There they were met with indeed, and hath appeared

the Apostles-almost certainly the upper room, the guest chamber, which was theirs for the Paschal week. the same news-"The Lord is risen to Simon." Of this appearance, we only know that St. Paul speaks of our Lord being seen of Cephas (1 Cor. xv. 5). We know nothing of the meeting; we can only gather that the loving Saviour came to console His Apostle, who had denied Him through weakness, and might have been too full of fear and repentance to enter into the joy of the return of his Lord from the dead. The greeting, "Christ is risen!" "The Lord is risen indeed!" has been ever since the Easter salutation of the Eastern Church, and through the whole Church throughout the world ever sounds that glad echo of the joy that is above all our strength :

Jesus Christ is risen to-day,
Our triumphant holyday!
Alleluia !

LESSON XLV.

THE APPEARANCE TO THE APOSTLES.

EASTER SUNDAY, A.D. 30.-LUKE xxiv. 36—48; JOHN xx. 20-23.

And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.

And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?

And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.
And he took it, and did eat before them.

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,

And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day :

And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

And ye are witnesses of these things.

Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.

Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send

you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost :

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

COMMENT.

Thus ever brighter and more bright,
On those He came to save,

The LORD of new created light,

Dawned gradual from the grave;
Till pass'd the enquiring daylight hour,
And with closed door, in silent bower,
The Church in anxious musing sate,

As one who for redemption still had long to wait.

Then gliding through the unopen'd door,
Smooth, without step or sound,

"Peace to your souls," He said, no more.

They own Him, kneeling round,

Eye, ear and hand, and loving heart,

Body and soul in every part,

Successive made His witnesses that hour,

Cease not in all the world to shew His saving power.

St. John, the loving and beloved, who had believed from the time he found the empty sepulchre, speaks for himself: "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." St. Luke's informants recollected the awe and terror that came over them when they found themselves in the presence of One Who had died three days since, and Who had come among them through the closed door. These, who were unprepared, deemed that Form a spirit from the grave, and were affrighted, in spite of His greeting, "Peace be unto you." He bade them touch and handle Him, to feel that He was solid flesh, and showed them His sacred Wounds, the precious marks of His suffering; for He is the Lamb as It had been slain; and those "dear tokens of His Passion" still are borne by His glorified Body before our God, as signs of the Atonement for our sins. They believed not for joy, in that gladness

overpowering thought, and He gave them still further and fuller proof that He was no shadowy spirit, by eating before them. Therefore, eating and drinking with Him was always referred to afterwards as one of the strongest qualifications of the disciples as witness. The broiled fish and the honey were probably part of the simple home provision brought with them. The fish 'Ixer' (Ichthys, in Greek) was held afterwards to hold the sacred monogram in its name, and as dwelling in the water to be pure. It was used as an emblem of Christ and of Christians. Honey had been part of the special promise of the good things of Palestine; and when Samson had slain the lion, and "out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness," it was honey that he had found in the skeleton. Again of Immanuel it was prophesied― "Butter and honey shall he eat" (Is. vii. 15); and in the nineteenth Psalm, honeycomb, with its many cells of laboriously-gathered sweetness, is made to typify the Word of God.

Then, as before with the two disciples, He made them see, as they had never done before, how the suffering which had wrung their hearts and overthrown their faith was the most necessary part of the Redemption so long expected, and that type and ceremony, Psalm and Prophecy, had all alike declared them in every point. "Thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise." On no other terms would He have been the Messiah and Redeemer. And now they were to carry into all the world the news of this pardon that He had won, preaching repentance and pardon everywhere. St. John adds the full commission as He gave it, thus explaining what He had before promised to St. Peter, the keys of the kingdom of Heaven; now as He said to St. John, "I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I have the Keys of hell and of death" (Rev. i. 18). As had been said in Isaiah to Eliakim, the steward of Hezekiah, "And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; he shall shut, and none shall open" (Is. xxii. 22), so the key is delivered to the ministers and stewards of Christ's mysteries. These keys, the Sacraments and Absolution, unlock the fetters of the slaves whom Christ has ransomed, as one by one they come to take advantage of that ransom in Baptism, and to be loosed by Absolution, again and again from the chains in which

they may have been allowing themselves to be bound by Satan. The sentence of the Christian ministry spoken in the power of the Holy Ghost, then breathed on them, shall be ratified in Heaven, when they remit, or pronounce pardoned, the sin of the penitent-or when, more sad duty, seeing no penitence, they dare not pronounce that the sin is taken away. Of course this applies to what is done in the power of the Holy Ghost. The King seeth not as man seeth, and as no Absolution can avail unrepented sin, so if the Absolution be wrongfully or ignorantly withheld by the messenger, the King can supply it. But it is His appointed means for the remission of sin.

LESSON XLVI.

THE APPEARANCE TO ST. THOMAS.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, A.D. 30.-JOHN XX. 24-31. But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

:

Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side

not faithless, but believing.

And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

and be

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

:

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book :

But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

COMMENT.-One Apostle was absent the night of this appearance of our Lord. St. Thomas seems to have been a man of strong, staunch affections, but slow of comprehension, and not easy in giving his belief. In spite of the many assurances our Lord

had given that He should rise again, the idea was so new and wonderful that Thomas could not embrace it. And when he heard from the other Apostles that they had seen their Master, he could not believe their evidence. As they had doubted the women, so he doubted them, thinking they had accepted some spiritual appearance as material, and declaring that he could not believe without himself handling the Body and touching the Wounds. To this slowness of faith our Lord was merciful, and came again, when Thomas had for a whole week thus been deprived of the joy that all the others were living in. As our Collect says, his doubt tended to "the more confirmation of the faith," since, as we all feel in common life, the convincing of an incredulous person is the proof of the strength of the evidence. And when our Lord stood in the midst, and invited His Apostle to convince himself by the touch, Thomas's confession was complete, "My Lord, and my God." He was overpowered by the flash that came on him, realizing all hitherto but half understood, and knowing, both in one, his risen Lord and eternal God.

Then spake our Lord the blessing to all His Church who should have to live by the word of those witnesses, "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." This is the blessing to us, who see not here, and must walk by faith, not sight; and it is the higher blessing.

But it is well to lay to heart that doubt and unbelief are not intellectual merits, as too many try to represent them. They are the result of dulness of soul, of spiritual blindness, and this goes along with an unwholesome cultivation of the critical faculty. The soul becomes blinded by the reasoning power, and pride and vanity prolong its blindness.

Thus many a precious day, month, year,
The blessing we delay;

It comes at length, with saddened cheer;
He justly dims His ray.

Happy if it come at all! Happy if the clouds, conjured up by evil example, by the pride of intellect or the temptations of imitation, ever are cleared away, and the day ever comes when the