THE DESPONDING DISCIPLES.

THE crowd that gathered round the cross of the innocent sufferer had dispersed; and even they who, but a few days since, were bound together by a common faith, are now scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. With the last breath of the expiring victim, expired their hopes! What a gloom must have settled over their minds, as the approach of night warned them to retire from Calvary!

But among those who had witnessed the crucifixion, we may designate two men who were returning to their home at Emmaus, a neighbouring village, about seven miles from Jerusalem. But little is known respecting them. The probability is, that they had seen Jesus, listened to his teachings, and witnessed his works, and thence been led to regard him as the Messiah; but the crucifixion staggered their faith and dashed their hopes.

In this state of mind, dejected and melancholy, they are returning whence they came, very naturally conversing of their previous views and feelings, in connection with the scenes they had so recently witnessed. They had not journeyed far, when a person accosted them and inquired the subject of their conversation, or the cause of their sadness; their dejected countenances being a sufficient apology, if one were needed, for such an intrusion.

Astonished that any one should be unacquainted with an event of so recent occurrence, and which had thrown the whole city into a state of unwonted excitement, they concluded that he was a stranger; and accordingly, with all that simplicity and brevity of speech which characterize deep emotion, they began to tell him of "Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be

condemned to death, and have crucified him:" and how they "trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and besides all this," said they, "to-day is the third day since these things were done."1

But he, instead of expressing either surprise at their statement, or sympathy with their feelings, immediately reproached them for not seeing, in the events to which they had referred, what had been clearly predicted in their own Scriptures; and then beginning his discourse, he explained to them from Moses and the prophets the things that had recently taken place in Jerusalem: how that their notions were not in accordance with the Scriptures; that, agreeably to the intimations of ancient prophecy, the Messiah must suffer; and that therefore the death of Christ was in fact no argument that he was not the long-promised deliverer of Israel.

Thus conversing, they reached the village; but their travelling companion seemed to them to be going farther, and therefore they constrained him to stop a while, and to participate their hospitality; so pleased and edified had they been with his conversation, and so reluctant were they to lose the benefit of his company. Accordingly, he went in to sup with them; and while they sat at meat, strange! he undertook the office of the master of the feast: he "took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them;" thus reminding them, in the most unaffected and touching manner, of the authority, the love, the gesture, the mien, of Him whose death they bemoaned. Perhaps, as he raised his hands to heaven, in invocation of a blessing on the food, they observed the prints of the nails.

Then they recognised him, and saw clearly that he was risen, and was indeed that very Messiah whom they had so fondly hoped would redeem Israel. But as they recognised him, he, availing himself of the moment of their surprise and joy, suddenly departed, leaving them to recal his instructions by the way, and, by consequence, the impressions which his words had

1 Luke, xxiv, 13-32.

2 The term fool in this connection is not to be viewed as an expression of contempt, but simply as an appropriate epithet for their dullness in not having perceived the drift of the prophetic writings; or their thoughtlessness in not having understood that the Messiah must die and rise again.

made on their minds and hearts: Strange, that we did not know him! "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures ?" "

Here, then, is a specimen of the nature of that evidence which may be adduced in favour of Christ's resurrection. It is, as it were, one link in that chain of proofs by which this event is placed beyond all reasonable doubt. Here are two witnesses, alike competent and dispassionate, and testifying under circumstances which cannot be explained with either the supposition that they meant to deceive, or were themselves deceived. Be it considered, that, whatever their former views and expectations might have been, the door of the sepulchre closed on their hopes when it enclosed the body of the crucified Jesus; that they were returning to the place of their abode with heavy hearts; and the more despondent, as the prospect of their deliverance from Roman bondage, which had so lately seemed to dawn on their vision, was now shrouded in darkness: so erroneous was their conception of the Messiah's kingdom, and so imperfect their acquaintance with the true import of the prophetic Scriptures. Though there was every inducement for them, as they had previously acknowledged him, and been known as his disciples, to believe that Christ would rise from the dead; though the third day, specified in his predictions as the time of his resurrection, was past; though they had just heard the report of the women who had gone early on the morning of the third day to the sepulchre, that the body was not there, and that the angels whom they saw there had said that Christ was alive again, still, they were not only sceptical, but despondent.

Being in such a state of mind, it is not surprising that they did not know who it was that accosted them. They were not expecting to see Jesus; they did not believe that he was alive; and it required the strongest evidence to convince them that he had risen from the dead; nothing short, indeed, of the evidence of their senses: and, though they had been interested in his conversation, and enlightened by his exposition of the prophecies, they had not the remotest idea that the stranger who had joined them was indeed the risen Jesus, until, while they were intent on the duties of hospitality to their guest, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them, as Jesus himself

had done in the company of his disciples, previous to his crucifixion! Such a circumstance was the more significant, as it was wholly unexpected. It roused them from the stupor into which they had been thrown by Christ's death, and in a moment riveted their eyes in scrutinizing wonder on the lineaments of their guest. 'We cannot be mistaken; no, it is He, the crucified Jesus! But he has gone! and yet we cannot doubt: we have seen him! he is certainly risen, as he said.'

Such were the circumstances under which they recognised him, and such their convictions; and the proof of their having been thoroughly satisfied that they had really seen Jesus, is found in the fact that the same hour, though already fatigued with walking, they returned to Jerusalem; and finding the eleven together, told them how Jesus had met them and conversed with them by the way, and how he was known to them in the breaking of bread.

Nor could they have been deceived as to the person who had met them; unless we may suppose that the woman of Samaria could have failed to recognise him with whom she had conversed at the well of Jacob; or the sisters of Lazarus, him who had raised their brother from the grave; unless Mary herself laboured under an illusion when she exclaimed, "Rabboni!" or Thomas, when he exclaimed, "My Lord and my God!" They had known him, and often listened with rapt attention to his teachings, and even embraced him as the Messiah; and the fact that they did not recognise him before, was owing either to his having presented at first a different appearance, or that they were no more expecting to meet him again than we are the friend whom, a few days since, we saw dead and buried.

Who but Christ himself would have accosted them at that time, or could have conversed with them in such a manner ? Though it might have been a stranger attracted by their earnest conversation, and curious to know what had occurred in the city, yet it is not probable that an utter stranger to Jerusa lem would have shown such profound knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures: or, though it might have been some one of the disciples with whom they had no acquaintance, yet all the disciples, for aught we know to the contrary, were equally disappointed, and equally in the dark respecting the nature of that deliverance which Christ had come to accomplish. But he who

met them in the way was no stranger to what had taken place in the city; nor was he a stranger to Moses and the prophets: and, so far from expressing surprise or wonder as a stranger would have done, or sympathizing with their views and feelings as any disciple would, he at once reproved them for their ignorance and disbelief of God's word. He proved to them that there was a necessity for Christ's sufferings, if not on the ground that God "might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus," yet clearly from the fact that his sufferings had been predicted; and then, by explaining the prophetic parts of Scripture, he satisfied their minds that the things which had come to pass, and which they bemoaned, were in exact fulfilment of all the prophecies respecting the promised Messiah: he walked along with them while thus instructing and interesting them; he would have gone beyond the village, but they constrained him to tarry with them; he went into their house to sup with them, and reclined at meat with them, and broke the bread, and asked the Divine blessing, in their

presence; and if such circumstances do not furnish sufficient evidence that he who met them was a real personage, no evidence can establish the fact: a hundred witnesses under such circumstances were no better than these two.

The question then turns on the authenticity of the narrative. But if it be not authentic, how can we account for the fact that they should have put into the mouth of a stranger to them, an exposition and application of those ancient prophecies of which they themselves were ignorant, and at the very time, too, when they had surrendered their own minds to doubt and despair? All this must have been a fabrication of theirs, if Jesus Christ did not accost them, and so converse with them: or, if the narrative had been written by an impostor, why should he have recorded, to their disparagement, the obtuseness of the disciples themselves as to the plain import of their own Scriptures? But how is it possible that an impostor should have written a narrative which is at once so simple, so tender, and so true to nature?

How natural that the disciples, after witnessing the death and burial of their Lord, should abandon all hopes of the cause which they had espoused; that, on leaving the city, they should carry with them a sad heart; that the things which had occurred