Bible Commentaries

Easter Day

John 20:1

We can hardly visit a cemetery without being filled with solemn and impressive thoughts. As you stand there with multitudes at your feet, all wrapped in slumber, your thoughts cany you back to the past, and on to the future. You look at the cold marble or the green grass which waves over that precious dust, but there is no one able to bid the slumberers arise.

I. The Empty Tomb.—There are many such spots where different groups of mourners meet, but there is one tomb above all the rest in which every Christian heart has a common interest, around which all may meet. It contains more sorrows and more hopes than all the graves on earth. It contains no ashes, for it is empty. It is the place where the risen Redeemer once lay. We are met at a strange place, it is true—the one place on earth where we know quite well that Jesus is not. Why, then, you ask, should we spend our time around a spot so cheerless and so Christless? Simply because He once was there, and every spot that Christ has touched is sacred and instructive. He once was there as lifeless as the dead of centuries, not merely in appearance but in reality. Many a head was bowed in woe, and many a heart was wellnigh breaking with sorrow, for their last hope had sunk in the grave with their Lord. And the night passed—the blackest night that ever closed over human grief; but with the early dawn of the third day—the brightest day that ever dawned for you—love made Mary Magdalene draw near, and to her surprise she found the stone rolled away and the keepers fled. Fast and far the news travelled. The glorious fact of a conqueror more mighty than death was that morning proclaimed to the world, and no sophistry has as yet been able to explain it away. It was the greatest transaction in history; it was accomplished in silence. It was the mightiest conquest the world had ever known; it was achieved in the dead of night, while the world slept. The Redeemer overcame the world's most dreaded foe, and broke the bonds of death. He came forth from the tomb a living man. Yes, it is a fact. The grave of Jesus Christ is empty; I suppose it is the only empty tomb on earth; and history records no mightier fact for the instruction and comfort of mankind. And what is the significance of this great fact?

II. The Atonement Completed.—It means that the Atonement is complete; it means that God the Father has accepted Christ's work as a satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It means that the problem of a future life has been solved, and a veritable hereafter revealed. Ours is not the Gospel of a dead Saviour, but of a living, reigning, life-giving One Who lives for evermore. Though a grave, it is the place of life. Since Jesus rose the power of the grave has been broken. It is no longer a dark prison-house, but the gate of life. Now we die to live again. But there is not only life for the body beyond the grave; there is spiritual life in the risen Saviour. As the Lord Jesus lay dead, not in appearance only, but in reality, so do all men by nature lie spiritually dead. Are there not men and women known to you in this world who are dead to every noble aim in life, buried in the world's follies and sins? So they will remain until they permit the risen and life-giving One to roll all their burden of sin back into the empty grave.

III. A Place of Comfort.—It is a place of comfort. We do not usually associate the grave with ideas of a comforting nature. We think of it rather as a place of parting and bitter grief. But the first note in the Gospel of the Resurrection was a note of comfort. "Fear not ye," said the angel to the weeping women. "Fear not," said the angels to the lowly shepherds when the Christ was born. The Gospel of Christ throughout is a Gospel of comfort. What but it has power to cheer the shrinking soul standing on the brink of the grave? "Fear not" The past need not trouble you, for Christ has made atonement for sin. The present you need not dread, for you are supported by the everlasting arms. The future is all safe in the power and love of Jesus Christ.

IV. A Place of Hope.—The empty grave is a place of hope. How often our hopes are blighted here, our expectations dashed down. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ proclaims the reviving of lost hopes. The brightest hopes were blighted when Jesus died, but when He rose they all revived. How many hopes have been buried in graves. But graves are not dug in the ground alone, or hewn from rocks. Human hearts are sepulchres, and how many hopes are buried there! I do not suppose there is a single heart beating in which there does not lie some unrealised hope, some unfulfilled expectation, but if your hearts are true to Christ, then be sure there is a resurrection day coming. The hope you thought you lost has only gone on before. It awaits you in the glorious hereafter. With Him it rose, with Him it ascended, and with Him it is kept as a sacred trust till you go home to claim it. There is nothing you really value that Christ will not give you back again. There is not a joy, not a hope, that has gone down here in the night of disappointment, but will rise in a fairer world where the sun will never set. Every lost affection will return to every loving heart, every hope to the despairing soul, and joy unspeakable to every mourner. All that on earth you have loved and lost will be given back to you in heaven.

But do not linger here. Do not rest by that empty grave. Go in search of the living Lord. You will find Him at God's right hand, and if you listen you will hear Him say, "I am the Resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

John 20:1

It is a man who tries to apprehend God through his logic and psychology; a woman understands Him better through emotions and deeds. It is the men who are concerned about the cubits, the cedar wood, the Urim and Thummim of the Tabernacle; women walk straight into the Holy of Holies. Men constructed the cross; women wept for the Crucified. It was a man—a Jew defending his faith in his own supernatural revelation—who tried to ram a sponge of vinegar into the mouth of Christ, dying; it was women who gathered at the sepulchre of the Resurrection. If Christ could have had a few women among His Apostles, there might have been more of His religion in the world, and fewer creeds barnacled on the World's Ship of Souls.

—James Lane Allen, The Reign of Law, pp287 , 288.

References.—XX:1.—F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p74. Expositor (7th Series), vol. v. pp322 , 438. XX:1-18.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. John 20:6-7

Finding that one of His children had been greatly shocked and overcome by the first sight of death, he tenderly endeavoured to remove the feeling which had been awakened, and opening a Bible pointed to the words: "Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about His head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself". Nothing, he said, to his mind, afforded us such comfort, when shrinking from the outward accompaniments of death—the grave, the grave-clothes, the loneliness—as the thought that all these had been around our Lord Himself; round Him who died and is now alive for evermore.

—Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold (chap4).

References.—XX:9.—H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Beading, p202. Bishop Westcott, Village Sermons, p138. XX:10.—T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p190. XX:10-16.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxv. No2119. XX:11.—W. H. Hutchings, Sermon Sketches (2Series), p127. J. Bateman, Sermons Preached in Guernsey, p68. C. Bickersteth, The Gospel of Incarnate Love, p79. XX:11-24.—F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p231.

Love and Grief

John 20:11-18

In this beautiful and ever-memorable incident there are three things upon which I wish to dwell. The first is Mary's grief; the second is Mary's love; and the third is the revelation of the Lord to Mary.

I. Let me speak, then, upon the grief of Mary, trying to make plain to you the greatness of that grief. (1) The first glimpse we get into its deeps is that Mary shows no wonder at the angels. There is nothing more absorbing than great grief. It banishes fear, surprise, dismay, astonishment. And from the utter absence of all such feelings here, we learn how terrible was Mary's grief. (2) The same intensity is manifest again when we notice how her grief embraced her world. It is when we see Mary so absorbed that every one she meets must know her sorrow, that we realise her womanly despair at the loss of her Saviour and her Lord. (3) Then, too, her grief had made her blind. That also reveals the depth of her dismay. Neither love nor hate nor jealousy nor anger is more effectual in sealing up the eyes than is the pressure of overwhelming grief. (4) The strange thing is that had she only known it, the cause of her grief was to be the joy of ages. And so I learn that in our deepest griefs may lie the secret of our richest joys, and that there may be "a budding morrow in midnight".

II. Now let us turn to the depth of Mary's love. (1) And how intensely she loved may be most surely gathered from her refusal to believe that He was lost. There is a kind of love that faces facts, and it is a noble and courageous love. It opens its eyes wide to dark realities, and bowing the head it says, "I must accept them". But there is an agony of love that does not act so: it hopes against hope and beats against all evidence. It is only women who can love like that, and it was a love like that which inspired Mary. (2) The depth of Mary's love is also seen in her instant and glad obedience to her Lord. The one thing she wanted was to be with Christ, yet that was the one thing which He denied her.

III. The revelation of the Lord to Mary. (1) The unceasing wonder of it all is this, that to her first He should have showed Himself. The strange thing is that what Christ did that morning, He has been constantly doing ever since. The first to see Him in all His power and love have been the very last the world expected. (2) And then Christ made Himself known by a single word. We are drawn to Christ by the deep and restful sense that we are known.

—G. H. Morrison, The Wings of the Morning, p97.

The Rising of Christ (Easter Day)

John 20:13

Resurrection is the method of the kingdom of God. Not by steady and unbroken progress does it advance, but by death and rising again in new form from the dead. So it has been in the history of the Church. Again and again the familiar forms in which faith had apprehended Him die and are lost to sight, only to be superseded by some new aspect of Him, at first unfamiliar and distrusted, at last recognised as Christ risen again. So it has been also in the faith of individuals. Having known Him in some particular fashion, we try to retain the vision just as it was. Like Haliburton, like Peter before him, we "spake ravingly of tabernacles". But God is inexorable, and we have to learn for ourselves "what this rising from the dead should mean".

I. History.—The Church began in a primitive simplicity which was content to tell the story of the Gospels. And, told by hearts hot with love to Jesus, that story conquered the world. But as the faith spread through the Roman Empire, and came in contact with the Greek thought of the day, lawless thinking and loose organisation demanded new forms both of creed and of ecclesiasticism, and the ancient Catholic Church arose. Doubtless there were many simple souls who felt themselves lost and bewildered among all those new institutions, and whose cry was: "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him". Yet He was not taken away, but risen, in a new form suited to the new situation.

Phase after phase of Christian faith rises, lives, and grows obsolete: and always there are some who cry that the Christ of the fathers has been taken away. But really it is only a phase that has been taken. That phase is dead. It has served its time and has now become ineffective, no longer influencing conduct, stirring the heart, or convincing the intellect.

The claim of the new phases is as sound as that of the old was. "There is no real resting-place," says the late Dr. Jowett, "but in the entire faith that all true knowledge is a revelation of the will of God". In the new forms Christ is not taken away, but risen that He may reveal the Father to a new generation.

II. Individual Experience. —Here, too, Christ often disappears, and those who have lost Him come to old means of grace—doctrines, sacraments, devotions—and find them but cold and empty cerements. In one way or another, the world has been too much for you. Yet none of all these things have taken away your Lord. He is risen, and He waits to meet you, when you wander bewildered, disheartened, or ashamed. His appearance will not indeed be exactly what it was before. The search for truth, the cruelty of suffering, and the shame of apostacy—each works in the soul changes which require some new aspect of the Christ. But the wonderful thing about Christ is that He is sufficient for life in all its aspects; and that whatever be your experience, and however impossible it be now to regain the exact aspect of faith which once was yours, there is in Him all that man can ever need. He stands not where you were but beside you where you are, and if you will but turn and look you will find that He is risen and not taken away.

—John Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p90.

References.—XX:14.—H. Bonar, Short Sermons for Family Reading, p224. Expositor (7th Series), vol. vi. p115.

Supposing Him to Be the Gardener

John 20:15

I take my text from the supposition of Mary: "She, supposing Him to be the gardener". You know the events of the Easter morning: How she came to the tomb with spices prepared for the embalming of the dead Body, and how she did not seem frightened by the presence of the angels which frightened the men—very often women are more brave than men. And when the angels asked, "Woman, why weepest thou?" she said: "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him". And as she said this, Jesus stood by her, and she, supposing Him to be the gardener, said: " John 20:15; Luke 24:37

I. Putting these two incidents side by side, I can see a picture of the twofold difficulty of that new life that Christ came to reveal. I can see, as in a parable, the two ways in which we fail to gather and use the great revelation that Jesus makes to us. We make the mistake that the Magdalene made. We love an easy, earthly explanation of life. We live too often under the dominion of this world's narrow probabilities. We are content, nay, even resolved, that our thought shall move within the cramped limits of our experience. We pass unmoved, unenlightened through some hour that might have been a great hour of the soul, because, for us, life is prejudged. An explanation may be perfectly reasonable and quite wrong. What more reasonable than to suppose that that figure in the garden was the gardener? Who else was likely to be there at that early hour? Who else was likely to have any right or business there? The sanity, the likeliness of Mary's conclusion were beyond criticism. But she was wrong. She was tremendously and profoundly wrong. And her mistake teaches us that the truth as it is in Jesus may give the lie to all time-born probabilities. It may contradict earth's narrow, hour-long likelihood. The empty sepulchre is not an isolated marvel. It is not just a splendid, lonely mystery, challenging for evermore the mind that must still live on in a world wholly governed by laws that are traceable and wholly made up of situations that admit of being reasoned out.

II. Let us look at what happened on the evening of the first day of the week. The mistake that the disciples made in the evening was just the opposite of the mistake that the Magdalene had made in the dawn. She had stumbled over the likely and the familiar: they stumbled over the unlikely and the strange. She had found an explanation that was simple and reasonable and by no means disconcerting. They found an explanation that was irrational, disquieting, and remote from the facts and laws of life. To her, Christ was the gardener about to begin his day's work: to them He was an inexplicable and dreadful apparition, a ghostly presence from the place of silence and shadows, flinging about their souls the garment of nameless fear. Mary did not go far enough in her explanation of the figure in the garden. She stopped short at the bidding of her habit of thought. She accepted too easily the verdict of sense and judgment. The disciples in their explanation of the figure that appeared among them went too far. They passed beyond the range of all that to them had ever been real and intelligible. They saw only a ghostly visitant, an abstraction, a terrifying mystery. Can we find in that stupefied and fear-stricken company a lesson we need to learn? Is it not the reality of the unseen world, the real existence, the immediate and practical significance of the things of the spirit? We lock the door, we bar the windows of the house of life. We shelter ourselves amid the securities and fellowships of earth. But in spite of every bolt and bar He comes.

III. It was the same figure that Mary mistook for the gardener and that the disciples mistook for a dread apparition. It was the same living, loving Saviour of human souls. In Jesus the two worlds meet. In Him the earthly and the heavenly are reconciled.

On the Magdalene Jesus laid a new law of reverence, on the disciples a new law of familiarity.

—Percy Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, p87.

John 20:15

The gardener, as St. Francis sweetly says, reminded her only of flowers, while her head was full of nails, and thorns, and crosses.

—Faber.

References.—XX:15.—R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p33. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix. No1699 , and vol. li. No2956. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. i. p68. XX:16.—H. S. Holland, Old and New, p201. A. Bradley, Sermons chiefly on Character, p273. XX:16-18.—H. S. Sanders, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p409.

Touch Me Not

John 20:17

I. Observe, first, how the risen Lord withdraws Himself here from His disciple, and why. It is not enough merely to say, that in the nature of the case nothing else was to be looked for. It is true He had been on a far journey since He had met them last. In a word, He belonged to another order now, the order of the spiritual, the unseen, the eternal. And therefore it might be thought there must be a certain aloofness about Him so long as He should still remain on earth. They must "touch Him not". Nevertheless this is hardly our Lord's meaning here. Or if it be part of it, then it is the smaller and least important part As is evident from what follows: "Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father"—implying surely, that when that consummation shall have been reached, a contact and companionship with Himself shall be open to which there shall attach no hindrance or limitation whatsoever. He closes one chapter in the history of His relations with the world that He may open another and even more desirable. The outward fellowship is to give place to an inward; the ordinary human companionship to a mystic or spiritual communion.

II. Observe the nature of the new bond which our Lord speaks of here as existing between His followers and Himself. It comes out in His calling of them "brethren". It was a term which He had never applied to them before. We may say that there were three stages in the process by which the Son of God drew near to us, and identified Himself with our life and destiny as to be able to call us brethren. (1) In the first place there was His birth into this lowly world. (2) Then, further, there is His identification of Himself with His sinful brethren's lot as in God's sight—which is the inner meaning of His whole public life. (3) And yet, it was not in the course of His lifetime He called men brethren, but after it was all behind Him. Why? may it not have been that to all this it was needful to add something else, before that most intimate relationship should be perfected and assured? The most expressly human of all our experiences, perhaps, is death. In that supreme hour of His death, He gained the full and final right to His own title, Son of John 20:17

The first words of the risen Lord were spoken to Mary: "Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father". Take not hold of Me, He said. And yet neither in the old days nor in the new had it been His manner to repel or check the outgoings of love. Mary Magdalene washed His feet with tears—the feet not yet nailed—and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Since Mary and the Lord had parted, much had passed. The death, the sleep, the experiences of the other world, the return, the rising again, on His side; and on hers, a whole lifetime of questioning, misgiving, and agony. Even in the great forty days He suffered other women to clasp His feet. He was patient with the Apostle who demanded to touch and see, and yet it was His will of love to beat Mary back and say the words, Touch Me not.

I. Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended. So she may touch Him one day in another way. Touch Me not, for she was holding to the earthly, and imagining that His presence was bound up with the external form, and that she could only make sure of Him when she clasped Him with clinging hands. She had despaired when the bodily form of her Lord had vanished, and when she saw Him attain it was with the bodily form that she associated all possibilities of communion, likeness, and love. If it had been as she fancied, then, indeed, she would have believed in vain, for He was to linger but a little on these darkened shores of time. But His departure—and herein is the sweetness and the power of His saying—was to give Him back to her in a nearer, dearer, and closer manner than she had dreamed of when hope was highest. Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended. There is to be a better fashion of touching Me, holding Me, detaining Me when I have gone away. I pass into the heavens, but I do not leave the earth.

II. Between our Lord and the faithful dead there cannot be a perfect parallel. He conquered death as they did not. True, He burst the bars of iron asunder and made way for His own. True, He rose as the firstfruits of His sleeping people. True, they are with Him in Paradise on the day they die, but their bodies remain and see corruption, and the trumpet has not yet sounded. Their souls are in His sacred care, on the bosom of His love. But we cannot have communion with them as we can with Him. With Him there is possible the utmost intimacy of converse, the speaking and the hearing that go on from day to day between us and the living. He wakens us, if we will, every morning to fresh messages, and we may pour out our hearts before Him, and be assured of His heed. Not in the same full and satisfying sense can we communicate with our dead, and yet we slowly learn, under the Spirit's teaching, to think of them as we think of Him, and our love is changed, purified, and exalted in proportion as we realise the spiritual world and Christ as its King and Head.

III. This may be illustrated by a study of "In Memoriam". That great poem is a unity, and it describes the way of the faithful soul in bereavement. It begins with the first experience of stupor and confusion and grief. The heart desires at first simply what Mary desired, the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still. It is bound to the past, and unable to rise to higher things than the lips and the eyes and the meeting of the morrow. It goes back with passionate yearning to what once was, and longs that it may be again—the presence and companionship which meant sight and hearing and touch. It was through these that what it pines for was known and loved, and it cannot think of the soul existing apart from them. Even if it does exist it is not the human heart that was so dear, that is so missed. It is a phantom or a ghost. It is thought of with awe, perhaps even with recoil. While this phase of feeling lasts the dead body is dearer than the jewel it held. There is no consolation and no uplifting until we understand the spiritual touch, until the soul is delivered from the bondage to sense, until the desire fixed on what is dead turns to that which is not dead. The spiritual enfranchisement comes when we understand that love may survive the sensible presence of its object—and that on both shores. When we on this side understand that, then the soul withdrawn becomes beloved and loving, not shadowy and awful, then the days that are no more become rather sweet than sad, a life in death and not a death in life. It may be very long ere the desire for the tangible, the visible, the material weakens. Through much tribulation the enlightenment must come. Indeed, it can hardly come except to those whose spirits the risen Lord has touched. This is the victory that overcomes grief, even our faith.

—W. Robertson Nicoll, Sunday Evening, p181.

Ascension Tide

John 20:17

I. Our first thought is of our Master's glory, of that final attestation of His mission and work of which the voices from heaven at His Baptism and His Transfiguration were the prelude: of the opening and beginning of that new kingdom in which the Son of man has all power given to Him in heaven and on earth; in which He has the Name given Him which is above every name; in which He reigns "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, King of kings, and Lord of lords".

II. And our next thought John 20:17

This is the second word spoken by our Lord after His Resurrection; and it was spoken to the simple womanly penitent. His first word touched her heart, His second informed her spirit.

I. The Action of the Magdalene.—The action of the Magdalene in stretching out her hand to touch our Lord proved that she never supposed that He would be further removed from her than He was in His natural body. There was the Christian woman's faithful, loving, pious act. Is it your first impulse to get the precious possession of your risen Lord?

II. The Rebuke.—Let us go a step further. The word was instant—"Touch Me not". Now, do you think that by that word He meant in any way that He was separate from her? Was it a warning, do you think, to His redeemed, that He was no more to be approached as near, that He was retiring into the nature which He had from all eternity, pure Godhead, and had left behind Him in the grave His manhood, emptied Himself of His human fellowship and kinship with us? Not at all. When He bade Mary touch Him not, He only negatived her impulsive love, and corrected it by a higher knowledge of a more perfect blessing which should after a brief interval of patience be hers. He needed that body as an instrument for our atonement and sacrifice in death upon the cross; He needs that body now to be an instrument of uniting man with God. Mary should touch Him, Mary should receive, embrace, possess Him, but not in the only way in which she had kissed His feet and washed them with her tears and wiped them with the natural drapery of her hair, but she should touch Him and possess Him in a better way.

III. "Not yet Ascended."—It is clear from these words that the union of any individual man with Christ is the result of the Ascension. The period of forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension was a transitional state, not intended to last, an intermediate condition of life, an interval that is too subtle to be defined. The natural body of Christ—that John 20:17

I. To whom Sent.—Christ's brethren—Peter, John 20:19; John 20:26

I. The circumstances thus briefly described are in themselves a significant illustration of a constantly John 20:20

I. These wounds were silent arguments. Christ's hands and His side had an eloquence unapproachable. They were arguments cut in form and figure. Some men have been able to cut stone into poetry and words into music. There has been no speech, no appeal to the ear; the whole appeal seems to have been direct d to the vision of John 20:20

This scene is suggestive of so many considerations that the difficulty is which to choose. There are three which claim especial attention just at present.

I. Our Lord's Indulgent Treatment of Mistakes and Imperfections in Religious Beliefs.—Touch John 20:20

The time of weariness, suspense, and doubt was over; the disciples knew that the Lord was risen from the dead. They saw Him, they heard Him speak, and He showed them His hands and His side. Here we come into contact with one of the abiding sources of Christian gladness. It is the presence of the Lord that makes His people glad, as it is the absence from Him which makes them sad. It is one of the axioms of the Christian faith that the Lord is ever with His people; it is one of their experiences that He keeps tryst, and His presence makes His people glad. Why did the sight of Jesus make His disciples glad?

I. They were glad for His sake. They were glad when they saw the Lord, because the Resurrection told them that He had won the victory, and had finished His work. They were glad because they knew that He had overcome all that was hostile to Him and His work. That work was finished. But that source of gladness remains for all His people. Whenever we see the Lord, whenever manifestations of His presence come within our experience, we are glad for His sake, because He endured the cross and is set on the right hand of God.

II. The disciples were glad for their own sake. He was still the same patient, loving, compassionate, helpful Friend and Saviour He had been during the years in which they had known Him. So when He had ascended up on high, and returned to the Father, they were persuaded that He felt in heaven as He had felt on earth, continued to be touched with a feeling of their infirmities, and was still afflicted in all their afflictions. A love that did not depend on the worthiness of the people loved, that death could not touch, that many waters could not quench, surely such a love was unexampled. We can only explain it or understand it by coming to understand Him. We Can only say it is like Jesus to love after this fashion. But this source of Christian gladness is also permanent. How may He come, and how may we recognise Him when He comes? To the first question no answer can be given. But there are times, places, seasons, where the seeking heart is sure to find Him. (1) It was when he was in the spirit on the Lord's Day that John saw the vision of the Lord, and received from Him the new mission he had to accomplish. (2) More definitely we may always expect to find Jesus in His Word. (3) But even more particularly. "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." Never have His people met together and found that He was absent.

—J. Iverach, The Other Side of Greatness, p85.

References.—XX:20.—W. F. Shaw, Sermon Sketches for the Christian Year, p56. W. P. S. Bingham, Sermons on Easter Subjects, p66. F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p77. W. H. Simcox, The Cessation of Prophecy, p314. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2Series), vol. i. p209. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p312. E. H. Bickersteth, Thoughts in Past Years, p1. C. Bigg, The Spirit of Christ in Common Life, p282.

The Missionary Commission of the Church

John 20:21

These are amazing words. If they do not amaze us I fear Newman's explanation is the true one: "You do not meditate and therefore you are not impressed". What an astonishing avowment it is! Christ makes Himself co-ordinate with the Father. Not only does the Lord associate Himself uniquely with God, but in a wonderful way He associates Christians with Himself.

I. Christ commissions us to evangelise men. God sent Christ to save the world; in a lesser but very real sense Christ sends His disciples to save the world. My text has been well described as "the charter of the Church". Such it is. The point to be specially noted is that all Christians are sent. How can we all go? We can all go either personally or representatively. We are not responsible for the conversion of the world, but we are responsible for the evangelisation of the world.

II. Christ sends His servants with a wonderful experience of Divine things. "As the Father hath sent Me." How did God send Jesus? I answer that He sent Him with a matchless experience Divine. "So send I you." What an experience He gave His first commissioned evangelists! "He showed unto them His hands and His side." They are made sure of the Saviour whom they are to proclaim. This is ever and infallibly the missionary secret. All who have seen the Lord are sent. And this rich experience is the inspiration of missionary work.

III. The commissioned disciples are enriched with peace. What was the risen Master's greeting when He appeared among His disciples to commission them that first Easter evening? "Peace be unto you." And as He states the great delegation, what is His prefatory word? "Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you." There is a grand distinction between the two benedictions. As Bishop Westcott expresses it: "The first "Peace" was the restoration of personal confidence; the second "Peace" was the preparation for work".

IV. The servants of the Lord are supremely empowered. In the Holy Spirit all empowerment for world-evangelisation rests. He is the "Holy Spirit," and imparts holiness to those who receive Him.

V. With solemn authority Christ's commissioned servants go forth. "All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth" is Christ's own declaration. Does He impart authority to His sent ones? Assuredly. This is His word: "Whosesoever sins ye forgive they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained". What is this authority? I believe it relates, in Wesley's phrase, to "ecclesiastical censures" and to them only. It is entrusted with the power to keep its membership pure.

—Dinsdale T. Young, The Enthusiasm of God, p62.

References.—XX:21.—B. Martin, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii. p388. F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons in Outline, p246. J. Keble, Sermons for the Saints" Days, p185. J. B. Brown, The Divine Life in John 20:24-29

Thomas the doubter—how shall we think of him? We can classify the doubters. There is the indifferent doubter with whom all matters of religion are of so little importance that it is absurd to claim a miracle in support of them, especially such a miracle as the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is the conceited doubter. Then there is the doubter that only talks. And last of all there is the honest doubter, to whom all that is spiritual is unknowable. But surely Thomas is not represented by either of these classes.

I. The very character of Thomas teaches us that faith is a much harder thing for some people than it is for others. Thomas was a slow, diffident John 20:24-29

It is said that the first institution of the Festival of St. Thomas was established at a period between the eighth and the eleventh century. In the Greek Church it is commemorated on6th October, but in the English Church on21st December. The name Thomas, whether in its Hebrew form or in that of its Greek equivalent—Didymus—signifies "a twin," or "a twin-brother"; and because he is always mentioned in the sacred lists with St. John 20:25

Of all the Apostles, St. Thomas affords the most striking parallel to the prevailing tendencies of our age. These words of his might have been spoken by a disciple of the modern school of sensational philosophy. But he is not a mere type of a school of thought. He is a Christian man with mingled graces and faults.

I. St. Thomas's Doubt viewed in Relation to his own Spiritual Condition.

(a) It was a decided doubt. We look upon doubt as something that wavers, falters, hesitates. But St. Thomas showed the opposite spirit. He was very positive. The dogmatism of unbelief is often observed; but here we may see the dogmatism of doubt Though the expression appears paradoxical, it is verified by common observation. If a man lays down certain conditions on which he will believe, and regards these conditions as absolute and final, he is as dogmatic in his decision not to decide the question before him till those conditions are fulfilled.

(b) This doubt must be, distinguished from, distrust. The Apostle did not waver in his allegiance to Christ; he merely questioned the astounding rumour of the Resurrection. He would still die for his Master, though he could not believe that his Master had risen from the grave. The really important matter for all of us is an active loyal trust in Christ An orthodox Judas is no Christian, while a sceptical Thomas remains within the fold of Christ

II. St. Thomas's Doubt as Illustrative of a Common Phase of Thought.—There was a method in his doubt. He had a very clear idea of what he required to satisfy his mind. He wanted personal experience, and he wanted the evidence of his senses.

(a) The first requisite was personal experience. He must see for himself. A similar disposition is apparent in the claims for individual conviction advocated so strenuously in the present day. This is the great Protestant principle of private judgment run wild. People refuse to accept a doctrine because the Church authorises it. It must be proved to them on its own merits. Wholesome and sensible as this demand is when kept within reasonable limits, it lands us in absurdity when it is pushed to extremes. We cannot obtain direct evidence of every truth. Life is too short for the task, and our facilities are too limited. We accept facts of history on testimony. Is it not reasonable that we should accept the historical foundation of religion in the same way?

(b) The other requisite was the evidence of the senses. This evidence of the senses is set in the first place among our modern grounds of conviction. Yet the senses are being proved to be liable to great illusions, and at least they can show only objects of sense. The spiritual world is wholly dark to them. Important as the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Christ John 20:25

That was the saying of an Apostle, I confess; but it was not said like an Apostle. See how foolish this is in worldly matters. An English traveller was once talking to the Emperor of Burmah (which is a very hot country) and telling him of different things in England. He spoke about our railroads and our newspapers, and our shops, and our manufactories; and the Emperor, though he was very much surprised, believed everything. At last the traveller happened to say something about skating, and the Emperor would listen no longer. He said: "You have told me many wonderful things, but I was willing to believe them, because you said them. But I never will nor can believe that water becomes hard enough to be walked on. If the whole world told me John 20:25-27

I suppose the life of every century has more or less special resemblance to that of some particular Apostle. I cannot help thinking this century has Thomas for its model. How do you suppose the other Apostles felt when that experimental philosopher explored the wounds of the Being Who to them was Divine, with that inquisitive forefinger? In our time that finger has multiplied itself into ten thousand thousand implements of research, challenging all mysteries, weighing the world as in a balance, and sifting through its prisms and spectroscopes the light that came from the throne of the Eternal.

—O. W. Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast Table, vii.

St. Thomas

John 20:26

Thrice in the pages of St. John's Gospel Thomas comes before us, and on all occasions we note the same characteristics—the same tendency to look at the darker side of things, to fear too much and hope too little. Let us glance, for a moment, at the attitude of Christ, of the other disciples, and of St. Thomas himself.

I. First, then, we would notice that our Lord does not reject the poor disciple who was "doubtful in His Resurrection". He does not refuse the very test which he demands. There is a tone of tender pity rather than of condemnation in the words: "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed". But this blessing is not given to all; and certainly when Christ bade St. Thomas "reach hither his finger and behold His hands, and reach hither his hand and thrust it into His side," He was allowing that such a demand was not in itself to be condemned. But notice that He treats Thomas as a disciple before he believes—and why? Because He knows that, perplexed and doubting though he be, he has the root of the matter in him—personal love, devotion, and loyalty to Himself. This is the first and great thing, the attitude of the heart to Christ; this in itself is faith; and intellectual conviction must come not before, but afterwards.

II. Let us notice the attitude of the other disciples. "And Thomas with them." They also did not "cast him out". Alas! how different might not the history of the Church have been, if intellectual error, where the heart was true, had not been ever regarded as disloyalty to Christ! I do not, of course, mean for a moment that we can afford to be indifferent to doctrinal error. But who can read ecclesiastical history without feeling that the temper in which intellectual error has been treated has been, generally speaking, very alien to the spirit of Christ? It is surely for us to try to cultivate more of the spirit of Christ and of those Apostles who suffered the doubting Thomas "to be with them".

III. And finally, we may see in the story of St. Thomas a warning to doubters. The doubting disciple did not cut himself off from communion with his brethren; when they met for prayer and fellowship he was there with them. Do not, if you have any love of Christ, let your doubts and difficulties be a reason for cutting yourselves off from the Christian society, or from public worship. Be true to Christ—if it only be with the loving doubt of a Thomas—be true to Him, and it may be that you shall have his reward, and that on your wondering eyes shall break the vision of the King in His beauty!

—H. R. Gamble, The Ten Virgins, p177.

References.—XX:26.—J. Keble, Sermons for Easter to Ascension Day, p230. A. Maclaren, After the Resurrection, p52; ibid. Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. John 20:28

I should throw up revelation altogether if I ceased to recognise Christ as Divine.

—Mrs. Browning, Letters, ii. p156.

References.—XX:28.—Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvii. p257. G. Bellett, Parochial Sermons, p253. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p172. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p42. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No1775.

The Beatitude of Faith

John 20:29

The benediction of faith: it is one of the last messages of the risen Lord to His Church, and it brings fresh consolation and strength from age to age in correspondence with the varying needs and perplexities of mankind. Let us ask ourselves wherein lies the blessedness of faith, and what are the claims that it makes upon us, if we are to share in the promised benediction.

I. And first we notice at once that there is one marked difference between this blessing and those others which form the preface to the Sermon on the Mount. There in each case reasons are given; and specific reward is spoken of as bestowed upon each grace. But no special reward of faith is spoken of in the text. Faith is its own reward; and the law of faith is this: Whosoever hath, to him shall be given. Faith is like love: it does not ask for anything beyond itself. It rests in itself.

II. What, then, after all, is this belief. As it may be in its beginnings a different thing from full assurance and joyful confidence, so it is always a different thing from a mere passive assent to dogma, a mere repetition with our lips of a phrase in which truth is supposed to be expressed. A mere speculative conviction as to the truth of this or that principle affects conduct but little. There is such a thing as faith without works, but it is dead. Faith in God, in our blessed Lord Himself, means more than belief such as this; it means trust in a Person. If we believe anything truly, it must occupy a share in our daily thoughts, it must influence our conduct, it must display itself in life. And so it is with the faith in Jesus Christ, Incarnate, Crucified, Risen, which the text describes as blessed.

III. Here we have come upon the true tests of our faith. (1) Obedience. It is not only a test, it is a source of faith. It is in trying to do God's will that we learn to hear His voice. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Does that mean that we may not verify by experience the wisdom and the depth of our Lord's teaching? Nay; but we must not wait until we have satisfied our intellect as to its perfection before we begin to act on it. (2) And a second test of our faith is the reality of our prayers It is in prayer that faith is exercised and disciplined, even as it is in prayer that it finds its fullest and freest expression.

—J. H. Bernard, Via Domini, p165.

The Blessing of Faith

John 20:29

It was on the evening of the Sunday after the first Easter Day that our Lord manifested Himself to the unbelieving disciple.

Thomas's declaration, "Except I shall see... I will not believe," is the cry of many today. And even among some professing Christians there is a desire to "spiritualise" the Resurrection, rather than to regard it as a fact of historic truth. The Church of England has no place for men who thus take away our Lord, so that we "know not where they have laid Him".

There is no need for us to discuss the evidences of the Resurrection. It has been well said that there is no fact of history more clearly attested than that our Lord rose again from the dead.

We are among those who have not seen and yet have believed, and to us is the promise of the text given.

In what does that blessedness consist?

I. It Ensures the Presence of the Risen Christ in the Heart.—It is ours to be able to say with St. Paul, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me". And we who have believed seek to know more and more of "Him and the power of His Resurrection". The presence of Christ in the heart of the believer! What does it mean? It means that our life will become— (a) Christ-controlled.

(b) Christ-centred.

(c) Christ-guarded.

We become one with Christ and He with us.

II. It Enables us to Share Christ's Victory over Sin—especially that sin which doth so easily beset us. How can we crucify sin? His Resurrection life imparted to us means that "we reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God". It is by the power of the risen Christ that we may smite Satan and all his hosts.

III. It Gives to Each One of us the Sure and Certain Hope of the Resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. This is the faith which not only overcometh the world, but gives hope to the mourner, and illumines even the dark valley of the shadow of death.

We have not seen, but yet have believed. "Lord, increase our faith, and make our life one with Thine."

Faith Without Sight

John 20:29

St. Thomas loved his Master, as became an Apostle, and was devoted to His service; but when He saw Him crucified, his faith failed for a season with that of the rest. At the same time we need not deny that his especial doubts of Christ's Resurrection were not altogether owing to circumstances, but in a measure arose from some faulty state of mind. St. John's narrative itself, and our Saviour's speech to him, convey an impression that he was more to blame than the rest. His standing out alone, not against one witness only, but against his ten follow disciples, besides Mary Magdalene and the other women, is evidence of this; and his very strong words: "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 it is observable that, little as we know of St. Thomas, yet the one remaining recorded speech of his (before Christ's Crucifixion), intimates something of the same doubting perplexed state of mind. When Christ said He was going to His Father, and by a way which they all knew, Thomas interposed with an argument: "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way?" that John 20:29

I bless myself and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles; that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea; nor one of Christ's patients, on whom He wrought His wonders: then had my faith been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. "Tis an easy and necessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined. I believe He was dead, and buried, and rose again: and desire to see Him in His glory, rather than to contemplate Him in His cenotaph or sepulchre."

—From Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici.

References.—XX:29.—H. D. M. Spence, Voices and Silences, p303. H. S. Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p243. J. T. Bramston, Fratribus, p104. Bishop Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p52. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No2721. W. E. Barton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lii. p307 , and vol. lv. p230. T. T. Lynch, Sermons for My Curates, p33. XX:30.—J. Clifford, The Christian Certainties, p159. Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p66. XX:30 , 31.—A. Adamson, Christian World Pulpit, vol1. p312. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii. No1631. Expositor (5th Series), vol. v. p223. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. John , p327. XX:31.—H. D. M. Spence, Voices and Silences, p113. F. W. Farrar, Truths to Live by, p3. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iv. p177; ibid. vol. v. p49.