SECTION II. THE EYES OF THE DISCIPLES OPENED
Mark xvi. 14; Luke xxiv. 25-32; 44-46; John xx. 20-23.
Jesus showed Himself alive after His passion to
His disciples in a body, for the first time, on the evening of His resurrection
day. It was the fourth time He had made Himself visible since He rose from the
dead. He had appeared in the morning first of all to Mary of Magdala. She had
earned the honor thus conferred on her by her pre-eminent devotion. Of kindred
spirit with Mary of Bethany, she had been foremost among the women who came to
Joseph's tomb to embalm the dead body of the Savior. Finding the grave empty,
she wept bitter tears, because they had taken away her Lord, and she knew not
where they had laid Him. Those tears, sure sign of deep true love, had not been
unobserved of the Risen One. The sorrows of this faithful soul touched His
tender heart, and brought Him to her side to comfort her. Turning round in
distress from the sepulchre, she saw Him standing by, but knew Him not. "Jesus
saith to her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to
be the gardener, replies, Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where thou
hast laid Him, and I will take Him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary."[28.20]
Startled with the familiar voice, she looks more attentively, and forthwith
returns the benignant salutation with an expressive word of recognition,
"Rabboni." Thus "to holy tears, in lonely hours, Christ risen appears."
The second appearance was vouchsafed to Peter.
Concerning this private meeting between Jesus and His erring disciple we have
no details: it is simply mentioned by Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians,
and by Luke in his Gospel; but we can have no doubt at all as to its object.
The Risen Master remembered Peter's sin; He knew how troubled he was in mind on
account of it; He desired without delay to let him know he was forgiven; and
out of delicate consideration for the offender's feelings He contrived to meet
him for the first time after his fall, alone.
In the course of the day Jesus appeared, for the
third time, to the two brethren who journeyed to Emmaus. Luke has given greater
prominence to this third appearance than to any other in his narrative,
probably because it was one of the most interesting of the anecdotes concerning
the resurrection which he found in the collections out of which he compiled his
Gospel. And, in truth, any thing more interesting than this beautiful story
cannot well be imagined. How vividly is the whole situation of the disciples
brought before us by the picture of the two friends walking along the way, and
talking together of the things which had happened, the sufferings of Jesus
three days ago, and the rumors just come to their ears concerning His
resurrection; and as they talked, vibrating between despair and hope, now
brooding disconsolately on the crucifixion of Him whom till then they had
regarded as the Redeemer of Israel, anon wondering if it were possible that He
could have risen again! Then how unspeakably pathetic the behavior of Jesus
throughout this scene! By an artifice of love He assumes the incognito, and,
joining the company of the two sorrowful men, asks them in a careless way what
is the subject about which they are talking so sadly and seriously; and on
receiving for reply a question expressive of surprise that even a stranger in
Jerusalem should not know the things which have come to pass, again asks dryly
and indifferently, "What things?" Having thereby drawn out of them their story,
He proceeds in turn to show them that an intelligent reader of the Old
Testament ought not to be surprised at such things happening to one whom they
believed to be Christ, taking occasion to expound unto them "in all the
Scriptures the things concerning Himself," without saying that it is of Himself
He speaks. On the arrival of the travellers at the village whither the two
brethren were bound, the unknown One assumes the air of a man who is going
farther on, as it would not become a stranger to thrust himself into company
uninvited; but receiving a pressing invitation, He accepts it, and at last the
two brethren discover to their joy whom they have been entertaining
unawares.
This appearing of Jesus to the two brethren by
the way was a sort of prelude to that which He made on the evening of the same
day in Jerusalem to the eleven, or rather the ten. As soon as they had
discovered whom they had had for a guest, Cleopas and his companion set out
from Emmaus to the Holy City, eager to tell the friends there the stirring
news. And, behold, while they are in the very act of telling what things were
done in the way, and how Jesus became known to them in the breaking of bread,
Jesus Himself appeared in the midst of them, uttering the kindly salutation,
"Peace be unto you!" He is come to do for the future apostles what He has
already done for the two friends: to show Himself alive to them after His
passion, and to open their understandings that they might understand the
Scriptures, and see that, according to what had been written before of the
Christ, it behooved Him to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.
While the general design of the two appearances
is the same, we observe a difference in the order of procedure followed by
Jesus. In the one case He opened the eyes of the understanding first, and the
eyes of the body second; in the other, He reversed this order. In His colloquy
with the two brethren He first showed them that the crucifixion and the rumored
resurrection were in perfect accordance with Old Testament Scriptures, and then
at the close made Himself visible to their bodily eyes as Jesus risen. In other
words, He first taught them the true scriptural theory of Messiah's earthly
experience, and then He satisfied them as to the matter of fact. In the meeting
at night with the ten, on the other hand, he disposed of the matter of fact
first, and then took up the theory afterwards. He convinced His disciples, by
showing them His hands and His feet, and by eating food, that He really was
risen; and then He proceeded to show that the fact was only what they ought to
have expected as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
In thus varying the order of revelation, Jesus
was but adapting His procedure to the different circumstances of the persons
with whom He had to deal. The two friends who journeyed to Emmaus did not
notice any resemblance between the stranger who joined their company and their
beloved Lord, of whom they had been thinking and speaking. "Their eyes were
holden, that they should not know Him.''[28.21] The main cause of this, we
believe, was sheer heaviness of heart. Sorrow made them unobserving. They were
so engrossed with their own sad thoughts that they had no eyes for outward
things. They did not take the trouble to look who it was that had come up with
them; it would have made no difference though the stranger had been their own
father. It is obvious how men in such a mood must be dealt with. They can get
outward vision only by getting the inward eye first opened. The diseased mind
must be healed, that they may be able to look at what is before them, and see
it as it is. On this principle Jesus proceeded with the two brethren. He
accommodated Himself to their humor, and led them on from despair to hope, and
then the outward senses recovered their perceptive power, and told who the
stranger was. "You have heard," He said in effect, "a rumor that He who was
crucified three days ago is risen. You regarded this rumor as an incredible
story. But why should you? You believe Jesus to be the Christ. If He was the
Christ, His rising again was to be expected as much as the passion, for both
alike are foretold in the Scriptures which ye believe to be the Word of God."
These thoughts having taken hold of their minds, the hearts of the two brethren
begin to burn with the kindling power of a new truth; the day-dawn of hope
breaks on their spirit; they waken up as from an oppressive dream; they look
outward, and, lo, the man who has been discoursing to them is Jesus Himself!
With the ten the case was different. When Jesus
appeared in the midst of them, they were struck at once with the resemblance to
their deceased Master. They had been listening to the story of Cleopas and his
companion, and were in a more observing mood. But they could not believe that
what they saw really was Jesus. They were terrified and affrighted, and
supposed that they had seen a spirit--the ghost or spectre of the Crucified.
The first thing to be done in this case, therefore, manifestly was to allay the
fear awakened, and to convince the terrified disciples that the being who had
suddenly appeared was no ghost, but a man: the very man He seemed to be, even
Jesus Himself. Not till that has been done can any discourse be profitably held
concerning the teaching of the Old Testament on the subject of Messiah's
earthly history. To that task accordingly Jesus forthwith addressed Himself,
and only when it was successfully accomplished did He proceed to expound the
true Messianic theory.
Something analogous to the difference we have
pointed out in the experience of the two and the ten disciples in connection
with belief in the resurrection may be found in the ways by which different
Christians now are brought to faith. The evidences of Christianity are commonly
divided into two great categories--the external and the internal; the one drawn
from outward historical facts, the other from the adaptation of the gospel to
man's nature and needs. Both sorts of evidence are necessary to a perfect
faith, just as both sorts of vision, the outward and the inward, were necessary
to make the disciples thorough believers in the fact of the resurrection. But
some begin with the one, some with the other. Some are convinced first that the
gospel story is true, and then perhaps long after waken up to a sense of the
importance and preciousness of the things which it relates. Others, again, are
like Cleopas and his companion; so engrossed with their own thoughts as to be
incapable of appreciating or seeing facts, requiring first to have the eyes of
their understanding enlightened to see the beauty and the worthiness of the
truth as it is in Jesus. They may at one time have had a kind of traditional
faith in the facts as sufficiently well attested. But they have lost that
faith, it may be not without regret. They are skeptics, and yet they are sad
because they are so, and feel that it was better with them when, like others,
they believed. Yet, though they attempt it, they cannot restore their faith by
a study of mere external evidences. They read books dealing in such evidences,
but they are not much impressed by them. Their eyes are holden, and they know
not Christ coming to them in that outward way. But He reveals Himself to them
in another manner. By hidden discourse with their spirits He conveys into their
minds a powerful sense of the moral grandeur of the Christian faith, making
them feel that, true or not, it is at least worthy to be true. Then their
hearts begin to burn: they hope that what is so beautiful may turn out to be
objectively true; the question of the external evidences assumes a new interest
to their minds; they inquire, they read, they look; and, lo, they see Jesus
revived, a true historical person for them: risen out of the grave of doubt to
live for evermore the sun of their souls, more precious for the temporary loss;
coming
"Apparelled
in more precious habit,
More moving, delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of their
soul,"
than ever He did before they doubted.
From these remarks on the order of the two
revelations made by Jesus to His disciples,--of Himself to the eye of their
body, and of the scriptural doctrine of the Messiah to the eye of their
mind,--we pass to consider the question, What did the latter revelation amount
to? What was the precise effect of those expositions of Scripture with which
the risen Christ favored His hearers? Did the disciples derive therefrom such
an amount of light as to supersede the necessity of any further illumination?
Had Jesus Himself done the work of the Spirit of Truth, whose advent He had
promised before He suffered, and led them into all truth? Certainly not. The
opening of the understanding which took place at this time did not by any means
amount to a full spiritual enlightenment in Christian doctrine. The disciples
did not yet comprehend the moral grounds of Christ's sufferings and
resurrection. Why He underwent these experiences they knew not; the words
"ought" and "behooved" meant for them as yet nothing more than that, according
to Old Testament prophecies rightly understood, the things which had happened
might and should have been anticipated. They were in the same state of mind as
that in which we can conceive the Jewish Christians to whom the Epistle to the
Hebrews was addressed to have been after perusing the contents of that profound
writing. These Christians were ill grounded in gospel truth: they saw not the
glory of the gospel dispensation, nor its harmony with that which went before,
and under which they had been themselves educated. In particular, the divine
dignity of the Author of the Christian faith seemed to them incompatible with
His earthly humiliation. Accordingly, the writer of the epistle set himself to
prove that the divinity, the temporary humiliation, and the subsequent
glorification of the Christ were all taught in the Old Testament Scriptures,
quoting these liberally for that purpose in the early chapters of his epistle.
He did, in fact, by his written expositions for his readers, what Jesus did by
His oral expositions for His hearers. And what shall we say was the immediate
effect of the writer's argument on the minds of those who attentively perused
it? This, we imagine, that the crude believer on laying down the book would be
constrained to admit: "Well, he is right: these things are all written in the
Scriptures of the Messiah; and therefore no one of them, not even the
humiliation and suffering at which I stumble, can be a reason for rejecting
Jesus as the Christ." A very important result, yet a very elementary one. From
the bare concession that the real life of Jesus corresponded to the ideal life
of the Messiah as portrayed in the Old Testament, to the admiring,
enthusiastic, and thoroughly intelligent appreciation of gospel truth exhibited
by the writer himself in every page of his epistle, what a vast distance!
Not less was the distance between the state of
mind of the disciples after Jesus had expounded to them the things in the law,
and the prophets, and the psalms concerning Himself, and the state of
enlightenment to which they attained as apostles after the advent of the
Comforter. Now they knew the alphabet merely of the doctrine of Christ; then
they had arrived at perfection, and were thoroughly initiated into the mystery
of the gospel. Now a single ray of light was let into their dark minds; then
the daylight of truth poured its full flood into their souls. Or we may express
the difference in terms suggested by the narrative given by John of the events
connected with this first appearance of the risen Jesus to His disciples. John
relates, that, at a certain stage in the proceedings, Jesus breathed on the
disciples, and said unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." We are not to
understand that they then and there received the Spirit in the promised
fulness. The breath was rather but a sign and earnest of what was to come. It
was but an emblematic renewal of the promise, and a first installment of its
fulfilment. It was but the little cloud like a man's hand that portended a
plenteous rain, or the first gentle puff of wind which precedes the mighty
gale. Now they have the little breath of the Spirit's influence, but not till
Pentecost shall they feel the rushing wind. So great is the difference between
now and then: between the spiritual enlightenment of the disciples on the first
Christian Sabbath evening, and that of the apostles in after days.
It was but the day of small things with these
disciples yet. The small things, however, were not to be despised; nor were
they. What value the ten set on the light they had received we are not indeed
told, but we may safely assume that their feelings were much of kin to those of
the two brethren who journeyed towards Emmaus. Conversing together on the
discourse of Jesus after His departure, they said one unto another, "Did not
our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way, and while He
opened to us the Scriptures?" The light they had got might be small, but it was
new light, and it had all the heart-kindling, thought-stirring power of new
truth. That conversation on the road formed a crisis in their spiritual
history. It was the dawn of the gospel day; it was the little spark which
kindles a great fire; it deposited in their minds a thought which was to form
the germ or centre of a new system of belief; it took away the veil which had
been upon their faces in the reading of the Old Testament, and was thus the
first step in a process which was to issue in their beholding with open face,
as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and in their being changed into the same
image, from glory to glory, by the Lord the Spirit. Happy the man who has got
even so far as these two disciples at this time!
Some disconsolate soul may say, Would that
happiness were mine! For the comfort of such a forlorn brother, let us note the
circumstances in which this new light arose for the disciples. Their hearts
were set a-burning when they had become very dry and withered: hopeless, sick,
and life-weary, through sorrow and disappointment. It is always so: the fuel
must be dry that the spark may take hold. It was when the people of Israel
complained, "Our bones are dried and our hope is lost, we are cut off for our
parts," that the word went forth: "Behold, O my people, I will open your
graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the
land of Israel." So with these disciples of Jesus. It was when every particle
of the sap of hope had been bleached out of them, and their faith had been
reduced to this, "We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed
Israel," that their hearts were set burning by the kindling power of a new
truth. So it has been in many an instance since then. The fire of hope has been
kindled in the heart, never to be extinguished, just at the moment when men
were settling down into despair; faith has been revived when a man seemed to
himself to be an infidel; the light of truth has arisen to minds which had
ceased to look for the dawn; the comfort of salvation has returned to souls
which had begun to think that God's mercy was clean gone for ever. "When the
Son of man cometh shall He find faith on the earth?"
There is nothing strange in this. The truth is,
the heart needs to be dried by trial before it can be made to burn. Till sorrow
comes, human hearts do not catch the divine fire; there is too much of this
world's life-sap in them. That was what made the disciples so slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets had spoken. Their worldly ambition prevented them
from learning the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, and pride made them blind
to the glory of the cross. Hence Jesus justly upbraided them for their unbelief
and their mindless stupidity. Had their hearts been pure, they might have known
beforehand what was to happen. As it was, they comprehended nothing till their
Lord's death had blighted their hope and blasted their ambition, and bitter
sorrow had prepared them for receiving spiritual instruction.