'They saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long
white garment; and they were aifrighted. 6. And he saith unto them, Be
not affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is
risen; He is not here; behold the place where they laid Him.'--Mark
xvi. 5,6.
Each of the four Evangelists tells the story of the Resurrection from
his own special point of view. None of them has any record of the
actual fact, because no eye saw it. Before the earthquake and the
angelic descent, before the stone was rolled away, while the guards
perhaps slept, and before Love and Sorrow had awakened, Christ rose.
And deep silence covers the event. But in treating of the subsequent
portion of the narrative, each Evangelist stands at his own point of
view. Mark has scarcely anything to say about our Lord's appearance
after the Resurrection. His object seems mainly to be to describe
rather the manner in which the report of the Resurrection affected the
disciples, and so he makes prominent the bewildered astonishment of
the women. If the latter part of this chapter be his, he passes by the
appearance of our Lord to Mary Magdalene and to the two travellers to
Emmaus with just a word for each--contrasting singularly with the
lovely narrative of the former in John's Gospel and with the detailed
account of the latter in Luke's. He emphasises the incredulity of the
Twelve after receiving the reports, and in like manner he lays stress
upon the unbelief and hardness of heart which the Lord rebuked.
So, then, this incident, the appearance of the angel, the portion of
his message to the women which we have read, and the way in which the
first testimony to the Resurrection affected its hearers, may suggest
to us some thoughts which, though subsidiary to the main teaching of
the Resurrection, may yet be important in their place.