Christ Risen.
“And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the
_mother_ of James, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come
and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they
come to the tomb when the sun was risen. And they were saying
among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door
of the tomb? and looking up, they see that the stone is rolled
back: for it was exceeding great. And entering into the tomb, they
saw a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed in a white
robe, and they were amazed. And he saith unto them, Be not amazed;
ye seek Jesus, the Nazarene, Which hath been crucified: He is
risen; He is not here: behold, the place where they laid Him! But
go, tell His disciples and Peter, He goeth before you into
Galilee: there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you. And they
went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment
had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one; for they
were afraid. Now when He was risen early on the first day of the
week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast
out seven devils. She went and told them that had been with Him,
as they mourned and wept. And they, when they heard that He was
alive, and had been seen of her, disbelieved. And after these
things He was manifested in another form unto two of them, as they
walked, on their way into the country. And they went away and told
it unto the rest: neither believed they them. And afterward He was
manifested unto the eleven themselves as they sat at meat; and He
upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because
they believed not them which had seen Him after He was risen. And
He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel
to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned. And these
signs shall follow them that believe: in My name shall they cast
out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up
serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise
hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall
recover.”—MARK xvi. 1-18 (R.V.).
The Gospels were not written for the curious but for the devout. They are
most silent therefore where myth and legend would be most garrulous, and
it is instructive to seek, in the story of Jesus, for anything similar to
the account of the Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bo tree. We read
nothing of the interval in Hades; nothing of the entry of His crowned and
immortal body into the presence chamber of God; nothing of the
resurrection. Did He awake alone? Was He waited upon by the hierarchy of
heaven, who robed Him in raiment unknown to men? We are only told what
concerns mankind, the sufficient manifestation of Jesus to His disciples.
And to harmonise the accounts a certain effort is necessary, because they
tell of interviews with men and women who had to pass through all the
vicissitudes of despair, suspense, rapturous incredulity,(16) and faith.
Each of them contributes a portion of the tale.
From St. John we learn that Mary Magdalene came early to the sepulchre,
from St. Matthew that others were with her, from St. Mark that these
women, dissatisfied with the unskilful ministrations of men (and men whose
rank knew nothing of such functions), had brought sweet spices to anoint
Him Who was about to claim their adoration; St. John tells how Mary,
seeing the empty sepulchre, ran to tell Peter and John of its desecration;
the others, that in her absence an angel told the glad tidings to the
women; St. Mark, that Mary was the first to whom Jesus Himself appeared.
And thenceforth the narrative more easily falls into its place.
This confusion, however perplexing to thoughtless readers, is inevitable
in the independent histories of such events, derived from the various
parties who delighted to remember, each what had befallen himself.
But even a genuine contradiction would avail nothing to refute the
substantial fact. When the generals of Henry the Fourth strove to tell him
what passed after he was wounded at Aumale, no two of them agreed in the
course of events which gave them victory. Two armies beheld the battle of
Waterloo, but who can tell when it began? At ten o’clock, said the Duke of
Wellington. At half past eleven, said General Alava, who rode beside him.
At twelve according to Napoleon and Drouet; and at one according to Ney.
People who doubt the reality of the resurrection, because the harmony of
the narratives is underneath the surface, do not deny these facts. They
are part of history. Yet it is certain that the resurrection of Jesus
colours the history of the world more powerfully to-day, than the events
which are so much more recent.
If Christ were not risen, how came these despairing men and women by their
new hope, their energy, their success among the very men who slew Him? If
Christ be not risen, how has the morality of mankind been raised? Was it
ever known that a falsehood exercised for ages a quickening and purifying
power which no truth can rival?
From the ninth verse to the end of St. Mark’s account it is curiously
difficult to decide on the true reading. And it must be said that the note
in the Revised Version, however accurate, does not succeed in giving any
notion of the strength of the case in favour of the remainder of the
Gospel. It tells us that the two oldest manuscripts omit them, but we do
not read that in one of these a space is left for the insertion of
something, known by the scribe to be wanting there. Nor does it mention
the twelve manuscripts of almost equal antiquity in which they are
contained, nor the early date at which they were quoted.
The evidence appears to lean towards the belief that they were added in a
later edition, or else torn off in an early copy from which some
transcribers worked. But unbelief cannot gain anything by converting them
into a separate testimony, of the very earliest antiquity, to events
related in each of the other Gospels.
And the uncertainty itself will be wholesome if it reminds us that saving
faith is not to be reposed in niceties of criticism, but in a living
Christ, the power and wisdom of God. Jesus blamed men for thinking that
they had eternal life in their inspired Scriptures, and so refusing to
come for life to Him, of Whom those Scriptures testified. Has sober
criticism ever shaken for one hour that sacred function of Holy Writ?
What then is especially shown us in the closing words of St. Mark?
Readiness to requite even a spark of grace, and to bless with the first
tidings of a risen Redeemer the love which sought only to embalm His
corpse. Tender care for the fallen and disheartened, in the message sent
especially to Peter. Immeasurable condescension, such as rested formerly,
a Babe, in a peasant woman’s arms, and announced its Advent to shepherds,
now appearing first of all to a woman “out of whom He had cast seven
devils.”
A state of mind among the disciples, far indeed from that rapt and
hysterical enthusiasm which men have fancied, ready to be whirled away in
a vortex of religious propagandism (and to whirl the whole world after
it), upon the impulse of dreams, hallucinations, voices mistaken on a
misty shore, longings which begot convictions. Jesus Himself, and no
second, no messenger from Jesus, inspired the zeal which kindled mankind.
The disciples, mourning and weeping, found the glad tidings incredible,
while Mary who had seen Him, believed. When two, as they walked, beheld
Him in another shape, the rest remained incredulous, announcing indeed
that He had actually risen and appeared unto Peter, yet so far from a true
conviction that when He actually came to them, they supposed that they
beheld a spirit (Luke xxiv. 34, 37). Yet He looked in the face those pale
discouraged Galileans, and bade them go into all the world, bearing to the
whole creation the issues of eternal life and death. And they went forth,
and the power and intellect of the world are won. Whatever unbelievers
think about individual souls, it is plain that the words of the Nazarene
have proved true for communities and nations, He that believeth and is
baptised has been saved, He that believeth not has been condemned. The
nation and kingdom that has not served Christ has perished.
Nor does any one pretend that the agents in this marvellous movement were
insincere. If all this was a dream, it was a strange one surely, and
demands to be explained. If it was otherwise, no doubt the finger of God
has come unto us.
The Ascension.
“So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken unto them, was
received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.
And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working
with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed.
Amen.”—MARK xvi. 19-20 (R.V.)
We have reached the close of the great Gospel of the energies of Jesus,
His toils, His manner, His searching gaze, His noble indignation, His love
of children, the consuming zeal by virtue of which He was not more truly
the Lamb of God than the Lion of the tribe of Judah. St. Mark has just
recorded how He bade His followers carry on His work, defying the serpents
of the world, and renewing the plague-stricken race of Adam. In what
strength did they fulfil this commission? How did they fare without the
Master? And what is St. Mark’s view of the Ascension?
Here, as all through the Gospel, minor points are neglected. Details are
only valued when they carry some aid for the special design of the
Evangelist, who presses to the core of his subject at once and boldly. As
he omitted the bribes with which Satan tempted Jesus, and cared not for
the testimony of the Baptist when the voice of God was about to peal from
heaven over the Jordan, as on the holy mount he told not the subject of
which Moses and Elijah spoke, but how Jesus Himself predicted His death to
His disciples, so now He is silent about the mountain slope, the final
benediction, the cloud which withdrew Him from their sight and the angels
who sent back the dazed apostles to their homes and their duties. It is
not caprice nor haste that omits so much interesting information. His mind
is fixed on a few central thoughts; what concerns him is to link the
mighty story of the life and death of Jesus with these great facts, that
He was received up into Heaven, that He there sat down upon the right hand
of God, and that His disciples were never forsaken of Him at all, but
proved, by the miraculous spread of the early Church, that His power was
among them still. St. Mark does not record the promise, but he asserts the
fact that Christ was with them all the days. There is indeed a connection
between his two closing verses, subtle and hard to render into English,
and yet real, which suggests the notion of balance, of relation between
the two movements, the ascent of Jesus, and the evangelisation of the
world, such as exists, for example, between detachments of an army
co-operating for a common end, so that our Lord, for His part, ascended,
while the disciples, for their part, went forth and found Him with them
still.
But the link is plainer which binds the Ascension to His previous story of
suffering and conflict. It was “then,” and “after He had spoken unto
them,” that “the Lord Jesus was received up.” In truth His ascension was
but the carrying forward to completion of His resurrection, which was not
a return to the poor conditions of our mortal life, but an entrance into
glory, only arrested in its progress until He should have quite convinced
His followers that “it is I indeed,” and made them understand that “thus
it is written that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead
the third day,” and filled them with holy shame for their unbelief, and
with courage for their future course, so strange, so weary, so sublime.
There is something remarkable in the words, “He was received up into
heaven.” We habitually speak of Him as ascending, but Scripture more
frequently declares that He was the subject of the action of another, and
was taken up. St. Luke tells us that, “while they worshipped, He was
carried up into heaven,” and again “He was received up.... He was taken
up” (Luke xxiv. 51; Acts i. 2, 9). Physical interference is not implied:
no angels bore Him aloft; and the narratives make it clear that His
glorious Body, obedient to its new mysterious nature, arose unaided. But
the decision to depart, and the choice of a time, came not from Him: He
did not go, but was taken. Never hitherto had He glorified Himself. He had
taught His disciples to be contented in the lowest room until the Master
of the house should bid them come up higher. And so, when His own supreme
victory is won, and heaven held its breath expectant and astonished, the
conquering Lord was content to walk with peasants by the Lake of Galilee
and on the slopes of Olivet until the appointed time. What a rebuke to us
who chafe and fret if the recognition of our petty merits be postponed.
“He was received up into heaven!” What sublime mysteries are covered by
that simple phrase. It was He who taught us to make, even of the mammon of
unrighteousness, friends who shall welcome us, when mammon fails and all
things mortal have deserted us, into everlasting habitations. With what
different greetings, then, do men enter the City of God. Some converts of
the death bed perhaps there are, who scarcely make their way to heaven,
alone, unhailed by one whom they saved or comforted, and like a vessel
which struggles into port, with rent cordage and tattered sails, only not
a wreck. Others, who aided some few, sparing a little of their means and
energies, are greeted and blessed by a scanty group. But even our
chieftains and leaders, the martyrs, sages and philanthropists whose names
brighten the annals of the Church, what is their influence, and how few
have they reached, compared with that great multitude whom none can
number, of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, who cry with a
loud voice, Salvation unto our God who sitteth upon the throne, and unto
the Lamb. Through Him it pleased the Father to reconcile all things unto
Himself, through Him, whether things upon the earth or things in the
heavens. And surely the supreme hour in the history of the universe was
when, in flesh, the sore stricken but now the all-conquering Christ
re-entered His native heaven.
And He sat down at the right hand of God. The expression is, beyond all
controversy, borrowed from that great Psalm which begins by saying, “The
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand,” and which presently
makes the announcement never revealed until then, “Thou art a Priest for
ever after the order of Melchizedec” (Ps. cx. 1, 4). It is therefore an
anticipation of the argument for the royal Priesthood of Jesus which is
developed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now priesthood is a human
function: every high priest is chosen from among men. And the Ascension
proclaims to us, not the Divinity of the Eternal Word but the
glorification of “the Lord Jesus;” not the omnipotence of God the Son, but
that all power is committed unto Him Who is not ashamed to call us
brethren, that His human hands wield the sceptre as once they held the
reed, and the brows then insulted and torn with thorns are now crowned
with many crowns. In the overthrow of Satan He won all, and infinitely
more than all, of that vast bribe which Satan once offered for His homage,
and the angels for ever worship Him who would not for a moment bend His
knee to evil.
Now since He conquered not for Himself but as Captain of our Salvation,
the Ascension also proclaims the issue of all the holy suffering, all the
baffled efforts, all the cross-bearing of all who follow Christ.
His High Priesthood is with authority. “Every high priest standeth,” but
He has for ever sat down on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in
the heavens, a Priest sitting upon His throne (Heb. viii. 1; Zech. vi.
13). And therefore it is His office, Who pleads for us and represents us,
Himself to govern our destinies. No wonder that His early followers, with
minds which He had opened to understand the Scriptures, were mighty to
cast down strongholds. Against tribulation and anguish and persecution and
famine and nakedness and peril and sword they were more than conquerors
through Him. For He worked with them and confirmed His word with signs.
And we have seen that He works with His people still, and still confirms
His gospel, only withdrawing signs of one order as those of another kind
are multiplied. Wherever they wage a faithful battle, He gives them
victory. Whenever they cry to Him in anguish, the form of the Son of God
is with them in the furnace, and the smell of fire does not pass upon
them. Where they come, the desert blossoms as a rose; and where they are
received, the serpents of life no longer sting, its fevers grow cool, and
the demons which rend it are cast out.
FOOTNOTES
1 Cf. the admirable note in Archdeacon Watkins’ “Commentary on John.”
2 By the absence of the article in the Greek.
3 The opposite is asserted by the fact that one demon may ally himself
with seven others worse.
4 The connection would be almost certain if the word “devil” were
alike in both. But in all these narratives it is “demon,” there
being in Scripture but one devil.
5 The exceptions in the Revelation are only apparent. St. John does
not call Jesus the Son of man (i. 13), nor see Him, but only the
type of Him, standing (v. 6).
6 And this proves beyond question that He did not merely follow
Ezekiel in applying to himself the epithet as if it meant a son
among many sons of men, but took the description in Daniel for His
own. Ezekiel himself indeed never employs the phrase: he only
records it.
7 Lange. _Life of Christ_, li. p. 179.
8 It is also very natural that, in telling the story, he should
remember how, while hesitating to enter, he “stooped down” to gaze,
in the wild dawn of his new hope.
9 “Theology would have been spared much trouble concerning this
passage, and anxious timid souls unspeakable anguish, if men had
adhered strictly to Christ’s own expression. For it is not a _sin_
against the Holy Ghost which is here spoken of, but _blasphemy_
against the Holy Ghost.”—Lange “_Life of Christ_,” vol. ii. p. 269.
10 Unless indeed the meaning be rather, “_ever_ hearing the word,”
which is not its force in the New Testament (Matt. xviii. 17,
twice).
11 Once besides in the New Testament this phrase was applied to death.
That was by St. Peter speaking of his own, when the thought of the
transfiguration was floating in his mind, and its voices lingered
unconsciously in his memory (2 Pet. i. 15, cf. ver. 17). The phrase,
though not unclassical, is not common.
12 That the event was recent is implied in the present tense: “he
followeth not”: “forbid him not”; the matter is still fresh.
13 “By the fire the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of death.”—_In Memoriam_, xx.
14 The ingenious and plausible attempt to show that His death was
caused by a physical rupture of the heart has one fatal weakness.
Death came too late for this; the severest pressure was already
relieved.
_ 15 I.e._ in the New Testament, where it occurs but once besides.
16 Can anything surpass that masterstroke of insight and descriptive
power, “they still disbelieved for joy” (Luke xxiv. 41).