the pastoral, which after baptizing all who repent and believe, into Christ's mystical body, goes on to teach them all things which He has taught us, and brings them to the means of grace, and keeps them out of temptation, and under all good influences, and seeks to lead them on from strength to strength, till it bring every one of them before God in Zion. They who take the former view are only wrong when they themselves stop, or lead their disciples to stop, at it. They who take the latter are only wrong when they are so absorbed in their pastoral cares, that they neglect to see the multitudes that are lost in sin, and fail to be moved with compassion for them, and to go forth and snatch them as brands from the burning, and compel them to come in to the feast of the Gospel.

The place which the resurrection held in the mind of the primitive Church is remarkably shown, not only in the preaching of the apostles, in which it held so prominent a place, but also in the external institutions of the Church. When the apostles, acting by Divine inspiration, set aside the ordinance of the Sabbath, the world-old memorial of creation, the memorial, secondly, of the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt, it was set aside to supersede it by a memorial of the re-creation of man's fallen nature, a memorial of our deliverance from the bondage of sin and Satan. And what day did they appoint as the memorial day? Not Friday, the day on which Christ died, but Sunday, the day on which He rose again. On what day were the primitive disciples accustomed to come together, to show forth their faith in the redemption through Christ, by breaking the bread? Not on Thursday, the day of the institution, or on Friday, the day of the death, but on Sunday, the day of the resurrection. And when the celebration of the Eucharist was separated from the Common Meal, at what hour did the early Church celebrate it?

Not three in the afternoon, the time of the "It is finished," and of the "giving up the ghost," or in the evening, the time of the institution, but in the early morning, the hour of the rising again. And, similarly, the great annual festival of the Christian year, and the one day in the year on which all Christian people are desired to meet together for the great annual Eucharist, is not Maunday-Thursday, or Good Friday, but it is Easter Day, the festival of the Resurrection.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE FORTY DAYS.

AFTER Our Lord rose again from the dead, He did not at once ascend to heaven; He continued still forty days upon earth. During this period we see a mystery both in His being and in His life. In His being: His body was no longer under the usual conditions of our human bodies. It was a body; "A spirit has not flesh and bones,” as the disciples ascertained by sight and touch that He had; a spirit does not eat and drink, as He did before them. It was the same body: they recognised it by its features and its scars. But it was not under the same conditions as before. It had the power of passing through matter, for it appeared again and again to the disciples assembled with the doors secured, for fear of the Jews. It had the power of vanishing again from their sight, as from that of the disciples at Emmaus. There was a mystery in His life. He no longer lived familiarly with His disciples as before; He only appeared to them from time to time. Where the remainder of His days and nights was passed is beyond our conjecture.

We may note briefly that these appearances-now to one disciple, now to another, repeatedly to the eleven, on one occasion to 500 brethren at once; in different places-in the garden, in the upper room, by the lake side, on the mountain, in Jerusalem, in Galilee, on Olivet-afforded ample opportunities for His satisfactory identification, and leave no room to doubt that He whom they thus saw appearing

among them from time to time was indeed the Jesus of Nazareth with whom they had lived familiarly, whom they had seen dead on the cross, whose body had been laid

in the grave.

Again, these occasional appearances gradually weaned the disciples from the old life of continual dependence upon His presence. It prepared them to realise His spiritual presence when these occasional bodily appearances should come to an end. Whether they were in the upper chamber in prayer, or engaged in their secular occupation-fishing on the lake, they had learnt to know that the Lord might be invisibly with them, and might, at any moment, present Himself to their sight, with His salutation, "Peace be unto you." And thus they learnt after His ascension to realise, that though now always invisible, He was with them by His Spirit always.

St. Luke sums up the occurrences of these forty days in these words: 1. He showed Himself alive unto them by many infallible proofs; 2. He gave them commandments; 3. He spake to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God; 4. He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, for the baptism of the Holy Ghost. We seem to gather from this summary two great purposes of the forty days-first, to establish the truth of the resurrection; second, to instruct the apostles in the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and give them directions for their future life and work. And when we turn to the Gospel narrative we find these two subjects there. The various appearances are recorded, and the commands and discourses concerning the kingdom of heaven are glanced at. First, there was the exposition in all the Scriptures of the things concerning Himself. The exposition is not recorded, but doubtless we have portions of it, and a general clue to this meaning of the Old Testa

ment Scriptures, in the explanations of prophecy, and the unfolding of types and figures, by all the writers of the New Testament. Then of things pertaining to the kingdom of heaven, we have the commission to the apostles (John xx. 21, 22, 23), "Then said Jesus unto them again, Peace be unto you; as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."

The command given to Peter, and in him to the rest, "Feed my sheep, Feed my lambs."

The announcement to the brethren, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." As God, He possessed all power from all eternity, so that the words must relate to His human nature; it was as Son of Man that God had delegated to Him this sovereign power.

In right of this sovereignty, He gives commandment to His apostles, "Go ye therefore and teach [make disciples of] all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." First, make disciples of them by preaching the elementary truths of the Gospel; then when they believe, admit them into the kingdom of heaven, i.e., the Church of Christ, by the Sacrament of Baptism; and then teach them more fully to observe all things which I have commanded you.

And then He gives the promise of His perpetual presence with His Church : "And, lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Lastly, He bade them wait at Jerusalem until the Holy Ghost should come; and He blessed them, and was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.

What the things were which the converts were to observe