The debt is inexhaustible, therefore, to begin; and yet it is added to, if not even doubled, by every separate sin. Who shall make restitution then unto God? If fourfold is not too much towards man, what is due towards Him? And how shall I pay that which is due? These are the questions which a spiritual nature inquires of itself. This is the great demand which a regenerated conscience makes on itself. You see in Zaccheus its intense desire to be just towards man. There is at least as intensea desire to be just towards God; and when all is said that ought to be of the Fatherhood and love of God, it does not satisfy this desire. It rather intensifies it in one way. The greater God's kindness, the greater my sin. There may be some difficulty, therefore, in understanding how the blood of Christ can satisfy that desire and "purge the conscience from dead works." (Heb. ix. 14.) But one point seems indisputable; viz., that nothing else ever can!

MATHEMATICUS, MA.,

Formerly Chaplain Trin. Coll. Camb

THE FOREIGN PULPIT.- No. VII.

SUBJECT: Mary at the empty Tomb.

"But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and, as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre," &c.-John xx. 11–18. Analysis of Homily the Seben Hundred and Ninety-Eighth.

E are to meditate on Mary at the empty tomb. Her heart will be a mirror for our hearts. That wonderful experience, that strange and unexpected transition from the anxious twilight of a gloomy sorrow into the clear daylight of a blissful joy, is the thought we have to ponder. Not that through sympathy with Mary our feelings should carry us back to the time when He who died on the cross needed to appear to his disheartened friends to animate their broken faith, but that we may celebrate with them an unalterable event, as fresh and

mighty and potent to-day as then; an experience which we ought all to share with Mary. For does not that message of the angel, "Why seek ye the living among the dead," mean still precisely what it did then? Our Saviour is not dead and past, but living, present and eternal. Death might remove Him out of the circle of living men, but it had no claim on Him, must give Him back to us, and therewith living fellowship for ever. This message of the angel, then, was indeed glad tidings; but how were they to be convinced that it was as true as it was good? Since they had known the Lord in bodily form, He would make Himself known to them again in bodily form. And this He did. But in so revealing Himself he would teach them that they must learn to believe in his presence when they saw no outward appearance. This too He did. He showed them, by the wonderful change that had taken place in Him, by his power of appearing and vanishing at will, that they were to believe in and enjoy a sense of his living nearness and fellowship without being dependent for it on the bodily eyes. This is the sense of the words, "Thomas, because thou hast seen, thou hast believed," &c. For us, who do not see but believe, the question is-How DOES THE RISEN SAVIOUR REVEAL HIMSELF?

I. TO WHAT LONGING? Even of old the seeing the risen one was not a thing of the physical sight at all. It was dependent on the condition of the inner life. Not to the world, only to his own disciples, did the risen one show himself. The hostile world would not need to be convinced that they had not succeeded in shutting him up in the tomb and if all their hostility failed; if, in spite of fires and swords, his name should become ever more prized and potent on earth; if, in the flames of the doomed Jerusalem, their own temple should be reduced to ashes while his should come forth out of the ashes only more glorious and strong, then would his enemies have to acknowledge Him— as they would have to behold Him one day-as the Judge of the world; as He said at his trial, "What and if ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power," &c. This was the only evidence the hostile world was capable of appreciating. But since the Saviour comes near to men to win their confidence and love, He revealed Himself after his resurrection only to those

who were longing to be fully convinced that He was the Saviour and Redeemer.

And foremost among these stood Mary. Of this woman it is recorded in the Gospels, with what we should call, if we were speaking of a human production, a vague and tantalising brevity, that Jesus had formerly set her free from a seven-fold power of darkness. Since that she had never quitted the group of his disciples. She accompanied Him on his last journey to Jerusalem, to Calvary, and on the first day of the week she is first at the grave to prove, by her presence and by the spices she brought, her love and fidelity to her departed friend. When she comes she finds the grave empty. She hastes to call Peter and John. They both come; behold; are uncertain how to regard it, and go away. Mary could not tear herself away from the empty grave; she remained standing before it and weeping. Now first does she feel her loss. She had passed through the dark scenes of Calvary in mute amazement; then, for a moment, tender care for his body had partially diverted her mind from its sorrow. Now her faithful, loving heart had lost its last stay. As she stood in loneliness before the empty tomb, the whole world appeared to her like an empty tomb, before which she stood alone to seek in it in vain even the faintest traces of the love she had lost. What could comfort her now that He was no more; now that only an empty tomb was left to remind her of her loss? What would become of her if his holy, divine life was no longer to stand side by side with her poor, feeble, sinful life, that she might cling to it, as the ivy to the oak, and train herself heavenwards.

Fully possessed by these strong emotions, even the heavenly messengers whom she saw, and who tenderly asked the cause of her tears, were not able to awake any hope. Sunk in grief, the sight of these angels, even the question, makes no impression. These things only occasion her to give utterance to her sorrow and to break out in the bitter complaint, "They have taken away my Lord," &c.

Is not this a page in our life-history? In childhood the living Saviour took you by the hand, and your inner life began to entwine itself around his. Storms came and the bond was torn ; in the tossing of the waves, childlike confidence was lost, and

the sense of his nearness, but not the longing; that cannot be lost, and hence Mary, in her hopeless sorrow, would not return to the forgotten past.

This is the deepest sorrow of the soul, to know what can help and yet to have lost it-to seek the Lord among the evidences of his life, and yet to have only an empty grave to go to. Eighteen centuries lie, like a heavy stone of separation, on that grave; who will roll away the stone? When we have to stand before our own life as before an empty tomb which reminds us only of what we have lost, and on which we cannot find even the pale form of our childhood's Saviour, there is no comfort for us, even though they who have the true comfort ask, "Why weepest thou?" We break out in the comfortless words of Mary, "They have have taken away my Lord," &c.

We are convinced then from such a state in such a soul that a risen and living Saviour is what we want. It would not have helped Mary if she had found the buried one. Her own love only could have lent the appearance of life to it; it could not help or save her.

If our longing souls rest in the fact that He has lived, loving Him in the grave of the historic past, what can He be to us? He is not here-He is risen, is the divine message to us.

II. IN WHAT EXPERIENCE, While Mary, still hopeless, is asking for Him, He is beside her, though she knows it not. Though invisible, and unknown it may be, He is near all who seek Him. He sees that Mary is seeking; He causes her to express her longing; He sympathises with the mourner, but did not enable her to recognise Him at once. Why not? Oh, do you not remember that word, "Woman, mine hour is not yet come?" The experience God gives depends for its value on our susceptibility, and this comes to maturity only by persistent seeking. Mary is wholly lost in thinking how she could find and fetch her Lord, and again, as just before, the desire of her heart breaks forth at the question of the Saviour, as though "the gardener" must know that which to her is alone worth knowing, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence," &c. Poor Mary, where wilt thou seek a Lord and Saviour? Rich Mary, thou needest not first to fetch, to seek Him. He has already sought thee and

fetched thee to Himself, and only a word is needed, and thou wilt know that thou hast Him.

She turns again to seek Him, when Jesus says, "Mary!" and she, embracing his feet, "Rabboni, my Master." Who shall repeat the tender tones of that "Mary" in which she recognised at once the voice of seeking love; of that "Rabboni"-the jubilee of the soul. She felt boundless sorrow over the apparently irreparable loss of the good that alone gave value to life, what words shall describe her joy that this was given her again?

Notice: It was through her name that the Lord revealed Himself to Mary. A name may awaken emotion, as when you hear the voice of one who has been long absent. She knew her Lord in that He knew her. Her name is written on his heart for

ever.

In this way the risen Saviour makes Himself known to us. We see in Mary how little our recognising his presence depends on the bodily eyes. She recognised Him first with her heart. It is the heart always that recognises the living Saviour with the certainty that casts out fear and doubt.

III. WITH WHAT DIRECTIONS. The complaint of the heart is not of the reality or the certainty of precious moments, but it is that they are only moments. Mary had no advantage in this respect over us. The moment she recognised He says,

me not," &c.

"Touch

Stern words, reducing her joy, but needful. They are the words of teaching love, and if love is severe, who will say "too severe." Mary needed to be taught that the fellowship of the future would be very different from that of the past. Few had enjoyed his intimacy, henceforth all might and in a higher form. Their dependence on Him as a man must be changed into a higher and holier relation which would appear at first to be more loose, but was really closer. Accordingly the glorified Saviour now calls his disciples "brethren." This is his relation to them henceforth.

All this Mary had to learn amid her joy, that her joy might not be taken from her when the Lord should ascend, but might be glorified and made abiding by his return to the Father.

And as this joy would naturally seek to retain the beloved.

VOL. XXIII.

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