our griefs and wants. Here is the rich value of "Inquiry meetings "-meetings in which the minister not less than the troubled visitor is to be the questioner. Nothing so liberates the imprisoned soul as the opening the gates of speech. For so our Sorrowing Two found.

And yet at first they stood still, looking sad. Evidently they felt annoyed by the interruption, and for a moment kept moody silence. But presently Cleopas, greatly surprised, answered: "Art thou sojourning alone in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which have come to pass there in these days?" It is as though he had said: "Hast thou come up to the Passover alone, sojourning in Jerusalem as a hermit? How else couldst thou have been ignorant of the wonderful things which are on every one's tongue?"

Tale.

Luke xxiv. 19

24.

"What things?" gently persists the Stranger, The Mournful still inviting them to unburden their hearts. And now they proceed to unfold their tale of woe. "What things' dost thou ask us? Concerning Jesus the Nazarene, Who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people; and how our chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He Who was to redeem Israel. Moreover, besides all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, who were early at the sepulchre; and when they found not His body they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive. And some

Ex. xii.

of them that were with us went to the sepulchre and found it even so as the women had said; but Him they saw not." Simple souls! What information they fancied they were giving their unrecognized Companion! How artless and to us even foolish their sorrowful tale! It is very difficult for us to realize their position. To us the story of the crucifixion and resurrection has been familiar from infancy. But to them these events had come as unexpectedly as an earthquake. Go back these eighteen hundred years, and try to realize their situation. They had been up to the Holy City to attend the Passover. Doubtless they had gone up blithely; for the Passover, commemorating as it did the miraculous deliverance of their fathers from the bondage of Egypt, was the great festal day of the Jews. Moreover, the disciples of the Nazarene seem to have looked forward to this particular Passover with special anticipations of joy. They felt that the long yearned-for hour had come when their illustrious Master and Friend would ascend the throne of David, and actually redeem Israel, an expectation deepened by the triumphal entry of only the Sunday before. But how suddenly and terribly had they been disappointed! Instead of the acclaim they had seen the arrest; instead of the imperial purple, the mock scarlet robe; instead of the crown of gems, the mock crown of thorns; instead of the golden scepter, the mock reed; instead of the homage, the mock genuflection; instead of David's throne, Joseph's tomb. All this was an unspeakable shock to their patriotism, their piety, their love, their

trust; for now they had lost both the Divine Christ and the human Jesus. And the shock was all the more unbearable because of its earthquake suddenness. True, Jesus had often foretold His own death and resurrection; but His words had always fallen on them unheeded; they never had imagined that He would really die and be buried and rise again. True, before leaving town this morning they had heard wonderful rumors about an empty sepulchre and visions of angels who declared that He was risen. But they gave no credit to these rumors, supposing them to be but the fancies of excited women. And so they plod

on and sigh and weep over the irreparable loss of One Who, as they had hoped, was about to have redeemed Israel.

And here the Stranger, as though impatient with their stupidity and perverseness in not understanding their own Scriptures, breaks in: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And, beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. "O fools!" And well may He call them so. Nothing is so stupid as the unbelief which springs from the failure to understand the law of moral progress first suffering, then blessedness; first defeat, then victory. What these disciples doubted was not the glory, that was easy to believe: they doubted the suffering. And yet a suffering Messiah was in a conspicuous degree the theme of

The Matchless
Exposition.

Luke xxiv. 25

27.

Rev. xiii. 8.

John xii. 24,

John xii. 32.

Luke xxiv. 46.

Evangelic Prophecy: witness the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. In fact, the idea of a suffering Christ, a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, gives a deep crimson tinge to all the Old Covenant, running as a scarlet thread through the whole system of ancient prophecy. Had these disciples but understood their own Scriptures, they would have foreseen, from the beginning, Cross and Tomb. In fact, the cross was the condition of the crown, the tomb the condition of the throne. Listen to the Master Himself: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." Ay, thus it is written, and thus it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day. And just because Messiah's cross was the condition of Messiah's throne, the Messianic prophecies are red with an ensanguined Christ; the prophetic necessity grows out of the moral. Christ did not die in order to fulfill prophetic Scripture: Scripture was prophetic of Christ's death because that death had been doomed in the very nature of God and of man. The "ought" was prophetic because it was a moral ought. "O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And it is as true for us as it was for Him. There is no ascending into Heaven except from out of the tomb of our own slain selves. The cross is the only ladder high

enough to touch Heaven's threshold. The cross makes the only true scala santa

The great world's altar stairs

That slope through darkness up to God.

In Memoriam, liv

And beginning from Moses and all the Prophets He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Doubtless, He began with Eden itself, explaining the Seed of the Woman, the Covenant with Abraham, the Paschal Lamb, the Exodus out of Egypt, the Angel of the Covenant, the Shekinah, the Tabernacle, the Mercy-Seat, the Day of Atonement, the Manna, the Rock, the Brazen Serpent, the Star of Balaam, the Throne of David, the Immanuel of Isaiah, the Messiah of Daniel. Thus He, so to speak, Christianized all the Old Testament, pointing out everywhere His own footsteps, and signs manual, and personal lineaments. Oh, what an expository sermon that must have been! How new the old words! What would we not give could we have listened to Him! What would we not give could He enter our homes to-day, and explain to us not only the Old Testament but also the New! Thank God, He does visit us. The Paraclete, even the Spirit of Truth, Whom the Father promised to send in His name, has come, teaching us all things, bringing to our remembrance all things which Jesus has said, bearing witness of Him, guiding us into all the truth, showing us the things to come, receiving that which is Christ's and showing it unto us: so that we 1 John ii. 20. may know all things. He that hath an ear, Rev. ii. 7.

John xiv. 16, 26; xv. 26; xvi. 13,

14.