sense "The Lord's Supper." Yet in the truest, abiding sense it was the Holy Communion. For wherever the Risen Lord is, there in deepest truth is the Sacrament. But although the new comers declared that they too had seen the Risen Lord, Mark xvi. 13. the other disciples did not believe them. Perhaps their unbelief sprang from their notion of a physical impossibility: "It can not be that He appeared to Simon here at Jerusalem and at the same time to you at Emmaus." In all events, they refused to believe any one except their own Simon Peter: "He hath appeared unto Simon."

THE EPIPHANY TO THE TEN.

Why are ye troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself: handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have. And when He had thus spoken, He shewed them His hands and His feet.

LUKE Xxiv. 38-40.

4

VI.

THE EPIPHANY TO THE TEN.

Sudden Epiphany.

Luke xxiv. 36.

John xx. 19.

AND now, even while they were thus convers- The ing and arguing, the doors having been shut for Mark xvi. 14. fear of the Jews, Jesus Himself suddenly appears in the center of the group, saying, "Peace be unto you!" The doors having been closed for fear of the Jews: what a glimpse this allows us into the perils of the young Brotherhood! Already is their Master's own saying, uttered on the night of the betrayal, fulfilled: "The servant is not greater John xv. 20. than his lord: if they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." Observe as it was the hierarchical party of the Jewish estate which persecuted the infant Church even down to the close Acts. xxiv. 1-9. of Paul's career, so, with shame be it confessed, it is the ecclesiastical element of society which since the time of Constantine has been the chief persecutor of Christ's Church. And if in our own age and land we are worshiping no longer with closed doors, but openly, in absolute freedom of action and conscience, it is because we are living in the land wherein Roger Williams more than two centuries ago bravely reasserted Christ's own