an," they said, in effect,
"there is no need for tears; didst thou but know, couldst thou but
understand, thy heart would overflow with supreme joy, and thy tears
become smiles." "They have taken away my Lord," she said, "and I know
not where they have laid Him." What could angel voices do for her, who
longed to hear one voice only? What were the griefs of others in
comparison with hers? In an especial sense Jesus was hers! _my_ Lord!
Had He not cast out from her seven devils?

Some slight movement behind, or perhaps, as Chrysostom finely supposes,
because of an expression of love and awe which passed over the angel
faces, led her to turn herself back, and she saw Jesus standing, but
she knew not that it was Jesus. Supposing him, in her grief and
confusion, to be the gardener, she said that if he knew the whereabouts
of the body she sought, she would gladly have it removed at her
expense: nay, she even volunteered to bear it off herself. Then He
spoke the old familiar name with the old intonation and emphasis, and
she answered in the country tongue they both knew and loved so well,
"Rabboni!" In her rapture she sought to embrace Him, but this must not
be; and there was need for Christ to work in her love, with His high
art, as the artificer may carve the stone, or engrave some legend on
the intaglio. He therefore withdrew Himself, saying, "Touch Me not."
To Thomas afterward He said, "Behold My hands and My side; reach hither
thy finger": because there was no danger of his abusing the permission,
or leaning unduly on the sensuous and physical. But Mary must learn to
exchange the outward for the inward, the transient for the eternal, and
to pass from the old fellowship with Jesus as friend and companion into
a spiritual relationship which would subsist to all eternity.
Therefore Jesus spoke of His ascension, and bade her look upward, and
see, gleaming on high, diviner things. So she was prepared for the
time, when, in the upper room, she should continue steadfastly in
prayer, and come nearer to Him whom she loved than ever previously.

Did you ever realize that the intonations of the voice of Jesus, which
had passed unimpaired through death, suggest that in that new life,
which lies on the other side of death, we shall hear the voices speak
again which have been familiar to us from childhood? As is the
heavenly, so are they who are heavenly; and as we have borne the image
of the earthy, we shall bear that of t