stress, but He reminds them that very
commonly pain and anxiety accompany the birth-throes of a new life; and
if they found themselves shortly in depression and grief which seemed
inconsolable, they were to believe that this was the path to a new and
higher phase of existence and to a joy that would be lasting. Your
grief, He says, will shortly end: your joy never. Your grief will soon
be taken away: your joy no one shall take away. When Christ rose again,
the disciples remembered and understood these words; and a few chapters
further on we find John returning upon the word and saying, "When they
saw the Lord, they were glad,"--they had this _joy_. It was a joy to
them, because love for Christ and hope in Him were their dominant
feelings. They had the joy of having their Friend again, of seeing Him
victorious and proved to be all and more than they had believed. They
had the first glowing visions of a new world for which the preparation
was the life and resurrection of the Son of God. What were they not
prepared to hope for as the result of the immeasurably great things they
had themselves seen and known? It was a mere question now of Christ's
will: of His power they were assured.

The resurrection of Christ was, however, meant to bring lasting joy, not
to these men only, but to all. These greatest of all events, the descent
to earth of the Son of God with all Divine power and love, and His
resurrection as the conqueror of all that bars the path of men from a
life of light and joy, became solid facts in this world's history, that
all men might calculate their future by such a past, and might each for
himself conclude that a future of which such events are the preparation
must be great and happy indeed. Death, if not in all respects the most
desolating, is the most certain of all human ills. Anguish and mourning
it has brought and will bring to many human hearts. Do what we will we
cannot save our friends from it; by us it is unconquerable. Yet it is in
this most calamitous of human ills God has shown His nearness and His
love. It is to the death of Christ men look to see the full brightness
of God's fatherly love. It is this darkest point of human experience
that God has chosen to irradiate with His absorbing glory. Death is at
once our gravest fear and the spring of our hope; it cuts short human
intercourse, but in the cross of Christ it gives us a never-failing,
divinely loving Friend. The death of Christ is the great