d found safety in. The other Apostles came one by one, a
frightened, disheartened group, shame-faced and doubtful as to what
might next befall them. The thing that to us seems strangest of all is
that no one seems to have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about
His resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any
light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of what
our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming of the
Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood His meaning;
and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that involved in His
sayings about the resurrection we can understand that they should have
been so little influenced by them.

S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that she would
have been unable to think of the future at all save as a dreary waste
of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all to her, was dead.
She had stood by the Cross through all the agony of His dying: she had
heard His last words. That final word to her had sunk very deep into her
heart. She had once more felt His Body in her arms as it was taken down
from the Cross; and she had followed to the place where was a Garden and
a new tomb wherein man had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body
placed and hastily cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on
the Passover Eve would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at
all where she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in
her brain,--He is dead, He is dead.

It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what He
Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean what it
had always meant to religious people of her time and circle. What that
was we have very clearly presented to us in the talk with Martha that
our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay dead. There is a fuller
knowledge than we find explicit in the Old Testament, showing a growth
in the understanding of the Revelation in the years that fall between
the close of the Old Testament canon and the coming of our Lord. There
is a belief in survival to be followed by resurrection at the last day.
That would no doubt be St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the
belief of many Christians to-day. "I know that he shall rise again in
the resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that
they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who have no