one in, torn through the flesh and left eternal
wounds as the chevrons of glory.

And still the silence of hope mingled with fear.

Then he said:

"Have ye here any meat?"

And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.

And He took and did eat before them.

He had said to them He was flesh and bones, not flesh and blood.

He was not flesh and blood because in the sin-offering all the blood
must be poured out at the bottom of the altar, and He was Himself
the antitypical sin-offering. He had poured out His blood. It had
run as a living stream from every vein and artery.

Because He was the sin-offering in death, in resurrection He became
for the first time a priest--high priest after the order, not of
Aaron, but Melchisedec.

That very morning as the high priest He had ascended to heaven,
within the vail, and sprinkled His redeeming blood (how is not
revealed) on the eternal throne, changing it from the throne of
judgment to a throne of grace. That night He stood before them He
was their high priest, not of earth, but heaven. He breathed upon
them, imparted to them the Holy Spirit--the Comforter--linking them
to His immortal body. He remained with them, going and coming,
during forty days, operating with them officially by and through the
Holy Spirit as His unseen executive; for we are told that, "until
the day he was taken up he through the Holy Ghost had given
commandments unto the apostles;" and then, finally, as this scene in
the book of Acts shows us, ascended to His high-priestly function
and unceasing service of intercession.

He is seated in heaven now, seated there as the same Jesus who met
His disciples that first Sunday night, the same Jesus who ascended
out of their midst from Olivet. This same Jesus! The same not only
in realistic, human body, but the same in character, full of the
same measureless compassion and grace as when He sat on the well
curb in Samaria and though thirsting as a real man for real water
offered to give to the sinful woman who by divine and eternal
ordination met him there, the water that should be in her as a well
of water springing up into everlasting life.

This same Jesus is coming again, not a phantom, not an impalpable
spirit, not a ghost Christ, but a Christ who is a real man of real
flesh and real bones.

This is the key-note of the book of Acts.

He who died for men, who has sanctioned the Holy Spirit to operate
in His name, speak in His n