meet them in Galilee. This was the same commission which the other women had received from the angel, and they were earlier than Mary in their intelligence. The disciples received their account with a kind of doubting confidence, some believed less and some more; but as a body they were left in a state of mind to require further evidence of a fact so strange and unexampled.

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EMMAUS.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CHRIST REVEALS HIMSELF TO TWO DISCIPLES AT EMMAUS-TO THE COMPANY OF DISCIPLES AT JERUSALEM-TO THE UNBELIEVING THOMAS-THE CHARGE OF OUR LORD TO PETER-THE FEAST OF PENTECOST DRAWS NEAR-CHRIST GIVES HIS LAST CHARGE TO HIS DISCIPLESLEADS THEM FORTH TO BETHANY-IS RECEIVED UP OUT OF THEIR SIGHT.

HE same evening, two men who had been disciples of Jesus, and whom many suppose to have been among the seventy, were returning to Emmaus, where they lived, from Jerusalem, where they had probably been attending the Passover. Emmaus was a small village distant about

eight miles north-west of Jerusalem. On

the way they were talking earnestly of the circumstances attending the death of Christ, and of the strange report which the women who went to the sepulchre had that morning brought to the disciples.

These men, after the death of Christ, seem no longer to have regarded him as the Messiah; nor had they much faith in the relations of the women, though their minds had been so far struck with their statements that they were, it seems, discussing their probability, and hesitating to believe what they had not themselves seen. As they were thus communing together they were joined by a stranger who entered into conversation with them. This was Jesus himself. But probably through Divine influence

in connexion with the difference in his dress and the absence of any expectation of such a circumstance, he was not recognised by them. He asked them, "What manner of communications are these which ye have one to another as ye walk, and are sad?" In answer they expressed their surprise that any one coming from Jerusalem could be ignorant of things which had for some days been the common talk of the holy city. Jesus still asked, "What things?" Then they briefly recited how that Jesus of Nazareth, "a prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people, had been delivered unto death by the

chief priests and rulers;" and this put an end to the hopes which they and many others had cherished, for they had, they said, trusted that "this was He who should have delivered Israel." And besides this, some of their women had thrown them into amazement by asserting what seemed incredible-that they had been told by