INTRODUCTION (continued 10)

PERFUMES IN THE ROCK

What little light had penetrated the dark cloud disappeared with the setting of the sun. The darkness was thick and sinister. A black night was shutting down on the world which on that day had lost the only Being which could give it light. Against the scarcely visible whiteness of the Hill of the Skull, the naked corpses glimmered dimly. They were obliged to work by the red light of torches, flaming without smoke in that windless air, and by that blood-red light they could see clearly, even to the long streaks of blood which had run down the foot of the cross, to the newly stirred earth.

Joseph, aided by Nicodemus and by a third helper, was scarcely able to draw out the deep-driven nails which held the feet. The ladder was still there. One of them, climbing up on it, took out the nails from the hands, supporting the loosened body with his shoulder. The others helped him to lower down the corpse, and the body was placed on the knees of the Virgin of Sorrows who had borne Him. Then they all made their way towards a garden near by where there was a sepulcher destined for Jesus. The garden belonged to the rich Joseph, who had had the sepulcher hewn out of the stone for himself and his family, for in those days every well-to-do Jew had a family sepulcher far from all the others, and the dead were not condemned to the promiscuity of our administrative cemeteries; temporary, geometric, and democratic like all our modern magnificent barbarisms.

As soon as they had arrived at the garden, the two bearers 379of the dead had water brought from the well, and washed the body. Until then the women, the three Marys—the Virgin Mary, the contemplative Mary, the liberated Mary—had not moved from the place where He whom they loved had died. Now, defter and more skillful than men, they began to help in order that this burial, performed thus at night and in haste, would not be unworthy of Him for whom they wept. They lifted from His head the insulting crown of Pilate’s legionaries, and plucked out the thorns which had penetrated the skin: they were the ones to smooth and arrange the hair clotted with blood; and to close the eyes into which they had looked so many times with pure tenderness, and that mouth which they had never kissed. Many loving tears fell upon that face where in the calm paleness of death the old sweetness shone once more, and their tears washed it with water purer than that from Joseph’s well.

All His body was sullied with sweat, with dust, with blood; bloody serum oozed out from the wounds of the hands, of the feet, of the chest. When the washing was finished, the corpse was sprinkled with Nicodemus’ spices, and that without sparing, for they were abundant; even the black wounds left by the nails were filled with spices. The body of Jesus had received nothing but insults and blows after the evening when the sinning woman with a premonition of this day had poured nard upon the feet and upon the head of the Pardoner. But now, as then, the murdered white body was covered with perfumes and with tears sweeter than perfumes.

Then, when the hundred pounds of Nicodemus had covered Jesus with a fragrant pall, the winding sheet was tied about the body with long linen bands, the head was wrapped in a napkin and another white cloth was spread over the face, after they had all kissed Him on the forehead.

There was space but for one body in the open sepulcher. Recently made, it had never been used. Joseph of Arimathea, not able to save Christ alive in any of his houses, now that the fury of the world had died down, gave up to Him the dark subterranean habitation hewn in the rock, and intended for his own dead body. According to the ritual the two Sanhedrists 380recited aloud the mortuary psalm, and finally, after they had placed the white-wrapped body in the cave, they closed the opening with a great stone and went away silently, followed by the others.

But the women did not follow them. They could not bring themselves to leave that rock which separated them forever from Him whom they loved more than their beauty. How could they leave Him alone in the darkness, doubly black, of the night and of the tomb, He who had been so desperately alone in His long death agony? They whispered prayers, and recalled to each other the memory of a day, or a gesture, or a word of the loved one, and if one of them tried to comfort another, the second but sobbed more bitterly. Sometimes they called Him by name as they leaned against the rock, and spoke lovingly to Him now that His ears were closed in death, as they had not dared while He was alive. They poured out, at last in the damp black shade of the garden, that love greater than love, which their poor, limited human hearts could no longer hold back.

Then finally, chilled and terrified by the night’s blackness, they too went away, their eyes burning, stumbling amid the bushes and the stones, promising one another to return there as soon as the feast-day had passed.

HE IS NOT HERE

The sun had not yet risen on the day which for us is Sunday, when the women once more drew near to the garden; but over the eastern hills a white hope, light as the distant reflection of an earth clothed with lilies and silver, rose slowly in the midst of the throbbing constellations, vanquishing little by little the sparkling brilliance of the night. It was one of those calm dawns, suggesting innocents asleep, and the clear benign air seemed stirred as by a recent stir of angels’ wings. It seemed one of the virginal days, ushered in with transparent pallor, shy and cheerful with cool breezes.

In the half light, the women advanced, breathed upon by 381wandering airs, lost in their sadness, under the spell of an emotion they could not have explained. Were they returning to weep upon the rock? Or to see Him once more, He who had captured their hearts without laying them waste? Or to put about the body of the Immaculate One spices stronger than those of Nicodemus? And speaking among themselves, they said, “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?”

There were four of them, since Joanna of Cusa and Salome had joined Mary of Magdala and Mary of Bethany, but they were women and weakened by their sorrow.

But when they came to the rock they stood still, astounded. The opening into the sepulcher showed black against the darkness. Not believing her eyes, the boldest of them touched the sill with her trembling hands. In the daylight, brightening now with every moment, they saw the stone there beside them, leaning against the rocks.

The women, struck into silence by their fright, turned around as if expecting some one to come to tell them what had happened in those two nights which had passed. Mary of Magdala feared at once that the Jews, not satisfied with what they had made Him suffer when He was alive, had stolen away the body of Christ; or perhaps, unwilling to have the honorable sepulcher used by a heretic, they had thrown Him into the shameful common grave used for men stoned and crucified.

But this was no more than a presentiment. Perhaps Jesus was still lying inside in His perfumed wrappings. Enter they dared not, yet they could not bear to go away, not knowing what had happened. As soon as the sun, risen at last above the summit of the hills, shone into the opening of the sepulcher, they took courage and entered.

At first they saw nothing, but they were shaken by a new fear. At their right, seated, was a young man clothed in a long white garment, showing in that darkness like snow. He seemed to be awaiting them.

“Be not affrighted: he is not here: for he is risen. Why seek ye the living among the dead? Remember how he spake 382unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.”

The women listened, terrified and trembling, not able to answer, but the youth went on, “Go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him.”

All four of them, quivering with terror and joy, left the grotto to hasten where they had been sent. But after a few steps, when they were almost outside the garden, Mary of Magdala stopped, and the others went along the road towards the city without waiting for her. She herself did not know why she had remained behind. Perhaps the words of the unknown youth had not convinced her, and she remembered that they had not even made sure that the sepulcher was really empty; perhaps the youth in white was an accomplice of the priests who wished to deceive them?

Suddenly she turned and saw a man near her, outlined against the green of the garden, and the sunlight; but she did not recognize Him even when He spoke. “Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?”

Mary thought that it might be Joseph’s gardener come early to his work. “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

The unknown man, touched by this impassioned candor, by this child-like simplicity, answered only one word, spoke only one name, her name, pronounced longingly, wistfully in the touching and unforgettable voice which had called her so many times: “Mary!”

At this, as if awakened with a start, the despairing woman found her lost Master: “Rabboni, Master!” And she fell at His feet in the dewy grass and clasped in her hands those bare feet still showing the two red marks of the nails.

But Jesus said to her, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto 383them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and to your God.”

And at once, He withdrew from the kneeling woman, and moved away among the plants, crowned with sunshine.

Mary watched Him until He had disappeared; then she lifted herself up from the grass, her face convulsed, wild, blind with joy, and ran after her companions.

They had but just come to the house where the Disciples were in hiding and they had told hastily and breathlessly the incredible news: the sepulcher opened, the youth clad in white, the things which he had said, the Master risen, the message to His brothers.

But the men, still stunned by the catastrophe, and who in these dangerous days had shown themselves more torpid and passive than the weaker women, were not willing to believe this wildly improbable news. Hallucinations, women’s dreams, they said. How could He be risen from the dead after only two days? He had said that He would return, but not at once: so many terrible things were to be seen before that day of His return!

They believed in the resurrection of the Master, but not before the day when all the dead would rise again, and He would come in glory to rule His kingdom. But not now: it was too soon, it could not be true: waking dreams of hysteric women!

But in the meantime, Mary of Magdala rushed in, breathless with haste and agitation. What the others had said was all true. But there was more: she herself had seen Him with her own eyes, and He had spoken to her, and she had not known Him at once, but had recognized Him as soon as He had called her by name: she had touched His feet with her hands, had seen the wounds on His feet; it was He, alive once more; and He had told her, as had the unknown youth, to go to His brethren, so that they should know that He had risen from the dead as He had promised.

Simon and John, finally aroused, rushed out of the house and began to run towards Joseph’s garden. John, who was 384younger, outran Peter and came first to the sepulcher. He looked through the door, saw the linen cloths lying on the ground, but did not go in. Simon came up panting and rushed into the grotto. The linen cloths were lying on the ground, but the napkin which had been about the head of the corpse was folded and wrapped together in a place by itself. John also went in, saw, and believed. And without another word they returned in all haste towards the house, still running, as if they expected to find the Risen One in the midst of the others whom they had left.

But Jesus, after He had left Mary, withdrew from Jerusalem.

EMMAUS

After the solemn interval of the Passover, plain, ordinary everyday life began again for all men.

Two friends of Jesus, among those who were in the house with the Disciples, were to go that morning on an errand to Emmaus, a hamlet about two hours’ journey from Jerusalem. They left as soon as Simon and John had returned from the sepulcher. All these amazing tales had shaken them somewhat, but had not really convinced them of an event so portentous and unexpected. Serious-minded men, they could not understand or believe what they had heard: if the body of the Master was no longer there, might it not have been taken away by men’s hands?

Cleopas and his companion were good Jews, men who left a place for the ideal in their minds, burdened with many material cares. But this place for the ideal was not to be too large, and this ideal must be commensurate with their own natures if it were not to be expelled as an unwelcome guest. Like almost all the Disciples, they too expected the coming of a Liberator, but of one who would come to liberate Israel first of all,—a Messiah, in short, who should be the son of David rather than the Son of God, a warrior on horseback rather than a poor pedestrian, a scourge of His enemies and not a lover of sick people and children. The words of Christ 385had almost given them a glimpse of higher truths, but the crucifixion disheartened them. They loved Jesus, and they suffered in His suffering, but this sudden, shameful ending without glory and without resistance was too great a contrast to what they had expected, and especially to much of what they had hoped. They could understand that He might be a humble Saviour, riding on gentle asses instead of on warlike chargers, and a little more spiritual and gentle than they would have liked; they could understand this, although with difficulty, and endure it although grudgingly. But that the Liberator had not known how to free either Himself or others, that the Messiah of the Jews should have died through the will of so many Jews on the scaffold of murderers and parricides, was too great a disappointment,—an inexcusable scandal. They pitied the crucified leader with all their hearts, but at the same time they were tempted to believe that they had been deceived about His real nature. His death—and what a death!—looked to their narrow, practical minds sadly like a failure.

They were reasoning together of all these things as they went along under the warm noonday sun and at times the discussion grew hot, for they did not always agree. Then suddenly they caught a glimpse of a shadow on the ground near them. They turned around. The shadow was that of a man who was following as if he wished to hear what they were saying. They stopped, as was the custom, to greet him, and the traveler joined them. His did not seem an unknown face to the two men, but look at him as they might, they could not think who it was. The newcomer, instead of answering their silent questions, asked them, “What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk?”

Cleopas, who must have been the older, answered with a wondering gesture, “Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?”

“What things?” asked the unknown man.

“Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: And how 386the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.”

“O fools, and slow of heart,” exclaimed the stranger, “to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” Do you not remember how He was predicted from Moses down to our own time? Have you not read Ezekiel and Daniel? Do you not even know our songs of the Lord and His promises?

And almost indignantly He recited the old words and the prophecies, recalled the description of the Man of Sorrows given by Isaiah. The two listened, docile and attentive, without answering, because the newcomer spoke with so much heat, and the old admonitions in His mouth took on new warmth and a meaning so clear that it seemed almost impossible that they had not understood them before. The talk of the newcomer gave them the impression of being the echo of other talks like those heard in times past, but confusedly, like a voice from the other side of a wall.

In the meantime they had arrived at the entrance of Emmaus, and the pilgrim made as though He would have gone further. But now the two friends were not willing to part with their mysterious companion, and they begged Him to stay with them. The sun was going down, throwing a warmer golden light on the countryside, and their three shadows had lengthened on the dusty road.

“Abide with us,” they said, “for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.” Also thou art tired and it is the hour for food. And they took Him by the hand and made Him come into the house where they were going.

387When they were at table, the guest who sat between them took bread, and broke it and gave a little to one of His friends. At this action, the eyes of Cleopas and the other man were opened, as when we are suddenly wakened and find the sun shining. Both of them sprang to their feet, trembling with emotion, pale, amazed, and finally knew Him, the murdered man whom they had misunderstood and slandered. But they had no time even to run to kiss Him, for Jesus vanished out of their sight.

They had not recognized Him when they had seen Him, not even by His speech, although that was so like His speech in His lifetime; they had not recognized Him even by the light of His eyes while He spoke, nor by the sound of His voice! But when He took the bread in His hands, like a father who shares it with His children in the evening after a day of work or of travel, in that loving action which they had seen Him perform so many times in their hastily arranged intimate suppers, they had recognized His hands, His blessed and wounded hands, and the cloud lifted and they found themselves face to face with the splendor of Christ risen from the dead. In His first life when He was their friend they had not understood Him; when on the road to Emmaus He had taught them, they had not recognized Him, but at the moment when He became the loving Master, serving His servants and giving them bread which is life and the hope of life, then for the first time they saw Him.

And tired and fasting as they were, they went back over the road which they had come, and after nightfall arrived at Jerusalem.

And as they went along they said almost shamefacedly, “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?”

The Disciples were still awake. Without drawing breath the newcomers told of their encounter and what had been said along the way, and how they had recognized Him only at the moment when He broke the bread. And in answer to this new confirmation, three or four voices cried out together, “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon!”

388But not all the Apostles were convinced even by these four appearances, by the fourfold testimony. To some, this prompt, this extraordinary resurrection, which had taken place by night in a secret and suspicious manner, seemed more the hallucination of grief and of yearning than actual truth. Who were the people who claimed to have seen Him? A hysterical woman who had been possessed by a devil; a distraught man who had not seemed himself from the moment when he had denied his Master; and two plain fellows who were not even His real Disciples, and whom Jesus had thus chosen, no one knew why, in preference to His closer friends. Mary might have been deceived by a phantom; Simon, to win back his self-respect after his baseness, was determined to do no less than Mary; the others were perhaps impostors or, at the most, visionaries. If Christ were really risen, would not He have been seen by them all while they were together? Why these preferences? Why this appearance at three-score furlongs from Jerusalem?

They believed in His resurrection, but they thought of it as one of the signs of the ending of the world, when everything would be fulfilled. But now that they found themselves confronted with the fact that He alone had risen from the dead while everyday life went on as usual, they realized that the return into life of human flesh (and of human flesh which had not gone to sleep peacefully in the last sleep, but whose life had been torn away by violence), that this idea of rising from the dead not in the distant future but in the immediate present, contradicted all the other concepts which made up the tissue of their minds. They realized that this contradiction had always existed, but their doubt had not risen to consciousness until this brusque encounter of two impossible elements: a remote miracle and an actual fact.

If Jesus had risen from the dead, that would mean that He was really God; but would a real God, a Son of God, ever have been reconciled to allow Himself to be killed, and in so shameful a way? If He could conquer death, why had He not stricken down the judges, put Pilate to confusion, paralyzed the arms of those about to nail Him to the cross? Through 389what paradoxical mystery had the Omnipotent allowed Himself to be dragged through the ignominy of the weak?

They were reasoning thus among themselves, some of the Disciples who had heard but had not understood. Prudent like all sophists, they did not venture openly to deny the resurrection in the presence of those exalted hearts, but they reserved judgment, turning over in their minds the reasons for its possibility and impossibility, wishing for a manifest confirmation, but unable to hope for one.

In the excitement of the day no one had eaten. But the women had prepared supper, and now all sat down to the table. Simon remembered the Last Thursday: “This do in remembrance of me.”

And a flood of tears dimmed his eyes while he broke the bread and gave it to his friends.

HAVE YE HERE ANY MEAT?

They had scarcely eaten the last mouthfuls when Jesus appeared in the doorway, tall and pale. He looked at them one by one, and in His melodious voice greeted them: “Peace be unto you.”

No one answered. Their astonishment overcame their joy, even for those who had already seen Him since His death. On their faces the Man risen from the dead read the doubt which He knew they all felt, the question which they did not dare express in words, “Art Thou really Thyself a living man, or a spirit which comes from the caverns of the dead to tempt us?”

“Why are ye troubled?” said the Man who had been betrayed, “and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I, myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

And He stretched out His hands towards them, showed them the marks still bloody left by the nails, opened His garment over His breast so that they could see the mark of the lance in His side. Some of them, rising from their couches, knelt 390down and saw on His bare feet the two deep wounds, each with its livid ring around it.

But they could not bring themselves to touch Him, for they feared to see Him disappear suddenly as He had come suddenly. If one of them had embraced Him, would he have felt the warm solidity of a body, or would his arms have passed through the emptiness of a mere shadow?

It was He with His face, with His voice, with the irrefutable traces of the crucifixion, and yet there was something changed in His aspect which they could not have described, even if they had been calm. The most reluctant were forced to believe that the Master stood before them with all the appearance of life begun anew, but their thoughts whirled in the last of their doubts and they were silent as if they were afraid to believe in their senses, as if they expected to wake up, from one moment to another. Even Simon was silent. What could he have said without betraying himself by tears to Him who had looked at him with those same eyes in the courtyard of Caiaphas while he swore that he had never known Him?

To make an end of their last doubts, Jesus asked, “Have ye here any meat?”

He needed no longer any food except that for which He had vainly asked all His life. But these men of the flesh needed a fleshly proof, a material demonstration as was befitting those who believed only in matter and nourished themselves only on matter. They had eaten together on their last evening; this evening also, now that they were again together, He would eat with them. “Have ye here any meat?”

A piece of broiled fish was left in a dish. Simon put it before the Master, who sat down at the table and ate the fish with a piece of bread while they all stared at Him as though it were the first time they had ever seen Him eat.

And when He had finished, He raised His eyes towards them, and, “Are you convinced now, or do you still not understand: does it seem possible to you that a spirit can eat as I have eaten here in your presence? So many times I have been forced to reprove your hardness of heart, and your little faith! And behold you are still as you were at first, and you were 391not willing to believe those who had seen me, and yet I had hid nothing of what was to happen in these days. But you, deaf and forgetful, hear and then forget, read and do not understand. When I was with you, did I not tell you that all things which were written and which I announced must be fulfilled; that it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem? Now you are witnesses of these things, and behold I send the promise of my Father upon you. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth, and as the Father sent me, I send you. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. I will remain here a little and we shall meet again in Galilee, but I am with you always even unto the end of the world.”

Little by little as He spoke, His Disciples’ faces lighted up with a forgotten hope, and their eyes shone with exaltation. This was the hour of consolation after the gloom of those dreadful days just passed. His indubitable presence showed that the impossible was assured, that God had not abandoned them and never would abandon them. Their enemies, apparently victorious, were conquered; the visible truth bore out all the prophecies. It was true that they had known already everything He was then saying, but those truths really lived in them only when His lips repeated them.

Their King had come back, the Kingdom was near at hand, and His brothers, instead of being derided and persecuted, would reign with Him through all eternity. These words had fired again the most tepid, had brightened the memory of other words, of other sunnier days, and suddenly they felt an exaltation, an ardor, a greater desire to embrace each other, to love each other, never more to be separated from each other. If the Master was risen from the dead, they themselves could not die; if He could leave the sepulcher, His promises were 392the promises of a God and He would fulfill them to the uttermost. Their faith was not in vain, and they were no longer alone: the crucifixion had been the darkening of one day in order that the light might shine out more splendidly for all the days to come.

THOMAS DIDYMUS

Thomas, called Didymus, was not present when Jesus appeared, but the day after, his friends ran to seek him, still agitated by what Jesus had said. “We have seen the Lord!” they said. “It was really He. He talked with us. He ate with us like a living man.”

Thomas was one of those who had been profoundly shaken by the shame of Golgotha. He had said once that he was ready to die with his Master, but he had fled away with the others when the lanterns of the guard had appeared on the Mount of Olives. His faith had been darkened by the gloom which had shut down on Golgotha. In spite of Christ’s warnings, he had never once thought that the end of his Master could be thus. To think of the shame into which Jesus let himself be led, with the passivity of a feeble sheep, made him suffer, almost more than the loss of Him who had loved him. This disappointment of all his hopes had shocked him almost as though he had discovered that he had been cheated, and in his eyes his disappointment excused even the shame of their abandoning Him. Thomas, like Cleopas and his comrades, was a sensualist, whom the exalted example of Christ had lifted high into a world which was not his own. Faith had taken him unawares, like a contagious fervor. But as soon as the flame which had kindled him anew every day was buried, or seemed buried, under the shameful stoning of hate, the light of his soul burned low, and grew cold. He took on again his first character, his real character, which sought tangible things with the senses, hoped for material changes in matter, and expected to find only in material things material certainties and consolations. His eyes refused to look at the things which his hands could not touch, and for this he was condemned never to see the 393invisible,—a grace reserved only for those who believe it possible. He hoped for the Kingdom, especially when the words and the presence of Jesus brightened his earthly heart with the light of Heaven, but not for a purely spiritual Kingdom floating in the firmament among the unsubstantial islands of the clouds, but a kingdom where living, warm-blooded men might have eaten and drunk at solid and tangible tables, might govern with new laws a fairer earth assigned to them by God.

Thomas, after the scandal of the crucifixion, was not at all disposed to believe a hearsay report of the resurrection. He had seen his first beliefs too roughly disabused to put any faith now in his equally deceived companions. And he answered to those who joyfully brought him the news, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

He had said at first, “Except I shall see.” But he corrected himself at once: even his eyes could deceive him, and many men were cheated by visions. And his thoughts went on to a material test, to the coarse, brutal proof of fact,—to put his finger there where the nails had been, to put his hand, his whole hand, where the lance had penetrated. To do as a blind man does who sometimes is less mistaken than men who see.

He rejected faith which is the higher vision of the soul. He even refused to have faith in the sight of his eyes, the most divine of our bodily senses. He put his faith only in his hands, flesh handling flesh. This double denial left him in the dark, groping like a blind man, until the Light made Man, through a supreme loving concession, gave him back light for his eyes and for his heart.

But this answer of Thomas has made him one of the most famous men in the world: for it is Christ’s eternal characteristic to immortalize even those men who affronted Him. All those afraid to touch spiritual concepts for fear of breaking them, all cheap skeptics, all the misers in academic chairs, all tepid half-wits stuffed with prejudices, all the faint-hearted, sophists, the cynics, the beggars and the retort-cleaners of science; in short all rush-lights jealous of the sun, all geese hissing 394at the flight of soaring falcons, have chosen for their protector and patron Thomas called Didymus. They know nothing of him except this: he does not believe in what he cannot touch. This answer seems to them the sum-total of perfect good sense. Let anybody who wishes claim that he sees in the darkness, hears in the silence, speaks in solitude, lives in death; the followers of Thomas can get no such idea into their thick, dense heads. So-called “reality” is their stronghold, and they will not budge from it. They prefer to fill their lives with gold which satisfies no hunger, with land in which they will occupy so small a cavity, with glory so fleeting a whisper in the silence of eternity, with flesh which is to become worm-eaten corruption, and with those noisy, magic discoveries which after enslaving men hurry them towards the formidable discovery of death. These and other things like them are “real things,” beloved by the devotees of Thomas. But perhaps if they had ever had the idea of reading what happened after that answer made by Thomas, they would have their doubts even of him who doubted the resurrection.

A week later, the Disciples were in the same house as on the first occasion and Thomas was with them. He had hoped all that week that he also might be permitted to see the risen Master, and sometimes he had trembled, thinking that his answer might be the reason for Christ’s absence; but suddenly there came a voice at the door, “Peace be unto you.”

Jesus entered, his eyes seeking out Thomas: He came for Thomas, for him alone, because Christ’s love for him was greater than any affront. And He called him by name and came up to him so that he could see Him clearly, face to face, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.”

But Thomas did not obey Him. He dared not put his finger in the nail print nor his hand in the wound. He only said to him: “My Lord and my God.”

With these words which seemed an ordinary greeting, Thomas admitted his defeat, fairer than any victory; and from that moment he was wholly Christ’s. Up to that time he had 395revered Him as a man more perfect than others, now he recognized Him as God, as his God.

Then Jesus, who could not forget Thomas’ doubt, answered, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

This is the last of the Beatitudes and the greatest: blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed, for in spite of the theories of the dissectors of corpses, the only truths which have an absolute value in reality are those which the eyes of the flesh cannot see and hands of flesh and blood can never handle. These truths come from on high and reach the soul directly: the man whose soul is locked shut cannot receive them, and will see them only on the day in which his body, with its five limited doorways, is like a shabby worn-out garment left upon a bed, in the interval before men hide it underground like a noisome afterbirth.

Thomas is one of the saints and yet he was not one of those blest by that Beatitude. An old legend relates that up to the day of his death his hand was red with blood, a legend true with all the truth of a terrible symbolical meaning, if we understand from it that incredulity can be a form of murder. The world is full of such assassins who have begun by assassinating their own souls.

THE REJECTION OF THE RESURRECTION

Christ’s first companions were at last convinced that His second and eternal life had begun. He who had been killed, who had slept as a corpse sleeps, covered with the perfumes of Nicodemus and the winding-sheet of Joseph, had after two days awakened like a God. But how long it took them to admit the reality of His return!

And yet the enemies of Christ, to make an end to the greatest obstacles in the way of their other negations, have accused those very astonished, perplexed Disciples with having willingly or unwillingly invented the myth of the resurrection. Caiaphas and his followers claimed that the Disciples carried off the body by night and then spread around the news of 396the empty sepulcher in order that weak-headed mystics might more readily believe that Christ was risen and thus allow those cheats to continue their pestiferous trickery in the name of the dead Trickster. And Matthew says that the Jews bought some witnesses with “large money” that if needful they should report that they had seen Simon and his accomplices violate the sepulcher and carry away on their shoulders a heavy burden wrapped in white.

But His modern enemies, through a last remnant of respect for those who founded with their blood the indestructible Church, or rather through their profound conviction of the simple-mindedness of the first martyrs, have given up this idea of deceit. Neither Simon nor the others could have acted out such a deception; they never could have kept such a piece of trickery straight in their poor thick heads. But if they were not consciously deceiving, they were certainly stupid victims of their own fancy or of the knavery of others.

These enemies of Christ affirm that the Disciples hoped so vividly to see Jesus rise from the dead as He had promised, and that the resurrection was so urgently needed to counteract the disgrace of the crucifixion, that they were induced, almost forced, to expect it and to announce it as imminent. Then in that atmosphere of superstitious suspense, the vision of a hysterical woman, the hallucination of a dreamer, the delusion of an unbalanced man sufficed to spread the news of the appearance of Christ about the little circle of the desolate survivors. Some of them, unable to believe that the Master had deceived them, easily put their faith in the affirmations of those who claimed to have seen Him after His death. And, by dint of repeating the fantasies of these wild dreams, they ended by taking them seriously themselves and by convincing the more candid souls. Only on condition of such a posthumous confirmation of the divinity of the dead man was it possible to hold together those who had followed Him and to create the first stable organization of the universal Church.

But those who with their accusations of stupidity or fraud try to undermine the certainty of the first Christian generation, forget too many things and too many essential things.

397First of all is the testimony of Paul. Saul the Pharisee had been to school to Gamaliel, and might have been present, even though at a distance and as an enemy, at Christ’s death, and certainly knew all the theories of his early teachers, the Jews, about the pretended resurrection. But Paul, who received the first Gospel from the lips of James, called the brother of the Lord, and from Simon, Paul famous in all the churches of the Jews and the Gentiles, wrote thus in his first letter to the Corinthians: “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.” The Letter to the Corinthians is recognized as authentic even by the most disdainful and suspicious nosers-out of falsification. The first Letter to the Corinthians cannot have been written later than the spring of the year 58, and hence it is older than the oldest Gospel. Many of those who had known the living Christ were still living at that time and could easily have contradicted or undeceived the Apostle. Corinth was at the gates of Asia, inhabited by many Asiatics, in close relation with Judea; Paul’s letters were public messages which were publicly read at gatherings, and copies of them were made to send to other churches. The solemn and specific testimony of Paul must have come to Jerusalem, where the enemies of Jesus, many of them still alive, would have found some way to controvert them by other witnesses. If Paul could have thought a valid confutation possible, he never would have dared write those words. That he was able therefore, so short a time after the event, publicly to affirm a prodigy so contrary to ordinary beliefs and to the interests of Christ’s watchful enemies, shows that the resurrection was not merely a phantasy of a few fanatics, but a certainty denied with difficulty, easily proved. We have no other record except this letter of Paul’s of the appearance of Christ to the five hundred brothers, but we cannot even for a moment imagine that Paul, one of the greatest and purest souls of early Christianity, could have invented it,—he who 398had so long persecuted those who believed in the reality of the resurrection. It is extremely probable that the appearance of Christ to the five hundred happened in Galilee on the mountain spoken of by Matthew, and that the Apostle had known one of those who had been present at that memorable meeting.

But this is not all. The Evangelists, who set down with some incoherence, but with the greatest frankness, the recollections of Jesus’ first companions, admit, perhaps without wishing to, that the Apostles themselves did not expect the resurrection and found it hard to believe. When we read the four Gospels with attention we see that they continued to doubt even with the risen Christ before them. When on Sunday morning the women ran to tell the Disciples that the sepulcher was empty and Christ alive, the Disciples accused them of raving. When later He appeared to many in Galilee: “And when they saw him, they worshipped him:” said Matthew; “but some doubted.” And when He appeared at evening in the room where they were taking supper, there were some who could not believe their own eyes and hesitated until they had seen Him eating. Thomas still doubted after this, until the moment when his Lord’s body was actually before his own.

So little did they expect to see Him rise again that the first effect upon them of His appearance was fright. “They were affrighted and supposed that they had seen a spirit.” They were therefore not so credulous and easily fooled as their defamers would have them. And they were so far from the idea of seeing Him return a living man among the living that when they first saw Him they mistook Him for another. Mary of Magdala thought that He was the gardener of Joseph of Arimathea; Cleopas and his companions were not able to recognize Him all along the road; Simon and the others when He came to them upon the shore of the lake, “knew not that it was Jesus.” If they had really been expecting Him, Himself, their minds on the alert, burning with longing, would they have been frightened, would they not have known Him at once? When we read the Gospels, we get the impression that Christ’s friends, far from inventing His return, accepted it almost because they were forced, by external coercion, and 399after much hesitation; the exact contrary, in short, of what is desired to be proved by those who accuse Christ’s friends of being deceived or of having deceived.

But why this hesitation? Because the warnings of Christ had not been able to dislodge from those slow and indocile minds the old Jewish repugnance to the idea of immortality. The belief in the resurrection of the dead was for centuries and centuries foreign to the wholly material mentality of the Jews. In a few prophets like Daniel and Hosea there are some passing traces of the idea, but it does not appear explicitly except in one passage of the story of the Maccabees. At the time of Christ the common people had a confused idea of it as a distant miracle, a part of the conceptions of the Apocalyptic writers, but they did not think it possible before the final upheaval of the great day: the Sadducees denied it firmly and the Pharisees admitted it as the remote and common reward of all righteous men. When the superstitious Antipas said that Christ was John risen from the dead, he meant to say with a vigorous figure of speech that the new Prophet was like a second John.

Reluctance to admit such an extraordinary infraction of the laws of death was so profoundly rooted in the Jewish people that the very Disciples of Christ were not disposed to admit the possibility of the resurrection without reiterated proofs, although they had seen Him raise others from the dead and had heard Him predict His own resurrection. And yet they had seen Him bring to life with His powerful summons the son of the Widow of Nain, the daughter of Jairus, the brother of Martha and Mary: the three sleepers whom Jesus had awakened because of His compassion for the grief of a mother, of a father, of a sister. But it was the habit and the fate of the Twelve to misunderstand and to forget. They were too set upon their material thoughts to be ready to believe at once such a victory over death. But when they were convinced, their certainty was so firm and strong that from the sowing of those first enforced witnesses has sprung up an enormous harvest of men born again in the faith of the resurrected One—which the centuries have not yet mowed down.

400The calumnies of the Jews, the accusations of false witnesses, the doubts of the Disciples, the plots of implacable enemies, the fallacious sophistry of the progeny of Thomas, the fantasies of heresiarchs, the distorted conceptions of men eager to prove Christ definitely dead, the turns and twists of the myth-spinners, the mines and assaults of the higher and lower criticism have not availed to wrench from the millions of human hearts the certainty that the body taken down from the cross of Golgotha reappeared on the third day to die no more. The people chosen by Christ condemned Him to death, hoping to have done with Him, but death refused Him as the Jews had refused Him, and humanity has not yet finished its accounting with that assassinated Man who came out from the sepulcher to show that breast where the Roman lance had forever made visible the heart which loves those who hate Him.

The cowardly souls who will not believe in His first life, in His second life, in His eternal life, cut themselves off from true life: from life which is generous acceptance, spontaneous love, hope in the invisible, certainty of the truth which passeth understanding. They themselves are dead, although they seem living, those who refuse Him, as death refused Him. Those who drag the weight of their still warm and breathing corpses over the patient earth laugh at the resurrection. The second birth in the spirit will not be granted to those who reject life, but an appalling and inevitable resurrection will be granted to them on the last day.

THE RETURN BY THE SEA

When the tragedy had drawn to a close with its greatest sorrow, its greatest joy, every one turned again to his own destination, the Son to the Father, the King to His Kingdom, the High Priest to his basins of blood, the fishermen to their nets.

These water-soaked nets, with broken meshes, torn by the unaccustomed weight of the great draughts, so many times mended, patched, knotted together again, which had been left 401by the first fishers of men without one backward look, on the shores of Capernaum, had finally been mended and laid on one side, by some one with the prudence of the stay-at-home who knows that dreams are soon over and hunger lasts for all one’s lifetime. The wife of Simon, the father of James and John, the brother of Thomas, had saved the casting nets and the drag-nets as tools which might be useful, in memory of the exiles, as if a voice had said to those who had remained at home: “They too will come back; the Kingdom is fair, but far distant, and the lake is fair now, to-day, and full of fish. Holy is holiness, but no man lives by the spirit alone. And a fish on the table now is worth more to a hungry man than a throne a year from now.”

And for a time the wisdom of the stay-at-homes, taken root in their native countryside like moss on a stone, was vindicated. The fishermen returned. The fishers of men appeared again in Galilee and once more took the old nets into their hands. They had received the order of Him who had drawn them away from there that they should be witnesses to His shame and to His glory. They had not forgotten Him and they could never forget Him: they always talked of Him among themselves and with all those who were willing to listen to them. But Christ on His return had said, “We will meet again in Galilee.” And they had gone away from ill-omened Judea, from the mercenary city ruled by its murderous masters, and they had trod once more the road back to their sweet, calm fatherland, whence the loving ravisher of souls had snatched them away. The old houses had a mellow beauty, with the white banners of newly washed linen, and the young grass greening along the old walls, and the tables cleaned by humble old hands, and the oven, which every week spat out sparks from its flaming mouth. And the quiet fishing-town had beauty, too; with its tanned naked boys, the sun high over the level market-place, the bags and baskets in the shadow of the inns, and the smell of fish which at dawn was wafted over it, with the morning breeze. But more beautiful than all was the lake: a gray-blue and slate-colored expanse on cloudy afternoons: a milky basin of opal with lines 402and patches of jacinth on warm evenings; a dark shadow flecked with white on starry nights: a silvery, heaving shadow in the moonlight. On this lake which seemed the very spirit of the quiet, happy countryside, the fishermen’s eyes had for the first time discovered the beauty of light and of water, nobler than the heavy unlovely earth and kinder than fire. The boat with its slanting sails, its worn seats, the high red rudder, had from their childhood been dearer to them than that other home which awaited them, stationary, whitened, four-square on the bank. Those infinitely long hours of tedium and of hope as they gazed at the brilliant water, the swaying of the nets, the darkening of the sky, had filled the greater part of their poor and homely lives.

Then came the day when a Master, poorer and more powerful than they, had called them to Himself to be workers with Him in a supernatural, perilous undertaking. The poor souls uprooted from their usual surroundings had done their best to be lighted by that flame, but the new life had trodden them out like grapes in the wine-press, like olives in the olive crusher in order that their rough hearts should yield up tears of love and pity.

It was only after the Cross had been raised on Golgotha that they had wept with true sorrow: and only after the Crucified Leader had returned to break bread with them that they had been kindled anew to hope.

And now they had come home, bringing back only a few recollections, and yet those recollections were enough to transform the world. But before beginning the work which He had commanded, they were waiting to see Him whom they loved in the place which He had loved. They were different men from the men who had gone away, more restless, sadder, almost estranged, as if they had come back from the land of the lotus-eaters and saw from beyond with purer eyes a new earth indissolubly united with Heaven. But the nets were there, hung up on the walls, and the boats at anchor swayed up and down on the water. Once more the fishers of men, perhaps out of nostalgia, perhaps out of material need, began to be lake fishermen.

403Seven Disciples of Christ were together one evening in the harbor of Capernaum, Simon called Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael of Cana, James, John and two others. Simon said, “I go afishing.”

His friends answered, “We also go with thee.”

They went into the boat and put off, but all that night they caught nothing. When day came, a little depressed because of the wasted night, they came back towards the shore. And when they were near they saw in the faint light of the dawn a man standing on the shore, who seemed to be waiting for them. “But the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.”

“Children, have ye any meat?” called the unknown man.

And they answered, “No.”

“Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.”

They obeyed and in a moment the net was so full that they were scarcely able to draw it in. And they all began to tremble because they had guessed who it was awaiting them.

“It is the Lord,” said John to Simon.

Peter answered nothing, but hastily drew on his fisher’s coat (for he was naked), and cast himself into the sea that he might be first on shore. The boat was scarcely two hundred cubits from the land and in a few moments the seven Disciples were about their Lord. And no one asked Him, “Who art thou?”—because they had recognized Him.

On the shore there were bread and a lighted brazier with fishes broiling on it, and Jesus said, “Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.”

And for the last time He broke the Bread and gave to them and the fish likewise. After they had finished eating Jesus turned to Simon and under His look the unhappy man, silent till then, turned pale: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?”

The man who had denied Him, when he heard this question full of tenderness, but for him so cruel, felt himself carried back to another place beside another brazier with other questions put to him, and he remembered the answer he had made then, and the look from Christ about to die and his own great lamentation in the night. And he dared not answer as he 404wished: “Yes” in his mouth would have been boasting and shamelessness: “No” would have been a shameful lie.

“Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.”

He made no claim for himself but “thou knowest that I love thee,” Thou who knowest all and seest into the most hidden hearts. “I love thee”: but he had not the courage to add “more than these” in the presence of the others, who knew what he had done.

Christ said to him, “Feed my lambs.”

And for the second time He asked him: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?”

And Peter in his trouble found no other answer than, “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.”

Why dost Thou still make me suffer? Dost Thou not know without my telling Thee that I love Thee, that I love Thee more than at first, as I have never loved Thee, and that I will give up my life to affirm my love?

Then Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

And for the third time He insisted, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?”

He was drawing from Peter three affirmations, three new promises to cancel his three denials at Jerusalem. But Peter could not endure this repeated suffering. Almost weeping, He cried out, “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee!”

The terrible ordeal was over, and Jesus went on, “Feed my sheep. Verily, verily I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry whither thou wouldest not.”

That is, to the cross, like the cross where they nailed me. Know, therefore, what it means to love me. My love is brother to death. Because I love you, they have killed me: for your love for me, they will kill you. Think, Simon, son of Jonas, what is the covenant which you make with me, and the fate which is before you. From now on, I shall not be at hand to take you back, to give you the peace of forgiveness, after 405coward fallings from grace. From now on defections and desertions will be a thousand times more serious. You must answer for all the lambs which I leave in your care and as reward at the end of your labors you will have two crossed beams, and four nails as I had, and life eternal. Choose: it is the last time that you can choose and it is a choice for all time—irrevocable. For an account will be asked of you as a servant left in the place of his master: and now that you know all and have decided, come with me.

“Follow me!”

Peter obeyed, but turning about saw John coming after him and said, “Lord, and what shall this man do?”

Jesus said to him, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me!”

For Simon the primacy and martyrdom; for John immortality and endless waiting. He who bore the same name as the precursor of Christ’s first coming was to prophesy His second coming. The historian of the end was to be persecuted, a solitary prisoner, but he was to live longer than all the others and to see with his own eyes the crumbling of the stones, not one left upon another, of the ill-omened hill of Jerusalem. In his sonorous blue desert, in the midst of the blinding light and the immense blackness of the midnight sea, in his vision of the great deeds of the last day he will rejoice and suffer. Peter followed Christ, was crucified for Christ and left behind him the eternal dynasty of the Vicars of Christ: but John was not permitted to find rest in death: he waits with us, the contemporary of every generation, silent as love, eternal as hope.

THE CLOUD

Once more they returned to Jerusalem, leaving their nets, this time forever, travelers setting out upon a journey, the stages of which were to be marked by blood.

In the same place where He had gone down to the city glorified by men, in the shade of blossoming branches, He was to rise again after the interval of His dishonor and His resurrection, in the glory of Heaven. He remained 406in the midst of men, for forty days after the resurrection, for as long a time as He had remained in the desert after His symbolic death by water. Although His body seemed human, His life was transfigured into the ultimate sublimination of humanity and He was ready to enter as pure spirit, into the spirit of the Father from whom He had been separated thirty years before, that He might cast a gleam of heavenly light upon the shadow-darkened world.

He did not, as before, lead a life in common with the Disciples, because He was separated now from the life of living men; but He reappeared to them more than once to confirm His great promises, and perhaps to explain to those most capable of receiving them those mysteries which were not written down in any book but were passed on, under the seal of secrecy, through all the apostolic period and the following periods, and were imperfectly set down later under the title of Arcana Disciplina.

The last time they saw Him was on the Mount of Olives, where before His death He had prophesied the ruin of the Temple and of the city and the signs of His return, and where, in the darkness of night and of anguish, Satan, before his final defeat, had left Him wet with sweat and blood. It was one of the last evenings of May and the clouds in that golden hour, like golden celestial islands in the gold of the setting sun, seemed to rise from the warm earth towards near-by Heaven, like incense from great fragrant offerings. In the fields of grain, the birds began to call back the fledglings to the nests, and the cool breeze lightly shook the branches and their drooping, unripened fruit. From the distant city, still inact, from the pinnacles, the towers and the white squares of the Temple rose a smoky cloud of dust.

And once again the Disciples asked Jesus the question which they had put to Him in the same place on the evening of the two prophecies. Now that He had come back as He had promised, what else were they to await?

“Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?”

They may have meant the Kingdom of God, which in their 407minds, as in the minds of the Prophets, was one with the Kingdom of Israel, since the divine restoration of the earth was to begin with Judea.

Christ answered: “It is not for you to know the times or the season, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”

And having said this, He lifted up His hands and blessed them. And while they beheld, He was taken up from the earth and suddenly a shining cloud as on the morning of the Transfiguration wrapped Him about and hid Him from their sight. But they could not look away from the sky and continued to gaze steadfastly up in their astonishment, when two men in white apparel spoke to them: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”

Then having prayed in silence, they returned to Jerusalem, glowing with melancholy joy, thinking of the day just begun: the first day of a task which, after two thousand years, is not yet accomplished. They were alone now, alone against that innumerable enemy called the World. But Heaven is not so cut off from the earth as before the coming of Christ; the mystic ladder of Jacob is no longer a lonely man’s dream, but is set up on the earth, on this earth which we tread, and above there is an Intercessor who does not forget the ephemeral beings destined to eternal life who, for a time, were His brothers. “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” had been one of His last promises and the greatest. He had ascended into Heaven, but Heaven was no longer merely the barren dome where swift, tumultuous storm-clouds appear and disappear; where the stars shine out silently, like the souls of saints.

He is still with us, the Son of Man, who to be nearer Heaven ascended mountains, who was light made manifest, who died, raised above the earth towards the blackness of 408Heaven, and rose from the dead to ascend into Heaven in the peacefulness of evening, and who will return again on the clouds of Heaven. He is still present in the world which He meant to free. He is still attentive to our words, if they truly come from the depths of our hearts, to our tears if they are tears of blood in our hearts before being salt drops in our eyes. He is with us, an invisible, benignant guest, never more to leave us, because by His wish our earthly life is an anticipation of the Kingdom of Heaven, and is a part of Heaven from this day on. Christ has taken to Himself as His eternal possession that rough foster-mother of us all, that sphere which is but a point in the infinite and yet contains hope for the infinite; and to-day He is closer to us than when He ate the bread of our fields. No divine promise can be blotted out: the May cloud which hid Him from sight, still hovers near the earth, and every day we raise our weary and mortal eyes to that same Heaven from which He will descend in the terrible splendor of His glory.