226 REV. CANON G1RDLEST0NE. M.A., ON THE RESURRKOTION 



Then there is yet another phenomenon in the four Gospels. 

 While each of the Evangelists gives two very long chapters, 

 about seventy verses each, to our Lord's crucifixion, and to all 

 the circumstances that led to it, they are uncommonly short in 

 the account of the resurrection. Most of us have puzzled over 

 this. How is it they are not more detailed ? 1 can only 

 suppose details were not thought to be so necessary in the one 

 case as in the other. St. Paul in writing to the Galatians says 

 in the beginning of the third chapter: " 0 foolish Galatians, 

 who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, 

 before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth — 

 depicted — crucified among you ? " It seems to have been the 

 custom of the Apostles to give a most careful account of what 

 happened to Christ in the hours which preceded His 

 crucifixion, but they do not go into the account of the resurrection 

 in the same way. This was partly because no one saw Him rise ; 

 and partly because they were recording and not defending. 

 Two, if not three of the Evangelists had seen the risen Lord ; 

 and others had seen Him too. That was enough. Most of us 

 probably have wondered at the order in which Christ selected 

 the persons to whom He would appear on that first Easter 

 day, and that His mother should not be named. 



We must now revert to a certain phenomenon which has 

 already struck us as extraordinary. In order to find a solution 

 of the facts observed by Peter and John you must go to Paul. 

 Bear in mind that up to that time there had been nothing 

 similar to the resurrection of Christ. Jairus' daughter and 

 Lazarus and the rest simply returned to their old life, and their 

 physical condition was very much the same as it had been 

 before, only, I suppose, they were in very good health. But in 

 the case of Christ it was not a return to the old life. It was 

 an advance to another condition, and the body of Christ was 

 no longer a frame-work animated by the soul, but was now 

 more directly under the spirit. It had been sown an animated 

 body ; it was raised a spiritualised body. There had been a 

 great advance and change, perhaps not in the tissue or texture, 

 but still such a change that He was able to appear and 

 disappear in a moment as easily as some little creatures in the 

 water rise up to the surface and go down again in x a moment, 

 that change perhaps answering to what we may call materialis- 

 ing and de-materialising, which a spiritual body is capable of 

 for certain reasons. Probably all the appearances of angels in 

 the history of Israel prepared the way for this extraordinary 

 series of events which happened during the great forty days. 



