SERMON XXI.

WALK TO EMMAUS.

LUKE xxiv. 35.

And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

NEVER, perhaps, were pious minds more dreadfully disappointed, more confounded and astonished, than were the disciples of our Saviour, on witnessing his expiration on the cross. Thé weakness and timidity which they betrayed on his first apprehension, and during the process of his trial, seem to have been the natural effect of their general habits and character. Plain and simple minds, educated among the lower classes of society, always accustomed to reverence their civil and religious superiors, and to stand in awe of their authority, were naturally panic-stricken when they saw the man to whom they had most intimately attached themselves, arrested by an armed force commissioned by the supreme council of the

nation. They wished to witness his innocence, to bear a testimony in his favour, that might clear him of whatever was alleged against him; but they had never appeared at such a tribunal, and had no talents to speak or plead on such an occasion. Their first consternation was so great, that they instantly dispersed in different directions, each consulting his own safety. They could not, however, forget their beloved master. Though they dared not themselves make any attempt for his relief or aid, yet they undoubtedly hoped that he would find some method to effect his own deliverance. Having witnessed, in so many illustrious instances, his supernatural power, the thought must have occurred to them, that he who rescued Lazarus from the power of death, and brought him up out of the grave, could not be at a loss how. to save himself on the present emergency. Even while he was hanging suspended upon the cross, some feeble hope was probably entertained, that he would at length, by a miraculous effort, to the confusion of his enemies and the astonishment of all the spectators, come down from the cross unhurt and triumphant.

But when he had actually given up the ghost, and after his dead body was deposited in the tomb, the faith and hope of his disciples were more than staggered. The deepest gloom overwhelmed their minds. He had indeed, while he was yet with

them, repeatedly warned them of the things which had now taken place; but they never realized nor understood those expressions which predicted his approaching death. That he was to die and rise again, though so often foretold, were events of which they had no conception, nor the most distant apprehension. All that they had heard upon these subjects, struck their minds as dark sayings, inexplicable mysteries, into which they did not attempt to penetrate. Having been his chosen attendants through the whole course of his public. ministry, whom he had adopted, instructed, presided over, and cared for as children; whose interests were blended with his own, as members of his family; towards whom he had uniformly shown all the marks of the most endeared friendship ;they felt his death as a wound to their tender passions, and a privation of their enjoyments, greater and more dreadful than they could have suffered by the demise of any other relative,while no language can describe, nor any imagination paint the blast which it seemed to bring upon their hopes and prospects.

They had viewed him as more than man, a messenger from God, a prophet greater than any of their former prophets,-nay, they had acknowledged him as the son of God, the true and promised Messiah, whose coming their whole nation fervently desired and had been long expecting.

Under this persuasion, they had become his disciples, and had relinquished their earthly all to follow him. They had considered his doctrines as the words of eternal life, and had made him the basis of all their hopes, as well as the object of their supreme affection; confiding in him as that mighty Saviour who would rescue Israel from every foreign yoke, vanquish all their enemies, and establish the long expected kingdom of God among men. So full and fixed had they been in these ideas of him, that Peter, before he was put to the test, hesitated not to declare his readiness to die in defence of them. But, to their utter amazement, they had now seen this Prince and Saviour, whom they had deemed superior to all opposition, taken up and proceeded against as an impostor. And, on his public trial, instead of vindicating his claim to be the Messiah, in the presence of the assembled rulers,-bearing down, and silencing their objections, they had seen him sinking, and apparently crushed under their power. Instead of sitting upon the throne of David, receiving the homage of his subjects, they had beheld him suspended on the cross, a spectacle of scorn to the world,-forsaken by God, given up a victim to death, and swallowed up by the grave; while his enemies were every where exulting in his death as that of a great deceiver.

These events occurring so contrary to all the ideas of the Messiah entertained by the disciples, and to all their expectations from him, it is not perhaps possible for us fully to enter into their feelings, or to conceive the tumult of thought, the confusion and agitation of mind, which they must have experienced during the interval from his death to his resurrection. Circumstanced as they were, and endued with the sensibilities common to honest, upright minds, their distress must have been unspeakable. No men, before or since, ever were or could be in a situation precisely similar to theirs; where such vast interests and prospects were suspended upon what appeared to them so dreadful an uncertainty.

Not the interests of the present handful of disciples only, but those of the whole human race, from the first progenitors down to the last succession of their posterity, were involved on that occasion. It was the general hope of man that was seen trembling on the point of suspense. Had not Christ risen, the whole scheme of human redemption must have failed. The faith and hope of God's people throughout all ages, must have proved vain and unfounded. As he died for our sins, so he rose again for our justification. His resurrection sanctioned and established that religion which comprises the present and future wellbeing of the whole species; a religion which is