Throughout the Kesurrection records it is always the unex- pected that happens. They are no work of human fancy. Who would have invented a first appearance to Mary Magdalene, and a second to these unknown disciples, of whom one only, Cleopas, is so much as named, while both alike have no other place in the Gospel history ? Their home was within walking distance of Jerusalem, upon the road that led seawards towards Joppa. Emmaus lay some seven miles or more upon the route from Jerusalem. They had been of those who had gone up to the
great Passover, full of hopeful, strange presentiments. They had
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shared the expectation that Jesus, in whom they beheved, " a prophet mighty in deed and word," whom they took to be the Christ, might at the feast manifest Himself. " We hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel." And on them too had fallen the crushing disenchantment, the overthrow of all their hopes, the arrest, the crucifixion, and the death. They had seen Him numbered with the malefactors; they had perhaps helped to carry Him to the grave; and upon this miserable morning, sick at heart with grief and disappointment, they were gathered with the disciples plunged in speechless gloom of bereavement and spiritual despair. At least we know that, when tidings reached them of an empty tomb and of a vision of angels, it did not even keep them in Jerusalem. It did not kindle any gleam of hope. They thought of it, drearily, as one more unkindness to the dead. The festival was over ; they must go their ways ; and, with perhaps the customary prayer of parting in the Temple precincts, they took the homeward way.
It was noon, or later, as they passed out of the city gates, through the hot Syrian sun, and, like other groups of wayfarers, took the high road north-westward. Alone together, as friends will, they opened their hearts ; " they communed with each other of all these things which had happened." Sometimes they walked, talking rapidly, aloud, with the vehemence of Eastern men ; and then again *' they stood still, looking sad." How graphic it all is ! And may we not read in it an allegory of actual life ? It is in the communings of friends, two and two, that not seldom Jesus Christ, perhaps at the time unrecognized, draws near. So ab- sorbed were they in their own thoughts and griefs that they hardly noticed the stranger who overtook them and became a silent sharer in their conversation. It is the same Jesus who in the gospel narrative seems always so unmistakably Himself. " 0 foolish men, and slow of heart to believe," He said, with His own accent of wondering, expostulating love. And yet "their eyes were holden that they should not know him." How was it ? We can only guess by interrogating our own hearts. What is it, as we go wayfaring through life, that holds our eyes, so that sometimes we perceive the voice of Jesus, and then at other times, though He is close and speaking audibly, and in the very way we might have expected, we do not know or recognize ?
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Lord Christ, if Thou art with us and these eyes Are holden, while we sadly go and say "We hoped it had been He, and now to-day Is the third day, and hope within us dies," Bear with us, 0 our Master — Thou art wise And knowest our foolishness; we do not pray "Declare Thyself, since weary grows the way, And faith's new burden hard upon us lies"; Nay, choose Thy time, but ahj! whoe'er Thou art, Leave us not; where have we heard any voice Like Thine? our hearts burn in us as we go; Stay with us; break our bread; so, for our part Ere darkness falls haply we may rejoice, Haply when day has been far spent may know.^
2. They were out of heart. They had so built on hope, they had so trusted it was He that should redeem Israel, they had looked for a national deliverance, for the proclamation of a king. And all had failed, irreparably, as it seemed, and on their hearts there lay the " sense of void, of hopes not satisfied, of promises withdrawn." When we are cast down, when some spiritual expectation fails us, when that from which we had hoped most for ourselves or for others whom we care for turns out a failure, and only convinces us of weakness and of helplessness, it is hard to believe that Christ is even then and there preparing a revelation of Himself. Yet just when we are despondent and low-hearted, and once and again going over the grounds on which we built our hopes, and asking, Where was my mistake, why has He failed me so ? even then, it may be, Christ is Himself near to make it plain.
^ We have all our times of perplexity and sorrow. I do not mean those who naturally take a pessimistic view of life, and whose outlook is usually dashed in with colours of sepia, but Christians generally, both as members of a corporate body and in their own personal experience. There are few who have not been conscious of " an hour of darkness," a season in which they have a peculiar sense of spiritual loneliness and desertion, and which is followed by distressing doubts and troubles — similar to those which the two disciples felt on their way to Emmaus ; similar, for of course they cannot be the same ; their future is our past, and we are fully assured of the fact of Christ's Eesurrection, no less than of His life and death ; but we may be like them in the bitter