^ I happened to drop into a house where there was a large family, and I found the mother very busy about the room. "What are you doing?" I asked. "Oh, when the children have gone to bed I have to tidy up after them, and I make straight what they have left amiss." And there she was, just going over all the broken fragments of the children's work, and taking up the stitches that her little daughter had put all across the piece of work she had given the child to do. I could see quite well the big cross stitches, and how the mother was taking them up and making them good. I said to myself : Yes, that is just what Christ does. He comes into the day's life and work, when all the mistakes have been made, and the poor sermons have been preached, and the mis-statements have been uttered, and one looks back with such a sense of infinite regret and failure, and He says : " Peace be unto you. I am going over all the mistakes to put them right, and help to make powerful that which you left impotent and useless." ^
I.
The Appearance Behind Closed Doors.
"When the doors were shut**
1. Barriers are often raised unwittingly against Christ. When the disciples shut and locked the doors of the upper chamber, they never meant to bar them against Jesus. They were afraid 1 F. B. Meyer, in The Kesmck Week (1900), 132. ' Ihid.
332 THE SAVIOUR'S EASTER GREETING
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of the Jews, and acted only in self-defence. And there are lines of conduct in common life we may pursue, and we never dream
J/ that we are raising barriers between ourselves and the highest and the best : but in the end of the day for us, as for the disciples, it will be found that we have done more than we imagined — we have closed the door unwittingly on Christ.
i^ It is the tragedy of many a life that its doors are shut. Sometimes it is engrossment in pleasure, in business, in friendship, that bars the door against the ingress of the Saviour. All these things, lawful in themselves, and having indeed a right and v" necessary place in any life, may gain such an ascendancy as to become its masters, demanding all thought, all energy, all strength of life, until the man over whom they have gained control is himself behind closed doors. Sometimes it is by selfishness of joy or sorrow that the doors are closed. There is a joy which is
^ regarded as incommunicable, or a sorrow which is regarded as unshareable, and He who is the Author of each is excluded from life by His own providences misreceived and misinterpreted. Often, too, it is with us as with these His earliest disciples, fear of the consequences of identification with Him causes the door to be tightly barred. We are afraid of the disfavour of men, and in shutting out the Jews we really shut out Jesus. But chiefly J it is sin that excludes the Son of God from the life in which He seeks to be known and served. And this, too, may be of un- intentional beginning. For sin at its commencement is often merely thoughtlessness. Persisted in, however, despite the correcting light which God is unceasingly shedding upon us, it becomes actually wilful — the rebellious barring of the door against the Son of God.
^ Every morning that we rise, every day that we go forth, our choices make us or our choices mar us. Some day a choice more momentous than usual comes. We are face to face with one of life's great decisions. And we have not been living on high levels, and so we choose amiss, for a man's whole life is in every choice he makes. Then the days pass, and the issues show themselves, and the choice works itself out in life and character, and a hundred glorious things are tarnished and are tainted as the result of one disastrous choice. We never meant to shut out power and purity, but they have receded into the dim distance ever since. We never thought to grow heart- weary and world-
ST. JOHN XX. 19, 20 333
weary, but that may follow from one mismanaged choosing. Like the disciples, beset by some poor fear, unwittingly we have closed the door on Christ.^
And Life with full hands came,
Austerely smiling.
I looked, marvelling at her gifts —
Fortune, much love, many beauties,
The deed fulfilled man ponders in his youth,
Gold of the heart, desire of the eyes come true!
And joyously
"With these," I said "with these, indeed,
What spirit could miss delight ? "
And paused to dream them over.
But even then
" Choose," she said.
" One gift is yours — no more,"
And bent that grave, wise smile
Upon me, waiting.^
2. He came; they knew not how; they knew only that the chamber was strongly secured against intrusion or surprise. No bolt was withdrawn ; no door was opened ; no breach was made in the wall of their place of assembly ; there was no visible move- ment as from without to within, or from point to point. One moment they were, as they thought, alone ; and the next, they looked, and lo ! an outline, a form, a visible body and face, a solid human frame was before them, as if created out of the atmosphere which they breathed. " Jesus came and stood in the midst, and saith unto them. Peace be unto you." They gazed at Him ; they gazed at each other in bewilderment and terror. They supposed that they had seen a " spirit " ; they were with difficulty reassured — so St. Luke's report seems to imply — by the means which our Lord took to convince them that a body of flesh and bones was before them. At last they were glad when they saw the Lord.