But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.LUKE xxiv.21.
In the accounts of the disciples, contained in the New Testament, there is no attempt to glorify them, or to conceal any weakness.From the first to the last, they think and act precisely as men would think and act in their circumstances; -they are affected just as others of like culture would be affected by such events as those set forth in the record.And the genuineness of their conduct argues the genuineness of the incidents which excited it.The divine, wonderworking, risen Jesus, is the necessary counterpart of the amazed, believing, erring hoping, desponding, rejoicing fishermen and publicans.This stamp of reality is very evident in the instance before us.The conduct and the feelings of the disciples are those of men who have been involved in a succession of strange experiences.For a little while they have been in communion with One who has spoken as never man spoke, and who has touched the deepest springs of their being.He has lifted them out of the narrow limits of their previous lives.From the Receipt of Customs, and the Galilean lake, he has summoned them to the interests and awards, the thought and the work, of a spiritual and divine kingdom.At first following him, perhaps they hardly knew why,.conscious only that he had the Words of Eternal Life, the terms of this discipleship have grown into bonds of the dearest intimacy.
Their Master has become their Companion and their Friend, and their faith has deepened into tender and confiding love.
But still, theirs has been the belief of the trusting soul, rather than the enlightened intellect.From the fitness of the teaching, and the wonder of the miracle, they have felt that he was the very Christ; and yet, from this conviction of the heart they have not been able to separate their Jewish conceits.Sometimes, it may be, the language of the Saviour has carried them up into a broader and more spiritual region; but then, they have subsided into their symbols and shadows; --only, notwithstanding the errors that have hindered, and the hints that have awed them, they have steadily felt the inspiration of a great hope, the expectation of something glorious to be revealed in the speedy coming of the Messiah's kingdom.And now, does not the account immediately connected with the text picture for us exactly the state of men whose conceptions have been broken up by a great shock, and yet in whose hearts the central hope still remains and vibrates with mysterious tenacity? --men who have had the form of their expectation utterly refuted and scattered into darkness, but who still cherish its spirit? Christ the crowned King,-- Christ the armed Deliverer, --Christ the Avenger, sweeping away his foes with one burst of miracle,--is to them, no more.They saw the multitude seize him, and no legions came to rescue;--they saw him condemned, abused, crucified, buried; and so, in no sense of which they could conceive, was this he who should have redeemed Israel.And yet the suggestion of something still to come, --something connected with three days, -- lingered in their minds.And, in the midst of their despondency, striking upon this very chord, the startling rumor reached them that Christ had risen from the dead.It was in this mood that Jesus found the two disciples whose words I have selected for my text; -- faith and doubt, disappointment and hope, alternating in their minds; their Jewish conceit laid prostrate in the dust, and yet the expectation of something, they knew not what, now strangely confirmed.See how these feelings mingle in the passage before us."What manner of communications," said the undiscerned Saviour, "are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?"-"Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem," says one of them, "and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?" What things? "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth," replied they, "which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: and how the 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."My hearers, I think we see, in this instance the minds of these disciples working as the minds of men might be expected to work under like conditions.And to me this casts a complexion of genuineness upon the transactions which, as stated in the record, account for these mental alternations.The entire passage is alive with reality.
The genuine emotions of humanity play and thrill together, there, in the shadow of the cross and the glory of the resurrection.
But, if these feelings are thus natural, the experience itself indicated in that portion of this verse which constitutes the text is not entirely removed from our ordinary life.The incident which occasioned these sad words was an extraordinary one; but its moral significance, as it now comes before us, illustrates many a passage in man's daily course.The language, as we read it, appears to be the language of disappointment; ---it was under the shadow of disappointment, though alternating with hope, that these disciples spoke; and it is to the lessons afforded by disappointment in the course of life that I now especially invite your attention.
