Mark 16:9-14 - Homilies By E. Johnson

Appearances of the risen One.

I. THEY WERE REPEATED AND VARIED ,

So in the history of the Church and the world; there are epochs of the manifestation of Christ and of apparent concealment. Though history in one sense repeats itself, in another it does not. Christianity is the exhibition of the new in the old, the old in the new. And so in the individual.

II. THEY WERE MET BY PREJUDICE . New truth finds in us something ever to over-come. The victory over a prejudice gives us cause for thanks; what we really possess of truth we possess because we have resisted it. We do not understand it till we have contended against it. "We may believe more surely in the Resurrection, because they were so slow to believe."

III. THE SPIRITUAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IS THE REAL EVIDENCE , Unless we see that Christ's resurrection coincides with spiritual truth and needs, we shall not see it at all. Mediate knowledge can never be free from doubt; certainty lies in that which is immediate.—J.