the reported fact of the resurrection, which appeared to have just reached their ears before they began their journey, but which they seemed little prepared to expect or to believe. And then Jesus, having reproved them both for their ignorance and their unbelief, as slow of mind to understand, and slow of heart to believe those writings, which, as Jews, they had received without question, as prophetical and inspired; began even from the writings of Moses, and shewed them by quotation from the whole succession of inspired Scriptures, the things concerning the Christ as Messiah,-how these things which had occurred were foretold and predetermined, and that the Christ was prophecied of beforehand, as so to be humbled and to suffer, and so to rise from the dead and to enter into glory. Then when He came to Emmaus, having consented for a time to tarry with them, He, though only their guest, as they supposed, took the head of the table, as about to conduct their meal; and when there He took bread, the appointed consecrated emblem of His pierced body, and blessed, and brake, and gave it to them; and in that delightful ordinance,-appointed for the manifestation of the Redeemer to the eye of faith,-in that ordinance, then especially administered by Him bodily,-their eyes were opened, and they knew their crucified and risen Lord. But at this moment He vanished out of their sight, leaving them to meditate upon the unquestionable proof they had had of His resurrection and His power; upon the enlarged views they had obtained of the nature of His mission, and upon their once criminal ignorance and unbelief. One remark only of these two disciples is recorded

by the Evangelist,-it is their reference to their own feelings during their conversation with Jesus. They said, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scripture?" Now the immediate point on which we would fix attention, is the nature of that teaching which the risen Saviour vouchsafed to these disciples. It was Divine teaching, in the way of opening the Scriptures with respect to Himself, and calculated to draw out their affections toward Him as the Saviour, and towards the dispensation of God's grace. Such was the instruction which the blessed Jesus, after He had passed through death and the grave, saw fit, from a miraculous concealment, to impart to them.

And First, let us notice the subject of instruction. He opened the Scriptures respecting Himself. He shewed them that He, Jesus Christ, was the real Messiah, and that for the accomplishment of the promised salvation, it was necessary that He should suffer, and through suffering, enter into His glory. This was a point on which they were evidently very ignorant,— criminally ignorant; and this was the point to which Jesus, fresh from the scene of suffering, and the night of the grave, saw it right to press exclusively upon their attention. Surely, they who scoff at such teaching, who think it wearisome and unnecessary, had need to examine their motives well before they condemn that which has received so wonderful a sanction, and which in fact originated in such high authority and example. And, surely, if it be true that the Eternal Son of God had so become incarnate, and so suffered, and so risen again, for our salvation,

it cannot be a matter of little importance that we should be thoroughly instructed in this way; and that on these important topics we should have "precept upon precept; line upon line, here a little, and there a little." For there are many of us indeed, whom, if the Saviour were to join us in the way, as we converse together, He would have abundant reason to upbraid us with the scantiness of our knowledge and our faith in His holy Word.

Then observe the mode which the Saviour took to instruct these two men. He did not come upon them in the way by a blaze of overpower ing light and irresistible conviction, but He adopted ordinary methods of opening their understanding and their hearts; which ordinary methods were made effectual by His own Divine power and His will, that they should know these things. These methods were two, doctrinal and sacramental.

And, first, doctrinal. Under the semblance of an ordinary individual, He taught them by explanation of the written Word. "Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." He shewed them from these earlier writings, how the incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ; and the object of these things, the salvation of men, were all foreshewn and pre-ordained. He pointed out the internal connexion between the Mosaie system and the kingdom of Messiah,-between the sacrifices ordained by Moses, and the one sacrifice which Christ had offered; and He shewed from the nature, the purposed object of Messiah's work, the perfect consistency and necessity of such humiliation and suffering, with

the fact of His subsequent entrance into glory.

And the fact is most valuable to us. When Christ was under temptation in the wilderness, He availed Himself, for defence against the tempter, of the same weapon which His followers must use, "the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God;" and so, when as the risen and glorified Mediator, He addressed Himself, before His ascension, to instruct two of His followers, He took the ordinary method appointed in His Church, expounding out of the Scriptures the things concerning Himself, proving out of the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ; so closely did He adhere to His own rule,-" If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead;" and so certainly by that rule shall we be judged.

Secondly. The method of teaching was sacramental. Before His death, the Saviour had appointed the breaking of bread as a sacred sacramental institution commemorative of Him,— "Do this in remembrance of me." That sacred feast was to be the most solemn and interesting ordinance of His Church. It was to be the time and the mode in which, as we know by the Church's experience, the liveliest apprehensions of the love and mercy of our Redeemer were to be received. Jesus appears therefore on this occasion to have adopted this interesting service, as the critical point of His intercourse with these two disciples, that He might thus confirm all the instructions which, without being known, He had imparted to them, and stamp it indelibly upon their minds by the manifestation of Himself. "It came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it,

and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him.” The enlarged view which, by the special guidance of the blessed Redeemer, they had been enabled to take of the earlier Scriptures, was thus followed up by a repetition of that sacred service with which He had closed His intercourse with His Apostles, and which He had appointed as commemorative of His death; and in that blessed sacrament over which He then bodily presided, they knew their Divine Master; they recognized in Him who had so enlarged their minds, the same gracious Teacher with whom they had companied before His death, and whom they had seen expire upon the cross; and in this palpable proof of His truth, of the reality of His mission, and of His supernatural power, they felt more fully the truth and the real value of all that instruction which they had lately received from Him.

And then let us notice the effect of this teaching. It called out their affections towards that Christ of whom they had heard. So that when the Scriptures were opened to them, and they saw the gracious purposes of God for salvation recorded in the early Scriptures, and saw the sufferings of Christ in the stead and for the redemption of sinners, and learned the full meaning of all that had happened to their beloved Master, their hearts burned within them. They appear to have listened to His discourse with an interest far too intense to watch and criticise their feelings particularly, at the moment; but after the Saviour had left them, and when they knew who had been their condescending companion and teacher, then they could refer to those feelings as a collateral proof of the fact that it was

indeed Jesus who had been with them. They speak of it as something extraordinary, as something that they were in a degree blameable for not noticing at the time;—“Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" The instruction of Jesus at this time, then, was such an exhibition of the nature of Christ's mission and work, as to make the hearts of those who received it burn or glow with warm, and lively, and affectionate excitement. They listened to these unequalled expositions of Divine truth, till their bosoms glowed with delight.

Here, then, we have a most important fact, on which our minds ought to be seriously fixed. Subsequently to His death in the flesh, the blessed Jesus did teach two of His disciples by direct doctrinal instruction from the Scriptures, confirmed by the manifestation of Himself, in the sacramental supper; and shewed them from the writings of Moses and the prophets, that Christ ought so to have suffered as He did, and to enter into His glory. Here, then, is a direct specimen of the teaching which Jesus Christ adopts and approves, since that event of mortality which has made so important a separation between Him and His people. As to actual nearness to His people, for power and protection, our Emmanuel is as near as ever; but there is a sense in which His death did produce a separation. The river of death still rolls between Christ and His militant Church. We cannot be with Him where He is, till, by the suffering of death, we become immortal as He is. He died for sin once, and He dieth no more. It will be so with His people: it is appointed unto them once to die, and after that

they go to Him. The heavens have received him now, "until the restitution of all things ;" and even previous to His ascension, though He was occasionally manifested to the mortal tenants of this earth, yet it is important to observe that immediately after death, He then essentially belonged to another compartment of the Divine operations, as much as any ordinary man who leaves this world by death. It is important, therefore, thus to know what was the kind and character of instruction to be imparted to the Church that He left on earth.

And having seen this, we would, Secondly, point out from it the practicability of such instruction now. That instruction was,-Jesus Christ by a supernatural agency, guiding the minds of His disciples to a correct knowledge of revealed scriptural truth, and confirming it by the efficacy of His appointed sacrament. It was the teaching of the unseen Jesus: He who had, in fact, been as much removed from this mortal scene and all necessary participation in it, by death, as any other man who dies, still remained near to His disciples, and by a mode which they could not, and which now even we cannot comprehend, thus accompanied them, unknown and unperceived, and poured into their minds enlarged and elevated views of scripture truth, so that their hearts burned within them.

The whole of this is contrary to natural experience. What other man, after a cruel death, remains to teach our ignorant minds, with power to control our sight that we could not know him, and power to vanish from us at his pleasure? We are compelled to come to this conclusion, that if such is the power of the crucified and risen Jesus, then (unless some diminution

of His power has occurred) from that invisible world, on which His risen and glorified humanity has entered, He is still able to teach His disciples, who are yet within the precincts of human life. We have the unquestionable fact of Christ teaching men after His withdrawal from the world by death. We have only to take into the account the fact of a further degree of mystic withdrawal, the entire withdrawal of His bodily presence from the perception of the natural eye, even of His people,—the retiring of this Divine Saviour's glorified manhood, from the state of actual bodily proximity to ourselves on earth, to the throne of immortal glory at the right hand of God,—and then we can, equally with the case of the two disciples, conceive of the practicability of the same Jesus still carrying on the same gracious work as opening to us the Scriptures, as being spiritually made known to us in the breaking of bread, and causing our hearts to burn within us as we talk with Him by the way.

It seems to be no further assumption of power, that this gracious visitant of our earth should teach our spirits by His influence from His throne in heaven, than that subsequently to His natural death, He should be found at the side of His disciples, miraculously hidden from their view, instilling into them the principles of scriptural truth, and being manifested to them by the breaking of bread. Once admit the one upon the testimony of Scripture and the other easily follows. We have only to admit the scriptural idea of a slight further degree of the withdrawal of His bodily presence, and then we can see how every disciple throughout His universal Church may