LUKE xxiv. 17. “And He said unto them, What manner of com-
munications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk,
and are sad?”

WHAT was at the bottom of the sadness of the disciples?
1. It was first of all the sadness of bereavement.
2. It was the sadness of mental perplexity.
3. It was the sadness of a forfeited object in life, of a
shattered career.
Our modern world contains not a few of the disciples
of Christ in name, downcast and sad, who are leaving
Jerusalem as if on the point of giving Him up.
I. There is a sadness of mental perplexity. We are
always groping at problems, said Goethe. It is our risen
Lord who offers the true solution to all our perplexities.
He has a right to speak with authority, because He first
of all died in the full daylight of His history, and then
raised Himself from the dead.
II. The sadness of the conscience—the sense of our
own sin—is not merely the reflection on definite acts;
it is the perception also of a moral atmosphere at variance
with the will of God. Our risen Lord reveals Himself to
those who are weighted down by sin as pardoning it and
blotting it out.
III. There is a sadness of the soul which arises from
the want of an object in life to grasp by the affections,
to be aimed at by the will. Our Lord’s resurrection
warrants us in living for Him as the supreme object in
life, and this rescues us from the misery of an aimless
existence.
Henry Parry Liddon, D.C.L.