A GREAT many have felt and confessed, that this story has led them, more than any other, to an apprehension of a risen Lord, and of the kind of communication, which might have existed between Him and His disciples, very different from what it had been before the Passion, but different in being more real, more intimate, mixed with greater awe, yet producing a greater glow and warmth of heart, rarer in words, communicating deeper instruction, making that which had been heard dimly before intelligible, diffusing peace, enabling the heart to enter into mysteries which had been floating vaguely about it.

The sense of a body delivered from the chains of death, essentially the same as it was before, using, naturally, as its own, powers which had been hidden, or had only occasionally come forth, is one part, not the only, or, perhaps, the chief, part of the revelation. Its capacity of vanishing, and of reappearing, is felt to indicate the possibility of a spiritual Presence, which may be continually near, and in which we may be meant ever to abide.--Unity of the New Testament, p. 301.

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