The world has always had strange ways, however, of putting an indefinite construction upon the words of Jesus. Men often remark upon the wonder of them, but living the truth of them is quite another thing. People are willing to admit their beauty. Here and there are those who are even willing to admit their truth. They are not so many, however, who venture to take them for a life program. The same old story was repeated in this case. The assurance of Jesus that the tomb should be but a temporary habitation had been listened to with respect, but it had not been really taken seriously. It had become a forgotten promise. Whether Mary disbelieved, or only failed to believe, she acted upon the assumption that Jesus was dead. Others had remained in their graves. She took it for granted that she would find him in his. She had not learned her right to expect marvelous things. She cannot be blamed much. She only did what most people do. To her credit it must be said that she learned that day that hers was not a dead, but a living Lord. It is to be hoped that others have learned as much. The silences were eloquent, aided as they were by the shock of a great surprise. They spoke very clearly to Mary as she stood thoughtfully by the vacant tomb that morning. Indeed, they spoke so clearly that across all the intervening generations we can still hear some of the things they said. They told her that life laughs at fetters. Whoever thinks to bind it with stones and seals plans the impossible. It is made for the universal spaces and for the everlasting years. The life of Jesus possessed altogether too much vitality to long remain hidden behind the stone walls of a sepulcher. The world is strewn with graves. We have dug them in countless numbers, and departed generations made so many that the vast majority of them have long been forgotten. They are all as empty as was the tomb of Jesus that Sunday morning. We look at the earth and think of it as hiding those whom we have loved when we ought to look upward and think of them as in the keeping of another world. We look backward and think of their lives as belonging to the past when we ought to look onward and think of them as belonging to the boundless future. The silences of the garden must have told her, too, that the Lord had reached one of the final points in his leadership of men. His was largely a mission of demonstration. For ages men had been frankly doubting that true godliness and actual immortality were possible. Jesus demonstrated the fact that the divine spirit fits normally into both the affairs of life and the experiences of the hour of death. He proved that it was possible not only to live like a god, but also to die like one.