I take the view, that within a few days of the Resurrection, the Apostles, by our Lord’s command, returned to Galilee. If the Resurrection had been immediately followed by a time of agitation—one of persecution for instance—so that the Apostles could not have let their minds dwell on what had happened, the lessons of that period would have been soon effaced; but our Lord, as we have seen, is ever careful to provide seasonable opportunity for reflection, and it was not likely that He would suffer it to be wanting now. The Apostles in Galilee, engaging again in their old callings, would have leisure to review, not only the last few days, but the whole of the two eventful years since they had been called from their work to follow Christ. It was probably here in Galilee that the Apostles received a command to return to Jerusalem; for we cannot account for the presence there of all the eleven, at the time of the Ascension, together with the mother and brethren of our Lord, except by special direction of our Lord. They would not, without some injunction, have remained at Jerusalem after the Resurrection,(334) neither would they have gone up thither for Pentecost, having been so lately at the Passover. Whether the appearance to the “five hundred brethren at once”(335) be, as I think it was, identical with that on the mountain in Galilee recorded in St Matthew’s Gospel, c. xxviii., v. 16, is a matter of discussion. But where else, except in Galilee could five hundred disciples have been got together? It could not have been at Jerusalem, at the Ascension, because the brethren there only numbered one hundred and twenty souls.(336) St Matthew, it is true, only speaks of the eleven disciples as going “into Galilee unto the mountain,” but others must have been present because we are told that “some doubted,” and the eleven would not have doubted. This admission shews that when the writer drew up his account, he felt no eagerness to strengthen the evidence for the Resurrection; and that He had no fear of its being disbelieved by those for whom he wrote. The eagerness that St Matthew does shew is to find instances of the fulfilment of Scripture, not to support his statements of fact. It seems to me likely, that, in Galilee, among His earliest followers, our Lord should have appeared more publicly than He did elsewhere; here only could He find a _body_ of believers who should serve as witnesses, and, inasmuch as among these five hundred, there must have been men in different states of belief, it falls in with our Lord’s way, so often noted, that He should appear in a form, not indisputably recognisable at once and by all, but with His aspect so changed, by some glorification perhaps, that those who were half-hearted in their belief might remain in doubt or disbelief if they chose; while the faithful and loving would be in no uncertainty about their Master’s lineaments and voice.