The death of Christ was the orphanhood of the disciples. I am not inventing a figure of my own when I say this. It is the language which our Lord Himself uses to describe their destitute condition. In our English Bible He is made to speak of leaving them comfortless. The words in the original are: "Leave you orphans"--"Leave you desolate," as it is translated in the Revised Version. They would be fatherless, motherless, homeless, friendless--at least, so it seemed to them--when He was gone. No condition of life excites so keenly the compassion of the compassionate as the helplessness of the orphan. It is not only that a child is deprived, by its parents' death, of the means of subsistence; its natural guardian, teacher, friend is gone. Henceforth it is a waif on the ocean of the world. In no respect different was that void which threatened the disciples when the Master's presence had been withdrawn. They had left all--authority, home. They had forsaken parents and friends, and He had become Father and Mother, and Sister and Brother to them. They had given up houses and land, and He was henceforth their home. Their dependence on Him was absolute. Whatever of joy they had in the present, and what of hope they had for the future, were alike centred in Him. They thought His thoughts and lived His life. And now this communion of soul with soul, and of life with life, must be ruthlessly severed. This was the terrible shock for which Christ would prepare the minds of His disciples. It was not only the void of earthly hopes scattered by His death; but their Teacher, their Guide, Spirit, Friend, Christ, their Father was withdrawn. The voice which soothed must be silent, and the eye which gladdened must be glazed, and the hand which blessed must be stiffened in death. Christ lay buried--lost for ever, as it would seem to them. What joy, what strength, what comfort could they have henceforth in life? They would stake their whole on Christ, and Christ has failed them. Surely, never was orphanhood more helpless, more hopeless, than the orphanhood of these poor Galileans.