prominently mentioned, and it would not accord with the contented return home of the disciples. Accepting the latter sense, it is instructive to observe the very small amount of evidence with which "the beloved disciple" is content. He simply finds the sepulchre empty and the linen clothes lying, and although no one even speaks of the resurrection, no one professes to have been an eye-witness of it, and "as yet they know not the scriptures, that he must rise again from the dead," he is nevertheless said to see and believe. It will have been observed that as yet, although the two disciples have both entered the sepulchre, there has been no mention whatever of angels: they certainly did not see any. In immediate continuation of the narrative, however, we learn that when they have gone home, Mary Magdalene, who was standing without at the tomb weeping, stooped down and, looking into the sepulchre,--where just before the disciples had seen no one,--she beheld "two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus lay. 13. They say unto her: Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them: Because they took away [------] my Lord, and I know not where they laid him."(1) This again is a very different representation and conversation from that reported in the other Gospels. Do we acquire any additional assurance as to the reality of the angels and the historical truth of their intervention from this narrative? We think not. Mary Magdalene repeats to the angels almost the very words she had said to the disciples, v. 2. Are we to suppose that "the beloved disciple," who saw and believed, did not communicate his conviction to the others, and that Mary was left {457} precisely in the same doubt and perplexity as before, without an idea that anything had happened except that the body had been taken away and she knew not where it had been laid? She appears to have seen and spoken to the angels with singular composure. Their sudden appearance does not even seem to have surprised her.