The supper table was spread.

No one cared to eat.

The story had been going all day that Jesus had risen.

The women said so. They persisted that they had seen and talked with
him.

Two men claimed, also, to have seen him, walked, talked and broken
bread with him, that very afternoon.

The disciples did not believe it.

They were afraid to believe it lest it should prove to be untrue.

Then, suddenly, he stood in the midst.

They thought it was his ghost.

This was a proof to them that he had not risen; for a ghost is a
disembodied thing.

He was a ghost--he was disembodied--therefore he had not risen.

So they felt--each one of them.

They did not say it--but they thought it.

He knew their thoughts.

He asks them why these thoughts arise in their hearts. He upbraids
them for their unbelief.

He tells them plainly, a ghost does not have flesh and bones.

He says, "I have flesh and bones."

They are still silent.

Then he stretches out his hands towards them. He shows them his
feet.

There are great marks in them--there is around these marks as the
stain of blood, or of wounds whence blood had flowed.

Still they do not speak. They are afraid to believe; it is too good
to be true.

He says to them, "Handle me and see--take hold of my feet--feel me--
examine me for yourselves."

They are as immovable and speechless as men changed into stone.

He turns upon them quickly and says, "Have you anything to eat?"

They point to the untasted supper.

Then comes the climax.

He goes to the table.

He sits down.

He eats before them.

It is of record that he did eat _broiled fish_ and an _honeycomb_.

Either this is the worst fable ever palmed off on the church of
Christ--on the credulity of aching human hearts--or it is the truth
of God.

Call it the truth of God--then the body in which our Lord Jesus
Christ rose was the body in which he died.

That body, stamped and sealed with the stigmata of the cross, is the
living, quivering definition, and indisputable demonstration of
immortality. Immortality is the living again in a body which was
dead and dieth no more; or, it is the change of the body in which we
now live into an incorruptible, glorious body which shall never die.

In that body which he raised from the dead, and which never saw
corruption, our Lord Jesus Christ now sitteth at the right hand of
God.

He is there as the vision and standard of immortality.

He is there as