of Christ, say, after nineteen hundred years!

Now as long as the living Jesus was with the first Church she was all
right. His life was the source of her life; His authority and power
meant her existence and unity. But when the Shepherd was smitten the
sheep were scattered. When the followers of Christ saw Him powerless and
dead they denied Him and fell back to their natural instinct of
self-defence, and the first Church died with the death of Christ. It was
like the green corn in the field smitten by a flail to the very root.
The owner of the corn walks in the field and looks with despair on his
perished corn. But it happens often that after a few days the field
begins under the sunshine to flourish anew, and the corn grows
beautifully and brings forth plenty of fruit.

Mary of Magdala and the other Mary brought this first sunshine over the
smitten corn. "He is alive!" This was the tidings of the women on the
second morning after His death. This tidings about the living Lord Jesus
con-verted Peter and the other disciples again to Christianity. "He is
alive"--that was the greatest word ever uttered by any human tongue
since the Church was founded. Yea, through this very word the drooping
Church was brought again to life. Whatever utterances Peter made during
Christ's life were as dead as stone compared with Mary Magdalene's
tidings of the living Lord after the catastrophe of His death. The
beautiful and true words: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God," had no meaning whatever for the future of Christianity in
comparison with the certainty that the dead Christ had risen, i.e. that
He was Lord even over death. Therefore if I could be convinced that a
grain of good as small as the mustardseed should result from the strange
quarrels about the primacy of this or that Church--or this or that
bishop--I would be very sorry that there did not exist a Church founded
upon the memory of Mary Magdalene. For Mary Magdalene, and not St Peter,
expressed the first the absolutely decisive revelation, churchmaking and
world-changing. "He is alive" was this decisive revelation.

Pentecost was the crown of the first Church and meant her victory over
all her internal conflicts and her final armament for the coming
dramatic struggle in the world. The Church, which kept herself after
Golgotha on the defensive, inwardly against doubt and fear, outwardly
against the regardless persecution of men, now, after Pentecost,
undertook a