[Illustration:  JESUS APPEARING TO MARY MAGDALENE (Easter Morning)
              B.  Plockhorst Page 209]

Poor John.  He forgot those other words of His Lord concerning His life,—­“I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”  The Lord had done the one already:  He was soon to do the other, though His sorrowing disciple understood it not.  Meanwhile we leave him, resting if possible from the weariness of the garden and the palace and Calvary, during that Friday night, which was to be followed by a day of continued sadness, and that by another night of sorrowful restlessness.

CHAPTER XXVIII

John at the Tomb

“Now on the first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, while it was yet dark, unto the tomb, and seeth the stone taken away from the tomb.  She runneth therefore, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved.

     “Peter therefore went forth, and the other disciple, and they went
     toward the tomb.

“Simon Peter ... entered into the tomb.

“Then entered in therefore the other disciple also, ... and he saw
and believed.”—­John xx. 1, 2, 3, 6, 8.

“Let us take John for our instructor in the swiftness of love, and
Peter for our teacher in courage.”—­Stalker.

“Oh, sacred day, sublimest day! 
Oh, mystery unheard! 
Death’s hosts that claimed Him as their prey
He scattered with a word;
And from the tomb He valiant came;
And ever blessed be His name.”
—­Kingo.  Trans.  Hymns of Denmark.

“Mine eye hath found that sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heav’n’s richest store.”
—­Milton.—­The Passion.

Of the women who visited the tomb of Jesus on the morning of the Resurrection, John was especially interested in Mary Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, probably in his presence; thus giving him opportunity to see the marvelous change from a most abject condition, to grateful devotion to her Healer, perhaps beyond that of any other one whom He healed.  John long remembered her starting on her errand “while it was yet dark.”  So he remembered Judas starting when “it was night” on his errand, of which Mary’s was the sad result.  One was a deed of love which no darkness hindered:  the other was a deed of hate which no darkness prevented or concealed.

John had a special reason for remembering Mary.  When she had seen that the stone was taken away from the tomb, it had a different meaning to her from what it did when she and John saw it on Friday evening.  And when she “found not the body of the Lord Jesus,” she imagined that either friends had borne it away, or foes had robbed the tomb.  In surprise, disappointment and anxiety, her first impulse was to make it known—­to whom else than to him who had sorrowed with her at the stone-closed