“Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into Heaven?” The questioners were two angels.  Without waiting for answer, they gave promise of Jesus’ return.  “Then returned the disciples unto Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet.”  Whither bound?  We are told, “They went up into the upper chamber.”  No longer simply “A large upper room” to which Jesus had told Peter and John they would be guided.  Were they not now the guide of the nine thither, to the place where they had six weeks before “prepared” for the Passover?  Did not the goodman of the house give the Disciples a second welcome, and offer it to them as a temporary place for the Christian Church?  So it would appear, for again we are told, “they were there abiding.”  Once more Luke gives their names, in the Acts as he did in his Gospel.  All except Judas answered, in that upper room, to the roll call of the company scattered from Gethsemane, but reunited in a closer union.  In each of Luke’s lists he begins with the Bethsaidan band.  But he does not preserve the same order.  In the latter he begins, not with the two pairs of brothers as such—­Peter and Andrew, James and John,—­but with the Apostles whom Christ had drawn into His inner circle, Peter, John and James, naming first the two who were already becoming the acknowledged leaders of the Christian band.  In that list we find the name of Andrew recorded the last time in Holy Writ.

But the eleven were not alone:  others resorted thither for the same purpose.  What was that purpose? and who were some of them?  This is the answer:—­“These all with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer, with the women, and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with His brethren.”

It is here, for the last time, that we read of Mary, in the Gospels.  In what better place could we bid her farewell than in the room consecrated by the presence of her Son.  How we rejoice with her that in that place the longing of her heart must have been satisfied as she joined “with one accord in prayer ... with His brethren”—­her sons who during His life had not believed on Him.  What a welcome to that room did they receive from John, their adopted brother!  May we not indulge the thought that among “the women” were her own daughters; and that we hear her joyfully asking the once carping question of the Jews concerning “the carpenter’s son,” but with changed meaning, saying, “His sisters, are they not all with us?” If so “His Mother called Mary,” “and His brethren,” “and His sisters,” and John the adopted son and brother, were at last a blessed family indeed.  Mary on her knees with her children around her, rejoicing in God her Saviour, of whom she had sung in the infancy of her Son—­that certainly is a fitting scene to be the last in which we behold the Mother of Jesus.

“When the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place.”  They were united in feeling, purpose and devotion, in the “one place,” the home of the early Church.