goeth before you into Galilee! there shall ye see Him.” For if Matthew himself, too, had not
stated that the eleven disciples went away into Galilee into a mountain, where Jesus had
appointed them, and that they saw Him there and worshipped Him, we might have supposed
that there was no literal fulfilment of the prediction in question, but that the whole announce-
ment was intended to convey a figurative meaning. And a parallel to that we should then
find in the words recorded by Luke, namely, “Behold I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day
and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected;”1561 which prediction certainly was
not accomplished in the letter. In like manner, if the angel had said, “He goeth before you
into Galilee, there shall ye see Him first;” or, “Only there shall ye see Him;” or, “Nowhere
else but there shall ye see Him;” unquestionably, in that case, Matthew would have been in
antagonism with the rest of the evangelists. As the matter stands, however, the words are
simply these: “Behold, He goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see Him;” and there
is no statement of the precise time at which that meeting was to take place—whether at the
earliest opportunity, and before He was seen by them elsewhere, or at a later period, and
after they had seen Him also in other places besides Galilee; and, further, although Matthew
relates that the disciples went away into Galilee into a mountain, he neither specifies the
day of that departure, nor constructs his narrative in an order which would force upon us
the necessity of supposing that this particular event must have been actually the first appear-
ance. Consequently, we may conclude that Matthew stands in no antagonism with the nar-
ratives of the other evangelists, but that he makes it quite competent for us, in due consistency
with his own report, to understand the meaning and accept the truth of these other accounts.
At the same time, as the Lord thus pointed, not to the place where He intended first to
manifest Himself, but to the locality of Galilee, where undoubtedly He appeared afterwards;
and as He conveyed these instructions about beholding Himself at once through the angel,
who said,” Behold, He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see Him;” and by His
own words, “Go, tell my brethren, that they go into Galilee, and there shall ye see me;”—in
these facts we find considerations which make every believer anxious to inquire with what
mystical significance all this may be understood to have been stated.
81. In the first place, however, we must also consider the question of the time at which
He may thus have shown Himself in bodily form in Galilee, according to the statement
given by Matthew in these terms: “Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee into a
mountain where Jesus had appointed them; and when they saw Him, they worshipped Him;
but some doubted.” That it was not on the day of His resurrection is manifest. For Luke and
John agree in telling us most plainly that He was seen in Jerusalem that very day, when the
night was coming on; while Mark is not so clear on the subject. When was it, then, that they
saw the Lord in Galilee? I do not refer to the appearance mentioned by John, by the sea of
1561 Luke xiii. 32. See above, Book ii. chap. 75, § 145.
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Of Christ’s Subsequent Manifestations of Himself to the Disciples, and of…