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midst; but until they saw it triumph over the grave the disciples were not able to admit and demonstrate so fully its Principle. Thomas, beholding the idea of it in Jesus, (after his supposed death) was forced to acknowledge how entire was the proof. From all the disciples had seen and suffered, they became more spiritual, therefore could better understand what the Master had taught them. This, therefore, was the resurrection, for it raised them from the blindness of a belief in God to the understanding of Him, “Whom to know aright was Life.” They needed this, for soon their dear Master that had just risen to their comprehension would rise again, higher in the spiritual scale of being, and so much beyond them in reward for all his faithfulness, he would disappear to their more material thoughts, and Biblical history would name it the ascension. Ancient prophets who wrought before Jesus, foretold his coming, and the reception the world of sense would give Truth; also there is a connection inseparable between their experiences, and those of every Christian who perceives the idea and accepts the understanding of God. Jesus, born of a virgin mother, was more of a miracle to that age, than to this; for even the naturalist is now furnishing reports of embryology in some species wholly without the male element. The Bethlehem babe was the nearest approximation since the record in Genesis to the science of being, in which Spirit makes man; for man born of woman, was the usual advent of mortal man, and this material belief was what entered Mary's spiritual conception of Jesus, which accounts for the struggles of Gethsemane, but it made him the mediator between God and mortal man;