These are the last words in St. Matthew's Gospel, that Gospel which, on the whole, gives us the fullest picture of our Lord, His words, and His deeds, and which supplies to most readers of the Bible the greater part of their impressions about Him. The words were spoken by Christ at one of the few recorded times when He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection. It is plain from the account given in the first chapter of Acts that these cannot have been Christ's very last words, but still they belong to those last forty days of His appearance on earth between His rising from the grave and His mounting up into heaven; and St. Matthew plainly regarded them as a true ending to His whole story, the weightiest part of a solemn charge which marked that all was nearly over.

When the two Maries came to the tomb, St. Matthew tells us, on that first Easter morning, they found it empty. An angel sat by the door. He bid them fear not, for He whom they sought was risen. He invited them to look in and see the place where the body had lain; and then he sent them off with speed to tell the disciples the joyful news, and to command them to hasten into Galilee, where they would find Christ gone before them.