There is a sense in which - in most ways - the end of the phase of Christ's earthly life has to have 'failure' written over it - failure in the world: failure in Israel: failure with His disciples: the failure of His teaching: the failure of His works and of His claims. These latter failures especially were due to the natural and earthly level or horizon within which they were living. It was in themselves that He was "straitened"; their spiritual bondage and mental limitation. The Forty Days were not only the evidence of His resurrection, but of the change which the resurrection makes.

With the resurrection of Christ and Pentecost a new spiritual order was constituted, an order of essentially spiritual men and women, with spiritual capacities, consciousness, and abilities.