a new and living relation between the Lord and His people. The Lord who was raised lives and manifests Himself to His disciples. They needed, in the first place, to know that He was really risen; and they needed, in the next place, to understand that the old earthly relationships were gone. He weans them gradually from these, that He may prepare them for doing without them.

Such facts as these are illustrated. Jesus Christ, during the forty days, did not manifest Himself to or communicate in any way with those outside of the Church. His visits were exclusively to His disciples. The continuity of His risen life may be seen from this "If a man love me, I will manifest myself to him." Again, the manifestations are given to those who are in special need, and are carefully adapted to supply that need. To Peter, when the two were alone, and in the presence of the rest; to Mary, and to Thomas, He manifests Himself. Tenderness and reproof are mingled. There is a remarkable individuality in each interview, but the issue of each is the same--the communication of new strength and faith. Again, He manifests Himself sometimes to one, sometimes to two or three, more frequently, to all assembled together; and the

promise still holds, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." "If two of you shall agree as touching anything ye shall ask, it shall be done for you by my Father which is in heaven." Once more, it is manifested that in all, Christ Himself, independent of other things, is the all-sufficient happiness of His children.

So, then, just as before His crucifixion He gives us a prayer that helps us to understand His eternal intercession, so now we have in these forty days pregnant instances of the precise way in which He is to be present with His people for their comfort and refreshment even unto the end.

I need not say much of the divine originality of this idea. The combination of truth between one-sided Materialism and one-sided Spiritualism, a conception for which the apostles had absolutely no precedent, and which even yet men find a most difficult and strange idea, cannot be explained on any other supposition than the facts. Strange and difficult though the idea may be, it is nevertheless the only one that will harmonize the apparently antithetic experiences of our perplexing life.'

1 See Note F.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Ascension of Christ.

"Thou hast ascended on high."

"If Christ was only six hours crucified,
After few years of toil and misery,

Which for mankind He suffered willingly,
While heaven was won forever when He died-
Why should He still be shown on every side,
Painted and preached, in nought but agony,
Whose pains were light matched with His victory,
When the world's power to harm Him was defied?
Why rather speak and write not of the realm
He rules in heaven, and soon will bring below,
Unto the praise and glory of His name?

Ah, foolish crowd! The world's thick vapors whelm
Your eyes, unworthy of that glorious show,

Blind to His splendor, bent upon His shame."

MICHAEL ANGELO.

E have seen how Christ entered the world,

WE

how He bore Himself in it, how He died and rose again from the grave. How is He to leave the world in a manner that shall harmonize with His entrance into it and His life there?

There is, there can be, but one answer-He

ascended. Not much about the Ascension is said in Scripture, and in lives of Christ it is often

dismissed in a few brief lines; many large and important truths, however, are wrapt up in the story. He was not the first to go into the other world by another gate than that of death. Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and a chariot of fire was sent to take Elijah home. But these translations, instead of resembling the ascension of Christ, rather show His divinity by their contrast with it.

Jesus Christ ascended by His own power and His own will. "I go to my Father”—“I leave the world and go to my Father." There was no doubt the power of the Father working along with that of the Son. "After He had blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." Still the primary idea is that He ascended. How sharply this separates Him from Enoch and Elijah! Enoch, we are told, walked quietly with God, and one day he was lifted gently by the Divine Hand out of the turbulences of sin that were round about him. He did not ascend himself; God took him. Then, Elijah was taken up to heaven by a whirlwind. He did not fix the time or the way of his departure. But God knew when his work was done, and when His purpose had been wrought to its last refinement,

He removed him. He sent for him a fiery chariot. As He appointed the time, so He made the way. In fit keeping with Elijah's fiery and impetuous life was his departure in the chariot and horses that took him up the track of flame to his home with God. It has been strikingly suggested that the very force and violence of the translation show the difficulty with which mortal flesh can be taken into heaven. There was a great and manifest expenditure of power in bearing the prophet up, but nothing can be more easy and tranquil than the ascension of Christ. As His life was gentle and His death calm, so without noise or ostentation He rose up to His glory. He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. They watched Him ascending, and they might have seen His shadow on the sward as He bore His way upward, until at last a cloud received Him out of their sight. As He was God, it was more natural for Him to ascend into heaven than it was for Him to come down to earth. Descent is natural and only too easy to man. It is for God to ascend; and so in obedience to His own will, and in accordance with the laws of His own nature, He rose out of their sight into heaven. He ascended.