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period in our Lord's history, and recounting one by one the "infallible proofs" afforded that He was indeed raised from the dead, praise God with full hearts for the evidence thus vouchsafed of that Truth which is the foundation of all our hopes: the seal of our justification, and also, (as lately shewn), the source of our regeneration in this life, and the earnest of immortality and glory in that which is to come : that so, having improved the season of Easter now drawing to its close, we may be prepared to follow the disciples to Mount Olivet (as the Church a few days hence invites us to do); and, in the full faith of the Saviour's RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD, contemplate with them the mystery and realize the fact of His ASCENSION TO GLORY.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

XXI.-HIS ASCENSION TO HEAVEN.

PSALM xvi. 11.

"Thou wilt shew Me the path of life;

"In Thy presence is fulness of joy;

"At Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore."

THE verse next preceding this-"Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption"—has already afforded subject for two Discourses of this Series; as a prophecy of two distinct and notable events in the Redeemer's history, His Descent into Hell or Hades, and His Resurrection from the dead: and this verse is now taken as an equally clear prophecy of that which terminates it,-His Ascension into Heaven, which the Church celebrates this day.

And here, again, our attention must be confined to the results of this Event as affecting Himself personally, and, in Him, "the Church which is His

body:" without attempting to include its other bearings; as, for example, The Office which He discharges in the Heavens as High Priest and Mediator,-His Advocacy and Intercession,-in its manifold blessings and results: which Office, as it does not fall so properly within the line marked out by the course that has been proposed, is also a subject far too wide to be embraced in it.

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I. As then regards Himself personally, the results of His Ascension were two, each of infinite moment and importance, the one affecting His Divine and the other His Human nature: contemplating Him first as "Son of God," and secondly, as "Son of Man."

1. As to His Divine Nature, His Ascension was the re-entering on or resuming of the glory which He had with the Father before His Incarnation and from all eternity: as He states in His prayer, St. John xvii. 4, 5,-"I have glorified Thee on the "earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest "me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou me "with Thine own self with the glory which I had "with Thee before the world was :"-the glory of that His Essential Divinity so expressly asserted in the opening passage of that same Gospel, ch. i. 1-3: "In the beginning was THE WORD,

" and the Word was with God, and the Word was "God. The same was in the beginning with God. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

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And thus is this Event the great confirmation of that Truth to Faith: so that as when we read that on one occasion He said to His disciples "I came "forth from the Father and am come into the world; "again I leave the world and go to the Father;" they answered him, "Lo, now speakest thou plainly "and speakest no proverb; now are we sure that "thou knowest all things and needest not that any

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man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou "camest forth from God:"-so we may say with them and more confidently, "By this"-by the fact of His Ascension to heaven-we believe that He came forth from the Father and came into the world, and now is "set down with the Father in His throne" and glorified with the glory of God.

I say, 'The confirmation of this Truth to faith:' for the evidence of it to sight-the evidence that will silence unbelief-is not yet; nor will be until His own words are fulfilled, "Hereafter shall ye see the "Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and "coming in the clouds of heaven;" (Matt. xxvi. "64); that declaration which drew forth (as we remember) from the High Priest, who knew its im

port, the exclamation " He hath spoken blasphemy:" and which is still, in that its true import, accounted blasphemy by those who deny His Divinity. Such there have been from the beginning, and are now, many and such (we are forewarned) there will be increasingly as the consummation and development of Anti-Christianity draws near of which this is the chief characteristic and the very definition-the denial "that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh."

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which is the denial of "the Father and the Son," (1 John ii. 22; iv. 3): the confutation of whom will be His Second Coming-the manifestation of His glory, as was the First the manifestation of His humiliation when, as it is written, "At the name "of JESUS every knee shall bow, of (those) in heaven, "and in earth, and under the earth: and every "tongue confess that Jesus Christ is LORD, to the "glory of God the Father"-"to the glory of the Father" because of the ineffable union of the Father and the Son. But the Christian-(for we must not call such Christian though they call themselves so) -though he waits for that event with ardent desire, though he "looks for and hastes unto the coming of the day of God," looks not for it to satisfy himself of the Lordship of Christ nor of His Divine glory : for, this he confesses when he says, 'He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the

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