SERMON XII.
THE NEARNESS OF THE UNSEEN WOULD.

SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION DAY.

S. MARK xvi. 19,

"After the Lord had spoken unto them, He was taken up into heaven, and sat down on the Right Hand of God."

IT is well that at such times as this, Christian persons earnestly trying to meditate on the great things which happened to our Lord, should put themselves as well as they can in the place of the holy Apostles, and consider what their feelings must have been, who saw with their very eyes the wonderful and fearful events which we only read or hear of. The difference between seeing and only hearing is very great. Job speaks of it, as if it made all the difference. "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee." Which of us has not found something like this? When God, e. g. has given us back a dear friend, whom we perhaps expected never to see alive again: or when on the other hand He has taken away some one whom we could ill spare: which of us but found such joy and such sorrow far different from what he had before expected? It might be more tolerable to us, or it might be heavier; at any rate it was not the same as our imagination had told us of.

We cannot therefore suppose, do what we will, that we draw accurately to ourselves in thought the picture of the great event, which the Scripture draws for us in words at this time, the Ascension of our Lord and Saviour into the heavens. But some points in it we may be sufficiently sure of, and may feel in our hearts enough to do us much good. I will now take one, and that the simplest and most obvious. Only think how the beholding of that sight must have brought home to them the thought, how near earth is to heaven; what a narrow line, what a mere hair's breadth, separates us from the eternal world. Here is a Person Who, down to a certain moment on the day answering to last Thursday, the fortieth day after the Paschal Sunday, had been living and conversing bodily among His friends, going in and out, eating and drinking in their presence. For so many years, except at certain short intervals, He had been their constant companion; day after day and all day long, it had been a matter of course to them to think of Him, to expect His interference, to order all their ways with an eye to Him, as visibly present. Their whole life, their whole being in the world, had been in a manner mixed up with Him. And behold, He disappears at once: not gradually, by slow decay and death, as one worn out, from whom people part by degrees; but in a moment. They see Him go, their eyes follow Him, as He is taken up and parted from them, rising up from the earth on which He was standing, the level land on the top of Mount Olivet, very near the village of Bethany. From that spot, a familiar spot, a neighbourhood where they had been used to see Him employed in His daily work; while in the act of lifting up His Hands to bless them, they behold Him slowly drawn up as by an invisible power, through the air. He is going: He will soon be gone. See now, a cloud begins to receive Him, a bright cloud probably, like that which came and overshadowed the three disciples on mount Tabor; the special token, perhaps, of the presence of His Holy Spirit. In this cloud His disciples lose sight first of His glorious and Divine Countenance and all the upper part of His person, and then of the rest; and while they are gazing, He is gone. His very Feet slowly disappear and are lost within that bright cloud. He is gone: they feel that He is no more on earth. "But where is He? How is He employed? How may we now think and imagine of Him? We cannot forget Him, we cannot do without Him:" so we may be sure, would each Apostle feel in his heart, "Who will tell us what has become of Him?" They saw His Footsteps; the very spot from which He ascended was specially marked with the print of His retiring Feet, which indeed some affirm to be visible even at this time: at any rate, the saying shews the feeling of the Church about our Lord's example and pattern left on earth, that we, treading in His steps, may ascend after Him to heaven. They saw His Footsteps, but Himself they saw no more, and a thousand times a day, we may be sure, did they ask themselves, "Where is He now? In what work of love is He engaged for us?"

We may the better enter into the feelings of our Saviour's Apostles at that moment, if we consider how it is with ourselves, and with those whom we know, when they are taken from us by death; when that final, cold, dark cloud receives them altogether out of our sight. They had been gradually, perhaps, but slowly, fading away; their friends had staid with them watching them, and had said over and over again to themselves, "they must soon be released: they cannot last much longer." We knew they would go; we watched them, as we saw that they were going: and now they are gone: and where are they? What is their place in the world out of sight?

Yes, brethren: the death of each person among us, as we part with each one in turn, reads so far the same lesson as the glorious event of our Lord's own Ascension. It puts home to us, brings forcibly before us, this most certain, most aweful, most blessed circumstance, the nearness of the next world to this: so that as we read in the Burial service, "in the midst of life we are in death," so at sight of the Ascension, were it not for our sad unworthiness, we might say to ourselves, "in the-midst of earth we are in heaven." There is, as I said, but a hair's breadth", the narrowest possible span, between the condition of Lazarus, lying at the rich man's gate full of sores, yet full of patience and faith, and the condition of the same Lazarus, carried of the Angels into Abraham's bosom. One moment this, the other moment that, is his condition. To see our Lord disappear as He did, must have fixed this aweful thought in the Apostles' minds, so as nothing else could fix it; except indeed they had been caused by Providence to witness with their eyes a case of the contrary kind, a case like that of Dathan and Abiram, when the earth opened her mouth suddenly, and swallowed them up, with their wives and children and all that appertained unto them. "They and all that appertained unto them went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation." If we had been by to see this, surely, my brethren, it would have been to us a most overpowering proof, how close we are to eternity; how near to this present world is that fearful pit into which those sinners sank; quite as near on the one side, as the heaven which was opened on Ascension Day is on the other side.

Truly it is so: had we been by to witness these great things, they would have been to us astonishing testimonies from the great Lord, Creator and Owner of all, that we are on the edge of both heaven and hell. There are but those two, heaven and hell, appointed for us, and one or other we must take; there is but heaven for us to ascend into with our Saviour, or the pit for us to go down alive into, with Koran. And the end of all things, this double end, is close at hand: one moment, and it may be here. Before one more breath is drawn, the one or the other of these may be our unchangeable portion for ever: and if we are spared, it is but a question of time. Sooner or later that last breath will come, and we shall find ourselves--we, who are now here, as yet by God's mercy with more or less of hope--shall find ourselves actually sinking into the deep with the Evil one, or in the act of being carried up with our Lord into heaven itself.

It is even so, brethren: if you have any faith at all, you surely believe this: I know you do not doubt nor deny it. You believe it: but what do you think of it? Or is it too fearful, too astounding, for you willingly to think on it at all? Well, you may put it off; I mean, you may put off the thought of it, if you please. Nothing at present forces you against your will to turn your minds towards eternity. As it is in any person's power, when he hears of such things in Church, to stop his ears, and hinder himself from so much as receiving the sounds which bring with them disagreeable unwelcome thoughts; like the deaf adder spoken of in the Psalm, "which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer:" so the just God leaves us all free, if we will, to decline listening in our hearts to His calls and warnings at any time. There are plenty of things in this world to think about, if we choose, every day and all day long: mere play for children and childish people, mere business for grown-up men and women, mere ease and refreshment for the aged whose work is over. There are lusts for the sensual, vanities for the proud, quarrels for the quarrelsome, grievances for the discontented and envious. Verily it is a world, not wanting in objects to take up a man's mind, if he chooses to give himself wholly to them. No doubt, you may, if you will, come to great perfection in the art of shutting out from your soul uneasy disquieting thoughts about the next world: and there is one who will always be too ready at hand, too glad to help you to such irreligious forgetfulness.

But then, my brethren, you must take the consequences. You may effectually shut out the apprehensions of eternity for the present: but then you must make up your mind to what may happen bye and bye. This is a war, in which there is no discharge. If a man take the devil's wages, if he consent, for his present enjoyment's sake, to turn away his heart from his Saviour and his salvation; then he must abide the same sentence, which the master and captain whom he has chosen will abide at last. You may refuse to think of the next world, saying, "it is too dismal; you had rather enjoy yourself: you will let nothing daunt you:'' but whatever comes in the next world of such a course of conduct, to that you must make up your mind.

But, my brethren, my children in Christ, I hope better things than this of you, one and all. I hope that there is not one here, who will obstinately refuse to face the thought--terrible as it surely is for all who have sinned; that to you, to me, to each one of us severally, the Almighty Judge will ere long openly and bodily appear, and say a word which will send us either upwards or downwards for ever. Now, He speaks many words to us, and leaves us our choice whether we will mind them: but that word will leave us no choice. As soon as we hear of it, we shall obey it. He will either say, "Come, ye blessed of My Father," or "Go, ye cursed:" and presently each one of us will find himself either drawn upwards, as our Lord on the day of His Ascension, or cast down and swallowed, as Dathan and Abiram when the earth opened her mouth.

Supposing there were any doubt of these things, yet a wise man would do his best to be safe, even from the chance of so terrible a lot as falling into hell, and to secure but the chance of so blessed a place as Heaven. But there is really no doubtfulness in the matter: you know there is not. Think only of what happened on Holy Thursday. Twelve men saw their Lord, Whom they had before seen crucified and risen again, go bodily up into heaven: they gave up everything they had in the world, and spent their time in labouring and suffering, and at last laid down their lives, in testimony of what they had seen, "God also bearing them witness with signs and wonders and gifts of the Holy Ghost." And as surely as they saw Him go into heaven, so surely they know, and have told us, where He is in heaven. Not in any Angel's place, but above the highest Angels: "on the Right Hand of God, Angels and Authorities and Powers being made subject unto Him:" according to His own prophecy, uttered indeed to His enemies, the high priests and elders, but in the hearing also of S. Peter and S. John, and perhaps also of some other of His friends: u Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." That is, "ye shall see Him both as King and as Judge: as King, for it is said i sitting on the right hand of power:' as Judge, for it is said 'coming in the clouds of heaven.'" Plain therefore it was to the Apostles, and no less plain is it to us and to all Christians, what is become of our Lord, and how highly He is exhalted. Now this of course, if a man have common sense, to say nothing now of duty, and gratitude, and love, settles what ought to be the whole course of our lives. If Christ is exalted above all, if He has all power in heaven and in earth, what madness is it to disobey Him; what entire safety, peace, and comfort, to be under His protection and favoured by Him! But there is another thing which touches us yet more nearly. This Almighty King, this righteous and unerring Judge, is no stranger, no alien to our nature, under whose dominion we find ourselves placed, and so are bound to submit ourselves to him, but without having any special interest, he in us and we in him. Not at all so. He is no stranger: He is our bone and our flesh; of the same blood, of the same nature that we are, only without spot of sin. He is so near to us, so entirely one with us, that in His exaltation we all are exalted. We are exalted as men, children of Adam: because One Who is also a child of Adam is lifted up to so high a place. One Who is really, as men speak, our blood-relation; really, outwardly, bodily, akin to each one of us: is set down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. He has all our natural tendencies to love and indulgent pity: He loves us because we are His kindred, with a love far more perfect than any one of us loveth another: indeed our love for one another is altogether taught and inspired by Him. If you had a brother who loved you, in the Queen's court, entrusted with all the good things of the state: should you not account your fortune made? How much more, now you know that our brother Who loves you and died for you is at the Right Hand of God!

Can there be anything more than this? There is something more, yea, and beyond comparison greater and more blessed. We are not only, as men, brothers of our Lord and Saviour, but as Christian men, we are actual members of Him, mystically yet really united to Him, partakers through Him of the Divine Nature: as it is written, "He called them gods, to whom the Word of God," the Incarnate Saviour, "came." Since then we are each one members of Him, not only is our common human nature exalted in Him, but each of us also personally. He is the Head: you, I, the rest, are members: and where the Head is, there God intends the members should be also; there, by mysterious communion, they are already. He is the great King; therefore we are all of us kings. Through the Sacrament of our new-birth, Holy Baptism, we are inheritors of His royal blood; and by His grace we are entrusted and enabled to reign as kings here on earth; to reign over our own wild passions and keep our bodies and souls in order; and also to reign over outward things, to command even the changes and chances of this mortal life, that they do us no harm but everlasting good, because, being either borne patiently or used faithfully, they help us to become better, and to do God service, in His kingdom: as it is declared to all Christians; "All things are yours: whether... the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."

Away then with all little and low thoughts. Who would not be very courageous in Christ's work! And on the other hand, down with all proud thoughts: for the more highly we are exalted in Christ, the more reason is there we should abase ourselves in the very dust, remembering past backslidings and present infirmities, and the strict account we have to give.

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