SERMON XIII.
CHRIST FILLING ALL THINGS.

SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION DAY.

EPH. iv. 10.

"He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things."

S. PAUL, in this part of the epistle to the Ephesians, is preaching us a short sermon on a verse in the sixty-eighth Psalm. The verse on which he is preaching is, "When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and received gifts for men;" and of course his sermon is well suited to this holy season, in which we remember Christ's Ascension. Observe here, says the Apostle, how David, speaking of the Lord his God, says, "He is gone up on high." Well, but for God to go up, He must first have come down among men. For His place and abode is naturally up on high. He must descend, before He can ascend. Therefore, proceeds the Apostle, "this word, ascended, what else can it signify, but that He had also descended first?" He had in a mysterious way come down from His high place in heaven: and whither had He come down? Not simply to earth, but into the lower parts of the earth. And whither hath He gone up? Not simply to heaven, but far above all heavens. There is a descent first, and an ascent afterwards: the descent as low, the ascent as high as it could be. That there might be no mistake, he bids all take notice, that it was the same Person Who first came down and afterwards went up. "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens." And lastly, he explains in one word the merciful purpose of this most astonishing dispensation. The Lord, the very same Lord and Son of God, first came down, then went up, and His end in doing so was, "that He might fill all things." The whole answers in a remarkable way to the second and third portions of the Apostles' Creed. The great God descends to earth, that is, Jesus Christ made Man, "conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." He descends not only to earth but to the lower parts of the earth: i.e. He suffers "under Pontius Pilate; is crucified, dead, and buried, He descended into hell." For of this descent into hell, more especially, we are to think, when we read of His going down to the lower parts of the earth. During the hours from the moment that He gave up the ghost to the moment of His glorious Eesurrection, His Body lay in the grave, and His Divine Soul went down "and preached to the spirits in prison." As low as could be was His descent: and when He began to ascend again, He staid not till He came to the Right Hand of God. First, from the lower parts of the earth, from the grave and from the prison of departed souls He came to the surface of the earth again, on Easter morning, to abide in men's sight forty days. That was His Resurrection: the beginning, in fact, of His Ascension. Afterwards, at the end of the forty days, He ascended into heaven, and not into heaven only, but far above all heavens, to the very Right Hand of God the Father Almighty; where He sitteth as a King on His throne; and from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Thus the saying, He descended and ascended, is in short the second portion of our Creed. And the other saying, that He might fill all things, answers to the third or concluding portion of the same Creed. For how doth our Incarnate and Risen Lord fill all things? Surely by His Holy Spirit; of which it is written in the book of Wisdom, "The Spirit of the Lord filleth the world." And did not the Holy Comforter on the first Whitsunday begin to fill the world with Christ, uniting sinners to Him one by one, and making them saints, till the whole earth should be full of His glory, and that glory should be more and more glorious, until in its fulness it should become the "Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting?" Of all which He gave a token, in that He came down at the first" "with a sudden great sound as of a rushing mighty wind, and filled all the house where" the Apostles "were sitting." They heard Him, above, beneath, on every side of them, at once: as their fathers had seen His visible glory when the cloud filled the Temple. That mighty sound, that bright cloud, were the sure tokens of the Spirit of the Father and of Christ, abiding everywhere and at all times in the Holy Catholic Church; shewing its present work in the "Communion of saints, and the Forgiveness of sins," and certain bye and bye to fulfil, as I said, its future work in the "Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." Thus the final portion of our Creed explains how He Who first descended and then ascended did so, that He might fill all things. Had He not descended, by taking our nature upon Him, there could have been no Body of Christ, of which we might be made members. Had He not afterwards ascended into heaven, He could not afterwards have sent down His Spirit to fill all things with Himself by making all members of Him.

This is the special point, my brethren, on which I would desire that we may all meditate to-day: our Lord and Saviour filling all things. Reflect how entirely He does fill all things in every sense of that word. All things, according to their measure, are full of Him. In that He is true God, One with the Father, He filleth all places, all regions, one as much as another, with His Divine Presence. In that He is God made Man, God our Saviour, God crucified, dead, and buried, risen and glorified and partaken of by His people, He filleth all His holy ones, whether in earth, in paradise, or in heaven, as each one is capable of receiving Him. Look at a little child just baptized. There is no outward change in it, it sleeps and wakes, takes its nourishment and utters its little cries as before; we see no particular difference, and yet faith tells us, that little one is full of Christ, and were it to die this moment, would be sure, quite sure, to go to Christ. Consider that same little child as it grows older. It is still full of Christ; for it hath still Christ's Spirit within it, enabling it, if it will, to live in its degree the life of Christ upon earth. Too true it is, that by a certain amount of sin, known to God, unknown to us, any one of us may, if he will, cease to be a partaker of Christ; he may finally drive the good Spirit away from him, and become the mere shadow of a Christian, a walking dead body, empty and void of Christ our life. Yet still the great truth remains, that it is the purpose and will of our Redeemer to fill us all with Himself by His Spirit; and even with regard to those who seem most entirely to have forfeited the gift, we are not allowed to despair. It may be some friend's sad case, it may be our own; we may have come fearfully near to the point of final ruin, we may be trembling on the very edge of the pit, but it is not too late: if we yet hear the voice of Christ, if we yet have the heart to turn towards it when we hear it, He may return and fill us with Himself again. Only remember, and never let the thought go, that every moment of wilful delay is lost for ever: and what if we should be lost with it? Christ is in each Christian, filling each more and more with Himself, in such measure as we try to keep Him with us; but He is not in all alike. The gifts of His Holy Spirit are of many kinds, and are given in divers degrees, as the rewards will be hereafter; and so holy men have compared the condition of glorified spirits in heaven to so many vessels ranged in some rich man's treasure house, each to be made quite full, yet of course holding more or less according to their unequal sizes. All good Christians will be called together to sit down at the feast in the kingdom of heaven, to "be satisfied with the plenteousness of His house, and to have drink given them of His pleasures as out of a river:" but some will be able to taste and receive more than others. Every star will shine in unclouded brightness, yet "one star" will differ "from another star in glory." And as the rewards prepared in heaven, such must f the trials be here on earth: various and unequal, as He knoweth best for each. As a man's limbs are all I of the same body, all quickened with one life from the same soul, which belongs to one limb as entirely: as it does to another, so you and I, this Christian I and that Christian, all alike are of Christ, all quickened with one and the self-same Spirit, which is the life, the Christian life, of one of us as entirely as of another. And yet our offices and our gifts are not the same, any more than the eye has the same work with the hand, or the head with the feet. Christ filleth all, therefore all are one: therefore none must look down upon another, or refuse to sympathize with it. You know S.Paul's parable: "the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; neither again the head to the feet, I have no need of you." Those who have higher or more favoured places are not to look down upon others, or think they could do without them. And again: Christ filleth all, and in the strength of Christ each one doth his work, whatever it is. Why repinest thou, as if thou wert forgotten, as if thy Lord took no account of thee, whoever thou art who occupiest the room of a lower and less honoured limb in the great body? Do thou thy mean ordinary work thoroughly well, entirely in Christ's Spirit, and see whether He will not treat thee with such a reward as will take away all temptation to envy thy neighbour. It is not, depend upon it, it is not so much what we do, as how we do it, with what mind and purpose, which will make the great difference in the accounts of eternity. Your Lord has set you in such a place: one care you have, to do your duty in that place: you may safely trust your good Saviour to take care of your reward. It is your own duty, moreover, which you have to mind, not the duty of other people: that also, except so far as you can help them, you had best leave to the common Master Who hath set each one his task. If you cannot help seeing faults in your brethren's work, pray for them, but do not despise them, nor indulge a fretful wish that you were in their place, under the notion that you could manage better. Force yourself still to recollect that Christ is in them and in you: for His sake be gentle to them; for His sake be strict with yourself.

One other thought I will mention: a very deep and aweful one, and very natural to come into a serious mind on this great day of Ascension; that as Christ is in all Christians, one and the same to all, so He is, and ever must be, one and the same with His former self. He is one and the same Christ now in Glory, Who humbled Himself in the dust at Gethsemane, and permitted men to nail Him to the Cross on Calvary. He is, as S. Paul says, "Jesus Christ, the Same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things." Now as Christ is one with Himself always, so we, who are Christ's. We are not so bad perhaps, or not so good, as we were at some former time, but we are the very same persons that we were at our Baptism, may be, or so many years ago. This seems a simple thing: but have you ever considered it in earnest, my brethren? Have you considered, that as our Lord Jesus Christ is the very same Person, now above all the heavens, as He was when His condition was lowest; hid in the womb, and laid in the grave: so shall you and I be the same persons, bye and bye, in the next world, as we have been since our first beginning? You and I, and those who are next to us, on our right hand and our left, and all the rest of the congregation, every one of them, are and will be the same persons for ever. "My Redeemer liveth," saith holy Job: "and in my flesh shall I see God: Whom mine eyes shall behold and not another." And another, with very different expectations, said, even the covetous prophet Balaam said, "I shall see Him but not now; I shall behold Him but not nigh." Every wicked Christian may expect with Balaam to see Him one day with the eye of flesh, Whom he refuses now to see with the eye of faith. Such as Balaam will see Christ, but not nigh; for the word will be given in that moment, "Depart from Me." And on the other hand patient believers, like Job, who have waited on Him, though their reins were consumed within them, they also shall see Him, they shall see His Face with joy, plainly with their very bodily eyes, wherewith they behold one another in their life-time: as it is written, "thine eyes shall behold the King in His beauty." We shall see Him, we shall all behold Him: with the same keen and aweful distinctness, the same sense of utter reality, as the Apostles felt when they saw Him rise from the earth, and disappear behind the cloud on the top of the mount of Olives. We shall all see Him, we shall behold Him; but with how different aspects, and with what opposite results! What a cloud will that be, behind which He will hide His glory from those who shall be left behind, when in the Body He shall return to heaven again! For it will not be then, you know, as in His first Ascension. He will not leave His faithful ones gazing after Him, but they shall be caught up to meet Him in the air, shall be received into His own cloud, and so shall they ever be with the Lord. But those that are left behind; the Balaams and Korahs and Judas's, the unclean and covetous, the unruly and unbelieving; which way will they move? What sort of a cloud will receive them, and with whom will they be for ever?

And we shall see it, that is the point: we shall be there, and have our portion on the one side or on the other, we, the very same persons that are here now, shall be there then: on the right hand or on the left; and we shall have our memories with us and our consciousness, only a thousand times keener and more lively than ever they were on earth. Here, from mere lapse of time, unless people watch against it, they really forget that they are the same persons who did such and such wicked things many years ago. I have often found it so. Without any special repentance, they go on as if the sins of their youth were blotted out, merely because it is twenty, thirty or forty years since they were committed; and they are as much affronted at being reminded of them, as if you were charging them with the sins of some other person. But it is not so: they are the same persons, and so they will find at last. God grant they may find it in time!

We shall be the same persons, when we stand up to be judged: and what is yet more aweful, more beyond thought, we shall be the same persons afterwards. On and on through all eternity, we, we ourselves shall abide, knowing ourselves to be, in heaven or in hell, unspeakably near to God or unspeakably far from Him. Very different, no doubt, we shall be, both in soul and in body, from what we are now: but still in God's sight and in our sight we shall be the same individual beings. How unlike is a little new-born child to a tall strong full-grown man, full of wisdom and counsel, and knowing so much of many things: and yet the little child, if he lives and prospers, may become such a man. So, after this our childhood on earth, we shall be full-grown in goodness or in badness, when we come to the other world; yet knowing ourselves to be the same. We must be moving upwards or downwards: starving the good seed, which is Christ in us, or growing more in His fulness. Which way are you moving? I beseech you, lay it to heart. Prove yourselves, examine yourselves, try yourselves thoroughly this very week: for next Sunday is one of the great Seasons, in which God cometh to try and judge His people for their correction; and as you employ or neglect those Seasons here on earth, so will He honour you or cast you away, when He cometh finally to judge you for reward or punishment.

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