SERMON III.
OUR LORD'S LAST PRAYER.

ASCENSION DAY.

S. JOHN xvii. 11.

"And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine own Name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are."

WHAT Christian would not listen earnestly to the last prayer of Jesus Christ, and account himself very undutiful, if ever he should permit himself to slight what his Lord prayed for, immediately before He departed? Now this prayer in the seventeenth of S. John may be considered in some sense as His last prayer; for it was offered up just before His aweful atoning Sacrifice of Himself on the Cross, and it refers throughout to His Ascension which was to take Him finally from among men, as to something immediately to happen. It is therefore much the same in regard of our Lord, as the last words and prayers of a departing person are in regard of him. We may well believe that what He then prayed for on behalf of His Apostles, was the same which He desired for them in that solemn blessing, which He pronounced Just before His Ascension. "He led them out as far as to Bethany and lifted up His Hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass while He blessed them, that He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." We can hardly doubt that one chief point of this blessing was that same heavenly Unity which He had before prayed for on their behalf: that they might be one with Him, and through Him one with the Father, and through the Father and the Son, one with each other: true members of Jesus Christ, and truly making up one holy and mysterious Body, one Church, of which He is the Head.

This blessing He asked, not for the Apostles alone, but for all Christians. "Neither pray I for these alone," saith He, "but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us." "The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou, in Me, that they may be made perfect in one."

See how the notion of being altogether one, runs through the whole of this Divine prayer: how our Redeemer dwells upon it, as if it were the great point, the great object of all, quite necessary to the accomplishment of the work, for which He came into the world. And observe that the prayer was uttered just before that great and unspeakable Sacrifice of Himself upon the Cross: even as now, when Christians of our Church are making their solemn offering in memory of that Sacrifice, the very first and chiefest blessing they ask is, that God would "inspire continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord; and that all they that do confess His holy Name may agree, in the truth of His holy Word, and live in unity and godly love." As that prayer goes before the consecration of the Holy Communion, so our Lord's intercession for Unity went just before His giving His Body to be broken and His Blood shed on the Cross for His people. It seems as if that unity were a great part of our Redemption, or at any rate, very closely connected with it.

And to confirm this, observe on the other hand, that our Lord uttered that wonderful intercession just after He had been ordaining the Sacrament of Unity, the communion of His Body and Blood. How that is a Sacrament of Unity, S. Paul explains in one of his epistles to the Corinthians. "We being many are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread." The pressing together of so many corns into one loaf is a type of the moulding of all Christians, rightly baptized, into one spiritual Body: and the partaking of that one Bread is the partaking of Christ's Body, and incorporates us more and more with Him.

Moreover, all those forty days, from the Resurrection to the Ascension, Christ continued with His Apostles, speaking of the things (no doubt) which were most necessary to be told them, to prepare the way for His return. And what were those things? They were such as pertain to the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God, i. e. the Church universal, took up the greater part of our Lord's instructions now in the portion of time before His departure.

No doubt then, as I said before, this mysterious blessing of Unity had much to do with God's Church and kingdom: rather one may say, it seemed the very same thing.

And, that the Apostles so understood it, they gave these signs immediately: that after our Lord's departure they all kept together: that the one thing they did before the descent of the Holy Ghost was ordaining one to take Judas' place, and complete the unity of the body, damaged by his fall: that when the Spirit came, He found them "all with one accord in one place."

On returning from the holy Mount, where they had lost sight of our Lord, they did not go apart to seek God each his own several way; but they went, S. Luke tells us, into an upper room, where abode the eleven Apostles, all of them, continuing in prayer and supplication with the women, the devout women who had attended our Lord from Galilee, and with Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with His disciples.

Again, whereas the treachery and death of Judas had made a breach in the Apostolical body, a rent in the Lord's garment, which should be without seam, they knew it to be His will that this should be healed, and the Body made one, as at first, to be ready for the descent of the Holy Spirit: and therefore without losing time they proceeded to elect one, S. Matthias, in the place of Judas. "He was numbered with the eleven Apostles," and so the Mystery of Unity, as far as men could provide for it, being complete, the whole Body continued waiting in prayer for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Even as at man's first creation, God formed man out of the dust of the earth, and the entire body was formed, and lay ready to have "breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living soul," after the image of Him Who created him.

Thirdly, the aweful and unspeakable moment itself of the descent of the Blessed Comforter found them all with one accord in one place. They were not scattered abroad in their several habitations, some serving God in one way, some in another; but all were "with one accord in one place." They were "with one accord:" that was, as it were, the soul of their Christian unity: they were "in one place:" that was the body of it. And being thus prepared both in body and soul, they had the third and most glorious part of a Christian man's being, wonderfully added to them. "Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." And so from being only body and soul, they became body and soul and spirit; body and soul and all that they had, began to be sanctified in a heavenly manner, and transformed by the indwelling Spirit into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

This was God's blessing upon the Apostles, the holy women, the Mother of Jesus, and His disciples, they doing all in their power to keep up that heavenly Unity, for which their Lord had prayed so earnestly, and which He recommended to them in so many ways. Surely if ever we are to hope for a return of something like the blessing of Pentecost, a great outpouring of God's gracious Spirit, there is reason to think that some great and earnest longing and prayer for Unity, and self-denial for Unity's sake, must go before it. The body must be made one again, before the breath of that first life can be expected to be breathed into it. I say, made one again. For where now is that Christian Unity? Where are all, or the greater part, of Christians "with one accord in one place?" No man surely can deny that the Unity, for which our Lord prayed and which was so blessed by His Spirit, is, in a great measure, lost from among Christians. No man can tell how very serious the consequence of that loss may be, to his own soul, and to the Church generally: no man can be sure that his own personal unworthiness has not a great deal to do with the sad darkness and divisions which prevail, where all ought to be light and peace. Alas! how is this glorious and happy day turned into a day of grief and humiliation, because the members of Christ, being stained with many sins, have been permitted by the just Judge to separate themselves, or to cast one another off! "How is the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed!" To human eyes, all might almost seem lost in confusion. But He in His great mercy still permits us to pray, in humble following our Lord's intercession, that all Christians may again be one, again united in the one true Church, as we hope even now they may be invisibly united. He commands us to pray, and we do so pray, when we say, "Thy kingdom come." He commands us so to live, that that and our other prayers may be heard. He commands us, especially, to love one another; to make allowance for each other's doubts and difficulties; to avoid offence; to fast and pray and labour for peace. So doing, in the end we may trust to find His peace for ourselves: and we may do some little towards obtaining for His whole people the "blessing of Peace."

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