ST. MARK 505
somewhere on earth in His glorified body ; or, what is still more inconceivable and contradictory, have died a second time under circumstances that precluded any eye from witnessing it. But, finally, fix your attention upon that which, as being of paramount importance, imperatively challenges it, the authoritative seal of historical truth which He affixed Himself, in the presence of the whole world, upon the fact of His Ascension, by the outpouring, on the tenth day after His return to heaven, of the promised Holy Ghost. If anything be fitted to remove our last doubt, it is the day of Pentecost.^
2, The Ascension was expedient for tis.
When Christ left the earth He was not bereaving His people. He was depriving them of a lesser good in order to bestow upon them a richer and a nobler. We have that on His own plain and unequivocal assurance. On the night in which He was betrayed, when He was gathered with His disciples in the upper room, and when the shadow of the coming parting lay dark and heavy across His soul and theirs, He sought to cheer His fainting and broken-hearted followers by assuring them that it was for their good that He should leave them. "Never- theless," He said, " I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away." Now our Lord spoke many a hard saying during the years of His earthly sojourn, but He spoke none harder to believe than that. Those disciples of His that night absolutely and utterly refused to believe it. Yes, Christ spoke that night to deaf ears and incredulous hearts. If He had said, " It is expedient for the angelic host," who had missed the face of their blessed Lord for three and thirty years, they could have understood that. If he had said, " It is expedient for the saved and redeemed," whose joy would be increased by their Eedeemer's presence, they could have under- stood that. If He had said, " It is expedient for Me to go away," to leave the trials and tears and difficulties and struggles and poverty and pain of earth for the blessedness and glory of heaven, they could have understood that. But that it should be expedient for them to be deprived of their Lord, who had been their joy, their strength, their inspiration, their hope ; expedient for them to be deprived of His presence, and to be left friendless and alone in the midst of foes, like sheep in the midst of
' F. W. Krummaclier.
5o6 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
wolves — no, they could not understand that. Their Lord's words sounded to them like bitter irony. It was a hard saying, and they could not bear it. And yet we can see to-day, and these very disciples came themselves to see, that when Christ said, " It is expedient for you that I go away," He spoke the literal truth. For wherein does that expediency consist ? It consists in the universal presence of Christ. Christ went away from His disciples in order that — paradoxical as it may sound — He might come nearer to them. He left them in bodily presence, that spiritually He might be present with thera everywhere and at all times.
•jf There are times when we wish we had shared in the experi- ence of the first disciples, and had been privileged to hear our Lord's voice and see His face and feel His touch. The sentiment expressed in our children's hymn is at one time and another the sentiment of all of us —
I think, when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with them then. I wish that His hands had been placed on my head,
That His arms had been thrown around me, And that I might have seen His kind look when He said
"Let the little ones come unto Me."
And yet, natural though the sentiment of that hymn is, it is false. Why this pensive longing, this wistful regret for the days of Christ's earthly sojourn ? Is it that Christ is beyond our reach and call and touch to-day? As a matter of fact He has come nearer to us by going away.^
Lo, as some bard on isles of the ^gean.
Lovely and eager when the earth was young, ,
Burning to hurl his heart into a psean.
Praise of the hero from whose loins he sprung; —
He, I suppose, with such a care to carry. Wandered disconsolate and waited long,
Smiting his breast, wherein the notes would tarry, Chiding the slumber of the seed of song:
Then in the sudden glory of a minute
Airy and excellent the proem came. Bending his bosom, for a god was in it,
Waking the seed, for it had burst in flame.
* J. D. Jones.
ST. MARK 507
So even I athirst for his inspiring,
I who have talked with him forget again;
Yes, many days with sobs and with desiring Offer to God a patience and a pain;
Then thro' the mid complaint of my confession, Then thro' the pang and passion of my prayer,
Leaps with a start the shock of His possession, Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is there.^