5IO THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
^ The exalted Man, sitting at the right hand of God, is the Pattern of what is possible for humanity, and the prophecy and pledge of what will be actual for all that love Him and bear the image of Him upon earth, that they may be conformed to the image of His glory, and be with Him where He is. What firm- ness, what reality, what solidity this thought of the exalted bodily Christ gives to the else dim and vague conceptions of a Heaven beyond the stars and beyond our present experience' I believe that no doctrine of a future life has strength and substance enough to survive the agonies of our hearts when we part from our dear ones — the fears of our spirits when we look into the unknown inane future for ourselves — except only this which says Heaven is Christ and Christ is Heaven, and points to Him and says, " Where he is, there also shall his servants be." ^
We know not when, we know not where, We know not what that world will be; But this we know — it will be fair To see.
With hearts athirst and thirsty face,
We know and know not what shall be : Christ Jesus bring us of His grace To see.
Christ Jesus bring us of His grace,
Beyond all prayers our hope can pray, One day to see Him face to Face, One day.2
2. The Ascension of our blessed Lord involves the glorifica- tion of the whole human race. In His Incarnation Christ identified Himself once for all with human-kind. He bound us in a close and vital relationship to Himself. He became bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. He shared our lot and made us partakers of His destiny. The highest interests of humanity became embodied in Him. If the powers of evil could prevail over Him, then they might soon enslave the whole human race. If He should overcome death, and pass through the grave and the gate of death to a joyful resurrection. He would thus open to all mankind the gate of everlasting life. If God should exalt Him with great triumph unto His Kingdom in heaven. He would by that same act exalt all His faithful followers to the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before.
^ A. Maclaren. ' Christina G. Rossetti,
ST. MARK 511
Thou hast raised our human nature On the clouds to God's right hand;
There we sit in heavenly places, There with Thee in glory stand.
Jesus reigns, adored by angels;
Man with God is on the throne; Mighty Lord, in Thine Ascension
We by faith behold our own.^
3. Christ's sitting at the right hand of God presents to our view a Saviour at Rest. That session expresses the idea of absolute repose after sore conflict. It is the same thought that is expressed in those solemn Egyptian colossal statues of deified conquerors, elevated to mysterious union with their gods, and yet men still. Sitting before their temples in perfect stillness, with their mighty hands lying quiet on their restful limbs ; with calm faces out of which toil and passion and change seem to have melted, they gaze out with open eyes as over a silent, prostrate world. So, with the Cross behind, with all the agony and weariness of the arena, the dust and the blood of the struggle left beneath, Christ " sitteth at the right hand of God the father Almighty." He rests after His Cross, not because He needed repose even after that terrible effort, but in token that His work was finished and perfected, that all which He had come to do was done ; and in token that the Father, too, beheld and accepted His finished work. Therefore, the session of Christ at the right hand of God is the proclamation from Heaven of what He cried with His last dying breath upon the Cross : " It is finished ! " It is the declaration that the world has had all done for it that Heaven can do for it. It is the declaration that all which is needed for the regeneration of humanity has been lodged in the very heart of the race, and that henceforward all that is required is the evolving and the development of the consequences of that perfect work which Christ offered upon the Cross. So the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the priests who stood " daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices " which " can never take away sin," with " this Man who, after he had offered one
J Clir, W ordsworth.
512 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the right hand of God";
testifying thereby that His Cross is the complete, sufficient,
perpetual atonement and satisfaction for the sins of the whole
world.
^ It would seem as though one could hear the antiphonal
singing of the heavenly choirs, as this perfect One passes into
heaven.
Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates;
And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors:
And the King of glory shall come in,
is the exulting challenge of the angels escorting Him. To this comes back the question, inspired by the passion to hear again the story of the victory,