Life is one long-drawn anguish of decay. Where Thou wert wont to go we also went: Why not to-day?"
Nevertheless a cloud cut off their gaze :
They tarry to build up Jerusalem, Watching for Him, while thro' the appointed days Ho watches them.
' J. Kelman, EpJumera EUrnitatis, 140.
ST. JOHN XVI. 7 207
They do His Will and doing it rejoice,
Patiently glad to spend and to be spent : Still He speaks to them, still they hear His Voice And are content.^
(3) He would he nearer than lefore. — Our first thought may perhaps be, Who can be so near Jesus now as the Apostles were during all the time that He went in and out among them ? Yet these same men found themselves far nearer Him after He had gone away. In the days of His flesh He had sat with them ; but after His ascension He not only seemed to hover round them, and brood over them, but He sent His Spirit to dwell within them. And thus believers now, seeing that they possess the indwelling Spirit, are really much nearer the Lord Jesus Christ than Peter and James and John were during the time from the baptism of John, unto that same day that He was taken up from them.
But God is never so far off
As even to be near; He is within : our spirit is
The home He holds most dear.
To think of Him as by our side
Is almost as untrue As to remove His throne beyond
Those skies of starry blue.
So all the while I thought myself
Homeless, forlorn, and weary, Missing my joy, I walked the earth,
Myself God's sanctuary.^
(4) And He would he nearer, not to them only, hut to all. — Upon Wesley's tablet in Westminster Abbey may be read that proud word of his: "I look upon all the world as my parish." The qualifying words have no place on the tablet : " Thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty to declare, unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation." Wesley's heart was as big as the world, but he could only be in one little corner of it at once ; even
» C. G. Rossetti, Poems, 170. 2 p. W. Faber.
2o8 AN EXPEDIENT DEPARTURE
there he could speak only to those that were " willing to hear." What limitations are these ! The Spirit's parish is the world. Every corner of it, every soul in it, owns His presence, and none can fence himself off from His approach or shut up the avenues by which conviction may come home.^
^ Suppose Jesus were still in the Holy Land, at Jerusalem. Every ship that started for the East would be crowded with Christian pilgrims. Every train flying through Europe would be thronged with people going to see Jesus. Every mail-bag would be full of letters from those in difficulty and trial, and gifts of homage to manifest men's gratitude and love. You yourself, let us say, are in one of those ships. The port, when you arrive after the long voyage, is blocked with vessels of every flag. With much difficulty you land, and join one of the long trains starting for Jerusalem. Far as the eye can reach, the caravans move over the desert in an endless stream. You do not mind the scorching sun, the choking dust, the elbowing crowds, the burning sands. You are in the Holy Land, and you will see Jesus ! Yonder, at last, in the far distance, are the glittering spires of the Holy Hill, above all the burnished Temple dome beneath which He sits. But what is that dark seething mass stretching for leagues and leagues between you and the Holy City ? They have come from the north and from the south, and from the east and from the west, as you have, to look upon their Lord. They wish
That His hands might be placed on their head; That His arms might be thrown around them.
But it cannot be. You have come to see Jesus, but you will not see Him. They have been there weeks, months, years, and have not seen Him. They are a yard or two nearer, and that is all. The thing is impossible. It is an anti-climax, an absurdity. It would be a social outrage ; it would be a physical impossibility .^
(5) But again, it was expedient that He should go away in order that they might be weaned from thoughts of earthly greatness. — For Christ in heaven is and must be infinitely greater to the soul and heart of men than even He could be, seen by us with our bodily eyes on earth, living with us, and belonging to this earthly state of things which is for the present life — infinitely greater even than if He had been with us in the glorified body which
' J. Telford, The Story of the Upper Room, 184. ' H. Drummond, The Ideal Life, 66.
ST. JOHN XVI. 7 209
He had after His resurrection, and in which He appeared and conversed with His disciples during the forty days before He ascended. It is because His Kingdom is not of this world — ^it is because He came to open and draw up men's hearts to what is infinitely above this world, and anything that ever belonged to it — it is because He came to teach, and to give them what " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," of the good things " which God hath prepared for them that love him" — it was for this that, having shown Himself in the world. He did not stay in it. If He had stayed in it, our thoughts would have been towards Him, as still belonging to this world. We see how difficult it was to wean the thoughts of His own disciples from hopes and expecta- tions of earthly greatness. " Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " was their question when He had risen. How much more difficult it would have been if He had still continued with them, in human form, even though glorified ! How could that lifting up of their minds to what was spiritual and eternal have been accomplished ? How could they have been taught those great lessons of inner and spiritual religion, if the great Object of their faith was still visibly present with them, and as one of them ? How could they have been made to feel as they did, that the Kingdom of God was within them, that man has to deal and commune with his God in the secret reahty and truth of his heart and spirit — how could they have been made to unlearn all that was outward and visible in their religious thoughts, and have had the eyes of their understanding opened to eternal truths, and to a religion that was all of heaven and in heaven — if they still could find, and see, and hear on earth the form and voice of the greatest of their teachers ?