sumably capable of reaching its end. Underlying that process lay His Divine Being, in its inherent power incapable of growth, no attainment but original endowment. The return to the Father in the Ascension-act marked the perfection of the human process in harmonious realization within the Divine powers of His Person.
Still further, the work oi Christ remained ineom- jilete without the Ascension. It has been objected against His teaching that it is incomplete as a system and incoherent in its details. There is ground for the complaint. His ministry bears traces throughout of its preparatory character. His teaching is at times jmrabolic, Mis acts often typical. His method as much an ellbrt to create a new power of insight as to oiler a new sura of truths. He holds out hopes of a more immediate personal, if spiritual, direction, under the force of which a richer fulness of His truth shall be gained. He anticipates future acts of His work which are not simply symbolic of His utterances, but neces- sary to their interpretation. A future is always with Him : separate from the present in its con- ditions and gifts and in the nature of His agency, so separate as justly to be entitled to the name of a new 'dispensation.' The Ascension marks the transition. It has no substantial independence. It closes the public ministry ; it opens the con- tinuation of that ministry in the new age of the Spirit. It announces that the great human facts necessary to redemption are finished, and that tlie results are henceforth to be increasingly realized. His saving energies are consummated in His in- carnate and glorified Personality : the departure is necessitated that they may not remain a legacy of dead and inoperative information. For this reason the Ascension, as thepassing into exaltation, stands at the beginning of the fnsk x/iin'/iKil ixprricnces of the Apostolic age. It eN|ilaiii,s the extraordinary change in the mind of the ^\po.>tles. Tlicy felt an intense conviction. Because there had been no loss, their conception of Christ has been cleared, His exaltation seen. His perpetual action promised. Under the new light they jiroceed to organize the momentous work of the CInirch. On precisely the same basis they instruct their hearers and develop their doctrine. The centre of the missionary dis- courses is the Exalted Christ ; intimate communion with Him exalted is normative to their thought. That truth fills up their entire consciousness and crushes out every other thought. It forms tlie firm foundation 'on which their whole life and mind are built u]). Tliey are witnesses to one great fact. The XT doeuinents set forth much in the way of new truths and new etiiics, but their distinctive testimony is to a new intense experience, which has altered the entire character of those who share it. That experience is everywhere traced in direct derivation from Christ glorified.
But the Christ glorified is the Jesus of history. The new experience is related to the acts of His life in a vital way. A distinction may be drawn between them, but only as two aspects of one reality, not as two terms, the one of which may be regarded as the mythic symbol of the other, fioth terms must be safeguarded. Hence, if the Lord now glorified was once within the conditions of human experience, cognoscible to human faculties, and has passed from them, the question cannot be silenced, Hoto did He pass? The essential point is His passage out of those earthly conditions of life within which He had hitherto been known. Must not such passing have been visible? The bodily Ascension is the answer.
3. Historicitij. — The evidence for the Ascension is diiect and indirect, (a) Tlie direct witness is meagre. There is but one description that may serve as a basis of fact, v^z. the narrative in Ac
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11-12 'pj,g other passages (Mk 16'-', Jyk 24") are under the highest critical suspicion as being not original to their texts. They suffer, moreover, under two further disadvantages : their vagueness, their summary character. They appear to give results, being less accounts of detail than confessions of faith. Their value is similar in character to that of the Ejiistles ; tliey testify to the existence of a widespread crystallized tradition in the first century. Does the record in Ac 1'"'- give more? It belongs to the less authentic of the sources of the author. If the author be St. Luke, he cannot be reckoned an eye-witness ; but lie may furnish the information of an eye-witness. Tlie narrative bears every trace of careful statement and of non- reflective features. Even if indications of idealiza- tion of the past occur in this first part of the book elsewhere, there are none here ; the phrasing is simple and matter of fact ; tliere is no sentiment, nor sorrow : only a glad vision evoking worsliip, challenging thought, inspiring courage. Tlie dis- crepancies between this account and that in Lk. are probably superficial. Bethany lay on tlie further or eastern slope of the Mt. of Olives, about a mile down from the summit. The road from Jerusalem passed along over the lower wooded ridges, on one of which in all likelihood, just above the village (eus Trp6s) over against it, the Ascension took place. There was another route leading nearer the summit, on which later tradition sought the site and erected a church. Neither Acts nor Lk. means to give an exact .spot. The fragmentari- ness of the narrative has created difficulty. Several considerations are adduced in reply. For one thing, the Ascension is plainly regarcled as belonging to the Kesurrection appearances, viz. as the appear- ance in which Christ's final vanishing took place, and notable simply on tliat ground. For another, it is ])ointed out that the NT writers take a view of history which does not correspond to modern requirements. They write not to prove truths denied, but to illustrate truths accepted. They do not seek to prove the occurrence of events or to escape ' discrepancies ' ; they seek rather to emphasize the significance of events. And to the significance of the Ascension there is abundant reference. A suggestion, again, of great interest as justifying the sparse particulars given in the Gospels, is that a sort of convention forbade the introduction of the theme into a narrative of Christ's life, the Kesurrection being regarded as the culminating jioint of His earthly existence.