Secondly, the attempt to separate the Christian facts from Christian experience is not well based. We may rejoice to witness that the life of faith now is the being in Christ in a riclier .sense than the being with Him before He ascended. The acknowledgment, however, neither disproves the necessity for His life before the Ascen.sion, nor proves tlie necessity to visualize it after the Ascen- sion. The Increase of faith may not, indeed, come by a mere ' return to Jesus ' as He was known before His death ; but how can He as ascended be fruitfully contemplated by ignoring His earthly existence ? Then, again, wherein lay the need for the disciples to give outward form to their emo- tions more than for n.s now ? The narratives they have given us, it is averred, are due to their spiritual imagination embodying in mythic form their spiritual experience. The disciple lives by faith and not by sight, it is argued, hence Christian experience must dispense with outward events.* There is in both statements a gross ex,aggeration. The full glory of Christ's Person is, of course, im- measurable : no vision or bodily appearance can possibly exhibit it except in faint traces. Is the vision therefore useless ? The contrary is the very principle of the Incarnation ; God revea!ling Himself in personal, eventful form. 'The Christian facts underlie Christian faith, and make it progressively eflective ' (Westcott, ' Work,' 2). And this because they manifest the Person of Christ, by them His Person is brought within the range of our ex- perience ; they are the channel of His communicat- ing His power to us. The facts and the faith are vitally related. They form one reality. They are distinguishable as aspects of that reality, but not to be separated. In explaining the rea*lity it is not legitimate to make the distinction and then proceed to reject one of its terms, resolving, as may happen, on the one hand, the experience into an aftermath of the event ; or, on the other, the event into a vivid picture of the experience. In both cases the witness is invalidated by imagina- tion. The second of those tendencies is aggres- sively in vogue. If carried to its logical issue, it must eviscerate the Ascension-experience of Christ of all objective substance, and expunge the narra- tive from the gospel. But to do this is to create a lacuna in the facts which will prove intolerable.
On the whole, the new method of psychological analysis of the primitive Church consciousness has brought no new danger. In at least three respects it is beneficial : it has given the coup dc grace to earlier negations (cf. Schmiedel in above cited article) ; it has withdrawn attention from the details to the belief itself as the heart of the question, as the better mind of the Church insists ; * The references in the foreproing section are to the school of Ritsohl on the one hand (cf. Herrmann, Communion with God, etc.), and to such theistio theologians as Martineaii and Estlin Carpenter (cf. the former's Seat of AuthorUi/, also sermon on •Ascension 'in vol. entitled J\'o(wnaJ Duites ; and the latter's The Fust Three Goepels.
it has broadened the range of points to be con sidered, opening the door for a class familiar to traditionalists but hitherto excluded by advanced critical investigation.
5. Gcncml conseqiiences for Christian faith.— Belief in Christ's Ascension involves several general consequences of an interesting kind. From the earliest time it was seen, c.rj., to be a type of the ascension of all believers. ' If Heaven is His true abode, it is also theirs ; and this as the natural goal of human nature, the end continuous with the beginnings of human life on earth. For Christ, His Ascension was the assumption of His own proper life, the orderly passing into its full exer- cise and enjoyment ; for the Christian, it is the orderly completion of his life recreated in Christ. It is not simply the ideal to be set before his natural life here, and to be realized by modifica- tion or development hereafter. The earthly life is renewed by being incorporated into Christ, through whose Spirit a new power enters into it ; he is a ' new creature. ' But the new creation is his own proper life, to live below it is to degrade Ids nature. The renewed earthly nature is already begun to he taken into God ; like Christ, believers are ascend- ing even here. To this process the ascension is but the natural close. As such it is at once the entering into the heavenly inheritance of blessing and the entering upon the triumph of them that endure.
Again, the Ascension of Christ assures and de- velons the desire for immortality. It has greatly quickened interest in the hope of life after death, and encouraged the conviction tliat it will be justi- fied by the event. Tliere are 'natural intimations of immortality.' There is a practically universal remonstrance of the human heart against tlie gra^•e. The highest knowledge of this world has always been optimistic of reaching a world of solved problems and of realized ideals. The latest gift of science to mankind is the gospel of hope which is contained in the doctrine of evolution, ' man is not man as yet, but in completed man begins anew, a tendency to God' (Ascent through Christ, iii. 3). But of all this there never has been real certainty. The hope is but a longing and an inference at the best. Did Christ actually ascend ? The conviction that He did has for centuries been rooted in Chris- tian minds, and has reacted on the general hope. It has assured them that the spirit in man is more powerful than death ; it has furnished the proof, as it is the illustration, of man's final destiny. That conviction, be it observed, is not an inference from the general hope. It is a fruit of fellowshi]) with Christ. It is a religious experience : the ex- perience, viz., of men who, united to Christ, share in the power of His Spirit, and liy that power enter upon endless life. Further, t'hri.st's Ascen- sion offers a suggestion of important possibilities for the bodily nature. There is to bo ' a redemp- tion of our body' (Ro 8=^); tliere is 'an image of the heavenly' (1 Co 15^'') we must hear; a ' spiritual body'(v.«), the ' body of glory' (I'li 3-'), that will be raised; 'our mortal bodies' are to be 'quick- ened' (Ro 8"). The future life is not to he one of pure sjiirit : it is to be 'clothed uiion" (2 Co ,')-'). In no respect did Christ asMimr fiiii.lanirntal divergence between His n.-ilun- .uiil Iiuhkui luiiuro. The Apostolic thought dwells ,,„ Mi. ,,ii,.|i,.-s xMih His brethren. Later theoUi-y hiMimie .■uidacions, and affirmed explicitly, 'Man is to be made God.' Manhood is to be taken up into the Godhead. That the body in some mysterious manner is to participate in this glorification would appear to be necessary, however difficult the conception. The one precedent for the thought is Christ's, whose body was not dissolved but transfigured. See BODV.