restrial globe,-rising higher and higher into the air, till a bright and dazzling cloud received him, and he disappeared from their enraptured sight. Still gazing after him, they kept their eyes intent on that part of the sky where they had lost him from their view,-imagining, perhaps, that he would descend again, as he had before done at his transfiguration. It appears that, at this moment, two of the heavenly beings were on the spot with them; but whether those beings were angels or whether they were glorified prophets, the Scripture does not inform us. They are described as "two men dressed in white apparel:" and the object of their being present on the occasion seems to have been to explain to the Apostles the marvellous event which they had witnessed; for they accosted them in these words :-" Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner, as ye have seen him go into heaven." This convinced them that their Lord would appear no more on earth, till he should come in glory to judge the world. They returned, therefore, submissively to Jerusalem, there to await the coming of that Comforter whom Christ had promised to send, and prepare to execute the office he had assigned them of reforming and enlightening the unconverted world.

The ingenuousness and candor of the Apostles and Evangelists are very remarkable :-for they never conceal their own misapprehensions, nor do they ever

attempt to throw a veil even over their own faults; but they faithfully and minutely record their mistakes. Ambition had been the ruling vice of their hearts; and they had pictured to their imagination scenes of earthly splendor in which they were to be conspicuous. From their very first attendance upon Christ, they had vainly hoped that the kingdom, of which he was often discoursing, was to be a "kingdom of this world,"-a kingdom of temporal power and grandeur, in the administration of which they were to have a distinguished share. No reproof could sufficiently rectify and subdue this flattering expectation. This was the reason, that, when he was apprehended by the Jews, they concluded that all their hopes of power were failing, and, therefore, they forsook their Master, and fled for their own safety. His crucifixion and ignominious death extinguished their ambition for a time, not by convincing them that it had ever been groundless, but because no new motives were left to make it effectual. Then they were obliged, by the very necessity of the case, though not without regret, absolutely to abandon even hope:-yet, when they collected again in a body and attended upon him after his resurrection, the old leaven of ambition began to ferment; and the very last question they asked him before his ascension, was, "whether he would at that time restore again the kingdom to Israel." He gently reproved them for allowing their thoughts to intrude into the secrets of Divine Providence, such

as the establishing or destroying of earthly kingdoms, "the times and seasons for which, the Almighty has reserved within his own power." He intimated to them, that they were not to be political, but religious ministers; that, as such, the power with which they were to be invested in quality of his Apostles, was the power of the Holy Spirit ;-and that they would possess it so largely and so conspicuously, as to be his witnesses, not only "in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria," but also "to the uttermost part of the earth." This said, he ascended in triumph to his Father, and left them, by the intervening declaration of the two heavenly messengers, fully and for ever convinced, that the empire which he came to establish was not of an earthly kind,—but that it was of a religious and spiritual nature, and preparatory to a kingdom of happiness and glory in the invisible world.

To bring about this necessary change in the minds of the Apostles,-to quench for ever in them the fervors of ambition,-to engage all their affections and passions on the side of heavenly truth,-to dissolve the connexion which had previovsly existed in their imaginations, between inward virtue and outward prosperity, between righteousness of soul and wordly grandeur,-things that, indeed, have no necessary connexion whatever ;-all these seem to have been the important results accruing to them from the Ascension of Christ. We never hear again of so much as one spark of earthly ambition lurking in

their minds. They nobly followed his example,— living, and preaching, and suffering, as he lived, and preached, and suffered on earth; that, at length, they might be glorified and might triumph with him in heaven.

Thus, by being admitted as eye-witnesses of our Saviour's glorious and miraculous departure to take possession of his mediatorial throne at the right hand of his Father who is in heaven, they gained a complete insight into the whole plan of the Christian dispensation, from its first promise and dawning in the patriarchal ages, down to the grand consummation of it, when he was to descend again, in the same august and glorious manner, to judge the world. "In like manner," said the Angels, "as ye have seen him go into heaven, shall he so come again." This illustrious event, therefore, of Christ's ascension was so far from being an exhibition of pomp, that it contributed to the purposes of God's moral government, and was explanatory of those purposes. It carried the attention, and winged the desires and passions of those who personally witnessed it, upward into heaven. It enabled them to preach, with energy and conviction to a listening world, that Divine doctrine which was to wean its followers from every sordid care and every base pursuit, and to make their life on earth a probationary state, in which they were to be qualified for a better.

The fact of Christ's ascension, thus visibly and infallibly known by the Apostles, was faithfully re

lated, and truly handed down to every succeeding generation of Christians,-seriously and conscientiously to be believed, on the credit and veracity of those who had been eye-witnesses of it. What, therefore, was to them a matter of fact, is become to us a matter of belief, or of faith. And hence we daily declare our sincere and cordial assent to these important truths, that "Christ ascended into heaven," and that he "sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty." But as this is a mode of expression condescendingly adapted to our mean and shallow capacities, we must always be careful to interpret it in such a sense as is worthy of the Divine perfections.

By heaven, therefore, we must here understand the seat of supreme dominion and power,-the supereminent region where God displays to admiring angels his most excelling glory, and a particular manifestation of his ineffable majesty. His presence is, indeed, universal; and, therefore it extends through infinite space. No place can be assigned or imagined, where He is not. But he can exhibit more particular glory, wherever and whenever he pleases : -and where this is done in the most conspicuous manner, there his throne, his majesty, and, in short, heaven itself, are said to be.

Thither is Christ exalted, and seated at the right hand of God. But we are not to understand this expression in a literal sense, as denoting an attitude of rest or of indolence. The Deity literally has

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