He is present in the person of the Holy Ghost. Visibly, corporeally, locally, He is parted from us. Invisibly, spiritually, influentially, efficaciously, He is present with us. His Spirit is with us, and where His Spirit is there He is, or else the Godhead would be divisible. But as, during our Lord's stay on earth, the Spirit was not personally present, because the Son was here in the flesh and by visible presence, so now the Son is not present, because the Spirit is here by invisible presence, showing Himself to the eye of faith, as the Son when on earth to all our senses. The Ascension parted us from the Son and joined us with the Spirit. The Son went and the Spirit came.

This is of great importance, doctrinally. The fact that our Lord in His own Person is parted from His Church, is the master-key to many difficulties by which the minds of men have often been perplexed. Christ is not here.

He is in Heaven. This does not take life from His Church, and make it a soulless carcase from which life is fled, for the Spirit may inhabit the body although the Head is hidden in the sky; but it is fatal to all notions of a local presence. There cannot be any such change wrought upon the substance of bread and wine as to make our Lord's Body and Blood locally present in them here, because that Body and Blood are locally in Heaven. It cannot be right to adore the elements of bread and wine in the holy Eucharist as though they were our Lord Himself; or to adore Him as locally present on the altar by means of the elements, for, in either case, we must suppose our Lord to be here on earth and not parted from us. Rather, we must adore Him at God's right hand in Heaven, and use the elements

which our eyes see as a ladder by which to mount to that which is unseen. The presence of the sacrament is essentially spiritual. Our Lord is in the sacrament, and if He is there His body is there in some manner, because His body is inseparable from Himself; but the essence of His presence is spiritual. He is there by His Spirit. He is present after a spiritual manner, and His body, though there, is not there locally and as a body, for in body He is parted from us, but by virtue of that presence of the Comforter Who is now His substitute on earth, and quickens all His ordinances as means of life unto our souls.

our Lord is here, not our Lord Himself.

The Spirit of

He was parted from them. This must never be forgotten. The visible and fleshly presence of the Son is taken from us. The invisible presence of the Spirit is given us instead.

II. Mark, next, the carrying. “He was carried up into Heaven." He was carried. This may not mean more than that He went up. It may be but a manner of speech, as though we should say of a bird that it was borne aloft, though even then we should mean that the air or wings bore it. But when we know that Angels were present upon that hill side, and remember that these ministering spirits were His servants whenever any great thing happened to Him, we see in it more than this. In every great epoch of His life Angels attended on Him and took part in the transaction. Gabriel ministered at His conception, and announced His birth into the world, as the chief of that mighty host which sang in the ears of men the songs of Heaven. An Angel saved Him from Herod, and conducted Him to Egypt. Angels ministered to Him in the wilderness, and bore Him in their hands,

that He might not be dashed in pieces by that hard trial which He there endured. An Angel strengthened Him in His agony. He was kept by Angels— "one at the head, and the other at the feet"-during His short rest within the tomb; and Angels were the heralds of His triumphant rising. Remembering, then, how intimately Angels were associated with Him in His mediating work on earth, and marking, as we must, that nothing great or memorable can happen to Him but Angels must appear upon the scene, to indicate the nature of that flaming retinue by which He is attended, we can scarcely hesitate to declare that as a greater than Elijah was here so a greater chariot carried Him; and that the wings of Angels, the presence, the power, the glory of angelic hosts were round about Him, in a cloud of radiance which was not visible to eyes of sense,-conducting Him with shouts of triumph, and the songs which were unheard below, along the sacred way which leads from the plain and humiliation of earth to the exalted blessedness of Heaven.

It was to Heaven that they carried Him. God is a Spirit, and is not subject to those laws of space and time which are the condition both of our present thoughts and of our state on earth as His finite creatures. Place cannot be to Him what it is to us. He is in all places. He fills all space. The whole creation is not vast enough to contain Him. And yet it is evident that He would always associate our thoughts about Himself with that Heaven of Heavens which He speaks of as His especial dwelling-place, and the scene upon which His perfect glory shines. He would define for us our notions regarding Himself and His presence. As He would teach us

upon earth, that while no place is absent from Him and nothing is hidden from His eyes, yet the house which is devoted to His service, and the place where two or three gather together to give glory to His name, is like the Ark on which the Shekinah shone manifestly, so He would also teach us that there is one place which is, as it were, the temple of all creation, the one central spot in the immense universe, in which the fulness of His glory is, from whence all His love and brightness emanates, and to which whatever is best among His human creatures shall be drawn hereafter, to live in the midst of light, and be sustained upon the element of love and blessedness. It was to that place, to that central sun from which all glory radiates, that our Lord was carried in the midst of that angelic cloud which compassed Him about. And we are told also that there was another cloud-a visible cloud, which was a shadow of the cloud which was invisible-wrapping itself in folds around Him, and hiding Him from human sight. The last which His disciples saw of Him was His entrance into the cloud. I need not now speak of the theology of clouds, though clouds are very closely connected with the presence and manifestation of God on certain remarkable occasions. But you remember the cloud of the transfiguration, and the clouds which St. John speaks of when he says, "Behold He cometh with clouds." In clouds He went and in clouds He shall come again. I will only now point you to the mystery which surrounds Him, and which is symbolized by this visible cloud. He was parted from us in a cloud. He is hidden from us in that cloud of mystery which, like the emerald rainbow, is around the throne. Within

will

depths of wonder which are infinite, amid the secret things of Heaven which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, He now dwells, higher than all created things, second to the Father only, with all power given to Him both in Heaven and in earth, at once the Crown of created things and their great Creator. But all to us is mystery. We know that our own flesh is in Heaven and beside the throne. We know that one of us has all things in His power, so that He can do for us whatever He thinks good, and can bestow ́upon us every blessing which in our present state we are able to receive. We know that through Him the Father is pleased with us, and for His sake freely gives us all things. But what Heaven is,-wherein His bliss and ours consists,-what it is to see God in the flesh, the nature of spirits, and many like things, all this is mystery. We have lost Him in a cloud. That He is in the cloud we know. That perfect man as well as perfect God is in the Heaven of Heavens. Of this we are certain. But all beyond is veiled. We could neither have seen such glory with our human eyes had it been pictured to us, nor have understood such wonders had they been revealed. And therefore the Spirit of Truth has drawn a curtain between us and them, and would say if I may venture so to speak for Him-'Wait a space. The time shall be when that curtain shall be drawn aside, and that veil shall be rent which now separates between things seen and things unseen. Now thou must believe and wonder, in order that thou mayest see. And then thou shalt still more

to us,

little

wonder when allowed to see.'

The Spirit of God would at once define our thoughts and land us in a mystery. He would show