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presented could not have been freed. But was it enough that the Mediator should be quickly released from the grave, and that our nature should be thereby pronounced capable of the forgiveness and favor of its Maker? It is here that we have to make our supposition, that the resurrection had not been followed by the ascension of Christ. It is sufficiently easy to certify ourselves of the indispensableness of the resurrection; for we see at once the force of the distinction drawn by St. Paul, that Christ was "delivered for our offences," but "raised again for our justification." But it is quite another thing to certify ourselves of the indispensableness of the ascension; for, when our justification had been completed, might not the risen Mediator have remained with the church, gladdening it perpetually by the light of his presence? To this we reply, that the reception of our nature, in the person of our surety, into heavenly places, was as necessary to our comfort and assurance as its deliverance from the power of the grave. We ask you only to remember, that, as originally created, man moved in the immediate presence of God; and that the state from which he fell was one of direct

that the object of the remainder of our discourse is simple and definite: we have to search out, and set before you, reasons, from which it may appear that we are bound to exult in the ascension of our Lord; or which, in other words, might justify our joining in the summons, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors." Now let us just suppose that Christ had not been exalted to the right hand of God, and let us see whether the supposition would not materially affect our spiritual condition. We know that Christ had taken our nature into union with the divine, on purpose that he might effect its reconciliation to God. In order to this, it was necessary that he should suffer and die; for the claims of justice on the sinful could not, so far as we know, have been otherwise satisfied. And he willingly submitted to the endurance: "being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." But there was a virtue in this death, which made it expiatory of the sins of the world; so that when the Redeemer had breathed his soul into the hands of his Father, the offending nature was reconciled, and the human race placed within reach of forgiveness. Accordingly, it was just-intercourse and blissful communion ly to be expected that the resurrection would quickly follow the crucifixion of Christ; for justice could not detain our surety in the grave, when the claims, which he had taken on himself, were discharged. Hence the resurrection of Christ was both the proof and consequence of the completeness of his mediatorial work: he could not have risen had he not exhausted the penalty incurred by humankind; and, when he rose, God may be said to have proclaimed to the universe the sufficiency of the sacrifice, and his acceptance of it as an atonement for the sins of the world. If Christ had remained in the grave, and his flesh had seen corruption, we could only have regarded him as a man like one of ourselves; at least, we could never have regarded him as a substitute, whose vicarious endurances had been effectual on our behalf; for so long as he had been still "holden of death," we must have felt that he was a debtor to justice, and that, therefore, those whom he re

with his Maker. And Christ had un-
dertaken to counteract the effects of
apostacy; as the second Adam, he en-
gaged to place human nature in the
very position from which it had been
withdrawn by the first. But was there
any demonstration that such undertak-
ing, such engagement, had been fully
performed, until Christ ascended up to
heaven, and entered, as a man, into the
holy place? So long as he remained
on earth, there was no evidence that
he had won for our nature re-admis-
sion to the paradise from which it had
been exiled. Whilst he
went about
doing good," and preaching the Gos-
pel of the kingdom, that nature was
still under the original curse, for the
atoning sacrifice had not been present-
ed. Whilst he hung on the cross, that
curse was in the act of being exhaust-
ed; and when he came forth from the
tomb, it was pronounced to be whol-
ly removed. But the taking away the
curse was not necessarily the restoring
the nature to all the forfeited privileges

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and blessings: it was the rendering have assurance that we shall spring the nature no longer obnoxious to God's from the dust and soar into God's prerighteous anger, rather than the rein- sence. stating it in God's love and favor. It is altogether imaginable that enough might have been done to shield the nature from punishment, and yet not enough to place it in happiness. And what we contend is, that, up to the moment of the ascension, no evidence was given on the latter point, though there was abundance on the former. The whole testimony of the resurrection was a testimony to the exhaustion of the curse; it went not beyond this; and therefore could not prove that the flaming sword of the cherub was sheathed, and that man might again enter the garden of the Lord."

And if Christ had never returned, in human nature, to his Father; if, having been delivered from the grave, he had remained upon earth, in however glorious a character, we must always have feared that our redemption was incomplete, and that we had not been restored to the forfeited position. For, whatsoever Christ did, he did as our representative; and whatsoever was awarded to him, was awarded to him as our representative. We are reckoned as having fulfilled in him the righteousness, and endured in him the penalties of the law: turn to Scripture, and you find that we were circumcised with Christ, that with him we were crucified, with him buried, with him raised up; for in him was our nature circumcised, crucified, buried, and raised; and what was done to the nature, was counted as done to the individuals to whom that nature might belong. Hence, in following Christ up to his resurrection, we follow our nature a long way towards full recovery from the consequences of apostacy; but, if we stop at the resurrection, we do not reach the reinstatement of that nature in all its lost honors. In order to this we must have that nature received into the paradise of God, and there made partaker of endless felicity. Christ, raised from the dead, and remaining always upon earth, would only have assured us of deliverance from the grave, and protracted residence on this globe: we must have Christ raised from the dead, and received up into glory, ere we can

Are we not then borne out in the assertion, that we have as great interest in the ascension of our Lord, as in any other of the events of his marvellous history; and that it would be almost as fatal to our hopes, to prove, that, having been raised, he had never been glorified, as to prove, that, having been slain, he had never been raised? In each case there would be a stopping short of the complete counteraction of the consequences of apostacy; in each case, that is, evidence would be wanting that the Redeemer accomplished what he undertook. We can go, therefore, with the disciples to the deserted sepulchre of Jesus, and rejoice in the proof that "his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption." We triumph in the resurrection of our Lord; we see in it the resurrection of our nature; and we expect, with exultation, a moment when all that are in the grave shall hear a divine voice, and come forth indestructible. But we are not, we cannot be, content with this. Our thoughts are upon scenes which man traversed in his innocence, or rather upon scenes of which these were but types. We remember the garden where God condescended to associate familiarly with his creature; and we ask, whether the decree of exile have indeed been repealed, and whether the banished nature be free to reenter the glorious abode? If so, that nature must ascend in the person of our representative; we are still chained to earth, if Christ, as our forerunner, have not passed into the heavens. What then? shall it be in sorrow, shall it be in fear, that we follow the Redeemer to Bethany, when about to depart from this earth; shall we wish to detain him amongst us, as though satisfied with the emancipation of our nature from the power of death, and not desiring its admission into all the splendors of immortality? Not so, angelic hosts, ye who are waiting to attend the Mediator, as he ascends to his Father. We know and feel that Christ must depart from us, if he have indeed secured our entrance to the bright land, where ye behold the universal King. And, therefore, we will join

your strain; we will echo your melo- | in his being invested with glories which dy. Yes, though it be to ask that he require his separation from the church, may be withdrawn from his church, that men might well join with angels that he may no longer be amongst us in summoning the gates of the celesto guide, and cheer, and control, we tial city to fly open for his admission. too will pour forth the summons, We would bring to your recollection, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and that God had covenanted to bestow be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, great honor on his Son, in recompense and the King of glory shall come in." of the work of our redemption. And But this can perhaps hardly be said though it be true that this honor was to put the necessity for Christ's exal- chiefly to be put on the humanity of tation in a sufficiently strong light. It the Savior, it may easily be shown certainly appears, from our foregoing that some portion of it appertained to reasoning, that, unless the resurrection the divinity. We are, of course, well had been followed by the ascension of aware that it was not possible for our Lord, we should have wanted evi- Christ, as God, to receive additions to dence of the restoration of our nature his essential glory; and, accordingly, to the dignity and happiness which it is generally concluded that the glory had been lost by transgression. But conferred on him at his exaltation, was this evidence is furnished by the sim- a glory which devolved exclusively on ple fact of the ascension: it does not his manhood. It ought however to be seem to require the continued absence borne in mind, that, though Christ was of Christ from his church. If we are to the eternal Son of God, equal to the join the angels in the summons of our Father in all properties and prerogatext, we must be supposed to feel and tives of Deity, he had been but imperexpress joy that Christ was about to fectly manifested under the old dispenmake his dwelling in heavenly places. sation, so that he received not the hoAngels exulted, because the eternal nors due to him as essentially divine. Word was once more to manifest his You can hardly say that the second presence in the midst of their abode, and third Persons of the Trinity were and to be again the light and glory of so revealed, before the coming of Christ, their city. But why should we share as to be secure of the reverence, or this exultation? We may allow it to worship, to which they have right as be cause of rejoicing, that our nature one with the first. We are now indeed was admitted, in the person of Christ, able to find indications in the Old Tesinto the presence of God; but we seem tament of the doctrine of the Trinity: to need nothing beyond this: if Christ but this is mainly because of the light had immediately returned to his church, which is thrown on its pages from we should have had the same assurance those of the New. If we had nothing as now of our restoration to divine but the Old Testament, if we were favor, and the advantages, in addition, wholly without the assistance of a of Christ's personal presence with his fuller revelation, we should be amply people. informed as to the unity of the Godhead, and thus be secured against polytheism: but probably we should have but faint apprehensions of a Trinity in the Godhead, and be unable to worship Father, Son, and Spirit, as the eternal, indivisible, Jehovah.

Now we do not deny, that, in order to our joining heartily in the summons of our text, it is necessary that we should be prepared to rejoice in the exaltation, as well as in the ascension, of our Lord, in his remaining in heavenly places, as well as in his departure from earth. We must take into account the consequences of the ascension, as well as the ascension itself: for angels, undoubtedly, had regard to these, when manifesting gladness at the return of God's Son. And we are quite ready to carry our argument to the length thus supposed, and to contend that we have such interest in the exaltation of Christ,

Accordingly, we have always agreed with those who would argue, that the plan of redemption was constructed with the design of revealing to the world the Trinity in the Godhead; so that, whilst the thing done should be the deliverance of our race, the manner of doing it might involve the manifestation of those Divine Persons, who had heretofore scarce had place in hu

man theology.* It was a fuller discovery of the nature of God, as well as the complete redemption of the nature of man, which was contemplated in the arrangements made known to us by the Gospel; the Son and the Spirit came forth from the obscurity in which they had been heretofore veiled, that they might show their essential Deity in the offices assumed, and establish a lasting claim to our love by the benefits conferred. And when Christ, in that prayer to his Father which occupies the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, and which was offered but a short time before his crucifixion, entreated that he might be glorified with a glory which had originally been his, "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was," must he not have referred to a glory appertaining to his divine nature, rather than to his human? Whatever the glory that was about to descend on the manhood, it could not be described as a glory which he had had with the Father before the world was: his humanity was not then in being; and we know not how in any but a most forced sense, it could be said that Christ possessed, from all eternity, the glory which was to be given to the humanity not then produced. But if you consider our Lord as referring to his divinity, it is not difficult to understand his petition. From everlasting he had been the Son of God; and, therefore, there had belonged to him an immeasurable glory, a glory of which no creature could partake, inasmuch as it was derived from his being essentially divine. But, though essentially divine, he had not been manifested as divine; and hence the glory, which had appertained to him before the world was, had not yet become conspicuous: it was still, at least, partially concealed; for creatures had not yet been fully taught that they were to "honor the Son, even as they honor the Father." But now he was on the point of being exalted; and his prayer was, that he might be glorified with the very glory which he had originally possessed; in other words, that he might be display

* Waterland, Bishop Bull, &c.

ed to the world as actually divine, and thus might be openly, what he had all along been essentially, glorious with the glories of absolute Deity.

And you must all confess that it is a great point with us as christians, a point in comparison of which almost every other may be regarded as secondary, that the essential deity of Christ should be fully demonstrated, and that there should be nothing to encourage the opinion that he was but a creature, however loftily endowed. But suppose that Christ had remained with us upon earth; or suppose, that, having ascended, and thus proved the completeness of the redemption of our nature, he had returned to abide continually with his church. Would the covenanted recompense, so far as it consisted in the manifestation of his deity, have then been bestowed? Could Christ's equality with the Father have been shown convincingly to the world, whilst he still moved, in the form of a man, through scenes polluted by sin? To us it seems, that, under such a dispensation as the present, the continued residence of the Mediator upon earth would practically be regarded as contradicting his divinity. The question would perpetually be asked, whether this being could indeed be essentially divine, who was left, century after century, in a state of humiliation? for it must be humiliation for Deity to dwell in human form on this earth, so long at least as it is the home of wickedness and misery. And it would be nothing against this, that he was arrayed with surpassing majesty, and continually exhibited demonstrations of supremacy. The majesty, which moreover could only be seen by few at one time, would cease to dazzle when it had been often beheld; and the demonstrations of supremacy would lose their power after frequent repetition. We think that the common feelings of our nature warrant our being sure, that there would be immense difficulty in persuading a congregation, like the present, to kneel down and worship, as God, a being of whom they were told that he was dwelling as a man in Jerusalem, or some other city of the earth. And then you are to remember, that, even if his essential Deity had been manifested to men, he must probably have been with

drawn from other ranks of intelligence: for would it not almost imply a separation, which cannot take place, of his divinity from his humanity, to suppose him personally discovering his uncreated splendors in other parts of the universe, whilst he still dwelt in a body

where he had suffered and died?

So then we cannot well see how there could have been the thorough manifestation of the divinity of the Son, which had been almost hidden under earlier dispensations, had not Christ ascended up on high, and taken his seat at the right hand of the Father. We stay not to inquire how far the glory, which had been promised to his humanity, might have been bestowed, had there been nothing of this exaltation, or had it not been permanent. We confine ourselves to the glory which was to accrue to the divinity; for all our hopes rest on the demonstration which God gave, that Christ was his Son, coeternal and co-equal with himself. And if we were to ask evidence that he, who had been crucified and buried, was nevertheless a divine person, what should that evidence be? We would not ask the mere resurrection of this person, though that must of course form the first part of our proof. We would not ask his mere ascension; for if he might not tarry in the heavens, we should doubt whether they were indeed his rightful home. We would ask that he might be received into the dwellingplace of God, and there and thence wield all the authority of omnipotence. We would ask that angel and archangel, principality and power, might gather round his throne, as they were wont to do round that of the Father, and render to him, notwithstanding his human form, the homage which they render only to their Maker. We would ask that he should be withdrawn from mortal view, since Deity dwells "in light which no man can approach unto;" but that, from his inaccessible and invisible throne, he should direct all the affairs of this earth, hearing the prayers, supplying the wants, and fighting the battles of his church, and thus giving as continued proofs of omnipresence as are to be found in the agencies of the material creation. And this is precisely the demonstration which has been furnished. On testimony, than

which even that of the senses could not be more convincing, we believe that the Lord our Redeemer, the very person who sorrowed and suffered upon earth, is invested with all the honors, and exercises all the powers, of absolute Deity; and that, though he still retains his human form, there has been committed to him authority which no creature could wield, and there is given him a homage which no creature could receive. What though the heavens have received him out of our sight? there have come messages from those heavens informing us of his solemn enthronement as "King of kings, and Lord of lords ;" and notes of the celestial minstrelsy are borne to mortal ears, celebrating the Son of the virgin as the great "I am," who was, and is, and is to come. And it is in consequence of such messages that thousands, and tens of thousands, of the inhabitants of this earth, bow at the name of Jesus; and that vast advances have already been made towards a splendid consummation, when the sun, in his circuit round our globe, shall shine on none but the worshippers of "the Lamb that was slain."

Is this a result in which we rejoice? Is it indeed cause of gladness to us, that the divinity of the Son, veiled not only during the days of his humiliation in flesh, but throughout the ages which preceded the incarnation, has been gloriously manifested, so that he is known and worshipped as God? Then, if this be matter of rejoicing, we must be prepared to be glad, that, in ascending from Olivet, the Mediator ascends to fix his abode in the heavens. This full manifestation of divinity required heaven as its scene, and could not have been effected on the narrow and polluted stage of our earth. Yes, we must be glad that the ascending Savior is not to return, because by not returning he is to show forth his Godhead. And, therefore, we can again address the heavenly hosts, shining and beauti ful beings, who are marshalling the way, in solemn pomp, for "the High Priest of our profession." We know why ye, O celestial troop, exult in his return. He ascends to be the light of your abode; and ye triumph in the thought that he is to be eternally with you. And even we can share your ex

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