memories of the glory which in His pre-incarnate life he had had with the Father before the world was.1 But the human soul of Christ up to the moment of the Ascension had had no experience of the full vision of God which burst upon it when He was taken up. This was the goal of His human life, the joy set before His human soul; and in the moment of the Ascension it was attained.

2. The Session. 'He ascended... and sitteth so say the Apostles' and 'Nicene' Creeds; 'He ascended... He sat down' is the reading of the best text of the Quicumque.2 Both present and past can claim support from the New Testament, and it is obvious that they are not inconsistent; the Session, which began at the Ascension, continues to the present hour.

3

All references to the Session of the Ascended Christ rest ultimately on the I 10th Psalm, The Lord saith unto my lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. That our Lord had this Psalm in mind during the last week of His life and applied it to Himself as Messiah is clear from the questions

1Jo. xvii. 5: cf. the remarkable words of Jo. iii. 13, where, however, ỏ ☎v év tŵ ovρavê is probably an insertion; see Westcott's Additional Note.

2 Ascendit... sedet; åveλ0óvтa каÌ каlešÓμevοv. On the Quicumque text see C. H. Turner, in J. T.S. xi. p. 410.

3 For sitteth, see Mc. xiv. 62, Col. iii. 1, 1 Pet. iii. 22; for 'sat,' 'Mc. ' xvi. 19, Eph. i. 21, Heb. i. 3, viii. 1, xii. 2 (kekáůlkev).

which He put to the Temple crowd on the Tuesday of Holy Week; nor can it be doubted that He referred to it again when in the grey dawn of Good Friday He warned the High Priest and Sanhedrin, Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power. That this Psalm found its fulfilment at the Ascension was the fixed belief of the Apostolic age, as we see from its use by S. Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and the indirect reference to it in nearly a dozen other passages of the Acts, Epistles and Apocalypse.2

To the 10th Psalm, then, we must look for a clue to the interpretation of the phrase. A king is addressed, who is made by Divine decree assessor of Jahveh, and is seated at His right hand until such time as all his enemies have been subjugated. The same person is also appointed to be permanently priest after the archetype of the priest-king Melchizedek. Is the Psalmist a writer of the Maccabean age who has in view Jonathan, or perhaps Simon the successor of Jonathan, of whom we read in I Maccabees that the Jews and the priests were

1 Mc. xii. 36, xiv. 62. In the latter place the imagery is partly drawn from Dan. vii. II, but ek değiŵv kabεšóμevov is clearly from Psalm cx.

:

2 Acts ii. 33 ff. cf. Acts vii. 55f., Rom. viii. 34, Eph. i. 20, Col. iii. 1, Heb. i. 3, 13, viii. I, x. 12, xii. 2, 1 Pet. iii. 22, Apoc. iii. 21, xii. 5.

3 For an exposition of the Psalm see Dr. Driver in the Expositor for March, 1910, and for another study Dr. Emery Barnes in Lex in corde.

well pleased that he should be their leader and high priest for ever? Or is the Priest-King of the Psalms simply an idealizing picture of the theocratic King, drawn by a late Psalmist who had caught the inspiration of the Messianic hope? In any case the general purpose of the writer is clear. The ideal King is seen seated on the right of Jahveh Himself, or next in honour to Him; he is assured of complete victory over his enemies, on whose necks he will one day, after the manner of victorious captains, place his feet.8

The use of this Psalm in the New Testament in reference to the Session of Our Lord at the right hand of God invites us to contemplate Him as invested with the highest honour of which humanity is capable, recognized as the Father's Viceroy, and assured of final victory over all who oppose His rule. We behold him... crowned with glory and honour...from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. The Son of Man has heard the oracle, Sit thou at my right hand, and has taken His seat on the Father's throne. It is not difficult here to distinguish symbol from fact. The Throne, the Right Hand, the act of sitting down, the posture of

11 Macc. xiv. 41. For the difficulties presented by this view, see Kirkpatrick, Psalms, p. 664; Driver, .c.

2 See the remarkable illustration in 1 Macc. x. 63.

3 Cf. Josh. x. 24, 1 Kings v. 3.

4 Heb. ii. 9, x. 13.

the seated King, are as clearly symbolical as the final placing of the Lord's enemies under His feet. But the exaltation and glorification of the Sacred Manhood of our Lord, the exercise by Him of all authority in heaven and on earth, the certainty of His final triumph over sin and death, are facts, and the most potent facts in the life of the human race.

Other thoughts to which neither the Psalmist nor his Apostolic interpreters point may be suggested by the seated posture of the Ascended Christ. The notion of sitting (so writes Bishop Pearson) implieth rest, quietness, and indisturbance... Christ is ascended into heaven, where resting from all pains and sorrows He is seated free from all disturbance and opposition."1 The weariness of the ministry and the sufferings of the Cross were for ever at an end when he sat down at the right hand of God. As after the creation God is said to have rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made, so, it may be conceived, the Incarnate Son rests now with God from the work of His mission to the world. But this analogy does not present itself to the mind of the author of Hebrews, when he discourses on the sabbath rest of the Creator in close connexion with the Ascension of our Lord. Nor is it more than superficial, for the rest of the Creator was merely

Similarly Bishop Westcott, Historic Faith, p. 52: 'the image of Christ's Session is that of perfect rest.'

a ceasing to create; weariness and pain have no place in the life of unincarnate Godhead. If the Incarnate Son kept sabbath after the Cross, it was during His brief abode in Hades that He did so, when His flesh rested in hope of the Resurrection.1 It seems precarious, then, to connect the idea of repose with our Lord's Session in heaven. Victory is no doubt represented by it: he that overcometh, the Spirit says to the Churches, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne.2 But our Lord's victory over the world in the days of His flesh was but an earnest of the longer warfare and the more complete conquest which are the work of His ascended life. When He sat down at the right hand of power, it was not for a brief cessation from warfare, but for an age-long conflict with the powers of evil. 'Sitting' is not always the posture of rest. Some of the hardest work of life is done by the monarch seated in his cabinet, and the statesman at his desk; and the seated Christ, like the four living creatures round about Him, rests not day nor night from the unintermitting energies of heaven.

When the Apostolic Church thought of the ascended Lord as seated in heaven, she had in her

1 Ps. xvi. 9. But neither the Heb. (1) nor the LXX (KaтασKηywσei) suggests a reference to the sabbath.

2 Apoc. iii. 21.