act secretly and mysteriously like a charm; but by meeting directly the wants of our nature, and supplying food for its best affec-tions; by so cleaving us from evil, and so disposing us to good, that our hearts may be rendered fitter to receive the gift of Christ's Spirit, and so be quickened for ever.

SERMON VII.

CHRIST'S ASCENSION.

MARK XVI. 19.

So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

ALL the great events of our Lord's life on earth, are celebrated in the course of the Christian year. His birth; his circumcision; the manifestation of his birth to the wise men; his fasting and temptation before he entered upon his ministry; and, lastly, his betrayal, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. But of all these, the resurrection has been ever considered the greatest. Easter, in this as in other points, has taken the place of the passover of the Jews, that it is the greatest of all our festivals; it celebrates that event in which, in an especial manner, the whole of Christianity is contained. It is notorious, that the festival of the ascension is, in common practice, now much less regarded; and

to this other circumstances have partly contributed, but it never was considered to be so great a season as Easter, or as the festival of Whitsuntide, which immediately follows it, and which celebrates the descent of the Holy Ghost.

This feeling in the church is a very exact copy of the feeling shown in the Scriptures themselves. Every one must have observed how much more is said in the New Testament about the resurrection of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, than is said about the ascension. Nay, what is more remarkable, in two of the Gospels, St. Matthew and St. John, there is no account at all given of the ascension; and in St. Mark no more is said of it than the words which I have read in the text. It is only in the writings of St. Luke, in his Gospel, and in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, that any particulars are given respecting it. Now this is a circumstance which has often excited attention, and which, when inquired into, becomes, I think, full of instruction.

I suppose that our first impressions are, to consider the ascension of our Lord as the very greatest event connected with his appearance on earth. To our own minds,

undoubtedly, nothing could be so solemn, so exalting, as the changing this life for another; the putting off mortality and putting on immortality; and all this we connect with the thought of the removal from earth to heaven. Above all, here God is not seen nor known distinctly; although he be not far from every one of us, yet we must feel after him, if haply we may find him: here we see him through a glass darkly, in heaven we hope to see him face to face; and, therefore, an ascension into heaven conveys to our minds. the greatest change that can possibly be imagined; a change from a corrupt and most imperfect state of things to one of entire perfection. And had Christ been as we are, his ascension would have been spoken of very differently from what it is now; and the account of his resurrection would have been justly deemed incomplete without it. For then his resurrection would have been no more than that of Lazarus; it would have been only a respite from the power of death, not an entire deliverance from it; he would have risen from the dead, but being still as before, mortal, sinful, and corruptible, he would have been no less distant from heaven than ever. This would have been the case with Christ's

resurrection, had he been no more than a man as we are. But this was not so; and the difference is expressed by St. Paul, when he says to the Romans, that Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead. He rose because he could not but rise; the pains of death were loosed, because it was not possible that he could be holden by them; in fact, to him, if I may so speak, his resurrection was natural, it was his death that was the miracle of his love. Just before his crucifixion, he had told his disciples, that as he had come forth from the Father and was come into the world, so again he was going to leave the world and return to his Father. His resurrection showed that he had borne witness of himself truly; that he had indeed come forth from the bosom of the Father, from the glory which he had with him before the world was; that he had come for a little space into the world which he had made, to be its Redeemer as well as its Creator. So, then, the resurrection did but declare him who he was; but being what he was, what needs there to dwell upon his ascension? We know that God dwells not upon earth; and if it has pleased him from time to time, in human form, to com