world, that we may raise our souls to the enjoyment of them? And yet, if we do no more than enjoy, we are not without sin. The Church, in the persons of her apostolic représentatives, was gently reproved by angels for standing gazing up into heaven. (Acts i. 11.) Why? for adoring her LORD, for meditating on her Intercessor, for glorying in His triumph, for hopeful anticipation of her own, for hailing the event as the assurance of the Comforter's arrival? No, surely. "It was not the purpose of these angels to check the long looks of these faithful disciples after their ascended Master; it was only a change of eyes that they intended; of carnal for spiritual, of the eye of sense for the eye of faith." (Bp. Hall ubi supra.) They forbad an unprofitable amazement, which was forgetting, though for a moment, what the dispensation implied. This idle, unpractical, speculative gaze towards mysteries which clouds have received out of our sight; these inquiries which rather weaken than extend the reverential spirit in which Divine Truth must ever be approached, unless we would have it even destructive to us;-these things are never more cautiously to be avoided than at this joyful season, when we are ascending in thought with our SAVIOUR, onward to the throne of GOD, preparing to behold the wonders of His Spirit, and then to embark on the boundless and unfathomable ocean of the Divine Nature. The reproof of the angels inculcates the spirit of the 131st Psalm, which should be ours. Those beings, the most contemplative in creation, are also the most obedient; (Ps. ciii. 21 ;) and their practical application of the Ascension is, that it should ever remind us of our LORD's future coming, "in like manner as He ascended. "Strive not now so much to exercise your bodily eyes in looking after Him, as the eyes of your souls in looking for Him." (Bp. Hall, ubi supra.) Viewed, then, in relation to His return, how comforting the thought that He Who shall then judge us now intercedes for us! When we remember that we shall be judged according to our works, and when the accuser sets our deeds before us; when we remember that even sins secret to us are in the light of GOD's Countenance, and that for these we must account as well as for others; when our hearts faint and fail beneath the thought,-how sustaining to know that we are not to come to the flaming Mount, and the old Covenant, but to the Mount Sion, and to JESUS the Mediator of the New Testament! When we justly dread the sentence, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground!" how consoling to reflect there is One Whom our prolonged existence testifies to have said, "Let it alone this year also!" (S. Luke xiii. 6—9) ; Who has promised, too, to bestow cultivation on the fruitless tree, and Whose Ascension is the very warrant and completion of that promise! Who has received gifts for the rebellious also! How blessed to, know, in this our warfare with sin, that a time of triumph shall come for us! that even now, sin, though it assail us, shall not have dominion over us, for we are under grace, under the gracious dispensation of the present Comforter, purchased by the glorious Ascension of the LORD; (Rom vi. 14;) that our Joshua has called us to put our feet upon the necks of those deadly sins to which we are by nature slaves! (Josh. x. 24.) "Pride, the Amorite; Envy, the Hittite; Anger, the Perizzite; Gluttony, the Girgashite; Luxury, the Hivite; Covetousness, the Canaanite; Sloth, the Jebusite:" (Bp. Andrewes, Preces quotidiana, Wednesday :) and that ultimately, if we will but be faithful, sin shall be utterly destroyed! How cheering to know that Satan is bruised beneath our feet! that resistance is victory (S. James iv. 7) ! and that hereafter he will not even have opportunity to assail us! (Rom. xvi. 20.) Above all, it is the dispensation of the Ascension which completes our defence against Death, (Heb. ii. 15,) and our contempt of the most terrible thing that can befal untaught or unprepared man, that makes the most awful hour of existence serene and hopeful. How then should we in heart and mind ascend to heaven, and with Him continually dwell! (See Outline for Easter Monday.) "To every bleeding soul Thou sayest still, as Thou didst to Peter, 'Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me hereafter.' In assured hope of this glory, why do I not rejoice? and, beforehand, walk in white with Thine angels, that, at the last, I may walk with Thee in white ?" (Bp. Hall, ubi supra.) Amidst all these glories and consolations, however, the transaction of this day, like all other Divine dealings with us in this probationary world, is full of warning and caution. Such use of it the Psalmist directs, Ps. ii. 11. He Who is ascended "shall so come again." Angelic choirs have sung, Ps. xxiv. 7, and others have responded, 8. The LORD mighty in battle has ascended from His victory. But again shall angels sing, 9; and angels shall respond, 10. The LORD of hosts shall return from earth again, with His redeemed around Him; His enemies shall lie prostrate and crushed beneath His iron sceptre. Of this, His Ascension is the warrant. For that time, then, let us live in constant preparation; let us remember that the intercessory kingdom will not last, like the essential, for ever, that the fruitless tree will ultimately be cut down, and that the Ascension of CHRIST is a pledge that GOD will reward a faithful obedience. Let us live in the spirit of those true Ascension hymns, Ps. xv.; xxiv. 3—5. XXXVIII. Sunday after Ascension. Subject. Waiting for the HOLY GHOST. Text. Acts i. 4. "Wait for the promise of the FATHER." Illustrative Scriptures. S. John xiv. xv. xvi. Principal Words. περιμένειν,—ἐπαγγελίαν. WITH the resurrection of their LORD the disciples' hopes of an earthly kingdom revived. (Acts i. 6.) It was the delusion to which they had clung from the first; and never does it seem to have abandoned them till dispelled by the full Pentecostal blaze of spiritual illumination. Our LORD speaks of the restoration of Israel as a matter beyond their knowledge and concern: but He recals them at the same time to the recollection of a promise far more important and substantial, and in which they had a direct and most intimate interest, "the promise of the FATHER," which they had heard of Him, that Baptism of the HOLY GHOST which S. John had attested, and which Himself had so lately and so abundantly confirmed. This was what they were to wait for, to prepare for; and then they would be guided into all truth, and therefore into true conceptions of the kingdom of heaven. And this they were the rather to do, because He was |