DISCOURSE I.

Δι' ἡμερῶν τεσσαράκοντα ὀπτανόμενος αὐτοῖς, καὶ λέγων τα tepi tñs Baoiλɛíaç TOυ Оɛov. Act. SS. Apost. i. 3.

cifixion and

tion.

THE great events upon which the whole system of Christianity founded the Christian religion rests are the Crucifixion and on the CruResurrection of our Lord. From the very fall of Resurrecman, every thing of the nature of revelation of truth, or divine institution, bore reference to them. With a view to them the whole course of the world, in respect of God's divine government, was arranged and ordered. The patriarchal and Jewish dispensations; the prophecies, whether written or spoken, permitted among heathen nations, or imparted to the chosen people; the types, whether scattered over the face of external nature, or exhibited in the history of men; the knowledge which God gave, and the ignorance which He winked at; all the parts and portions of God's world, and His dealings with men, were framed and fashioned so as to be, in their respective

B

degrees, modes of preparing the way for the great events of the history of our Lord Jesus Christ'. These great events (prepared by the Incarnation, and sacredly completed by the Ascension) are the Crucifixion and the Resurrection from the dead. To these events all things led; for these events all things waited 2. Until these events had happened in the country of Judea, and at a particular point of time in the duration of the world, the very foundation-stones of the Gospel were not laid. The need of redemption had indeed existed long. The promise had been long given. The beginnings of the divine scheme of restoration had been long preparing. Example of life, and much preliminary doctrine had been delivered, first by prophets, and afterwards by the holy Son of God Himself; but until the sacrifice of the Cross began, and the resurrection from the dead completed the great victory over the evil spirits, and the final reconciliation of God with man, Christianity, properly speaking, had no existence. In these events it was established, and on these it depends.

The conquest over sin and death being thus achieved, our Lord had only now, it might seem, to rise to His Father's right hand, in order to resume the glory which He had before the worlds. Leaving behind Him upon the earth as much

1

Acts xvii. 30.

2

Rom. viii. 22.

3

evidence of the fact of His glorious resurrection as might suffice to confirm the faith of His disciples, He had now, it might seem, only to go up on high, leading captivity captive, and to receive and give to men those good gifts of the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father, whereby the Lord God should dwell for ever amid His refounded Church, making each member of it a temple of the Holy Ghost, that the whole edifice together might be a temple of the Lord *.

Lord re

forty days

earth.

But before He actually ascended, He passed Yet our forty days upon the earth; seen occasionally, yet mained not constantly accompanied by His Apostles; His on the glorified body no longer subject to the same laws as those of common men; performing miracles, and holding discourses, until the objects of this tarrying upon the earth being accomplished, "He led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them; and it came to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven "."

5

proof of

One object, it cannot be doubted, of this gra- 1st, To give cious delay of our Lord upon the earth, was to His resurestablish, by ample testimony, the fact of His Resurrection. His glorified body was indeed not

3 St. Matt. vii. 11, compared with St. Luke xi. 13.

4

Compare 1 Cor. vi. 19, with 1 Cor. iii. 16. 2 Cor. vi. 16.

5 St. Luke xxiv, 50.

Se reddidit oculis intuendum, manibus contrectandum, ædificans fidem, exhibendo veritatem; quoniam parum fuit

rection.

made visible to any but "to witnesses chosen before of God";" but in the course of these holy

9

8

days, besides other appearances, He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, after that He was seen of about five hundred brethren at once; after that He was seen of James, then of all the Apostles. For this cause Apostles were permitted to doubt, and disciples to be slow of heart, that their hesitation and delay in believing might lay more surely the foundations of our faith. And the fact which they had thus fully known, they

humanæ fragilitati et infirmæ trepidationi tam magnum miraculum uno die exhibere, et inde subtrahere, conversatus est cum eis in terrâ quadraginta diebus, &c.-S. August., Serm. ccxlv. de Asc. Dom., vol. v. p. 1079.

7 Acts x. 41. 1 Cor. xv. 5.

8

Invenimus itaque apud quatuor Evangelistas decies commemoratum Dominum visum esse ab hominibus post resurrectionem. Semel, ad monumentum mulieribus. Iterum, eisdem regredientibus à monumento in itinere. Tertio, Petro. Quarto, duobus euntibus in castellum. Quinto, pluribus in Jerusalem, ubi non erat Thomas. Sexto, ubi eum vidit Thomas. Septimo, ad mare Tiberiadis. Octavo, in monte Galilææ, secundum Matthæum. Nono, quod dicit Marcus, novissimè recumbentibus. Decimo, in ipso die non jam in terrâ, sed elevatum in nube, cum in cœlum ascenderat.-S. Aug. de Consensu Evang. iii. 84.

9

Ut dum a Domino in hoc spatium mora præsentiæ corporalis extenditur, fides resurrectionis documentis necessariis muniretur. Gratias agamus divinæ dispensationi, et sanctorum Patrum necessariæ tarditati. Dubitatum est ab illis, ne dubitaretur à nobis.-S. Leo, Serm. de Asc. Dom., vol. i. p. 190.

boldly and continually asserted, so that the preaching of the Gospel in the first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, is little else than a witnessing of the resurrection.

speak τὰ

βασιλείας

But besides this great object, it cannot be 2ndly, to doubted also that the sayings of our Lord, uttered Tepi Ts during these great days, are themselves also of TOU BεOU. signal and peculiar importance. They were spoken in His glorified body-spoken, as it were, more immediately from heaven. He seems, if we may say so with reverence, to have delayed His ascension in order to speak them. They are the first and great sayings of His new power given unto Him both in heaven and earth. They are, as St. Luke sums them up in the opening of the Acts of the Apostles, "the things of the kingdom of God." They are, in general subject, manner, and circumstances, strikingly unlike to any sayings which He had ever uttered before.

prospec

For it is to be much observed, that the teach- The teaching of the ing of our blessed Lord before the crucifixion, in Gospels so far forth as it respects the Church, and its tive. privileges, powers, and blessings, is altogether of a prospective or anticipatory kind. His moral I. The teaching is indeed of immediate, because of essen- teaching. tial and eternal force. But even this portion of His doctrine, it may be confidently said, is never found alone. It is never found unaccompanied

moral

1 Acts i. 3.