vour of God. Heaven was closed to him, and he lost all right to its enjoyments. The law, with its inflexible demands, excluded him, and no work of his own could meet those demands. If he suf fered the penalty of that law, there was no space left for hope, since that penalty was the extinction of hope itself-death, eternal death. To save man from this penalty; to satisfy the claims of that law, and thus remove the obstacle to an admission to the favour and presence of God in heaven, Jesus assumed this nature that had sinned, and united it in mysterious oneness with his divine nature, that a mediatorial person might be formed capable of this great work, and then obeyed both the precept and the penalty of the law; so that our nature suffered, obeyed, died, rose again, and entered into heaven as a permanent dwelling-place, in the person of this second Adam. Now, every step of this process was demanded before the work was complete in itself, or could be so manifested to us. Had Christ not assumed a human nature, he could not have atoned for the sins of a race with such a nature. Had he not obeyed the precept of the law, it could not have been written that "by the obedience of one man many are made righteous." Had he not died, he could not have redeemed us from the curse of that law, whose penalty was death. Had he not risen from the dead, there would have been no assurance to the world that he

did not die for his own sins, and no authoritative declaration from God that his atoning work was accepted, and the penalty of death remitted to those who believe. Hence, his resurrection was needful as God's endorsement of his work, and an assurance from the eternal throne that the law was satisfied. But suppose this had been all, and Christ had remained on earth, or at least not visibly ascended into heaven, would not the work and the proclamation of it be incomplete? The resurrection only assures us that the penalty of death and banishment from heaven is remitted; but this is not enough. We want to know that our nature is to be admitted to an eternal dwelling-place in heaven, and that it is to be allowed to live for ever in the presence of God above. It was this that we lost by the first Adam, and it is this that we would gain by the second. A mere deliverance from death and hell gives no assurance that we are certainly by this atoning Saviour to be admitted hereafter to heaven. Hence we need another stage in this magnificent work. We need that this great representative nature-God manifest in the flesh, man manifested and represented in the Mediator that this nature shall visibly and openly ascend into heaven, and remain there, the first fruits of our perpetual and rightful dwelling in heaven, as in its resurrection it was the first-fruits of them that slept. Thus only is that exiled,

doomed, and wandering nature restored to what it lost. It was banished from heaven, and its work of restoration cannot be proclaimed as complete until it has publicly been restored to that dwelling-place in the person of its great representative. As the first Adam was banished from the paradise below, the second must openly be admitted to the paradise above and dwell there, before the dread work of sin is undone, and the world assured that the Son of man has destroyed the works of the devil. Hence it is most obvious that the Ascension was absolutely necessary. The Resurrection proved, indeed, that the curse of the law was gone, and our nature escaped from hell. But it might still be true that no provision was made to secure our entrance to heaven, and our right to do so might still hang in uncertainty. It was, then, further needful that this representative nature should ascend to heaven, be welcomed to its glittering mansions, and occupy them as a permanent habitation. This was done by the Ascension, and hence, as a completion of the work of redemption, and also as a declaration to the world that it was complete, it was needful that he should thus be received into glory.

The necessity is obvious, then, when we take only this earthward view of it. But there are other views opened up by the scriptures that we cannot pass by, if we would thoroughly comprehend this transaction.

2. His mediatorial office required it.

There was a glory to be assumed by our Lord after his work of suffering, that demanded this public entrance upon it. In his intercessory prayer, he alludes distinctly and very touchingly to this: "I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." John xvii. 4, 5. Here he distinctly intimates that there is a glory on which he is now to enter that is a result of his work of redemption. This thought is often alluded to in the New Testament, and especially in the Epistles of Paul. The memorable passage in Philippians (ii. 5-11) is an elaborate statement of this fact. Heb. i. 1-4 states the same truth, and Eph. iv. 7-10 is but another presentation of the same thing. There are facts in heaven thus intimated that we can but imperfectly comprehend. There are faint and far off glimpses of a mighty coronation-day in the heavenly kingdom, of a glittering triumphal entrance into the city that hath foundations; when from the long and far-flashing ranks of the heavenly hosts there went up the shout, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in ;" and when to the lofty challenge of the one choir of rejoicing ones, "Who is this King of

glory?" there came the responsive strain, like the voice of many waters, "The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle;" and when the ascending Redeemer entered into his glory, sat down on the right hand of God, and assumed the sceptre of his mediatorial kingdom, and entered on that royal authority which he shall hold to the end: "For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet." Hence the Ascension was necessary, that there should be a display in heaven of his mediatorial glory in the assumption of that kingly rule that he is now exercising, and will continue to exercise until the work of redemption is done.

3. But it is equally required to display his Divine majesty as the God-man, the Eternal Son. Had he remained on earth, it is possible that the world might have grasped the great doctrines of his Divinity, and of the Trinity of persons in the Godhead, that are now so clear. But it is most probable that it would have been with difficulty. Were he to appear in all his Divine glory, as he does in heaven, the whole character of the dispensation as one of faith would have been changed, and heaven robbed of one of its strongest attractions. Were he to appear in the ordinary form of humanity, it would be a perpetual humiliation, implying that his work of atonement was yet incomplete; and it would have been most difficult for men to believe