ment of the Article that Christ . . . took again His body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature, is one which very closely follows the language of Holy Scripture. That it was the crucified body which our Lord took again is plainly taught by the evangelists. It still bore the marks of the passion, for "He showed unto them His hands and His side" (S. John xx. 20). The reality of His body is evidenced by the fact that He ate before the disciples (S. Luke xxiv. 43; cf. Acts x. 41). When 'they were affrighted and supposed that they had seen a spirit," He reassures them with the words, “Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself: handle Me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have" (St. Luke xxiv. 36-40). All these passages mark very clearly the reality and identity of the resurrection body. Yet there are other passages which indicate with equal clearness that a change has passed over it. It was the same, and yet different. The body has not been left in the grave, but it has been transfigured and endowed with new powers. He appears in their midst when "the doors were shut" (S. John xx. 19). He vanishes out of the sight of the two at Emmaus as suddenly and mysteriously as He appears in the midst of the ten (S. Luke xxiv. 31). And finally, in the last scene on the Mount of Olives, "as they were looking He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight" (Acts i. 10). Thus are taught the two lessons of the reality of the resurrection body, and its glorification. "There is sown a natural body; there is raised a spiritual body" (1 Cor. xv. 44). Of the actual nature of the resurrection body we know but little, and that little is drawn entirely from the statements of Scripture. It is perhaps impossible for us in our present condition to form any distinct conception of it, or to understand the

laws which regulate its presence and action. We can do little more than note the indications of its nature to be found in Holy Scripture. And the passages referred to above make it perfectly clear that while personal identity is preserved and bodily structure remains, yet its presence and appearance is governed by laws which are entirely different from those to which the "natural body" is subject. It is a glorified, and a " spiritual" body. Further, S. Paul expressly tells us that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven" (1 Cor. xv. 50), in connection with which statement we cannot fail to see a deep significance in the fact that when our Lord would describe His risen body to the disciples He speaks of it not in the familiar phrase "flesh and blood," but makes use of the unique expression "flesh and bones" (S. Luke xxiv. 39). This language is carefully repeated in our own Article (“took again His body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature"), and without venturing to assert that the resurrection body was bloodless, we may safely say that the unique phrase employed by our Lord was designedly chosen to convey a different idea from the ordinary term "flesh and blood." This latter expression occurs in S. Matthew xvi. 17; 1 Cor. xv. 50; Gal. i. 16; Eph. vi. 12; Heb. ii. 14. In the last of these passages it is used of our Lord's incarnate life before the crucifixion. "Since the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same." It is here used to denote that He took upon Him man's nature under its present conditions,1 "flesh and blood" being, as will be

1 See Bishop Westcott's notes on the passage, Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 52, where it is pointed out that by the use of the phrase alua κal σápέ “stress is laid on the element which is the symbol of life as subject to corruption."

seen from the other passages where it occurs, a term with earthly associations connected with it, suggestive rather of the lower animal life than of the higher spiritual existence. "Flesh and bones" is altogether a nobler expression. Its meaning may be gathered from such passages as Gen. ii. 23, xxix. 14; Judges ix. 2; 2 Sam. v. 1, xix. 12, 13. These may suggest that it denotes "community, kinship, close personal union and relationship"; and thus it is indicative of the change that has passed over the body of the risen Saviour, that though in His incarnate life before the crucifixion He "partook" of "flesh and blood," yet after the resurrection He claims not this, but "flesh and bones." He would teach His disciples that He was not formless spirit. But to have said that He was "flesh and blood" would have misled them into the idea that He was exactly what He had been. He therefore says that He has "flesh and bones," in proof that, while He had undergone a change, that change still left Him truly human.1

II. The Ascension and Session (at the Right Hand of the Father).

(a) The fact of the Ascension, though clearly stated, has comparatively little stress laid upon it in Holy Scripture. Of the four evangelists, neither S. Matthew nor S. John relate it, although the latter has preserved words of our Lord which directly refer to it, and so may be said to assume it as a well-known fact (See S. John iii. 13, vi. 62; xx. 17). It is just mentioned-but nothing more-at the close of S. Mark's Gospel, in the section the authorship of which is disputed (S. Mark xvi. 19). In St. Luke's Gospel, accord

1 Milligan On the Resurrection, p. 242. The whole note is suggestive, and on the nature of the resurrection body reference may be further made to the first lecture in the same volume.

ing to the received text, a brief notice of it is given, but the words referring to it are marked in Westcott and Hort's Greek Testament as a "western non-interpolation," being omitted in an important group of early authorities.1 S. Luke has, however, preserved a full account of it in the Acts of the Apostles (i. 9-11), to which it forms the proper introduction as the preparation for the day of Pentecost.

1

In S. Paul's Epistles there are but two direct references to it, namely, in Eph. iv. 8-10: "Wherefore He saith, when He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now this, He ascended, what is it but that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things." Tim. iii. 16: "Received up in glory" (aveλýpen év dón). S. Peter in his First Epistle (ἀνελήφθη (iii. 22), speaks of Christ as having "gone into heaven." But though direct notices of the actual Ascension are but few, the fact is implied and assumed not only in all those passages referred to below, which speak of the session at the right hand of the Father, but also in the whole conception of the priestly work of Christ as described in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as well as in the representation of the glorified Christ in the Apocalypse.

The mystery of the Ascension is one which it is peculiarly difficult for finite minds such as ours to grasp. We have to guard against thinking of it as a mere change of position from one place to another. As heaven is a state rather than a place, so the Ascension involves a change of the mode of existence rather than

1 The words καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, S. Luke xxiv. 51, are omitted in x D, abcff rhe. The recently discovered Old Syriac Version, however, which generally agrees with the "Western" group reads the verse as follows: "And while He blessed them, He was lifted up from them."

a change of position.

And yet we are not to think of it as if it brought about the destruction of our Lord's manhood or its absorption into Deity. The Mediator between God and man is still 'Himself man" (1 Tim. ii. 5). By the Ascension He "has entered upon the completeness of spiritual being, without lessening in any degree the completeness of His humanity. . . . We cannot indeed unite the two sides [of the thought] in one conception, but we can hold both firmly without allowing the one truth to infringe upon the other." 1 This we can do, and with this we must rest content. And so with regard to that "heaven" into which He passed when "a cloud received Him out of their sight"; the following words of a thoughtful and devout theologian seem to state very exactly the two sides of the truth which, if we are loyal to scriptural truth, we find ourselves compelled to maintain concerning it:

"We cannot conceive of heaven as any distinct place -some sphere, some distant world, or the like—some distinct 'where,' according to the ideas of our present sensible perceptions; because heaven is everywhere that God is. Yet we must persuade ourselves of some more definite place in heaven where the cosmical, the created life, is perfectly realised; where God Himself is all in all, where the fragmentary, the imperfect, inseparable from existence in time, is lifted up into the fulness of eternity."

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(b) As in the Apostles' Creed, the words, " He ascended into heaven," are immediately followed by the clause, "And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty," so in the Article after, wherewith He ascended into heaven, we read, and there sitteth. The phrase employed once more is entirely scriptural 1 Westcott's Historic Faith, p. 81.

2 Martensen, Christian Dogmatics (E. T.), p. 321.