family; girls modest, industrious, full of prayers and good deeds of kindness and charity; boys religious, selfcontrolling, hard-working, dutiful at home, pure of speech and life,-I say, a labourer's family like this bears almost a louder witness for Christ and Heaven than even those among whom such things are more expected and looked for.

All this, brethren, is our earthly work. It must be done soon it must be done here. And it must be done for His sake who ascended from the Hill of Olivet as on this day, and who, ten days afterwards, sent down the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, to give us the strength to do it with.

This is the way by which we are to bring the great doctrine of the Ascension of Christ into our daily and hourly life; claiming and exercising our citizenship of Heaven even while we live in the midst of earthly things.

God, Who watches us within and without, Who sees not only our outward life, but all the secret working of our most private and deeply-hidden thoughts,—is sparing us day by day for no other reason than that we may, if we will, turn to Him more heartily, and yield ourselves up more fully to the guidance and government of His Holy Spirit. How many more days, or months, or it may be years, He may still give us, is as well

known to Him as it is profoundly secret to us. But here is one Ascension-Day more: one more holy and blessed reminding of Him who is gone in the Flesh, though present in the Spirit,-Who will one day come in clouds, as the cloud on that day received Him out of the Apostles' sight,-to judge the quick and the dead.

May He give us grace to lay more to our heart than ever hitherto, His great Ascension lesson: that as we verily believe our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the Heavens, and there to sit on the right hand of the Father, so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually dwell: citizens of Heaven, while we toil, and pray, and, if it be His will, suffer upon earth; our bodies, our work, our warfare down below, but our minds continually drawn up, by His loving grace, to high and heavenly things. Be this the blessed, the holy, the happy lot of every one amongst us, for the sake of the same ascended Lord, Jesus Christ our only Saviour and Redeemer.

I

The Comforter

ST. JOHN xiv.

18. I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.

TRUST that there are many here present who know

their Bibles, and especially the blessed Gospels so well, as to recognise these words at once as forming a part of that very solemn discourse which our Lord held with His Apostles on the last evening of His life on earth, recorded in the fourteenth and three following chapters of St. John. That discourse is far more full and explicit on the subject of the Holy Ghost, and His mission to teach and comfort the Church of God, than any other which the Lord is recorded to have spoken during all His life on earth. So full indeed is it of this great subject, that we might very properly call it the discourse respecting the Holy Ghost.

The Lord, you know, was on the point of leaving them: first, on the very next day, when He should stretch His holy, loving arms upon the Cross, and dying

as a man, leave them to go in the Spirit to the place of departed souls, while His body should be laid in the rich man's grave. Then again, when the victory over the grave was won, and He was risen from the dead, He was to leave them a second time, rising in His glorified Body into the heavens.

That He should leave them at all was of course a sad thought to them. For they had known him so well, had hung upon His gracious words so often, had seen such wonderful signs of His Divine love and power, that to part with Him at all was a very grievous and bitter thing to them.

But in the midst of the very deepest of their sorrow and fear, He gives them comfort. He tells them that His going is actually a good thing for them: that it is actually expedient for them that He should go away; that unless He goes away the Comforter will not come to them; but that if He goes He will send Him to them: all this, and the office of the Comforter in teaching them, He dwells upon in these three great chapters, and winds it up, if I may so express myself, with this sweet word of promise-"I will not leave you comfortless," I will not leave you orphans (as the word really means), "I will come to you." Now, before I go into more particular explanation of the first words of this promise, I would ask, What does the Lord mean by saying that He

would come to them? He was going to leave them; and certainly He was not coming back to be with them in the same way in which He had been with them before. They would see Him again for a few days after His first leaving them; but after His second leaving them, they should not see Him again with their eyes. What then did He mean by saying that He would come to them? We know that the Holy Spirit came but how are we to understand that Christ should come?

Brethren, the answer to this question is this: when the Holy Spirit comes, Christ comes. When the Holy Spirit is among men, Christ is there. When the Holy Spirit is in the heart of men, Christ is there. When the Holy Spirit moves the worshippers to meet and offer prayers in spirit and truth, Christ is there in the midst of them. Be sure of this. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. But if any man

have the Spirit of Christ, Christ is

with Him: not

indeed in the flesh, as of old when He was with the disciples in Judæa, but very truly, very really, and very near. "Say not in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven to bring Christ down from above, or who shall descend into the deep to bring up Christ again from the dead," for with the presence of the Spirit, Christ too comes, yea, and the Father; and they make their abode