into the place of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and claims as His
own all these great and wonderful prophecies. He promises love,
protection, communion, the deepest, most mystical union of spirit and
heart with Himself; and He claims quiet, restful confidence in His
love, absolute, loving obedience to His authority, reliance upon His
strong hand and loving heart, and faithful cleaving to Him. The
Bridegroom of humanity, the Husband of the world, if it will only turn
to Him, is Christ Himself.

II. But a word as to the presence of the Bridegroom. It might seem as
if this text condemned us who love an unseen and absent Lord to
exclusion from the joy which is made to depend on His presence. Are we
in the dreary period when 'the Bridegroom is taken away' and fasting
appropriate?

Surely not. The time of mourning for an absent Christ was only three
days; the law for the years of the Church's history between the moment
when the uplifted eyes of the gazers lost Him in the symbolic cloud
and the moment when He shall come again is, 'Lo, I am with you alway.'
The absent Christ is the present Christ. He is really with us, not as
the memory or the influence of the example of the dead may be said to
remain, not as the spirit of a teacher may be said to abide with his
school of followers. We say that Christ has gone up on high and sits
on 'the right hand of God.' The right hand of God is His active power.
Where is 'the right hand of God'? It is wherever His divine energy
works. He that sits at the right hand of God is thereby declared to be
wherever the divine energy is in operation, and to be Himself the
wielder of that divine Power. I believe in a local abode of the
glorified human body of Jesus Christ now, but I believe likewise that
all through God's universe, and eminently in this world, which He has