throne of God, and there, 'bone of our bone, and flesh of our
flesh,' a true man in body, soul, and spirit, He lives and reigns.
The cradle at Bethlehem assumes even greater solemnity when we think
of it as the beginning of a humanity that is never laid aside. So we
can look confidently to all that blaze of light where He sits, and
feel that, howsoever the body of His humiliation may have been
changed into the body of His glory, He still remains corporeally and
spiritually a true Son of man. Thus the face that looks down from
amidst the blaze, though it be 'as the sun shineth in his strength,'
is the old face; and the breast which is girded with the golden
girdle is the same breast on which the seer had leaned his happy
head; and the hand that holds the sceptre is the hand that was
pierced with the nails; and the Christ that is ascended up on high
is the Christ that loved and pitied adulteresses and publicans, and
took the little child in His gracious arms--'The same yesterday, and
to-day, and for ever.'

Christ's Ascension is as the broad seal of heaven attesting the
completeness of His work on earth. It inaugurates His repose which
is not the sign of His weariness, but of His having finished all
which He was born to do. But that repose is not idleness. Rather it
is full of activity.

On the Cross He shouted with a great voice ere He died, 'It is
finished.' But centuries, perhaps millenniums, yet will have to
elapse before the choirs of angels shall be able to chant, 'It is
done: the kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of God and of His
Christ.' All the interval is filled by the working of that ascended
Lord whose session at the right hand of God is not only symbolical
of perfect repose and a completed sacrifice, but also of perfect