each individual, in these last words of the Lord as He stood on
Olivet, ready to depart.

The calm simplicity of the account of the Ascension is remarkable. So
great an event told in such few, unimpassioned words! Luke's Gospel
gives the further detail that it was in the act of blessing with
uplifted hands that our Lord was parted from the Eleven. Two
expressions are here used to describe the Ascension, one of which
('was taken up') implies that He was passive, the other of which ('He
went') implies that He was active. Both are true. As in the accounts
of the Resurrection He is sometimes said to have been raised, and
sometimes to have risen, so here. The Father took the Son back to the
glory, the Son left the world and went to the Father. No chariot of
fire, no whirlwind, was needed to lift Him to the throne. Elijah was
carried by such agency into a sphere new to him; Jesus ascended up
where He was before.

No other mode of departure from earth would have corresponded to His
voluntary, supernatural birth. He carried manhood up to the throne
of God. The cloud which received Him while yet He was well within
sight of the gazers was probably that same bright cloud, the symbol
of the Divine Presence, which of old dwelt between the cherubim. His
entrance into it visibly symbolised the permanent participation, then
begun, of His glorified manhood in the divine glory.

Most true to human nature is that continued gaze upwards after He had
passed into the hiding brightness of the glory-cloud. How many of us
know what it is to look long at the spot on the horizon where the
last glint of sunshine struck the sails of the ship that bore dear
ones away from us! It was fitting that angels, who had heralded His