strangely associated on the Mount of Transfiguration, had made himself
ready for his lonely grave. Here at his feet, the river had parted for
the victorious march of Israel. Away down on his horizon the sunshine
gleamed on the waters of the Dead Sea; and thus, on his native soil,
surrounded by memorials of the Law which he laboured to restore, and of
the victories which he would fain have brought back, and of the
judgments which he saw again impending over Israel, the stern, solitary
ascetic, the prophet of righteousness, whose single arm stayed the
downward course of a nation, passed from his toil and his warfare.
What a different set of associations cluster round the place of
Christ's Ascension - 'Bethany,' or, as it is more particularly specified
in the Acts, 'Olivet'! In the very heart of the land, close by and yet
out of sight of the great city, in no wild solitude, but perhaps in
some dimple of the hill, neither shunning nor courting spectators, with
the quiet home where He had rested so often in the little village at
their feet there, and Gethsemane a few furlongs off, in such scenes did
the Christ 'whose delights were with the sons of men,' and His life
lived in closest companionship with His brethren, choose the place
whence He should 'ascend to their Father and His Father.' Nor perhaps
was it without a meaning that the Mount which received the last print
of His ascending footstep was that which a mysterious prophecy
designated as destined to receive the first print of the footstep of
the Lord coming at a future day to end the long warfare with evil.
But more important than the localities is the contrasted manner of the
two ascents. The prophet's end was like the man. It was fitting that he
should be swept up the skies in tempest and fire. The impetuosity of
his nature, and the stormy energy of his career, had already been
symbolised in the mighty and strong wind which rent the rocks, and in
the fire that followed the earthquake; and similarly nothing could be
more appropriate than that sudden rapture in storm and whirlwind,
escorted by the flaming chivalry of heaven.
Nor is it only as appropriate to the character of the prophet and his
work that this tempestuous translation is noteworthy. It also suggests
very plainly that Elijah was lifted to the skies by power acting on him
from without. He did not ascend; he was carried up; the earthly frame
and the human nature had no power to rise. 'No man hath ascended into
heaven.' The two men of whom the Old Testament speaks were alike in
this, that 'God _took_ them.' The tempest and the fiery chariot
tell us how great was the exercise of divine power which bore the gross
mortality thither, and how unfamiliar was the sphere into which it
passed.
How full of the very spirit of Christ's whole life is the contrasted
manner of His Ascension! The silent gentleness, which did not strive
nor cry nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets, marks Him even
in that hour of lofty and transcendent triumph. There is no outward
sign to accompany His slow upward movement through the quiet air. No
blaze of fiery chariots, nor agitation of tempest is needed to bear Him
heavenwards. The outstretched hands drop the dew of His benediction on
the little company, and so He floats upward, His own will and
indwelling power the royal chariot which bears Him, and calmly 'leaves
the world and goes unto the Father.' The slow, continuous movement of
ascent is emphatically made prominent in the brief narratives, both by
the phrase in Luke, 'He was carried up,' which expresses continuous
leisurely motion, and by the picture in the Acts, of the disciples
gazing into heaven 'as He went up,' in which latter word is brought
out, not only the slowness of the movement, but its origin in His own
will and its execution by His own power.
Nor is this absence of any vehicle or external agency destroyed by the
fact that 'a cloud' received Him out of their sight, for its purpose
was not to raise Him heavenward, but to hide Him from the gazers' eyes,
that He might not seem to them to dwindle into distance, but that their
last look and memory might be of His clearly discerned and loving face.
Possibly, too, it may be intended to remind us of the cloud which
guided Israel, the glory which dwelt between the cherubim, the cloud
which overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration, and to set forth a
symbol of the Divine Presence welcoming to itself, His battle fought,
the Son of His love.
Be that as it may, the manner of our Lord's Ascension by His own
inherent power is brought into boldest relief when contrasted with
Elijah's rapture, and is evidently the fitting expression, as it is the
consequence, of His sole and singular divine nature. It accords with
His own mode of reference to the Ascension, while He was on earth,
which ever represents Him not as _being taken_, but as _going_:
'I leave the world and go to the Father.' 'I ascend to My Father and your
Father.' The highest hope of the devoutest souls before Him had been, 'Thou
wilt afterwards take me to glory.' The highest hope of devout souls since
Him has been, 'We shall be caught up to meet the Lord.' But this Man ever
speaks of Himself as able when He will, by His own power, to rise where no
man hath ascended. His divine nature and pre-existence shine clearly forth,
and as we stand gazing at Him blessing the world as He rises into the
heavens, we know that we are looking on no mere mysterious elevation of a
mortal to the skies, but are beholding the return of the Incarnate Lord,
who willed to tarry among our earthly tabernacles for a time, to the
glory where He was before, 'His own calm home, His habitation from
eternity.'
II. Another striking point of contrast embraces the relation which
these two events respectively bear to the life's work which had
preceded them.
The falling mantle of Elijah has become a symbol known to all the
world, for the transference of unfinished tasks and the appointment of
successors to departed greatness. Elisha asked that he might have a
double portion of his master's spirit, not meaning twice as much as his
master had had, but the eldest son's share of the father's possessions,
the double of the other children's portion. And, though his master had
no power to bestow the gift, and had to reply as one who has nothing
that he has not received, and cannot dispose of the grace that dwells
in him, the prayer was answered, and the feebler nature of Elisha was
fitted for the continuance of the work which Elijah left undone.
The mantle that passed from one to the other was the symbol of office
and authority transferred; the functions were the same, whilst the
holders had changed. The sons of the prophets bow before the new
master; 'the spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.'
So the world goes on. Man after man serves his generation by the will
of God, and is gathered to his fathers; and a new arm grasps the mantle
to smite Jordan, and a new voice speaks from his empty place, and men
recognise the successor, and forget the predecessor.
We turn to Christ's Ascension, and there we meet with nothing analogous
to this transference of office. No mantle falling from His shoulders
lights on any of that group, none are hailed as His successors. What He
has done bears and needs no repetition whilst time shall roll, whilst
eternity shall last. His work is unique: 'the help that is done on
earth, He doeth it all Himself.' His Ascension completed the witness of
heaven, begun at His resurrection, that 'He has offered one sacrifice
for sins, for ever.' He has left no unfinished work which another may
perfect. He has done no work which another may do again for new
generations. He has spoken all truth, and none may add to His words. He
has fulfilled all righteousness, and none may better His pattern. He
has borne all the world's sin, and no time can waste the power of that
sacrifice, nor any man add to its absolute sufficiency. This King of
men wears a crown to which there is no heir. This Priest has a
priesthood which passes to no other. This 'Prophet' does 'live for
ever,' The world sees all other guides and helpers pass away, and every
man's work is caught up by other hands and carried on after he drops
it, and the short memories and shorter gratitudes of men turn to the
rising sun; but one Name remains undimmed by distance, and one work
remains unapproached and unapproachable, and one Man remains whose
office none other can hold, whose bow none but He can bend, whose
mantle none can wear. Christ has ascended up on high and left a
finished work for all men to trust, for no man to continue.
III. Whilst our Lord's Ascension is thus marked as the seal of a work
in which He has no successor, it is also emphatically set forth, by
contrast with Elijah's translation, as the transition to a continuous
energy for and in the world.
Clearly the other narrative derives all its pathos from the thought
that Elijah's work is done. His task is over, and nothing more is to be
hoped for from him. But that same absence from the history of Christ's
Ascension, of any hint of a successor, to which we have referred in the
previous remarks, has an obvious bearing on His present relation to the
world as well as on the completeness of His unique past work.
When Christ ascended up on high, He relinquished nothing of His
activity for us, but only cast it into a new form, which in some sense
is yet higher than that which it took on earth. His work for the world
is in one aspect completed on the Cross, but in another it will never
be completed until all the blessings which that Cross has lodged in the
midst of humanity, have reached their widest possible diffusion and
their highest possible development. Long ages ago He cried, 'It is
finished,' but we may be far yet from the time when He shall say, 'It
is done'; and for all the slow years between His own word gives us the
law of His activity, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.'
Christ's Ascension is no withdrawal of the Captain of our salvation
from the field where we are left to fight, nor has He gone up to the
mountain, leaving us alone to tug at the oar, and shiver in the cold
night air. True, there may seem a strange contrast between the present
condition of the Lord who 'was received up into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God,' and that of the servants wandering through the
world on _His_ business; but the contrast is harmonised by the
next words, 'the Lord also working with them.' Yes, He has gone up to
sit at the right hand of God. That session at God's right hand to which
the Ascension is chiefly of importance as the transition, means the
repose of a perfected redemption, the communion of the Son with the
Father, the exercise of all the omnipotence of God, the administration
of the world's history. He has ascended that He might fill all things,
that He might pour out His Spirit upon us, that the path to God may be
trodden by our lame feet, that the whole resources of the divine nature
may be wielded by the hands that were nailed to the Cross, that the
mighty purpose of salvation may be fulfilled.
Elijah knew not whether his spirit could descend upon his follower. But
Christ, though, as we have said, He left no legacy of falling mantle to
any, left His Spirit to His people. What Elisha gained, Elijah lost.
What Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor guarantee. How firm and
assured beside Elijah's dubious 'Thou hast asked a hard thing,' and his
'If thou see me, it shall be so,' is Christ's 'It is expedient for you
that I go away. For if I go not away the Comforter will not come, but
if I depart, I will send Him unto you.'
Manifold are the forms of that new and continuous activity of Christ
into which He passed when He left the earth: and as we contrast these
with the utter helplessness any longer to counsel, rebuke or save, to
which death reduces those who love us best, and to which even his
glorious rapture into the heavens brought the strong prophet of fire,
we can take up, with a new depth of meaning, the ancient words that
tell of Christ's exclusive prerogative of succouring and inspiring from
within the veil: 'Thou hast ascended on high; Thou hast led captivity
captive; Thou hast received gifts for men.'
IV. The Ascension of Christ is still further set forth, in its very
circumstances, by contrast with Elijah's translation, as bearing on the
hopes of humanity for the future.
The prophet is caught up to the glory and repose for himself alone, and
the sole share which the gazing follower or the sons of the prophets
straining their eyes there at Jericho, had in his triumph, was a
deepened conviction of his prophetic mission, and perhaps some clearer
faith in a future life. Their wonder and sorrow, Elisha's immediate
exercise of his new power, the prophets' immediate transference of
their allegiance to their new head, show that on both sides it was felt
that they had no part in the event beyond that of awe-struck beholders.
No light streamed from it on their own future. The path they had to
tread was still the common road into the great darkness, as solitary
and unknown as before. The chariot of fire parted their master from the
common experience of humanity as from their fellowship, making him an
exception to the sad rule of death, which frowned the grimmer and more
inexorable by contrast with his radiant translation.
The very reverse is true of Christ's Ascension. In Him our nature is
taken up to the throne of God. His Resurrection assures us that 'them
which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him,' His passage to the
heavens assures us that 'they who are alive and remain shall be caught
up together with them,' and that all of both companies shall with Him
live and reign, sharing His dominion, and moulded to His image.
If we would know of what our manhood is capable, if we would rise to
the height of the hopes which God means that we should cherish, if we
would gain a living grasp of the power that fulfils them, we have to
stand there, gazing on the piled cloud that sails slowly upwards, the
pure floor for our Brother's feet. As we watch it rising with a motion
which is rest, we have the right to think, 'Thither the Forerunner is
for us entered.' We see there what man is meant for, what men who love
Him attain. True, the world is still full of death and sorrow, man's
dominion seems a futile dream and a hope that mocks, but 'we see
Jesus,' ascended up on high, and in Him we too are 'made to sit
together in heavenly places.' The Breaker is gone up before them. Their
King shall pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them.'
There is yet another aspect in which our Lord's Ascension bears on our
hopes for the future, namely, as connected with His coming again. In
that respect, too, the contrast of Elijah's translation may serve to
emphasise the truth. Prophecy, indeed, in its latest voice, spoke of
sending Elijah the prophet before the coming of the day of the Lord,
and Rabbinical legends delighted to tell how he had been carried to the
Garden of Eden, whence he would come again, in Israel's sorest need.
But the prophecy had no thought of a personal reappearance, and the
dreams are only dreams such as we find in the legendary history of many
nations. As Elisha recrossed the Jordan, he bore with him only a mantle
and a memory, not a hope.
'Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same
Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like
manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' How grand is the use in
these mighty words of the name Jesus, the name that speaks of His true
humanity, with all its weakness, limitations, and sorrow, with all its
tenderness and brotherhood! The man who died and rose again, has gone
up on high. He will so come as He has gone. 'So' - that is to say,
personally, corporeally, visibly, on clouds, perhaps to that very spot,
'and His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.' Thus
Scripture teaches us ever to associate together the departure and the
coming of the Lord, and always when we meditate on His Ascension to
prepare a place for us, to think of His real presence with us through
the ages, and of His coming again to receive us to Himself.
That parting on Olivet cannot be the end. Such a leave-taking is the
prophecy of happy greetings and an inseparable reunion. The King has
gone to receive a kingdom, and to return. Memory and hope coalesce, as
we think of Him who is passed into the heavens, and the heart of the
Church has to cherish at once the glad thought that its Head and helper
has entered within the veil, and the still more joyous one, which
lightens the days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord will come
again.
So let us take our share in the 'great joy' with which the disciples
returned to Jerusalem, left like sheep in the midst of wolves as they
were, and 'let us set our affection on things above, where Christ is,
sitting at the right hand of God.'
ELIJAH'S TRANSLATION AND ELISHA'S DEATHBED
And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of
Israel, and the horsemen thereof.' - 2 KINGS ii. 12.
'...And Joash, the King of Israel, came down unto him, and wept over
his face, and said. O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and
the horsemen thereof.' - 2 KINGS xiii. U.
The scenes and the speakers are strangely different in these two
incidents. The one scene is that mysterious translation on the further
bank of the Jordan, when a mortal was swept up to heaven in a fiery
whirlwind, and the other is an ordinary sick chamber, where an old man
was lying, with the life slowly ebbing out of him. The one speaker is
the successor of the great prophet, on whom his spirit in a large
measure fell; the other, an idolatrous king, young, headstrong, who had
despised the latter prophet's teaching while he lived, but was now for
the moment awed into something like seriousness and reverence by his
death.
Now the remarkable thing is that this unworthy monarch should have come
to the dying prophet, and should have strengthened and cheered him by
the quotation of his own words, spoken so long ago, as if he would say
to him, 'All that thou didst mean when thou didst stand there in
rapturous adoration, watching the ascending Elijah, is as true about
thee, lying dying here, of a common and lingering sickness. My father,
my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.' Seen or
unseen, these were present. The reality was the same, though the
appearances were so different.
I We have in the first case the chariot and horsemen seen.
To feel the force of the exclamation on the lips of Joash, we must try
to make clear to ourselves what its original meaning was. What did
Elisha intend when he stood beyond Jordan, and in wonder and awe
exclaimed, 'The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof'?
It does not seem to me that the interpretation of the words now in
favour is at all satisfactory. It tells us that the expression is to he
taken as in apposition with the exclamation 'My father, my father'; and
that both the one phrase and the other mean - Elijah! Yet what a
preposterous and strange metaphor it would be to call a man a chariot
and pair, or a chariot and cavalry! It seems to me that the very
statement of this explanation, in plain English, condemns it as
untenable. It is surely less probable that Elisha in that exclamation
was describing Elijah than that he was speaking of that wondrous
chariot of fire and horses of fire that had come between him and his
master, and that his exclamation was one of surprised adoration as he
gazed with wide-opened eyes on the burning angel-hosts, and saw his
master mysteriously able to bear that fire, ringed round by these
flaming squadrons, possibly standing unscathed on the floor of the
chariot, and swept with it and all the celestial pomp, by the
whirlwind, into heaven.
But why should he say 'the chariot of _Israel_'? I think we take
for granted too readily that 'Israel' here means the nation. You will
remember that that name was not originally that of the nation, but of
its progenitor and founder, given to Jacob as the consequence and
record of that mysterious wrestling by the brook. And I think we get a
nobler signification for the words before us if, instead of applying
the name to the nation, we apply it here to the individual. When Elijah
and Elisha crossed Jordan they were not far from the spot where that
name was given to Jacob, 'the supplanter,' whom discipline and
communion with God had elevated into Israel. And they were near another
of the sites consecrated by his history, the place where, just before
the change of his name, the angels of God met him and 'he called the
name of the place Mahanaim.' That means '_the two camps_,' the
one, Jacob's defenceless company of women and children, the other,
their celestial guards.
It seems reasonable to suppose that, in all probability, a reminiscence
of that old story of the manifestation of the armed angels of God as
the defenders and servants of His children broke from Elisha's lips. As
he looks upon that strange appearance of the chariot and horses of fire
that parted him and his friend, he sees once more 'the chariot of
Israel and the horsemen thereof,' the reappearance of the shining
armies whose presence had of old declared that 'the angel of the Lord
encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.' And now
the same hosts in their immortal youth, unweakened by the ages which
have brought earthly warriors to dust and their swords to rust, are
flaming and flashing there in the midday sun. What was their errand,
and why did they appear? They came, as God's messengers, to bear His
servant to His presence. They attested the commission and devotion of
the prophet. Their agency was needful to lift a mortal to skies not
native to him. Strange that a body of flesh should he able to endure
that fiery splendour! Somewhere in the course of that upward movement
must this man, who was caught up to meet the Lord in the air, have been
'changed.' His guards of honour were not only for tokens of his
prophetic work, but for witnesses of the unseen world and in some sort
pledges, suited to that stage of revelation, of life and immortality.
How striking is the contrast between the translation of Elijah and the
Ascension of Christ! He who ascended up where He was before needed no
whirlwind, nor chariot of fire, nor extraneous power to elevate Him to
His home. Calmly, slowly, as borne upwards by indwelling affinity with
heaven, He floated thither with outstretched hands of blessing. The
servant angels did not need to surround Him, but, clad no longer in
fiery armour, but 'in white apparel,' the emblem of purity and peace,
they stood by the disciples and comforted them with hope. Elijah was
carried to heaven. Christ went. The angels disappeared with the prophet
and left Elisha to grieve alone. They lingered here after Christ had
gone, and turned tears into rainbows flashing with the hues of hope.
II. We have in our second text the chariot and horsemen present though
unseen.
We are now in a position to appreciate the meaning of Joash's
repetition to Elisha of his own words, spoken under such different
circumstances.
Elisha was by no means so great a prophet as Elijah. His work had not
been so conspicuous, his character was not so strong, though perhaps
more gentle. No such lofty and large influence had been granted to him
as had been given to the fiery Tishbite to wield, nor did he leave his
mark so deep upon the history of the times or upon the memory of
succeeding generations. But such as it had been given him to be he had
been. He was a continuer, not an originator. There had been a long
period during which he appears to have lived in absolute retirement,
exercising no prophetic functions. We never hear of him during the
interval between the anointing of Jehu to the Israelitish monarchy and
the time of his own death, and that period must have extended over
nearly fifty years. After all these years of eclipse and seclusion he
was lying dying somewhere in a corner, and the king, young but
impressible, although, on the whole, not reliable nor good, came down
to the prophet's home, and there, standing by the pallet of the dying
man, repeated the words, so strangely reminiscent of a very different
event - ' My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen
thereof!'
And what does that exclamation mean? Two things. One is this, that the
angels of the Divine Presence are with us as truly, in life, when