unto you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled.1 The words, in my

Name, though they do not prescribe a formula, evidently express a new condition under which all requests must in future be made known to God. The fulness of joy is only for those who realize their relation to the ascended Lord, and consciously approach the Father through the ascended Son.

Our Lord is the One Mediator, the only way to the Father. Yet there is another Advocate, another Intercessor. While the Incarnate Son is our Advocate with the Father and makes intercession at the right hand of God, the Holy Spirit is our Advocate on earth, and makes intercession for us in the depths of our hearts.2 So awful and blessed a thing is Christian prayer that no petition finds its way from man to God without the co-operation of two Divine Persons, one working with man on earth, the other for man in heaven. The Spirit inspires prayer, or the desire which can as yet find no full expression in words; and the Son presents it to the Father, and claims acceptance for it on the ground of His righteousness, His sacrifice, His exaltation of manhood to the Throne of God.

1 Jo. xiv. 12f., xv. 16, xvi. 23 f.

2 Rom. viii. 26 f.

VII.

THE FORERUNNER.

THE Ascended Head is the Forerunner of the Body. The separation which began at the Ascension cannot be permanent: where I am, the Lord promised, there shall also my minister (diákovos) be; if any man minister (diakov) to me, him will the Father honour.1 The promise is repeated in another form in the last of the Apocalyptic messages to the Churches: he that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne.2

The title 'Forerunner' (pódpoμos) is usually given to the Baptist, who went before the face of the Lord to make ready his ways. The New Testament, however, uses the word but once, and then in reference to our Lord Himself. As the Baptist prepared the way of Christ, so the Ascended Christ prepares the way of His Church. It is to the author of Hebrews

that we owe this view of the ascended life, as we

1Jo. xii. 26.

2 Apoc. iii. 21.

3 Lc. i. 76 (cf. 17).

owe to him so much else that assists us to form a true estimate of its importance. He likens the hope set before us to an anchor of the soul, seeing that it is both sure and stedfast and entering into that which is within the veil; whither, he adds, as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Like ships at anchor, the souls of the faithful, though tossed by the waves of life, have no cause to fear shipwreck, so long as their hope keeps a firm grip upon the realities of the unseen world. But this can only be done by those who bear in mind that the great High Priest of the Church has gone within the veil as the Forerunner of His brethren, that they may follow in due time.

In a sense the Church already follows her High Priest and Head. It is given to us already to 'ascend in heart and mind' to our Lord, and 'with Him continually dwell,' as the Ascension Day collect prays that we may. In the words of S. Paul, God raised us up with Christ, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places;2 we are sharers not only in the risen but the ascended life. Nor do we share by representation only; through Christ, as we have seen, we have the right of personal access to God, liberty to pass the veil and enter the Holiest (παρρησίαν εἰς τὴν εἴσοδον τῶν ἁγίων). Το this 2 Eph. ii. 6.

1 Heb. vi. 18 ff.

extent the Head of the Body was immediately followed by the members, and the way into the Holiest has been open from the Apostolic age to

our own.

But the hope set before us evidently goes further than this, for it contemplates heights that are above us yet. We do not hope for access to God through Christ in prayer and Communion; we have it, it is ours in this present life. But there is much more that is not yet ours, and it is for this that we wait and hope. We feel the chain tugging at the anchor, and we know that the anchor is sure and stedfast and firmly planted within the veil we are conscious of the attractive power of the Ascended Lord. But meanwhile the higher world into which He has passed remains unexplored, even though our treasure and our heart are there. Some better thing is reserved for us; there is to be an ascension, not of heart and mind only, but of the whole man, corresponding to the Ascension of Jesus Christ; an entrance into the Holiest not only in the way of prayer and the Sacraments, but of beatific vision. and full satisfaction. The Forerunner will secure this also for His Church. The New Testament witnesses to future happy conditions of existence for which our present life in Christ is preparatory. And this highest hope of man stands connected with the

1

1 1 Pet. i. 4 τετηρημένην.

Ascension and the ascended life of our Lord. It is this great truth which the author of Hebrews so felicitously expresses when he gives to the ascended Head of the Church the title of Forerunner,

In a well-known passage of the fourth Gospel our Lord, without using the title, describes His own work as Prodromos. In my Father's house are many mansions (μoval); if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive (Tapaλýμoμai) you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.1 The words are simplicity itself; yet as we read them we are perhaps conscious that it is the form only which is simple and not the thought. The hope which they inspire, in fact, transcends thought. But some points are clear. My Father's House (ỷ oikia Toû παтρós μoν) is elsewhere in S. John our Lord's name for the Temple; 2 here it clearly is the immaterial, non-localized, Sanctuary of the Divine Presence, into which the humanity of Jesus was shortly to pass. In that Sanctuary there are many mansions, as our Authorized Version translates, following the Vulgate, and followed by the Revisers of 1881. Yet neither the Greek word

1Jo. xiv. 2 ff.

2Jo. ii. 16 τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρός μου. Cf. Lc. ii. 49 ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός

μου.

3 μοναὶ πολλαί, multae mansiones. Cf. Exod. xvii. 1, Num. xxxiii. 1.