Lord has said, there shall also my servant be; if any man serve me, him will the Father honour;1 even the messages to the churches in the Apocalypse end in each instance with a promise to the individual conqueror. And it is a hope which beyond all other human hopes has power both to uplift and to steady the life on which it has laid hold. It uplifts the life of man to the highest level of which it is capable, giving to each individual a citizenship in heaven, a permanent footing and permanent rights in the greatest of all communities, the New Jerusalem, the City of God. And as it uplifts, so it is a steadying power in the midst of the tempests of life-an anchor of the soul by which we weather the storm, tossed like others who are not so anchored, but escaping serious harm. There is perhaps no feature of early Christianity which is so seldom reproduced in the Christian life of our own time. We are busy with the social or the ecclesiastical questions of the hour, with the work of charitable or religious associations, with the side of the religious life which is concerned with the present order. When our thoughts turn to our Lord, it is of the Christ of the Gospels that we usually think; the Ascension has taken Him out of our sphere, and we scarcely try to follow; the great hope of the future, which was ever before the minds. 1Jo. xii. 26. of the first generations, has little power over us in the hurry of life. This change of attitude must bring some corresponding loss of spiritual strength, for which even the work of faith and the labour of love do not compensate; the patience of hope,1 that reserve of invincible courage, which, helmet-like, protects the seat of the vital powers from injury, is no less needful to the soldier of Christ than the zeal which is ready to spend and be spent in His service. If it be asked how the primitive hope is to be revived in a generation which no longer regards His coming as imminent, the answer is, By the endeavour to follow our Lord in heart and mind into the invisible world; to realize His life there; to accustom ourselves to the thought that it is the life for which each member of His Body is destined; to bring all the engrossing occupations of the present, not excluding our religious energies, into relation with the Ascended Christ and with the great future which His Return will reveal. The grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world; looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.2 INDEX Accuser, the, 94. ' anchor of the soul,' 102 f. Ascended Christ, vision of the, Ascended life, doctrine of the, Ascension, the, xi f., I ff.; doc- Ascension Day, Ascension-tide, Atonement, the day of, 42 ff. Body of Christ,' the, 74 ff. Caesar-cult, the, 19 f. Chrysostom, Prayer of S., 119. 'daysman,' 91 f. Diognetus, letter to, 160 f. Head, Christ the, 68 ff.; no Hebrews, Epistle to the, teach- ing of the, 4 f., 36 ff., 95, 101 f. Incarnate life, the two parts of Intercession, 93 ff., 100. |