"Who is the King of Glory?"
"The Lord strong and mighty, even the Lord mighty in battle against principalities and powers,"
was chanted back from the ascending escort of Jesus, in the sublimest strains of triumphant joy.
"Lift up your heads, O ye gates! and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in!"
Upon this we heard a mighty voice, as it were in heaven, accompanied by the sound of a trumpet, and ten thousand voices about the throne of Jehovah seemed to say:
"God is coming up with a shout. He rideth upon the heavens! He ascendeth on high! He hath led captivity captive, and received gifts for men. O clap your hands, all ye people of earth! Shout his triumph, ye hosts of heaven!
"Fling wide your gates, O City of God! Be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, for the King of Glory enters in!"
Ascending and still ascending, receding and still receding, fainter and fainter, came down to earth the angelic choruses, when at length the brightest cloud of angels faded away into the upper heaven, the Son of God shining in their midst, like a central sun, surrounded by a luminous halo; till finally, like a star, they remained a few moments longer, and then the heavens received him out of our sight.
While we stood gazing up into the far skies, hoping, expecting, yet doubting if we should ever behold him again, two bright stars seemed to be descending from the height of heaven above us. In a few seconds we saw that they were angels. Alighting on the place where Jesus had left, they said to the eleven, "Why gaze ye up into heaven, ye men of Galilee? This same Jesus, whom ye have seen go into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have now seen him ascend!" Thus speaking, they vanished out of our sight!
Such, my dear father, is the appropriate crowning event of the extraordinary life of Jesus, both Lord and Christ!
His kingdom is, therefore, my dear father, clearly not of this world, as he said to Pilate, the Procurator; but it is Above.
Doubt, then, no longer, dearest father! Jesus, the Son of Mary in his human nature, was the Son of God in his divine nature; an incomprehensible and mysterious union, whereby he had brought together in harmony the two natures, separated far apart by sin, by giving his own body as an offering, to reconcile both in one immaculate body upon the cross. There is now no more condemnation to them who believe in him and accept him.