Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you, shall so come, in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.
As the entrance of Jesus into the world, so his departure out of it, was graced, by the ministry of angels. Events, so important as these, deserved, and, it seems, required, to be so dignified. His birth was, indeed, obscure and mean; and therefore the attendance of those flaming ministers might be thought necessary to illustrate and adorn it. But his ascension into heaven was an event so full of glory, that it needed not, we may think, any additional lustre to be thrown upon it by this celestial appearance. For what so likely to raise the ideas and excite the admiration of those, who were witnesses of this event, as the fact itself, so sublimely and yet so simply related in these words of the sacred historian—while they beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight?
We may presume, then, that the heavenly host were not sent merely to dignify this transaction, in its own nature so transcendently awful; but for some further purpose of divine Providence. And we find that purpose expressed very plainly in the words of the text; which contain an admonition of great importance, and direct the attention of the disciples to the true end, for which this scene of wonder was displayed before them. For while they looked stedfastly toward heaven, as he went up, two men stood by them in white apparel; which, also, said, 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.
The Apostles, we may suppose, were only occupied with the splendor of the shew; or they were wholly absorbed in the contemplation of its miraculous nature; or they were speculating, perhaps, on the circumstances of it. They were asking themselves, as they gazed (at least, if they had possessed the philosophic spirit of our days, they might be tempted to ask), how the natural gravity of a human body could permit its ascent in so light a medium—how a cloud, which is but a sheet of air, impregnated with vapours, and made visible by reflected light, could be a fit vehicle of a gross and ponderous substance, and serve for the conveyance of it into the purer regions of æther, which we call heaven—or, what need indeed there was, that Jesus should be carried up thither; as if the God, to whom he ascended, were not in every place, alike; as if there were any such distinction, as high and low, with regard to him; as if all space were not equally inhabited by an infinite spirit; and as if his throne were not in the depths beneath, as well as the heights above, every where, in short, without respect to our descriptions of place, where himself existed.
From such a state of mind, or from such meditations as these, the Angels divert the Apostles, and call off they attention to a point, which deserved it better, and concerned them more nearly. ’Tis, as if they had said, “Suspend your admiration of this glorious spectacle; suppress all your fond and useless speculations about the causes of this event, and learn from us the proper uses of it. Ye have seen your Master thus visibly carried up from you into heaven; by what means, ye need not know, and may well forbear to inquire. But this intelligence receive from us (and it much imports you to be made acquainted with it); this same Jesus, who is thus gone up from you for a time into heaven, will come again with the same, or even additional glory, to judge the world in righteousness; to see what improvements ye have made of all he has done and suffered for you; and to fix your final doom according to your respective deserts, or miscarriages. Think well of this instruction, which so naturally results from all he said while he was with you on earth, and from what has now passed before your eyes; drop all your other inquiries, and resolve them into this, above all, deserving your best attention, how ye may prepare yourselves for that day, when he shall so come, in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”
The weight of this angelic admonition was enough to put all curious imaginations to flight, and to convince the Apostles then, and all believers at this day, “That their true wisdom consists in adverting to the moral and practical uses of their religion, instead of indulging subtle, anxious, and unprofitable speculations concerning the articles of it; such especially as are too high, or too arduous for them; such, as they have no real interest in considering, and have no faculties to comprehend.”
Permit me then to enforce this conclusion, by applying it to the case of such persons, and especially of such Christians, as have been, at all times, but too ready to sacrifice conduct to speculation; to neglect the ends of religious doctrines, while they busy themselves in nice and fruitless and (therefore, if for no other reason) pernicious inquiries into the grounds and reasons of them.
1. In the days of ancient paganism, two points in which religion was concerned, chiefly engaged the attention of their wise men; “GOD,” and the “HUMAN SOUL:” interesting topics both; and the more necessary to be well considered, because those wise men had little or no light on these subjects, but what their own reason might be able to strike out for them. And, had they been contented to derive, from the study of God’s works, all that may be known of him, by natural reason, his eternal power and Godhead, and had then glorified him with such a worship, as that knowledge obviously suggested; or, had they, by adverting to their own internal constitution, deduced the spirituality of the soul, together with its free, moral, and accountable nature, and then had built on these principles, the expectation of a future life, and a conduct in this, suitable to such expectation; had they proceeded thus far in their inquiries, and stopped here, who could have blamed, or, rather, who would not have been ready to applaud, their interesting speculations. But, when, instead of this reasonable use of their understandings in religious matters, they were more curious to investigate the essence of the infinite mind, than to establish just notions of his moral attributes; and to define the nature of the human soul, than to study its moral faculties; their metaphysicks became presumptuous and abominable: they reasoned themselves out of a superintending providence, in this world, and out of all hope, in a future; they resolved God into fate, or excluded him from the care of his own creation, and so made the worship of him, a matter of policy, and not of conscience; while, at the same time, they dismissed the Soul into air, or into the spirit of the world, either extinguishing its substance, or stripping it of individual consciousness; and so, in either way, set aside the concern, which it might be supposed to have in a future state, to the subversion of all morality, as well as of religion.
Such was the fruit of pagan ingenuity! The philosophers kept gazing upon God, and the Soul, till they lost all just and useful conceptions of either: And thus, as St. Paul says, they became vain in their imaginations; and their foolish heart was darkened[196].
If from the Grecian, we turn to the oriental, and what is called, barbaric philosophy, what portentous dreams do we find about angels and spirits, or of two opposite principles, contending for mastery in this sublunary world; ingeniously spun out into I know not what fantastic conclusions, which annihilate all sober piety, or subvert the plainest dictates of moral duty? So true is it of all presumptuous inquirers into the invisible things of God, that, professing themselves wise, they become fools!