(with Luke 24:15-53)
Ascension Day
I. It is quite necessary to seize firmly and hold fast by this thought, that the acts of Apostles and all subsequent acts of their true successors, are, as Bengel says, a continuation of Christ's own history, if we would understand St. Luke's opening section of Church history, or any after section of it from St. Luke's day till now. The one event in which St. Luke finds the meeting place of these two eras is the Ascension. It finds a place at the end of his Gospel, and at the beginning of his Church history, because it is really common to both.
II. Unlike the feebleness of good wishes on men's dying lips, the strong benediction of the Prince of Life commands and confers a blessing, while from His radiant face and form, and down from His uplifted hands, there rains into the souls of the eleven a rain of gracious influences, of hope and courage and content and gladness. Then, like a thing of rarer quality, which by its own upward virtue ascends through the grosser atmosphere below, His blessed body rose with a still and slow and stately movement into the pure bright upper air. Nor stayed; but followed by the fixed gaze of the amazed men, rose on, until, still raining blessings down, He reached the region where white clouds rest. Then suddenly there swept beneath His feet a cloud that shut him from their envious eyes. This was no time for idle, melancholy despondencies, that root themselves in the past for profitless longings after that which is not. Gazing into heaven will not fetch Christ back, nor any other departed. Let us return to Jerusalem. Earth has its calls to duty, and heaven will chide us if we do not heed them. Let this be the spur which quickens labour and the hope which cheers exhaustion, that "This same Jesus who is taken from us into heaven, shall so come in like manner as they saw Him go into heaven."
J. Oswald Dykes, From Jerusalem to Antioch,p. 5 (see also Preacher's Lantern,vol. iv., p. 1).
References: Acts 1:1-11. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 266; Acts 1:1-21. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 189. Acts 1:2; Acts 1:3. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 32.Acts 1:3. T. Binney, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 379; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ix., p. 468; Homilist,vol. iii., p. 015.Acts 1:4. Lawrance, Church Sermons,vol. ii., p. 123.Acts 1:4; Acts 1:5. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 33.Acts 1:4-8. Ibid.,vol. iv., p. 267.