biographers, and yet to have been passed over by them without a word of notice or allusion. Can it be for a moment supposed that two out of the four Evangelists had heard of the ascension of Christ—that the most wonderful termination of a wonderful life—and either forgot to mention, or deliberately omitted it? And may it not be assumed that Paul, when detailing the several occasions on which Christ had been seen after his crucifixion, must needs, had he known of it, have included this, perhaps the most striking of all, in his list? In fact the ascension rests entirely on the evidence of two witnesses, both of them comparatively late ones, the forger of the last verses of Mark, and the third Evangelist. Neither of them stand as near the events described as the true author of Mark, as Matthew, or as Paul, from no one of whom do we hear a word of the ascension. Nor do even these two witnesses relate their story in the same terms. The finisher of Mark merely tells us that after his parting charge to the eleven, he was received into heaven and sat at God's right hand; a statement couched in such general terms as even to leave it doubtful whether there was any distinct and visible ascension, or whether Jesus was merely taken to heaven like any other virtuous man, though enjoying when there a higher precedence (Mk. xvi. 19). Especially is this doubt fostered by the fact that this Gospel, when speaking of the witnesses to Christ's resurrection, never alludes to any of the physical proofs of his actual existence so much dwelt upon in Luke and the last chapter of John. Very much more definite is the statement at the close of the third Gospel. There it is related that Jesus led his disciples out to Bethany, where he blessed them and that, in the very act of blessing, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven (Lu. xxiv. 50, 51). The same author subsequently composed the Acts of the Apostles, and in the interim he had greatly improved upon his previous conception of the ascension. When he came to write the Acts, he was able to supply, what he had omitted before, the last conversation of the master with the disciples he was about to leave; he knows too that after the final words—no blessing is mentioned here—he was taken up and received by a cloud; that while the disciples were gazing up, two men in white—no doubt the very couple who had been seen at the sepulchre—*
