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There is reproof in the question. We might have thought that the question answered itself. Would it not have been strange if they had not stood gazing? Less wonderful spectacles than that have drawn together a crowd of gazers, and no one thinks of arguing with them. Curiosity alone will account for gazing upon this spectacle; ascent into heaven by one in human form, unaided by any visible appliance. Who, I say, would not gaze up into heaven to watch this? But how much more, if the person thus ascending was a friend — a friend closer than a brother. The disciples gazed as though they were looking their last upon the departed form. To be reminded, then, that this was by no means their last sight of Him was to be recalled at once to thoughts of peace, and hope, and blessedness; to be reproved for this gazing by the assurance which followed, that "this same Jesus shall come again in like manner as ye now see Him go," had healing in the very wound. Interpreted by the teaching of the Last Supper, the reproof said this to them: "Remember how He said to you while He was yet with you, 'A little while, and ye shall not see Me; and again a little while and ye shall see Me.'" One fulfilment of that saying you have already witnessed: He went from you by death, and He came back to you by resurrection. Another fulfilment of the same saying is now in development: He goes from you by ascension, and He shall come back to you in the Advent. This, then, was the meaning for the first disciples of the "Why stand ye gazing?" which is our text. Within tea days they understood it. On the instant it comforted them, for St. Luke expressly says, that they returned to Jerusalem that very hour with great joy. The idea of parting was swallowed up for them in the idea of meeting. But now, let us hear this question addressed to ourselves: "Why stand ye here gazing? What mean ye by this silence?" and let us think what we shall answer. "Why stand ye to-night in this church gazing on the ascension?" We take an onward step when we reply.

I. BECAUSE IT HELPS US TO REALISE A WORLD BEYOND THIS WORLD, a life above this life, a substantial rock that is higher than we, on which we would firmly stand our feet amidst the billows and storms of the temporal and the transient. To fix a steadfast gaze upon the ascending Lord, till a cloud comes between and intercepts the view, to which flesh and blood are unequal, of that glorious, that mysterious transition from the material into the immaterial universe — we find it helpful, we find it comforting, under the heavy pressure of sense and time, whether our circumstances at this present are joyous or grievous, weighted with care and sorrow, or but too jubilant with pleasure and prosperity. It is not easy to believe in a world out of sight. We want every help that a religious life can give to it, we want the aid of prayer, we want. the discipline of providence, we want the experience of years, we want, first and above all, a revelation such as God gives in His Son, commending itself to man's conscience and resting upon a basis of impregnable fact. I know not what would become of us in days such as these — days of unrest and disquietude, days of anxiety bursting sometimes into horror, days of failing hearts and almost despairing hopes, for the future of our own and other lands, if we could not gaze upward after the ascended Saviour and infer the certainty of a better country, that is a heavenly.

II. THE DESIRE TO REALISE THE LIFE OF CHRIST HIMSELF AS GONE INTO HEAVEN FOR US MEN AND FOR OUR SALVATION.

III. THAT WE ARE ALL LEARNING IN HEART AND MIND TO ASCEND AFTER HIM, AND THERE WITH HIM CONTINUALLY TO DWELL. There are many counterfeits of this grace, there are also some substitutes for it, counted as good or better, sometimes even by the Church of this age. It is an age which makes activity everything; measures religion by its tangible effects; leaves itself no inner life, as it were; itself depends on the outward, and thinks little even of the industry which has nothing to show for itself. The Church too much humours and pampers this temper of the times. Now, the ascent of our Lord is the protest against this whole system. They who would witness for Him must find time to track His ascending; they who would reproduce Him in. His reality to this nineteenth age must first have gazed steadfastly up; there must be leisure found or made for this, leisure for meditation, leisure for study, leisure for communing. Let each one fix his gaze upon the ascending Lord, that he may follow Him where the Ascended rests in that calm heaven, the heaven of holiness and the heaven of love. Let him dwell with the Ascended, having boldness to enter into the Holiest. Let us draw nigh; let it be a purified entering, and let it be a purified return also. That is the spiritual mind whose home is heaven. "Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" Because we would follow where He has led, live the life of heaven here, and at last be with Him for ever where He is.

(Dean Vaughan.)

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KJV: And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;

WEB: While they were looking steadfastly into the sky as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white clothing,