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  A COMPENDIUM OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
  by William Burt Pope
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Pope's systematic theology establishing divine revelation as the foundation of
Christian faith, examining how God reveals Himself through Scripture, miracles,
prophecy, and the person of Christ. A comprehensive Wesleyan-Methodist dogmatic
theology covering the full scope of Christian doctrine.

  Chapters: 34

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 03. Vol 01 - Definition of Theology
    2. 04. Vol 01 - Revelation or the Faith
    3. 05. Vol 01 - Inspiration
    4. 06. Vol 01 - The Canon: The Divine Rule of Faith
    5. 07. Vol 01 - The Existence and Notion of God
    6. 08. Vol 01 - The Divine Essence and Perfections
    7. 09. Vol 01 - The Triune Name
    8. 10. Vol 01 - The Attributes of God
    9. 11. Vol 01 - Creation
   10. 12. Vol 02 - Origin of Sin in the Universe and on Earth
   11. 13. Vol 02 - Nature of Sin
   12. 14. Vol 02 - Sin and Redemption
   13. 15. Vol 02 - Original Sin
   14. 16. Vol 02 - The Divine Purpose of Redemption
   15. 17. Vol 02 - The Redemptional or Economical Trinity
   16. 18. Vol 02 - The Person of Christ
   17. 19. Vol 02 - The Mediatorial Work in its Process
   18. 20. Vol 02 - Historical Manifestation of the Redeemer
   19. 21. Vol 02 - Names of the Redeemer
   20. 22. Vol 02 - The Finished Work
   21. 23. Vol 02 - The Atonement in its Results
   22. 24. Vol 02 - The Administration of Redemption
   23. 25. Vol 02 - The Holy Spirit
   24. 26. Vol 02 - The Gospel Vocation
   25. 27. Vol 02 - The Preliminaries of Salvation
   26. 28. Vol 02 - Historical
   27. 29. Vol 02 - The State of Salvation
   28. 30. Vol 02 - Christian Righteousness
   29. 31. Vol 03 - Christian Sonship
   30. 32. Vol 03 - Christian Sanctification
   31. 33. Vol 03 - Tenure of Covenant Blessings
   32. 34. Vol 03 - Christian Ethics
   33. 35. Vol 03 - The Christian Church
   34. 36. Vol 03 - Eschatology, or the Last Things

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  CHAPTER 1: 03. VOL 01 - DEFINITION OF THEOLOGY
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Definition of Theology

PRELIMINARIES.

DEFINITION OF THEOLOGY

THEOLOGY PROPER God and Divine Things IN RELATION TO MAN Extent and Limitation
IN JESUS CHRIST Relation to Natural Theology, and Earlier Dispensations IN THE
CHURCH:

Development and Various Types THEOLOGY A SCIENCE Its Aim, Methods, and Study

CHRISTIAN Theology is the science of God and Divine thing’s, based upon the
revelation made to mankind in Jesus Christ, and variously systematized within
the Christian Church.

(General Definition) All that belongs to the preliminaries of our study may be
distributed under the several heads suggested by this definition, which is so
framed as to include, first, Theology proper; secondly, its limitation to the
relations between God and mankind; thirdly, its essential connection with
Christ; fourthly, its characteristics as developed under various influences
within the Christian Church; and lastly, its title to the name of a science. The
introductory remarks which will be made on these several topics have for their
object simply to prepare the mind of the student for what lies before him; and
to give a few hints which will all afterwards be expanded in due course.

THEOLOGY.

God is the source and the subject and the end of theology. The stricter and
earlier use of the word limited it to the doctrine of the Triune God and His
attributes. But in modern usage it includes the whole compass of the science of
Religion, or the relations of all things to God. This gives it its unity and
dignity and sanctity. It is A DEO, DE DEO, IN DEUM: from God in its origin,
concerning God in its substance, and it leads to God in all its issues; His NAME
is in it.

1. The only adequate definition of this subject embraces DIVINE THINGS: Logos
peri tou Theou kai peri ton Theion. The Supreme, whose being is the first
postulate of theology or divinity, declares Himself to be as to His nature
incomprehensible and unsearchable. I AM THAT I Amos 1:1-15 is the nearest
approach to a definition; it asserts without proving His existence, and that He
exists in an essence known only to Himself. The Old Testament asks: Canst thou
by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?2
The New Testament, which brings Him nearer in His Son, represents Him as
dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto to search.3 In the
profoundest sense He is ever THE UNKNOWN GOD.4 It is His glory that He must
conceal Himself. But St. Paul, as a preacher to the Gentiles, nevertheless
declares that Unknown God, and in his writings uses two expressive phrases which
at once affirm the prerogative and assign the limits of our theology proper. He
speaks of the things of God, ta ton Thon, 5 in reference to those mysteries
which the Spirit can and will reveal to those who receive Him. And he indicates
that even apart from the supernatural revelations of the Spirit what is [or may
be] known of God, to gnwsyon ton Theon,6 is unfolded to man. All that is known
is all that may be known: the possible knowledge is the actual knowledge in its
successive communications from the light of nature to the light of grace and
thence to the light of glory. The thick darkness round about the unsearchable
Presence is not absolutely unbroken: the rays that flow from it penetrate every
department of true knowledge, especially of this.

1 Exodus 3:14; Exodus 3:2Job 11:7; Job 11:31 Timothy 6:16; 1 Timothy 6:4Acts
17:23; Acts 17:51 Corinthians 2:11; 1 Corinthians 2:6Romans 1:19.

2. There is a sense in which universal theology is concerned simply with the
relation of all things to God: if we carefully guard our meaning we may make
this proposition include the converse, the relation of God to all things.
Relation of course must be mutual; but it is hard in this matter to detach from
the notion of relation that of dependence. The Eternal One is the Unconditioned
Being. When we study His nature and perfections and works we must always
remember that He is His Perfect Self independent of every created object, and
independent of every thought concerning Him. But there is not a doctrine, nor is
there a branch or development of any doctrine, which is not purely the
expression of some relation of His creatures to the Supreme First Cause.

3. Hence every branch of this science is sacred. It is a temple which is filled
with the presence of God. From its hidden sanctuary, into which no high priest
taken from among men can enter, issues a light which leaves no part dark save
where it is dark with excess of glory. Therefore all fit students are
worshippers as well as students. In the heathen world there was a true instinct
of this. The highest tribute the ancients could pay to their poets and
philosophers, from Homer and Hesiod downwards, was to call them Theologoi. Their
philosophy was their theology. So in the early Church, when theology put on its
perfection, its relation to God was the seal of that perfection: St. John was
called the Divine, Ho Theologos, because his writings contained most of the
manifestation of the Holy Trinity in its internal and external relations. What
has been said of God Himself may be said concerning the theological study of
God: He is the centre everywhere of a science which has its circumference
nowhere. The remembrance of this must exert its influence upon our spirit and
temper in all our studies. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who
shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart.1

1Psalms 24:3-4.

DIVINE THINGS MADE KNOWN TO MAN.

Theology is mainly concerned with the things of God as they are related to man
and his destination. This proposition implies the capacity in our nature to
receive Divine truth; indicates both the extent and the limits of its range as
revealed especially for man; and explains the essentially human character which
is impressed on its form and invests it with a profound human interest.

1. Man is in a certain sense the centre of this science. He is specifically the
centre of one branch of it, technically called ANTHROPOLOGY, which has to do
with his characteristics as a creature formed in the image of God; but, more
generally, he is the object around which all revolves. The light of revelation
is poured upon the human race; and in its fullness upon it alone. Accordingly
the relation of mankind to the Supreme may be said to be one of the definitions
of theology. But man is only one insignificant, and yet not insignificant,
creature of God. His place in the vast creation, and the development of his
wonderful career in harmony with all other Divine designs, marks out his
relation to theology universal. But this general truth must be viewed in two
lights: man is the object of all revelation, as it concerns him and his
destination; man is the subject of all revelation, as he is its recipient.

(1) Theology is concerned with the destiny of man in the universe. Its first
lessons, the opening of the volume of the book, presents him as the head of the
creation of God: the history of the origin of all things, and of the slow
formation of this world, is only the preface to his introduction as the
representative of his Maker upon the earth. His fall and his redemption are
blended in one; the whole sequel of revelation is the record of the Divine
method of retrieving in the Second Adam what in the first was marred, THE DIVINE
IMAGE. The redemption of the human race, and the salvation of individual man,
are interwoven into one great economy, stretching from the shutting of the
earthly to the opening of the heavenly Paradise. There is not a revelation of
God in His three Persons, as the Father, the Son Incarnate, and the Holy Ghost,
which is not directly or indirectly connected with the salvation of mankind.
Thus theology is simply the system of Divine truth which lies at the foundation
of human religion or the spiritual fellowship between man and his Creator.

(2) But the same general principle may be referred to man as the recipient of
revelation.

Created in the image of God, he is an intelligent, free and responsible
creature, capable of separation from the Divine will and also capable of
restoration to the Divine communion. The two first postulates of all theology
are the Personality of the Infinite Being and the personality of man His
creature. Neither of these is matter of demonstration in the holy oracles: both
are assumed or taken for granted everywhere. To renounce either is to annihilate
theological knowledge properly so called. Although in the prosecution of this
study methods of proving both may be adopted, under the pressure of a necessity
imposed on us by the waywardness of human skepticism, yet must we finally and
always beg the question here God is a Person who condescends to man; and man is
a person who is capable of God.

(3) The objective and subjective relations of man as the centre of theological
science meet in the word RELIGION, one of the largest and deepest terms with
which we have to do. Its derivation has been much disputed; but the two leading
explanations of it may be united for our present purpose. According to
Lactantius, vinculo pietatis obstricti deo et RELIGATI sumus, unde ipsa religio
nomen accepit, non, ut Cicero interpretatus est, a relegendo. That is to say,
the eternal bond which binds man to God is signified by religion, which is
therefore the relation of the human creature to the Supreme Creator, as
acknowledged and borne witness to in all forms of theological teaching and
worship.

Men have never been without a religion, for God has never left Himself without
witness1 in any age or land: there have been gods many and religions many,
though to us only one God and. one religion. The rejected interpretation of
Cicero, however, demands to be heard: qui omnia, quae ad cultum deorum
pertinerent, diligenter retractarent et tanquam RELEGERENT, sunt dicti
religiosi, ex relegendo. That is to say, the exercise of the human mind in
pondering and considering Divine things is signified by religion, which is, as
it were, an instinctive and inwrought aspiration of human nature corrected and
purified and directed to its highest issues in the true faith. We combine the
two when we say that man is the centre of all theology as it is the foundation
of all true religion.

1Acts 14:17.

2. Hence the limitation that everywhere meets us. The relations of the vast
universe, and of other creatures in it, with God, are included only so far as
they concern mankind.

Revelation brings us tidings from without, from the outside universe; and its
communications concerning the earlier probation of spiritual intelligences,
their division into orders, their interest and agency in the development of the
Divine purposes, amount when systematized to a considerable department of
revealed truth, to which the name ANGELOLOGY is sometimes given. But it is
always their connection with man that regulates the method and the amount of
these disclosures. There is strict parsimony as to everything not essential to
human destiny: the principle of Least Action is maintained in revelation as in
nature. Hence it is obvious that the responsibility of theology, so to speak, is
limited to one subject. Those who study it must submit to this restriction.

What is that to thee?1 has its meaning here for all who indulge too much in
speculation both as to the past and as to the future. Concerning all other
things thou shalt know hereafter: there are many hints and earnests of a more
abundant compensatory outpouring of knowledge in due time. Meanwhile this is the
answer by anticipation to many objections of the skeptical spirit. We have but
one leaf out of an enormous book; its page begins and ends, so to speak, in the
middle of a sentence. Hereafter we shall see much more of this book. Now we know
in part.2 We know ourselves apart from other creatures and other worlds. Then we
shall know as also we are known: we shall know other beings and other worlds as
they know us.

1John 21:22, 2 1 Corinthians 13:12.

3. There is an impress upon theology, whether in its Divine records or in its
human science, which results from its adaptation to human faculties. We must
here take it for granted that man is a creature capable of religion, that is, of
communion with God, as a person related to a Person. The Scripture which does
not prove that God is does not prove that man is capable of knowing God: both
are the fundamental presuppositions of theology. But, reserving the fuller
demonstration of this, we must mark that as he is a creature in probation, his
knowledge of Divine things is given in probationary forms, testing his character
at every point. All is expressly adapted to his limited faculties, and imparted
to him in a way suitable to his present stage of existence. God has come down to
us in the likeness of men,1 and speaks to them in their own language. As the
Rabbins said of the Law, Lex Dei loquitur linguam filiorum hominum, the law of
God speaks the language of the children of men. The entire Bible is pervaded by
what is called ANTHROPOMORPHISM and ANTHROPOPATHY: the former gives a name to
the condescension of God in seeming to take a human form and human attributes;
the latter includes also the peculiar affections of man, not excepting some that
belong to his infirmity, such as hope and suspense. Not that the reality does
not correspond. The Supreme gives us a true revelation of Himself; but it is a
revelation that can be understood only in our world, and by us men. Even the
angels desire to look into these things; 2 they are learning the secrets of the
manifold wisdom of God as known by the Church; 3 but they cannot study them in
our language.

1Acts 14:11; Acts 14:21 Peter 1:12; 1 Peter 1:3Ephesians 3:10.

4. As human students of our own truth, we may be assured Sufficient that we
shall have full and sufficient guidance. Nothing that it concerns us to know has
been or will be hidden from us: what is reserved is reserved for our discipline,
as what is revealed is revealed for our instruction. He hath showed thee, 0 man,
what is good: 1 this must have its widest application. So also must that other
saying, which contains the counterpart: The secret things belong unto the Lord
our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children
for ever.2 With what a profound human interest does this invest the whole domain
of this sacred knowledge! Our life, our hope, our destiny, our all, is bound up
with it: it is the record of our degradation and of our deliverance, of our ruin
and of our recovery, of our woes and of our redemption. How great is the dignity
of man that he is the centre, in any sense, of such a science! If it is the name
of God that gives it its surpassing majesty, that grandeur is reflected upon us.

What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? 3 Our study cannot be conducted
aright without a combination of the loftiest triumph and the deepest humility;
we must always remember the dignity while we never forget the lowliness of the
place we ourselves occupy in it. Approaching the revelation of Him who is our
Wisdom, we hear: that no flesh should glory in His presence; 4 receiving that
revelation we again hear, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. 5
Theology is a light shed upon all the universe; it is the glory of God’s
creature, man. But this leads us to the eternal secret of our dignity. Our
knowledge comes to us through One who is Man and also God; His incarnation in
the fullness of time explains the Anthropomorphism of the Old Testament; and it
is in Him that the theology of God and the theology of man become one.

1Micah 6:8; Micah 6:2Deuteronomy 29:29; Deuteronomy 29:3Psalms 8:4; Psalms 8:41
Corinthians 1:29-31; 1 Corinthians 1:5Luke 2:32. BY JESUS CHRIST.

Jesus Christ is Himself in Person and in Word the revelation of God. He has
confirmed and supplemented Natural Theology, or that which is independent of
supernatural revelation. He has consummated the preliminary disclosures of His
own earlier dispensations. He has discredited and condemned all teachers and
teaching that reject His authority. Hence the science which we study is
essentially Christian theology. The postulates of the general proposition will
be more fully established hereafter: they are now only stated and assumed.

1. In its technical sense, the term CHRISTOLOGY generally refers to the doctrine
of Christ’s Person as such in the unity of His two natures; but it may be said
that Christology is Theology. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. 1
Although He reveals God as the Father who becomes visible in Him, He is in a
certain sense the manifestation of the entire Divinity. He is the Mystery of God
manifest in the flesh.2 The Old Testament, Behold your God! 3 Ecce Deus tuus!
answers to the New Testament, Behold the Man!4 Ecce Homo! Our Lord is the
ever-blessed unity of these: for both were spoken expressly of Him. His Person
is the compendium of all that is Divine in human things, and in Him are hid all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.5 He is the substance of revelation in act
and in word. He is Himself the one and supreme Theologian: neither knoweth any
man the Father save theSong of Solomon 6:1-13 He is the centre of theology; all
its doctrines revolve around Him: I am the Truth. 7 And, as Mediator between God
and men,8 making both one, He is in a peculiar sense the bond of perfectness in
theology. In Him is its unity, and it is complete in Him. The superscription of
the Apocalypse is the superscription of our science as a whole: it is the
apokalnpsis ’Iesous Christos, the Revelation of Jesus Christ,9 of Him as its
object, from Him as its source.

1 John 14:9, 2 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Timothy 3:3Isaiah 40:9; Isaiah 40:4John 19:5;
John 19:5Colossians 2:3; Colossians 2:6Matthew 11:27; Matthew 11:7John 14:6;
John 14:81 Timothy 2:5; 1 Timothy 2:9Revelation 1:1.

2. The Supreme Revealer confirms and absorbs into His teaching the original
revelations of nature: or what is called NATURAL THEOLOGY.

(1.) He presupposes the elements of this natural knowledge. He everywhere
appeals to it. But by the mouth of His servant Paul He has given the fullest
exposition of what it includes. First, the Apostle speaks of the law written on
their hearts, 1 or on the reason of universal man, which is the indestructible
evidence of a God in Whose image he was created: for we are also His offspring.
2 Secondly, he appeals to the religious consciousness, or conscience, in man
bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one
another 3 according to the standard written or rather engraven on the reason; to
the evidences of the eternal power and Godhead which were clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made; 4 and to a Providence, drawing men, in
all ages, to feel after 5 the unknown God of a final revelation. Thus St. Paul,
as preacher in the Acts, and teacher in the Romans, traces the broad outlines of
the primitive inferior and traditional knowledge of mankind. He is himself
pre-eminently the theologian of the finished revelation in Christ, but he
indirectly and yet most clearly acknowledges the labors of a certain theology
outside of supernatural revelation and preliminary to it.

(2.) The New Teacher confirms and supplements the theology of nature. Our Lord
came not to destroy but to fulfill this natural law and these natural prophets.
Of these scriptures also He silently says to the searcher: they testify of Me. 6
His coming reveals their imperfection; but His tribute to them, as the basis of
His teaching, vindicates their Divine origin. The fanaticism of the Jews cried:
Will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?7 He
did both afterwards by His Apostles, and the latter He had done long before.
This will hereafter recur at more length.

1 Romans 2:15; Romans 2:2Acts 17:28; Acts 17:3Romans 11:15; Romans 11:4Romans
1:20; Romans 1:5Acts 17:27; Acts 17:6John 5:39; John 5:7John 7:35.

3. Christian Theology is the consummation of its own earlier economies. Christ
was the Revealer from the beginning. But His revelations have been given by
progressive stages; and now in the end of the world He has gathered the whole
into one great system of truth.

We may therefore regard His perfect teaching as the consummation of its
preliminary forms. It is the fulfillment of OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY as a vast
body of preparatory truth, the ruling design of which is to prepare the way of
the Lord. This one complex economy of past revelation is itself divided again
into several branches: there is the PATRIARCHALTHEOLOGY, which had in it the
earliest broad disclosures of the Divine will, the Gospel before the Law; the
MOSAIC THEOLOGY, which is that of the chosen people, and its theocracy, and
typical institutes, the Gospel under the Law, and the PROPHETICAL THEOLOGY,
which is emphatically the Gospel in the Law. These branches of the earlier
teaching were all under the guidance of inspiration: under the Spirit of Christ
which was in them.1 They are all presupposed, confirmed, and supplemented and
perfected by the New-Testament institution of Christ. This also must again be
considered more fully.

1 1 Peter 1:11 4. New-Testament teaching, which sanctions the religion of nature
and the earlier disclosures of truth, both having the same common element of
preparation, denounces every independent source of religious instruction. One is
your Master, even Christ, kathegetes or didaskalos. 1 He has expressly shut out
all others who had come before Him, or who might come after Him: the former, all
that ever came before Me, 2 since My appearance, whom the sheep did not hear; 3
the latter, Go ye not therefore after them. He is not more jealous of the honor
of His Father than of His own honor. He is the absolute Teacher; But I say unto
you 4 interdicts every other: the only supplement of His own words which He
admits is that which He Himself gives in the person of the Spirit of truth.

5 And this is intended in the comprehensive saying of the last commission: panta
osa eneteilamhn, all things whatsoever I have commanded. 6 1 Matthew 23:8, 2
John 10:8, 3 Luke 21:8; Luke 21:4Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:5John 16:13; John
16:6Matthew 28:20. The theological systems of religious teaching which are thus
condemned are those which have been based upon perversions either of natural or
of revealed religion.

(1) The former has assumed many forms, all of them having some common relation
to the only truth. There has always been a TRADITIONAL THEOLOGY among men,
which, containing vestiges of primitive revelation perverted into error, has
been woven into every imaginable form of MYTHOLOGY, or legendary religion,
varying with the culture of the nations. These have been connected, especially
in the East, with elaborate religious systems which may be called the HEATHEN
RELIGIONS, FLOurishing especially in India, China, and Persia when Christ came
into the world. PHILOSOPHY, which seeks the first principles of truth in the
love of it, but without even professing to find it, has been in every age a
human disguise of Divine revelation: anciently deeply religious, almost in every
age the expression of a religious sentiment, but in modern times led away by
false fundamental principles. The theology proper of a perverted religion of
nature is DEISM, in its rather less anti-Christian form THEISM, which retains a
God but rejects supernatural revelation, and especially that of Christ.

(2) The perversions of revealed religion have assumed also many forms. The most
gigantic is that of RABBINISM, or TALMUDISM, as taught in the writings of the
Talmud, the foundations of which were laid in the Judaism of the interval
between the two Testaments. Next comes MOHAMMEDANISM, an imposture based upon
the Holy Scriptures, but reducing religion back again to the lowest conditions
of nature: the strangest admixture of truth and error which history presents.
And to them must be added that mass of CHRISTIAN TRADITIONALISM which is
identified with the corruption of the Christian Faith. All these are the dark
background of the science which the name of Christ sanctifies. We shall meet
some of them again and again: and indicate them now only in outline.

5. Christ, the Centre of theology, is its Living Teacher also. As the test of
all opinion and faith is the place it assigns to Him, —Whom say ye that I am?
being the question that follows Whom do men say that I ?Amos 1:1-15 —so His
doctrine cannot be studied effectually save at His feet. By His Spirit He guides
His disciples, as the company of its believing students, into all the truth: no
longer by a supreme inspiration, but by a secret instruction that gives the full
assurance of understanding to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, [which
is] Christ, 2 to every believer united to Himself. Pectus facit theologum, the
heart’s devotion makes the theologian: this aphorism of Augustine holds good of
all whose hearts are true to their Master. They are the holy brethren who are
invited to consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, [Christ]
Jesus. 3 Of the unbelieving Jews our Lord said: Why do ye not understand My
speech? even because ye cannot hear My word. 4 But His true disciples, down to
the least, can hear His doctrinal word, logos, for they have learned by the
Spirit its heavenly meaning as the word of eternal truth; therefore they
understand His speech, His lalias, and receive His perfect doctrine. They know
Him their Master, and His communications. But He gives His instruction through
His Spirit, not only by secret and personal illumination, but through the
channels of teaching provided in His Church, which is the pillar and ground of
the truth. 5 They receive both the elements and the developments of Christian
doctrine as set forth among the people of God; the teachings of God are
addressed to the household of faith: prov touv oikeiouv thv pistewv. 6 1 Mark
8:27-29; Mark 8:2Colossians 2:2-3Hebrews 3:1; Hebrews 3:4John 8:43; John 8:51Ti
3:15, 6 Galatians 6:10.

THEOLOGY IN THE CHURCH. The Lord has been pleased to commit His revelation, as
finished in the Scriptures, to the keeping of His Church, under the control and
supervision of the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures are the rule and standard and
test of theology, which in this relation must be regarded as the whole sum of
the Church’s Christian literature, gradually produced and variously modified: an
extension of the term which is absolutely necessary, but requires to be guarded
by the proviso that all sound theology is that which has its foundations and
evidences in the Word of God. The former part of this proposition must now be
assumed: its, discussion is reserved for a future place. Meanwhile, it may be
said that there is nothing in theology which does not seek its authority in the
Word of God: our science is the arrangement, development, and application of
facts and principles given by inspiration. The authoritative volume has from the
beginning been lodged in the Church. The early oracles were in the keeping of
the covenant people; and the Christian Faith has been delivered unto the saints.
1 The oracle has always had its ark. As the Church was enlarged the Bible was
enlarged; but never was the one without the other in the world. Neither,
however, without the Divine Spirit, Who has always watched over the growth of a
theological literature around the Bible. Besides the fixed utterances of
inspiration, the Holy Ghost has His own many other words 2 spoken by men under
His more common influences; and Christian men have also theirs, which He
overrules and controls. And all these are in their expansion theology, using the
term in its widest latitude: a boundless mass of more or less systematized
doctrine, the growth of all ages, of all kinds of soil, and of all zones of
religious faith. The whole, so far as we have to do with it, is directly or
indirectly the produce of the Christian Church: either as the formal arrangement
of its own teaching, or as the result of false teaching which it condemns. And
we have to consider its various characteristics accordingly.

1 Jude 1:3; Jude 1:2Acts 2:40. But religious truth, as molded within the Church,
must be developed according to some laws. First, the requirements of teaching
would insure the creation of a large body of various theology. Again, this has
assumed specific forms as conformed to different types of doctrine within the
Church: giving birth to a great mass of what may be called Confessional
theology. And, further, there is a rich development that is governed by the law
of adaptation to the internal and external circumstances by which the truth may
be surrounded. The idea of evolution is all-pervading in this science; and we
are safe in applying it if we remember that there is one law of development
peculiar to Scripture, the law of progressive revelation, and another that
governs the human systematization of this.

Divine doctrine is developed in the Bible; in the Church human dogma.

I. Both as teacher and as defender of the Faith the Christian Church was from
the beginning under a necessity to create a theology: whether as the teacher of
its converts or as their defender against error. Didactic divinity was the
necessary expansion of what in Scripture is termed the Apostles’ doctrine.1 Its
first and simplest form, as seen in the writings of the earliest Fathers, was
EXPOSITORY or practical, aiming at the edification of the flock; then followed
the CATECHETICAL, for the preliminary instruction of converts or Catechumens in
order to baptism, conducted by pastors as Catechists, and formulated in the
permanent Catechism; and thus were laid the foundations of all subsequent
BIBLICAL theology proper. Defensive assertion of truth was rendered necessary by
heresies arising within the community, and by the duty of vindicating the Faith
against those without. The latter obligation gave rise to APOLOGETICS in all its
branches, called in modern times EVIDENCES: Apology having reference rather to
the position of the Christian society as challenged by the world, Evidences
belonging rather to its aggressive and missionary character. The former
introduced DOGMATIC Theology, taught first in Creeds—the Apostles’, the
Niceno-Constantinopolitan, and the Athanasian; afterwards in specific
expositions of those creeds, and their individual articles: this, as
distinguished from Apologetic, is controversial divinity or POLEMICS. In later
times, all these branches have been incorporated into the unity of what is
called SYSTEMATIC divinity, or the orderly arrangement of the doctrines of
revelation, as they are Dogmas fixed in the decisions of the Church, defended
against external assaults, and unfolded in the ethics of human duty. This is the
normal development of the science within Christendom, and common to all its
branches. Every Christian community presents in its own literature more or less
systematically all these various forms of fundamental teaching.

1 Acts 2:42.

II. There is a development also which has been conducted according to the law of
distinct types of doctrine, issuing finally in what has been already termed
CONFESSIONAL theology. This opens a very wide field, where the differences of
the several branches of Christendom meet our view. It requires something like an
historical survey.

1. Such a survey must include the New Testament itself; but marking the
essential difference between its several types of doctrine and those that appear
in the Church after inspiration had ceased. It is important to have a clear
conception of this. The sum of Scriptural teaching is the combination of many
elements which the Holy Ghost fashioned into unity. As the history of the
redeeming government of mankind runs on, the gradual evolution of doctrine
generally and of individual doctrines runs on with it; and as all events
converge to the fullness of time so all doctrines converge to the fullness of
truth.

Multiplicity and variety are for ever tending to simplicity and unity. The
preparatory teaching of the Old Testament and the perfect teaching of the New
are one in the unity of prophecy and fulfillment. The same may be said of the
predictions of the Gospels before the Pentecost, and their accomplishment
afterwards. And there are different types of doctrine in the Apostolic circle.
St. John, St. Peter, St. James, St. Paul contribute their several distinct
exhibitions of Christian truth, each of which is sharply marked off from its
fellows, while all conspire to the unity of the faith. 1 The first Three
received each his special charisma or gift, and represented the Savior’s
teaching as given to them in its elements by His own lips, before and after the
resurrection, and as subsequently expounded to them by the Holy Spirit,
according to the Lord’s promise. St. Paul was added to the company; he derived
his teaching, according to his own testimony, directly from the Risen Savior,
who elected the future Apostle from a Rabbinical school, and gave him a specific
revelation of the scheme of the Gospel. In one of the Epistles which contain the
fullest exhibition of what is new in the evangelical system he says: for I
neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of
Jesus Christ.2 It is most obvious that the method of the Inspiring Spirit was to
complete the Christian revelation on the principle of a series of converging
developments, the last and highest of which were committed to St. Paul and St.
John. This fact will meet us again; it will be our main guide in the Biblical
exposition of theology. Meanwhile, it must be remembered that these developments
ended with the perfected revelation. Divine doctrine then ceased, and human
dogma then began its course. The unity of New-Testament doctrine is perfect. The
Apostle Paul, who seems to introduce so many new elements into his teaching that
he is claimed by very opposite parties as the real founder of Christian
theology, is the most strenuous of all in asserting that unity, and in
denouncing every tendency to divide the Christian Faith into several types. Now
I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak
the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be
perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment .. . Is
Christ divided?

1 Ephesians 4:13; Ephesians 4:2Galatians 1:12; Galatians 1:31 Corinthians
1:10-13.

2. In Christian history the case is different. Christendom soon was partitioned
into provinces: the period of perfect unity in theological teaching was very
brief. This is not the place to discuss the moral character of this fact: it is
with the fact alone we have to do, and with that only in a preliminary way.

(1) During the first six hundred years, the Patristic age proper, the unity of
the Faith was expressed by the Ecumenical Creeds: the APOSTLES’, which gradually
expanded the Baptismal Formula, the NICENE, which introduced a more theological
definition of the Holy Trinity in Unity, the ATHANASIAN, which still more fully
expanded this, and added to it the precise definition of the Incarnation.
Scarcely were the Three Creeds lodged in the universal Faith than the first
division of Confessional theology took place: that between the ORIENTAL and the
WESTERN Confessions. Beginning with the difference of a word, the insertion of
the FILIOQUE to express the procession of the Spirit from the Son as from the
Father, the breach wore on, and the two Theologies have had ever since their
marked types: that of the East contemplative, mystical, unprogressive, and
teaching rather by symbol than by creeds; that of the West abounding in
analysis, always progressive, and developing every truth to its utmost issues.
The Greek or Oriental Creed, mainly though not exclusively represented by the
Orthodox Church of Russia, holds to the decisions of the seven (Ecumenical
Councils from 325 to 787, the Nicene Creed being its basis. Since the
Reformation it has issued several Confessions, that of Peter Mogila in 1643, the
Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem 1672, the Catechism of Philaret, sanctioned in
1839. Oriental divinity has many points of specific distinction from that of the
West. From the Roman Catholic it differs by rejecting the doctrine of the
Papacy, by some modifications of the Seven Sacraments, by denying the Immaculate
Conception of the Virgin, by circulating the Bible in the Vernacular, and, as a
consequence of the first of these differences, by the assertion of its own
absolute supremacy as the only orthodox and true representative of Christianity
on earth Classing Romanism among the schisms and heresies as the eldest born
among them, it nevertheless agrees with Rome in the great bulk of its doctrines,
and has no affinity with Protestantism save in its rejection of an infallible
human authority and the consequent possibility of its own reformation.

(2) The Romanist and Protestant types of theology have divided the Western world
for three centuries: united as they undoubtedly are in many of the most
fundamental verities, their differences touch almost every essential topic in
the administration of redemption and the presence of Christ in His Church. Those
differences will meet us only too often: meanwhile it is enough to say that each
type of doctrine is developed into a large body of theology. The basis of
Romanism was until lately the TRIDENTINE symbols and decrees and canons, or the
solemn sanction given by the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth
century to the dogmas which had been growing up in the mediaeval times, and were
formulated in opposition to Protestantism. In the present century the VATICAN
decisions on the Immaculate Conception, 1854, and Papal Infallibility, 1870,
have been added to the Tridentine decrees and Roman Catechism of the era of the
Reformation. PROTESTANTISM as such, that is, the general system of doctrine
which derived its name from the protest against Rome, has many subdivisions, and
its confessions are many. Historically considered, these divided into two at the
Reformation: the LUTHERAN and the REFORMED; the chief expositors of the former
having been Luther and Melanchthon, and of the latter Calvin and Zwingli. These
are one in their adhesion to the three ancient Creeds, but specially in the
restoration of Holy Scripture to its supreme place as the standard of faith, in
the vindication of the fundamental doctrines of grace which in the ancient
Creeds had not sufficient prominence, and in the establishment of the Scriptural
view of a sinner’s personal relations to Christ. But they differ in other
respects: mainly in that Lutheran Theology is more deeply sacramental, and the
Reformed is pervaded by the revived predestinarianism of Augustine. The chief
standard of Lutheran doctrine is the Augsburg Confession of 1530, with Luther’s
Catechisms of 1529, and the Formula of Concord, 1577. The chief Reformed
Standards were the Helvetic Confession of 1564, the Heidelberg Catechism of
1563, with the various Confessions of France, Belgium, and Scotland. The
Re-formed doctrine has spread more widely, and is now represented by many
formularies, among which may be classed the Thirty-nine Articles, and more
distinctly the Westminster Confession, which unites most of the English-speaking
communions of Calvinism.

(3) In the beginning of the seventeenth century the ARMINIAN, or rather
REMONSTRANT, Confession arose in Holland, under the direction of James Harmen,
Arminius as a protest against what .has been called, from its second founder,
CALVINISM. The supreme principle of this latter type of doctrine is the Absolute
Sovereignty of God: its best representative is the Westminster Confession. The
Armenian type has for its principle the universality of the benefit of the
Atonement and the restored freedom of the human will as an element in the
doctrine of the Divine decrees. The Remonstrance presented by the followers of
James Arminius contained five articles, of which the following is the substance:
that God elected to salvation, or to reprobation, those whose faith or whose
final disbelief He foresaw; that Jesus Christ died for all, but only believers
receive the benefit; that repentance and renewal are of the Spirit’s operation;
that the grace which effects this may be finally resisted; that the question of
a necessary final perseverance must be left undecided. These Five Points, the
last of which was afterwards made more explicit, have been the foundation of
Arminianism in Holland, and in England, where it leavened theological thought to
a great extent. In the Revival of the last century the original Methodists were
distinguished from the followers of Whitefield as Arminians. But the immediate
successors of Arminius declined from sound faith in some particulars; and in its
own country the system is deeply tinctured with Socinianism and Rationalism.

(4) All these Confessional types are exhibited in the systematic teachings of
the larger communions into which the modern Church is divided. Nor are there any
other, unless a UNITARIAN type is admitted: there was after the Reformation a
Socinian Confession; but that, as a Confession, has vanished, scarcely any trace
of its peculiarities being found in modern Unitarianism, which has its most
productive field in America, and can scarcely be distinguished from pure Theism.
Nor can there be said to be an ECLECTIC or LATITUDINARIAN system: for these
words apply to no one particular type of Christian doctrine.

(5) METHODIST theology, which has spread during the last century over a very
wide area of Christendom, is Catholic in the best sense, holding the Doctrinal
Articles of the English Church, including the Three Creeds, and therefore
maintaining the general doctrine of the Reformation. It is Arminian as opposed
to Calvinism, but in no other sense. Its peculiarities are many, touching
chiefly the nature and extent of personal salvation; and with regard to these
its standards are certain writings of John Wesley and other authoritative
documents.

III. There is a third view to be taken of development in the theology of the
Christian Church: having reference to the form it has in all ages taken from
external circumstances. This also will be best seen in such a brief review as
may serve to indicate the importance of the study of the ecclesiastical history
of doctrine or dogma, and, at the same time, prepare the way for those
historical summaries which will be given under the several heads of the
following course.

1. In the Patristic Church—including the ante-Nicene and post-Nicene periods
down to Gregory, A.D. 600—there were schools of theological thought, which
represented almost all the later tendencies. For instance, Asia Minor and
Antioch, Alexandria, and North Africa were severally centers of three very
distinct kinds of teachings: the first, more faithful to Scripture and
Apostolical tradition; the second, blending philosophical speculation,
allegorical interpretation, and the mystical element with its Christianity; and
the third, hard, real, and dialectic. The early writers in these distinct
schools betray their influence in every age, and in all their views of Christian
doctrine, and the same influence extends downwards, more or less, through
subsequent times. These schools reign still without the names.

2. During the earlier part of the Middle Ages, superstition molded tradition
into forms of doctrine that more and more diverged from the Scriptural standard.
This was a period, however, of comparative stagnation, as contrasted with the
luminous activity of the post- Nicene age and with the deep theological devotion
of the Schoolmen beginning with Anselm about 1100. The Scholastic divinity in
the universities of Christendom wrought up the materials it inherited into
systematic forms, which carried dialectic subtlety and philosophical speculation
to their highest point. By the toil of many indefatigable minds it laid the
foundation of the complete system of Roman Catholicism as formulated in the
Council of Trent; while, at the same time, it transmitted its methods to
Protestantism, the first century of which almost rivaled the work of the
medieval doctors in analytical severity and completeness. Whatever deductions
may be made from the value of its results, the Christian Church owes very much
to the industry and devotion of the Schoolmen. Systematic theology had its
origin in their labors.

3. Through all these, however, struggled the Mystical spirit, which controlled a
large part of the Scholastic theology, and penetrated every branch of the
Christian Church, influencing the doctrines of each by turns. Its law of
development is the independent teaching of God in communion with the human
spirit: independent, first, as without the external means of grace, and,
secondly, as given to the individual apart from all others. The theology of
every period, and of every region of Christendom, has received the impress of
this law working lawlessly: its operation has touched Pantheism at the one pole,
and at the other merely imparts a mystical coloring to Christian doctrine and
devotion. Consequently, it is impossible to characterize Mystical theology as
one distinct whole; and still more evidently is it wrong to brand it with
indiscriminate condemnation. Its earliest Christian representative, the
pseudo-Dionysius, teaches with all his errors a sublime doctrine of the Supreme
and of man’s communion with Him; and the purest spirit of self-renouncing
consecration pervades the writings of Scotus Erigena and other Mystics who held
the leading doctrines of the Christian Faith. The Theologia Germanica, a work
which transmitted to modern times the ancient Mysticism, was made by Luther
almost one of the textbooks of the Reformation. From that time downwards Mystic
devotional theology reappears in every region of Christendom. Romanism has had
its several types in Spain, France, Italy, and Germany; and its Mystical
writers, apart from their unevangelical and quietistic errors, carry devotion
into a very high region. Every community of Protestantism has had its
representatives both of the sound and of the unsound Mysticism. In some it has
passed into a transcendental theosophy, Jacob Behmen being their expositor; in
others, into a fanatical independence of external revelation, and indifference
to the common fellowship of the Church; in others into a visionary religion of
intuitional sentiment and feeling. But its healthiest manifestations have been
simply a tribute to the pure Mysticism of the New Testament; a protest against
the mere form and externality of godliness; and the true expression of all that
is high and unearthly in communion with God.

4. In every age, but especially in these last times, theology in the Church has
been influenced by a tendency the opposite of that of Mysticism: the spirit of
Rationalism, which makes the human understanding the measure of the truth it
accepts. Rationalism is either philosophical or critical: the former has aimed
to recast Christian doctrine, and make it the manifold expression of its own
ideas; the latter has been destructive, eliminating from the faith everything
that human reasoning cannot explain. In both these forms it has widely
influenced the development of Christian theology, though both may be said to
carry their doctrine to a region altogether outside of Christendom. The term
Rationalism, as signifying one of the elements that mould religious thought, may
be restricted to the latter meaning. It is the spirit which perpetually labors
to make the truths of revelation acceptable to the human understanding. In a
very different sense from that of the Apostle, it testifies only that which it
has seen: seen with the eye of reason alone.

Accepting the Christian Faith as a whole, it claims to give a good account of it
to the intuitions and judgments of men; but this at the expense of all that is
transcendent, mysterious, and past finding out in the ways of God with mankind.

5. The other aspect of Rationalism may more appropriately be termed Speculation
in theology. Speculation starts from certain a priori determinations which
thought finds in itself as the necessary and primary ground of all being and
thinking. It fixes upon its point of observation, and speculates or regards
attentively the whole field of possibilities from that point of view. Hence it
constructs its own philosophy of religion from subjective principles. It aims to
understand Christianity as the expression of eternal laws governing the
universe. The result has been an ever-shifting variety of theological
conceptions of the sum of things. The characteristics of each system have been
marked by some primary category or law of thought to which all is reduced: in
that of Scotus Erigena it was the idea of Nature uncreated, creating and
created; in Leibnitz the Monad; in Spinoza, the one eternal Substance, with its
attributes of thought and extension; in German transcendental philosophies, all
more or less theological, the idea of the absolute, the Ego and non-Ego, the
Idea, Each makes the Christian revelation the eternal and necessary expression
of its own self-gendered thought. But another application of the term
speculative in relation to theology requires to be mentioned: that which simply
implies a disposition to push inquiry into the fringe of thick darkness which
encompasses the circle of every revealed doctrine, and to fill up the chasms in
the system of truth at every point. It is the undue exercise of imagination in
the religious domain; and it differs from Rationalism only in this, that it does
not reduce faith to knowledge, as if we must perfectly know in order to believe,
but rather strives to include within the sphere of knowledge what is left to the
acceptance of naked faith. With speculative theology, however defined, we ought
to have but little to do.

6. Finally, there are healthy developments in theology, and especially in some
branches of it, which are guided by the general advancement of human affairs.
With the progress of human culture theology progresses. In its relation to
science, philosophy, learning, and civilization generally, it both gives and
receives. It absorbs the good influences, and counteracts the evil, of the
times. It begins, as it were, afresh in every land in which it is planted and
grows with its growth. The tree is everywhere the same, and its fruit the same;
but its development varies with the influences of soil and culture. In every
Christian Church theology is, at this moment, undergoing as a science manifold
and obvious improvement; and each community contributes its part to the general
advance. But this leads to the last branch of our general proposition.

THEOLOGY SCIENTIFIC.

Christian Theology is the systematic arrangement of the truths pertaining to the
revelation of God. It may lay claim to the character of a science: its aim is
scientific, as it is the basis of practical religion: its methods also are
scientific, in the best and only legitimate sense. But theological science has
peculiarities which distinguish it from all others, and must be kept in view by
every student.

I. The aim of theology is to exhibit the grounds and principles, the connection
and harmonies, the results and applications, of the facts of revelation. In
common with every science, it obeys the law of the human mind, which demands
that the materials of its knowledge should be inductively generalized and
systematically arranged; and, in common with every science, it arranges its
materials for use and practical application.

Theology is the science, and Religion is the art. The two derivations of the
word RELIGION—from Relegere, or Religare—blend, as we have seen, in making it
the practice of the duties that flow from man’s relation to God. Whether more
subjective, according to the former, or more objective, according to the latter,
it is, and has ever been, the art or practice of the Divine service. The
reasons, obligations, laws, arguments, and results of this service are set forth
in the science which is its foundation. And, as religion is from God, so also is
theology. The Bible is as full of the science as it is of the art of religion.
It will be seen hereafter that there is a distinction between Biblical and
Systematic theology; but that distinction does not involve the exclusion of
theological science from the Bible: almost every treatise in it refuses to allow
this. Wherever man’s duty to God is taught, there must be the establishment and
enforcement of its grounds; and Holy Scripture encourages both the theoretical
and the practical study of Divine truth.

II. The methods of theology are scientific. It observes, tests, and arranges
facts and makes generalizations; it uses both the inductive and deductive
processes of argument; it depends upon the same primary laws of thought upon
which those processes rest; and it sets out, as all legitimate human inquiry
must set out, with a firm faith in certain truths which lie behind experience,
being inwrought into the fabric of our minds: such as the primary law of
causation and all that it involves, and the validity of those laws of belief
which are innate. But the facts of our science are gathered from regions some of
which are thought to be interdicted to scientific observation. There is the
sacred deposit of original truths in the constitution of man’s nature. There are
the economies of Creation and Providence. There is the boundless storehouse of
the Word of God; and there are the innumerable testimonies of common experience,
of which Scripture is the test, while they confirm the Scripture. Strictly
speaking, all these regions of observation are one, inasmuch as every element of
religious consciousness, and every lesson of the external universe, is wrought
up into the fabric of Divine revelation. We cannot take a step further without
the assurance that these are legitimate fields of observation, the facts or
phenomena of which are as real as the facts with which physical science has to
do.

Theological science is dissipated at once if this is denied. Supposing it
granted, then there remains only the careful, honest, and religious observance
of the accepted laws of reasoning. The result, whether by analysis or synthesis,
is the scientific presentation of each doctrine and class of doctrine and the
entire compass of theology. In this way, that is by the rigorous processes of
induction and deduction, systematic theology arrives at a clear and distinct
apprehension of every article of the Faith. For instance, its doctrine of sin is
the result of a wide and exhaustive examination of a large number of testimonies
in Scripture and in experience which force conviction on the mind that one, and
one only, theory can account for all the facts. The same may be said of its
doctrine of the Person of Christ, which is inductively established by a
comparison of many passages, none of which individually contains a formal
statement. Of this we shall have manifold other illustrations as we proceed.

III. Hence a distribution of the truths of revelation in systematic forms, which
combine into a complete encyclopedia of theological science. A comprehensive
view of this divides it into Biblical, Historical, and Dogmatic; each of these,
however, more or less penetrating the others, and all combining to form what may
be called Systematic divinity.

1. BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, in its widest meaning, includes the criticism and study of
the text of Scripture; its construction as a whole; the laws of exegesis and
their application, or Hermeneutics; its archaeology, geography, and history; and
all that belongs to the Introduction to the Bible. More restricted in meaning,
it is the arrangement of the theology of Scripture in its own terms and
according to its own laws of development and classification. In this sense it is
the foundation of all theology properly so called: every doctrine, as will be
seen, having its own and proper Biblical development.

2. HISTORICAL THEOLOGY embraces ecclesiastical history in its whole compass, or
the history of the kingdom of God within and without the Scripture; including
all that belongs to the Church, its antiquities, ceremonies, and jurisprudence,
but especially the progress and development of Christian doctrine through the
ages of controversy and formation. It is in this latter sense that we shall use
the term: endeavoring to present every specific article of the Faith in its
evolution in ecclesiastical systems.

3. DOGMATIC or DOCTRINAL THEOLOGY includes both the doctrine and ethics of
Christianity in their scientific arrangement, with their apology and defense; in
it doctrine as taught in Scripture, and dogma as taught in the Church, are one.

4. SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY may be said, more or less, to include all these: it takes
the system of doctrine as its basis, but illustrates it from history, and
verifies it by Scripture.

It has this peculiarity, that, while the other three may be independent of any
particular standard, every work on systematic theology more or less bears the
impress of one confessional stamp.

5. Of this fact the present course will be an illustration: exhibiting the
compass of Divine truth, whether as presented in Scriptural forms, or as molded
by ecclesiastical development, or as dogmatically stated in its results. It will
first treat of the Christian Religion, and of its Documents as the DIVINE RULE
OF FAITH: including the topics of Revelation, Inspiration, Canon, with such
exhibition of the credentials or evidences of the Faith as are consistent with
the strictly dogmatic character of our course. This is the necessary
introduction to the supreme doctrine concerning GOD: His Being, Essence, Names,
and Attributes. The consideration of these subjects will lead to the relations
of GOD AND THE CREATURE. Then follows the doctrine concerning SIN: its origin,
nature, and universality. The MEDIATORIAL MINISTRY OF JESUS CHRIST, His Person,
and His Work, as objectively finished on earth and in heaven, will next demand
prolonged attention, leading to the ADMINISTRATION OF REDEMPTION, including
Personal Salvation, the Ethics of the Gospel, and the Institutions of the
Christian Church. All must needs be closed by the doctrines pertaining to the
LAST THINGS.

IV. It is of great importance that the mind should be imbued at the outset with
a sense of the possibility and the advantage of a well-articulated system. In
the organic unity of Christian truth every doctrine has its place in some cycle
of doctrines, while all the lesser systems revolve around their common centre.
And it is one of the fruits of theological study to enable the student to locate
every topic at once. But not only so. There are rich and profound harmonies
among these truths; and every doctrine, having its proper place, has also its
relations to almost every other: the quick discernment of these relations is
another fruit of devout and earnest inquiry. Putting the two together, the high
aim of the proficient in this study should be to discover all the affinities and
connections of the truths of the Christian system. It may be objected that such
scientific precision in the definitions and demarcations of doctrine is out of
keeping with the free spirit of Christian theology. It is customary to point to
the rich and irregular luxuriance of Scripture. But the Scripture is altogether
on the side of order. Some parts of it are as systematic as they could be made;
and none are without system. It has, and bids us have and hold, the ugiainontwn,
the form of sound words. 1 St. Paul distinguishes between the words of faith and
the words of good doctrine, 2 which he exhorts Timothy to combine in their
unity. Of course, the effort to systematize must be governed by a higher aim,
and guarded against the danger to which it is peculiarly exposed. Theology, the
city of God, is built, as it were, upon seven hills, which are the great
doctrines that may be discerned to be fundamental. These several hills of the
Lord are not sharply separated from each other, but throw out their spurs in all
directions, making it hard to show where one department of truth ends and
another begins. To maintain the distinctions without marking them too
mechanically is the aim of sound theological science.

1 2 Timothy 1:13; 2 Timothy 1:21 Timothy 4:6.

V. It remains only to mark the sacred peculiarities of this study. True as it is
that its methods are the same which are employed in the inductive sciences, it
is also true that its materials are partly or mainly collected in a region which
merely human science cannot penetrate, and where a special kind of demonstration
is alone attainable. It is wrong to place theology on a level with the inductive
sciences: it is either below them, or above them, or both, according to the
spirit in which it is viewed.

1. There is a sense in which the entire round of theological truth is matter of
faith: even those facts which belong to the consciousness of every man are
connected with great verities that are delivered to faith from the invisible
world, Now, faith is the inward assurance of things not seen, and makes the
materials of theology as real and certain as the things that physical science
has to deal with. But that faith is not altogether common to man; it is
connected with certain moral conditions; and, to those who have it not, theology
in every form is only an incomprehensible pseudo-science. They retort upon it
its own words, and brand it as science falsely so called. 1 Not that they
entirely reject the study of Divine things: to them also there is a Science of
Religion, or of the superstitions and quasi-spiritual delusions of mankind. To
those who believe it is the truest, most comprehensive, and not least exact of
all the sciences; and it is not their fault if it remains, nevertheless, a
region of esoteric mysteries into which they alone are initiated.

1 1 Timothy 6:20.

2. Mystery is everywhere in this knowledge: its simplest elements are things
unsearchable by the faculties of man. This is to some extent true of all other
sciences; they all have their mysteries, in both the Scriptural senses of the
term: things brought to light that have been long hidden, and things
unsearchable, the signs of which only are seen. The latter always wait on the
former; when the mystery ceases to be a matter reserved from knowledge, it
ceases not to be a matter reserved from reason. This is true of the impenetrable
things of nature; it is a mistake to think that when science has discovered the
laws that govern the wonderful phenomena with which it deals, the mystery
ceases. The simplest elements of every department of knowledge are things
unsearchable by human faculties. Supposing scientific research to be successful
in penetrating every secret of nature, so far as to find the secondary cause of
every effect, there is still a large residuum over which it broods, waiting for
light which probably will never come. But the theological mystery is confessedly
great. 1 Every doctrine, however bright and blessed in itself, is compassed
about with thick darkness; every page and every line of its record " exit in
mysterium." There are, and will ever be, great antitheses or, as men call them,
contradictions in thought which our limited capacity is unable to reconcile.
Metaphysical thinking is compelled to leave these antinomies unsolved wherever
the finite and the infinite meet. Our science also has its speculative region,
into which reason soars, but the logical understanding cannot follow. Moreover,
and finally, it has revelations to deal with which appall the minds which they
baffle: the dread and awful truths which are its dark side, having their
reflections in human experience and the ordinary course of nature, but not the
less a stumbling block on that account. All these are the cross of theology,
which to itself is its glory, to unbelieving man its reproach.

1 1 Timothy 3:16.

3. Like every other science, but in a peculiar sense, theology has much in it of
the " petitio principii." It assumes many irreducible first axioms. The
consciousness of self, the consciousness of a world not self, the consciousness
of God neither self nor the world, we may seek to demonstrate, but they are
postulated in the demonstration. It will appear, as we proceed, how often and in
what various ways theology seems, in its general credentials and in its defense
of every doctrine, to argue in a circle. This is a necessity of which it need
never be ashamed, and no truly philosophical or scientific mind will charge this
as an offence.

4. In common with all the sciences, theology has its phraseology of conventions:
partly of scriptural precedent or suggestion, partly of human appointment.
Conventional terms are necessary in all knowledge: the symbols of ideas once
settled are, and ought to be, unchangeable. The systematic arrangement of Divine
truth requires them, and has enlisted them in great variety. It has its precise
technical terminology, the fixing of which has been the result of sound
inductive processes, and the accurate maintenance of which gives its precision
to our study. Revelation, Inspiration, Scripture, Faith, Trinity, Substance,
Person, are instances of terms which have their established conventional
meaning. The importance of this may be illustrated in the case of two of these
terms in particular. Inspiration is a word in common use to signify an influence
breathed upon or flowing into the mind from any external source, as opposed to
its own inherent operations: hence it has a current philosophical and literary
application. In religious matters it also signifies any influence or energy of
the Holy Spirit in the awakening of spiritual feeling. But it has in theology a
conventional meaning, which is limited to the direct and specific discipline of
the Inspiring Spirit preparing the writers of Scripture for their task; and to
that use of it the term is strictly to be appropriated. Again, the word Person
has a variety of applications. It signifies generally the ground of personality,
or of independent, conscious, responsible action. But it has in theology a
specific relation both to the doctrine concerning God and to the doctrine
concerning Christ. As to the former, it is used conventionally to distinguish
the Three Persons in the unity of the one Divine essence. The personal God is
known to us as Three Persons; and the term which has been long established
stands simply as the symbol of an incomprehensible mystery. As to the latter,
the indivisible Person of Christ signifies the result of the union of His two
natures. The conventional term has here another and distinct use, being again
the symbol of a mystery equally unfathomable with that of the Triune
personality. The same term has its different conventional use in these two
supreme subjects: and its applications must be remembered and respected. But
every department has its own specific theological vocabulary. They will defend
themselves as we proceed: meanwhile, the student should be impressed with their
importance, making it a law of his study to define them carefully and hold them
fast tenaciously.

5. Theological science, in conclusion, has a Divine sanction, influence, and
control, which no other can claim. There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration
of the Almighty giveth them under-standing in every department of knowledge. But
in theology, which seeks in all truth its relation to God and eternity, there is
the guarantee of a special guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. His witness is
not given only to the personal acceptance of the believer; it is a testimony to
the doctrine on which his experience rests.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of
God; that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. 1 This
declaration of St. Paul refers to nothing less than the whole compass of
theology, as it unfolds the deep things of God; and, what is more, it assures us
that the sufficient knowledge of these deep things is not the prerogative of
inspired Apostles only, but is the common privilege of all who receive the
Divine Spirit as a Teacher. The theological student who does not imprint this
truth on his heart at the outset goes on his perilous way without the strongest
incentive for the encouragement of his labors. In this study the Holy Ghost more
than blesses the diligent mind: He directs its pursuits, shapes its conclusions,
and sanctifies its reasoning. The first condition of the successful pursuit of
this science is the submission of the reason to the teaching of the only wise
God our Savior.2 In the Holy Scriptures this is laid down as a primary axiom. No
one who despises or neglects it will ever be more than a learner, ever learning,
and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth; 3 but St. Paul, using the
same strong word for a perfect experimental apprehension, says elsewhere that
God will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth,
eiv epignwsin alhqeiav. 4 The intellectual and spiritual perception of truth
which is denied in the one case and affirmed in the other is expressed by a
phrase which the Apostle never uses save for the highest certitude of knowledge.
The sum of all is that no one who steadfastly relies on the Heavenly Teacher
will fail to reach the full assurance of understanding, 5 in relation at least
to that knowledge which is all that is essential to man, THE MYSTERY OF GOD,
even CHRIST.

1 1 Corinthians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 2:2Jude 1:23; Jude 1:32 Timothy 3:7; 2
Timothy 3:41 Timothy 2:4-5Colossians 2:2.


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  CHAPTER 2: 04. VOL 01 - REVELATION OR THE FAITH
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Revelation or the Faith THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH.

REVELATION OR THE FAITH REVELATION AS GIVEN BY GOD

General; Its Definitions

Special: Its Purpose and Sphere THE CHRISTIAN FAITH AS RECEIVED BY MAN FAITH AND
REASON CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION ITS RESPONSE TO EXPECTATION OF
MANKIND:

Preparations in Human Nature;

Correction of Natural Religion;

Perfecting of Former Revelations DIVINE ATTRIBUTES IN REVELATION: The
Supernatural Order

MIRACLES Nature of Evidence;

Tests

PROPHECY

Laws;

Tests;

Value as Credential

INSPIRATION The Divine Hand in Scripture CHARACTER OF CHRIST THE REVEALER HIS
SUPREME CLAIM AND ITS JUSTIFICATION HYPOTHESES CONCERNING CHRIST INFLUENCE OF
CHRISTIANITY ITS AVOWED AIM AND PRETENSIONS ITS FULFILMENT OF ITS MISSION ITS
PERSISTENCE AND PERMANENCE:

Early Spread;

Conflict with Judaism;

Heathenism;

Natural Religions;

Scientific Thought;

Gradual Victory; THE HOLY GHOST AS THE ABIDING INTERNAL CREDENTIAL

SUMMARY

CHRISTIAN Theology, as the science of Christianity, the one, perfect, and only
Religion, is based upon the documentary records of God’s revelation of Himself
and of His will in Christ Jesus. Of necessity, therefore, its first inquiry
should be directed to the nature and authority of its Sacred Writings, which
contain at once the historical development and the finished result of the Divine
revelations to mankind. One proposition gives here the summary of the whole
truth. The Holy Scriptures are the Divine Rule of Faith: a statement which,
unfolded, opens three departments of investigation. First, they are the
documents and the depository of the Christian Revelation, or the Christian
Faith, which is the consummation of all religious knowledge. Secondly, they are
Divine in their origin: the product of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. Thirdly,
they are the Rule of the Faith, as forming a body of canonical Scriptures,
regulating forever the doctrine and teaching of the Christian Church. Hence we
derive the three great words which are the superscription of the whole body of
dogma concerning the written oracles of God: Revelation, Inspiration, and Canon.

REVELATION OR THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.

These two terms may be studied as counterparts, and in some sense as synonymous.
The Christian Faith is the perfected Revelation, and the perfected Revelation is
the Christian Faith; each and both being coincident, generally speaking, with
the Christian Scriptures. But Revelation refers them to God the Revealer;
Christian Faith regards them as received by man. It will be useful to make this
distinction govern our treatment of the whole subject. Human faith and Divine
revelation are DOUBLE ONE AGAINST THE OTHER. 1What God is pleased to make known,
man’s acceptance makes his Faith. 1 Sir 42:24.

REVELATION. The term Revelation signifies in its last and highest theological
meaning the unveiling or disclosing of God’s redeeming purpose to mankind. This
definition distinguishes it from more general manifestations of the Supreme
Being, and gives to the Christian revelation its distinctive character, as
including all other forms of Divine teaching and adding its own supplement and
consummation. It is at once the most elementary and the-most comprehensive word
of our theological system.

REVELATION GENERAL.

Revelation, taken in its broadest sense, includes every manifestation of God to
the consciousness and perception of man: whether in the constitution of the
human mind, in the framework of nature, or in the processes of Providential
government. The term is used to embrace the whole compass of the Divine
disclosures, whether in act or word, whether by immediate contact of the Eternal
Spirit with the human soul or by mediating instrumentalities, whether of truth
generally or any special token of the Divine will. In this more general
application other words are used besides apokalupsis, or revelation: such as
photizo, of the light of the Son in human reason which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world; fanerón, 1 of the declaration of the Divine glory in the
universe, and of the testimony of the Supreme to all men to whom that which may
be known of God is manifest,2 referring to His providential guidance of the
Gentiles before whom He left not Himself without witness, OUK AMARTURON.3 It is
sufficient for our present purpose that all these lower and more unrestricted or
improper revelations and methods of revelation are taken up into Revelation
proper. The Records of the Faith are the records of all the teachings that at
sundry times 4 and in divers manners preceded and prepared for it.

There is, however, a special and limited meaning of the term. But, before
considering this more fully, it may be well to note some theological
distinctions which lead the way to it.

1 John 1:9; 2 Romans 1:19; 3 Acts 14:17; 4 Hebrews 1:1

1. The word revelation unites the two ideas of a Divine unveiling or
apokalupsis, and making known or fanerosis, of the mysteries of religion, or of
the soul’s relation to God.

We must remember the conventional meaning of these terms in theology. There are
secrets gradually unveiled in the worlds of mind and matter, the slow disclosure
of which is appointed to be the aim and the reward of human science; but we do
not call them mysteries. Nor do we call their discovery revelation, save as they
are directly connected with religion and taken up into the economy of the
Providential government of the world.

2. This leads to another distinction: Revelation, in this higher theological
meaning of the term, is general and special. As GENERAL it is undoubtedly common
to the human race as such: the foundation of what may be called natural theology
and natural religion.

Although, as we have seen, the highest word is not: used of this universal
unveiling of God in the creature, it may be called natural as distinguished from
supernatural revelation. This latter is SPECIAL; as being imparted not so much
in man; as to man, through the medium both of Divine works and Divine words, as
will be hereafter seen.

3. External and internal revelation are to be separated: the former is as it
were given objectively and for all; the latter is specially imparted to the
organs of revelation, and to those who receive it in faith. They are united in
St. Paul’s words: by revelation He made known unto me the mystery which in other
ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His
holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit. 1 Here is the special revelation not
included in the former general manifestations of God; the disclosure to the
organs of inspiration as a body; and the internal unveiling to St. Paul by the
Spirit, to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery. But it is
obvious that all external revelation must also be internal, though the converse
may not be said with the same propriety.

1 Ephesians 3:3-9.

SPECIAL REVELATION.

Revelation, in the stricter, deeper, and fuller sense, is the unfolding of the
eternal counsel of God in Christ, for the restoration of man to fellowship with
Himself. This is the sum and substance of truth as truth is in Jesus; 1 it is
the conclusion of the whole matter of Divine manifestation to man; and, as such,
it is perfected in the Christian Scriptures, that is, in the final testimony of
Jesus. His testimony is the last word of all objective revelation. In this
definition there are three salient points; the one Eternal Purpose in Christ the
Revealer, the perfect Scripture, and the identity, or rather coincidence, of the
Christian oracles with the Christian Faith.

1 Ephesians 4:21.

1. Revelation proper is consecrated to the mystery hid with Christ in God, the
one Secret which it unfolds. This is the common burden of the prophets and of
the Apostles and of Christ Himself. It is the ONE TRUTH of the whole Word of
God. The entire range of its disclosures, in all their many forms, is governed
by this supreme purpose, and all pay their tribute to this one subject. Christ,
Himself the Sum of all revelation, is Himself also the one Revealer or
Apocalyptist. He is the Revealer in act and in word. First, and above all, in
act He is Himself the personal revelation of God and His whole eternal purpose
towards the human race. This profound truth of Christianity is presupposed
throughout the New Testament. It may be studied in the combination of several
Pauline passages. In the first the great Mystery of Godliness is spoken of as
being manifest in the flesh: 1 this refers to the Person of Christ Incarnate,
who elsewhere is termed the Mystery of God, which is Christ,2 the one Secret to
be revealed in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.3 Again,
this manifestation is said to be reflected from the mirror of the Gospel, which
consummates all Divine disclosures: But we all, with open face receiving as in a
glass the glory of the Lord.4 Finally, it is still more clearly explained in a
passage which combines the others, as the knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ,5 the Countenance of the personal God in His incarnate Son
looking upon man and giving him, in the light of that countenance, all that he
needs to know for time and eternity. Our Lord Jesus Christ is Himself the
substance of all revelation of God, according to His own testimony: He that hath
seen Me hath seen the Father.6 Secondly, therefore, He is the Revealer in word.
No one knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him: ho Huiós
apokalúpsai.7 Christ is THE WORD 8 in His original and eternal estate, Who,
however, became incarnate to be the Oracle of God in the temple of humanity. No
man hath seen God at any time; the Only begotten God, Who is in the bosom of the
Father, He hath made Him known.9 In His incarnate estate He is also THAT
PROPHET, 10 Who should absorb into Himself all prophetic functions, whether of
announcing or of foretelling the will of God. In virtue of that first name, He
has been from the beginning the Revealer: it was His voice that uttered the
ancient oracles. In virtue of the latter name superadded to the former, He has
summed up, satisfied, and consummated the revelation of all past ages in one
perfect revelation for ages to come.

He spake by the prophets; He spake upon earth; and, though gone from us, He yet
speaketh. His word means all revelation, and all revelation means His word. The
ORACLE and the oracles are one.

11 Timothy 3:16; 2 Colossians 2:2; 3 Colossians 2:3; 4 2 Corinthians 3:18; 5 2
Corinthians 4:6; 6 John 14:9; 7 Matthew 11:27; 8 John 1:1; 9 John 1:18; 10 John
1:21.

2. The Scriptures contain and are this perfect disclosure and finished
revelation. Of their Divine origin we need not think as yet; though it is
anticipated in the fact that the Savior has given His authenticating testimony
to the whole body of them in their integrity. That sanction, first, makes the
Old Testament the revelation of Christ. As it testified of Him so He testifies
of it. He took it into His hands, and blessed it, and hallowed it forever as His
own. As revelation is Christ, and Christ is the subject of the Old Testament,
the Old Testament is of necessity the revelation of God. Knowing better than any
human critic can know all its internal obscurities and difficulties, He sealed
it nevertheless for the reverence of His people. The canon of the ancient
oracles, precisely as we hold them now, no more no less, He sanctified and gave
to His Church as the early preparatory records of His own Gospel and kingdom.
That sanction, secondly, assures us that the New Testament is His own
authoritative completion of the Scriptures of revelation.

Leaving the fuller study of this proposition for a further stage, we need only
note the general fact that our Lord declared His own purpose to complete an
unfinished revelation.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to
destroy, but to fulfill, allá pleeroósai: 1 not only to fulfill the predictions
both of law and prophecy, but to fill out their meaning; to set on them the seal
of perfection by revealing fully what they revealed only in part. All the lines
of Old-Testament revelation were broken off and incomplete: He gathered them up
into Himself and His word, so that in Him they might have their vanishing point
and yet not vanish. In regard to the Old- Testament oracles the word of St. Paul
does not hold good: When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in
part will come to an end. 2 And He made full provision for the preservation of
His perfected doctrine. All that we need to assure our hearts of this was given
in one large promise, which declared that His sayings should be revived in their
unbroken unity in His disciples’ memory, He shall teach you all things, and
bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you; 3 that
what He could not yet speak concerning His Person, His Spirit should reveal, He
will guide you into all truth; 4 and that the same Spirit should show them the
things to come. The Spirit was no other than Himself by His Agent re-uttering
His own words, revealing His own Person and work, and filling up His prophecy of
the future. Hence, lastly, our Lord’s sanction makes the complete Scriptures the
finished revelation, never to be superseded. Nothing can be more plain than that
the entire fullness of what the Revealer had to say to the world was to be
communicated to the Apostles by the Holy Ghost; and that, not as a further
disclosure on the part of the Spirit, but as the consolidation of the Savior’s
teaching into its perfect unity, and its expansion into its perfect meaning. No
future streams of revelation were to rise higher than the fountainhead of truth
opened in Himself. Hence we may repeat concerning the Book what has been said
concerning the Lord’s teaching: the Bible means all revelation and all
revelation means the Bible.

1 Matthew 5:17; 2 1 Corinthians 13:10; 3 John 14:26; 4 John 16:13.

3. We are justified, therefore, in holding that the Scriptures of revelation and
Christianity, as the Christian Faith, cover the same ground and strictly
coincide. As yet, we have nothing to do with the question of inspiration, nor
with inquiries into the genuineness and integrity of individual books and
individual passages; but only with the general fact that in all sound theology
the Bible and Christ are inseparably connected. Not that they are in the nature
of things identical: we can suppose the possibility of an Incarnate Revealer
present in the world without the mediation of the written Word. Indeed we are
bound to assume, as has been already seen, that there is a wider revelation of
the WORD in the world than the Scriptures cover. Moreover we may assert that His
revelation of Himself is still, and even in connection with the Scriptures, more
or less independent of the Word.

But, as the basis of the science of theology, the Bible is Christianity. It has
pleased God from the beginning to conduct the development of the great mystery
by documents containing the attested facts, the authenticated doctrines, and the
sealed predictions of revelation. The process of the Divine Counsel has been
bound up with the enlargement of the Volume of the Book. That Book is the
foundation of Christianity: the Lord of the Bible and the Bible are indissolubly
the Rock on which it is based. We have no other Christian Religion than that
which is one with its documents and records; we have no documents and records
which do not directly or indirectly pay their tribute to the Christian Religion;
and there is no revelation in any department of truth of which the same may not
be said. All revelation is identical with Christianity and summed up in it.

Hence, generally speaking, and as yet regarding the Scriptures only as a whole,
we may say that the character of Christianity is the character of the Bible; the
claims and credentials of the one are the claims and credentials of the other.
This observation will lead us by an easy transition to the counterpart of
Revelation: the Christian Faith. THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. The Revelation given by
God is the Christian Faith as received by man. The entire body of revealed truth
is addressed to the principle of faith, receiving on Divine evidence what
becomes matter of certitude and assurance. This is the objective dogmatic Faith
delivered to the saints. But this same Faith may also be regarded as having to
win the assent of the world, and as presenting its credentials to the reason in
order to universal acceptance.

Hence we have two general aspects of our present subject: first the Christian
Revelation as accepted by faith, and, secondly, as presenting its evidences to
reason. THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION ASACCEPTED. The Christian Revelation in all its
compass of truth is addressed to faith primarily, to reason only as subordinated
to faith. It is committed to the supreme tenure of that principle which is the
evidence and substantiation of spiritual things. This faith extends explicitly
to all the facts, doctrines, and promises of the Holy Scripture, and implicitly
to all its mysteries whether already revealed, in course of revelation, or
reserved for the future. Its supreme object is Christ and the truth as TRUTH is
IN JESUS. 1 But it must be remembered that the Christian Faith is effectually
such only to those whose belief is quickened by the Holy Ghost into the
assurance of personal knowledge and experience.

1 Ephesians 4:21.

It is obvious that this general proposition involves a consideration of the
credentials of Christianity; but we have now to do with Revelation only as
addressed to faith. As containing the Christian system of truth, and recorded in
the Bible, it appeals to a universal principle of human nature, the faculty of
believing This primary faculty is profoundly seated in our constitution: it
works as the acceptance of truth on sufficient evidence, whether of
consciousness, or intuition, or testimony. It is at the root of all knowledge
generally, especially of all knowledge of spiritual things. Now it is to this
principle pre-eminently that Revelation appeals: to faith alone as it is a
revelation of spiritual principles and truth: to faith conjoined with reason as
it is a Divine record of facts through which these principles are taught. These
two points have now to be briefly discussed.

I. Faith must here in all things have the pre-eminence.

1. The grand revelations of the Word of God are all committed to that highest
and noblest faculty which the Scripture calls the evidence of things not seen. 1
The existence of a Supreme First Cause, the creation of the world framed by the
Word of God, 2 the nature of sin and the glory of redemption, the Person of the
Incarnate and His atonement, the union of the Holy Spirit with the spirit of
man, the processes and issues, in time and eternity, of the redeeming economy,
in short all that belongs to the supernatural world, must be believed or they
are not the heritage of the soul. There is no faculty competent to deal with
them, to receive them, to appropriate them, but faith. Reason of itself is the
soul’s judgment according to sense: if it is regarded as occupied with the
mysteries of the spirit and the spiritual world it is no longer reason but faith
under the name of reason.

Faith is to the other world what the senses are to the world that now is; the
eye, the ear, the taste, and the touch that perceives what the physical senses
cannot perceive. All is thus summed up: The natural man receiveth not the things
of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know
them because they are spiritually discerned. 3 1 Hebrews 11:1; 2 Hebrews 11:3-4;
3 1 Corinthians 2:14

2. Hence it is that, inasmuch as the principle of faith belongs as certainly to
human nature as reason does, the evidences of the; supernatural world are
addressed to a faculty which they ought to awaken, even as light ought to awaken
the faculty of seeing. If the great truths of Revelation excite no response it
is because a deadly evil vitiates the faith which does not vitiate the natural
senses. It is necessary to dwell upon this, because reason, thus set aside, will
ask why it is that Revelation addressed to a universal faculty in man does not
meet with instantaneous and universal acceptance.

3. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
understanding.1 There is a Spirit Who demonstrates truth to the mind,
affections, and will of the personal man; but only to him who is sincere and
cometh to the light. 2 The credentials of Divine truth are self-evidencing: they
are like the light of the sun in the natural world. This preliminary postulate
is of the utmost importance, and may be established from the Scripture itself
without any irrational begging of the question. First, let our Lord Himself be
heard. The testimony concerning Him is, that He is the true Light, which
enlighteneth every man, coming into the world. 3 His testimony to Himself,
borne, moreover, to one who was not His disciple, is: Every one that is of the
truth heareth My voice, 4 where of the truth points to the mystery of man’s free
posture of mind as disposed or otherwise to be guided aright. This final
declaration of Him Who knew what was inMan 1:5 expresses the spirit of His
entire teaching concerning the selfmanifestation of His truth to every man’s
conscience who wills to do His will. 6 Secondly, the light of the body of
revelation is the Holy Ghost. The Savior does not appeal to reason, apart from
the mediation of the sole and supreme Convincer. That Spirit also knoweth what
is in man, and brings His own Divine demonstration to every mind that does not
refuse to consider what He says. He so adapts His arguments to the present
fallen moral nature of men that their rejection can spring only from the
perverseness of those whose spiritual eye of faith is darkened. As Christ is the
Truth incarnate, the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Truth. 7 He is the great
Apologist of Revelation to the world. And St. Paul says, concerning His
argument, that it is nothing less than demonstration: en apodeíxei pneúmatos, 8
Hence, thirdly, descending to man, we may appeal to the testimonies of Scripture
as to the sin and self-conviction of unbelief. The tenor of those testimonies
may be summed up in the same Apostle’s last word, concerning the heretic, the
Hairetikón ánthroopon: he is autokatákritos, condemned of himself. 9 Those who
resist the truth are men of corrupt minds, and this has its evidence in their
being reprobate concerning the faith. 10 On the other hand, he tells us that
there is a manifestation of the truth to every man’s conscience in the sight of
God; 11 and that, in every case in which it is hid, the cause is to be found in
a blindness superadded by the god of this world. The same God who in the natural
sphere commanded the light to shine out of darkness 12 in the beginning,
commandeth still the light of His knowledge to shine in the face of Jesus
Christ. No command of God can be disobeyed. There was light follows Let there be
light 13 in the moral world also; but the light, like its Author, may be
rejected of men: the darkness comprehendeth it not.14

1 Job 32:8; 2 John 3:21; 3 John 1:9; 4 John 18:37; 5 John 2:25; 6 John 7:17; 7
John 16:13; 8 1 Corinthians 2:4; 9 Titus 3:11; 10 2 Timothy 3:8; 11 2
Corinthians 4:2-4; 12 2 Corinthians 4:6; 13 Genesis 1:3; 14 John 1:5.

4. To those who receive the light, in the sense of not refusing it, revelation
is one whole, and all its glorious system of truth is received and surely
believed. To them it is both objectively and subjectively THE FAITH; and,
inasmuch as Christianity has brought it in all its fullness into the world, it
is to them THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. This phrase has therefore a large meaning. It
signifies that it is not their Philosophy simply, the glory of their reason, the
Tradition they have derived from their fathers, but the rich inheritance which
the Holy Spirit has given to that one supreme faculty of their souls, the faith
which is the evidence of things not seen. 1 It is a body of truth which, as
reason did not give it, so reason cannot take it away. It is a region in which
they walk by faith, which their faith habitually visits, in which their faith
lives, and moves, and has its being.

1 Hebrews 11:1.

II. But some of these remarks have already suggested that faith is strictly
allied with reason in the acceptance of Christianity as a system of truth. The
Spirit Who awakens faith regenerates the reason so that it humbles itself to
receive mysteries which it cannot understand; the evidences on which faith rests
are such as; the reason is called on to approve, here the judgment of the mind
having its full honor; and in the acceptance of the whole economy of the
Scriptures of Revelation faith and sound reason; are blended into a perfect
unity.

1. The Christian Faith presents to the faculty by which the infinite and the
eternal are perceived a system of truth which human reason cannot fathom or
understand, against which it naturally rebels. But the same Spirit Who opens the
eye of faith gives reason its perfect soundness, so that it consents to accept
what it cannot itself verify. Here of course we regard Revelation as one organic
whole, which has for its unifying principle one overwhelming truth, the union of
God and man in Christ. Around this centre revolve other equally incomprehensible
doctrines; and beyond these in a wider orbit many which are not in the same
sense beyond the human faculties. And speaking of the one vast Revelation we may
say that it is committed to faith and submissively wondered at by reason. Faith
is elevated to receive it and reason humbled to submit to it.

2. But this faith is not arbitrary or despotic. It gives its rights to reason in
all things over which reasoning presides. It presents the evidences for the
being of God, for the Incarnation of the Son, for the mystery of the Atonement;
and reason must either admit the evidence as in the case of the Divine
existence, or confess that it has nothing to plead against it, as in the case of
the Incarnation. Like sin before the presence of Divine justice reason shuts her
mouth and is silent. But, descending into the province of the general external
evidences of Revelation the matter changes its character. Either it must be said
that here reason and faith are one under different names, or faith must be
regarded as no longer the faculty of perceiving the infinite but as the
principle of believing on evidence. In either view faith and reason are here
inseparable. Faith accepts and relies on what there is every reasonable ground
for believing. Our great term, THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, then becomes the body of
external revelation which is surely believed in by all Christians because they
are assured of the strength of its evidences. But this leads us at once to the
Credentials of Revelation. THE CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION.

Revelation, which is one with the Christian Faith, which is one with its
documents and records, presents its sufficient Credentials to the reason and
heart and will of man as one great body of irresistible evidence. First, it
comes to mankind as a response to the universal desire and expectation of
communication from above: to the craving of the human heart for communion with
God. Secondly, Revelation exhibits, in its own structure, the Divine attributes
as stamped upon every part of its system in the form of miracle, prophecy, and
inspiration. Thirdly, it furnishes, in the Person of Christ the Revealer, its
heavenly guarantee of its own truth. Fourthly, in its perfect consummation as
Christianity, it appeals to the character of its influence in human history:
positively in its victory over the world’s evil, and negatively in its victory
over all opposition. Lastly, it relies, as a Divine revelation might be expected
to rely, on the demonstration of the Holy Spirit. All its credentials may
without much difficulty be classed under these several heads: so far that is as
they are a general apology and vindication of the Christian Faith contained in
itself. The Revelation of Christ in the Scriptures enforces its own claims, and
theology must pay supreme deference to those internal credentials. These become
Evidences when they are arranged in their order. What the Law was to the earlier
Gospel, Evidences are to Credentials: added because of human weakness. They have
their use, as it respects both the believer and the unbeliever; to the former
for confirmation, to the latter for conviction.

1. The believer is taught by them how to give a reason of the; hope that is in
him: to be ready or prepared, prós apologían, 1 for Apology. St. Luke, the
Evangelist of the Evidences, sets this: clearly before us: he so arranges the
testimonies of the Faith that; Theophilus, already instructed in the verities
most surely believed, might know the certainty of those things: epignoós, 2
referring to an accurate and systematic knowledge.

Both for the confirmation of his own faith, and for the conviction of the
gainsayer, every Christian, especially every Christian minister, should have the
form of sound defense at hand to guard the form of sound words the
Hupotúpoosin,3 or systematic arrangement, is equally necessary for each.

1 1 Peter 3:15; 2 Luke 1:4; 3 2 Timothy 1:13.

2. As to the unbeliever, the Credentials must be so arranged as to form a
complete body of evidence for his possible conviction: without either
undervaluing or over-estimating their importance. They must not be despised by a
transcendental reliance on the selfevidencing light. Christianity, like its
Founder, has a mission to seek that it may save. Its history, both within and
without the Bible, is a record of calm reasonings with the mind, even of those
who turn away. Evidences or signs are for those who believe not. There may be
cases in which the arguments used concerning Revelation may induce the skeptic
to listen to the voice of Revelation itself. But, on the other hand, too much
must not be expected from them, as they are external evidences apart from the
interior demonstration of the truth. Our Lord and His Apostles have left us no
instance of argument with those who held not some measure of faith to which
their reasonings might appeal. As the Book of Revelation does not reason with
Atheism, neither does Christianity lay any stress on reasoning with Infidelity
and disbelief.

3. Various terms have been here introduced: such as unbeliever, disbeliever,
doubter, and skeptic. These bear their shades of meaning, which it is important
to remember and discriminate in all discussions on this subject. It is well
known that in the New Testament there is everywhere a clear and broad
distinction between two classes: believers and unbelievers. But it is not
Implied that the state of unbelief is that in which nothing is believed: on the
contrary, UNBELIEF is DISBELIEF and disbelief is the belief of the opposite of
that which faith holds. Not that no room is left for a neutral state, that in
which men muse in their hearts and remain suspended in doubt. DOUBT hesitates
between two contradictory conclusions. It may have some degree of belief,
checked by a consciousness of ignorance: in this case it is provisional, waiting
for more light, and the New Testament gives several instances of this as worthy
to be reasoned with. It may be definitive, and is then SCEPTICISM, or the
surrender of the mind to a conviction of the impossibility of certainty, with a
tranquil complacency in such a state. But as skepticism believes that truth
cannot be found, it is itself faith in necessary ignorance, unbelief of that
about which it doubts, and therefore really disbelief. Hence the bad sense which
is generally attached to the word in Christian Evidences.

4. Let it be further observed that these credentials have no reference to those
branches of evidences that concern the volume externally viewed: they come from
the heart of Revelation as it is one great communication in Christ; and the
question of the authenticity and authority of the several parts of the Holy
Scriptures must be postponed. It must be remembered also that the Apologetics of
the Christian Faith accompany the several doctrines; every article of the creed
requires its own defense; and therefore the evidences of Christianity must needs
be distributed over the whole course of our dogmatic system.

Again, they allow opportunity for the fair consideration of everything that can
be said for or against Christianity as such, without descending, however, to
innumerable subordinate questions, which have no importance in themselves. Once
more, the exhibition of these credentials in all their grandeur will simplify
the later evidences as to the several doctrines of the Bible, and at the same
time lend those evidences their own force. Finally, this arrangement enables us
to do justice to the cumulative character of the argument: it is not merely an
accumulation of all that may be said on the subject, but such an orderly
presentation as will make every argument, whether more or less important, both
give and receive strength through its connection with the rest. THE RESPONSE TO
THE RELIGIOUS EXPECTATION OF MANKIND.

Christianity, or the perfect Divine Revelation, presents itself as the answer to
a universal demand. It explains while it appeals to the innate craving of the
human mind to know God, or its sentiment of religion, and accounts for the
general expectation of the Race, as expressed in its traditional Religions:
appealing to them by what they contain of truth, and by what they contain of
falsehood. It comes with these credentials; and, moreover, pleads as being the
perfect utterance of a Revelation which has been among men from the beginning,
and, therefore, as the response to an expectation kept alive in the world by its
own earlier teachings. Under this first department of credentials must be
included all those preliminary considerations which are sometimes reckoned as
Presumptive Evidences. In systems of Apologetics, or Evidences, presumptive
arguments are commonly arranged in a threefold gradation. First, it is shown
that a Divine revelation is POSSIBLE, whether as it respects the Giver of it or
the recipient. Secondly, the deficiencies of reason within and the failures of
human religion without are urged to establish that such a revelation is
NECESSARY. Then, thirdly the conclusion follows that it is PROBABLE: the
probability, when the Divine goodness and man’s desire are taken into the
account, reaching the point which only falls short of moral certainty. Now this
chain of propositions may be established: the argument breaks down nowhere. But,
for the reasons already given, it seems better to attain the same object by
first of all examining the Revelation itself.

Instead of arguing over the first proposition, the affirmation of which is
contradicted by a certain school of philosophy, we must assume it to be true by
appealing to the consciousness of all men, the doubters included. To conduct
this argument without taking some revelation for granted is a thing impossible.
And it is certain that it is more after the manner of the Bible to set out with
the credentials of Revelation itself than to array a number of internal and
presumptive evidences in its-absence. THE DESIRE OF THEHUMANMIND.

Divine revelation appeals to a preparation in the human spirit which it explains
and accounts for: first, the instinctive and indestructible sense of dependence
on a First Cause; secondly, the consciousness of responsibility to a Supreme
Authority; and, thirdly, the union of these in the deep desire to know and have
fellowship with the Source and End of life. This three-one fact in human nature
revelation challenges; and here is its first credential. The instinct in man and
the response from God meet. From the first word of the Scriptures to the last
the Voice of the Creator speaks to the still small voice of His creature: the
Voice of the All-sufficient answering the cry of dependence, of the Merciful
Judge dealing with guilt, and of the Eternal and Invisible conversing as Man
with humanity. In the Bible, as completed by Christianity, there is not a
possible question of human nature to which a response is not given. The positive
strength of this plea will be considered when we come to establish the existence
of God. Meanwhile, it may be necessary here to obviate two opposite objections
which may be urged against this most mighty presumptive argument.

1. Atheistic philosophy of every order is content to assert that the sentiment
in human nature is one of the fruits of its own imagination, begotten of fear or
hope; and that it has invented a revelation to satisfy the demands of its own
delusion: the imaginary revelation from heaven being, like heaven itself, its
most consummate delusion. With such theories of the soul it is vain to argue: at
least, they do not enter into the present discussion. Save, indeed, so far as
they sometimes undertake to deny that what we may term this instinct is really
universal in the constitution of man. This is simply an appeal to experience and
induction. No race of humanity has ever been found which does not contradict
this denial. Among the very lowest tribes there are traces of a certain sense of
dependence on another world: the degraded feeling which looks with awe at some
fetish symbol of the unknown is the same tribute at the one pole as the
philosophical speculation of Agnosticism is at the opposite pole, to a sense in
man of the Infinite. The finite instinct for the Infinite, which is faith,
undergoes in them the same degradation which; all their other mental and
spiritual faculties have undergone: no more, no less. But of this more will be
said hereafter.

2. Deism has another and very different kind of counterargument. It sometimes
insists that these instinctive preparations for the voice of God are themselves
the revelation of the Supreme, and that there can be no other: that is to say, a
transcendental Deism refuses to allow that there can be any other authenticated
revelation of the Infinite to the finite than that which is direct in the
consciousness of those who receive it. But it forgets that the; very highest
religious sentiment in man is only a desire unsatisfied; and that, as every
strong and universal instinct has its answer from without, so also must this the
strongest and most universal of all. But it may be denied that there is any
longing of the human mind for an external revelation. Many who admit that the
irrepressible yearning of the human soul towards the Infinite is an. argument
for the expectation of a secret revelation of God in the depths of the yearning
spirit nevertheless refuse to admit the force of this appeal in favor of a
revelation coming from above with all the external appendages that belong to the
Christian Faith. It is sufficient to reply that this style of argument ignores
the fact that the relation of man to God is such as to demand an external
communication as well as an internal. If he were, as he should be, at peace with
the Object he seeks, the communion with his Maker might be conducted altogether
within. Yet even then not altogether within; for the whole universe around him
would be full of symbols, the visible revelation of his Creator. But he is, by
the very supposition, estranged from God. The original conditions have ceased to
exist: and no argument can be based upon them. The unutterable longing to which
Christianity responds is that of a guilty spirit; not only dependent on the
Supreme, but trembling before Him. Man looks up to heaven—as his Greek name,
anthroopínee, testifies; but he looks up to an outward Judge and not within to
an interior God; and expects and hopes that the Supreme will appear to him and
speak to him by some being, or voice, or token. And this is the germ of all
revelation.

Moreover, it is undeniable that in every age and in every region men have longed
for and believed in an external expression of the Divine mind. In fact,
Christianity is but one of many responses to man’s groaning unutterable towards
God. But this leads to a further stage in our credentials, to which what has
been said is only introductory.

CORRECTION OF THE RELIGIONS OF MANKIND. As Divine revelation responds to the
spirit in man, so it explains and responds to the great Anticipation of the
Human Race, as testified by its universal Religions. This also is a most mighty
credential, which may be regarded under several aspects.

1. The Christian Religion explains the religiousness of mankind, and pays
respect to the forms in which this has been expressed. St. Paul, the amplest
expositor of Natural Theology, preaches in the Acts, and teaches in the Epistle
to the Romans, that the whole world has always been under a Divine education:
drawn by God’s works of creation to contemplate His power, and by the benefits
of His providence to consider His goodness, in order that it might thus be
prepared for a third revelation which should display both His power and His
goodness in redemption. The Apostle, as the leading representative of this
argument, professes only to DECLARE or preach, —katangélloo humín—the UNKNOWN
GOD 1 Whom all the world had been ever consciously or unconsciously seeking:
that world which is, as Tertullian said of the human spirit, naturaliter
Christianus. He makes God Himself, in a certain sense, the universal Teacher of
the Gentiles in faith and verity, didáskalos ethnoón, 2 and heathenism, like the
law, a schoolmaster unto Christ. In other words, this representative of
Christianity traces all forms of religious faith and practice among the nations
to a yearning for revelation from heaven. And he in fact gives us the argument
we now use: the strong presumption from the Consensus Gentium, the consent of
all the world, in favor of a communication from God to mankind. For,
Christianity, which is revelation made perfect, or rather the only true
revelation, appeals to the anticipation it explains. Tracing to their ultimate
cause both the truth and the error, it makes both subservient to its own
credentials. It must be remembered that the New Testament is in this the
successor and continuator of the Old. The whole Bible appeals from beginning to
end, that is since the time that external religion began, to; the common, tribal
or national, instinct of the peoples of the earth. This argument we shall
hereafter use in demonstration of the existence of a Divine Source of all
things: namely, the very fact that the Bible regards it as already a secret
thought, ready to be revealed, in the hearts of all men. Our present argument
supposes that the being of God is admitted. And its strength is this, that that
God has in every age been training the nations for a full disclosure of Himself.
As it is written: He correcteth the Gentiles; 3 or places them under discipline.

1 Acts 17:23; 2 1 Timothy 2:7; 3 Psalms 94:10.

2. All this has taken for granted that the forms of religion always existing in
heathenism have possessed certain elements of truth. Otherwise they would be
worthless as evidence of a universal aspiration towards communion with heaven.
Whatever strong assertions we may find in the Old and New Testaments of the
doctrinal errors and moral abominations of heathenism, we discern everywhere an
acknowledgment of something good lying at their root, of which they are only the
perversions. Much truth is tacitly recognized in the sacred traditions of
mankind, however waning and ready to perish: that is to say, much truth
dispersed among them and variously represented, though no one system may be said
to exhibit even the perversions of all truths. Perhaps almost all the great
tribal or national expressions of the feeling after the Infinite have more or
less paid their tribute to the unity and supremacy of the One Unknown God, with
a dim perception of a plurality in that unity; to the existence of intelligences
higher than man, as it were between God and man, this notion being disguised in
a thousand ways, from Polytheism down to the personification of all the forces
of nature; to the degradation of man himself through a fall, and the
universality of sin as personal guilt and liability to punishment; to a
mysterious Deliverer desired of the nations; to the sense of the necessity and
acceptableness of worship by sacrifice ; in the ethical domain to the rights of
the Bight and the goodness of the Good; to the inextinguishable hope of
immortality, more distorted perhaps than almost any other truth. Now it is a
credential of the Christian revelation that it acknowledges all this; or rather
that all this is true. Professing to be the supreme, the only direct,
communication from God to man, it points to a universal consent among the
nations that some such revelation was expected and was needed.

3. But this leads to the further argument, that Christianity explains and
corrects these errors while it confirms the truth underlying them all. It comes
as the correction of every delusion into which it declares the Eternal had
permitted the world to fall as the consequence of its resistance of His Spirit.
It teaches the true doctrine concerning God.

Sweeping away the pantheism, the polytheism, the atheism of the nations: it
amends the doctrine of sin, by connecting it with redemption; it substitutes the
true Divine-human Sacrifice, its expiation cleansing the heathen temple, its
gift of the Spirit supplying the need of the heathen philosophical schools; it
reforms the whole economy of worship, by revealing a Mediator; it supplies the
defects and reproves the corruptions of the world’s ethical systems; and it
brightens and simplifies its doctrine of the future state.

4. Such are the credentials of the Christian revelation: such are its claims to
be heard. No further plea is at present urged than this. No other system, among
the many candidates for acceptance, has ever made such pretensions as these. No
ancient creed or religion, however missionary in its spirit, ever professed to
come from God with the explanation and sure guidance of the world’s spiritual
desires. Christianity alone explains heathenism, with a solution at once gentle
and stern. And it alone brings in the time of a universal reformation. This is,
however, laid down only as its credential: as such it has all the force,
although no more than the force, of a preliminary demand for profound respect
and solemn attention to its appeals.

5. Objections to this credential, as such, and limited strictly to the present
stage of the argument, may be noticed at once and disarmed in a few sentences.
It will be said by the Atheist, or the Antitheist, that Christianity, in common
with every other form of the religious sentiment among men, is no more than an
invention of the human mind—or that subtle action of matter which is called the
mind—and the most beautiful, though not always the most beautiful, evolution in
man of those strange phenomena which in the lower orders of creation make man
himself their object. All the history of religion, in every part of the world,
and among all the tribes of mankind, is only the record of the evolution of
something in man that has no name, no object, and apparently no meaning.

We are not at present concerned with the Atheist; and may postpone further
reference to this subject. Meanwhile, there is another form of the objection
which cannot be thus summarily dismissed.

(1.) It appears to many students of what may be called Comparative Theology that
the existence of so many other religions, containing so many noble and
uncontested truths, is a bar to the acceptance of Christianity as the one
definitive revelation of God. They deny the distinction between natural religion
and super-natural, between natural theology and revealed. They assert that all
the faiths or mythologies of mankind are natural or supernatural alike,
according as these words are understood. All are supernatural, in the sense that
the Creator has lodged in the spirit of man a faculty for the Infinite, which
has developed in a few great historical religions; just as the Creator gave man
a, supernatural endowment of language, which has been developed into a few great
families of speech.

All are natural, in the sense that all have their natural pedigree, and may be
traced through the various nationalities as, equally with language and perhaps
more than language, the foundation of race distinctions. Hence, the Science of
Religion distinguishes in various ways the religions of mankind. There are the
religions which should be traced to individual founders: such as Moses,
Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tse, Christ, and Mohammed. And there are those
which are national, and have never been connected with human names: the
religions of the ancient Brahmans, the Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Slavs, and
Celts. Again, we have the Faiths which have Sacred Books and those which are
without them: of the former eight being reckoned, Brahmanism and Buddhism among
the Hindus; Zornastrianisrn among the Persians; among the Hebrews, Mosaism and
Christianity; among the Arabs, Mohammedanism; among the Chinese, Confucianism
and the religion of Lao-tse. These distinctions rise at last into the division
of two or three great families. First, the Aryan, subdivided into the Brahmanism
of the Yeda, Buddhism which sprang from it and revolted against it, and
Zoroastrianism, which departed from the ancient Yedic faith. Secondly, the
Semitic, with its Old and New Testament religions, the latter transferred,
however, into Aryan soil: and Mohammedanism. These have played the most
distinguished part in the history of the world hitherto; but a third must be
added, the Turanian, to which the branches of Chinese religion belong. The
argument deduced from the study of Comparative Theology is simply this: that
there is not one religion which is of Divine right, and must needs be separated
from all the rest. In plain words, whatever other distinctions there are—
between Monotheistic and Polytheistic, Documentary and Traditional, Cultivated
and Fetish—the distinction between true and false religions is not to be
allowed. There is no final, definitive, supreme religion for mankind, any more
than there is one universal language for mankind. This science, which is
comparatively new, makes a fair show of zeal for all religions; and, indeed,
most triumphantly vindicates the truth, depth, and universality of the Godward
tendency in our nature. But this is at the expense of Christianity, however
seemingly on its side. In fact, it takes away all the strength of the credential
now under consideration, so far as it concerns Christianity, while leaving it in
its full force so far as it concerns revelation generally, or the religion of
nature. What then is to be said in defense of our argument?

(2.) First, and foremost, the Science of Religion pays too much honor to the
Faiths of the World when it brings Christianity into conjunction or comparison
with them. After allowing all that the catholic Apostle asserts as to the
religiousness of mankind—our argument has done justice to that—we must not
forget his dark testimony against the outward forms of that religiousness. The
world by wisdom knew not God. 1 Comparative Theology collects a number of
sublime sayings about God to which Hindu devotion gave birth; but it is
undeniable that the system of Brahmanism was at almost all points a gigantic
parody on the religion of supernatural revelation. Attempt after attempt from
age to age was made to reform it; but its greatest reformation, that of
Buddhism, —now one of the most extensively held faiths in the world—was and is
in reality a religion without a God: the vastest waste of Atheism that has ever
been known. Christianity is not one of the religions of the world: responding,
like others, to the common instinct, only in bolder and sublimer terms. Once
more, Christianity is not what the Science of Religions makes it: an offshoot
from Mosaism, and an improvement on it, as Buddhism rose out of the old Vedic
faith and put away its old gods. It is the one only religion that the world has
ever received directly from heaven. In its present form, and with its present
name, it originated in the midst of Judaism, at a certain epoch, and struggled
for and won its ascendancy much after the manner of other religions. But
Christianity as Divine Revelation is only the consummate form of a truth, or a
system of truths, that has been in the world from the beginning of human
history. But this will introduce another very important aspect of our
credentials.

1 1 Corinthians 1:21.

CHRISTIANITY THEPERFECTINGOF FORMER REVELATIONS.

It is a continuation of the same argument to say that Christianity is itself an
explanation of the preparatory disclosures of revealed truth, and the
consummation of them all.

1. This is, in fact, the crowning presumptive argument in its favor, that it is
the end and completion of a revelation that has been going on from the
beginning. It is not a religion that literally began in Judaea with the advent
of Jesus. It does not profess to be the first supernatural communication to
mankind: it is not the opening of the heavens for the first time. It finishes a
testimony that began with the fall of man: in the best sense, it is therefore as
old as the Creation. This last sentence has been made the watchword of English
Infidelity: as if its being coeval with the human race were a disproof of its
Divine original. But this is in fact its glory. It is the last accent of a Voice
which spoke first at the gate of Paradise. That voice was the Primitive
Revelation from the perversions of which all the innumerable forms of mythology
arose. But that Voice awakened the desire of the human race to which all
revelation has been a response, and has constantly deepened that desire whilst
it responded to it. But only in a peculiar line, and within a limited area. On
either side of that line, and beyond that area, men groped after the lost,
Creator and the forfeited Paradise in their own way: being dealt with both in
justice and in mercy. The mercy of the Supreme has in every age guided the
instincts of all the sincere. St. Peter is as catholic as St. Paul on this
subject. Discerning in Cornelius the best religion of the Gentiles, he said: I
perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that
feareth Him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him. 1 But justice
abandoned the races as such to the consequences of their own perverseness:
because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were
thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened. 2 Thus the two Apostles agree: as to individuals the sincere have been
guided towards an unknown Savior; as to the races the just Providence of God
dealt with them according to their inventions. Meanwhile, there has been in
every age a clear, distinct, though not voluminous announcement of the will of
God, delivered to a chosen and faithful people. And the peculiarity of these
preliminary revelations has been this, that every word has at once satisfied
human aspiration and kindled it to higher desire. Christianity is the final
answer to a continuous expectation kept up from age to age. It is the response
to what may be called a third form of the great anticipation: besides the
instinct in every human spirit, and in the human race as such, man has had,
though all men have not had, an express testimony of the Mind of the Supreme,
leading human hope onward to the perfect revelation of Christ. Christianity
comes as the perfecting of its earlier Self: the final and sufficient response
to the expectation it had kept up from the beginning. This is its supreme
preparatory credential.

It is the last of many words, and leaves nothing more to be desired in the
present estate of mankind.

1 Acts 10:34-35; 2 Romans 1:21.

2. The force of this credential will be felt only by those who already accept,
or are disposed to accept, the revelation of Jesus. The more it is pondered the
more satisfactory will it seem to all who take a large view of the dealings of
Providence with man. There are, of course, unsearchable mysteries in the
subject: mysteries so perplexing that they have driven some speculatists to the
renunciation of a God. To those who do believe in God the gradual education of a
world free and responsible is a thought to be accepted and reposed in. It is
more tolerable at least than other thoughts which would displace it. It is more
in harmony with every high conception of the Supreme to suppose that He has in
every age been communicating His will with more and more clearness to mankind,
having always in view a final and full disclosure, than to suppose that He
planted a religious germ in man’s heart which has been always developing with
infinite variety in every variety of soils, no provision whatever being made for
the survival of the best, without indeed allowing that there is or that there
can be any best.

(1.) But the objection may be urged that it is below the dignity of a Divine
revelation to keep the world so long in suspense. In answer to this we can only
refer to the analogy of all the other dealings of God which come within our
cognizance. The earth as man’s abode, the history of all the creatures that it
inherit, especially the progress of everything pertaining to its chief
inhabitant, has been under a law of secular and slow evolution.

Supposing the entire economy of things to be under the government of one Supreme
Mind—that is to say, supposing the God of revelation to be the Author of
nature—there can be, or there ought to be, no difficulties in the way of
considering at least the claims of a revelation which professes to describe the
methods of a gradual education of the human race. To the Theistic advocates of
development this ought to be a strong recommendation of the Holy Scriptures, and
of their final solution of all mysteries in Christianity. With its Materialistic
or Positivist advocates of course we have nothing to do: there are no
credentials which appeal to them. They must give up their delusion of Nescience
or unintelligent and meaningless Law, and first be reconciled to a Personal
Author of all things, before the Christian Revelation even looks their way. But
those who admit that the laying of the material foundations of the
superstructure of intelligent life required incalculable ages ought not to
shrink from the preliminary announcement that God has at sundry times and in
divers manners spoken to the human race, and finally consummated all His words
in His Son.

(2.) If, once more, it be pointed out—as it constantly is—that what professes to
be the last revelation is after all only a partial response to the deep
questions of mankind, this may be granted as a fact, but it is robbed of its
force as an argument by the suggestion that even Christianity is only part of a
scheme, understood only by the Infinite Mind, the first elements of which alone
are brought within the range of our faculties. It will be shown hereafter that
there is not a solitary question of the human-spirit, on the answer to which its
present peace and its probation for eternal happiness depend, which the Holy
Oracles do not satisfy. More than that we have no right to expect. Had the
revelation of Jesus professed to leave no mystery unexplained, that would have
been a stronger plea against its Divinity than infidelity has ever yet been able
to find.

SUMMARY. The cumulative strength of these pleas, the line of which only has been
indicated, is or should be irresistible. They have immense force as a moral
demonstration of the claims of Christianity to be heard and weighed with the
most profound solemnity. Not to listen to Christ is to be self-condemned. His
words are the only response to the universal anticipation of the human; race: as
existing in the very constitution of the mind, as testified; by the consent of
nations, and as kept alive from the beginning by supernatural and gradual
disclosures of the Divine will. Either I God has thus finally spoken, or there
is no God, and man is the incomprehensible creation of chance and the sport of
the chance that created him. THE EXHIBITION OF GOD AND OF HISATTRIBUTESIN
REVELATION.

Another class of the credentials of revelation is found in its exhibition of the
Divine attributes, displayed in the tokens of the presence of God generally, and
particularly in the supernatural order of miracles, prophecy, and inspiration as
including both, which everywhere reigns. These are not so much notes and
qualities of revelation as the fabric of the revelation itself; and have always
been, whether separately or combined, the strong enforcement of, its claims upon
attention and acceptance.

REVELATIONSUPERNATURAL.

God is a Personal Presence in the whole economy of revealed truth. But He is not
present in the same sense as that in which He is immanent in the world:
revelation is, has ever been and must ever be, a supernatural order, blending
with the natural And moving on harmoniously with it in general, whilst
exhibiting most essential differences. But here it is necessary to define terms,
or rather to remind ourselves of their conventional relations.

1. There is a sense in which the natural order of things—that is, the
constitution of nature as governed by certain fixed physical and metaphysical
laws—must always be touched if not pervaded by the supernatural, that is, by
what is not matter of our constant experience. The invisible world, and all
interventions from the spiritual world, are supernatural. Hence it follows that
the introduction of man into this system of things was a supernatural
intervention; and all revelations of the unseen in the constitution of his
nature are supernatural; and all evidences of the presence and glory of God in
the universe as seen by man are supernatural.

2. This then being granted, there is a sense also in which the great economy to
which the Bible bears witness is in a preeminent sense supernatural. From
beginning to end—that is, from the first intimation of a coming Redeemer to His
final manifestation with final and eternal truth upon His lips—all has been
beyond and above the nature of man’s ordinary experience. All has been one vast
and never-ceasing demonstration of God moving among men and supernaturally
operating in human affairs. His wonderful works pervade the whole, though only
on occasions bursting into what we call Miracle. They have displayed His
presence in His own immediate acts, or in acts above nature performed by the
instrumentality of His creatures. They have displayed His one design in the
communication of knowledge concerning it to His ministers in Prophecy. They have
displayed His wisdom in the preservation, through men raised up to be objects of
Inspiration, of the continuous record of His revealed economy of salvation. Thus
the laws of the supernatural operation have been threefold. MIRACLE is the
intervention of the Supreme Power in the established course of nature. The
Creator put all things under the control of general law, but it is manifest that
He is excepted who did subject all things 1 to it. His personal authority is not
a violation of law, nor a suspension of it, but the introduction of a new and
sufficient cause of any effect He would produce. PROPHECY is the intervention of
the supreme knowledge, imparted to man independently of the ordinary laws of
knowing: whether for the purpose of uttering new truth, or of foretelling what,
to all but God, is contingent in the future. INSPIRATION is that supernatural
intervention of the Divines wisdom by which the miracle of prophecy is made
permanent in the organic unity of Scripture. Now these are all of the essence of
revelation: they combine in every part of it. The Scriptures, or Revelation, or
the Christian faith—these three are one—have exhibited one vast and permanent
miracle, one great prophecy ever in coarse of fulfillment, and one great result
of inspiration.

1 1 Corinthians 15:27.

3. These three may be regarded as one great continuous Miracle, and one great
body of credentials commending to us the Scriptures of revelation. But these
credentials for faith must have their own evidences for reason. As they belong
to the supernatural order they must be received by faith. They imply, indeed
they assert, the being of God, and His intervention for objects, and in a
manner, before which reason sinks confounded. But as facts recorded and humanly
attested, they must be received on evidence which is trustworthy and amenable to
the tests of trustworthiness. These two must combine; just as in all things
pertaining to religion, faith and reason must unite: being reconciled when they
differ, and blended into the harmony of certitude. In examining these several
evidences of God in revelation each must be viewed as distinct. But, in
considering them as credentials of one great scheme professedly the revelation
of a God Whose existence is admitted, we are not under the necessity of
examining at length the question which touches their abstract possibility in a
philosophical point of view. We regard them as the internal demonstrations of
Scripture, and have only to ask what their force and meaning are as credentials,
and to prove that no condition of such credentials is wanting. THE CREDENTIAL
OFMIRACLES.

There are many and distinct terms used in Scripture to signify what we call
miracles.

They are called generally the ergon, or works of God; sometimes these works are
referred to as acts of the Divine power that effects them, and they are then
MIRACLES OR dunamesi; sometimes the purpose for which they are wrought is made
emphatic in their designation, and they are SIGNS or shmeia. A third term,
terata, is occasionally connected with these; but, as it merely refers to the
immediate effect produced on the minds of beholders, it has no theological
importance. All that requires to be said as to the credentials of Miracle may be
referred to these two words respectively.

WONDERFUL WORKS OF GOD The former, the highest expression of which is in the
Pentecostal word, The wonderful works of God, 1 pervades the whole Scripture,
which clearly distinguishes between the ordinary operations of Providence and
these extraordinary tokens of the Divine presence.

It makes miracle the special intervention of omnipotence: in this sense also
there is no power but of God. Revelation shows us the Maker of the laws of the
universe, which we understand only as the invariable sequence of cause and
effect, introducing when He pleases a new cause: not violating His own laws, or
suppressing, or arresting them; not using the operation of more extensive laws
than those known to exist, but simply bringing in new causes of new effects when
He sees fit. Faith recognizes the FINGER OF GOD; 2 , 3 and reason, admitting the
existence of a Supreme Cause, assents to this. Its definition of Miracle is an
act of the immediate power of God intervening in the connection of natural
causes and effects. It does not argue with those who deny to the God of nature
this power and freedom to use it. The preliminary objection against the
possibility of miracle, and the value of any amount of evidence that might seek
to establish its credibility, can never be met by any other argument than this
first term. It is well that the Apologist of revelation should take a high stand
here. If there is a Personal God there can be no a priori reason why He should
not interfere with His own laws. No continuity and unbroken order of sequence in
cause and effect can be made an argument against the possibility of its being
disturbed. The last word of philosophy on the subject is that our faith in the
stability of nature is a primary law of human thought, as certainly bound up in
our mental constitution as our consciousness of personal identity. Now we have
an equally firm faith operating as a primary law of thought that an omnipotent
Being can, if He will, put forth His Finger and regulate in a new way laws the
general order of which He does not violate. On this conviction rests all the
evidence that miracles need as they are manifestations of a Divine presence.

1 Acts 2:11; 2 Exodus 8:19; 3 Luke 11:20.

SIGNS. The second term, shmeia, (Greek) ’oth, (Hebrew) theologically and in our
present connection the more important, is never wanting in Scripture, though
used with a more limited application. It indicates that God declares Himself
present in certain particular miracles, and challenges attention to His own
words or the words of His messenger thus authenticated. Now, revelation has not
at its great epochs been without this credential.

While the Wonderful Works are literally never absent in revelation, —always in
course of procedure, open or secret, known or unknown, in miracles of nature and
in miracles of grace, during the ages while the Volume was constructed and since
it has been finished, for ever and ever throughout the whole economy of
salvation, —the Signs have been occasionally given at certain great and
important epochs, and in confirmation, both to believers and unbelievers, of
messages from heaven. It is needless to ask whether it might have been
otherwise: in His wisdom God has seen fit to accompany all supernatural
communications by signs and infallible tokens. But, though needless, it is not
unprofitable to consider how absolutely necessary such signs and tokens must be
to authenticate tidings so amazing as those which the Scripture brings. Here a
few distinctions may be useful.

1. The grandest miracles which are the credentials of revelation are in the
substance of the revelation itself. Very many of the extraordinary
interpositions it records are not bound up with the nature and purpose of the
economy of God’s redeeming will, but have been miraculous attestations of
individual missions. When, however, we rise from its appendages,
circumstantials, and preliminaries to the Great Redemption itself, the case is
different. Christ the Author of Christianity and its Substance and its End is
the supreme Miracle, and everything connected with Him is miraculous. As soon as
we come within the sphere, of His sacred presence the definition of miracle
becomes enlarged: it is then an immediate act of Divine omnipotence which has
its necessity, its reality, and its exhibition in the redeeming economy. To the
central or final congregation of wonders in Him those of the Old Testament
looked forward, and with them the great series virtually ended. The advent of
Christ was a miracle; of which the entire history of His words and works, of His
life and death, of His resurrection and ascension, is a continuation. Hence it
is obvious that with regard to the Christian system as a whole miracle is
essential to its demonstration. For without miracle there is no Christian
revelation.

2. But, descending from this high level, we may confidently assert that the
authentication of the human agents of the Divine will required such attestations
from heaven as we call miracles. It may be going too far to say that the common
instinct of mankind expects that if God sends a messenger He will excite
attention by signs preceding and confirm His word by signs following. No founder
of a human religion has ever failed to appeal to this general expectation.
Confucius and Buddha and Mohammed are sometimes said to have been exceptions;
but they were exceptions only to this extent, that they did not profess
themselves to work miracles. Buddha was a strange anomaly in every respect. He
appeared only as a reformer of an old religion, and did not found, or rather did
not claim to found, a religion of his own. In other words, he needed no
credentials, for he did not profess to come from God. Confucius brought no
revelation: his honest task and his honest work was to revive and classify and
perfect the religious literature of his people.

Mohammed pretended to no power of working miracles: wisely declining to come
into competition with the true prophets of God whose revelations he appropriated
and perverted. But he did bring, or assume to bring, a new revelation; and
accordingly he made his appeal to miraculous messages and communications which
were in the place of the miracles he could not perform. But, apart from the
question of universal expectation, —which is of some importance, though not
decisive, —we find that from beginning to end the Author of revelation is
represented as taking this expectation into account, and as always investing His
ambassadors and heralds with the credentials of miracle. The importance of these
signs by which the Divine Being has authenticated the beginnings at least of
every new economy of truth is sometimes undervalued. It is said to be more in
harmony with heavenly decorum to communicate truth directly to the human mind;
and more consistent with the dignity of truth itself that it should depend on
its own intrinsic adaptation and fitness. But they who reason thus are
needlessly jealous of the Divine prerogative and of human dignity. He who knows
what is in man has never offered a revelation to the race without such signs and
wonders as were sufficient to establish it in the world, leaving those
inexcusable who should refuse to believe.

3. This leads to the nature of the credential itself, or the value of the
miracle, as it is a sign. Generally, and taking revelation as a whole, it
appeals to the body of evidence that God has interposed in human affairs, in a
manner transcendently extraordinary, as its plenary and abiding demonstration.
That is to say, in few words, the Christian Faith rests its strong claim on this
among: other things, that there is a series of wonderful works and supernatural
acts behind it, around it, and encompassing it, which no sincere and candid mind
ought to be able to resist. More particularly, every messenger, the Supreme
Messenger not excepted, coming with professed revelation from above, has
invariably been authenticated by miraculous endowments which God Himself has
deemed necessary and sufficient to vindicate His servants’ mission. Lastly, the
miracles which satisfied the generation receiving these credentials are, as will
be hereafter seen, committed to the documents which hand down the truths they
taught; and the miracles and the documents together with those truths become
matter of historical testimony.

4. Finally, it is obvious that the value of miracles as such, and apart from all
other credentials, is to be found mainly in the authentication of the messengers
to their own contemporaries. Their immediate effect on those who behold them is
expressed by Nicodemus: Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come from God;
far no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him. 1 Then
follows profound attention to the messenger and the message. The Sign precedes
the teaching. But to after generations there is a certain change. They have the
message, and its full force as truth, before they consider the miraculous
attestation. We in our day include the original miracles with all other branches
of evidence which are to be received on trustworthy testimony such as no lapse
of ages can invalidate. But this leads to a consideration of that testimony
itself, or what may be called the credentials of this Credential.

1 John 2:2.

EVIDENCES AND TESTS OF MIRACLE. The entire question of the trustworthiness of
the testimony to the miraculous facts of revelation may be resolved into a
statement of the criteria or tests to which these supposed facts may fairly be
subjected.

1. Such Divine interventions must authenticate missions worthy of God. And it
requires no argument to prove that the miracles to which the Christian
revelation appeals have a cause behind them of supreme value. As a whole—from
the miraculous attributes of the trees in the garden down to the ascension of
the Incarnate Son of God and the Pentecostal opening of the heavens —they
sustain the grand fabric of the Divine education of redeemed mankind. Here we
must divert our attention from many isolated wonderful works and think only of
the One Work of God upon earth. But, descending to particulars, and sending a
general glance backward through all the economies, we see that the great
assemblages of miracles were wrought at crises pregnant with importance to the
Great Cause in the Old Testament. The ante-Mosaic miracles were authentications,
not of God’s messengers-only, but of His own dread Name and attributes. At the
introduction of the Mosaic institute there was reason for the glorious
manifestations of the Divine power, rebuking the long-endured perverseness of
Egypt, authenticating the Lawgiver so slowly accepted by His own people, proving
the Divinity of what we call the Mosaic economy, and confirming that proof by
signs following down to the miraculous entrance into Canaan. While the Theocracy
lasted, every recorded wonder attested at the critical hour that Jehovah
reigned. The miracles which cluster around the persons of Elijah and Elisha
asserted His supremacy when the cause of God was at stake in the chosen land.
And, finally, after long comparative cessation, there was a great, and, in some
respects, unexampled renewal of miracles to rescue the sinking faith of the
people during their captivity. It scarcely needs to be pointed out that the New
Testament yields the same analysis. The prolonged miracle of the Divine Person,
Whose deep humiliation for mankind rendered necessary the vindication of His
Godhead, stands out from all wonders of the Bible as one continuous Virtue from
His Divine-human presence. The Resurrection, with its infallible signs,
completed the education of the Apostles’ faith, and laid the corner stone of all
evidences forever. The miracles of the Acts are exhibited only on critical
occasions, but always then: witness the minor renewals of Pentecost for the
conversion of the Gentiles, for Samaria, and for the relicts of the Baptist’s
ministry; lessening, as it were, through these several phases, according to the
importance of the occasion. Not always however were they lessened. The
resurrection-miracles of St. Peter and St. Paul followed hard on the Savior’s
highest acts: to demonstrate by the hand of two or three witnesses, after His
rising, the fact of the victory over death which He had demonstrated most
effectually by His rising itself. The abundance of St. Paul’s miraculous gifts
were the signs of an Apostle 1 which his peculiar vocation demanded.

And, finally, the miracles wrought in the early churches were enough and no more
than enough to attest the reality of the Pentecost; being, so to speak, the same
kind of confirmations of that great day as the few resurrections of the Acts
were confirmations of that other day of the Resurrection proper. It must be
remembered, however, that in conclusion the Supreme has not absolutely
restricted His wonderful works to the great eras of revelation: the power of
God, like the word of God, is not bound. We discern a certain law of miracles
which seems to limit them to great epochs; but there is nothing in it which
requires us to limit the Holy One, or to render it impossible that miraculous
interventions have occurred since the full establishment of the organic Church
in the world. Moreover, the occasional instances in which the wonders, or teras,
have been wrought by the permitted agency of wicked men are so referred to in
Scripture as to strengthen this credential of revelation. As Balaam in the Old
Testament and Caiaphas in the New delivered sublime predictions, so the
magicians in the Old Testament wrought supernatural wonders under a Divine
restraint; and Antichrist, to come with his lying wonders, is predicted in the
New. But the true workers of miracles in the Scripture are its holiest men; 2
and one of its closing records is the miracle that vindicates the sanctity of
miraculous power upon Elymas.

1 2 Corinthians 12:12; 2 Acts 13:11.

2. It may be demanded that these wonders of the Finger of God should generally
teach worthy lessons, besides asserting the power of God in the supernatural
order of the world: in other words that they should be essential constituents of
revelation itself, as well as being its credentials. We must not, indeed,
presume to judge what in every case is the worthiness of the lesson taught: some
miracles may seem too trivial, such as the recovery of the axe, 1 others too
stupendously great, such as the sun’s standing still, 2 for acceptance. With
this reservation, it cannot be denied that the wonders of Scripture are most
confessedly worthy of the cause they support. In all cases they pay respect to
the very laws that they seem to supersede. They themselves effectually teach the
lessons of the Divine will and illustrate the Divine perfections. Not a miracle
in the whole Bible fails to demonstrate either the power or the fidelity, or the
wisdom, or the justice, or the mercy of God. They are never, or very rarely,
even liable to be regarded as merely portents. All are faithful to the character
of God as otherwise revealed: mingling chastisement with mercy in both
Testaments, the benevolence and mercy largely predominating in the New. As it
respects the miracles of Christ, the supreme miraculous credentials, they are so
ordered from the least to the greatest as to teach symbolically the whole
mystery of His grace, and to give illustrations beforehand of the character of
His future administration through the Holy Ghost. There are a few of His
miracles which have been thought to militate against our canon, and to be merely
portentous or evidences of capricious severity: for instance, the consignment of
the swine to death, the withering of the fig-tree, and the vehement act of
zealotry in the Temple. But, read in the light of the Divine providence in the
world, these acts of Jesus will be seen not only to be in harmony with the
zealous severity of the Divine justice but to be almost necessary for its
illustration. Seeing that the gentle Redeemer so often predicted the desolation
which impenitence would bring upon God’s ancient people, it might be expected
that some few of His symbolical miracles would confirm His prophecies. And these
seemingly exceptional cases, in which He made inanimate and irrational creatures
the vicarious symbols of His displeasure, are precisely of that character. But
more of this when the character of the Lord Himself becomes our Credential.

1 2 Kings 6:6; 2 Joshua 10:13.

3. It may be expected, further, that the miracles which bring the Supernatural
Hand into human affairs shall, as credentials, allow of the application of fair
criteria in the case of those who witnessed them, and further that they shall be
supported by; sufficient evidence for posterity, (1.) As to the former, the
demand may be as abundantly satisfied as the case admits.

Many of the wonders recorded in the Bible are simply matters of record, and
their circumstantials are lost forever. But these may claim the benefit of being
blended with the mass of those which are as it were wrought before our eyes, in
the midst of all their surroundings. If the question were of the integrity of
Scripture these exceptional instances might be challenged, and must be defended.
But for our present argument that is needless: it is enough to assert that the
grand miraculous credentials of the two covenants were wrought openly, under the
cognizance of men’s senses, and amidst such circumstances as forbid the
possibility of deception. The miracles which accompanied the advent and
legislation of Moses: were witnessed by large numbers; and the testimony of the
rivals; who used their enchantments is in evidence. Of course we have only the
record of Scripture itself to guide us; but for our present argument that is
enough. We have all the evidence the case allows that the Egyptians as well as
the Israelites saw and believed things that were not done in a corner. We have
not con-temporary documents to which appeal can be made. But the entire history
which flowed out of these miraculous interpositions speaks for them. From
generation to generation the annals of the nation are full of allusions to what
was steadfastly believed from the day of its occurrence. And the whole economy
of Hebrew revelations was founded upon that faith. However, it is obvious that
this question touches the Gospel miracles more particularly. With regard to them
our Savior Himself may be asked for evidence. He admitted that publicity and
openness and candid invitation of criticism were to be expected from anyone who
claimed to bring a special message from heaven. And what He said as to His words
held true of His miracles, which were His acted words: I spake openly to the
world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews
always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. 1 Even the Resurrection—the
miracle above every miracle—was amenable to the same tests with all others;
although in the nature of the case the interior mystery must needs be hidden. It
was a supernatural event which men might investigate and be assured of: which
indeed would be investigated with the utmost diligence. But it ought to be
remembered here that the wisdom of the advocate of Christianity is quietness and
confidence in a defensive or negative position. He is not bound to do more than
challenge the opponent to prove that with regard to any of the recorded miracles
of the Gospels, or of the Old Testament, there is the slightest vestige of
evidence that anything was done which could give any ground for suspicion. But
this leads to something that is more positive.

1 John 18:20.

(2.) As to the latter: we are, as posterity, in a different position, and
miracles are matter of historical evidence. There are no events in the past
history of the human race, which have become matter of accepted history and are
doubted by no sane person, more amply and circumstantially attested than the
miraculous life and resurrection from death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ:
that is, the whole range of the central miracles of Christianity.

They were not questioned at the time of their supposed occurrence; at least, the
only challenge they underwent was of such a kind as to turn to their advantage.
All kinds of spectators watched the more public miracles; and the only
disparagement recorded was that of those who ascribed the Lord’s works to
Beelzebub, and His absence from the sepulcher to the cunning stratagem of His
disciples. The resurrection of Jesus was the critical or crucial miracle the
establishment of which would assure all the rest. Now that event was guaranteed
to many hundreds of persons by many infallible proofs; it was believed from the
time by a large body of conscientious and credible witnesses, whose mental and
moral character sustains every test, who, moreover, to the number of hundreds
sealed their conviction by an entire consecration of life, and some of them by
the sacrifice of life itself. Finally, the great miracles of revelation are
connected with posterity by the existence of public monuments which owe their
existence to a widespread and profound confidence in their genuineness. In
ancient times the Passover attested the national faith in the deliverance from
Egypt, and it has continued from generation to generation to declare the
strength of the evidence based upon the faith of a whole people. Similarly, the
Lord’s Day has declared down to the present time the faith of an immense body of
witnesses that the Savior rose from the dead. And, in fact, the Christian Church
as an institution vouches, if not for the reality of the miracle of Christ’s
life and death and resurrection, at least for the satisfaction with which the
evidence of it was received from the earliest Christian generations.
Supercilious skepticism may affirm that no amount of evidence can ever avail to
enforce upon the mind the acceptance of facts which are contrary to the eternal
laws of nature. The only reply which, at this stage, we can give is that this is
quite true, if no God exists; but that, if a Personal Ruler of the universe is
believed in, such supernatural facts are not incredible; and, finally, that
these events were witnessed and relied upon by a very large number of
trustworthy witnesses who; have sent down their evidence signed and attested to
posterity.

4. Once more, the dignity of eternal truth demands that it should not lay the
main stress of its demonstration on miracles: certainly never on miracles alone.
No one in all the records of revelation is represented as having made the
validity of his mission depend on his works; though no one, thus authenticated,
was ever known to decline producing this credential when; challenged. There is
no subject connected with the evidences of the Faith that requires more careful
statement than this. Exaggeration on both sides is very frequent. Certainly, it
might sometimes appear as if everything was staked upon miraculous intervention:
for instance, the challenges of Moses and Elijah seem to confirm this notion, as
also a few of the minor miracles of both Testaments. But it ought to be
remembered that the wonderful works wrought in Egypt were not merely the
credentials of Moses: they were also and chiefly marks of the Divine displeasure
against the false gods of that land, and chastisements of the perverseness of
those who refused to obey. The same may be said of the contest on Mount Carmel.
The people were bidden to choose between the True God and the false gods before
the tokens came from heaven; and when these came, they took the form of
chastisement, as in the case of Egypt. Merely as portents, to astonish the
beholders and thus enchain their attention, miracles were never vouchsafed. But
at all the great crises of revelation they have been given to enlist and
pre-engage the hearers by tokens of Divine goodness and power. In fact, and on
the whole, as they are the Hand of God demanding attention to His Voice, the
relation of miracles to the doctrine of the Teacher who performs them is always
most simply stated and guarded throughout the Scripture. The tokens when
rejected are very soon withdrawn: There shall no sign be given unto this
generation 1 was not uttered until sign after sign had been rejected. Moreover,
it is observable that the performance of miracles becomes very occasional where
the Gospel is established; and that by degrees they are taken up into the number
of transitory and exceptional charisms, tokens of the Divine power for them that
believe not, 2 and instruments of usefulness to those who believed. When it is
said that God confirmed the word of His servants both with signs and wonders and
with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost 3 we must remember that the
stress is laid upon the last clause. And our Lord’s prediction and promise of
the greater works than these 4 to be wrought by His Apostles, and of the
miraculous tokens to be expected by believers, were not intended to be
understood of a permanent authentication of the Gospel by miraculous tokens. But
this takes us back to the Supreme Witness Himself, Who has left many testimonies
to the true place of miracles among the credentials of His Faith. Nothing is
more certain than that He appealed to His works as fulfillment of prophecy, and
as proofs of His own Divine power and authority. He also made them the vehicle
of teaching His most impressive lessons, and of encouraging His servants’ faith
in the goodness of His heart. Our Lord also declared that His miracles rendered
unbelief inexcusable: If I had not done among them the works which none other
man did, they had not had sin. 5 But the works include, if they do not mean, the
words: If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.6 And
accordingly His most solemn testimony as to the responsibility of His generation
was: the word that I have spoken the same shall judge him in the last day. 7
Finally, there are two other passages in St. John which will repay careful
study. Though ye believe not Me, believe the works: 8 this places the works in
their due subordination, while giving them their value. Those who ought to
believe, because of the works, ought rather to have believed because of the
virtue that proceeded from Himself. The works which the Father hath given Me TO
FINISH, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me that the Father hath sent
Me: 9 this gives the glorious Gospel, as one whole finished in Christ, its
supreme place as the final and consummate evidence of the truth of revelation.

1 Mark 8:12; 2 1 Corinthians 14:22; 3 Hebrews 2:4; 4 John 14:12; 5 John 15:24; 6
John 15:22; 7 John 12:48; 8 John 10:38; 9 John 5:36.

5. Lastly, there is a criterion or postulate which believers in revelation add
to those already considered. The miracles of Scripture, in their wide variety
and unbounded grandeur, are the economy of a SUPERNATURAL ORDER. As they must,
therefore, be in many respects dimly apprehended by the limited faculties of
men, it may be expected that there will be residual difficulties, remaining as
the test of faith. Among these difficulties we do not reckon the supposed
evidence of modern science in favor of a fixed and unalterable reign of law, any
interference with which is in itself not to be conceived. Law implies a
Lawgiver, and the Supreme Author of all laws may interpose when and how He will.
Moreover, so long as man has the evidence of consciousness that he can control
for a season the action of natural laws, the exercise of his own volition being
independent of any previous merely natural cause, it will be impossible to
persuade him that the Infinite Personal Will cannot interpose amidst the
sequences of nature. But there are other difficulties. Such is the occasional
want of seeming reason for a supreme intervention; concerning which, however, it
is enough to say that we are not fit judges on this question.

Again, the undeniable occurrence of prodigies such as witchcraft and necromancy
and the performance of wonderful works through the agency of evil spirits, are
sometimes a stumbling-block to faith: only however to a faith which does not
admit, what the Scriptures everywhere testify, that such things as these have
been permitted by God for reasons to a great extent incomprehensible to us.
Finally, the question of the continuance of miraculous signs since the days of
the Apostles presents a topic of difficulty. But the difficulty vanishes if it
is honestly admitted that there is no reason why the Supreme should not still
manifest His power in endowing His servants occasionally, whether with the gift
of prophecy or with the gift of miracle. This granted, the question becomes then
simply matter of evidence. All these and other seemingly unsolvable problems
become to the believer in the supreme miracles of the Incarnation and the
Resurrection no more and no less than trials of humility and intellectual
submission and faith.

PROPHECY.

PROPHECY, as one of the credentials of revelation, is, like Miracle, bound up
with its very fabric. It is the Divine law of the gradual disclosure of that
system of truth which is ever expanding throughout the Scriptures from stage to
stage unto perfection. As such, the term has two meanings: one wider, according
to which it is the immediate declaration of the will of God through His
servants, whether as to the past, or the present, or the future; and one more
restricted, according to which it is the prediction of future events in
connection with the great economy of revealed truth.

PROPHECY MORE GENERAL.

1. Prophecy is the utterance of Divine revelation; and a prophet is one raised
up and sent to communicate God’s truth. The meaning of nabiy’ is an Announcer;
and that of chazah, is Seer, the earlier name of the same office, or one who
receives what he is to utter in visions. The visions were not universally
characteristic of the office; but the office itself, and the employment of it
throughout the whole economy of revelation, is one of the great credentials of
the Bible, as pervasive as the miracle, with which indeed it is indissolubly
bound up, being only one aspect of a continuous Divine intervention in human
affairs. The prophet was not an ordinary announcer of the will of Heaven, like
the priest who might read and expound the law. He was an instrument of the
Divine will raised up out of the order of nature, to receive communications
which may be called supernatural, being imparted by an influence of the Holy
Ghost sometimes called Vision, sometimes the Word of the Lord: for instance, The
word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision. 1 Whether
by exhibiting to the interior eye the scene, or by lodging the word in the
thoughts, there can be no doubt that the Author of revelation performed what in
another domain would have been a miracle, every time that the Man of God 2 or
the Man of the Spirit 3 was sent forth with his burden of revelation.

1 1 Samuel 3:1; 2 Genesis 20:7; 3 Hosea 9:7.

2. The essence of this credential of Divine revelation is this, that it
represents every communication from God as directly imparted by a Divine
afflatus, the influence of which the prophet could not mistake, and the reality
of which the people might test. This direct contact of the Spirit of God with
the spirit of man is the pervading law and the pervading glory of the Divine
revelation from Moses downward. There is nothing resembling it in the history of
perverted religions. So far as the oracles, soothsayers, and diviners of
heathenism offer any analogy, it is only as a foil to the grandeur of this
credential. It is thus spoken of by the voice of Jehovah Himself. When Miriam
and Aaron murmured against the superior dignity of Moses as the prophet of the
Hebrews, they said: Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath He not
spoken also by us?1 and it is recorded that Jehovah came down in the pillar of
the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle; . . . and He said. Hear now
My words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make Myself known to
him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so,
who is faithful in all Mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even
apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he
behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?
Here we have, as it were, in epitome, the entire mystery of the prophetic gift
and function; and in such a manner as to exhibit the strength of this credential
most impressively. It is the Voice of Jehovah, jealous of His own honor and of
the honor of His servants, at once describing and defending the prophetic law of
revelation. We mark that there was to be a permanent order of these agents
always ready—whether as a school of the prophets or still abiding in their
callings—for the high service of the Kingdom. To one of them Jehovah would
reveal Himself whether in a more extraordinary manner or otherwise, in such a
way, however, that the receiver of the vision should have no doubt: I the Lord
will make MYSELF known unto him. 2 Yet the Supreme was not limited to any order
of men or to any special method. Hence we find that, while the Seventy Elders
received the Spirit and prophesied and did not cease (or but not further] ,3 the
same Spirit rested also upon Eldad and Medad and they prophesied in the camp.
Above all minor ministries rises Moses supreme: with him Jehovah spoke face to
face. Yet he was not strictly supreme: being only the type and precursor of that
Prophet, like unto him yet greater than he, with whom in eternity the Father
speaketh face to face: the SON over His own house. 4 When this Son came, the
ancient order of prophets ceased; for the Supreme Revealer made every one of His
Apostles like Moses, and spoke to them face to face. Moses could never
communicate the Spirit received by him; for we hear him say: Would God that all
the Lords people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon
them.5 But our Lord Himself breathed on His Apostles His own Spirit. And thus
the whole sum of revelation is under the sublime law of a direct manifestation
of God to His people through His servants. This is the grand and glorious claim
of revelation from beginning to end, from Moses to the Greater than Moses.

1 Numbers 12:2; 2 Numbers 12:6; 3 Numbers 11:25-26; 4 Hebrews 3:6; 5 Numbers
11:29.

3. We find everywhere, however, the most careful provision for the vindication
of this credential. The interior consciousness of the prophet was the guarantee
to himself that the Lord was with him; this however could not be transferred to
others, and is no argument to unbelievers who regard the entire mystery of the
prophetic function as a delusion. But Jehovah gave His people tests by which
they might verify the claims of these prophets.

Those whom God sent could appeal to the fact that the honor of Jehovah was their
supreme end. What our Savior said concerning Himself was true of all who had
come before Him, and of all who should follow Him. My doctrine is not Mine, but
His that sent Me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself. He that speaketh of himself
seeketh his own glory.1 This test may be applied to the company of the prophets,
and, if applied with candor, will result in the conviction that such a body of
men could never have imposed a series of delusions on their own people and on
the whole world. But this is not all. These men were fortified by two other
qualifications. They were sometimes armed with the power of working miracles, as
in the case of Moses and Elijah, Sometimes also their credential was the
utterance of prediction: When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the
thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not
spoken.2 This, however, leads to that second and more limited meaning of the
word which has almost displaced the former.

1 John 7:16-18; 2 Deuteronomy 18:22.

PROPHETIC PREDICTION.

Prophecy is thus more specifically the impartation of a Divine knowledge of the
future to man: that is, it embraces the prediction of future events. All
revelation from the beginning has been prediction unfolding into prediction.
This, we have seen, is its law; concerning which no more can be said than that
the God of revelation has so willed it. We can imagine it otherwise: every
generation might have been taught its lesson, as based upon the past, but not
including the future. But we are shut up to the assumption that revelation is
the progressive disclosure of one great event to which the eyes of all
generations, as well before it; as after it, were to be directed. Moreover,
according to the testimony of Scripture itself the prediction of future events
followed by the accomplishment of those predictions has always been one of the
Divine methods of authenticating revelation. Here then we have the general laws
of prophecy proper, and its criterion; as a credential. THE GENERALLAWSOF
PROPHETIC PREDICTION.

There are a few general principles the study of which are of great importance in
order to a right estimate of Scriptural prediction as a distinct and pervasive
credential of revelation.

1. The first is that CHRIST IS ITS SUPREME SUBJECT: the Object to Whom give all
the prophets witness,1 directly or indirectly, from generation to generation,
till He came; and for Whose return, now that He is gone, all the predictions of
Scripture wait. The Redeemer Himself declared that the Scriptures were to be
searched because they testify of Me: 2 if whatever else might be found in them
this was their supreme matter. The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.
3 His Person, advent, and kingdom give to all the prophecies of Scripture their
unity. The great catholic all-embracing predictions which pervade revelation
concerning the accomplished redemption of mankind, from the Protevangelium, or
first prediction with promise, downward, are everywhere found; each new cycle of
the prophetic inspiration pays its tribute to that great design of the coming
Deliverer. While no prophet is ever heard to foreannounce his successor, all
conspire to foreannounce the Christ. We cannot always see the connection between
the lesser predictions and that vast accomplishment; but we do see that the
running superscription of prophetic revelation is the final kingdom of the
Redeemer. All types, which are prophecies in act, and all predictions, which are
prophecies in word, have a more or less obvious reference to the Gospel. To
discover this we often have to apply what is called the Canon of a Double Sense;
that is, a first accomplishment nearer at hand, which itself suggests a second
and ulterior satisfying all requirements: a combination worthy of the Divine
attributes, and resembling in the free domain of history the use of symbols in
nature; the events to which the predictions first refer being themselves
prophetic of Christ. In due time we must examine the predictions of the Old
Testament more in detail.

Meanwhile, all that is necessary here is to dwell on this law as stamping the
credential character of prophecy. There are indeed predictions in the Old
Testament—such as those minutely describing the destruction of some of the
ancient cities of the world —the accomplishment of which is known and read of
all men who study history. They must not be forgotten. But whoever examines the
New Testament carefully will see that the whole strain of allusion to the Great
Fulfillment of the fullness of time points to the coming and kingdom of Jesus as
the one accomplishment that guarantees all the rest. There is nothing more
certain in the annals of mankind than that a series of predictions runs through
the ancient literature of the Jews which has had a most exact fulfillment in the
advent and work of Jesus. This is the supreme credential of prophecy in
revelation.

1 Acts 10:43; 2 John 5:39; 3 Revelation 19:10.

2. Another unfailing evidence of the Divine presence in the prophetic Scripture
is the peculiar law of PROGRESSION found to pervade them: a law which determines
the steady development of the great doctrine of revelation according to certain
fixed principles.

Every age is under the sway of some governing prophecy the accomplishment of
which introduces the government of a new order of prophetic expectation. The
fulfillment of one prediction becomes the starting-point of another, with wider
issues and a larger number of subordinate tributaries.

(1.) It may be said that one transcendent prophecy begins the Scripture,
commands the whole of revelation, and binds time and eternity in one: the first
Gospel of a coming Redeemer. But even this illustrates, like all others, that
largest application of the principle which divides the whole series into the
Old-Testament predictions and those of the New.

All the ancient prophets spoke of what Isaiah, in their name, calls the Last
Days, 1 or the great AFTERWARD, that indefinite period of Jacob’s prophecy,
achariyt hayaamiym, which began to be more definite in the opening vision of the
evangelical Prophet, It shall come to pass in the last days. 2 The coming of
that glorious After Age, or the ends of the world, or the world to come, the
Fulfillment, is the fullness of time 3 generally.

Particularly, it is stamped with perfection in the New Testament by three
tokens: it is the time of the last days when God spoke His perfect revelation in
HisSong of Solomon 4:1-16 and imperfect oracles were consummated by one Final
Voice; secondly, when He who was foreordained before the foundation of the
world, and testified beforehand, was manifest in these last times, 5 as the
spotless Lamb of the Finished Atonement; and, finally, the period of the last
days when the prophecy was accomplished, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all
flesh. 6 These three events fill up the perfection of the Second Period of
redemption: the Voice of the Son, the Atoning Blood, the Effusion of the Spirit.
And with Christ, the Supreme Fulfillment, begins a new order and range of
prophecy what eternity is to time that His coming in the new economy is to the
expectation of Him in the old. In fact, the very same language was adopted by
the ancient Rabbins to distinguish these: the time of the Messiah was the WORLD
TO COME.

1 Genesis 49:1; 2 Isaiah 2:2; 3 Galatians 4:4; 4 Hebrews 1:2; 5 1 Peter 1:11; 1
Peter 1:20; 6 Acts 2:17.

(2.) The same principle may be traced in the subordinate cycles throughout
Scripture. The patriarchal predictions, while always faithful to the first law
and keeping the Messianic age in view, terminated in Canaan, to begin again with
an altogether new order of prophecies. The predictions of the Jewish prophets,
so far as they referred to the Captivity, found their accomplishment in that
event, the first goal of the largest of all clusters of foreannouncement; but
with that accomplishment another series emerged into prominence. Similarly,
there are, in the New Testament, subordinate cycles of predictions out of the
accomplishment of which other predictions arise. Over the Incarnation there was
a large array of prophetic songs, pointing to the Advent but including also its
ulterior results. Our Lord’s own predictions referred to His death and
resurrection and ascension; to the outpouring of His Spirit, the establishment,
of His kingdom, the destruction of Jerusalem, the final resurrection, and the
end of the world: the largest and most comprehensive series of predictions
delivered by any one Voice since prophecy began. The same law is latent in the
Apocalypse, the last book of prophecy; but here our eyes are holden, and it is
not given to those who now read to trace its operation otherwise than in broad
outline. The more this general principle is studied, in its application to the
entire mass of the predictions of Scripture, the more glorious will appear to
all dispassionate students the economy of prophecy which the Omniscient Mind has
ordered. Whatever it may be to those who are bent upon resisting all evidences
that recommend the Word of God, to those who are OF THE TRUTH this law of
foreannouncement will itself be a strong credential of revelation.

3. Once more, and pursuing the same topic a little further, all prophecy is
under the law of RESERVE; a mysterious law which has been appointed in the
Divine counsel, and has literally never been changed. In its absolute supremacy
it governs the development of revelation: this being the difference between time
and eternity, that in the latter alone will all restriction be done away Neither
What nor What manner of time 1 as ever been fully made clear until the day has
declared it. It is evident that this might have been otherwise. The same Spirit
Who foreannounced the Coming of the Christ could have so described His Person,
so unfolded His work, and so defined the period of His advent, as to remove
every vestige of uncertainty. But this was not His will. He so ordered every
prediction, and every cycle of predictions, that, while enough was declared to
encourage hope and excite desire, enough was concealed to shut up the heirs of
prophecy to faith.

Looking back upon the long series as irradiated by the light of Pentecost we see
that every general and every more particular prediction had its determinate
reference to the Great Fulfillment; but we can see also that not one of them was
clear enough to preclude unbelief in the case of those who were disposed to
murmur against Divine Providence.

Every generation could rejoice in the fulfillment of the prophecies that had
gone before concerning itself; but as to its own future it was under the sway of
an indefinite hope.

There is no exception to this law throughout the economy of prophecy. When it
was approaching its Old-Testament close, it might appear as if the law was
somewhat relaxed; for Daniel’s predictions are exceedingly minute, and their
specifications of the Seventy Weeks, and of the peculiarity of the last week of
the Seventy, goes beyond the general indeterminateness of prophetic utterance;
but his prophecies are no real exception, having been until the Messiah came
almost as indeterminate as the date of the Millennium. The New Testament
introduces the same law, and is everywhere faithful to it. Reserve begins again;
and it reigns over the expectations of the Christian church at the present hour.
Our Lord’s foreannouncements of His passion were veiled in a certain obscurity;
and it was not until after His resurrection that even the THIRD DAY was
understood. Even when approaching the seventh of the weeks before Pentecost, and
giving His disciples their last encouragement, the Savior says only Not many
days hence, 2 though we might suppose that the tenth day would be certain to
all. As soon as the Holy Ghost begins a new cycle of predictions concerning the
coming again of Jesus, with all the subordinate fulfillments of prophecy
connected with that event, we mark that we are under the same restrictions as
the fathers were under. We have the immeasurable advantage of the accomplishment
of the greatest prophecies concerning Him in the First Advent; hut the times and
the seasons of the Return are still under a veil. We have, like the ancients, to
inquire diligently what, or what manner of, time the Spirit of the Christ did
signify. 3 Nor have we a right to expect until the Lord comes a more clear and
full revelation of the millennial events than the fathers had of the Advent of
the Redeemer. Now this law of a strict reserve is itself a glorious testimony to
the wisdom and goodness of the God of revelation: especially when it is
connected with those we have already referred to. For, to sum up, all prophecy
points to One Supreme Person, like the needle to the pole, and with only the
same tremulous variation; all proceeds in the majestic march of a determinate
counsel, but in spiral cycles; and over all, including that under which we live,
there is the same veil of heavenly mystery. Like every past generation, we also
are in the hour of a great Expectation: an hour or a day which is rich with the
inheritance of a vast fulfillment, but richer still, if possible, in the hope of
a yet more abundant inheritance hereafter when the time of its perfect
revelation and enjoyment shall have fully come.

1 1 Peter 1:11; 2 Acts 1:5; 3 1 Peter 1:11.

4. Finally, an important law of all prophetic announcements is that it has been
constituted by the Holy Spirit a sign to every successive generation: in other
words, like the miracle proper, and equally with the miracle, it has been a
Divine credential of revelation. In the unlimited wisdom of the Supreme the
prophetic office was ordained to subserve many purposes. It was the medium
through which the supreme communications were, from time to time, made to the
chosen people, of encouragement or warning to themselves, and of defiance and
threatening against their enemies. Hence for a long series of ages it was the
vehicle of the entire economy of Divine instruction: containing the doctrines
and the ethics of the religion common to all dispensations, with a glorious
prospective announcement of the Christian truth hereafter to be revealed. Hence
the prophetic books, and the prophetic elements in all the other books, are to
us an inexhaustible fund of instruction apart from their predictions of future
events. But, all this being true, it is equally plain that the whole system of
foreannouncement was intended to be from generation to generation a standing and
permanent credential. There is abundant evidence of this in all parts of the Old
Testament. And if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the words which the
Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the
thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not
spoken. 1 Long afterwards we read: Remember the former things of old: for I am
God, and there is none else: I am God, and there is none like Me. Declaring
futurity from the former time, and from ancient times the things that are not
yet, done. 2 To this our Lord gives His own sanction for the New Testament: And
now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass ye
might believe. 3 1 Deuteronomy 18:21-22; 2 Isaiah 46:9-10; 3 John 14:29.

THETESTSOF THE PROPHETIC CREDENTIAL. THE TESTS of prophecy are very simple. They
are, strictly speaking, not the moral character of the prophet, nor the
worthiness of the matter, nor the preservation of the record, nor obvious
connection with the Divine scheme: these are all implied characteristics which
have been already dwelt on in another connection. But the prophecies which are
the credentials of a revelation ought to be such as to satisfy their student
that they can be accounted for only by Omniscience; they should be beyond the
suspicion of a mere human fulfillment: and they must of course, in order to be;
prophecies, precede their accomplishment.

1. It is undeniable that the prediction of future events is the prerogative of
Omniscience alone; and also that in the Scriptures; God is represented as making
it one great purpose in His commission of the prophets to establish clearly this
claim. We may suppose therefore that the predictions of Scripture will
generally, if not in all individual and isolated cases, have such a character as
to be beyond the reach of human calculation. It may safely be granted that in
some cases it is impossible to prove the event foreannounced to have been beyond
the range of skilful foresight. But it must be remembered that the weight of the
argument from prophecy does not rest upon isolated examples: it depends upon
certain great and prominent and vast predictions such as only the Supreme Mind
could have given to men, and the accomplishment of which is before our eyes.
Beginning with these, and fortified by their undeniable strength, we have only
afterwards to stand on the defensive with regard to the rest: nothing is
necessary beyond establishing that the opposite conclusion cannot be proved.
First, then, let this test be applied to that One Great Object of prophecy to
Whom all the prophets bore witness. During a thousand years a perfect picture is
gradually drawn, by more than a hundred distinct predictions, of One Person, and
of Him as unique in the history of mankind: that distinct picture being the
filling up of an outline which had been sketched thousands of years before, in
fact from the very beginning of the world. Could the Deliverer of mankind have
been foreseen in all the marvelous traits of His character, and in all the
minute circumstances of His appearance and history and life and death and
resurrection and reign, by the enthusiasm of national longing? Could the
converging foresight of a series of prophets have drawn this most elaborate and
most sacred Portrait? The same may be said as to the steadfast predictions of
the fates of some of the leading nations of the world. After the Person of the
Messiah, the Israel after the flesh which rejected Him takes the next rank in
the historical perspective of prophecy. There is a similar wonderful unanimity
in the predictions of their entire history whether as originally Hebrews, or
afterwards Israelites, or in more modern times Jews. Their destiny as depicted
in the Bible, that is in both Testaments, brings prophecy and fulfillment into
such plain and undeniable harmony that no room ought to be left for infidelity.
This is a topic that must be pursued through the whole Bible, which shows that
the rejection and dispersal of the people was foretold when it was most
prosperous, its elevation and dignity when it was most dejected. Moses, the
founder of Hebrew greatness, foretold the dispersion of Israel as the result of
their disobedience, and at the same time their preservation through all ages as
distinct and unconfounded among the nations. Scarcely one of the later prophets
but has repeated this wonderful prophecy, applicable to no other race. The
nations among which they were scattered have disappeared, or are in course of
disappearance: the ten tribes are wanderers over the face of the earth still.
They have survived the greatest revolutions of history: a standing proof that
the Eye of the Supreme foresaw what His omnipotent Hand has accomplished. Though
I make an end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not
make an end of thee. 1 And, as to those other nations themselves, the prophetic
Scriptures abound with predictions, more or less minute, the fulfillment of
which has proved that the voice of God uttered them. It was foretold, again and
again, that the covenant people should go into captivity: that the captives
should be again set free, and those who spoiled them be themselves laid waste. A
minute study of these prophecies will show, and the more minute the study the
more effectually will it show, that Omni-science was in these predictions.
Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah pre-dieted that the kingdom of Israel and Jerusalem also
would be scourged by Assyria; and it was so. The fulfillment was exact as to the
ravage of Samaria, and the restraining hand that saved Jerusalem from
destruction. In the year 712 B.C. Nahum denounced ruin against the Assyrian
oppressor and Nineveh: in the year 612 B.C., after a century which had given no
signs of this, the destruction of Nineveh took place.

Concerning Babylon also, the successor of Assyria, there were equally sure words
of prophecy. No fact in human annals is more certain than that the Babylonian
captivity was foretold by Isaiah, and also the deliverance of the people; nor
than that Micah, two hundred years before their accomplishment, predicted the
same events. The burden of Tyre in Isaiah described its ruin, by the Chaldeans
in a manner so clear and explicit, and so fully confirmed by history, as to make
it one of the triumphs of prophetic evidence. But for confirmation of the
evidence the prophecies themselves must be carefully studied. This branch of the
Apologetics of revelation is only glanced at in this general summary; it will
amply repay the most exhaustive examination.

1 Jeremiah 30:11.

2. As the first test pays its tribute to the Omniscience of the God of
revelation, so the second pays its tribute to the Omnipotence. Only He Who gave
them could fulfill the predictions of Scripture. But it has been urged by the
opponents of the Faith that many of those so-called vaticinations which
undeniably are found in the rhapsodies of the prophets were really fulfilled;
but fulfilled through the determination of those who were interested in their
accomplishment that they should be accomplished. It is pleaded with great
subtlety that patriotic enthusiasts, gifted with keen foresight, gave hints of
what they saw in the germ of probability; and that these hints fulfilled
themselves. It is not a hopeless, nor is it even a difficult, task to vindicate
the whole body of Old-Testament foreannouncements from this charge. But it most
concerns us to examine it in its reference to the New Testament, where it is
applied, with some show of plausibility, but with no real force, to the Supreme
Fulfillment of all prophecy. The spirit of infidelity does not shrink from
making the career of Christ a studied adaptation to Himself of the scattered
prophetic hints of the ancient records. It seizes upon the Scriptural word, that
it might be fulfilled; 1 and boldly assumes that the entire history of our Lord
and His kingdom in the New Testament was a cunningly devised fable, 2 woven
after the pattern given in the Old Testament. It is scarcely necessary to say
that here lies the stress of the whole argument against the Christian revelation
as resting upon the fulfillment of prophecy. We may remain for ever in doubt as
to the precise relation of some of the obscurer predictions of the prophets to
their fulfillment: the doubt is simply the result of our ignorance of many of
the elements necessary to its solution. But it is a matter of vital importance,
the very life of Christianity is in it, that our Lord’s manifestation on earth
should be a fulfillment of what was provided and foretold according to the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God; and not a studied assumption of a
character and destiny sketched in the enthusiasm of national hope. Here we must
needs argue in a circle: it is the first necessity, as will be hereafter seen,
that, as we believe in God, we believe also in His Son. And He rests the whole
issue of His mission, with all its boundless interests to mankind, upon the
accomplishment of the entire prophetic word in Himself. He has appropriated all
the leading foreannouncements of the Messiah to His own Person. But, in His own
application, and in that of His Spirit in the Apostles, there is a distinction
to be observed. While all the major prophecies are referred to as absolutely
accomplished in His mission—beginning with His incarnation and ending with His
final return—many of the minor prophecies are said to be fulfilled in an
accommodated sense. The formula that it might be fulfilled 3 applies to some
events which accomplish prophetic types: such as Out of Egypt have I called My
Son: 4 and, Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet,
saying, In Rama was a voice heard. 5 The same principle may be applied to many
quotations from the ancient prophets: in Christ and His kingdom all types and
predictions found as it were their natural and legitimate resting place. But it
must be remembered that, if the Supreme Fulfillment is in Christ, His authority
must protect all the prophets who wrote of Him: protect them, not only in their
general authenticity, but also in the detail of these most obscure predictions.
The two prophets against whose mission and specific prophecies infidelity has
most vehemently excepted are Isaiah and Daniel; and these are precisely the
prophets whom Jesus and His Apostles most emphatically quote. They are safe
therefore in our estimation for the Master’s sake.

But, speaking generally, they are safe in their own integrity. Their leading
foreannouncements were such as could never have fulfilled themselves, nor have
been fulfilled by those who artfully seize upon these hints. Have the nations
and empires whose overthrow was predicted and accomplished, fulfilled the
predictions by their own cunning? Are the Jews executing on themselves the
judgment written? They are the most determined enemies of the Christian
Fulfillment; but they do not deny that the hand of God has been long against
them. He has smitten them, they think, for the chastisement of the world’s
peace; and wounded them for the transgressions of mankind; but surely they have
not smitten and wounded themselves in order to fulfill predictions bound up with
their own disgrace.

1 Matthew 1:22; 2 Hosea 11:1; 3 Matthew 2:17-18.

3. The test of prophecy takes yet another form. It is very confidently asserted
that some of the avowed predictions of Scripture were written POST EVENTUM:
after the supposed accomplishment. To prove this in the case of any of the least
of these predictions is a task which has not succeeded; in the case of the
greatest of them, that is of those on which the burden of the credential lies,
it has been a hopeless failure. But the spirit of infidelity is very bold: as
daring in its unholy attacks as the spirit of faith is daring in its acceptance
of mysteries. From the earliest assault on prophecy down to modern times the
whole force of its attack has taken this direction. Disintegrating the
Scriptures as a whole, utterly renouncing the traditions of ages, and attaching
no weight to the testimony of Christ and His Apostles, of the Jewish and
Christian churches from the beginning, it scruples not to make the Pentateuch a
Mosaic tesselation of documents to which Moses has only given his name, which
indeed belongs to a period subsequent to the Captivity; and the voices of the
psalmists and prophets, from Samuel and David to Joel and Zechariah, are
regarded as singing strains which turn history, past and present, into poetry
with a prophetic form. The Book of Daniel is declared to have been written after
the leading events which it records, these being mainly predictions concerning
Antiochus Epiphanes; while its remarkable miracles are supposed to prove its
unauthentic character as well as later origin. It has been seen that the Lord
has thrown His shield around this prophet; He mentions him by name; receives
from him His Messianic designation, Son of Man, and that of His kingdom, the
kingdom of heaven; and generally protects him by anticipation against all
assaults. The Lord’s own apology is sustained by the best modern research; and,
after the utmost critical sifting, its most vehement opponents have no argument
to allege but the extreme minuteness of its prophecies and the supernatural hand
in its events. The Holy Gospels contain predictions of the Supreme Prophet; and
they also are therefore assigned, in spite of the strongest evidence of
antiquity, to a period after the destruction of Jerusalem. In this case also our
loyalty to the Lord almost forbids argument. If Christ Jesus be worthy of any
confidence the main predictions of the Old and New Testaments must have been
delivered before their fulfillment. As to a multitude of lesser prophecies,
about which there may be contention, the application of our test, and the
consequent vindication of the prophets in detail, will require the close study
of prophetic Scripture as a distinct branch of theology. But that minute
investigation is not necessary to show the triumph of this particular credential
of revelation as such in its broad outlines. Doubtless the New Testament
followed the Old, and the Old was not written after the event. The dispersion of
the Jews, the spread of Christianity, the ruin of the great empires whose
burdens rest upon the prophets, the signs of Antichrist, the latterday
infidelity, —all are fulfillments of distinct prophecy, which assuredly was
written before their accomplishment.

PROPHECY AND MIRACLE. The evidence of Prophecy as a credential of revelation is
of the highest order: whether taken by itself or in connection with miracle
generally.

1. In common with miracle proper it is a standing and perpetual token of the
Divine presence in the whole sphere of revelation. He Himself appeals to both as
His high prerogative in many of the sublimest passages of the prophets. I have
declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of My
mouth, and I showed them; I did them suddenly and they came to pass. 1 It was
the Voice Supernatural, beyond the ordinary methods of guiding man’s inquiries,
that declared all coming events from the beginning: nothing worth calling
history has taken place without foreannouncement. And it was the Hand
Supernatural, beyond the ordinary and quiet operation of Providence in nature,
that SUDDENLY brought it to pass. The boundless variety and steadfast unity of
these predictions give them an unspeakable, grandeur; and the wonderful events
in human history which are the direct fulfillment of prophecy are beyond all
others great in all the elements of sublimity. In fact, if all the events which
have been matter of fulfillment and of prophecy are eliminated from the current
of human history there is not much that is left. The leading transactions of
every age have been under a ruling prophecy; and we also, in our day, wait to
see the end of the things that concern ourselves.

1 Isaiah 48:3.

2. Viewed apart, and by themselves, these prophecies are peculiarly cumulative
in their demonstrative force. Unlike the miracles, the fulfilled predictions
constantly enlarge the materials of their evidence. There is a sense indeed in
which this observation, frequently made, is not true. The miracles recorded in
Scripture are thought to be more feebly commended to the acceptance of every
succeeding generation; as if the testimony on which they rest grows weaker as it
recedes from the present. But that is not philosophically true. Moreover, the
most evident and noblest miracles—if any such distinction may be made—are yet
constantly performed; and the Finger and Hand of God are evermore at work in the
hearts of men and in the heart of society. Still, the accumulating force of the
prophetic credential is more conspicuous than that of the miracle. We live under
a vaster amount of fulfillment than any former age; and he who shall take the
historical prophecies of the Old Testament and trace their fulfillment in the
course of Oriental history will have an irresistible demonstration of
Christianity at his command.

3. Finally, like the miracles, the prophecies are bound up with the teaching of
the Bible; and, apart from their evidential force, yield an unlimited treasure
of instruction in the ways of God, the work of Christ, and the destiny of man.
Neither miracle nor prophecy can easily be over-estimated as the vehicle of
Divine teaching: neither can be while time lasts exhausted.

INSPIRATION, OR THE DIVINE HAND IN SCRIPTURE. The specific doctrine of
inspiration, as the ground of the Divine authority of the Scriptures, will be
considered in its place. It may here be regarded very briefly as one of the
credentials of revelation, on a level with Miracles and Prophecy and completing
or consummating their evidence.

1. Inspiration is a distinct element of the supernatural order of revealed
truth: one of its laws and characteristic attributes. As such it simply means
that the sacred documents are worthy of the Divine Author; and that they are not
unworthily described as

GODBREATHED.

Strictly speaking only the writers are inspired; but the last word on the
subject in the New Testament gives the epithet to Scripture itself: Pása grafeé
Theópneustos 1 What we have agreed to mean by inspiration is therefore the fact
that God has interposed to keep a continuous and abiding record of truth in the
world: this, throughout all the ages of the world’s religious history, has been
the Divine method of imparting and preserving the knowledge of God among men.
The beginning of this interposition, so far as concerns the written documents,
is lost in the distance of ages; but none of its fruits can be supposed to be
lost. Inspiration is, in a certain sense, one with revelation, as meaning the
Divine bestowment of knowledge that could not otherwise be acquired. It does
not, however, entirely coincide with revelation: being either less or more:
less, since much that has been revealed has not been transmitted; more, since
much is recorded and transmitted that was not given by direct revelation. But,
whatever may be its limits, it indicates a specific intervention of God in human
literature, through which there has always been in course of production, and has
been finally produced, the permanent and authoritative revelation of His mind
and will to man. And this may fairly be regarded as a credential of the whole
system of revealed truth: it is worthy of the Divine wisdom, and what might have
been, humanly speaking, expected, that He whose power has been known in miracle,
and His knowledge in prophecy, should declare His wisdom and fidelity in giving
revelation to mankind, and in making it an abiding heritage. Now revelation
makes this its universal claim; and appeals to the manifest evidences of the
Presence of God, as its Author and Indwelling Spirit, in Holy Scripture. Such is
the overwhelming demonstration of this, that the whole weight of the cause of
Christianity might be made to rest upon it, if it be rightly stated and
exhibited. The entire scope and contents of the volume of inspiration justify
its pretension to have come direct from heaven. When the character of Jesus is
introduced, and the moral and spiritual effects of His Gospel, we shall have to
consider much that might be supposed to belong to this credential. But there
remains a very interesting argument that may be briefly touched upon here.

1 2 Timothy 3:16.

2. Generally speaking, the records of revelation are worthy of their Divine
authorship or of the Divine authorship which they claim. Dispassionately taking
up the whole Bible, with the hypothesis in our thoughts that it was composed by
writers under a special control of the Holy Spirit, we find nothing, or very
little, to make us hesitate in admitting the claim; but, on the contrary,
perpetual demonstration that the several authors cannot have been left to
themselves. The children of this Wisdom justify her on the whole; and where they
seem to do otherwise it is only that we cannot penetrate the secret which makes
any one of them say, in the language of St. Paul, I speak as a fool. 1 1 2
Corinthians 11:23.

3. For, it must be remembered that the records of revelation exhibit a
characteristic Divine-human excellence corresponding with the only sound theory
of inspiration. They are worthy to be assigned to the authorship of the
controlling Spirit: supposing that Spirit to employ human faculties and human
editorship. They may not be at all points, in every line and every record, what
we might expect from the immediate dictation of the Holy Ghost, or from the
writing of His Finger on tables delivered to man. But, if they are below what
God might be supposed to send down straight from heaven, they are certainly
altogether beyond the unassisted ability of man, higher indeed than any ability
of man, even assisted from above, could have produced: that is to say, there are
disclosures in various parts of the Bible, and one in particular everywhere,
which imply not the raising of earth to heaven but the descent of heaven to
earth. We have only to contemplate their tranquil, authoritative solution of
questions that no other books have attempted even to investigate; their profound
and natural familiarity with God and the things of God; the simplicity and
awfulness of their doctrine of sin; the supreme moral interest that everywhere
reigns; and their universal, never-failing appeal to what is good in human
nature, as if a Divine Voice were issuing from them for ever speaking to
something in the human spirit that must hear. If God records His truth for man,
this is just what He would write: whether we have respect to what is given or to
what is withheld. There is a perfect Divine dignity and perfect human purity: it
is both the Voice of God and the voice of man; combined in so marvelous a way as
to make the claims of Inspiration rightly understood a most impressive
credential of the Faith.

4. Hence the simple and undeniable fact of the supremacy of the Bible, as a
collection of religious documents, may be appealed to as itself a mighty
presumptive argument of its own truth and of the truth of the religion it
propounds. There is nothing parallel, nothing similar, in human literature.
Place it by the side of the most ancient religious books, the Indian Vedas, the
Chinese Classics arranged by Confucius, and the other sacred writings of the
world at large, and comparison must soon give up its task. Soon give it up: not
immediately; for there are undoubtedly certain outlines of primitive truth in
the ancient writings of the East which show that they also were written not
without a certain degree of the Divine afflatus. The Holy Ghost has ever been
the Voice of One crying in the wilderness, and saying. Prepare ye the way of the
Lord. In the books which treat of the Science of Religion, and give us systems
of Comparative Theology, more than justice is done to this element common to the
sacred books of what we call heathenism and the Holy Scriptures: so far as mere
justice is done, the advocate of Christianity heartily assents, but when the
other holy writings are collated with the Christian at all points it is an
exaggeration of justice that becomes most unjust. The Bible refuses to form one
column of a great Biblical Polyglot. There is outside of the Christian
Scriptures no document extant among men which really professes to have been
written under the inspiration of God: and among those which may seem to make
such a claim there is not one which does not in half its contents refute the
claim, common sense being the judge. Again, there is no document of the kind
extant for which it may be pleaded that, though as standing alone it has no
divinity, it recovers its character when placed in a collection of sacred books.
But there is not a book of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures which does not
vindicate its own dignity and sanctity at all points when studied as belonging
to the entire volume. This leads however to a distinct argument.

5. The Unity of the Scriptures of revelation is a very strong credential in its
favor as professing to be from God. It is one great vision, and its
interpretation one: beginning and ending with the same Paradise, with thousands
of years of redeeming history between. It has been instinctively called, what it
does not call itself, the Bible: one Book divided, if divided at all, into two
parts. That the New Testament as fulfillment should so perfectly correspond with
the Old Testament as prophecy is in itself the most wonderful phenomenon in
literature: it is evidence as near demonstration as need be of the intervention
of a Divine Hand. The Redeemer made manifest in the later Scriptures answers
face to face and feature for feature to the Form predicted in the older
Scriptures. But it is not merely that the Same Being is foreannounced in one
book Who comes in another. He is the sole predominant subject of many books in
both departments of the Bible. One idea runs through the whole: the kingdom of
God set up or restored in His incarnate Son. To this idea authors of various
ages and of various races contribute in a harmony which never could be the
result of accident or mere coincidence. Only the Divine power could have made so
many men, of different lands, concert, without concerting, such a scheme of
literature. These men belonged to no school of consecutive writers: yet they
seem as if they had been, before time was, in the counsel and councilchamber of
Jehovah, and to have come forth each predestined to furnish his own
contribution. If they had not asserted their inspiration of God, that hypothesis
must have been invented to account for the facts and phenomena of their
writings. But they have asserted it: the claim is bound up with every page of
the word they have left behind them.

6. There is a special aspect of this argument which will be found of great
importance by those who examine it from this point of view: that is, the unity
of teaching which is maintained through a long and diversified course of
development. The leading doctrines which distinguish Christianity from every
other system of supposed religious truth are to be traced through the many books
of the Bible in a line of ever widening and everdeepening expansion. Each
prominent article of our Faith may be traced upwards to its germ in the earliest
Biblical documents, and downward again as it threads its way distinct from
others until it finds its full expression. And all combined converge through the
older Scriptures to a consummate harmony in the New Testament. These two facts
are undoubted: they ought not, at least, to be doubted by anyone who is familiar
with the history of doctrine in the Bible. The Holy Trinity, with the redeeming
relation to mankind of the Second Person in that Trinity, and the relation to
the universe of life sustained by the Third Person; the establishment in the
world of a kingdom of grace destined finally to triumph; the acceptance of every
penitent sinner by God on the ground of what is called a Righteousness of Faith;
the essential difference between soul and body, with the transient separation
caused by physical death; the eternal issues of the present life of probation;—
these are all doctrinal truths which run through the whole Bible, so that
Christian preachers may take their proof-texts from almost every book; but which
run through the Bible with always progressive clearness. The development of
doctrine we have to study elsewhere. It is referred to now as a clear indication
of the presence—perhaps it would be better to say of the very strong probability
of the presence—of a Divine Hand in the construction of the Bible. The supreme
truth—that of the Sacred Trinity in the Godhead— might be shown to bear up the
pillars of this argument. There is not a single reference in the Old Testament
to the Messiah as a Person near to Jehovah, or as Jehovah Himself, that is not
perfectly consistent with the amazing secret concerning His being which the New
Testament brings to light; nor is there a single reference, among multitudes, to
the Spirit of God that is not perfectly in harmony with what the later
Scriptures declare as to His relation to the Father and the Son. Such is the
effect produced on the devout mind of a believer in Christianity by the
consideration of this wonderful harmony that he is disposed to place it among
the foremost evidences of the Faith. Most certainly it is one of its most
emphatic and persuasive credentials.

7. It must be remembered that the argument based upon the presence of the Divine
Hand in the construction of the Bible is not exhibited as final and
demonstrative: it is, as has just been remarked, only a credential hard to
resist. Here a few further observations may be made which will suggest hints to
be followed out by the student himself to any extent.

(1.) There is in this no more demonstration than the analogical argument
generally presents. Throughout the works of God— granted that the creation is a
work of God— we perceive the universal sway of a law of evolution, qualified
however by a subordinate law of occasional interventions that seem to break the
former. Precisely what we find in nature and in providence we find in the
gradual construction of Scripture. Why it should be so, it is vain to ask. That
it is an absolutely valid proof of the Divinity or supreme authority of the
Bible it is vain to assert, It might by the most wonderful of all coincidences
have happened that such a Book should be composed at long intervals by authors
independent of each other, and retain such a character of steady, uniform,
evergrowing development. But the probabilities against this would have been
exceedingly great.

(2.) Again, it must be borne in mind that the Divine influence and agency in
Scripture is not asserted to be absolute and unqualified. What was said as to
the miracles, and might have been said as to prophecy—that residual difficulties
were to be expected in the nature of the case—may be said of the credentials of
inspiration. Objectors frame hypotheses of miracle and prophecy with which the
facts are not found to accord: and they are offended.

So, also, they frame hypotheses of inspiration with which the records of
revelation cannot be harmonized: and they turn away with suspicion. This subject
will be more fully discussed when we come to the doctrine of inspiration. At
present it is enough to say that there is in the human elements of the
workmanship of Scripture nothing utterly inconsistent with the supposition of a
Divine Hand overruling and controlling and even arranging the whole compass of
sacred literature.

SUMMARY.

These three credentials of Miracle, Prophecy, and Inspiration ought to be
united: they mutually give and receive strength, and are strongest when they are
combined. The miracle is of course most demonstrative to the extant generation
of beholders, the prophecy is of course demonstrative only to the generations
who come afterwards. The present generation in the midst of which miracles are
wrought cannot hand down to us in the fullest degree the evidence of their
senses; we who behold the fulfillment cannot send back to those who heard the
prophecy our vision of accomplished prediction. Inspiration embraces the two in
one: it records the fact of the miracle, and, as inspiration, makes it present
to every age; while, as inspiration, its record of a prophecy makes the
fulfillment as if it were already come or were already past to those who hear
it. This may be made plainer by applying it to the narratives of our Lord’s
mission. Throughout the holy Gospels Jesus is found working miracles and
uttering prophecies. When His works and His words were alike approaching their
close, He predicted the coming of a miraculous power which should provide for
the permanent record of the whole: He promised the Spirit of inspiration Who was
not only Himself to abide with His disciples but also to cause the Lord’s words
to abide with His Church. Certainly the Savior when He gave this assurance
uttered a prophecy, which was fulfilled from the Day of Pentecost onward; while
the prophecy predicted a miraculous effusion of the Holy Ghost Who was to be a
Memory within the disciples’ memory, and a special expositor of their Master’s
words. And the fulfillment of the prophecy was the Spirit of inspiration through
Whose influence and superintendence the Four ’Gospels were written. But these
three are more or less united throughout the history of the Bible: they have
never been disjoined since the construction of the Biblical Library began.
Strictly speaking, it was prophecy which commenced, miracle abundantly followed,
and in due time inspiration provided one permanent record. The three have kept
pace through all the ages of revealed truth; and they ended together, when their
common work was done. Yet they have not ended. In the Bible miracle, and
prophecy, and inspiration abide: but in some respects the greatest is
inspiration; for it really absorbs the two others, and gives continuance and
permanence to the whole. THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST THE REVEALER. The Person of
Jesus Christ, the Author and Finisher of the Faith, is its highest and most
sacred credential. This is true of our Lord’s historical manifestation
generally; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to regard Him as
the Founder of His own religion, and to mark the perfect consistency with which
He supports His claim to be the Incarnate Revealer of all truth. The more
closely we examine the Four Gospels the more clearly shall we perceive that He
Himself in His Divine-human self-consciousness rested upon this for the
enforcement of His claims: not only in the case of those who were around Him in
the flesh, but also throughout all the future. The strength of this argument as
such will be found to be only increased by the various explanations from time to
time devised to resist it. There is no rational way of accounting for the Person
and Work of Christ but that which accepts the Divine origin of Christianity. THE
SUPREME CLAIM.

Here we have reverently to consider the claim of Jesus, the Supreme Revealer,
and the consistency of His teaching with His claim: both these being viewed as
completely exhibited in the Christian revelation as a whole.

1. The Savior’s testimony to Himself is not to be gathered from any one of His
assertions, but from the entire strain of the Gospels, as these are corroborated
by the exposition of His Apostles. The sum is, that He came down from heaven as
the Son of God, and appeared on earth while still in heaven as the Son of man,
to reveal the words of His Father and to accomplish His Father’s, will, for
human redemption. There is nothing parallel to the pretension of Jesus; nothing
like it ever entered into the mind of man. The anticipation of mankind had never
risen to such a conception: scarcely had the Old Testament itself prepared for
it, Jesus is the Incarnate Son of God: this fact, or this claim, entirely rules
the new dispensation. For the Christianity which does not bring this credential
we do not plead: such a Christianity has descended to the level of other
religions. It might almost be said that the very claim is a sufficient
credential. That such a Being as Jesus of Nazareth undeniably was —so lowly and
pure, so unselfish and reverent, so mighty in word and deed, with such
irresistible power over all who approached Him—should declare Himself to have
come down from heaven with the mysteries of eternity, with eternal truth in His
words and eternal love in His heart, is itself something so new and transcendent
that it might almost take our faith captive at its will. This is the thought of
those who are already His. But it is a sublime credential which provokes the
unbelief of the unregenerate reason, and must defend itself.

2. There is no more wonderful characteristic of our Lord’s revealing mission,
and no stronger assertion of its divinity, than the absence of everything that
might place Him on a level with other teachers, or with men generally. From His
first word to His mother in the temple down to His prayer before the cross,
there is not a single expression uttered by Himself which, fairly interpreted,
makes Him a member of the fellowship of the human teachers of mankind. Nor is
there a single expression in the New Testament which, fairly interpreted, makes
Him a member in common of the human race.

(1.) It is true that on some few occasions Jesus spoke as a man, and seemed to
ally Himself with the Rabbis around Him. To Nicodemus He said, We speak that we
do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness: 1 thus
contrasting himself with the Master of Israel as the teacher of a new doctrine,
while in some sense identifying Himself with his order. But it must be
remembered that He immediately added: No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He
that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man Which is in heaven: 2,3 thus,
the very sentence which appears to conjoin the Redeemer with His own Apostles,
in which He indeed uses almost the words that both St. Paul and St. John apply
to themselves, is that which contains the very loftiest assertion of His Divine
authority as a Teacher. It is the new Teacher Who says that He is THE SON OF MAN
WHICH IS IN HEAVEN.

1 John 3:10-13; 2 2 Corinthians 4:13; 3 1 John 1:1.

(2.) Further, and it is of great importance, our Lord never once allied Himself
with mankind in any such way as would be inconsistent with the infinite
peculiarity of His claim as His Father’s Representative in the human race. The
more deeply this fact is pondered the more wonderful will it appear, and the
more mighty as a credential of the Christian Faith. Though His delights were
with the sons of men, 1 and He so identified Himself with the human family as to
elect for His own lips the name SON OF MAN, yet in every variety of way He
distinguished Himself from the descendants of Adam. IF YE, BEING EVIL, 2 is only
one instance out of many with which the Gospels make us familiar.

Whosoever studies the question in all its bearings will find that in this fact
is one of the most effectual internal evidences of the truth of our holy
religion.

1 Proverbs 8:31; 2 Matthew 7:11. ITS JUSTIFICATION. The full exposition of the
character of our Lord in all His offices must be reserved. But there are some
reflections which arise from a general review of the history of His revelation
of Himself, and of the truth in Him, which will set this sacred and central
credential in its proper light.

1. Though it is undoubtedly true that nothing in human history runs parallel
with this claim of the Redeemer, it is found to be in strict harmony with the
profoundest desires and instincts of the race. Not indeed that the incarnation
of the Son of God had ever been anticipated. The loftiest aspiration of the
religious spirit in man had never aimed so high. The transcendental philosophy
which makes the Infinite and the finite two necessary poles of thought finding
their axis, as it were, in the union of the Absolute and the Conditioned in
Christ could never have existed if the Gospel had not given it the idea. The
difference between the modern and the ancient Pantheistic philosophy is to be
traced to this: Hegel and the moderns have ploughed with the heifer of
revelation, that is, of New Testament revelation; for scarcely did the Old
Testament disclose this deepest secret of the counsel of God. Whatever
approximations towards the idea of a personal union between God and man,
exhibited in any one historic person, are to be found in the ancient or modern
systems of religious philosophy lack, as close scrutiny proves, the essential
element of the Christian incarnation. They never conceived, nor did they
approach the conception, of a real and permanent union of the Divine and human
in one personality.

Yet the very distortions of the truth are profoundly suggestive. They are like
the magicians’ imitations of the miracles in Egypt: permitted exhibitions of
what man’s fantasy will do with Divine truth, when Satan is the teacher and not
the Holy Ghost. But to return The manifestation of our Lord among men—the Son of
Man and the Son of God in one—was the pure and perfect realization of the
highest unconscious longing of human nature: that of seeing the Divinity
reflected again in itself as a mirror. He was in that sense also the Desire of
all nations. 1

1 Haggai 2:7.

2. Christ’s personal character, if such language may be used, is in precise
harmony with the assumption of so unheard of a relation. It is a character of
which it must be said that it is neither altogether Divine nor altogether human:
it is Divine-human; with the perfection of God in it, but exhibited in the life
of a man. Human holiness has in Him its consummate ideal: judged indeed by a
standard that He has set up; one however that our own reason approves. Following
Him throughout His career, and forgetting so far as we can His Divinity, we mark
that every act and word, and believe, are constrained to believe, that every
thought also, is consistent with His assertion that Satan had NO PART IN HIM. 1
When the Savior was tested by the Enemy in the wilderness He neither asserted
nor denied His sinlessness; but the answers He gave were precisely those which a
perfect human nature would have uttered. It is written, Man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 2 When
He was maligned by His foes among men He simply challenged all accusers and
defied them: Which of you convinceth Me of sin? 3 As He approached the cross,
where His atonement; required His absolute sinlessness, He spoke most
explicitly. The prince of this world cometh, and hath NOTHING IN ME. 4 It is,
of: course, utterly impossible, in the nature of things, to demonstrate the
absolute sinlessness of Jesus as man. None but God can: pronounce upon that. But
it must be remembered that, according to the assumption of the whole New
Testament, Jesus was more than man. His holiness is essentially Divine holiness.
That is, it is a holiness which is guaranteed by the Divinity of the Son of God.
The miraculous conception insured the sanctity of the human nature; and the
Divinity of the Son insured the permanent necessity of that sinlessness. Hence
it was Divine sanctity.

We see that it is not a holiness that has retrieved itself, that our Lord’s
resistance to temptation is not that of one who can fall, that He does not speak
of law and of duty save as a God. In short, the religious character of the
Savior is Divine-human: it is what God, supposing Him also man, would exhibit;
and that is all the argument requires.

1 John 14:30; 2 Matthew 4:4; 3 John 8:46; 4 John 9:30.

3. The Incarnate mission of Jesus is conducted precisely under such restrictions
as are consistent with the twofold nature of His one Person; and this alone we
have a right to demand. All His works and all His words are Divine. The universe
is under His authority: there is a sense in which we see all things already put
under Him. And nothing can be more certain than that our Lord claims to know
everything pertaining at least to human destiny: as the impression produced in
our mind is that supreme power is at the Savior’s command, so also we feel a
conviction that He has unlimited knowledge. In Him are hid all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge: 1 hidden in the deepest sense of the term. Both these
truths our Lord impresses in His own heavenly manner, not yet understood by
those who heard: The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father
do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. 2 These
words speak of what is an Eternal Vision, and of what is an Eternal Power. But
there is a strange reserve in the Redeemer’s assertion of both: yet not strange,
however mysterious, to those who understand, or rather believe in, the Lord’s
wonderful relations to God and man. This power is, as it were, held by Him in
trust and sometimes fettered by some transcendent restraint; this knowledge is a
hearing of the Father, first in eternity, and then gradually enlarging in human
faculties. Of the unfathomable mystery that is here it is needless to speak:
only of its consistency with the claim, amazing beyond all human conception, of
the Founder of our faith.

1 Colossians 2:3; 2 John 5:9.

4. Christ’s style of teaching exhibits the same harmony. It is, on the one hand,
perfectly after the manner of men. He uses human documents, quotes them humanly,
and adopts the purest arts of human rhetoric. His presentation of truth as a
Teacher is simply the highest in human literature. But it is absolutely Divine:
those who are drawn by the cords of a man, for instance, in the beginning of the
Sermon on the Mount must be constrained to own at the close that they have heard
the voice of a God and not of a man. We feel that His dealing with the
conscience is not that of a human witness, nor of a sanctified human teacher,
but of a Judge, Who not only gives laws and administers them but also demands of
all who hear Him an account of their conduct. No one can read carefully the Four
Gospels without feeling that the Master of Christian doctrine and morals is more
than man. It may be sometimes matter of doubt whether the Teacher is one to whom
in an extraordinary manner the Divine authority was delegated, or Himself the
Divine Son of God. But there can be no doubt whether or not the Voice of Jesus
speaks with the confidence of a final Revealer of doctrine and Arbiter of duty.
And the very doubt to which reference has been made implies the pure humanness
of His ministry. The two sides of His teaching character—the one expressed by
the people’s question. How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? 1 and
the other by our Lord’s own self-revelation, My Father hath taught Me 2—are
harmonized in the Redeemer’s claim as avowed through His whole history, but on
no other principle can they be reconciled.

1 John 7:15; 2 John 8:28.

5. The end and consummation of the Savior’s whole work reveals this credential
in its infinite clearness and force. The Founder of Christianity Himself lays
the chief stress of His appeal to mankind on His redeeming mission, and His
atoning death. It must be expected, therefore, that in the crisis and
culmination of the incarnate history—that is, in the transactions connected with
the death of the cross—the deep secret of our Lord’s Divine-human nature would
be exhibited in its most impressive way. Accordingly, we observe that in almost
all the details of our Lord’s suffering and death there is evidence that the
Victim of manifest human violence and of hidden Divine justice is both human and
Divine. He approaches His passion as a man: the Man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief, 1 is only a man of deeper sorrow and more profoundly acquainted with
grief than other men. Looking at Him from our human position, we see that He
advances to the end like any other martyr: He had His distant dread, His
Gethsemane foretaste, and then the very bitterness of death itself. By those who
looked at Him with only human eyes He was regarded naturally as the first of all
confessors: perfect in meekness as towards enemies, perfect in lowliness of
heart as before God, and perfect in self-sacrifice as bearing the witness of
blood to His mission. But by those who beheld Him from heaven—He was seen of
angels 2 —it was regarded as a more than mortal passion. The Eternal Father had
again and again declared that the Sufferer was His Eternal Son: as when He sent
Him down from the mount of transfiguration, and when He acknowledged Him before
the wondering crowd in the temple. So also the centurion near the cross, and the
disciples who watched Him afar off, bore their witness. These testimonies,
however, may not be accepted by all as the credentials of Christ: their value is
felt only by those who accept the heavenly origin of the Gospels, and already
believe in the Divine-human Person of the Son. But the naked strength of the
argument is felt by those who watch the Great Sufferer of Christianity, and mark
very carefully the union of Divinity and humanity in the Savior’s own sentiment,
bearing, and words. According to His own sacrificial Prayer, His death was a
voluntary self-sanctification: to be an offering the virtue of which should
expiate the sin of the world, to reveal the Divine glory in the redemption of
mankind, and through that revelation to secure His own return to the glory of
God. No testimony borne by our Lord to Himself is plainer than that which
declares Him to have died not as men die; but to have suffered as the Son of
God, appointed in the Divine counsel to save the race by dying for it. The
entire economy of Christianity is based upon this. It stands or falls with the
security of this foundation. The Person Who claims the confidence of men, and
demands that they entrust to Him their eternal destiny, asks their absolute
submission only as their Divine-human Redeemer. His credentials are not perfect
till they are delivered from the cross. And His apologists, who plead His cause,
affirm that every incident and word of the history of the passion, like the
great passion itself, is consistent with the Savior’s claim. There is a calm
undertone of Divinity in all the human experience and testimony. The Lord
declared beforehand the circumstances of His death, and after a certain period
made His disciples familiar with that cross the sight of which afterwards
appalled them so much. He spoke of His enemies as having no power against Him of
themselves; of the hosts of angels as ready to defend Him if He should only call
them to His aid; and of the whole passion generally as a foreordained event that
nothing could avert from Him though He accepted it with perfect spontaneousness.
It is profoundly true that the credentials of Christianity come in all their
strength from the passion week and the eve of the cross. Humanly speaking, and
supposing the Sufferer to be only a perfect man, we may claim for the death of
Jesus a dignity and a pathos of which there are few examples in history and no
rivals. He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, knowing what awaited Him
there; and, though He might have escaped—for the leaders of the people evidently
wished to give Him the opportunity—He deliberately arranged everything, down to
the minutest particular, for His own end. His disciples’ safety was in His
thoughts, and provision for His mother, and for the daughters of Jerusalem only
less dear to Him than she was, at the very time that He was meditating on the
world’s salvation. During the same hour that He was pouring out His triumphant
prayer in the expectation of His glory, as if the suffering of death was over,
He was in the profoundest anguish of Gethsemane, holding in His hand the cup
which He drank with seemingly more fear than Socrates felt when his cup was in
his hand. But an infinite difference is manifest between the cups. There was a
bitterness in the Redeemer’s agony which no man hath felt or could feel. It was
the endurance of that curse on human sin which the Christian economy ascribes to
Christ, and the absence of which makes the history of the end of Jesus
unintelligible. We take the three Gospels and perpetually feel that there is
something more than mortal in His sufferings. We add to them the fourth, and we
perceive the secret of the mystery. To have invented such a combination of the
suffering and triumphant Messiah was altogether beyond the power of such men as
the Evangelists. It had been the labor of Jewish Rabbis for ages to disjoin the
two: the interpretation of inspired men alone could unite them thus. The Spirit
of Christ in the Prophets could only signify the passion and the glory that
should follow. But the Spirit of Christ in the Evangelists teaches them to see
the suffering and the glory blended in one hour, the hour and the power of
redemption. That two such aspects of His death are found in the same Gospels
requires the agency of the Spirit for its explanation; and His explanation is
that the Savior was delivered up by the wicked counsel of men to the wicked
hands of men, on the one hand, and that on the other, He died by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God. Meanwhile He, as at once God and man, yielded
Himself up both to the will of man and to the will of God His Father. Here all
is evident though incomprehensible consistency with that supreme claim on which
all the stress is laid, and those who are of the truth must feel the force of
this most sad and most glorious of all His credentials.

1 Isaiah 53:3; 2 1 Timothy 3:16.

6. Once more, it must strike every thoughtful observer of Jesus, and hearer of
His words, that the peculiar character of His predictions concerning the future
of His cause upon earth is in strict harmony with His Divine-human claims.
Almost from the outset of His manifestation it is obvious that the Teacher of
Nazareth speaks of that future with two voices that are really one: that is to
say, on many occasions it might seem as if He were sent to make a great
experiment, the issue of which would depend upon His servants’ fidelity; while,
on many other occasions, He spoke in the full consciousness of the
accomplishment of a Divine purpose the end of which was known to Him as clearly
as the beginning. There can be no doubt that these two aspects of our Lord’s
prevision are manifest everywhere. When the Son of man cometh, shall He find
faith on the earth? 1 was His question to the disciples concerning a special
kind of faith that He constantly inculcated, a faith, however that He bids His
disciples to regard as rare in every age, and probably—to them but not to
Himself— to be rare at the last. This is only one specimen of many passages in
which the Savior seems to look out upon a vast contingency. The harvest truly is
plenteous, but the laborers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that He will send forth laborers into His harvest. 2 Here we have another. But
there is a much larger number of His sayings in which there is no contingency
expressed or implied. Such are all the purely eschatological discourses, where
the program of the future kingdom is sketched in its broad outlines with a firm
hand. There is no more clear and definite history in the Bible than the future
of the last day, evidently as present to the Divine Teacher in the Gospels as
the day on which He speaks: whatever may be thought of the authority of the
writers of the New Testament, it is certain that without a single exception they
represent to us a Savior Who beholds at once the sum of things, declaring the
end from the beginning, 3 and has before His eyes the whole panorama of human
history. Certainly it was not His will to disclose all because, in the
unfathomable mystery of life, what is present to the Supreme is to the creature
a yet unformed future dependent on himself. Hence the Savior’s predictions of
the events of the long interval—the times and the seasons—are given in general
terms. That there was to be a long interval He always implied: especially in the
kingdom-parables. That it was to be a diversified interval of struggle He showed
also: / am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I if it is already
kindled? 4 The disciplinary furnace was already heated; before its fiery process
began among men it must begin at the house of God, and even with the Son in the
house: But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it
be accomplished! His disciples might expect it to be otherwise: Suppose ye that
I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: for from
henceforth—a term that always stretched from the present to the last
future—there shall be five in one house divided, three against two and two
against three. The two aspects of the future—that in which it is a fixed issue,
and that in which it is a varied contingency—are strikingly combined in the
Lord’s reference to what He termed the day of His appearing. While in general
the expression refers to the final advent, it is certain that the Lord Himself
comprehended under it the entire space of the interval: the several critical
events—such as the Pentecostal visitation and the destruction of Jerusalem, and
the many indefinite crises indicated in the Apocalypse—were the day or the
coming of Christ. This must be studied more fully in its proper place.
Meanwhile, it is enough to point out in how wonderful a manner the Savior’s
predictions of the future of His cause and kingdom confirm His claim to be the
incarnate but Divine Revealer of the Father’s will and Author of the Christian
Faith.

1 Luke 18:8; 2 Matthew 9:37-38; 3 Isaiah 46:10; 4 Luke 12:49-52.

7. This leads, however, to another view. The provision made by the Founder of
Christianity for the continuance of His cause or kingdom on earth exhibits the
same tokens of consistency with His Divine-human character. The human provisions
are throughout perfect in their calm, deliberate foresight. The Seventy and the
Twelve were carefully chosen: the former to prepare the Lord’s own way in a
transitory manner, and accordingly with rules for their guidance not adapted for
permanence; the latter to pave the way for His Gospel among all nations after
His departure; and accordingly with a long-continued discipline the perfection
of which appears throughout the Gospels. We see also that while the Lord speaks
of a kingdom over men He is also preparing for a Church gathered from among men:
its foundation is laid, and the Two Sacraments—the most wonderful expedients in
all legislation—appointed for the initiation and abiding test of worthy
membership. Besides these two fundamentals of ecclesiastical order many other
regulations were made. In fact, nothing was left unprovided for: every hint and
germ develops afterwards into profound significance, fitted into a perfect
system. But the provision is at all points Divine; and in truth its adaptation
depended upon the Lord’s own survival and victory as God over death and
continuance in life. All was made to rest, further, upon a heavenly Substitute
for His visible presence, Whose glorious descent from heaven, a Messenger from
Himself, is as clearly before the Redeemer’s mind as His own descent through
death to the world of spirits. This argument—for it is really such— requires to
be studied with care, especially in the light of the final discourses in St.
John. Can anything be conceived more grand or sublime than the Savior’s tranquil
committal of the interests of His kingdom to Another Divine Person, for whose
advent He had made all necessary preparation? The idea of a divided function—
His own in heaven and the Spirit’s upon earth—is one with which we are so
familiar that we are apt to lose our sense of its perfect uniqueness. If it did
not come from above, it could not have come from below. If its origin was earth,
then never did earth produce so strange a thought before. In other words, the
great future is humanly provided for, but under Divine conditions, by one and
the same Incarnate Head of our religion.

8. We might trace still further this marvelous chain of consistency, the links
of which are the credentials of our Lord’s mission. But the best apology of the
Christian Religion for ever keeps the Person of its Founder in view and
considers the combination in Him of Divine dignity and human humility. The
claims of Jesus to the homage and devotion of men are at all points exactly what
might be expected of Deity Incarnate, but to be accounted for on no other
assumption. Without that great pre-supposal all is obscure and incomprehensible
: that being admitted all is harmonious and worthy of acceptation. In our
Savior’s character as the Head of a religion are seen in marked distinctness the
two sides. There is a series of records which represent Him as one of ourselves,
and even as claiming to be the Refuge of the weary because He could say, I am
meek and lowly in heart; 1 and such a most tender human atmosphere the history
breathes to the end. But this same Jesus everywhere claims, both from His foes
and from His friends, all that God might exact: the former He threatens with His
own displeasure, as if there could be no fear beyond that; while from the latter
He demands perfect love and creaturely consecration. There is nothing like this
in the history of mankind. Such a twofold relation of One to others—of a human
Head to the members of His community—is absolutely alone in human affairs. The
purest, gentlest, and most abstracted of men, whose deep devotion to heaven and
unselfish spirituality cannot be for a moment even brought in question,
nevertheless addresses those who seem to be His fellows as their God and their
Judge. On the one hand, He displaces Moses, 2 who was the meekest man on earth,
and becomes Himself the pattern of humility. 3 On the other hand, His holy wrath
surpasses the jealous anger of Moses who rebuked the people and died for his
impatience. The Woes of Jesus are as historical as His Benedictions. 4,5 But,
after all, the noblest argument for the consistency and truth of the Savior’s
claims is the calmness with which He asks for the undivided homage of every
heart. He Himself makes the sum of religion the perfect love of God; and then
claims perfect love for Himself: here upon earth as there in heaven it holds
good that I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE. 6 1 Matthew 11:29; 2 Numbers 12:10; 3 Numbers
20:10; 4 Matthew 5:1-48; 5 Matthew 21:1-46; 6 John 10:30.

9. We complete the chain, thus feebly held and traced, when we point to the
inexpressible influence of the Savior’s character, both while He was upon earth
and since He has gone into heaven If He came down to this world, the Eternal Son
in the flesh, and delivered these credentials of power and goodness, and died
for us as the Incarnate Lover of our souls, we might expect that His
Divine-human ascendency over men would be supreme and permanent. No one can read
the four Gospels without feeling that the sway of Jesus of Nazareth over those
who came within the sphere of His influence was strictly answerable to our
hypothesis. To none was He an object of indifference; no one ever crossed His
path, or exchanged words with Him, who was not thenceforward a different man. It
is impossible to account for His supremacy over all on any human principle. The
narratives that record it are too artless and simple to be suspected of
depicting a mere human hero: they have no air of embellishment, and rather
understate than exaggerate.

There is not a sentence in them that calls attention to the character or works
of Jesus as their subject. They simply record facts, and leave those facts to
produce their own impression. We follow the steps of the Redeemer; and mark that
His influence on all men is precisely what the influence of God incarnate would
be. If the recorders of His life had purposed to describe such a Being,
supposing them able to form the conception and to execute it, they could not
have better accomplished their task. The scene with the doctors and His parents
in the Temple, the conclusion of the discourse on the mountain, the testimony of
those sent to entangle Him, the various accounts of His colloquies with His
disciples, occasional intercourse with individual strangers, and controversies
with the malignant Jews, with the solemn pathos of awe which He inspired into
every person who had to do with His death, all conspire to prove that the Jesus
of the Gospels is always consistent with His claims to be the Incarnate Son of
God.

Never man spake like this Man!1 never man was loved, reverenced, adored like
this Man! The sentiments inspired by this Son of the Blessed are to those who
love Him testimony to the Divinity of His claims. And it has been permanent.
There is nothing possible to the Supreme that the name of Jesus has not
accomplished during the Christian ages. His name through faith in His name has
evoked a stronger and a purer enthusiasm than any other; and it is the only one
that has evoked it among all races alike. Wherever the Gospel is preached and
received Jesus is accepted as the Son of man Who is the Son of God: accepted
with a fervor and confidence which no human qualities could account for. No mere
man ever was or could be received with such an equal devotion: with that kind of
catholic recognition which regards Him not as a Jew or an Oriental but as the
Man Who belongs to all men. But the vast majority of those who have received Him
have received Him as their God: the exceptions have always been few. He has
received a Divine devotion through all generations from His own people; and been
hated as only Divine excellence can be hated. He is still God manifest in the
flesh: 2 by far the most influential power that has ever been known in the
affairs of mankind.

1 John 7:46; 2 1 Timothy 3:16.

HYPOTHESESEXPLAINING THE MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST.

Many have been the attempts to give an account to human reason of the most
wonderful phenomenon in all human history: that is, to parry the force of this
argument, the most precious and the most effectual of all that Christianity has
to bring forward. It has been felt by friends and enemies alike, that this is
the inmost stronghold; and consequently both the most determined assaults and
the most resolute defense have been found here. A few remarks may be made on the
methods adopted by infidelity: the student will perceive that the consideration
of these methods will tend only to strengthen our position.

1. It is remarkable that the Gospels, which contain predictions of the entire
future of the Redeemer’s kingdom, very accurately predict, both by word and in
act, the kind of assault that would be directed against the name of Jesus.
During our Lord’s sojourn on earth the representatives of every subsequent
speculation spent their surmise and questioning upon Him, and the
representatives of every subsequent attack are found confronting Him. The
colloquy between the Master and the disciples at Caesarea Philippi throws much
light on the divided opinions of the generation. Whom do men say that I, the Son
of man, ?Amos 1:1-15 was a question once asked and still continued from age to
age. It teaches significantly that the opposition excited among His
contemporaries took the form of hypothesis concerning His Person. His enemies
pondered rather Who He was than what He was. Although sometimes they strove to
impeach His moral character, as one who broke the Sabbath, or who stirred up the
people, or who was too familiar with sinners, generally they aimed at the
mystery of His relation to the Father: either avowedly pointing to His known
Nazareth family, or darkly hinting at a supposed compact with Satan. Anyone who
should collate and study the opinions of His contemporaries concerning Him will
find the germs of all subsequent opinions and treatment. From that day Jesus has
riveted on Himself the regards of the whole civilized world. And it may be
safely affirmed that all speculation on the Founder of Christianity has had
reference, expressed or unexpressed, to the mystery of His Incarnate Person.
This most strange phenomenon—the Form that seems so much like the Son of God—has
to be accounted for in some way by those who reject Christianity. They must
confront and salute this Figure: it may be with fear or with scorn or with
reasoning doubt; but never with indifference.

1 Matthew 16:13.

2. The methods of infidel resistance to the claims of Christ have been very
various; but usually they have wavered between two sides of an alternative:
while all accept the reality and in a certain sense the truth of the Record,
some have labored to find flaws in this Image of holiness, or, if they have not
disparaged the Lord’s character, have aimed to prove that it exhibits nothing
beyond human attainment; while others, despairing of this, and leaving His
character untouched, have made it a picture drawn by the enthusiasm of His
disciples vying with each other in laying on the Picture touches of perfection.
What more has to be said definitely on these points will be only briefly
indicated: reverence imposes a restraint as to the former class; and future
discussion of the Person of Christ will introduce much that might otherwise be
said on the latter. THE PERSONAL CHARACTER OF JESUS. Our Lord’s personal
character, whether in itself or in relation to His mission, has been brought
into controversy from the beginning: but with very different subordinate
objects, and on very different principles. Generally, the assault has been
negative or positive: either the absolute sinlessness of Jesus has been denied,
or some positive moral impeachment has been ventured on.

1. Negatively, it has been asserted that the sinlessness which Christianity
imputes to its Founder is simply and absolutely an impossibility. Concerning
this assertion it is enough to say that it pays an unconscious tribute of high
importance to the fact that our Savior’s claim to be, in virtue of His Divine
personality, eternally and essentially what His servant calls Him, Separate from
sinners. 1 It is felt by most sincere opponents of the Christian revelation that
Jesus is presented to us by His Evangelists, and by Himself through their
record, as One in Whom there neither is nor could be any taint. St. John gathers
up all testimonies in one Indefinite Present: In Him is no sin. 2 Some there are
who do not admit that such a claim is made: many sincere Christians, for
instance, think it necessary to the perfection of our Lord’s human nature that
it was possible for Him, under pressure of temptation, to have fallen; and many
unbelievers suppose that Jesus went no further than a challenge to His enemies
to prove against Him any moral evil. In either case, they take it for granted
that He shared the common infirmity of mankind, and make their comments
accordingly. Some, at whose head stand the French Encyclopedists, and the German
author of the "Wolfenbuttel Fragments," regard him as an impostor who made piety
a mask: having failed to secure the empire of Judaism he changed his: mote, and
said that his kingdom was not of this world. Others suppose that he was only the
first and greatest of Christian enthusiasts who have mistaken ardent zeal and
high devotion for sinlessness. Later infidelity has been more respectful than
the earlier, and has been content to allege that the exemption of Christ from
sin is fatal to the claims of Christianity: since He was truly man, and all men
are sinners. The Christian theology which meets such an argument by saying that
Christ might have sinned but did not sin, plays into the enemies’ hands. The
best, and indeed the only, reply is that the Head of the Christian Faith was
tempted of evil in His human nature, which was conceived and born without sin;
and that He was incapable of falling because His human nature had no personality
independent of His Divine nature, which rendered sin impossible.

1 Hebrews 7:26; 2 1 John 3:5.

2. Positively, the elements of our Lord’s character have been analyzed, and
found to be wanting in some attributes essential to perfection. This is a
chapter in our Apologetics which the Christian mourns to approach, and would
fain make very brief. He can see no spot in the Lamb of God; and the more he
studies the character of his Master the more fully persuaded is he that it
embodies all perfection. But many who say that they are dispassionate critics
come to a different conclusion. The Savior’s asperity against His enemies; His
avowed indifference to ascetic practices, and disrespect to the conventional
morality which would separate a Rabbi from convivial assemblies and prevent his
numbering women among his disciples; His recoil from sufferings and from death;
His vacillation during the last days of His life; the bitterness of the final
Woes uttered before He left His people; these are features in which—by recent
English Infidelity, to its disgrace—He has been counted less great than some of
His own disciples. But there is no difficulty in answering these objections. As
to the Lord’s indifference to the conventional ethics of the time, it is enough
that we adopt His own defense. As the Lord of the Sabbath He relaxed the
prescriptive observances which had clustered around the day; as the Lord of the
Temple He acted there as men did not generally act; and as the Lord of all
proprieties He made Himself the Friend of publicans and sinners. Moreover, as
His morals were well known to be strict in principle co the verge of rigor, it
was His good pleasure to show in practice that the wisdom which cometh from
above is justified of all her children: that her severity is not asceticism and
her abstracted-ness from created things is not indifference to the welfare of
mankind. The Savior did indeed bow under the burden of His unfathomable
Messianic sorrows, and His human part shrank from the bitterness of that death
which was prepared for Him. But to shrink from death is not necessarily to fear
it: the Redeemer only paid a tribute of salutation to the enemy whom He came to
destroy. Moreover, his eyes must be holden indeed who does not perceive that in
Gethsemane, as distinguished from Calvary, the question was of something
infinitely more than death. On the cross, in the presence of multitudes of
witnesses, no infirmity is betrayed for a moment: in the garden before the cross
there is a most mysterious and incomprehensible struggle of the Incarnate
Redeemer which points to the sacrificial endurance of the visitation of Divine
justice for the sins of the world. This was not the sinful fear of dying:
witness the words, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death! UNTO DEATH!
1 Here there were only three human witnesses—if indeed in all senses
witnesses—and the record of the exceeding bitter Gethsemane cry might have been
withheld, if the Evangelists had written with the fear of enemies before their
eyes. As to the last impeachment, our Lord is the perfect Counterpart and
Representative of the Old-Testament Jehovah. As He said, Ye believe in God,
believe also in Me, 2 so we may say: those who disbelieve in Jesus because of
His severity and wrath against hypocrites and reprobate sinners must disbelieve
in the God of the ancient Scriptures. In the Gospels we see and hear and feel
the very Jehovah of the older revelation, as He is described from Paradise to
the Return from Captivity.

1 Matthew 26:38; 2 John 14:1.

HYPOTHESES AS TO JESUS AND CHRISTIANITY. As it respects the public appearance
and work of the Founder of Christianity, the argument is turned against our
Faith in many ways. It may be well to glance rapidly at the; stages through
which the assault generally travels, or rather at the various restingplaces
where the spirit of unbelief halts.

1. The first hypothesis reduces Jesus to the level of the other great reformers
of mankind, assigning Him it may be the first place: PRIMUS INTER PARES, as they
said of Him in Galilee that He was one of the prophets. 1 At the right juncture
he arose and fascinated the world by a mysterious influence which it could not
resist, and so swayed the minds of his followers that he became for ages the
Lord of human thought and destiny. Every great power in human affairs has had
its secret. Every man who has moved his own nation in his own time, and many
nations afterwards, has had some peculiar element of success: a great doctrine,
or the offer of something longed for by all men, or irresistible force of arms.
So it is said that Jesus had his secret, though no one ventures to say what it
was.

Suffice that he led captive the whole world at his will; and for some
unexplained reason was more successful than any before him had ever been. The
peculiarity of this hypothesis is that it treats the Founder of Christianity
with great respect, and in fact has been accepted by many who accept the
Christian revelation as from God: a Divine economy but without a Divine Head.
But it is utterly inadequate to explain the Savior’s own testimony to the nature
of His mission; and is therefore at best a great unreality. He Himself utterly
disavowed it. From the beginning to the end of His public teaching He separated
Himself from other human teachers as summarily as He separated Himself from
other children of Adam. Although the words all that ever came before Me are
thieves and robbers 2 had another meaning as spoken to the Jews, they were
intended also to signify that no Messiah professing to have come with a
revelation for the race could substantiate his claims. He Who spoke was Himself
from the beginning to the end of the world the only Revealer. Neither does
Christ nor do His Apostles rest the weight of the Christian religion upon the
human excellence of its Founder in comparison of other prophets of mankind.

1 Matthew 16:14; 2 John 10:8.

2. A second hypothesis makes Jesus a Jewish fanatic, who was inspired by an
intense study of the ancient documents and legends of Judaism, formed during his
silent youth the amazing scheme out of which Christianity sprang, kindled his
own enthusiasm in the hearts of a few others whose natures he could read as he
read Simon’s, came to believe in himself as the creation of his own enthusiasm,
cast all upon the hazard of a great experiment, and at length paid the penalty
of his daring. But a single glance at the awful tranquility and reasonableness
of the Lord’s character at once dispels this illusion. An enthusiast He was,
beyond any that ever lived: He was the second Adam, hungering and thirsting for
what the first Adam had lost; both His anger and sorrow at the effect of sin,
and His eagerness to redeem the world, sprang from His supreme charity. All the
glorious enterprises of Christian love of souls have been only rills from the
ocean in Him. But a fanatic He was not, nor is there one trace of fanaticism in
all the narratives concerning Him. Those who read the Gospels in the light of
the Old Testament, and with sufficient knowledge of Hebrew customs, will see no
traces of religious frenzy in the acts of Jesus.

It was no more than a meet tribute to His own honor and the honor of His own
Father that He cleansed the Temple: that is, the outer court and approaches of
it, where alone the guilty traffic took place, and where such an act of zealotry
as His would require only authority to sanction it: By what authority doest Thou
these things? and who gave Thee this authority? 1 When He turned water into wine
He did the precise opposite of what a fanatic would have essayed to do. When He
seemed to renounce His mother and His brethren, it was only to teach that He was
of no race or lineage, but the Son of man: that lesson taught, He never treated
His mother or His kindred with anything but love. As to those who profess to
believe that He was a conscious impostor, though they hear Him ask, How can
Satan cast out Satan? 2 it is superfluous to say a word. That an impostor should
spend his life in exposing hypocrisy, and in sacrificing self for the good of
others, as Jesus confessedly did, His enemies of every age being witness, is
what no sane reasoner ever alleged. Modern infidelity has outgrown that charge,
and is or ought to be ashamed of having made it.

1 Matthew 21:23; 2 Mark 3:23.

3. So far we have been considering what arguments may be urged against the
Divine origin of Christianity as represented by its Head. But these have had
little success.

Accordingly, the attack has been more generally directed against the documents
of the Faith: and elaborate theories have been devised to account for the Author
of Christianity without any special reference to Himself or His own character.
These are sometimes dignified by high-sounding names, and have had much more
attention than they deserved. By whatever names known they are simply variations
on the central theme that the Christian religion is a remarkable development
under favoring circumstances of a fortunate germ. This germ could not, however,
have developed without the help of the early adherents of Jesus, who are
supposed, in every form of the hypothesis, to have raised the superstructure—for
the figure must now be changed—of the Christian system on the foundation of the
name of Jesus: that name being supposed by some to have been merely the centre
of legendary accretions, by others the symbol or expression of a national
Messianic myth, and again by others as the watchword of opposite parties in the
early church, in the interests of which the Gospels were invented, thus creating
a Christendom that forgot the true meaning of the name Jesus, being the
expression only of theories or tendencies.

(1.) First comes what may be called the Legendary Hypothesis of Christianity. It
simply assigns to it an origin which requires no more than a slight nucleus of
reality in the person of Jesus and His personal influence of word and work: the
industrious enthusiasm of His followers invented all the rest. This method of
accounting for the Christian economy is applied to it in common with the whole
scheme of revelation and all the supernatural events and wonderful histories of
the Bible. In fact, it is the normal and necessary argument of unbelief in the
Divine conduct of the universe generally, and of human affairs in particular. It
is based on a philosophy, falsely so called, which makes the religious sentiment
merely an accident of human nature, either its embellishment or its disease as
the case may be. It supposes that the universal instincts, traditions, and
religious records of mankind are merely the produce of imagination under a
special influence, for which no account can be given. In particular, it assumes
that the entire fabric of the Bible is a tissue of the national legends of a
people smitten more than most others with the religious phantasy. With the
application of the notion of legend and invention to the Bible generally we have
not now to do: save so far as its utter futility in the case of the Gospels
discredits its value in regard to all revelation. As to the history of Jesus it
is hard, inexpressibly hard, to believe that so compact, affecting, and heavenly
a narrative could have been made up of the floating traditions of Galilee and
Judea. It is enough to point to the inexpressible air of reality suffused over
the accounts, their pure and childlike simplicity, the self-forgetful-ness of
the writers, their impartiality in recording what showed the weakness as well as
what showed the strength of the great Hero of their narrative, the transcendent
Picture drawn so absolutely beyond invention, and the natural flow of the
narrative into the current of later history which cannot be assigned to legend.

(2.) The Mythical Hypothesis is but a modification of the former: more seemingly
dignified but not more rational. The myth may be defined as the vesture in which
great national ideas have, from generation to generation, clothed themselves by
a certain necessity of human development, and without the concurrence of any
conscious legendary invention. Undoubtedly the myth, muthos, means the product
of fancy but not the product of falsehood. Every race has had its great
illusion. The hope of a coming deliverer has been bright in the expectation of
every people, especially of every people whose history has been, like that of
the Jews, calamitous. The Messiah had been for ages predicted and expected among
them, especially since the Captivity. The Messianic idea was the great myth
which was realized from time to time. When the Roman oppression was at the worst
the idea took form in many persons; but that of Jesus was the fairest. He was
only the resultant of many forces springing from the common expectation. His
disciples made him the centre of their unconscious but necessary creations; and
thus only embodied the supreme Judaic fiction. This hypothesis hardly merits
refutation. It is utterly inconsistent with the facts. The Jesus of Christianity
and the Christianity of Jesus did not spring up in poetry by which a nation
expressed its hopes: the nation as such disavowed the whole. It was undeniably a
very small company who were responsible for the form of the new revelation. The
hypothesis must be applied to the plain, straightforward, and earnest circle of
the Apostles. On the one hand, it in some sense lowers them to the level of
childish dreamers; on the other, it ascribes too much to their mythologic and
creative faculty, which is thus supposed to have invented one of the most
elaborate systems of belief known to man. The four Gospels and the Acts and the
Epistles are not composed of the stuff that myths are made of. They are, or
profess to be, clear history, and doctrine based upon the history; with
reasoning of the severest kind binding the whole together. Legends and myths are
after all impalpable things: Christ and Christianity are hard realities.

(3.) The most popular theory among philosophical opponents of Christianity in
its perfect form makes it the result of conflict among various parties in the
Christian Church.

Those who hold it may or may not accept the idea of a mission assigned by
Providence to Christ: they may or may not believe in God. Generally they leave
that matter undetermined. But there are two parties at two opposite extremes who
have their specific notions as to the person of Jesus. The one hold Him to be
the temporary expression of the eternal incarnation by which the Pantheistic God
is for ever evolved in consciousness; the other hold Him to be the simple
expression of a human ideal. But all agree that the system contained in the New
Testament sprang up from a union of many opposite, or of two chief, tendencies:
hence it is sometimes called the hypothesis of Tendency. It would be scarcely
necessary to examine this were it not that it has been by far the most
influential theory in the attempt to harmonize the various books of the New
Testament. It assumes that Jesus lived and taught and died; but that no record
of His history was thought of until far into the second century. Then arose
gospels or memoirs with many aims or designs. Those which merely gratified an
unsanctified curiosity found no permanent credit, and are now preserved only as
relics. Some, however, were written in the interest of a Judaic Gospel, and of
them St. Matthew takes the lead: some sentences preserved by him, and by him
alone, might seem to make Jesus no more than a zealous assertor of the
perpetuity of Judaism. Others were written in the interest of a Gospel for all
the world, and of these St. Luke takes the lead: some of the most touching parts
of his work introduce the heathen as receiving the glad tidings. Meanwhile, the
hand of the partisan is to be found here and there and everywhere cunningly
interpolating his own view: making the author whom he transcribes and whose text
he corrupts speak a language inconsistent with his views. Accordingly, critics
of this school have a reason to give for every various reading, and their only
perfect text is that in which all writers absolutely agree. But there is another
and more interesting application of the hypothesis, which might with more
propriety be termed the PAULINE; for it really makes Paul the founder of the
Christian system. Different schools contended both over the body and the spirit
of Jesus: over His resurrection from the dead in the flesh, and the resurrection
of the spirit of Judaism in Him: there was a broad distinction between the
Jewish and the Gentile, the bond and the free, the Petrine Christianity and the
Pauline. The writings of the New Testament were composed or at least finished,
some with the one tendency, others with the other; but both were exquisitely
combined in the Acts, which Peter and Paul divide between them with about equal
pre-eminence. Paul, however, finally triumphed; his Jesus spoiled the best of
the Rabbis or Prophets; prevented Judaism from putting on its perfection in the
teaching of the Master on the Mount; and gave the character of Christ a coloring
of his own that it has permanently retained. The careful study of the
New-Testament writings refutes this most elaborate hypothesis, which arose from
a superficial study of them. He who collates the four Gospels will find that
they agree with each other, and with the later Epistles in representing Christ
to have abrogated the Law as an institution for one people, and to have
fulfilled its meaning in every sense.

There is not a page of the New Testament where may not be found, either in
letter or in spirit, the evangelization of the world. The simplicity of the
history, both of the coincidence and of the divergence of Christianity and
Judaism, forbids the acceptance of this notion that the idea of Jesus was
perverted by Paul. The Pauline Christ does not differ from the Petrine or the
Johannaean. It is St. Paul who calls Him a Minister of the circumcision; 1 and
it is St. Peter who says that Christians are built up a spiritual house, 2 and
it is St. John who, in the name of all the Apostles, announces: That which was
from the beginning . . . declare we unto you. 3 All tendencies run one way, and
that way is Christ: a Christ Who is not divided, but one. It is true that the
Form of the Blessed One does not rise at once in full perfection upon the
records of the New Testament: it is developed, as the word is, or gradually
fashioned into its fullness and integrity. But the several writers conspire to
this; and, after all that they have done, it is Christ Who remains and not they.
Not I, each says, but Christ liveth in me. St. Paul especially deprecates this
theory by anticipation in the beginning of the Corinthian Epistle. And, while we
are observing the interminable phases through which it passes in this voluminous
school of destructive critics, we hear always a voice: Was Paul crucified for
you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? 4 1 Romans 15:8; 2 1 Peter 2:5; 3
1 John 1:1; 1 John 1:3; 4 1 Corinthians 1:13.

SUMMARY.

1. Our Lord in delivering to His people the Faith delivers it, so to speak, with
His own hand, and His own Person is His highest credential. He is the Author and
Finisher of the Faith. 1 Prophets before Him and Apostles after Him look, and
bid us look, only to Him; or, as the writer who strengthens the faith of the
wavering Hebrews says, to Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our
confession: 2 no man falters long whose eye is singly and supremely fixed on
Christ Jesus. Revelation reflects the glory of His Person: that is, His
Divine-human perfection. It is hard to demonstrate the truth of our Religion on
the assumption that Christ was as other men; the Christianity of that postulate
is not Christianity, and the character of Christ is the greatest possible
embarrassment to its principles: the conclusion is too vast for its premises. No
man ever paid the person and words of Jesus the tribute of sincere,
unprejudiced, thoughtful attention without feeling the irresistible power of
this argument. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice: 3 these words
are a sublime explanation and rebuke of the inmost spirit of infidelity. After
all that He had said and done He would at the end give no further sign: Why
askest thou Me? ask them which heard Me, what I have said unto them: behold,
they know what I said.4 He still makes the same calm and unbending appeal: we
have Moses and the prophets, we have Christ and the Apostles; but in them all He
speaks of Whom the Father said, Hear ye Him! 5 There is the immortal strength of
the credentials or evidences of Christianity. If we believe in Jesus, all other
apologetics are comparatively needless: if we doubt about or reject Him, all
other evidence will be comparatively superfluous. It is impossible to read
deeply into the Gospels without perceiving that the Savior always appeals to
something behind and below and beyond all other evidences. Whether present in
the flesh or absent in heaven He looks for faith in Himself as a principle or
sentiment or energy that ought to be awakened by His own manifestation and word.
If that faith is not found a revelation from heaven is resisted: Ye will not
come to Me, that ye might have life. 6 Wherever and to whomsoever Jesus speaks
there is an influence accompanying His words that must lead to faith, unless
moral obstacles interfere. On that day when our Lord first opened to His
disciples the secret of His Messiahship, and Simon Peter uttered the great
confession, He pronounced the confessor blessed because he was taught of God;
and yet it is most manifest that Simon only uttered the sentiment that the
appeal of his Master naturally evoked. Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; for
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Which is in
heaven. 7 We mark that our Lord sometimes points to His miracles, sometimes to
the fulfillment of prophecy in Himself; but sometimes He seems to disparage both
these. The evidence that radiated from His own Person, the virtue to vanquish
unbelief that flowed from Himself, He never disparaged.

Jesus is His own Interpreter, and His own Apologist: the Sun in the moral
firmament that needs no other proof than that it is a pleasant thing to see the
light. This great argument should be the helmet and breastplate of the
Christian, especially of the Christian minister.

It gives immense corroboration to all other defenses; abates the strength of
every form of opposition; and consummates and crowns the whole system of
Christian apology. Other series of evidences may convince the judgment, but this
central one gives rest to the heart. Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest, 8 was the language of our Lord at the
time when He mourned over the unbelief of the wise and the prudent from whom His
truth was hid, and offered His thanksgiving that to babes were revealed all
things that were delivered unto Him of the Father.

1 Hebrews 12:2; 2 Hebrews 3:1; 3 John 18:37; 4 John 18:21; 5 Matthew 17:5; 6
John 5:40; 7 Matthew 16:17; 8 Matthew 11:28-30.

2. Doubtless, this appeal—which as a whole is unique in the Gospels—was not
limited to those whose minds were troubled with perplexities as to the truth.
But certainly they were included. We find the Savior often referring to the
embarrassments of the age in which men’s thoughts were directed to the great
Messianic expectation and they mused in themselves. Himself being the Christ,
and knowing full well the thoughts of all hearts, He felt the most profound
sympathy with the struggles of those who came to Him for the solution of their
doubts. We may be sure that His promise of rest was given to such men as were
feeling their way to Himself through a multitude of prejudices and difficulties
which it is hard for us to estimate. We are apt to forget that He was not only
the Friend of publicans and sinners, but the Friend of doubters also. The more
carefully we examine the accounts of His intercourse with men, the more
certainly we find that the difficulties in the way of their faith were always
present to His thoughts. We plainly see and hear how solicitous He was to
vanquish unbelief and win the hearts of all. But this great apostrophe to
disquieted minds and the great promise of rest teaches us that He Himself has no
argument more mighty and more influential than the study and emulation of His
own character: That I am meek and lowly of heart. 1 1 Matthew 11:29.

THEINFLUENCEOF CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity in the world is its own permanent apology. Its credentials have
been presented to mankind from the beginning in the slow but sure accomplishment
of the Divine purpose which it proclaims. To this it made its appeal in
Apostolic days, and to this it makes its appeal now: what religion should
accomplish in the free spirit of man personal or individual and social or
collective the Christian religion has done and is doing. In one sense this is
the most plain and palpable among the evidences of the Faith; in another sense
it is one of the most difficult, inasmuch as the many obvious and reasonable
objections which arise and demand to be considered are not always easily to be
refuted. The best method of exhibiting this line of argument is, to state
clearly what the claims of Christianity, as a power, are, and what they are not;
then to point to the proof that it has answered and is answering its ends,
notwithstanding the facts that may be urged to the contrary; and to show that
every opposing or rival system has either been utterly powerless, or is slowly
confessing its defeat.

THEAVOWEDAIM OF CHRISTIANITY. The key-note of this method of demonstrating the
truth of Christianity is found in St. Paul’s assurance that Christ in His Gospel
is the power of God, and the wisdom of God.1After challenging the whole world to
gainsay what he affirms, and reducing its glorying to naught by showing the
impotence of its wisdom, he sums up: That no flesh should glory in His presence.
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and
righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is
written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. 2 The chapter, ending
thus, is really a chapter of Apologetics; and these words which close it place
the Redeemer, as the Author of Christianity, in the midst: with the world at its
best on one side, reduced to silence and hopelessness, while on the other, the
believers in Jesus have their glorying restored in Him Whom the Father hath made
the very author of their new life, Whom He hath set forth more particularly to
be the sole fountain of wisdom for the teaching of mankind, of salvation from
sin for individual man, and of redemption for the entire race.

1 1 Corinthians 1:24; 2 1 Corinthians 1:29-31.

1. The Gospel, making foolish the wisdom of this world, professes to impart
perfect truth. The wisdom in St. Paul’s sentence is what our Savior meant when
He said, I am the Way, THE TRUTH, and the Life, 1 where the three testimonies
must be united: in Jesus is the whole truth concerning the way of life; nor is
there any other truth than as it is in Jesus. 2 Now it may be observed that the
Gospel really limits truth to the things which concern man’s relation to God:
there may be many verities in other matters, but there is only one truth, and
that is the foundation of religion. When therefore we estimate the nature of the
claim of Christianity it must be remembered that the claim is limited to
religious truth only, and that as taught of the Holy Ghost. If the documents of
the Faith are challenged on innumerable other questions, and judged by their
relation to all branches of human knowledge, and tested by their conformity or
otherwise with universal science, then their Author says, by the mouth of the
same Apostle: not the wisdom of this world.3 1 John 14:6; 2 Ephesians 4:21; 3 1
Corinthians 2:6.

2. Again, the system of Christianity proclaims that it brings to mankind
generally, which of course in this matter is also man kind individually,
deliverance from spiritual evil: that is, from the consequences of transgression
by a provision for righteousness and from the consequences of separation from
God by a provision for sanctification to Him and His service. These two, it will
be observed, are very closely conjoined, so as to form one idea dikaiosúnee te
kaí hagiasmós. 1 This is the wonderful claim of the religion of Christ, that it
professes to put away sin, by a method that at once sets the conscience right
with God and His holy law, and delivers the consciousness of man from the sense
of impurity and consequent estrangement from Him: both the CONSCIENCE and the
CONSCIOUSNESS of sin being in the design of grace removed. The provision for
this is the grand secret of the Gospel and the design of the mystery of the
Incarnation. God hath provided in His incarnate Son the means of putting away
human evil. Jesus Christ is at once man and God: His mediation on behalf of the
human race is that of One in Whom God meets man on a new ground and in a new
relation. In Christ all sin is atoned for by man: for He is man absolutely. In
Christ God accepts the Atonement, and unites man to Himself notwithstanding his
sin: satisfaction being presented to justice, and satisfaction guaranteed to
holiness that the pardoned sin shall be also abolished. But here again it must
be remembered that Christianity does not promise to rid individuals of evil by
virtue of an act external. There must be a personal union with Jesus by faith,
even as there is already a collective union of the whole race without faith. The
individual is delivered only on certain conditions: through the penitent
acceptance of the Atonement, and a sanctifying Spirit provided for all but
administered only to the soul united with the Lord.

If the infidel spirit asks how sin should reign in spite of an atonement that
has put away sin, the answer is twofold: first, evil does not absolutely reign
in the world, as will be hereafter shown; and, secondly, the claim of the Gospel
is not to deliver every man by a physical necessity or despotic application of
power, but everyone who uses its provisions as an infallible remedy abundantly
supplied.

1 1 Corinthians 1:30.

3. The religion of Jesus professes to redeem the world of mankind or the race of
Adam from all its evil: to be set for the healing of the nations. 1 This is
everywhere its unlimited promise. It is not to be denied that redemption from
all kinds of calamity is announced: a redemption in which not only man rejoices,
but, in a certain sense, the whole creation around rejoices with him. The Old
Testament bids the earth and the heavens be glad because of the coming of the
Universal Deliverer; 2 and when He came Whom the earth and the nations desired
it was declared of Him by Himself, in the first words He uttered concerning His
mission when He assumed His office in Nazareth: He hath anointed Me to preach
the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me [to heal the brokenhearted], to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at
liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. 3 But
here again we must be careful to note that the Savior of our race never
professes to have come with an absolute, unconditional, and universal
deliverance from all the effects of transgression. How this should be, why it
should be, that the Redeemer of the world does not, notwithstanding His name,
put an end for ever to the evil of the world, is a question to which no answer
can be given: no other answer, that is, than that the redemption of mankind is a
probationary redemption, and takes effect only through the spread of a spiritual
kingdom, as a process that acts with moral, slow, and not in every respect
irresistible, force.

1 Revelation 22:2; 2 Isaiah 2:1-22; Psalms 96:1-13; Psalms 100:1-5; 3 Luke 4:18.

4. Such are the claims, and with such qualifications, for which alone the
religion of Jesus is answerable. In an argument which pleads its effects and
results we are bound to take Christianity according to its own profession. It
does not claim to be an instrument in the hand of absolute omnipotence:
providing a heavenly Man or a Divinity in man who should first instruct the race
in duty, then go down to the pit where its past generations were gathered, and
rescue them; then send forth His influence to abolish sin, either in this world
by moral teaching or in the next by purgatorial discipline; and, finally, put an
end to all the evil that could not otherwise be removed. Neither is that the
Gospel which Christ preaches, nor could we well apologize for it if it were. Be
that as it may, the Christianity which it is our business to defend by showing
its own credentials is of a very different character. It professes to be the
sole instructor of mankind: but only in religious truth, and only through a word
which a Divine Interpreter must explain. It promises to save men from their
sins: but only through such an atoning provision on behalf of all as each must
appropriate for himself. It engages to emancipate our world from all its evils;
but only as that world is created anew in Christ, and made up of individuals who
receive His salvation. If the opponents of Christianity forget the freedom of
man’s will, and the moral character of the influence religion brings to bear
upon it, then they contend against a religion which we are not anxious to
defend.

CHRISTIANITY HASFULFILLEDITS MISSION.

It may be confidently asserted that the Christian Faith has made good its
glorying, whether we look generally at its influence in the world, or at its
specific triumphs under the several heads already adverted to as the substance
of Apostolical apology. THE DIVINE WISDOM IN THE GOSPEL. That Christianity has
introduced into the world a system of doctrine worthy to be called Divine is the
plea itself sets up, and one that may be sustained: in fact, it alone has a
system of doctrine. All must admit that its exhibition of truth is at least the
most compact and perfect the world has ever known: this must be allowed even by
those who demur to many of its individual dogmas. Remembering that the Christian
Religion means both its Testaments, that which it received and that which it
created, we may say that it presents a body of professedly authoritative
teaching on all subjects of interest to mankind, — ranging from heaven to earth,
from earth to things under the earth, and thence back to heaven again, —in
comparison of which all other teaching that belongs to the race is but as legend
and fable. It is no exaggeration to affirm that whatever great fundamental
truths are found in other systems come in a nobler form and in a more consistent
connection from the lips of Jesus and His Apostles. There are doubtless many
great spiritual ideas held by the Eastern Religions especially in common with
the Gospel. But in the Gospel they are released from those appendages which
almost distort them out of recognition; and, what is more than that, they are
taught as parts of one vast and literally infinite circle of truth the centre of
which is God. Although the outermost circumference of this circle is nowhere,
its inner circumference, which comprehends strictly human doctrines, is clearly
defined and traceable all round, without any arc of indistinctness. It is the
compactness, completeness, and consistency of the Evangelical system of truth
that sustains its claim to be the wisdom of God. But the argument—so far as it
is argument—will be better exhibited by considering what may be said in
opposition.

1. It would hardly be a fair objection to the Christian system of teaching that
it is, as a whole, beyond the grasp of the human intelligence. Man’s faculties
are limited, and cannot expect to understand all the mysteries of religion. We
know that we are encompassed about with innumerable worlds, which are but parts
of the universe; but beyond our own planet we know little even of physical
nature: how can we expect to understand the things that pertain to spirit and
the God of spirits? Whatever truth is, it must at all points transcend our
capacity. But it may be urged that many of the doctrines of Christianity are
inconsistent with reason, or opposed to its primary laws of thinking: indeed,
this is even charged against all the fundamental and peculiarly Christian
revelations of truth. The Holy Trinity, that in the necessary unity or soleness
of the Divine essence there are three Personal Subsistences; the creation of the
physical universe and the beginning of limited existence; the probation and fall
of spirits for ever unsaved and of redeemed mankind, as involving the dependence
of an Infinite Being on contingent events; the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of
God, one Person in two natures as distinct as Infinite and finite can be; and
the vicarious sacrifice of that Divine-human Person for the race of man; the
vast contrast between this insignificant world and the price of its redemption;
the doctrine of original sin as infecting the race, and yet virtually atoned for
.at the beginning or before it began its course, as actually after many ages
expiated at the cross, and nevertheless eternally punished in many:—these are
but specimens of ’doctrine absolutely essential to the Christian system which
are said to militate against the first principles of human thought. Similarly,
the entire record of the providential government of the world with which these
doctrines are bound up, especially some of the more wonderful facts of
Scripture, such as the series of stern Divine interventions and judgments in the
old world and the prophecies in the New Testament of yet sterner to come, excite
the rebellion of human thought, which measures the unknown God by a standard of
its own. Against this class of objections to Christianity there is no other
argument than that which Christianity itself uses in the Scriptures of the New
Testament. Both the Master and His Apostles speak as perfectly aware that they
announce things utterly beyond human comprehension and things which seem to
contradict reason. Their reply to every objection is, that the whole system of
Divine truth is beyond and above mere human criticism; in fact requiring a
special faculty, and that faculty to be specially illumined from above. Here was
the force of our Lord’s appeal to Nicodemus, who was perplexed by one of the
seeming paradoxes of the new religion: If I have told you earthly things, and ye
believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things. 1 This is a
word of great importance: our Lord’s figure suggests that He had mysteries to
disclose, not so much Himself as by His Apostles, which were as far above
ordinary doctrine hitherto familiar as heaven is above earth. The Apostle Paul
also again and again speaks of the wisdom of God in a mystery: 2 in mystery
unsearchable. The apologist may and must attempt to conciliate human reason by
showing that the most difficult doctrines introduced by Christianity are rather
above man’s thinking power than contrary to the laws of thought; that some faint
adumbrations of the highest of them all, the Holy Trinity, are found in nature
and in the human constitution and some gropings after it in most of the
traditions of nations. He may also point to the perfect unity of the system
which stands or falls with its-awful doctrine of sin: a doctrine confirmed by
all the facts of human experience and the instincts of the human consciousness.
If so much stress is laid upon the invasion and suppression of our instinctive
principles, then it is lawful to point to them when they are in favor of
Christian doctrine. Undoubtedly the tenor of the teaching concerning sin is in
harmony with the profoundest thoughts of the human heart.

He may also appeal to the instinctive hope of an equalizing and reconciling
hereafter and that future solution which is reserved for the vindication of the
ways of Providence. But, after all that may be said, those who defend the Faith
must be content to use an argument which man in his irrational pride despises:
the argument that imitates the Bible and refuses to argue with one who will not
accept more than he can understand. Christianity imposes a doctrinal as well as
an ethical cross. In many cases, the burden of the Faith is the chief ethical
cross: that of which our Lord said, speaking of the mysteries committed unto
Himself for babes: Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me! 3 His elect ones in
every age have bowed down; and, though this is not itself an argument, it must
be remembered that very many of the greatest intellects among men have thought
it wisdom to bear that cross, and have found in bearing it their rest. This rest
must be sought and found.

1 John 3:12; 2 1 Corinthians 2:7; 3 Matthew 11:29.

2. The history of heresy in Christendom, the manifold perversions of doctrine
within the Church, and the endless diversities of opinion among believers
themselves, are pleas of which much use has been made. It cannot be denied that
every truth has been perverted, and that almost every truth has been denied,
among the communities professing to hold the Head; and, more-over, that the same
documents have been and are still made the standard of appeal by maintainers of
very opposite opinions on some most important points. But this undoubted fact
is, on the whole, rather in favor of the Christian system than to its prejudice.
Religious truth is not like truth mathematical. It is probationary, and does not
command assent. Had it been otherwise it might have banished every error from
the world in the course of one age. But it has the entire strength of sin and
sinful prejudice against it; and those whose lives it cannot reform would fain
reform its teaching. The Wisdom of God in the Gospel has ever waged, according
to its own prediction, a double conflict: against errors in the world without,
and against the foes of its own household. To obviate the argument that might
and would be found in the unfaithfulness of the professors of His religion, our
Lord has left on record His own testimony that many false prophets shall rise
and shall deceive many. 1 So also St. Paul predicted the greater and lesser
apostasies, and that evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving
and being deceived. 2 And St. John summed up the strain: declaring that prophecy
had already become fact: Even now are there many Anti-christs. 3 Moreover, he
turns the existence and abounding of these opponents of Christ and His doctrine
into an argument in favor of the religion from which they declined. Meanwhile
the heresies pass away, but the truth endureth for ever.4 1 Matthew 24:11; 2 2
Timothy 3:13; 3 1 John 2:18-19; 4 1 Peter 1:25. THE RELIGIOUS POWER OF PERSONAL
CHRISTIANITY. The effects of Christianity upon the character of him who heartily
embraces it, and yields to its personal discipline, most abundantly confirm its
claim to be a religion provided by God for man. It offers, through the atoning
mediation of Christ accepted by faith, a perfect deliverance from the sense of
guilt, and a perfect system of education for holiness.

These are the elements of a salvation needed, and equally needed, by all
mankind: the universal cravings of the race have been known to seek them as long
as the history of man has been known. On these two great necessities hang all
the obligations of religion.

It must meet these, or it is useless: and. if it truly meets these, then it
leaves nothing wanting. New Christianity in all its doctrinal and ethical
teaching keeps those two supreme demands in view. It makes everything, as it
were, subordinate to them. It professes to show every man living the Way of
Peace and the Way of Holiness: the method by which he may obtain knowledge of
the remission of his sins, and full deliverance from the sinfulness of his
nature. It promises to every believer a conscious union with his God: the power
of a Divine life within making him happy and holy and fit for fellowship with
the company of heaven. The testimonies of Scripture on these subjects are
confirmed by a cloud of innumerable witnesses in the history of mankind,
beginning with the Biblical records and continued to this day. Against this
evidence of the truth of Christianity as against every other many things may be
urged.

1. It may be said that this kind of argument is altogether subjective, and begs
the question. That the Christian religion makes such a claim is evident, and
also that many have supposed themselves to be living witnesses of its truth; but
that all such sup posed experience is or may be the result of delusion, or of
imagination, or of strong faith in an idea which goes far towards accomplishing
its own will. Now the effects produced by the Gospel in those who have entirely
surrendered themselves to its sway have been such as no imagination could
produce. Multitudes have felt relief from the burden of a guilty conscience,
either gradually or suddenly imparted, which has been to them as if, in the
language of Jesus, they had passed from death unto life; 1 and they have
consciously known, as they have been taught by St. Paul, the power of God unto
salvation. 2 They have been persuaded — as they think by the Holy Ghost — that
their sins were blotted out; and they have felt a strength supernatural in doing
right, in bearing affliction, in vanquishing self, and in suffering for God, the
source of which they have confidently ascribed to the same Spirit. But this kind
of evidence the New Testament itself is not eager to press on the unbeliever. It
is reserved for the sure encouragement of those who receive it.

1 1 John 3:14; 2 Romans 1:16.

2. It may be said further that the average lives of professors of the Faith from
the beginning have not sustained this argument: that the Gospel failed when it
was first sent, accompanied by miraculous aids; that it then elevated only a
very select number; and that its spiritual transformations and triumphs have
been comparatively few from the very first, so few that they are fitly named the
elect. Here again the apologist has little to say.

He must admit that our religion has waged war against a strong power in human
nature, and that this has been often a wavering or a failing war, even among its
best professors. But if we grant that the influence of Christianity is moral
only and not physical, there is no argument as against its own Divinity in its
comparative failure. The earliest prophecies in the New Testament predicted
precisely what has taken place; while they also assure us that the triumph of
the Gospel shall prove hereafter to have been exceedingly great: much greater
indeed in every age than the eye of man could discern.

3. But the plea most earnestly urged against this argument is this, that the
best effects of Christianity have been produced by other systems either
independent of it or contrary to it. Almost all the so-called natural religions
of older or of more recent times have names to present which are thought not to
suffer in comparison with the saints of Christendom. The Eastern faiths have a
wonderful catalogue both of ascetic and of mystic devotees; and the Greek and
Roman philosophies, — which have gloried in such men as Socrates, Seneca, Marcus
Antoninus, —are not behind them. This is a plea that it is not hard to set
aside, although the method of doing so may seem somewhat bigoted. First, no true
advocates of our Faith deny that godliness has existed outside of direct
revelation. The early apologists of the Faith were wont to dwell much upon what
they called the LOGOS SPERMATICUS, or the pre-incarnate Son of God at the root
of human nature, or as a seminal inspiration of-truth among the heathen, or the
influence of the light of THE WORD 1 everywhere diffused among men, as the New
Testament declares. The effort to find Him after Whom the Gentiles groped has
produced some of the noblest fruits of the tree of human morality. Other sheep I
have, which are not of this fold, 2 our Lord Himself said; and we may suppose
Him to have wondered at the faith of many, before and besides the Syrophoenician
and the Centurion, who put to shame the children of revelation. But this plea is
sometimes carried too far. It may be denied that, apart from Christianity, any
mortal has ever rejoiced in forgiveness and perfect victory over sin. On the
contrary, the highest ethics taught and exemplified in heathenism have lacked
the very qualities and prerogatives on which Christian teaching lays the utmost
stress. Not only have they lacked these qualities, but they have despaired of
the possibility of reaching them. The Heathen atonements were never regarded by
those who offered them as securing forgiveness from heaven; and Heathen
philosophy never pretended to bring to more than a few, and to them only in a
limited degree, the thorough purification of the nature.

1 John 1:9; 2 John 10:16.

4. Finally, it is said, as already intimated, that this is an argument in a
circle. We assume that Christianity is true because it produces certain effects
which itself only declares to be Divine. Nor can we altogether disavow this. The
evidences of the Faith are of necessity deeply infected with the Petitio
Principii. From beginning to end the New Testament refers to the effects of its
own proclamation of the Gospel as being produced by God. It accustoms the
individual believer—and to the individual reference is now made—to look for and
to be content with the testimony of the Divine Spirit, concerning Whom and His
influence it asserts, He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in
himself. 1 If it be asked, how is he to know that secret influence to be the
Holy Ghost? the answer is, that the Holy Ghost also says, IT is I! 2 And, after
all, the final refuge of the humble Christian must be in the Divine
authentication of the Faith within himself.

1 1 John 5:10; 2 Matthew 14:27.

CHRISTIANITY RENOVATING THE WORLD. The world is under a manifest process of
deliverance from all the evils that weigh upon it as the fruit of sin. The
pledge j given by our Lord in that first sermon at Nazareth has so far been
redeemed that we may with confidence predict that it will be redeemed in full. 1
No power at all comparable to Christianity has ever been at work in the world:
indeed, no power save the Gospel can be said ever to have been at work at all in
the world of humanity at large. Judaism was Christianity within a limited
sphere, and with only the hope of the Christ Who has come. But from the day of
Pentecost the Faith of Jesus has been leavening the entire race of mankind.
Negatively, it has been steadily raising the tone of universal morality, and
abolishing the worst evils of human society: even beyond the limits of its own
fellowship it has been an influence for good wherever it has been found, It has
waged exterminating warfare against every vice that has ever been condemned by
man’s instinct or laws: mitigating on the way the evils that it is bent on
destroying though unable at once to destroy. It may be boldly affirmed that
wherever genuine Christianity has been admitted it has discountenanced and
weakened and in due time abolished every practice that corrupts the fellowship
of mankind as such. Positively, it has introduced benevolence in a thousand
forms unknown to antiquity, and charities hitherto without a name; it has raised
and dignified all the nations that have received it; and it may fairly claim as
its own the civilization of the modern world. Objections here also only too
readily rise: objections confessedly hard to deal with.

1 Luke 4:21-27.

1. It is, alas, a too obvious plea that the organization of Christianity itself
has been to a very great extent flagrantly corrupt. Very soon—to put the
counterplea in its worst aspect—the religion of Christ, or rather the outward
form of it in the world, fell under temptation. Errors crept in which were all
the more perilous, and all the more humiliating, because they sprang from
corruption of the noblest principles of the faith. It is not necessary to
enumerate, what it is impossible to deny, that the Church which should reform
the world seemed unable to keep herself pure. This plea cannot be answered
without humiliation that it should be so, and thankfulness for the confidence we
have that the foundation of God standeth sure. 1 As to the answer itself it is
simple enough. As it is no valid argument against individual religion that the
godly may fall, so it is no disparagement of Christianity as a system that it is
liable to perversion. The causes of that perversion are very obvious; the body
corporate was not protected against them by any defense that should interfere
with the laws of historical development; and both our Lord and His Apostles
foretold the very apostasies and declensions that took place. Moreover, the
evils and corruptions which have encumbered the cause of Christ have never
altogether suppressed its saving influence in the world. And, finally, a steady
reformation has long been going on within the Church which will issue, according
to prophecy, in making it a yet more effectual power for the conversion of the
nations.

1 2 Timothy 2:19.

2. But a still more serious difficulty here arises. It is urged, and has been
urged in all ages, that the supposed remedial economy of the Gospel is either,
on the one hand, arbitrarily under the sovereign and elective control of God,
or, on the other, dependent on the free agency of man: in either case, too slow
and partial to be a real and effectual relief of the miseries of mankind as
such. Perhaps no objection to the Christian scheme has weighed more with
thoughtful minds than this. It seems hard that a Divine scheme for the rescue of
a world should in any sense suffer defeat, or be slow in its processes and
partial in its operation. Of mere human systems this might be expected; but
surely not of the system which is said to declare both the wisdom and the power
of God. The facts themselves are to the most cursory consideration very
embarrassing. The countless multitudes of the descendants of Adam have been only
slightly touched by the Gospel: comparatively few have even seen the tree whose
leaves are for the healing of the nations, and still fewer have put forth their
hands to it. What can be said to these things? Scarcely anything but what the
Scripture itself says on this very subject. The delay of Christianity to
accomplish its mission, while the dying generations of men wait for it, is
indeed a mystery unfathomable; but it is no argument against the Christian Faith
to those who remember that it is one branch of an infinite scheme, every
department of which is oppressed or glorified by the same mystery. And those who
believe that the Creator works by a law of evolution that required numberless
ages for the preparation of the earth, and in a long series of developments
before man was reached, ought not to rebel against the slow process of man’s
redemption. There is no reply but the appeal to the unfathomable mystery that
surrounds our being on every conceivable hypothesis. Those who reject
Christianity because it does not search to the bottom and expound the enigma of
life are not wise: it at least goes immeasurably farther than any other
philosophy. We cannot with our present faculties, or at any rate with our
faculties in their present stage of discipline, reconcile the inscrutable
counsel of God, on the one hand, and the profound abyss, on the other, of human
control over human destiny. Meanwhile the Christian economy is most certainly
accomplishing the redemption of the human family; there is no other force in the
world that even aims at this. We may predict that it will make an end of sins,
and bring in everlasting righteousness for the race as such. We may be sure that
the time will come when all miseries and evils that grace can vanquish will be
vanquished and be forgotten; and that the wisdom of God will hereafter give
account of everything that seems to impeach His goodness. As to the multitudes
of individuals whom the Gospel seems to forget or fail to save by the way, they
must be left with God and His Christ. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right? 1 But this eternal Judge of all the earth in the counsel of redemption
committed all judgment unto the Son; 2 and He hath given Him authority to
execute judgment also, because He is the Son ofMan 1:3 1 Genesis 18:25; 2 John
5:22; 3 John 5:27.

THEPERSISTENCEAND PERMANENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity has sustained its other credentials, and added a new one, in the
fact of its early spread, its enduring life, and its outliving every form of
opposition. Its triumph over all the assaults of its foes as well as all the
contingencies of time was predicted by our Lord for the encouragement of His
disciples, when He first announced the foundation and destiny of His Church. The
earliest use of the term is very suggestive in this light: Upon this rock I will
build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. 1 It is
both His defiance and His prophecy.

1 Matthew 16:18.

THEEARLYSPREAD OF THE FAITH. The history of the early victories of Christianity
is a strong enforcement of its claims. As a religion it had everything against
it: so decisively against it that, on the supposition of its being one more new
cults introduced by a human innovator, or, as St. Paul says, but a man’s
covenant, 1 every method of accounting for its swift diffusion and sway is
baffled.

Nothing in its relation to Judaism was favorable: the new Gospel was a miserable
disappointment to the Jewish people: its proclamation of a crucified Messiah was
unto the Jews a stumbling block. 2 It had few elements of affinity with the
philosophical systems of mankind, and made no appeal to the pride of the human
intellect: it preached a fundamental doctrine that was unto the Greeks
foolishness, and even that doctrine it preached foolishly. It did not, in fact,
come with any formal doctrine at all; but simply enforced at first the old
truths of natural religion as taught by a new Teacher Who must be accepted
before His mysteries were unfolded. It is true that the Person presented was
supreme in excellence; but the Gentile disputers did not know this at first, and
all they knew was that he suffered a death of infamy. If he was accepted it must
be as one who in defiance of every law of nature had left his tomb, but did not,
as might be expected, come back to live among men. Moreover, the men who
proclaimed the Gospel could not be acceptable to the Jews, not being Rabbis; nor
to the Greeks, not being philosophers; nor to the common people generally, not
bringing a popular doctrine. Their Gospel inculcated ethics of the grandest
character; but such virtues as spiritual-mindedness, unlimited forgiveness,
meekness, self-sacrifice, contempt for this world, abjuration of all good in
man, were not likely to win attention. It introduced its adherents to a society
that had no attraction but its simplicity, no rewards but persecution in this
life. Yet in a few decades it shook the world, and in a few centuries subjugated
it.

1 Galatians 3:15; 2 1 Corinthians 1:23.

1. Against this it is urged that the power of a great idea fitly represented
has, in every age, swayed mightily the minds of men, and that Christianity was
only one more instance and not really more influential than some others.
Something in the state of the world predisposed it for the peculiar idea of
redemption introduced by Jesus and His Apostles; nor is it necessary—the
argument runs—that we should know the peculiar secret. But it may be absolutely
denied that any system of religious thought has ever commanded all kinds of
people and excited such a perfect devotion. Brahmanism and Buddhism and the
other Eastern religions never even pretended to be forces for the world; and
though they have long existed they are tending towards extinction, and the
Nirvana of one of them is written on all. Mohammedanism has lived by the truth
it borrowed from the Bible, and been spread only by secular force: it has indeed
ruled a large portion of the globe; but it has long ago lost its missionary
character. Christianity in all respects stands alone. Of course, there is no
demonstrative force in the mere argument of success; nor would there be, if
success had been much greater. But at least it may be said that in connection
with other pleas this has great force: apart from a Divine power, there is no
mystery in the religion of the Christ greater than its early triumphs.

2. But, although there was much external might to oppose the spread of
Christianity, it has been argued that there was much within it naturally to
further its diffusion. A subtle case has been made out of the concurrence of
fortunate circumstances: such as the pure and vehement zeal of the Christians,
their new doctrine of a future life, the miraculous powers attributed to them,
their austere morals, the union and discipline and vigor of the commonwealth.
But it is obvious that this style of argument does in reality pay a high tribute
to the new Faith, while it has little force as a human explanation of its
triumphs. The reasoning unconsciously points to that very Finger of God which it
aims to withdraw from human affairs, if not to abolish altogether. THE CONFLICT
WITHJUDAISM.

1. Judaism was the first enemy that Christianity encountered, and has been in
all ages the most virulent if not the most formidable. Its opposition had this
peculiarity, that it was manifested against the Founder of the Faith: in fact,
it was the only human and visible opponent that He met upon earth. He came unto
His own and His own received Him not. 1 Throughout the whole course of His
ministry, but especially towards its close when His claim to be the Messiah
became known, He was persecuted by the representatives of Judaism. This gave a
peculiar emphasis to His saying: A man’s foes shall be they of his own
household. 2 Jesus arose in the midst of our race as a member of the Jewish
household, to perfect and glorify the ancient religion. His brethren according
to the flesh by their malice and blindness brought about in a way they never
contemplated the consummation and end of their own national religion and law.
And the result of their enmity in the death of the Messiah was a most wonderful
fulfillment of prophecy and evidence of the truth of His claims. When we enter
the Acts, we find that the first contest of the Gospel was everywhere with the
Jews; and that in most places, though not in all, the cause of Jesus was
triumphant. It was not in Jerusalem alone that a great company of the priests
were obedient to the faith. 3 But neither in the Gospels nor in the Acts is the
triumph of Christianity over Judaism so described as to make it an argument of
the Divinity of the Christian religion. Rather it might seem as if the
persistent enmity of the Jews was made such an argument, being so directly a
fulfillment of prediction: Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet: unto
our fathers, saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and
shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive.4 1 John 1:11; 2
Matthew 10:36; 3 Acts 6:7; 4 Acts 28:25-28.

2. During the early ages there was a fierce polemic kept up between the
Christians and the Jews. At first it seemed as if a compromise would be
affected. A considerable body of Jewish converts received Jesus as the Messiah,
but only as the greatest of the prophets, and as raised up for the ancient
people: others being admitted to these privileges only by complying with their
rite of initiation, and by binding themselves to keep the law. But when that
expedient failed, and the Christianity which had its final expression in St.
Paul’s writings gained the ascendancy, it was bitterly opposed by the ancient
people, and all the more bitterly because they ascribed to Jesus and His
religion the ruin of their polity. But Judaism the mother declined, and
Christianity the daughter triumphed. From generation to generation there has
been a ceaseless enmity between the Israel after the flesh and the true
Christian Israel after the Spirit; but, applying any fitting test whatever, we
must be persuaded that the Christian Messiah has gotten to Himself the victory.
His renewed, enlarged, baptized, and perfected Judaism lives on earth: the
Judaism which still clings to the law, and still looks for Another, lives
indeed, but is dead while it lives.

It has had its schools of learning, and names of high excellence. It has also
displayed marvelous virtue in its charities, in its indestructible patience of
hope—though a hope that must make ashamed—and in its meek endurance of
unexampled wrongs, often from Christian hands. But it is, as a system, dead,
twice dead; and never can be revived.

Moreover, it is remarkable that the greatest intellects produced by modern
Judaism— Maimonides and Spinoza, the latter especially, —have done much to
unsettle the religious ideas of mankind.

3. But the affecting and unnatural conflict between Christianity and Judaism is
itself, and apart from any great success, a strong argument in favor of the
Christian cause. Both systems are world-wide in their extent; both pervade, or
bid fair to pervade, the whole earth; but how entirely different are the issues
of their progress respectively! The one is advancing on a career of beneficence,
in the course of which it sweeps away all systems of idolatry, cruelty, and
wrong. The other simply overspreads the earth without any mission or pretence of
a mission: in obedience, as it were, to some fate or absolute compulsion. Why
the Jews are diffused among the nations, more or less dishonored of all, and in
spite of the enlightened views of the present day never able to throw off the
universal ban that is upon them, is a mystery that can be solved only by their
own Scriptures, now become not theirs but ours. In them, as interpreted by the
New Testament, the reason is given so plainly that he may run who readeth it. It
goes back to their very origin: The Lord shall scatter you among the nations. 1
And a second date it has, which is the turning point of the history of mankind:
His blood be on us, and on our children. 2 Moses predicted that, if they should
do evil in the sight of the Lord, 3 they should cease from the enjoyment of
their inheritance: Ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye
go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall
utterly be destroyed. 4 Utter destruction is never in the Divine threatenings
annihilation. His ancient people have gone out of the presence of God, like
Cain; and a mark has been set upon them, that they should not be exterminated,
but remain as an enduring demonstration of the truth of their rejected Messiah,
Whose cutting off—BUT NOT FOR HIMSELF—was their greatest EVIL IN THE SIGHT OF
THE LORD.5 1 Deuteronomy 4:27; 2 Matthew 27:25; 3 Deuteronomy 4:25; 4
Deuteronomy 4:26; 5 Daniel 9:26 . THE CONFLICT WITHHEATHENISM.

1. When Christianity appeared, the Gentile religions were both at their best and
at their worst: they had reached the highest result of their wisdom and art; but
they had also descended to the lowest point of their moral impotence. The world
was never so highly cultivated, and never so ethically vile. But both the
strength and the weakness of heathenism were armed against the new faith, which
was the object of the converging attacks of all the forces of the Gentile world.
Christianity during the first three centuries was of course aggressive as well
as persecuted. The ten imperial persecutions were only a reaction of heathenism
against a spiritual persecution which itself had to endure from a religion that
spared none of its weaknesses and poured contempt on all its errors. That
religion prospered in spite of every attack; and drove the mightiest mythology
the world had known into the villages, whence it derived the name of PAGANISM.
That which had been branded as an Exitiabilis Superstitio compelled before the
fourth century the homage of all civilized nations of the empire. An attempt was
made to revive heathenism under Julian the Apostate; but it signally failed. The
great Apologies of the second century were never answered. And when, somewhat
later, the advocates of the ancient and effete religions charged upon
Christianity the decay and ruin of the empire, Augustine’s treatise De Civitate
and other similar writings, silenced the argument of heathenism for ever.
Although many extraneous causes conspired to aid the Christian Religion in
gaining ascendancy, the dispassionate verdict of history must be that its own
internal power gave it the victory. And that power was the Holy Ghost leading it
in triumph in Christ.1 1 2 Corinthians 2:14.

2. This triumph of Christianity is all the more remarkable because as conquering
it was itself infected by many of the errors it displaced. Scarcely a form of
superstition was overcome which did not contribute its measure of corruption to
the faith of Jesus. The earlier and later heresies were to a great extent
results of the infusion of the old leaven of Oriental and Classical modes of
thought. Gentile philosophy was vanquished; but its Parthian arrows left their
poison, and the final superiority of orthodox Christianity over the subtle
errors of Gnosticism, Manichssism, Pantheistic mysticism, with the superstitions
of materialistic sacramentalism in later days, manifested its eternal power not
less than its original suppression of heathen error. If we take a broad and
catholic view of Christian history in its doctrinal development we shall see
that there has been a steady, continuous victory of truth over all forms of the
Gentile lie whether without or within the Church. No weapon formed against it,
however often reappearing, has finally prospered.

3. No species of heathenism has ever effectually withstood the power of the
Christian religion. Not always has its mode of assault been in harmony with its
own precepts.

Too often has its war with the old idolatries and superstitions been in harmony
with that spirit which the Lord condemned in His sons of thunder. 1,2 Sometimes
it has imitated the violent methods of Mohammedanism or employed the cunning
wiles of the great deceiver. But there has never been wanting an honest and true
propagandism. And the result has always accorded with the high aim and
pretension of the Gospel. It has supplanted one system after another in the
South, and the West, and the North. The Eastern superstitions alone have seemed
to defy its power, But these are slowly and surely yielding. They are the most
ancient forces of heathenism, and in seemingly immovable tranquility have
survived the fall of a multitude of other systems; but they are surely
succumbing to the truth which was earlier than they, and are fulfilling the
predictions which make certain the universal spread of the Gospel. In them the
word shall have its double truth: many that are first shall be last in yielding;
and the last shall be first 3 in demonstration of the glory of our Lord.

1 Luke 9:55; 2 Mark 3:17; 3 Matthew 19:30.

4. On the whole, a calm survey of the state of the world under the influence of
the Christian religion will lead every philosophic student of history to the
conclusion that the Head of the Church will surely become the Master of the
whole earth. Human prophecy, guided by the lights of the past and the analogy of
the present, must concur with prophecy Divine in predicting this. In the
struggle for existence—if we condescend to use current phraseology —the survival
will be on the side of Christianity. Give it time enough and it will, even apart
from supreme interpositions of the Spirit, displace every other system. It has
annihilated many; it has transformed some; it has touched all with the earnest
of a fundamental change. The mystery of its slow development is in some respects
unfathomable. But its ultimate supremacy is to human calculation the highest
possible probability: to faith in the word of revelation it is as certain as the
being of God. And its past, present, and future triumph is its irresistible
credential. THE CONFLICT WITHNATURAL RELIGIONS.

1. It has been already seen that the teaching of Christ is as much a
republication of the original principles of natural religion as it is an
expansion of the religion of Judaism. It rests upon these two as its pillars, so
far as it is a religion: that is, a system of observances and morality and
worship, which is all that religion or threeskeías, means. Christianity is,
however, a great revelation, an unveiling, of the supernatural world or order of
things; and against all that it brings over and above the teaching of nature
there has been from the beginning a protest. In fact, the early Apologies abound
with arguments vindicating the religion of Jesus against those who asserted the
sufficiency of the light of nature. But the victory over opponents of this class
was then easy, as the world had been long accustomed to the thought of heavenly
interventions. Antiquity, which really had nothing but the traditions of a lost
revelation, or what is called natural religion, was never without a strong
conviction that it had at the same time something much better. It would hardly
have understood the force of any argument against a revelation as such.

2. Perhaps the first, certainly the most influential, development of opposition
to Christianity proceeding on this line of thought was DEISM, the form assumed
by English Infidelity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this
continuous assault on the Faith many elements combined: it was an application to
theology, never intended by Bacon, of the new philosophy of induction and
experience, as also an application of the sensational philosophy never intended
by Locke; but it was mainly an attempt to show that the principles of natural
religion render a supernatural revelation superfluous, that the documents and
evidences of the supposed supernatural revelation are contradictory to the light
of nature, and also that these documents are in them-selves unworthy of
confidence. As it regards this last point, in which the English Deists were
followed by the destructive critics of France and Germany, more must be said
when the documents are under consideration. The Nationalism also that underlies
the entire system of attack must be examined elsewhere. Meanwhile, it is enough
to say that the Christian revelation has not only survived, it has vanquished,
Infidelity or Deism. The strength of this system—its theistic belief in God and
adherence to the principles of natural theology—proved its weakness. The
argument of Analogy was triumphantly applied to show that the believer in a God
Who controls the course and constitution of nature ought not to reject the
revelation of the Bible, which introduces only a wider extension or larger view
of the same scheme of the same God. It silenced all rational opposition to the
Christian Faith; and the silencing of opposition is in this case victory. As our
Savior said: Ye believe in God, believe also in Me. 1

1 John 14:1. THE CONFLICT WITHSCIENTIFICTHOUGHT.

1. Generally speaking, there has never been any opposition between Christianity
and true science. For Christianity pro-fesses to be, and is, a scientific
presentation of the largest and broadest philosophy ever expounded to mankind.
Hence St. Paul speaks of oppositions of science falsely so-called. 1 True
science, or disciplined and formulated knowledge, must needs respect the system
of thought which has commanded the homage of so influential a portion of
mankind. It is not too much to say that no principle of thinking deserves to be
called philosophy, and no results of thinking deserve to be called science,
which can despise the Christian Faith. On this subject, however, enough will be
found elsewhere. Meanwhile, it is one of the evidences of the truth of our
religion that it has survived the attack of many systems of false science. It
has in every past age received the homage of the best intellects and most
earnest cultivators of both physical and metaphysical truth. This is true of the
present age also. And it may be safely said that true Christianity is accepted
by a far larger number of rigorous and sound thinkers than is to be found in the
service of any one particular department of scientific opposition or perhaps in
all departments of scientific opposition put together.

1 1 Timothy 6:20.

2. This being true, it may be granted that it is true only of genuine
Christianity. There has been in all Christian ages an unsound development of
certain doctrines against which sound science has successfully protested. The
Christian Faith ought not to be held responsible for the additions of men; and
there can be no doubt that it has pleased God to rebuke by the ministry of human
learning many errors which have dimmed or perverted the Faith. During the Middle
Ages the authority of the Church was armed in favor of false interpretations of
Scripture, and science came to the aid of the simplicity of truth.

Christendom has had much to unlearn and much to learn through its contact with
scientific criticism and research. It may have something yet both to unlearn and
to learn: many most important helps for the solution of difficulties, the
removal of obstacles, and the reconciliation of apparent contradictions in the
exegesis of Scripture, may and indeed certainly will be afforded by the
investigations of scholars and physicists. Science furnished the key to open
some of the dark chambers of cosmogony. And as the origin of things is better
understood since modern geology sprang up, so also the origin of man is and will
be better understood when the chaos of modern anthropology is reduced to shape.
If it should seem in any case that a clear result of inductive science clashes
with Scripture or the Christian religion, it will be found, as it has been found
in times past, that the contradiction is not real: either the Scripture and the
particular truth concerned has been misunderstood, or the scientific induction
may itself have to be corrected, or some yet unknown mediatorial fact must be
waited for. There is much ground common to science and the Faith in the
archaeology, chronology, anthropology, and history of Scripture, not yet fully
explored. Meanwhile, science in this relation is comparatively young, and
Christianity is absolutely old. The foundation of the eternal verities that make
up the relations of God and man has never been shaken by sound human learning
and research. On many contested points there is doubtless much controversy. But
religion has nothing to fear; and it is a consolation, though a subordinate one,
that this is the firm conviction of many who are at once the most profound
students of modern science and the most humble disciples of Holy Scripture.

3. There is, however, a false science, a pseudonumos gnosis, 1 which has
absolutely withstood Christianity from the beginning; and, with peculiar
critical keenness opposes it now. This also it has vanquished in the past; and,
though the issue is still pending, it will be victorious now. This science is
one with many forms; and it may be called false, for its fundamental principles
are unscientific, as destroying the foundations of all human knowledge. If
science at all it is the science of nescience: a contradiction in terms.

Skepticism, or suspended judgment on many points, may be tolerated; though
universal skepticism is utterly alien from the spirit of the Bible, which
appeals to the common sense of mankind against the chaos both of universal
skepticism and universal nescience. The same may be said of Pantheistic science:
though based on a principle which has commanded the homage of much human thought
in all ages, it is not scientific; for it annihilates the distinctness, or at
least the permanent distinctness of the thinking subject, whose fleeting
phenomena cannot constitute knowledge. Christianity has overcome Pantheism : by
the very fact that the noblest Pantheists, the mediaeval, mystical, and the
German transcendental philosophers, have aimed to Christianize their system,
and, in fact, have held it as Christians. Where it has not leaned on the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity it has had no semblance of scientific
precision: Spinoza’s mathematical system died with himself. Positivism is the
supreme delusion of the nineteenth century: professing to be sure and absolute
science in every department, it leaves out the endless phenomena which
revelation has taught the world, and that with the general consent of all true
science, to call spiritual. Materialism is the modern form of Atheism which
seems to threaten the hold of religion on men’s minds. It is the last and most
uncompromising of its enemies: never during earlier ages having risen with
anything like strength, it seems now to be encouraged to assault the Faith by
the aid of physical science. But sound science must, sooner or later, utterly
disavow a system that abolishes the notions of cause and effect, of all final
causes and ends, and asserts, in the face of evidence most absolute, the
spontaneous origin of life. Most of these forms of the falsely called science
will be considered in their appropriate place. Here it is enough to say that
they have opposed Christianity in rain. The religion of Christ, with its earlier
and later documents, gives a grand and consistent, though at some points most
mysterious and unsearchable, explanation of all things. It may be said to have
already vanquished all systems and hypotheses which are destructive only and
have no positive principles or explanations of their own to substitute for what
they take away.

1 1 Timothy 6:20.

THEHOLY GHOSTTHE LAST CEEDENTIAL. No view of the credentials of Divine
Revelation is complete which omits a distinct reference to the Holy Ghost, Whose
special influence accompanies the Truth as its seal, demonstration, and
assurance. This has been of necessity referred to already, and will in due
course be more fully exhibited under other aspects and relations. Here it is
sufficient to lay down this principle as the sum and conclusion of the whole
matter: the Spirit of God and of Christ alone gives to all evidences their
force, and imparts to those who sincerely consider them both the faith that
believes and the confirmation of that faith.

Moreover, though it may seem a hard saying, the secret of an unbelieving
rejection of the Christian Revelation must be traced to an implicit or explicit
resistance of His neverfailing and impartial testimony. The presence of the Holy
Ghost promised and pledged and bestowed, is the last and crowning credential of
the Faith. THIS CREDENTIAL IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

It will be necessary only to indicate the force of the testimonies of Scripture
on this subject: testimonies forming an unbroken series, the course of which may
be easily traced by the following leading instances of their use and
application.

1. Our Lord, laying the foundation of the Faith, declares that the Spirit of the
truth should convict the unbelief of the world: of sin, because, they believe
not on Me. 1 Moreover, He promised that same Spirit as the power of the Holy
Ghost coming upon you, 2 by which His Apostles should be competent witnesses of
Himself. It is most evident that to the Spirit is assigned by the Head of the
Faith the function of enforcing its credentials. The Lord could not more
expressly have said that the cause of Christianity was to be pleaded for ever by
this Advocate or Paraclete. Accordingly, the first preachers of the Gospel
appealed to this credential, or relied on this Advocate. St. Peter says of the
facts, We all are witnesses; 3 but he then points to the testimony of the Holy
Ghost: He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear. 4 And, at a later time
more expressly: We are His witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy
Ghost, Whom God hath given to them that obey Him. 5 The Apostles speak with the
consciousness of a higher Witness behind their own, to whose effectual energy
they look for the demonstration of their words. The entire apostolic ministry
illustrates the same truth. The human witnesses do their best, setting forth, as
St. John says, events undeniable: That which was from the beginning, which we
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled, concerning the Word of life. 6 But they never rely only on
that. There is a concurrent evidence: The witness of God is greater, 7 the same
Apostle declares; and, with plain allusion to the Master’s words, adds, And it
is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth: kaí tó Pneúmá
estin tó marturoún hóti tó Pneúmá estin hee aleétheia, 8 as if the Spirit were
Himself the witness that He Himself is the truth; or, as the Vulgate has it,
quoniam Christus est Veritas. Thus the New Testament closes, in St. John’s
Epistle, with the great truth that the Holy Ghost, given by the Father, is the
permanent and, as it were, official proof in the world that God hath given His
Son.

He that believeth on the Son of God hath the Witness in himself. 9 Outside of
himself, and objectively, there the Savior that came by water and blood: 10 the
believer receives the external evidences of the mission of Jesus, both in its
commencement by Baptism and at its consummation on the cross. But the Spirit is
the supreme Witness within the witness.

1 John 16:8-9; John 16:13; 2 Acts 1:8; 3 Acts 2:32; 4 Acts 2:33; 5 Acts 5:32; 6
1 John 1:1; 7 1 John 5:9; 8 1 John 5:6; 9 1 John 5:10; 10 1 John 5:6.

2. It is very important, in connection with this, to remember that the actual
presence of unbelief in the Christian revelation is referred by St. Paul plainly
and unambiguously to the rejection of the Spirit: he tells the Corinthians,
after reminding them that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols,
even as ye were led, that No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy
Ghost, 1 words which follow their counterpart, No man speaking by the Spirit of
God calleth Jesus accursed. Above he had already said that faith standeth in the
power of God, that is, in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 2 These
passages confirm the principle laid down generally in the New Testament, that
there is a sense in which faith in the Christian revelation is the gift of God:
a gift, that is, bestowed in connection with the prudent and prayerful use of
our own faculties. Hence St. John ratifies the whole at the close of Scripture,
by saying that every true Christian that believeth on the Son of God hath the
Witness in himself: 3 hath, that is, both the testimony and Him that beareth it
within his own soul, as a permanent source of assurance. It is the Spirit that
beareth witness, 4 not merely to subjective personal acceptance, but also to the
great objective truth which is the ground of that acceptance, to wit, that Jesus
is the Son of God. 5 As the anointing of the Holy Ghost was the Father’s seal on
His Son’s mission— for Him hath God the Father sealed—so THE SAME ANOINTING, 6
descending from Him to the skirts of His garments, 7 is the seal that assures to
us the truth of His mission and the reality of our interest in Him. St. John
therefore says with confidence: ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye
know all things: 8 all things, that is, concerning the eternal difference
between Christ and Antichrist. That unction of the Holy One, the Revealer, may
not instruct in all mysteries, whether of nature or of grace, but if received in
humble faith it serves two purposes: it makes the believer confident in Him Whom
he trusts as a Savior; and it enables him to detect the liar that denieth that
Jesus is the Christ. 9

1 1 Corinthians 12:2-3; 2 1 Corinthians 2:4-5; 3 1 John 5:10; 4 1 John 5:6; 5 1
John 5:5; 6 John 6:27; 7 Psalms 133:2; 8 1 John 2:27; 9 1 John 2:22. ITS
PRACTICAL VALUE. This is the bare outline of a doctrine concerning the objective
and subjective testimony of the Divine Spirit which the entire New Testament
fills up. A careful consideration of the current of its teaching on this subject
will convince all, whether students or preachers or defenders of Christianity,
that an appeal to the never-absent demonstration of the Holy Ghost is their
sheet-anchor for themselves and their last appeal for others.

1. As apologists for the Religion we believe in we must remember for our
encouragement the limits of our own obligation. St. Peter instructs the early
Christians who had, like us their descendants, to defend their creed, that it
was their duty to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you
a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. 1 We are bound to
provide the very best arguments for the Great Hope that our learning and
diligence can supply. This is most certainly demanded of us; but nothing more.
After all, the Faith is not in our keeping, but in that of the Holy Ghost.

If we happily succeed in disarming opposition or securing attention or exciting
the beginnings of trust, the glory is God’s: Not by might, nor by power, but by
My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. 2 If we fail, and our opponents harden their
hearts, we must not give way to Jonah-like despondency, and fall into the snare
of our own ill-success: we must remember that our Master will see to it, and
show in His time whose words shall stand Theirs or mine. 3 1 1 Peter 3:15; 2
Zechariah 4:6; 3 Jeremiah 44:28.

2. As preachers also in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. 1 We
must cultivate an absolute reliance on a certain secret Divine testimony which
is infallibly given to every truth that we declare: however weakly we proclaim
it, provided only we proclaim it faithfully. Here we have the example of the
Apostles, who with great fervor argue and persuade, but with the utmost calmness
leave the result to God: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves
unworthy of everlasting life, Io, we turn to the Gentiles. 2 But we have a
higher example than that of the Apostles. Our Lord Himself, the Supreme
Apologist of His own religion, committed His failing cause to His Father. He
said, My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me; 3 and when they murmured
against Him and His words, He answered their murmurings and said: No man can
come to Me, except the Father Which, hath sent Me draw him; and I will raise him
up at the last day. It is written in the prophets. And they shall be all taught
of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father,
cometh unto Me. 4 This seems like a tranquil reference of the contest to the
arbitration of Heaven, leaving His opponents to their own responsibility. We may
humbly copy His example. Our doctrine is not our own, but His Who has sent us;
we must leave to His Spirit the responsibility and the justification of the
tremendous mysteries we are commissioned to unfold.

1 Isaiah 30:15; 2 Acts 13:46; 3 John 7:16; 4 John 6:44-45.

3. As Christian men, we have to take care that we find our own full assurance of
faith in the conscious influence of the Spirit of Christ. No theologian, in
these days of doubt and despair of truth, can keep his soul in peace who does
not so live that his mind may be the temple of the Holy Ghost, giving him the
full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, 1
which is summed up in one word, Christ. A beclouded faith may be traced to many
causes; but there is one secret of protection or cure: He that followeth Me
shall not walk in darkness. 2 1 Colossians 2:2; 2 John 8:12.

SUMMARY.

Thus far we have only sketched the course that Apologetics may take in
presenting the Credentials of the Christian Revelation generally and as such;
and as distinct from the evidences necessary to establish particular doctrines
and particular documents. When we have to discuss the Canon, and proceed with
the separate topics of theology, we shall find ourselves always obliged to
maintain a defensive position. The contest is prepared at every point. The
Christian system is everywhere militant; and some of the best evidences of the
Faith are those which arise under the several heads of its individual dogmas,
each of which has its own cause to defend. Meanwhile the general credentials of
Christianity prepare the way for those more detailed evidences and add force by
anticipation to the arguments introduced to sustain both the books and the
doctrines. When the glorious revelation as a whole is accepted, that acceptance
renders the mind more accessible to persuasion on subordinate points, and
disarms captious criticism of documents and minor difficulties of every kind.
When the objective Christian Faith is subjectively received by the faith of man
accepting its credentials—credentials adapted to our probation, and amply
sufficient, as sealed by the Holy Ghost—then it becomes comparatively easy to
proceed to the specific methods by which that Faith has been communicated. The
consideration of those methods connects this topic with that which now follows:
in which we descend from revelation as objective, universal and one, to the form
it assumes in holy books.


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  CHAPTER 3: 05. VOL 01 - INSPIRATION
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Inspiration

INSPIRATION: The Divine Faith REVELATION AND INSPIRATION TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE

Old Testament; Our Lord; the Apostles;

DOGMATIC RESULTS THE HOLY GHOST THE INSPIRES THE ORGANS OF INSPIRATION THE
SCRIPTURES OF INSPIRATION DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE:

Heathenism;

Judaism;

Patristic;

Mediaeval;

Reformation;

Arminian;

Modern Theories;

Assaults and Defense; The term Divine in the general proposition that the Bible
is the Divine Rule of Faith suggests the inspiration and infallible authority of
the Sacred Records. Inspiration, distinguished from Revelation as we have
employed the term, denotes the specific agency of the Holy Ghost in the creation
and construction of Holy Scripture: this is the Biblical conventional use of the
word which strictly limits its meaning. The theological treatment of the
doctrine requires us to examine, first, the testimony of ’the Bible itself to
its own inspiration; secondly, the history of the dogma in the universal Church;
and. thirdly, the dogmatic results that may be regarded as fully expressing the
truth on this subject. The distinction between the terms Revelation and
Inspiration depends, to a great extent, upon their conventional signification.
In the Bible we do not trace the distinction found necessary in dogmatic
theology, and so elaborately discussed in treatises on the subject.

There are hints, however, that justify us in assigning to each word its
particular province.

1. Scripture uses them interchangeably; or, rather, adopts the same forms of
expression to exhibit the methods of both. God by divers portions and in divers
manners spake in times past to the fathers in the prophets: 1 this includes at
once the revelation of all truth to the minds of the prophets, and the
inspiration by which they received and administered that truth. The Voice of God
pervades the Old Testament; and in the New it still speaketh in His Son. The
divers manners 2 include visions, whether in dream or ecstasy, by the medium of
which the Holy Ghost presented, with or without symbols, new forms of truth to
the mind, or what is always called the Word of the Lord; and also communications
to the waking faculties, conscious of all their own exercises and controlling
them. The divers portions cannot well be understood unless we regard them as
including the successive stages by which the ancient people were entrusted with
the written oracles.

Thus the inspiration and the revelation are one. St. Paul unites them when he
says. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord: 3 a sentence in which
all ancient methods are reduced to two, and these are shown to be continued in
the New Testament, though no longer so general and characteristic as they
formerly had been.

1 Hebrews 1:1; 2 Hebrews 1:2.

2. On the other hand, the Scripture authorizes the conventional phraseology
which distinguishes between revelation of truth and inspiration to record it.
The Son, in the unity of the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the Revealer. The
Spirit, in the unity of the Father and the Son, is the Inspirer. The Son is the
living and eternal Word in Whom the eternal ideas of all truth existed, before
they were made known; but the Spirit did signify 1 its meaning to the prophets,
who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 2 The word Revelation is
generally used of THE LORD; 3 the only instance of the use of Inspiration refers
it to the Scripture as the result. 4 The disclosure of the mind of God to man is
revelation when viewed in relation to the Truth unveiled, and inspiration when
viewed in relation to the methods of its impartation and transmission to
posterity. And, as revelation must in its highest meaning be limited to the
unfolding of the scheme of redemption, so inspiration is limited to that one
kind of contact or intercourse between the Holy Spirit and the spirit in man
which produced the written Word for all ages and generations.

1 1 Peter 1:11; 2 2 Peter 1:21; 3 2 Corinthians 12:1; 4 2 Timothy 3:16. THE
TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE ITSELF. The Scripture presents the credentials of its own
inspiration. Hence, remembering that in things Divine credentials are always
first, and are, if necessary, to be sustained by their own evidences, it is not
arguing in a circle to receive the witness of the Bible concerning itself: we
must study the whole subject with the Book in our hands. The Old Testament
yields its testimony in a manner accordant with its preliminary stage of
development; but, though only preliminary, that testimony will be found to
include every essential element of the doctrine. Christ, the Revealer, gives His
supreme attestation to the authority of the ancient Scriptures: such an
attestation, considering His claims, was absolutely necessary; it is expressly
given, and of course it is sufficient. He has also with equal expressness,
though in a different manner, declared by anticipation the plenary Divine
authority of the writings of the New Testament. After exhibiting the evidence of
this, we shall descend to the Apostles’ testimony concerning the inspiration of
the Old Testament and their own; and then may be in a position to sum up the
evidence of the Holy Oracles concerning themselves as one united whole. THE OLD
TESTAMENT.

1. The Old Testament does not lay down the distinction between Revelation and
Inspiration; but it furnishes the evidence by which the distinction may be
established.

Communications of the Divine will were given in various ways to various men, few
of whom, comparatively speaking, were educated and commissioned to write the
permanent records of that will. The Patriarchs received revelations, and
recorded some of them; but their records were not officially made Scripture by
themselves. It was the special prerogative of Moses that he was the immediate
organ of Jehovah, the Logos-Angel: There arose not a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses whom Jehovah knew face to face. 1 Of him it is not recorded that
the Spirit made him an instrument: a distinction which was afterwards perverted
as we shall see. Of all the inspired agents of Jehovah who testified concerning
Christ Moses approached most nearly to the Person Whom he predicted, or rather
was brought into closest analogy with Him. After the Uncreated Angel withdrew as
the immediate Revealer, phrases are introduced which had not been known before
but are used now in great variety. We read of the Spirit of God, 2 or of
Jehovah, coming down on men; of the Hand of the Lord 3 moving upon one and
another; of the Word of the Lord 4 coming to them.

1 Deuteronomy 34:10; 2 Numbers 24:2; 2 1 Samuel 10:6; 3 2 Chronicles 15:1; 4
Ezekiel 37:14.

2. But, running through all, there is a constant commission to write: from
Moses, through Samuel’s schools of the prophets, down to the end of the Old
Testament. The Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book. 1 A
large number of references to writing may be collected in the ancient records:
to the men appointed to write by the commandment of the Lord; 2 to God as
Himself the Writer, I have written to him the great things of My law; 3 to the
manner in which the prophetic records especially were arranged and preserved,
and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah; 4 and to the general designation of
the whole as Scripture, I will show thee that which is noted in the SCRIPTURE OF
TRUTH. 5 It will be seen by a collation of the multitudes of passages of which
these are specimens, that the Old Testament gives all the materials for the full
doctrine which is presupposed, sanctioned, and unfolded in the New.

1 Exodus 17:14; 2 Numbers 33:2; 3 Hosea 8:12; 4 Jeremiah 36:1-4; 5 Daniel 10:21.
OUR LORD’S TESTIMONY. Our Lord’s witness to the inspiration of both Testaments
is, to those who believe in Him, the sum of all reasoning. Not indeed that it
renders the most careful examination of the documents needless; but a steadfast
confidence in the Supreme Authority ought to precede, accompany, and follow
every consideration of evidence. Certainly His testimony should more than
outweigh all the objections which derive their strength from our ignorance. But
that is not all. The Savior’s assurances not only confirm the results of
inspiration, but throw a clear light upon its nature.

I. In many ways this supreme testimony is given by the Redeemer to the Old Canon
as a completed whole.

1. First, by His absolute ascription to its writings of a Divine authority. It
was the one thing common to Him and His Jewish opponents that the Scriptures,
the same to Him and to them, were admitted to be in all parts the Word and the
Writings of God. He asked them: Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God
by your tradition? 1 but said nothing of adding to or diminishing the holy
books. They made tradition and that was their fault; but they are not condemned
as making or unmaking Scripture. While sweeping away their enfeebling glosses,
and giving His own spiritual interpretation, our Lord expressly declared that
the least ordinance and the least commandment in the Old Testament was Divine,
and must have its fulfillment. Such is the meaning of one jot or one tittle, 2
as connected with what follows.

1 Matthew 15:3; Matthew 15:6; 2 Matthew 5:18

2. He attested the entire Old Testament, secondly, by the terms He was wont to
use in speaking of the older oracles. He quotes them as SCRIPTURE generally, and
as individual SCRIPTURES. It is written 1 is His answer to the Tempter in the
wilderness. Search the Scriptures 2 He said to the Jews and to all men: the
solitary instance (taken indicatively) of the commandment: a commandment with
promise, They testify of Me. 2 And He began His own prophetic office in the
synagogue by proclaiming, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. 3
The ancient collection of holy documents He distinguishes according to the
current division as the law or the prophets: 4 commandment and promise. In the
law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me. 5 But He
unites them all again as the Scriptures in that last unrecorded exposition of
the Old Covenant that He gave to His disciples. He once calls an ancient oracle
the Word of God, 6 and adds, the Scripture cannot be broken. 7 With this it is
instructive to connect our Lord’s saying concerning Himself, My words shall not
pass away; 8 which asserts at the end of His ministry the same eternal authority
for His own teaching which, at the beginning, He had asserted for the law.

1 Matthew 4:7; 2 John 5:39; 3 Luke 4:21; 4 Matthew 5:17; 5 Luke 24:44-45; 6 Luke
24:27; 7 John 10:35; 8 Matthew 24:35 3. The Redeemer never fails to refer to the
old Scripture as one testimony, given by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
concerning Himself. How then doth David in Spirit call Him Lord? 1 This is the
one instance in which the Spirit’s inspiration is directly referred to, and it
is a special prophecy concerning David’s Lord, uttered by David himself, as a
solitary exception to his usual style, and quoted exceptionally by our Savior:
in fact, it may be said that the entire Old Testament was represented; it
CALLETH HIM LORD. Hence the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy: 2 this
is a dictum which may also be inverted: the Spirit in the whole company of the
prophets is the testimony of Jesus. For all the ancient seers both saw and spoke
under the influence of the Spirit of Christ which was in them.3 1 Matthew 22:43;
2 Revelation 19:10; 3 1 Peter 1:11.

4. Thus the Savior’s witness to the Old Testament is simply perfect in every
element that Christian faith can demand. He began and ended His earthly life by
declaring its Divine authority and the necessity of its most minute fulfillment.
He gave His testimony, not in accommodation to a current notion of the times,
but as the Revealer of all truth. And the force of this is specially
strengthened by the fact that He sanctions the whole body of holy writers as One
who is above them all. What He said of the Baptist was still more applicable to
Himself: He is much more than a Prophet. 1 He does not speak, however, as
Himself inspired. Though a Prophet, and endued with the Spirit from on high, He
never claims for Himself a limited and specific inspiration of the Holy Ghost:
in this eternally separated from all the Spirit’s agents. As the Son of God
incarnate He re-utters the entire Old Testament as His own ancient oracles made
new; they as it were died in Him to their transitory meaning, and rose with Him
to be the power of an endless life. 1 Luke 7:26.

II. It is of the utmost importance to ask in what sense the Redeemer assures to
us a continuation of these authoritative oracles in His own New Testament. We
may boldly say that the Great Fulfillment necessarily implied a continuation of
Scripture, both as Word and as Writing.

1. Generally, our Lord testified, My words shall not pass away, 1 which is an
echo of the sublimest assertions of the Old Testament concerning the Divine
oracle. All His sayings on every subject, whether recorded or not, were the
words of God. Concerning the whole sum of His teaching He could bear witness, I
have given them Thy word. 2 This being so, can we suppose that such a deposit
would die with those who first received it? Their Master made provision that His
words should, so far as they were to abide, be preserved in their memory. The
promise indeed is very comprehensive, embracing all that the Lord had said. On
the Mount of Transfiguration the disciples were bidden to hear Him, 3 and that
in the presence of Moses and Elijah. In strict harmony with this is the fact
that at the close of His ministry Jesus, more expressly than ever before, made
His own sayings the sum of Scripture. It is remarkable that He does not impress
upon His disciples the solemn importance of remembering the Scriptures of the
Old Testament. It was His own word, — all things whatsoever I have commanded
you, 4 —that He left as a legacy. Surely what He said of the sacramental cup may
be applied in another way: this is the New Testament IN MY WORDS. The teaching
of the Lord was the new Bible; and we feel instinctively how true is the phrase
of St. Paul: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. 5 The word of Christ is
no other than the word of God.

1 Matthew 24:35; 2 John 17:14; 3 Luke 9:35; 4 Matthew 28:20; 5 Colossians 3:16.

2. He has also, both directly and indirectly, guaranteed to us new Scriptural
writings.

Though the Divine decorum forbade His leaving anything from His own hand, He did
not reverse the ancient law that revelation should be gradually developed in the
volume of a book. As Moses was commanded to write the beginning, 1 so St. John
was commanded to write the end, of that volume, 2 to finish it as it had been
begun. To be more particular: the new Scripture is prepared for and produced by
the same Spirit of inspiration Who gave the old records. 3 Precisely the same
law of procedure which we have seen in the creation of the earlier documents we
see governing the Savior’s arrangements for the later. It is as plain as if He
had said: By My Spirit I give you new Scriptures. But this He did not declare:
all grows out of His words without His saying so. Reserving revelation for
Himself, He assigned inspiration to the Holy Ghost, though without giving Him
the name of Inspirer; and so described His influence as to make it precisely
like that which rested on the ancient writers. In old time, it was said to
Moses: Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou
shalt say; 4 and to Jeremiah: Behold 1 have put My words in thy mouth, and Say
not, I am a child. 5 Here a special inspiration for special need is promised,
over and above the general inspiration for office.

Compare the words of our Lord to His Apostles, promising the very same special
influence: The Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.
6 It is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. 7 These are promises in the
Synoptists; St. John adds the final and supplementary threefold assurance: the
same Spirit will bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said
unto you; 8 further, He will show you the things to come; 9 and, generally, He
will guide you into all truth. 10 Connecting this special assurance with the Old
Testament, the Lord afterwards said, I send the Promise of My Father upon you:
11 as if it were a new function of the Ancient Inspirer that He would impress on
their minds. When that promise was fulfilled, they were, like Jeremiah, children
no longer, but men in understanding. Now with reference to the three departments
of the promise in St. John, the fulfillment required, and therefore included,
writing. Let this be carefully considered with regard to each. These are written
that ye might believe, 12 for the first. Write the things which thou hast seen,
13 for the second. And the Apostolical Epistles, containing the development of
the truth in its manifold applications, is the fulfillment of the third.

1 Exodus 17:14; 2 Revelation 1:19; 3 John 20:31; 4 Exodus 4:12; 5 Isaiah 59:21;
6 Jeremiah 1:7; Jeremiah 1:9; 7 Luke 12:12; 8 Mark 13:11; 9 John 19:26; 10 John
16:13; 11 Luke 24:49; 12 John 20:31; 13 Revelation 1:19.

3. From all this we may assuredly gather that the Mediator of the New Covenant
purposed to add another volume to the Scriptures of truth: without plainly
saying so, any more than in Genesis He foreannounced the entire Old Testament.
The facts declare this without any express declaration. The New Testament is
constructed before our eyes exactly as the Old was. The same laws and methods
continue in the new economy that were observed in the old. There is the same
direct personal teaching, and the Apostles see the Oracle face to face as Moses
saw Him. There are the same dreams and ecstasies; and there is the same
overruling direction of the Holy Ghost in the compilation of documents. This
only great difference exists, that the final truth is communicated by the
perfectly revealed Son through the perfectly revealed Spirit; and therefore long
times and seasons are in the swift consummation needless. All was accomplished
in a single age. The Preparations occupied many centuries; the Fulfillment
glorified one. THE APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY. The Apostolic testimony, both to the
fact and to the nature of Inspiration, is most ample: the full development of
this as of other doctrines is committed to the Apostles.

I. As to the Scriptures generally, or particular Scriptures of the Old
Testament, their tribute is explicit and clear.

1. St. Peter, as Preacher and Writer, is perhaps the preeminent witness: in the
Acts, to the Jews; in his Epistles, to the Church of Jews and Gentiles; in both,
to future generations. On the eve of Pentecost he gives what may be called a
classical text: édei pleerootheénai teén grafeén heén proeípen tó Pneúma tó
Hágion diá stómatos Davíd. 1 This is the Pentecostal witness once for all: in a
form more complete than anywhere else, as it were a general definition. The Holy
Ghost spake; 2 using the mouth of David an instrument, also that of Joel; and
the result was Scripture in one particular expression of it: whether as uttered
or as written it is identical. Nor is St. Stephen less clear: he says that Moses
received lógia zoónta, living oracles; doúnai heemín, 3 to transmit to
posterity, here again the spoken and the written oracles being identical. St.
Peter’s Epistles contain important evidence. No prophecy of Scripture is of
private interpretation—idías epilúseoos,4 referring to the prophet’s own
knowledge—but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost. As to the
Biblical writings in particular, there is much weight in his expression, the
other Scriptures, 5 when viewed on all sides. A shorter phrase in the first
Epistle adds to the words and the writings of the prophets the element of their
authority if any man speak, speaking as if the oracles of God, 6 which are
supposed to be the standard of all truth in doctrine and in ethics.

1 Acts 1:16; 2 Acts 1:16; 3 Acts 7:38; 4 2 Peter 1:20-21; 5 2 Peter 3:16; 6 1
Peter 4:11.

2. The Epistle to the Hebrews furnishes the most ample series of testimonies to
be found in the New Testament. The force of these is to be felt only by an
examination of the texture of the whole composition, which literally regards the
ancient Scriptures as oracles spoken by the Holy Ghost, and preserved for the
Christian Church in a book to be quoted from as infallible. It is remarkable
that the same expression is throughout used to indicate the testimony of the
Spirit and that of the writer whom He employs: The Holy Ghost 1 testifieth the
terms of the great covenant in Jeremiah; and One in a certain place testified, 2
meaning the Psalmist. While in this document God absolutely is the Revealer, and
the Son the supreme medium of revelation, the Spirit is specially connected with
the written Scripture. It may be added, that the first principles of the oracles
3 are represented as the same in the Old Testament and in the New: the rudiments
which these Christians needed to be taught again were the principles of the
doctrine of Christ; 4 and, as these had been taught in the Christian writings,
these writings were also THE DIVINE ORACLES.

1 Hebrews 10:15; 2 Hebrews 2:6; 3 Hebrews 5:12; 4 Hebrews 6:1.

3. St. Paul also, both as Preacher and Writer, lives and moves in the ancient
Scriptures.

He quotes them constantly, and always as containing the Voice and the Writings
of God. His manner of introducing individual texts shows plainly the importance
he attached to the very words used by the Holy Ghost. For instance: He saith
not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ.
1 He uses a wide variety of epithets, such as The Prophetic Scriptures, 2 Holy
Scriptures, 3 Sacred Writings, 4 and Scripture given by inspiration of God. The
last two contain his final testimony to Timothy; and they together declare that
the Hallowed or Sacred writings applied by faith in Christ impart saving wisdom;
and that all Scripture is Divinely inspired. The term Theópneustos, as a
predicate of grafeé, has given the theological word Inspiration its Scriptural
ground, sanctioning also the extension of the term to the writings as well as
the words and the persons of the inspired men. St. Peter’s great testimony
signalizes the impulse of the Spirit on the minds of the prophets: they were
ferómenoi, led or borne along. St. Paul supplements this by making emphatic the
result in the written Word in its widest extent, embracing much more than the
word of prophecy. The former leans rather to the revelation, the latter to the
inspiration, of the ancient documents; but both include the collected oracles,
and their saving power to the believing recipient. Together, they condense into
two short sentences the entire Biblical doctrine of the inspiration of
Scripture: that is, primarily though not only, of Old-Testament Scripture.

1 Galatians 3:16; 2 Romans 16:26; 3 Romans 1:2; 4 2 Timothy 3:15-16.

II. It is most important to collect the Apostles’ testimony to their own
inspiration. But it must be remembered that, though always conscious of the
Spirit’s special influence, they would only on defensive occasions be likely to
refer to it. In fact, the service of the Gospel required them on very many
occasions to abstain from urging their highest claim.

1. St. John is the Apostle who gives the faintest expression to the specific
gift of inspiration, while he is, perhaps, the most earnest in the assertion of
the authority that resulted from it. Yet in the Apocalypse he says that he was,
when he received his prophetic communications, in the Spirit, 1 the very term
applied by our Lord to the inspiration of David: no prophet was ever more
effectually moved by the Holy Ghost 2 than he. He speaks of those sayings as
faithful and true 3 which he wrote to the churches by commandment of the Lord,
as if they were his own: and the fearful words that end this book, if not the
Bible, declare its inviolable Divine authority. In his First Epistle he seems to
make the unction from the Holy One 4 a privilege of all Christians; but a close
examination will give reason to think that he referred primarily to the
Apostolic chrísma, or anointing, which was also a chárisma, or gift, not limited
to himself, and therefore not made prominent as his own, but his in the unity of
the whole Apostolate. Supposing, however, that the anointing is spoken of as
belonging to all regenerate believers, we fall back upon the tone of superhuman
authority which is impressed upon this document, as upon the two lesser Epistles
accompanying it.

1 Revelation 1:10; 2 2 Peter 1:21; 3 Revelation 22:6; 4 1 John 2:20.

2. St. Peter speaks of the writings of St. Paul as co-ordinate, on the same
level, with the other Scripture: 1 a slight hint of an understood and current
way of thinking has the force of a strong argument. It must be remembered that
he had just before been referring to his reason for writing a second Epistle:
That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy
prophets, and of the commandment, through your Apostles, of the Lord and Savior.
2 Hence there can be no question that he placed the apostolical company by the
side of the prophetic; and that he regarded himself, as well as his beloved
brother Paul, as representatives, in their writings and words, of the supreme
authority of the common Master. For it is well known that Words and Writings are
in Scripture often used interchangeably. In their ministry, applying his own
language, we have the word of prophecy made more sure. 3 The day has dawned.

1 2 Peter 3:16; 2 2 Peter 3:1-2; 3 2 Peter 1:19.

3. As to St. Paul himself, there can be no question of his claiming the
authority of inspiration. Not being numbered with those who had companied with
the Lord and received His great promise on the eve of the Passion, it was
necessary that he should dwell more on the prerogatives of his irregular
investiture. He speaks specially for himself, though as the representative of
all, when he claims so often to wield, both in presence and by letters, the very
authority of Christ. His reference to matters not given of commandment 1 must
not be misunderstood. He does not mean that he wrote merely on his own
authority; but that in these particular cases he could not and did not appeal to
any distinct and specific utterance of Christ. Yet it is observable that he is
never more peremptory than in giving the decisions which are not settled by the
precedents of the Supreme Master Himself. St. Paul does not separate between his
personal life and character as aMan 1:2 and: his official relation to the
churches; though he distinguishes between Christ revealed IN him, 3 and the new
Faith revealed UNTO him, 4 and the Gospel fully known BY him; 5 these three
filling up the whole compass of his new life. He ascribes his revelations to
Christ as the Revealer, 6 but to inspiration the words used which the Spirit
teacheth. 7 In short, had he been present in the paschal upper room, he could
not more abundantly have asserted his possession of the privileges of the
Apostolic company. His letters were to be read in the churches as the very Word
of the Lord, and for his least counsels he can say, I think that I also have the
Spirit of God: 8 a style of speaking sometimes regarded as meaning no more than
the common Christian privilege, but never in the New Testament so used. The
Apostle’s habitual thought was molded by the Old Testament, where such language
is reserved for the organs of inspiration; for instance, the spiritual man of
the prophet is literally the man of the Spirit.8

1 1 Corinthians 7:6; 1 Corinthians 7:12; 2 Romans 3:5; 3 Galatians 1:16; 4
Ephesians 3:3; 5 2 Timothy 4:17; 6 1 Corinthians 2:13; 7 1 Cor 2:40; 8 Hosea
9:7.

4. The two historical Evangelists, and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
who shared not directly the great promise given to the Apostles, shared it
indirectly. St. Mark and St. Luke had for their special province those subjects
concerning which the promise was given by the Savior, and under the direction of
St. Peter and St. Paul. No writings bear more undeniably the signs of an Apostle
1 than, these: and St. Luke’s especially are most essential to the living
organism of the New Testament. But the consideration of their contributions
belongs to the study of the Canon.

1 2 Corinthians 12:12.

5. To sum up all. The writers of the New Testament form a body of men, united in
the unfolding of Christian doctrine, who always deliver their message as from
God their Savior by His Holy Spirit. They do not often assert their inspiration:
but it is everywhere implied by themselves and supposed to be understood by
their hearers and readers. In this they occupy precisely the same position as
their predecessors in the Old Testament. Like them, they stand before the people
of God with infallible teaching from which there is no appeal; like them, they
occasionally declare themselves, when their authority is resisted, to be organs
of the Spirit. In a word, they simply take the place in the New Temple of the
prophets in the Old: continuing their office and ministration by a commission
the credentials of which were known and read of all men.

DOGMATIC.

Dogmatic Theology has a clear account to give of Inspiration. The Scriptures,
fairly compared and interpreted, declare it to be that special influence of the
Holy Ghost on the minds of holy men. Selected for the purpose, which qualified
them to communicate, from age to age, an infallible record of Divine truth
concerning the redeeming will of God. This is the conventional meaning attached
to the term both in earlier and later Christian times. Save with this meaning
the word inspiration becomes comparatively vague and valueless. Here we have to
consider the Inspiring Spirit; then the Inspired Organs; and lastly the
Scriptures of Inspiration. THE HOLY GHOST THE INSPIRER. The Holy Ghost, in the
Mediatorial Trinity, is, and is alone, the Author of inspiration. This is His
personal honor, and implies perfection in His work. To the ground of this office
in the Absolute Trinity we cannot penetrate any more than we can penetrate to
the ground of the revealing function of the Word; enough, that as the Revealing
Son is the Eternal Word, so the Inspiring Spirit, eternally proceeding from the
Father and the Son, is the supreme and sole medium of communication to the
spirit of man. Whatever the Son is to the creature the Spirit COMMUNICATES. In
the Mediatorial Trinity the Holy Ghost presides over the impartation of truth.
This may be illustrated by His relation to the Person of the Revealer generally,
and particularly by the terms employed in the phraseology of Scripture on the
subject.

1. It is true, throughout the entire economy of redemption, that the Spirit
reveals the Son as the Son reveals the Father. The preparations for Christ in
the former times, whether in natural or in supernatural revelation, were under
His control; and especially the latter. The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of
prophecy; 1 and it was the Spirit of Christ which was in them 2 that signified
through the prophets that future redemption which is the sum of revealed truth.
The New Testament fully discloses both the Revealer and His interpreting Spirit:
the One as much as the Other. As all truth comes through the Son Who revealeth
what He hath heard of My Father, 3 so the inspiration of the Spirit has always
made man capable of receiving the revelation. The Holy Ghost fulfils Christ’s
Divine word: He shall not speak of Himself. 4 And, precisely as the work of
Christ was fully made known when He appeared among men, so the office of the
Spirit as the Inspirer of the permanent records of that work was fully known
only after His Pentecostal coming.

1 Revelation 19:10; 2 1 Peter 1:11; 3 John 15:15; 4 John 16:13.

2. The phraseology of Scripture has been seen to be faithful to this truth.
There is a gradual unfolding of it from the beginning. The Spirit is dimly,
though less and less dimly, alluded to in the Old Testament as the Inspirer: in
the songs of the neutral ground between the Old and the New Testaments He is
more clearly spoken of: until after Pentecost He becomes the representative of
all the revelations of the Holy Trinity. This principle must regulate our
interpretation of certain passages that might seem to speak otherwise: that is,
with less distinctive reference to the Holy Ghost as the Inspirer. God is said
to have spoken or done what is spoken or done by each Person in the Trinity: a
canon this of great importance generally. It was the Lord, the God of Israel,
who wrought redemption for His people; 1 but the Son was the Redeemer. God sent
His Son: 2 but St.John’s testimony goes on that the Father sent the Son to be
the Savior of the world. 3 So it is said that God spake unto the fathers in the
prophets; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 4 The
Scripture is God-inspired, Theópneustos, 5 but only the Spirit is the Inspiring
God.

1 Luke 1:68; 2 1 John 4:10; 1 John 4:14; 3 Hebrews 1:1; 4 2 Peter 1:21; 5 2
Peter 3:16.

3. Hence special honor is due and should be paid to the Holy Ghost in His office
and province: He is the God of Scripture. In this domain He is supreme;
according to the Nicene Confession, which introduces this Divine work into the
highest act of worship: WHO SPAKE BY THE PROPHETS. It is therefore not to be
wondered at or condemned that we pay also a certain homage to the Scriptures as
His finished work. What is wrongly charged upon this submission as Bibliolatry
is a becoming sentiment of reverence for the Spirit in His word. Of Him also it
may be said, His work is perfect, 1 despite any supposed appearances to the
contrary. As creation and providence and redemption are finished and complete
severally, so also is the organization of the Scripture: perhaps all the more
perfect because of some things which we in our ignorance count imperfection.

1 Deuteronomy 32:4. THE ORGANS OF INSPIRATION. The men chosen of the Holy Ghost
to be the organs of inspiration were by Him sanctified through the truth for
their office; their faculties were prepared by His influence for the special
province of inspiration assigned to them individually; and He superintended and
controlled the exercise of those faculties for the accomplishment of His own end
in the construction of Scripture.

1. St. Peter, referring to the prophetic Word, says of the prophets: men spake
from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost. 1 It may be affirmed of all the
instruments used for this high function that they were under the common
sanctifying inspiration or influence of the Spirit. It is true that revelations
were given—that is, disclosures of truth, and visions of the future—both in the
Old Testament and in the New to men who were raised up to this end, but were
personally unsanctified: but Balaam and Caiaphas, though they received a
transitory inspiration, were not employed to perpetuate or hand down their
predictions.

They were used for a purpose, and their enforced ministry was taken up, like
Pharaoh’s, into the Divine plan. Similarly, certain writings, not themselves
written by inspired men, are incorporated into the fabric of Scripture. These
were all exceptions to the general rule, that only those who are in harmony with
truth and under its sanctifying influence received its higher revelations.

1 2 Peter 1:21.

2. But the Spirit used His instruments as men: their sanctity, or special
consecration to their task, was the sanctification of their natural endowments,
acquisitions, and study.

They were not passive in the writing of Scripture, even to that degree in which
they were passive in receiving revelation. They wrote, sometimes after long
interval, what they had received; and always according to the characteristics of
their individual genius, style of thoughts, and diction. But their faculties
were raised, invigorated, and strengthened to their highest pitch. What has been
termed the DYNAMICAL theory of inspiration, — namely, that its influence acted
upon and through the faculties of the inspired person, —is proved to be true by
all the phenomena of the several books. From the record of the most transcendent
visions down to the simplest private letter, the writer in Scripture is true to
himself. No individual author in the classical literature of Greece or Rome
differs more from every other than every writer in Scripture differs from his
fellow. Chronicler from Chronicler, Prophet from Prophet, Evangelist from
Evangelist, Apostle from Apostle.

3. Inspiration proper is then the specific influence on the mind, after these
pre-requisites are provided for. And, although no distinctions in degree are
alluded to in Scripture, the evidence may be found there that the one and the
selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will, 1 regulated His
inspiring influence by the need.

1 1 Corinthians 12:11.

(1.) There are some portions of the Holy Writings in which pure revelation and
inspiration coincide; where the inspiring Spirit would suggest the truth, and
also the words in which to clothe it; in fact, use His instruments almost
mechanically to subserve His purpose. It may not be easy to distinguish in every
case the results of the VERBAL inspiration; and the fact that the autographs of
the Bible have disappeared proves that the Holy Ghost has allowed nothing vital
to depend on such a distinction. The most sacred words of our Lord are
reproduced with slight variations by those to whose remembrance they were
recalled; but we observe that His promise ran: He shall teach you all things and
bring all things to your remembrance, pánta há, whatsoever I have said unto you.
1 The fluctuation of the expressions used by the several reporters does not
invalidate the assumption that in much of Scripture there is the inspiration of
SUGGESTION, especially of the things and sometimes of the very words.

1 John 14:26.

(2.) Many parts of the Bible, especially of the New Testament, are the logical
development and formal arrangement of doctrine. St. Paul in his Epistles reasons
from the Old Testament in assertion and defense of New-Testament truth; just as
he and the other preachers of the Gospel proved from Scripture that Jesus was
Christ. It is most obvious that in the conduct of his argument he uses his
faculties according to the discipline of his youth. But he himself tells us that
he also used words which the Holy Ghost teacheth, 1 and enjoyed that special
inspiration of the Spirit which was promised by our Lord: He will guide you into
all truth, hodeegeései, 2 He shall guide you in the way of reflection, argument,
and sound exposition. All the Apostles received for the Church and the world
what the Two received on the morning of the resurrection, and the Eleven
afterwards: Then opened He their under standing, that they might understand the
Scriptures. 3 1 1 Corinthians 2:13; 2 John 16:13; 3 Luke 24:45.

(3.) A large portion of Scripture is testimony to fact, of various kinds; and no
theory of inspiration of witnesses can be accepted which should destroy their
independent character as witnesses. They were inspired or moved to deliver their
independent and faithful testimony. Sometimes they have to register facts, or
supposed facts, which they gather from public records; sometimes to record
traditions, legends, current opinions, or uninspired predictions handed down by
tradition: in these cases they are only witnesses of what they found. Sometimes
they have to narrate events in which they had taken part to a greater or less
extent: in this case they are directed to chronicle the result of their own
investigations, each according to his own lights. Occasionally they are
concurrent witnesses of transactions which they observed from different points
of view: under such circumstances there is no previous harmonizing of the
testimonies, but each gives his own faithful witness, according to his Divinely
aided remembrance, the Divine aid, however, not necessarily rectifying the
original defect or incompleteness of observation.

Hence arise certain differences of presentation which the free Spirit has
permitted: differences which are just enough to show that the witnesses are sent
to give their evidence as independent, never enough to betray the supreme cause
of truth.

(4.) Once more, much of the Scripture is the result of what would be called
among men editorial arrangement. This extends over a considerable portion of the
Old Testament, and is what St. Luke, for instance, in the New claims for his own
function. Now the presiding and controlling influence of the Spirit was as much
needed for this as for any other department of the economy of revelation; but
His inspiration was of a different character.

He taught His instruments to distinguish in Hebrew literature what was His own
and what was not; He superintended the arrangement of the Psalms; He taught the
Evangelists to sift the oral traditions which were rich with the deposits and
memorials of the Sacred Life; and, generally, He watched over and directed the
construction of organic Holy Writ as one great body of Literature, in many human
respects like all other literature, but Divinely distinguished from every other.
THE SCRIPTURES OF INSPIRATION. The Scriptures themselves may be said to be
inspired as containing the permanent mind of the Spirit, and being the organ of
His abiding and living influence. Hence this attribute in many ways
distinguishes them from all other literature, sacred and secular.

TITLES The names given to the collection of Books confirm all that has been said
of them: whether those names are found in the Bible itself, or are the reverent
invention of later times. The writers themselves use the very highest
appellatives; and never refer to the contents of the volume as a whole, or to
any the least fragment of it, without some expression of deep reverence. This
habit was not confined to the Jews, ancient or modern, whose well-known
reverence approached superstition: it is shared by the disciples whom their Lord
forbade to call any man master on earth, who had brought them a new law, and
most certainly would not have suffered them to give such titles to any but the
writings of God. In this, too, they had His example. They are the SACRED
WRITINGS, tá hierá grámmata, 1 Thus St. Paul speaks of the Old Testament, and in
a connection which shows that the things which Timothy received through faith in
Christ Jesus were of equal authority, and therefore that the New was to be
included. Scripture everywhere, they are in this closing page HOLY SCRIPTURE:
The Writings pre-eminently, which refer not to the passing phenomena of time,
but to the things of eternity. This is the only title they receive as a whole.
They are the WORD OF GOD, however, in the estimation of Christians, as
enshrining the Evangelical record of the work of Christ which liveth and abideth
for ever; 2 so, as containing the compendium of all the distinct revelations
which are called individually the Words of God; and finally as suggesting, what
indeed they do not express, the close connection between the inspired Word and
the Word Incarnate. It is in some cases difficult to decide exegetically whether
the term Logos 3 refers to the Eternal Word or to the word spoken.

1 2 Timothy 3:15; 2 1 Peter 1:23; 3 Hebrews 4:12-13.

AUTHORITY.

1. Its plenary inspiration makes Holy Scripture the absolute and final
authority, allsufficient as the supreme Standard of Faith, Directory of Morals,
and Charter of Privileges to the Church of God. Of course, the Book of Divine
revelations cannot contain anything untrue; but its infallibility is by itself
especially connected with religious truth. It constitutes, as will be hereafter
seen, the absolute Canon or Book of Faith. It is comparatively silent as to
human science; it has its own laws of grammar and rhetoric; it quotes traditions
and admits records as testimony without pledging itself to their exactness. It
does not profess to be Divine in any such sense as should remove it from human
literature: a Bible of that kind would be something very different from what we
have. It is, after all, a Divine-human collection of documents: the precise
relation of the human to the Divine is a problem which has engaged much
attention, and has not yet been, though it may yet be, adequately solved. But in
the domain of religious truth, and the kingdom of God among men, its claim to
authority and sufficiency is absolute.

2. The evidence of the inspiration of the Scriptures belongs rather to the
historical review which will follow. It is sufficient to say here that it is
found in its own testimony, confirmed by its effects. Here once more we must
needs argue in what seems to be a circle. In fact, there are no evidences to be
brought to the question from without: only credentials from within. The Book may
be said to be inspired. St. Paul uses that expression, not of the writers, but
of what they write; and points to its profitable uses for the proof. His words,
already quoted, may be quoted again as the last authoritative assertion on the
subject which the Scriptures themselves contain. Every Scripture inspired of God
is also profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness.1 This was St. Paul’s final testimony, one of his Faithful
Sayings: uttered when all his own writings were in the world, concerning which
St. Peter used the same term grafás, classing them with the other Scriptures.2
When he thus spoke to Timothy, he was himself giving him instruction which the
older Scriptures could not give: hence the New Testament is included with the
Old in the general declaration. The power of the holy oracles in the souls of
all who study them has mostly been recognized as its supreme credential. The
Holy Ghost lives in the Word: and His testimony to that Word, as the organ of
His grace, is irresistible to the believer. To the unbeliever as such the
inspiration of the Bible cannot be proved.

1 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 2 Peter 3:16.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. The subject of Inspiration occupies a large place in the
history of religious thought and ecclesiastical polemics; which is not to be
wondered at, considering the vast issues at stake. On the question whether God
has given to His people an authoritative revelation of His will hangs every
interest of truth, assurance, and certitude of faith. If the Bible is what our
doctrine of inspiration asserts it to be, many great questions of controversy
among the Churches are, or ought to be, at once settled by it. This gives
harmony where all else is confusion. But the doctrine has been and is impugned:
and we must consider well the attacks upon a position so vital. Hence a general
view of its development is very important in the settlement of the doctrine. In
order to make the survey complete, it is well to consider the universal
tradition of mankind, the judgment of the Jewish Church, the ecclesiastical
dogmas in Christendom, and the present state of opinion and controversy as to
the nature and effect of inspiration.

HEATHENISM. In common with every doctrine of the Faith, this one had its
distorted shadow in the heathen world; but the distinction we establish between
Revelation and Inspiration is not here to be expected. Generally, a sentence of
Cicero may speak for all: Vetus opinio est, jam usque ab heroicis duct a
temporibus, eaque et populi Romani et OMNIUM GENTIUM firmata consensu, versari
quandam inter homines divinationem. More particularly, the manteis or Prophets,
announcing their frenzied oracles; the Poets, feigning or not feigning a special
influence on their minds; and the Lawgivers, of whom Numa is only a
representative, correspond, in a certain sense, to the Prophecy, to the
Hagiographa or Psalms, and to the Law, of the Jewish doctrine of inspiration. In
a certain sense only, however: for heathenism knew nothing, nor pretended to
know anything, of a great system of supernatural truth revealed to the minds of
men.

JUDAISM. The JEWISH CHURCH, before the Old-Testament Canon closed, had an
absolute faith in the inspiration of Moses and the Prophets, and the authors of
the other Holy Writings. They inherited a large miscellaneous literature, but
carefully distinguished and held sacred that portion which was given them
directly from above; and that distinction guided, as will be hereafter seen, the
settlement of the Canon. The Judaism of the Interval retained, with scarcely
perceptible diminution of intensity, the same faith. The apocrypha] authors
assert the essential difference between human and Divine writings. In the book
which Baruch wrote in Babylon. God is appealed to in these terms: As Thou
spakest by Thy servant Moses in the day when Thou didst command him to write Thy
law. Tobit also instructs his son to depart out of Nineveh, because that those
things which the prophet Jonas spake shall surely come to pass. In
Ecclesiasticus we read of many prophets by name, and of Isaiah who saw by an
excellent Spirit what was to come to pass at the last, and he comforted them
that mourned in Sion. 1 Jonathan, seeking the friendship of the Lacedemonians,
professes nevertheless not to need it, for that we have the holy books of
Scripture in our hands to comfort us. The book of Ecclesiasticus in its
occasional high prophetic tone seems to claim inspiration; but its claim was
never admitted; and it prays indeed for the restoration of lost prophecy, from
the cessation of which events were dated: raise up prophets that have been in
Thy Name; 2 as we read also in Maccabees, So there was a great affliction in
Israel, the like whereof was not since the time that a prophet was not seen
among them. Philo, an Alexandrian Jew, betrays the influence of Greek thought;
but he has a high theory of inspiration, and declares that the prophets are
Divine Interpreters, God making use of them as organs to manifest His will,
suggesting what they must say. Josephus represents the purer Palestinian belief:
"It is implanted in every Jew from the hour of his birth to esteem these
writings as the ordinances of God, and to stand by them; in defense of them, if
need be, cheerfully to die." He, like Philo, includes the historical books among
the records of inspiration; and assigns an equal value to all inspired
utterances. With later Judaism we need not much concern ourselves. It has lost
its authority as a witness, in consequence of its opposition to the Third Person
of the Holy Trinity Whom Christianity has honored as the Inspirer. Moses
Maimonides, in the twelfth century, was the first to devise three stages of
inspiration: the MOSAIC, without dream, fearless, face to face, constant, in
which none shared the prerogative of Moses; the PROPHETIC, in which the pure
truth was simply unveiled; and that of the KETHUBIM, or Hagiographa, given by
the Holy Spirit disclosing part of the truth in dreams or otherwise.

Maimonides is the master genius of modern orthodox Judaism: "A Mose ad Mosem non
surrexit sicut Moses" is a saying that expresses its method of rejecting the
Prophet greater than Moses. But, apart from these philosophical notions of
modern Judaism, the residuary and obsolete Jewish Church—if it may be so
called—has always been faithful to its original and high doctrine of
inspiration.

1 Ecc. 48:24; 2 Ecc. 36:15. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. In the Christian Church the
dogma has had an important process of development, or rather of variations in
theological opinion.

PATRISTIC.

1. The Patristic age furnishes no definition of inspiration, but a very high
doctrine was maintained. The Apostolical Fathers quote the Old Testament exactly
as the Apostles do: with the same reverent trust, and also with the same
freedom. Clemens Romanus, the first uninspired Christian writer, assigns to the
Scriptures of both Testaments the fullest inspiration; they are "the true
sayings of the Holy Ghost." Polycarp quotes the Apostles’ words as being words
of Scripture; and St. Paul in particular is by more than one said to write as
theopneustos, or divinitus inspiratus. Generally these earliest authorities make
the Two Testaments One Scripture. The Apologists unanimously teach, or rather
exhibit, almost a mechanical idea of it; some of them, however, limiting its
range to religious truth. They adopt the figure of the Lyre on which the Holy
Ghost discoursed. Justin Martyr used this figure in what may be regarded as the
first theological definition: Oute thuses oute anthrospins ennoia could men know
such great and heavenly things, but by a gift, doron, coming down on them . .
.phktron, osper organo kith apas tinos ho luras chomenon. Tertullian, who
invented many theological terms, first used that of INSPIRATIO. The early
Fathers generally and as a body maintained the same high view: Origen, erring on
many other points, held on this the highest theory. Chrysostom and Augustine
make the prophets the Mouth and the Hand of God: the latter speaks of the
venerabilem stylum Sanctae Scripturae. The NICENE CREED includes the Apostles
when it confesses to the Holy Ghost WHO SPAKE BY THE PROPHETS; this was the
witness of the early and undivided Church to the inspiration of the Old
Testament through the agency of the Personal Spirit, TO LALHSON DIA TON
PROTHTON. In harmony with this the Holy Ghost was called THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT:
Pneuma te to prophtikon sebometha kai proskunouhen. On the whole, the Patristic
Church was faithful to the doctrine which the last of the early Fathers, Gregory
the Great, represented when he said: "It is needless to ask what writer wrote,
as the Holy Ghost was the only author: it is superfluous to inquire with what
pen an author writes." An appeal to the words of the Old or the New Testament,
of either or of both, was an end of all controversy in those days as it is in
our own.

2. Withal there were, as might be expected, the germs of later freedom and
indeed laxity. The Montanist heresy, which assumed a series of Pentecosts and
administrations of the inspiring Spirit, was wholly rejected; but it has had its
modern representatives. The Alexandrian doctors, generally sound, here and there
allude to an inspiration common to the prophecies of heathenism and Scriptural
prophecies. Tertullian sometimes spoke, as others have spoken since, of an
inspiration of all edifying books. Origen and Augustine seem to have admitted
that some portions of the Bible were given without inspiration, or by
inspiration of a limited degree, some authors, even more than they, laid stress
upon the subjective or human element. And this was carried in the Antiochene
school, represented by Theodore of Mopsuestia, to an extreme: the writers were
mirrors reflecting according to their polish. Theodore was condemned by the
Fifth Ecumenical Council for surrendering certain books of the Old Testament and
of the New. But, like Luther, who followed him in this, he held a high doctrine
as to the inspiration of what he accepted; though, like Luther, applying a
subjective canon of his own to determine what ought to be Scripture or what
ought to be excluded.

MEDIAEVAL. In the Mediaeval Church, the doctrine of inspiration was obscured by
the gradual elevation of Tradition into a co-ordinate rank: in fact, the notion
of two inspirations—that of the Spirit in the Bible, and of the Spirit in the
Church — was gradually established. But the theory did not otherwise suffer: the
words of Scripture were still regarded as having a normal authority of their
own. Fredegisus of Tours (804) even laid down a most rigorous mechanical
statement on the subject. But he was-opposed by freer theories, which in the
rationalist treatment of Abelard and the subtile disquisitions of Thomas Aquinas
anticipated later distinctions of the Spirit’s inspiring influence. The-Mystics,
who in this age were mostly Pantheistic in their tendencies, gave up any
definite doctrine of inspiration, making it common to all saints in their
intuition of Divine things; and they thus provoked in some of the precursors of
the Reformation a recoil to the most rigid possible views. Meanwhile the
coordination of oral tradition steadily advanced, until it was formulated at the
Council of Trent thus: Sanctus Synodus, hoc sibi perpetuo ante oculos proponens,
ut sublatis erroribus puritas ipsa evangelii in ecclesia conservetur,
perspiciensque hanc veritatem et disciplinam contineri in libris scriptis et
sine scripto traditionibus, quae ex ipsius Christi ore ab Apostolis acceptae,
aut ab ipsis Apostolis S. S.dictante, quasi per manus traditae ad nos usque
pervenerunt. orthodoxorum patrum exempla secuta omnes libros tam V. quam N. T.,
cum utriusque unus Deus sit auctor, necnon traditiones ipsas, tum ad fidem quum
ad mores pertinentes, tan-quam vel ore tenus a Christo vel a S. S. dictatas et
continua successione in Ecclesia Catholica conservatas, PARA PIETATIS AFFECTO AC
REVERENTIA suscipit et veneratur. Si quis autem traditiones praedictas sciens et
prudens contemserit, anathema sit.

THEREFORMATION. The Reformation began in earnest the discussion of the dogma, as
bound up with its cardinal principle, of the sufficiency of Scripture for all
things pertaining to human salvation.

1. Its leaders were lax in their first decisions. Luther insisted on a material
inspiration, as to doctrine, and a formal, as to the manner, which was of less
importance: he subjected the books of the New Testament to the criterion of his
own judgment as to their Evangelical character, and rejected, for instance, the
Epistle of St. James. Calvin went also very far in the admission of the human
peculiarities. Hence, their Romish opponents found in this laxity a strong
argument in favor of Tradition. The Formularies of the two branches of the
Reformation varied. The Augsburg Confession is content with the absolute
regulative authority of Scripture: "Regulam autem habemus, ut verbum Dei condat
articulos fidei." The Reformed Confessions were stronger: the "Formula Consensus
Helvetici" says: "Hebraicus codex V. T., tum quoad consonas, tum quoad vocalia,
sive puncta ipsa sive punctorum saltem potestatem, et tum quoad res tum quoad
verba, Theopneustos." This was directed against Luther, who asserted that wood,
hay, and stubble might be in the prophets, though the substance was there that
could not be burned. The Anglican Articles are like the Lutheran more negative,
the Westminster Confession more rigid. But the dogmatic divines of the new
Churches tended gradually to the very highest rigor, as expressed in the
Helvetic Formulary: thus Buxtorf maintained, irrationally, that the very vowel
points of the Hebrew were inspired. In harmony with this, they asserted that the
TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI was the sole ground of assurance as to the Divine
authority of Scripture, while the Affectiones Scripture vindicated it to human
faith and commended it to human acceptance: two incontrovertible truths, which,
however, needed not the mechanical or Rabbinical doctrine.

2. The recoil from this extreme was to be expected. The reaction commenced with
the early ARMINIAN divines, who reserved the direct action of the Spirit for
matters of faith, leaving historical research and memory to do their part. Thus
Grotius says: A Spiritu Sancto dictari historias non opus fuit; satis fuit
scriptorem memoria valere, aut diligentia in describendis veterum commentariis.
The later Lutherans introduced grades of inspiration: Calixtus, those of
Revelation and Assistance; Pfaff, those of Revelation, Direction as to dogma,
and Permission as to all else. Witsius, however, in Holland, revived and
maintained the more rigid view. The Jesuits, in the sixteenth century,
introduced a convenient theory of POSTSPIRATIO, which should retrospectively
elevate such books as the Maccabees into Scripture. This was protested against
by the University of Louvain (1588), and left undecided by Sixtus V. The Romish
Church has never gone beyond Perrone, one of its living representatives: "
Diximus saltem QUOAD RES ET SENTENTIAS, quia cum noluerit Ecclesia definire, seu
dirimere quaestionem inter scholasticos agitatam, utrum preterea Deus verba ipsa
dictaverit, nexumque verborum et periodorum, ideo ne controversiam domesticam
cum ecclesiae doctrina temere permisceremus, coarctavimus propositionis sensum
ad rei substantiam, sine qua vera Inspiratio Divina neque est neque intelligi
quidem potest." Meanwhile modern Mysticism has made the Internal Light
co-ordinate with inspiration, just as Romanism has made Tradition. The highest
Mystics, of all communions, rose sublimely above the written Word. The Pietists,
however, such as Arndt, Spener, and the Bengel School, paid full honor to the
written Scripture, maintaining, however, the supremacy of the Living Spirit. The
Quakers in their formularies—for they have them—give ambiguous statements:
Barclay supposes that the Scripture only guides the Christian’s internal
standard. The early Socinians believed in inspiration: without the specific
Personal Inspirer, though as a specific influence. The Racovian Catechism
indicates traces of the truth from which modern Unitarianism has declined, as it
has receded from many of the other higher doctrines of Socinianism.

MOREMODERNHYPOTHESES.

1. Most orthodox churches have more recently endeavored to maintain a doctrine
of Plenary inspiration in harmony with the notion of different DEGREES.
Rejecting the terms MECHANICAL and VERBAL, as both inconsistent with the human
element, they have sometimes used DYNAMICAL, as indicating that the inspiring
influence was not so much UPON as IN and THROUGH the writers; the result,
however, being the infallible Rule of Faith delivered by the instrumentality of
men acted upon according to the laws of their own nature. This has required the
distinction of SUGGESTION, the direct revelation of things otherwise unknown;
ELEVATION, providing for the due preparation of the instruments; and
SUPERINTENDENT, as guarding the processes from the intrusion of error. The
second of these is by many, naturally enough, thought superfluous. The
Inspiration is PLENARY, as making the Holy Spirit responsible for the truth of
all the matter; but not VERBAL, as if He dictated the very words, which in some
cases are lost with the autographs of Scripture. Those who reject all such
theories of distinction are wont to attribute them to the influence of
Maimonides: but unjustly, for they are held by some of the most eminent and
orthodox writers on the subject in all churches; and in some form must be
accepted by every dispassionate student as nowhere contradicted by Scripture.

2. This view of the co-ordination of the Divine and Human undoubtedly lies at
the foundation of the true doctrine; but its dogmatic definition is difficult
and as dangerous as difficult.

(1.) The least error here leads to an annihilation of the essential distinction
between the action of the Spirit of God on Apostles and Prophets and His general
influence in purifying the regenerate faculties for the apprehension of truth.
The notion of an analogy between this unity of Divine and human and the Divine
and human nature in Christ is liable to the same errors which have beset the
doctrine of our Lord’s own Person. The Divine element has been and is still by
many carried to an extreme in the view of inspiration that makes the human
faculties absolutely passive: the Eutychian perversion, so to speak, according
to which there is no humanity or human agency left. This has been sufficiently
referred to, and is indeed self-convicted. But the reaction is more important in
its consequences: the Nestorian perversion, on the other hand, which assigns to
the human element such a distinctness and such an ascendancy as leaves no room
for a distinct, inspiring influence of the Holy Ghost.

(2.) Schleiermacher has given the tone to much modern English thought on this
and other subjects. Coleridge, Morell, Maurice, and others regard the inspiring
energy as only the impartation of clear intuitions of spiritual truth by
extraordinary means: namely, the raising of the faculties of the mind to a
higher potency of what all good men possess. Their notion makes inspiration
simply a sympathy with the revealing mind of Christ, the Apostles having had it
only in a higher degree than ourselves. The apostrophe of Moses, Enviest thou
for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the
Lord would put His Spirit upon them! 1 loses its meaning. There is on this
assumption no special prerogative of inspiration: all believers are inspired
according to the measure of their union with the Lord. If the mechanical theory
swallowed up the men in the Inspirer this loses the Inspirer in the men: both
errors are equally to be avoided.

1 Numbers 11:29.

(3.) Again, great numbers of orthodox theologians follow Rothe, Martensen, and
others, in regarding each writer as contributing his independent portion of what
is perfect truth only when the aggregate is received. However much this
principle may be condemned in the form it commonly assumes, there is in it much
truth. The Bible is one organic whole.

Truth is in every part; the whole truth, however, is only in the complete Bible.
The writers of the Old Testament were inspired in anticipation of the New; and
the writers of the New Testament were inspired to supplement the Old. The
Synoptic Evangelists do not give the full mind of the Spirit as to the Person of
Christ; but St. John’s presentation of it requires theirs as a background. So,
descending into details, every writer in the New Testament adds some fruit of
inspiration which is not found in any other. There is hardly a recorded event in
the Lord’s life which is not transmitted by the Holy Ghost with various shades
of difference in the several Evangelists, and to be understood fully only when
the different recorders are collected. But it is obvious that all this touches
the results of inspiration, and not inspiration itself.

(4.) There is a strong disposition to unite two things which are incompatible:
the belief in an Inspiring Spirit responsible for all spiritual truth with the
hypothesis that the human element is liable to all the common infirmities of
human composition. When the analogy of our Lord’s one Person in two natures is
pressed into the service of this theory, it ought not to be forgotten that the
human nature of our Lord was sinless and incapable of sin. If its upholders
allow that the human element in the Bible is unsusceptible of real error,
however affected by infirmity, their doctrine may be made safe, and, if safe, it
is deeply interesting and instructive. But that is not generally the view of
those to whom we refer.

They would indeed limit the possible incorrectness of our present form of
Scripture to things entirely unconnected with faith; and account for it in
various ways. Some of these methods are consistent with the dignity of the Word
of God: they are such as have been hinted at already. Others are vain and
needless devices, and surrender the principle of inspiration to vagueness and
uncertainty.

THEAPOLOGYOF INSPIRATION.

Modern assaults on the inspiration of Scripture are of two kinds: they either
deny its possibility on abstract grounds, as they deny the possibility of
revelation generally, or they seek to resist the evidences of its inspiration as
a concrete book.

PHILOSOPHY AND NATURALISM.

1. Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, united the two methods of attack. He
rejected, on Pantheistic principles, the idea of any independent action of God,
and was the first in later times to accumulate objections against the dogma
derived from the text itself. He has not been followed by many in his extreme
Pantheism; but Deism in England, and Rationalism or Illuminism in Germany and
France, joined with Pantheistic philosophy in refusing to admit any Divine
inspiration which should supplement the religion of nature as based on the
intuitional consciousness of the human mind and its inherent perception of
truth. But the defense of revelation generally is the defense of the method of
imparting it. The possibility of inspiration consistently denied by Pantheism is
inconsistently denied by Deism; for, with the assumption of a personal God Who
is not transcendent but reveals Himself, all their arguments fall. Apart,
however, from such denials of revelation generally, this specific doctrine is
philosophically opposed by many on psychological grounds. The views of
Schleiermacher, and many who echo him, have already been referred to as
introducing a false notion of the doctrine. They do in fact really lead to a
denial of it altogether. It is thought that religious knowledge, like all
knowledge, is only the intuitional consciousness gazing upon realities; and,
therefore, that it is unphilosophical to distinguish between the inspiration of
the writers of Scripture and the general Christian consciousness. But this
notion undermines the foundations of a supernatural disclosure of the mind of
God to man. Some seek to make a compromise.

They think, with Coleridge, that in old time God did super-naturally communicate
to men knowledge by the Law and the Prophets; but that in these latter and freer
days He makes common His revelations through the grace of enlightenment given to
all. Hence, so far as the Christian revelation is concerned, there is no
infallible authority beyond the testimonies of fallible consciousness. The more
thoroughly the objections to a specific influence on the mind from without are
considered, the more baseless will they appear.

One human spirit can influence, and, as it were, inspire another. But here we
have to do with the Creator of the human spirit, "Who can not only move upon it
but lodge His truth within it. There is literally no philosophical argument of
any value against the Christian doctrine of a special inspiring influence of the
Holy Ghost.

INTERNAL DIFFICULTIES AND DISCREPANCIES. From very early times the industry of
skepticism has been busy with the internal inconsistencies of Scripture, of
which a very formidable list has been made out. Infidels early learned to use
this weapon: it did not escape them that the Biblical library abounds, literally
abounds, with the materials for their task; the enemies of the Bible they have
thought to find in its own household. But it will be seen by the student who
gives the records of revelation the advantage of being supposed consistent,
unless positive proof of inconsistency is found, that there are only such
difficulties in the Scriptures as might be expected in such a book, written as
it was written, and for the disciplinary, educational purpose which it has in
view. Very much is done in the way of answering objections thus urged by simply
analyzing them. Such an analysis, however, to be of any value must be complete;
and the examination it requires belongs to the departments of Biblical
Introduction and Hermeneutics. All that is possible in our dogmatic system is to
indicate some general principles that must be remembered in conducting it, and
to point out the bearing of the question on our present doctrine.

1. Many discrepancies are, or at least may be, the result of copying and
translation. We have not the Originals; there is not a solitary autograph of
Prophet or Apostle extant; and many errors of transcription may be admitted, and
indeed must be admitted, by every candid student of the text: the inspiring
Spirit has watched over the vicissitudes incident to the transmission of human
literature without superseding them. The consideration of this question,
however, belongs to Biblical Criticism. It is enough here to say, that there are
few portions of Holy Scripture of which we can be sure that they lie before us
precisely as they left the hand of the first writers. The process of copying the
Hebrew of the Old Testament was peculiarly liable to danger: from the similarity
of the letters, generally, and specifically from the ancient habit of
representing numbers by letters of the alphabet, the difference between units
and hundreds and thousands being marked by the addition of points to the units.
This is a fact generally conceded. Dr. Kennicott says, " That the Jewish
transcribers did frequently express the Bible numbers in the original by single
letters is well known to the learned." And Winer: "In expressing numbers, the
Jews, in the period after the Captivity, employed the letters of the alphabet,
as is evident from the inscriptions of the so-called Samaritan coins; and it is
not improbable that the Old Hebrews did the same, just as the Greeks, who
derived their alphabet from the Phoenicians, from the earliest ages expressed
their numbers by letters. From the confounding of similarly shaped letters when
used for numerals, and from the subsequent writing out the same in words, can be
explained satisfactorily in part the enormous sums in the Old-Testament books,
and the contradictions in their statement of numbers; yet caution is necessary
here." A very large number of the contradictory historical statements detected
by comparing the Chronicles with the Kings, and Ezra with Nehemiah, and the
Genealogical Tables one with another, may fairly be thus explained. Nor should
any weight be attached to these, though numbered by hundreds: each of them must
be carefully sifted, and the result will generally be satisfactory. When it is
not so, we are bound to believe that errors have crept in through the operation
of causes that we cannot now trace. For instance, we read in one account that
the molten sea contained two thousand baths; 1 in another, and it received and
held three thousand baths. 2 Now here we have an instance that may stand for
many. Either 2, 2000, has been confounded with 3, 3000—the more probable
solution—or the words received and held suggest that it was capable of
containing the larger number. This is the first example that occurs: nothing but
want of space prevents reference to many others. In this case we need not
absolutely resort to a corruption of the text; but there are others in which
there is no other hypothesis open. When we read seven hundred horsemen in one
account 3 and seven thousand horsemen 4 in another, we must suppose that
shaanaah, has been miswritten for eleph, an easy mistake. In multitudes of texts
we must accept such errors; steadfastly believing, however, that they are thus
to be accounted for. And that, because we are equally bound to believe that the
Scriptures of the Old Testament which St. Paul calls the Oracles of God 5 were
originally written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The New Testament
has not been shielded from the errors of transcription: mistakes sometimes
arising from carelessness, sometimes from design, but in neither case obviated
by any continuous miracle. In the New Testament we have some early manuscripts
that supply a standard of judgment; but it cannot be absolutely asserted that
there are not errors now appearing even in all of them; and one or two seeming
misstatements in historical allusion may be among the number. Here the only
question that concerns us is, not how to reconcile inspiration with error in the
Bible, but inspiration with a Bible liable to corruption in the text. That is a
question not hard of solution. It is enough to the believer to accept the fact,
and to admit all its consequences into his theory of inspiration. The holy men
who wrote these books were inspired; but their inspiration left no protective
virtue in these documents themselves. All we can say is, that it has not pleased
God to bind up His eternal truth absolutely and inseparably for good and evil
with documents that perish in the using. The truth of the Bible is not staked
upon the truth of every sentence that may be found in our copies of it.
Meanwhile, it may be affirmed, on the other hand, that so far as concerns that
Word of God which liveth and abideth forever, 6 no corruptions of the written
text have been suffered to interfere with its perfect presentation. Not one of
all the multitude of various readings in the margins of both Testaments affects
in the slightest degree the foundation of the doctrine on which man’s salvation
depends.

1 1 Kings 7:26; 2 2 Chronicles 4:5; 3 2 Samuel 8:4; 4 1 Chronicles 18:4; 5
Romans 3:2; 6 1 Peter 1:23.

2. Many of the arguments urged against the inspiration of Scripture are really
directed against a false or exaggerated notion of its verbal character, and
consequently fall away before a freer theory. That many words and sentences were
given or suggested to the writers cannot be doubted by anyone who considers the
solemn importance of some of the leading terms of Scripture. But to assert that
every word was put into the mind of every writer on every subject is to lay on
our doctrine a burden too heavy to be borne. It is hard to suppose that the very
words in that case would not have been protected forever. And such inspiration
would have been too mechanical to harmonies with the obvious and undeniable
range given to the human faculties. But the chief point is that this notion
furnishes ground of opposition which it is difficult to resist. Very many
instances occur in the Gospels of variation in the reports of our Lord’s words,
on the most solemn occasions, which in no case affect their sacred spirit and
eternal meaning, but are absolutely incompatible with verbal inspiration. Our
Lord could not have spoken the several exact words placed in His lips: what they
severally mean He did speak. To take only one example, and that of the highest
possible solemnity, we read the following accounts.

Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for
(peri) many, for remission of sins. 1 Again: This is My blood of the covenant,
which is shed for (uper) many. 2 Again: This cup is the new covenant in My
blood, which is shed for (uper) you. 3 Once more: This cup is the new covenant
in My blood. This do, as oft as ye drink, in remembrance of Me. 4 Not to speak
of variations in the historical scenery of the first institution of the Lord’s
Supper, transpositions, derangements, and omissions, there is evidence here that
much is left to the human instrument, and that the thing signified is alone
supreme. But there is no evidence in this, or in the multitude of cases of which
this is an example, against the fact of the plenary inspiration and absolute
authority of the records. The three recorders and St. Paul—who here supplements
the Evangelists even as he supplemented the Apostolic company—issued their
authoritative accounts from the selfsame Spirit, dividing to each severally as
He would.

1 Matthew 26:28; 2 Mark 14:24; 3 Luke 22:21; 4 1 Corinthians 11:25.

3. Objections urged against the inspiration of Scripture on the ground of its
science, its religious doctrine, its miraculous element, its ethics, and
generally its inconsistency with itself or with the preconceived notions of men,
are on the whole easily met. The Holy Ghost never delivers to man as science
what science contradicts: to human science as such the Bible does not profess to
contribute anything. Strong in our conviction that this book, or library of
books, is the record of that Providential government for the sake of which the
world exists, we may be sure that it will not be contradicted in fundamental
points by anything that the records of nature, or the authentic annals of
history, will disclose. There are unsearchable mysteries in the field of science
as there are in the field of revelation: it is our wisdom to submit to them in
both, waiting for the final reconciliation. But on this subject enough has been
said elsewhere. As to the long array of doctrinal objections, they are literally
not to be heard as against inspiration. The teaching of the Bible, as a whole,
is absolutely self-consistent, supposing the idea of development to be
introduced: admitting that idea, the gradual evolution of truth as to God and as
to man, and as to the Incarnation uniting God and man, is precisely at all
points worthy of the controlling Spirit, and such as only the controlling Spirit
could have conducted. Particular instances of discord, as for instance between
St. Paul and St. James, are in every single case such as a superficial glance
discovers and a deeper meditation explains. There is much more force in the
allegation that the ethical principles of the Scripture are not equable and
uniform. But here also nothing but a calm investigation will do justice to all
the elements of the question. Everywhere in the composition of the Bible the
human element largely remains. As men are used as witnesses giving their
testimony according to their best lights—true as testimony, but stating what the
Spirit may use other witnesses to supplement—so human passions enter without
receiving Divine approval. The human documents and human compositions are
sometimes quoted, without express Divine approval of their spirit or
confirmation of their statements. There are many anomalies and difficulties
which will never be cleared up, it may be, because we have lost the key to their
solution: certain it is, that many of the stumbling-blocks of modern criticism
gave no trouble to the early Church, better informed than we are. It is equally
certain that many supposed flaws in the Bible which are regarded as negativing
its plenary inspiration disappear before profound investigation; and that many
of them are flaws only when regarded in the light of a false theory of the
doctrine. Men of God in both economies have all their faults described; and
sometimes those faults are taken up into the order of Providence; but in no
solitary instance is there any doubt about the fact that the Holy God loveth
righteousness. Everyone allows that the Scriptures, as a whole, have one end,
the establishment of holiness in man: then this admission should bar the
possibility of misinterpreting passages that might seem to look the other way.
That there are minor collisions in the ethics is certain; but we must remember
that in every such case there is a reason given. But the heaviest impeachment
leaves all else behind and attacks the conduct of God Himself in His dealing
with sinful men. Now this is a question of Theodicy and not of inspiration. The
Bible does reveal a wrath of God displayed in most mysterious ways in the
present world; and foretells its display in the world to come. We see enough
around to make us hesitate about refusing acceptance to the strange events
recorded in Scripture, where miracle is one of the present powers of the world.
But, in any case, they are no argument against the inspiration of Holy Writ as
such: what force these apparent anomalies in the Divine conduct have is on the
side of Atheism.

4. It must always be remembered that the Bible is a book adapted to man’s
probationary estate. Our probation is conducted in a world of the mysteries of
which we know but little. The world of revelation has also its unsolved secrets.
We know, indeed, much about the fabric of Scripture; but there is much concealed
from us. The Holy Ghost never defines inspiration as applied to the whole body
of Scripture. We have to construct our theory from the facts; and our theory
must take those indisputable facts as it finds them. As a whole, the Bible
shines upon the spirit of man as the sun in the firmament: not less clear, not
less self-evidencing. The difficulties are for the trial of our faith, our
diligence, our humility; and for the exercise of our souls in dependence, not
upon the letter but upon the spirit. As Bishop Butler says: "We are wholly
ignorant what degree of new knowledge it were to be expected God would give
mankind by revelation, upon supposition of His affording one, or how far, or in
what way, He would interpose miraculously to qualify them, to whom He should
originally make the revelation, for communicating the knowledge given by it; and
to secure its being transmitted to posterity." 5. Lastly, there is a high ground
to be taken by a believer in the Christian revelation, that is by one who trusts
in Jesus, which being taken must not be left for a moment. To this we have
referred again and again: it is the conclusion of the whole matter. He came up
out of the Old Testament with the Old Testament in His hand: and made the voices
of Moses and the ancient prophets His own voice. Long after the representatives
of the old economy vanished on the Mount, leaving Him alone Whom all must hear,
He expressly summed up their testimony as borne to Himself from first to last:
beginning at Moses and at all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the
Scriptures the things concerning Himself. 1 He made no exception, and no
reservation. The framework of our living Savior is the Holy Bible: He is set in
it. The believer in Christ, the eternal Oracle of God, receives the Scriptures
from His hands as clothed with a Divine authority; if it were not so, if the
Divine unction failed to descend upon any part of them, He would have told us.

He has no doubt; he must have no doubt, that the inspiring Spirit has deposited
in the Church a true testimony of the history of redemption. Whilst the attack
and the defense are going on, it is his wisdom to wait in tranquil confidence.
He must not take alarm, and capitulate. He must not abandon the outworks, nor
intrench himself in the supposed Bible within the Bible, in the supposed Spirit
in the letter. He must not do this, because the Christian revelation is bound up
with its Two Testaments; and he may be sure that the Holy Ghost will support him
and honor him in his fidelity to the Records of his Faith.

1 Luke 24:27.


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  CHAPTER 4: 06. VOL 01 - THE CANON: THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH
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The Canon: The Divine Rule of Faith THE CANON: The Divine Rule of Faith THE
CANON OF SCRIPTURE

SCRIPTURAL Old Testament Ratified in New

NEW TESTAMENT

HISTORICAL Earlier and Later History of Canon ASSAULTS AND EVIDENCES THE RULE OF
FAITH OBJECTIVE STANDARD OF DOCTRINE AND MORALS AND PRIVILEGES RATIONALISM AND
TRADITIONALISM SUBJECTIVE CANON BIBLICAL CRITICISM FABRIC OF THE BIBLE:

Introduction, History

PHILOLOGY

HERMENEUTICS EXEGESIS AND THEOLOGY

Having considered the Faith as the revelation of God in Christ accepted by man,
and the Divinity of its records as insured by their inspiration, it remains that
we complete the discussion of the subject by making prominent the specific
character of the Bible as the Canon or authoritative Rule of Christian doctrine
and practice. Two different uses of the term will suggest a division.
Objectively, the body of sacred writings was determined, under the guidance of
the Divine Spirit, by the application of a Canon, or rule, to which they were
found to be conformed: here we shall have the Canonical Scriptures.

Subjectively, under the illumination of the same Spirit, these tested Scriptures
became the absolute and final standard within the Christian Church: here we
shall have to consider The Rule of Faith and its interpretation as a Sacred
Text. The word kanónos, signifies literally a straight rod; and metaphorically a
testing rule or the organ of the critical faculty in ethics, or art, or
language. It is also, in a passive sense, used to denote that which has been
measured and determined. St. Paul applies the term both actively and passively
in the only passages where it occurs in the New Testament. 1 In the Patristic
writings it is employed with reference to the Rule of the Church, the Rule of
Faith, and the Rule of Truth; and the decisions of synods were called Canons.
The derivatives of Canon were applied to the Scriptures before the term itself:
they were Canonized Books, Libri Canonizati. Amphilochius, in a catalogue of the
Scriptures (cir. 380), first adopted the word to signify the rule, or criterion,
or standard, by which the contents of the Bible must be settled. From the time
of Jerome it has been current and established in both senses, the one dependent
on the other.

1 Galatians 6:16; 2 Corinthians 10:13-16. THE CANON. The objective Canon is the
collection of all the sacred writings of the two dispensations. The Christian
Church received the Canon of the Old Testament in its integrity from the Jewish,
and that of the New from the Apostles, the Savior’s authority being the
guarantee of both. It will be necessary first to establish these points by
Scripture itself, and then to review the history of the formation of the entire
Canon: examining briefly the subsequent variations of opinion as to its exact
limits: both, however, only so far as they affect the Christian Rule of Faith.

SCRIPTURAL The Canon of the Old Testament is ratified in the New, as containing
the infallible and sufficient Oracles of God for the older dispensation: thus
the Hebrew Scriptures, precisely as we now receive and hold them, are
authenticated, and the so-called Apocryphal books are excluded. The collection
of writings now called the New Testament also give indications of what might
naturally be expected, that they would in due time constitute a new and
supplementary Canon consummating the former.

THEOLD-TESTAMENTCANON.

We have the fullest assurance that the Old Testament, as we hold it, was
accepted by our Lord. He refers to the ancient distinction of The Law, Towraah,
containing the Pentateuch: The Prophets, Nabiy; and The Writings or The Psalms,
zamiyr, the Hagiographa. The demarcations of these three departments were not
precisely defined; but sufficiently to identify our present Hebrew volume as the
same which Jesus had in His Land and bade His disciples’ study. The importance
of such a supreme testimony cannot be exaggerated: it may be placed, and
sometimes we must place it, in the stead of many other arguments.

1. This testimony excludes the apocryphal books: the three-fold arrangement is,
in fact, recognized and admitted by some of these writings themselves, which
shows that they were avowedly excluded from the Canon. The term APOCRYPHA came
into use in the second Christian century, to designate books of hidden origin
(occulta origo), or perhaps secret authority (secreta auctoritas); and certainly
with the further meaning of spurious and heretical in opposition to the accepted
writings of the Church. Whatever was the precise application of the plain Greek
word, it implied an absolute authority in the collection from which they were
excluded, and the reason for their exclusion. The New Testament never quotes or
alludes to these books. It may be said that this is not a decisive argument, as
several books of the Old Testament are equally unrecognized: but it must be
remembered that when the Law, or the Prophets, or the Psalms are quoted, all is
authenticated that these conventional divisions were known to include. It may be
urged also that the Lord does not, any more than His Apostles, specify the exact
number of books contained in these divisions: especially in the last, which was
the most undetermined. But we have the sufficient evidence of contemporary
Hebrews to supply that deficiency.

Josephus says: " We have only twenty-two books which are to be trusted as having
Divine authority, of which five are the books of Moses. From his death to the
reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, the prophets, who were the successors of
Moses, have written in thirteen books. The remaining ’four contain hymns to God,
and documents of life for human edification." But thus we arc led to the next
point.

2. This division seems to set its seal on the means by which the Old-Testament
Canon had been arranged and ratified. Our Lord assumed, what St. Paul expressed,
that to the Jews, as a people, were committed the oracles of God. By accepting
these Scriptures, with their extant divisions, He silently confirmed a long
history, most of the details of which are lost. It is evident in the current of
Biblical history that there had been a gradual collection from the beginning.
The Book of the Law was deposited in the side of the ark of the covenant of the
Lord. 1 This original was to be copied by every future king: and it shall be
with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life. 2 Nevertheless,
Josiah had not seen it when Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the
scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord; 3 though we
know not in how many hands copies might have been found. For it had been
enlarged by other writings, and autographs may have been circulated by Joshua,
of whom it is said that he wrote these words in the book of the law of God, 4
and Samuel, who told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a
book, and laid it up before the Lord. 5 Hence Jehoshaphat sent out his Levites
who taught in Judah, and had the look of the law of the Lord with them, and went
about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people. 6 Proverbs also
were collected; as we read of the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of
Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out. 7 One general Book seems to have been
authoritative, of which the prophet spoke, Seek ye out of the book of the Lord
and read. 8 But, until the Captivity, there was no distinction in the classes of
writings. It was one volume that Daniel quoted, and Ezra and Nehemiah read
before the people from morning until mid-day. 9 When the Jewish polity was
reorganized there was a final revision. The universal tradition of the ancient
Church assigned to Ezra, and the Great Synagogue, the function of arranging
their Scriptures in their present form; the persecution of Antiochus, and the
proscription of the sacred books, having given occasion to the fixing of the
Canon. This question, however, must be studied in its appropriate literature. It
may be admitted that the supposed Synagogue of Jewish tradition represents a
succession of pious men from Ezra to Simon the Just, who was high priest after
the death of Alexander the Great. The final revision and collection was not, on
this supposition, finished in the time of Ezra. But the Savior’s authority gives
a retrospective sanction to the final authentication, however it was
accomplished.

1 Deuteronomy 31:26; 2 Deuteronomy 17:19; 3 2 Kings 22:8; 4 Joshua 24:26; 5 1
Samuel 10:25; 6 2 Chronicles 17:9; 7 Proverbs 25:1; 8 Isaiah 34:16; 9 Nehemiah
8:3.

THENEW-TESTAMENTCANON.

There is no plain declaration in the New Testament that the ancient Canon was to
be supplemented by another collection of books: not only is there no plain
declaration, but an almost total silence on the subject. When we remember how
often the Old Testament refers to the Volume which was, from age to age, in
course of enlargement, it seems an anomaly that there should be no similar
reference in the New. We read of the Word of truth: 1 of the truth as truth is
in Jesus; 2 of the new or better Covenant; 3 never of new Scriptures, certainly
never of a new volume or collection Heb. of inspired documents. But there are
not wanting indications, to which reference has already been made under the
Doctrine of Inspiration, that the design of the Holy Ghost included the
formation of a new Canon.

1 Ephesians 1:13; 2 Ephesians 4:21; 3 Hebrews 8:8.

1. Though the several terms by which the New-Testament Testimony writers were
accustomed to describe their enlarged message do not expressly refer to a new
Bible, they are such as to lay the foundation for it in due time. And it is
certain that the individual writings of the Apostles were held in the
congregations which received them to have equal authority with the ancient and
accepted Oracles of God, and that the Catholic Church addressed by St. Peter
reckoned St. Paul’s writings as co-ordinate with the other Scriptures. 1 It is
remarkable, further, that almost every writer gives somewhere or other a distant
hint, and even more than that, of the permanent authority of his own
contribution. This needs no further illustration than it has received already.
Looking back now, after the Canon has been ratified, we are bound to admit that
these sayings are precisely what they might be expected to have used on the
supposition that they calculated on their writings being consolidated into the
unity of Scripture.

1 2 Peter 3:16.

2. No argument, however, is needed beyond that of analogy. A new covenant would
require new oracles; the entire economy of the New Testament was only a
resumption and continuation of the ancient plan. Christ came to fulfill the Law
and the prophets, and to fulfill them by supplementing both their words and
their writings. He Himself was in the new economy what He had been in the Old:
the universal and omnipresent Revealer by His Spirit in His servants, the Spirit
of the Christ, which was in them. 1 But He raised up a series of agents and
writers who were the representatives and reproductions of those who formed the
Old Testament, though with other names. They were Chroniclers, Prophets, and
Lawgivers, just as of old time. There is a perfect continuity in the history of
revealed truth; had its method been changed in the end of the world, the Savior
would have told us of the change. The silence of the New Testament, or its
partial silence, as to any change of the Holy Spirit’s plan, has the force of a
confirmation of the established method. As in old time the volume of the book
was gradually enlarged, and not finally ratified until inspiration had ceased,
so we might expect it to be with the new economy. The New-Testament Scriptures
were circulated among the churches as the standard of their faith long, before
the Spirit led the Church to set on them the seal of what we call canonization:
to them, as to the Old Testament, all parties, orthodox and heretical, made
their appeal.

1 1 Peter 1:11.

HISTORICAL. The history of the completed Canon includes its gradual settlement
during the first centuries, and the fluctuations of opinion in later ages. A
fair consideration of these two subjects will lead to the conclusion that the
same Spirit Who gave the Scriptures has watched over them, and secured their
integrity. The formation of the Canon runs through the entire ante-Nicene age.
The fourth century closed before the faith and critical faculty of the Christian
communities added our present New Testament in its integrity to the Old, the
last lingering doubt as to any of the books having finally disappeared.

1. The first thing to be noted is the prerogative of the Church in regard to
this. The Apostle tells us that unto the ancient people as such were committed
the oracles of God: 1 a distinct testimony of great importance, if we mark the
force of the term episteútheesan, and the Proóton, which introduces the
sentence. There was a close analogy between the gradual acceptance of the new
body of Scripture and that of the old. The ancient Canon was not fixed until the
Spirit of inspiration had retired; it was the office of the Jewish Fathers to
distinguish between the authoritative books and all others; the tests by which
they determined the difference were, so far as we know them, the names and known
inspiration of the writers, and the traditional consent of past ages. The final
ratification was brought about by the pressure of persecution directed against
the sacred writings; but there ought to be no doubt that this was under the
special supervision of the Holy Ghost. The parallel is so far complete. But
there were some peculiarities in the case of the new collection. The Gospel was
diffused over the world, and every church was the guardian of its own holy
books, while every province of early Christendom had its own special selection
of Scriptures; there were also numberless heresies, multiplying their spurious
productions. These two circumstances tended to make the concurrence of the
Christian Church in the final acceptance of the New-Testament writings a more
remarkable fact than the unanimity of the Jewish Church in regard to the Old
Testament. When the set time was fully come the same Spirit who closed the
Old-Testament volume closed also the New.

1 Romans 3:2.

2. The tests applied to the books circulated among the Christian congregations
were very simple. The main criterion was their apostolic origin or
authorization, that being the guarantee of their inspired character. In case of
residual doubt, the common Regula Fidei, or rule of faith, was brought to bear,
as also the testimony of the churches that held the several documents in
question. It was the sure belief of the primitive Christians that the Lord gave
to the Apostles alone authority to direct the faith of His Church, both by their
words and by their written communications. Apostolic authorship or Apostolic
authorization was all they demanded in the sacred writings: they looked simply
for the signs of an Apostle, Tá mén seemeía toú apostólou. 1 Hence the writings
of St. Mark and St. Luke were never even classed among the doubtful books: they
were understood to have been written under the sanction of St. Peter and St.
Paul. Of the genuineness of those which claimed to be directly Apostolic, and of
the validity of such as claimed indirect sanction, their harmony with the common
Rule of Faith, and the testimony of the individual churches, were subordinate
and sufficient tests.

1 2 Corinthians 12:12.

3. The result was the early division of the sacred books into two classes: those
which were universally acknowledged as Divinely inspired, and those which were
not at first generally received. The former, the HOMOLOGOUMENA, were, before the
second century closed, the four Gospels and Acts, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul,
the first Epistle of St. Peter, and the first Epistle of St. John. The
ANTILEGOMENA were seven: not, indeed, rejected, but doubted about, and not at
once received. The reasons for this suspended judgment are evident. Some were
without the names of the writers, such as the Epistle to the Hebrews. Some were
written to the Christian community in general, and were current at large, under
the protection of no particular church. Others were addressed to individual men,
and on that account incurred suspicion. A few were opposed to the views of some
portions of the Church: such as the Apocalypse and the Epistle of St. James. It
must be remembered that they were not spoken against, as the term Antilegomena
might seem to indicate, but held in doubt only. In later times they have been
termed DEUTEROCANONICAL, their authority being counted less than that of the
other books.

4. There were a few small treatises that were very generally received in early
times with a peculiar veneration: written, it was thought, by Apostolical men,
or companions of the Apostles, such as Clemens Romanus, Barnabas, and Hernias.
They were publicly read in some churches, and were copied into the earliest
Codices, where they are still found, though only as appendages at the end. Their
pretensions did not long survive the jealous ordeal.

5. In an altogether different class must be placed the many writings that make
up the APOCRYPHAL Christian Books. Some of these were written in the interests
of a Judaising Christianity, others with a precisely opposite tendency, and the
remainder for the gratification of legend-loving curiosity. There were
apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses; but not one of them was
ever found in any private or public catalogue of the sacred writings. It may be
added that the apocryphal shadows of the New Testament are far inferior in
ethical character to those of the Old, some of which are of the highest merit.
The former, in fact, are either worthless or utterly unchristian.

6. Successive synodical decisions approximated more and more closely to the
catalogue of holy books which we hold. They culminated at the Council of Hippo,
and, four years afterwards, at the Third Council of Carthage, then under the
influence of Augustine, in the Canon of the present New Testament. The
persecution of Diocletian, in the beginning of the fourth century, led to the
more careful scrutiny of what had, during the whole of the century previous,
been called the " Evangelicum Instrumentum;" a term used by Tertullian, who also
described the whole Bible as "Totum Instrumentum utriusque Testament." Only the
pressing claims of other doctrinal discussions and decisions prevented the
Council of Nicaea from accomplishing what was already virtually done: the task,
that is, of defining the authoritative Canon of Holy Scripture.

7. The Old-Testament Canon was accepted and confirmed, as we now hold it, by
many catalogues in the fourth and fifth centuries. The Alexandrian Church,
represented by Athanasius, gives exactly our list of books: a remarkable fact,
when we remember that the Greek version made in Alexandria had first given
currency to the Apocrypha. But the study of Hebrew had declined: the Christian
Church was contented with the Septuagint, enlarged as it was by apocryphal
additions. The Hebrew Scriptures were too much left to the Masorites. Hence the
New-Testament Canon was earlier and more unanimously settled in Christian faith
and acceptance than the Old: even the Council of Carthage admitted, though with
reservation, the Old-Testament Apocrypha.

LATER HISTORY OF THE CANON.

Later opinion as to the Canon may be studied with advantage Modern and for
warning. Its outline, which should be filled up by a History. Careful study of
the literature of the subject, is as follows: 1. The question of the Canon was
long an open one in the mediaeval Church. The Council of Trent, in a decree
passed by a Trent, few divines in 1546, followed an example set by the Council
of Florence in 1441, and included nearly all the Apocrypha among the books of
Scripture: a decree contrary to the former catalogues, which therefore many
later Romanist divines have attempted to soften by distinguishing, in common
with many of the Reformers, between a higher and a lower canonical authority.

2. The later Greek Church has always fluctuated in opinion on this question.
After many attempts to mark off the Apocrypha from the Scripture proper, it
coincided with the Tridentine decision at a Jerusalem, Synod held under
Dositheus, in 1672.

3. The divines of the Reformation erred greatly on the side of laxity. Luther
rejected the apocryphal books from the Canon, though he admitted them for
edification. He separated the Antilegomena, especially Hebrews, Jude, James, and
the Apocalypse, from the rest: applying to them a subjective standard, "their
treatment of Christ," in which he pronounced them faulty; while the residue
contained, in his judgment, " the kernel of Christianity." The Swiss Reformers
more rigorously rejected the Apocrypha; and in this they have been followed by
their formularies and the Westminster Confession. The Arminians received the
Scriptures in full, though free in their judgments as to authorship. The English
Church in this, as in many other things, was guided by a spirit of conciliation.
Its Sixth Article defines Scripture as "those canonical books of the Old and New
Testament of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church;" it does not
enumerate the books of the New Testament, and admits the public reading of some
parts of the Apocrypha: " the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth
read for example of life and instruction of manners, but yet doth it not apply
them to establish any doctrine." The Methodist communities everywhere reject the
Apocrypha altogether, in common with the many bodies that accept the Westminster
Confession.

ASSAULTS AND EVIDENCES.

Modern assaults upon the Canon are, to a certain extent, bound up with
opposition to the Christian revelation generally; though they also originate a
distinct branch of critical inquiry. The determination of what constitutes the
canonical collection involves many questions, relating chiefly to the
genuineness, integrity, and authenticity of certain particular books; the
defense of which is of great importance, as the faith of the Church of Christ
rests upon the unity of the Scriptures as one organic whole. THE QUESTIONS
INVOLVED.

1. The broader question as to the existence of any authoritative Canon is not
here involved. That is settled by the acceptance of the doctrine of inspiration:
we are bound to admit the great mass of the Scriptures of both Testaments as
given by God to His Church. The question is not of the Bible generally, and as a
whole; only of its limits. But both in the New Testament and in the Old there
are some books which, as we have seen, have not always had an undisputed place.
With reference to these especially, and as to one of the points in dispute with
reference to all Scripture, the preliminary question must be asked and answered.
First, it must be settled that the documents we hold are from the writers and
times to which they profess to belong. This is a question of their GENUINENESS;
and it concerns only the documents them-selves. It asks, with regard to all the
books, and especially the contested ones, whether they were written by the
authors whose names they bear. Then arises the important point of their
INTEGRITY: making due allowance, that is, for the petty changes and
interpolations of text to which all books are liable in course of transcription.
Lastly comes the question of their AUTHENTICITY. This concerns the origin of the
documents, as professedly from inspired men, and containing the oracles of God.
It asks whether their claims are supported by those external and internal
evidences or credentials which alone can sustain so high a pretension. It is
obvious that these questions run into each other: hence, the term Authenticity,
and the questions which hang upon it, may be reasonably made to cover the whole
ground.

2. The study of this branch of theology involves the ordinary historical
investigation by which literary claims are sifted.’ But it is not limited to
this: the Holy Spirit approves the books which are "generally received in the
Church" by the impress of His secret and yet evident stamp. On the principles
which we consider fundamental, these two must control each other, but the
testimony of Christ and His Spirit must be supreme.

(1.) Whether as it respects the Old Testament or the New, every book and every
fragment of every book must undergo the ordeal. This constitutes a distinct
department of study, that of Historical Criticism: one of extreme difficulty,
and not to be undertaken by any student who has not the means of prosecuting it
thoroughly. Whatever confidence we have in our Lord’s authentication of the Old
Testament, and in the Church’s settlement of the New-Testament Canon, the
defense of every integral portion of the Bible is a necessity bound upon the
theologian by the assaults of infidelity. It is not too much to say that every
man set for the defense of the Gospel ought to have at command. The arguments
which prove the genuineness and authenticity of every book; or, which is the
same thing, the arguments which defend it against attack. Works known as
Introductions to the Bible, or Biblical Dictionaries, or Histories of the Canon,
furnish these in abundance, with all the argumentation for and against. But it
must be remembered that, while every book requires its defense, the leading
questions in dispute are really limited to a few vital points as to each
Testament.

(2.) Nothing is more important than to conduct any such inquiries with a clear
sense of its limitations. These are of two kinds. First, the inquiry into the
genesis and gradual construction of the various pans of Scripture, especially of
the Old Testament, is beset with the most formidable difficulties. Very much of
the material for judgment is gone past recovery. Hence the hopeless
contradictions and confusions, the helpless chaos of ever-shifting hypotheses,
which are found in the writings of the modern disintegrators of the Bible. The
field is to them literally one of boundless conjecture; and very often
conjecture and evidence are to them interchangeable terms. Hence, also, it is
evident that the defender of the Bible must not expect to be able to determine
many of these questions and must be content to leave them unsettled. Secondly,
we are not required, we are indeed not permitted, to engage in these inquiries
as if the life of Christianity were in them. The authenticity of the Bible as a
whole—which is, after all, inextricably bound up with its genuineness — involves
the TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, or that inward witness which it bears, and
which witnesses with our spirits who read any part of it.

Hence, it may be laid down as a canon for the regulation of our confidence in
the Canon that the Spirit of Inspiration is Himself the Divine Witness. As our
Lord has ratified to us the older Scriptures, so the Holy Ghost has ratified us,
in the Church and through the Church, the new Scriptures and the Bible as a
whole. Criticism must bring its human evidence; but the supreme evidence is His.
When it is said, however, that the Holy Ghost bears His witness to the Bible AS
A WHOLE, this must not be misunderstood. He has in a remarkable way set His seal
to the individual books, and especially to those which are most contradicted.
The most vulnerable parts seem most amply defended. For instance, the Mosaic
origin of the Pentateuch is very fully attested by the Savior and the Apostles:
if we collect the quotations and references in the New Testament we shall find
that the leading outlines of the history of the Five Books can be traced there.
The events before Moses are referred to on his authority. And his account of the
lawgiving, the wilderness, and all its events, the ritual economy of the
tabernacle, the entrance into Canaan, and in fact the entire contents of the
Pentateuch are accepted as of the Mosaic age and that of Joshua. The
authenticity of Daniel has been assailed, the later part of Isaiah has been
given to an anonymous author, the very heart of Zechariah has been taken from
his prophecies: now these are the three portions of the Old Testament which the
Savior has protected, next to Deuteronomy, with the utmost care. Among the books
of the New Testament there are a few which criticism keenly assails; denying
their apostolic origin and their inspired or authoritative character. It would
not be true to say that these give in every case more abundant internal evidence
for themselves; but certainly the Holy Ghost speaks through them to every
rightly disposed heart. Who can resist the appeal of St. John’s Gospel, the
Pastoral Epistles, and the Epistle to the Ephesians, St. James, the Epistle to
the Hebrews, and the Second Epistle of St. Peter? This last document was perhaps
most slowly of all admitted, for reasons easily traced; but no devout mind can
read its first chapter without feeling that the writer is full of the Holy Ghost
and not a forger assuming the Apostle’s name, and pretending that he had been on
the mount of transfiguration. Of course, this argument may be abused. But to us
it is supreme as to the entire Bible which the Spirit gave to the Church. THE
CANON ASRULE OF FAITH. The Canon of Scripture, as the accepted collection of
sacred writings, may be objectively viewed as the Rule of Faith to the Christian
Church, or the final and infallible standard of what is to be believed as
necessary either to personal salvation or to the integrity of the Christian
faith; and subjectively as a body of Divine documents which is to be studied
with all human appliances under the teaching of the Holy Ghost THE RULE OF
FAITH: SCRIPTURAL. The plenary inspiration of the Scriptures implies their
supreme authority, in every possible court, and at the same time justifies our
appealing to their own testimony as to the bearings and extent of that
authority. They everywhere speak as the final oracle of faith, duty, and hope,
and reject every kind of co-ordinate standard. This high assertion of their
claims is so set forth as to harmonies with the subordinate rules of faith or
confessions adopted by the several branches of the witnessing Church, and with
the exercise of private judgment: the supreme safeguard of the doctrine being
the presence of the Holy Spirit as the effectual and sufficient Guardian of His
Word.

1. Generally, the New Testament declares itself, as the consummation of
Scripture, to be the STANDARD OF FAITH. Absorbing the Old Testament, or rather
coordinating itself with the Old Testament, it declares by the testimony of one
of the last and greatest writers that Every Scripture inspired of God is also
profitable for TEACHING 1. . . that the man of God may be perfect. The man of
God is here the Christian teacher, of whom it is said that his knowledge of the
ancient oracles made him wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus.2 The Apostles were to be guided into all the Truth; 3 into the whole
compass of truth, as the truth is in Jesus.4 Hence the closing testimony in St.
Jude is to the Faith which was once delivered unto the saints: 5 redelivered by
its Supreme Authority to His new and perfect Church. The doctrine of our Lord is
the RULE AND CRITERION OF MORALITY, and of all human duty. The Christian faith
is the Christian law, and the Christian law is the Christian faith: Christ is
the end of the law for righteousness; 6 and His whole economy has for its design
that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit. 7 He is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life: 8 the
truth being here in the centre. He summed up the Apostles’ future teaching as
all things whatsoever I have commanded you. 9 St. Paul knows no other ethics
than what had been received and heard from himself, and bids his converts walk
by the same rule, or kanóni, 10, 11 as the infallible directory and test of all
obligation. And the book of truth and duty is also the CHARTER OF PRIVILEGES. It
was with the widest possible meaning that Jesus said, All things that I have
heard of My Father I have made known unto you: 12 the whole compass of the
blessings dilated on in the Acts and Epistles is only the expansion of germs
given in His promise. The New Testament is the book of the covenants of promise:
13 the new covenant between the Triune God and His people, ratified by the blood
of Christ, announced in His promise, and conferred by His Spirit.

1 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 2 Timothy 3:15; 3 John 16:13; 4 Ephesians 4:21; 5 Jude
1:3; 6 Romans 10:4; 7 Romans 8:4; 8 John 14:6; 9 Matthew 28:20; 10 Php 3:16; 11
Galatians 6:16; 12 John 15:16; 13 Ephesians 2:12.

2. The Scripture everywhere appeals to itself for an end of all controversy. To
the law and to the testimony! 1 was the ancient word in Israel. How then shall
the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? 2 By these words our Savior
makes the Scriptures concerning Himself absolute in their authority. Apollos,
like the Apostles, proved by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ. 3 The Bereans
were therefore more noble-minded than they of Thessalonica, because they
searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things wereSong of Solomon 4:1-16
The peril of neglecting the great salvation hangs upon its having been spoken by
the Lord, and confirmed unto us by them that heard Him. 5 There is a perpetual
appeal from one part of Scripture to another part of Scripture: sometimes to
reason, sometimes to heathen authors, sometimes to traditions; but always the
Caesar to which it finally appeals is itself. The Savior refers to the Old
Testament; the Apostles to Him and to them, St. Paul, in addition, to himself;
and St. Peter to St. Paul. This has the force of a universal law within the
Bible. And it cannot be denied that throughout the history of the Church from
the very beginning all parties have implicitly or explicitly made the Word of
God their last court of decision.

1 Isaiah 8:20; 2 Matthew 26:54; 3 Acts 18:11; 4 Hebrews 2:3.

3. Every other final authority is absolutely or by implication interdicted.
Nothing can be more clear than that our Lord regarded the whole sum of religion
as vitiated by infidelity to Scripture. In vain they do worship Me, teaching for
doctrines the commandments of men: 1 where the Pharisees are a mirror in which
later traditionalists are reflected. And again, Do ye not therefore err, because
ye know not the Scriptures? 2 1 Matthew 15:9; 2 Mark 12:24.

4. The supreme authority sanctions, however, other inferior standards in the
form of creeds. Those Rules of Faith which were constructed from the beginning
were based upon the formulas of Scripture itself: expressing in compendium the
belief of the Church. But of these, in all their forms, earlier and later, the
Bible is the test: the court to which they must finally be brought. This applies
to creeds, catechisms, standards, and formularies of every description: of which
more will be said hereafter.

5. The Rule also presupposes and harmonizes, as subordinate to itself, Public
Ministerial Instruction and Private Judgment, under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit. The Scriptures are the textbook of a living continuous teaching which is
an ordinance of God in the congregation: this may be and has been perverted; but
it is nevertheless the appointed means in the Church for the continuation of the
Apostles’ doctrine. Moreover, the privilege, duty, and responsibility of private
judgment are everywhere declared. The prophecies of God’s Word are, indeed, not
of private interpretation, 1 are not solved by themselves or any private
solution— idías epilúseoos ou gínetai, —and this is true of all Scripture, which
is not left without the interpretation of the Spirit Who gave it. Yet all
believers must prove all things: 2 not only the Bereans, in process of
conversion, but all Christians are responsible for the gift of reason,
regenerate and sanctified to its highest use. Both, however, require the
presence of the Supreme Interpreter. He still guides the living Church into the
truth, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary; He is the teaching
unction from the Holy One 3 imparted to every Christian; and the combination of
the three—the sanctified individual judgment, the didactic ministry, and the
Holy Spirit—gives its perfection to the whole theory of the Rule of Faith, which
is one in the unity of these three. Revelation, Inspiration, Canon are also
three-one in the unity of the ever-present and ever-living Spirit of the Truth.
4 1 2 Peter 1:20; 2 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 3 1 John 2:20; 4 John 16:13.

RATIONALISM AND TRADITIONALISM.

There are two errors on this subject which are more or less prevalent.
Rationalism, on the one hand, undermines the authority of God’s Word: either by
rejecting it as an external revelation, or by accepting it and making human
reason the sole arbiter of its meaning.

Traditionalism, on the other, makes the Scripture only a standard parallel with
the living tradition of the Church. Both, though in opposite ways, take from the
Bible its dignity as the Rule of Christian Faith, and sever it from its
connection with the Holy Spirit as it is the supreme instrument of His operation
in things spiritual for ever.

RATIONALISM. The Rationalist method either makes human reason the substance of
revealed truth, or the measure and arbiter of the meaning of Scripture. For, it
is of two kinds: one renounces external and independent revelation altogether;
another, that to which we now more particularly refer, accepts the Bible, but
only as a republication of the oracles of natural religion, and makes the human
understanding the sole, and, as it were, undirected instrument of its
interpretation.

1. To the former the Scriptures are simply an historical record and register of
the gradual development of the world’s religious instincts. Evolution governs
all things in the spiritual as in the physical domain; and the Old and New
Testaments only mark the stages through which the spiritual faculties of earlier
races had passed. In Jesus and His Apostles the religious consciousness of
mankind reached a high point, but not the highest which it has to reach. The
ever-developing reason of man must make their doctrine, has in all ages made it,
the starting point for further evolutions; and the end is not yet. This theory
for ever vacillates between Theism and Atheism, and has no place save among the
enemies of the Christian Faith. Of this enough has already been said when
discussing the evidences of revelation.

2. Rationalism proper accepts the supremacy of the Word as given by God for the
regulation of the Church’s doctrine, but insists that the human reason is the
sole judge of its meaning. This spirit more or less pervades the Christian
communities which have surrendered the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of
the holy oracles. It has many shades and varieties of definition and expression;
but these all unite in the view that the application of an honest and
enlightened reason is alone required by Scripture when it teaches authoritative
doctrine, enforces moral obligation, and promises privilege to the hope of
believers.

3. It is obvious that this principle proceeds on a wrong estimate of the
function of the human understanding, especially in relation to the Divine
Spirit, its guide: supposing a Divine supervision of man to be admitted. It
unduly elevates the power of reason, reason itself being witness. It is
unreasonable to accept truth concerning the Infinite Being, and eternal
interests, under the condition that it can be fathomed and perfectly understood:
on this condition some of the most elementary facts of internal consciousness
and external science must be rejected, for they are equally unfathomable. Hence,
declining to accept heavenly guidance in an unknown region, the rationalist
spirit must needs renounce the best, because the profoundest, parts of
revelation. It forgets the true and noble function of reason: to be the minister
of faith, which in all things knowable is in a certain important sense supreme.
Reason must weigh the evidences presented for faith, and deduce consequences
from what faith accepts; it must guard the result from the assaults of the
spirit of rebellious and undisciplined unbelief, as well as from the perversions
of overbelief and superstition. Carrying the subject into the region of
Scriptural testimony, we find that the spirit of what we now call rationalism is
constantly condemned. The same Word which from beginning to end honors reason by
calmly reasoning with it, by appealing to its indestructible convictions and
instincts, is most peremptory in defining the limits beyond which its province
does not extend. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:
for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are
spiritually discerned.1 d even to the spiritual discernment itself there is a
limit: For now we see through a glass, darkly. 2 Our utmost knowledge is
partial: in the present life we knoio in part, ek mérous.3 1 1 Corinthians 2:14;
2 1 Corinthians 13:12; 3 1 Corinthians 13:9.

TRADITION. The true doctrine opposes every notion of a co-ordinate authority in
Tradition. This has a legitimate office which must be vindicated, while its
perversion is condemned.

1. Tradition is paradosis, either oral or written. And it is obvious that it
holds an important place in the economy of Divine revelation. St. Paul commands
the believers at the outset of his writings to hold the traditions which ye have
been taught, whether by word or our epistle; 1 d not walking by these is walking
disorderly. Hence it includes in its original use the delivery of all truth
through human instrumentality to man. We owe to it the Scriptures, with that
sacred traditional interpretation of their leading doctrines which we call the
Analogy of the Faith; and we owe to it the preservation of many usages and
practices which are not absolutely ruled in the Bible. Theology has never
rejected or despised authentic and rightly understood tradition.

1 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 2 Thessalonians 3:16.

2. But the abuse of Tradition has always been the bane of doctrine, especially
of all Christian doctrine. Reduced to an ecclesiastical theory, it has then two
elements: Scripture and the oral tradition of the Church constitute a double
Rule of Faith; and this necessarily requires as its final arbiter an infallible
regulative authority in the Church itself.

(1.) The co-ordinate Rule is that of Oral Tradition, adding doctrines not
contained in Scripture; or Development, expanding those revealed in germ. It has
never been authoritatively settled what is the " Verbum Dei non scriptum," or
what constitute the APOSTOLICAL TRADITIONS; but some of the leading Articles of
Faith and practice are generally included. The hypothesis of DEVELOPMENT is only
itself a modern development of the theory of Tradition: the principle by the
operation of which the great distinctive errors of Romanism have been
constructed into Articles DE FIDE and made binding. The "Ecclesia Docens"
decides, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, when the hour has come for
opinion to become dogma. The infallible Church is the Episcopate lineally
descended from the Apostles; the Universal Church expressing its mind by
councils; and latterly, as the last development of dogma, the voice of the
Successor of St. Peter, speaking " ex cathedra," has been made the final arbiter
of truth. This is the doctrine of Tradition as held in the Roman Catholic
Church. Modifications of it are held elsewhere. The Eastern Church maintains the
Church’s concurrent endowment of inspiration, but supposes that this was limited
to the first ages: according to its teaching the double rule, Scripture and
Tradition, was complete when its earliest and only Creed was authenticated. In a
vague and indefinite form the same principle is inconsistently held by many
divines in communions which owed their origin to a protest against
ecclesiastical tradition as unduly paralleled with Scripture.

(2.) This theory loses sight of the true and most important office of Tradition,
which is simply the human witness and guardianship of the Divine oracles; it
dishonors the prerogative of the inspired writers, and builds, not upon the
foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, 1 t on the Church as their interpreter;
it assigns-to the visible community the functions of the invisible; it affects
the Faith with a character of changeableness, of which the fabric of Mediaeval
dogmas gives ample proof; and, lastly, it is the object of our Savior’s warning
denunciation, as represented in the Rabbinical traditions of His time. The tone
and the terms in which our Lord invariably spoke of this superaddition to the
one Rule of Faith ought to have secured His Church for ever against it. The
Jewish Talmud was constructed on this principle; and there has been in long
process of construction a corresponding Christian Talmud. The teachings of the
Faith have been in it undergoing a process of steady transformation. The
doctrine of the Atonement has been violated in the dogma of Transubstantiation,
that of Original Sin in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and that of the
Spirit’s supreme jurisdiction in the dogma of Pontifical Infallibility. This
theory, in its modern form of Development, is hurtful to the simplicity and
integrity of the truth; the Faith which was once for all delivered unto the
saints: teé hápax paradotheísee toís hagíois pístei. 2 thin the ages of the
Spirit’s inspiring administration there was development on the grandest scale,
and extending to all the leading doctrines of revelation: that principle is
nothing less than an absolute law. But the province of development outside of
the Bible is limited to non-essentials and the construction of dogmatic system:
in fact, the term in this case is altogether misapplied.

Only in Scripture is there, strictly speaking, development of doctrine proper.

1 Ephesians 2:20; 2 Jude 1:3.

THEINTERPRETATIONOF THE CANON. The Bible, as the Rule of Faith, is the
foundation of theology. It requires to be studied as a collection of documents,
both Divine and human, containing the materials and the directory of theological
science. The departments of this study are various. Biblical Criticism is that
branch of general criticism which makes the determination of the Text its
object. The province of Biblical Introduction embraces the substance and
contents of the Scriptures as a collection of Divine-human literature. Sacred
Philology has to do with the original languages in which revelation was given.
Hermeneutics deals with the Bible as a text to be exegetically and theologically
expounded. The general principles of these several branches of study must be
briefly sketched, as laying the basis of the doctrinal system of Christianity;
but they are here referred to so far only as they concern the fundamentals of
the study of theology.

BIBLICAL CRITICISM. The term Criticism means the art and exercise of judgment,
and has a wide application in regard to Scripture generally. But Biblical
Criticism does not extend its range beyond the judgment exercised upon the
verity of the text. Its aim is to give or restore the nearest possible
approximation to the original words of the Scriptural Autographs, not one of
which remains or has been the subject of direct historical testimony. In
accomplishing this object Criticism is guided by certain objective aids and
subjective canons more or less unanimously accepted.

1. Its external materials are the Manuscripts which remain and the earlier
Versions, especially the former. The MSS. of the Old Testament are not ancient,
dating no earlier than the twelfth century. The criticism of the Hebrew text is
therefore limited in its scope; it has to depend much upon the early care of
those to whom these Oracles were committed. But it has still a wide range, and
has made great progress of late. The MSS. of the Greek Testament are more
abundant, better authenticated, and in more perfect preservation than those of
any ancient classics: including the Uncial, copies in Greek capital letters, and
the Cursives in smaller type, they amount to nearly sixteen hundred. The
earliest of these are Uncials, and are of inestimable value in the archives of
the Christian Church as the most venerable representatives of its holy books.
The Alexandrian Codex, known as A, and now in the British Museum, dates probably
about the beginning of the fifth century, and contains the whole of the Two
Testaments, save the greater part of St. Matthew and a few leaves wanting
elsewhere. The Vatican, or B, is the basis of the Vulgate, authoritative in
Romanism; it is a century older than A, but is not so nearly complete in the New
Testament. The Codex Ephraemi, or C, is a Palimpsest—that is, a manuscript
written on a manuscript: two-thirds of the New Testament have been found
underlying certain other writings on this parchment. The Codex Bezae, D, now at
Cambridge, is probably of the sixth century, and contains only the Gospels and
Acts. But Divine Providence has reserved for this age the discovery of an Uncial
which is probably one of the oldest, certainly the most complete, of the early
copies of Scripture. It is known as the Codex Sinaiticus, or Alef, and contains
the complete New Testament. After these the Manuscripts, in the form of more or
less complete copies used in various churches and of lectionaries, rapidly
increase. Multitudes of these are lineally descended, as it were, from copies
made in the first centuries but now lost; and it always remains a question
whether they are not in many cases as fair representatives of the early text as
those Uncials of antiquity which still remain. The tendency has been entirely to
disparage them in comparison of the earliest Codices; but for this there seems
no just ground. The early Versions are of great importance in Criticism. The
Septuagint of the Old Testament is, on many accounts, the most important, as
being so much used in the New Testament; but it is not the only one. Each
century from the second to the seventh produced a remarkable version of the New
Testament, appeal to which, especially to the Peshito, or Syriac, of the fourth
century, affords valuable aid in the determination of the Text. The innumerable
Quotations found in the Fathers of the first five centuries belong also to this
branch, as they are very often free translations, or loose paraphrases of
translations.

2. These manuscripts multiplied, and, more or less sinking in authority as
centuries passed, are collated and thrown into Families or Recensions, according
to the leading districts of early Christendom from which they sprang: a
distinction, however, that has more historical than critical importance.
Biblical Critics, by the use of certain canons the application of which requires
the rarest judgment and experience, seek by their aid mainly to restore the text
to its original state. They have to consider the probable causes of the Various
Readings themselves: whether they have arisen through accident or by design. In
the latter case, which is often to be suspected, they have to track the changes
in the text to theological or other motives, and to estimate them accordingly.
It is their task to weigh an endless variety of evidence in this sacred critical
court; and, in coming to their decision on any controverted passage, they have
to meet a multitude of conditions which demand attention. There are a few plain
and reasonable principles which decide the great majority of cases: though their
value is much contested among critics themselves; and their application to some
residual difficulties is unsatisfactory. These canons are, for instance, that
the shorter reading is more likely to be the right than one more diffuse,
"brevis lectio praeferenda verbosiori;" that the harder or rougher is more
probably authentic than the smoother, " pro clivi lectioni praestat ardua;" that
a text is suspicious which manifestly favors orthodox dogmas. None of these
canons is unexceptionable. And it remains that the settlement of the text is a
task that demands the application of the keenest critical faculty under the
guidance of a most sober judgment. It is the business or prerogative of only a
rare order of scholars, but the results achieved by their labors are of
universal interest and value.

3. The theological bearing of this science is obvious. Nothing is more important
than the purity of the common standard of appeal in dogmatic discussions and
decisions. And, apart from that, it is the instinctive desire of all who love
the Scriptures to read them in their integrity: every evidence of sure
advancement towards a unanimously accepted text is matter of deep joy to one who
knows how much depends on the issues.

(1.) This must not be exaggerated. It may be assumed that the eternal verities
of revelation have not been permitted by the Holy Ghost to depend upon any
isolated passage of His own word, nor upon the absolute integrity of the text
generally. The majority of the contested passages, interpolations, and varieties
of reading are of no doctrinal weight. Not one of them affects the sole
fundamental proof of any article of faith: for the reason that no article of
faith rests upon the evidence of any one single text.

Hence, though the variations in the leading MSS. amount to scores of thousands—
including all, from changes in letters up to whole paragraphs inserted or
omitted, —they involve no question vital to Christian doctrine. We may hope to
see a text which humanly speaking, shall be perfect or near perfection: known
and read of all men. But no thought about the guarantees or the stability of the
Faith need be bound up with our hope.

(2.) Still, there are some variations in the text of the New Testament which are
of profound interest. These, amounting to some twenty or thirty, ought to be
carefully considered by every student; for, though no vital doctrine depends
upon them, their evidence has a peculiar weight, and the secret history, so to
speak, of the variations involves questions of deep theological import. For
instance, modern criticism very generally agrees to give up " The Heavenly
Witnesses," 1 opposition to the Vulgate and the Roman Catholic decision; but the
study of the question will show how clear and full was the doctrine of the
Trinity when such an interpolation could be made current. The same may be said
as to the question whether instead of GOD was manifest in the flesh 2 we must
read WHO was manifest, and whether we must retain the church of GOD which He
hath purchased with His own blood or the church of THE LORD. 3 with this is
closely connected the most striking of ill variations: the God Only-begotten 4
instead of the Onlybegotten Son in St. John’s Prologue. Other questions, such as
the omission or retention of the Doxology in St. Matthew’s version of the Lord’s
Prayer, have also their deep interest: as to this one in particular, there is
good reason why we should incline to favor the cause of its retention, resting
as it does on very strong arguments.

1 1 John 5:7; 2 1 Timothy 3:16; 3 Acts 20:28; 4 John 1:18

(3.) The Student may acquire sufficient skill to weigh well the arguments on
both sides of these and similar leading points in the settlement of the text;
and to come to a humble decision of his own. The peculiar and technical
knowledge required in this study, and the variety of conditions that must meet
in those who exercise authoritative judgment as to the Text, limit Biblical
Criticism, so far as its processes go, to a select number. The results, however,
as affecting theology, are open to everyone. All may weigh the evidences which
others collect, and appreciate the judgments they themselves could not
independently form. THE FABRIC OF THE BIBLE.

BIBLICAL INTRODUCTION includes in its wide compass all that pertains to a
knowledge of the Bible as made up of literary documents, and particularly as a
collection of human literature. A certain amount of acquaintance, familiar
acquaintance—the more intimate the better—with the fabric of Scripture is an
obligation on the student of theology, especially the ministerial student.

1. The Bible as a whole is the history, the only history, of Religion, or of the
relations between God and man, in the world. It contains the Chronicles of the
One Kingdom, which has had three manifestations, ante-Mosaic, Hebrew, and
Messianic; and of a fourth and final manifestation it contains an all-pervasive
series of predictions. This is the bond of its unity, as one great Record of
Prophecy and Fulfillment. The study of the volume, as unfolding one vast
accomplishment now in process, and pointing to another not yet revealed, regards
it as a complete organic unity, the bond of its perfectness being Christ and His
kingdom.

2. But this organic unity may be resolved into subordinate Divisions. First, we
have the several Great Dispensations already alluded to, and hereafter to be
exhibited. These may be regarded in another form as the relation of the Two
Testaments. The Old Testament— a name by which St. Paul almost seems to
denominate the ancient volume, in the reading of the Old Testament1 — divides
into the Law, or the historical basis; the Prophets, or the transition from the
Law to the Gospel; the Psalms, or the devotional element for all ages. The New
Testament is distributed into the Evangelicum or Four Gospels, the Apostolicum
or Acts and Epistles, and the Apocalypticum or Revelation. In more modern times,
the Gospels are distinguished as Synoptical, or the Three which unite in one
general synopsis of the Lord’s ministry, and Johannaean; the Acts are regarded
as transitional to the Epistles, and the several types of doctrine in the
Apostolical Epistles and the Apocalypse are compared with the rest of Scripture.
All these will be referred to in due course more fully.

1 2 Corinthians 3:14.

3. But every book has its own appropriate field of inquiry, this includes the
writer, date, circumstances, and design of each document; especially the
analysis in relation to its connection with its predecessors and successors. The
theological importance of this is great: an accurate knowledge, however general,
of the scope of every document will generally furnish its best defense against
attacks; it will throw light on its doctrinal character and bearings, and thus
locate it in the system of Biblical theology. A clear view of the literary and
other peculiarities of every book in the Bible is indispensable to the student:
it is one of the elementary requisites in theological education; but, perhaps on
that very account, there is nothing which is more neglected. No young minister,
no candidate for the ministry, should think he has acquired the rudiments of his
profession until he has established in his mind a nucleus of information
concerning all the individual documents: a nucleus around which additional
knowledge shall continually gather, until there is no part left in obscurity.

BIBLICAL HISTORY.

1. The Bible must be studied as from beginning to end historical. This is the
law of its construction in all parts, even the prophetical. Strictly speaking,
its history as such is that of the Chosen People alone, as the pre-ordained race
in which God would manifest Himself in the Incarnate Son; and the methodical
study of that history is one of the first theological obligations. As contained
in Scripture, and confirmed by secular historians, it is the most trustworthy
series of national annals, as it is in relation to the history of redemption the
most important. From Abraham to Moses, or the Bondage in Egypt, we have the
Patriarchal Age; from the Desert to Canaan, or from Moses to Samuel, the
foundation of the Theocracy; from the times of Judges and Kings, the Division of
the Nation, the Captivity, the period of the glory of Old-Testament Israel.
After the close of the inspired history of the old covenant comes the great
Interval of four hundred years, ending with the Incarnation, the Appearance,
Ministry, and Rejection of the Redeemer, and the Dispersion of the Tribes among
the nations of the earth as the consequence.

These are the critical facts in that sacred history which may be regarded as in
a certain sense the central stream of all history.

2. These salient points regulate the Scriptural Chronology, which, as a science,
is perhaps the most abstruse and difficult connected with the interpretation of
Scripture. It involves a consideration of the several systems which are adopted
for the arrangement of Scriptural dates, especially in the Old Testament: the
Septuagint differing from the Hebrew, and the Rabbinical from both: while the
principles which regulated the sacred writers are not yet precisely determined.
The solution of many chronological difficulties may be sought in errors of
transcription; but there is an uncertainty as to the use of numerals which still
has to be cleared up: the key has yet to be discovered for the scheme of Moses
and the earlier historical writers. If it should appear that the longer system
in which the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch agree is the correct one,
it will not be difficult to harmonies the Biblical Chronology of early times
with all that sound science, the authentic annals of other nations, and even
their traditions require. When we descend lower in the stream of history the
chronology becomes more simple. There are a few prominent epochs, the dates of
which may be regarded as fixed: the Exodus, the Building of the Temple, the
Deportations, the Birth of Christ, the Pentecost, the Death of Herod, the
Destruction of Jerusalem. It must be remembered that the Art of Verifying Dates
is comparatively modern; and time must be allowed for the settlement of many
questions. Meanwhile, and with regard to some epochs, a latitude must be
allowed, the limits of which are not defined.

3. The Biblical Geography includes almost the whole earth, but more particularly
that part of it which is the sphere of sacred history: the Holy Land, originally
Canaan, which became the Land of Immanuel. This is not only very interesting in
itself, but bound up inseparably with the interpretation of Scripture.

4. The Archaeology of the Bible is a peculiar department of its history:
including the entire fabric of the ancient Economy, viewed as past and apart
from its relation to the Gospel. There is a sense in which no jot or tittle is
really obsolete: as it may be asserted that almost everything Judaic has
outlived the changes of time. But with this we have not here to do. The
Antiquities of Scripture have two ranges: one of greater importance, including
the civil and political and religious constitution of Hebraism, as lying under
and around the very foundations of Christianity; and the other pertaining to the
people as a mere branch of the Semitic race, with social and religious usages
that may be compared with those of other nations.

(1.) With reference to the former, the more essentially sacred of the
antiquities of Hebraism, theological study has a wide scope. It includes the
national tokens of severance from the world: the Covenant Signs, Circumcision,
the Passover; with the earlier Tabernacle and the later Temple, and its interior
symbolical structure as the dwelling-place of God among His people. Also the
ceremonial of worship: the Levitical order; the High-priest-hood, with the
relation of all other functions to it; the service and system of Sacrifice, the
sin-offerings and thank-offerings, with their varieties; the Three Feasts, their
history and meaning and typical significance; the One Fast; the Sabbaths and
Sabbatic cycles; the New Moons; the voice of Prophecy, never absent; and the
several methods of revelation, from Urim and Thummim, through symbols and
visions, down to the Bath-kol which forms the transition to the next department.

(2.) There is also a post-Hebraic Archaeology belonging to the Judaism of the
Interval, or, rather, to the time when Hebraism was passing into Judaism. In
some respects the ancient Church appeared to greatest advantage after the
Captivity: it inherited the past, by the lessons of which its chastisement
prepared it to profit; it gave rise to many new institutions, some of which,
specially sanctioned by our Lord, contained the germs of much that was
incorporated into the Christian Church. It is hardly possible to study too
carefully the annals of this Interval: for instance, the rise and history of the
Sanhedrim; the constitution of the Synagogue and its order; the gradual
ascendancy of Scribes, Rabbis, and other guardians of the law; the separation of
the people into Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes; and the new Festivals, such
as the Purim, which our Lord approved, though not of direct Divine institution.
A deep and peculiar theological interest attaches to this portion of the history
of the great Preparations. The study of this period, as will be hereafter seen,
never fails to be most amply repaid.

(3.) Many topics of Archaeology are subordinate, though such only in a relative
sense. The interpretation of the New Testament requires an accurate and
seasonably applied knowledge of the manners and customs of the ancient people:
their mode of life, domestic architecture, merchandise, agriculture, festal and
funereal rites, social habits, music, literary methods, style of writing, and
forms of public and private instruction. The Commentaries furnish generally such
information as the expositor or preacher requires; but the student should not be
entirely dependent on incidental reinforcements of his memory. He should aim to
be well read and at home in all these branches of sacred knowledge.

5. The Natural History of the Bible includes all that remains: that is, the
world of nature in which Scripture lives and moves. It has its own comprehensive
range, not to be studied as in the light of modern physical science, but not
without its interest even in this respect. The Fauna and Flora of the Biblical
records, as very faithfully depicted in the best Introductions and Monographs,
have a theological as well as a general value: almost every fact will, somewhere
or other, be found to affect the interpretation or illustration of New-Testament
doctrine; and the importance of everything must be measured by its subservience
to this object.

BIBLICALPHILOLOGY. The study of Scripture in its original languages lies at the
foundation of theology. The text of revelation is in two tongues, each of which
has its varieties and peculiarities. A certain knowledge of these is
indispensable to the finished theologian, though neither his practical knowledge
of the Bible nor the value of his pastoral ministry is dependent on a minute and
thorough acquaintance with them.

1. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, with the exception of certain Chaldee
fragments. 1 There has always been, and still is much discussion as to its
relation to the original speech of the one undivided race of mankind: as also
with regard to its affinities with what is inexactly called the Semitic stock of
languages: the Aramaean, divided into Syriac and Chaldee; the Samaritan, a
mixture apparently of Hebrew and Aramaean; and the Arabic, with its cognate
Ethiopia. The profound study of the Old Testament requires that these Semitic
dialects should be included: the Aramaean branches, because of the Chaldee
portions of the Old Testament and the vernacular speech of our Savior’s time
which glimmers occasionally in the Gospels, and the important Peshito-Syriac
version; the Arabic, because of its value in the determination of many Hebrew
roots. But after all it is the pure Hebrew which is indispensable: not only for
the sake of the Old Testament itself, but also because the New Testament is so
much colored by direct quotations and indirect tones of speech.

1 Daniel 2:4 to end of chap. 7, Ezra 4:8-24; Ezra 5:1-17; Ezra 6:1-18; 7:12-26;
Jeremiah 10:11.

2. The Greek in which it has pleased the Holy Ghost to enshrine the
New-Testament Scriptures is the later classical dialect, the Koinh. This is its
foundation; but it is deeply affected by the Jewish-Hellenistic dialect, with
more or less infusion of Hebraisms in style and words: in some parts being no
other than Hebrew thought in Greek clothing. The Alexandrian age was the link
between the Oriental and the Western style; hence the Septuagint Version, the
Apocrypha and Philo, are important helps for the study of sacred Greek To this
must be added a certain new and peculiar phraseology and turn of expression
which the new ideas of Christianity introduced. Taking all these things into
account, we may say that the language of the New Testament is a distinct study,
requiring its own apparatus of philological appliances and aids.

3. The two sacred languages, as they may be called, are in our days better
understood, and the aids to their acquisition are more abundant, than in any
former age. The Lexicons, Grammars, and Concordances of the Hebrew and the Greek
are so accommodated to the student’s necessity, that he may with ordinary
diligence acquire at least a practical and working knowledge of the original
Scriptures. A profound knowledge is possible only to few; but none who lay early
their foundations need be without such an expertness in the use of the
instruments of sacred philology as will enable them to appreciate the exposition
of guides more learned than themselves. It is of great importance to be clear on
this point. The noblest results of modern learning are found in Commentaries on
the Bible. These are often in conflict on some critical points of exposition;
and the reader is necessarily thrown on his own judgment. And that judgment he
will be able to form if he habitually makes the originals his study, according
to his best lights. And, apart from this, a very moderate acquaintance with the
Greek Testament especially will bring the words of the Holy Ghost much nearer
than any translation even the best can possibly do.

HERMENEUTICS.

There is a distinct science of Hermeneutics: that is, of the principles which
are applied in Exegesis, the exposition and interpretation of Scripture. The
science is an exceedingly extensive one, but its theological application rests
on a few general principles, as simple as they are important.

I. The history of Biblical Hermeneutics in the Christian Church may be studied
with advantage. There have not been successive schools; but the several schools
have been marked by the preponderance of the allegorical or mystical, the
ecclesiastica, or traditional, the literal or purely historical and rational
principles more or less marked in every age. The earliest principle of
interpretation that affected theology was that of the Alexandrian school, which
always tended to the allegorizing method, as inherited from the Jewish Cabbala.
It did not altogether neglect the grammatical interpretation of the "body" of
Scripture, but paid more attention to the moral exhibition of its "soul," and
most of all to mystical or anagogical uses for the initiated or teleioi. It is
obvious that no definite or coherent system of dogmatic theology can be based on
this principle of exposition, however rich it may be in results when duly
controlled. During the Middle Ages this method more or less continued; but it
was still more characteristic of those times that the exposition of Scripture
was fettered by ecclesiastical bonds: first the Regula Fidei, or rather the Rule
of the Church, directed it; independent research was checked; and Commentaries
mostly took the form of Catenae, or Synopses of Patristic exposition, down to
the Council of Trent. Meanwhile a free, historical method had here and there
always-existed: especially in the early school of Antioch, and among the
rationalist Schoolmen, such as Abelard. This has never been absent as a protest
of learning against the excesses of the two other principles. Since the
Reformation these tendencies have been perhaps more marked than before: the
last, especially, has found its expression in the Rationalist exposition of
modern times. It is now the highest aim of this science to combine the three:
giving the profound spiritual sense, the traditional interpretation of the
Church, and the scientific study of the text, their respective rights.

1. Hence we may reproduce these several methods and apply them to the general
laws of Hermeneutics. The grammatical study of the plain text answers to all
that was sound in the historical school; the observance of the analogy of faith
displaces the ecclesiastical principle, the analogy being to a great extent the
internal Biblical tradition itself as maintained in the purest traditions and
exegesis of the Christian community; and dependence on the Holy Ghost, the
interior Teacher, preserves the best secret of the allegorical or mystical
school without its errors.

2. At the root of all lies the grammatical or literal interpretation: what is
meant when it is said that the Bible must be interpreted like any other book.
The Lexicons give the meaning of the words; the Grammar, their right
construction; and the Concordance, the several writers’ distinctive phraseology.
The student of Scripture, like the student of any ancient classics, has the key
which enables him to understand what the Bible says, and what it means so far as
the literal meaning goes.

3. It may be safely said that a very large proportion of the difficulties,
harshnesses, and even apparent discrepancies of the Bible vanish before an exact
application of the rules of grammar as to cases, prepositions, moods and tenses,
especially of the Greek. Very much depends upon the simple grammatical meaning
of the Aorist in those two correlative passages: Even so death passed upon all
men, because all sinned; 1 and if One died for all, then all died.2 Modern
commentaries yield ample evidence of this; as also the gradual improvement of
our translations of Scripture. Further illustrations need not be given here:
they will constantly occur in the development of our doctrine. But the fact
cannot be too emphatically stated, that a grammatical and minute interpretation
of the plain text is a great step in the understanding of the far larger portion
of the Word of God.

1 Romans 5:12; 2 2 Corinthians 5:14.

4. The peculiarity and abundance of the figurative character of that text makes
no essential difference: it belongs to universal grammar; and, though Biblical
figure has its peculiar laws, obviously it also is amenable to a simple literal
interpretation. The simpler tropes—by which, as the word tropos signifies, words
or extended terms are merely turned from their natural meaning according to a
general habit of mankind—abound in the Bible, as in all Oriental books. The
Simile, or pure comparison; the Metaphor, which is the simile without the link
of comparison; and the Metonymy, or Synecdoche, which describes an object by
some of its relations or parts, all have the same meaning as in other
literature: this is true even of such metaphors as I am the true Vine, 1 or The
Lord God is a sun and shield; 2 and of the metonymy in They have Moses and the
Prophets, 3 or We are the Circumcision. 4 The Scriptures, in fact, adopt these
figures into their ordinary language to a very large extent. In some instances,
it is undoubtedly important to distinguish between the figure as to be
understood literally, and the figure as to be figuratively understood: a
distinction on which hangs much theological discussion, as, for instance, in
relation to the institution of the Eucharist. In the words This is My body which
is given for you, and this cup is the New Testament in My blood, 5 we have
metaphor and metonymy or synecdoche united. And, however true it is that
something infinitely beyond grammatical interpretation is needed here, still the
simple grammar itself goes far towards the right meaning. The same may be said
of the more extended tropes, such as Allegory, Parable, and Symbol, which must
have, whatever else they have, their natural interpretation. Allegory, as the
expansion of Metaphor, has always a real history at its basis: as in that of the
Vine brought out of Egypt 6 and St. Paul’s allusion to Agar and Sarah. 7 The
relations between the history and the veil that hides it require careful study
in the light of analogy hereafter to be considered. But, supposing the key
necessary to its theological solution found afterwards, the simple grammatical
exposition of the trope remains. So of the Parable. —Our Lord’s peculiar,
affecting, and, it may be said, unshared method of teaching, — which is the
Simile expanded. It has its one great point of resemblance, and always its
subordinate accessories; but the relation between these must be carefully
studied first as a mere parable before higher principles are brought in. The
Symbol, which is an indefinite trope that pervades Scripture, ranging from a
word or a number up to actions with complicated scenery, has its own laws, which
form a deeply interesting and important branch of sacred Hermeneutics; but these
laws do not in any case dispense with the literal meaning.

1 John 15:1; 2 Psalms 84:11; 3 Luke 16:29; 4 Php 3:3; 5 Luke 22:19-20; 6 Psalms
80:1-19; 7 Galatians 4:1-31.

II. The Analogy of Faith suggests a second canon of interpretation which applies
to Scripture as different from all other writings. This is a wide term, and
includes, in fact, three ranges of application: first, the close observation not
only of the writer’s context but of his general strain of teaching, as he is one
representative of the inspired doctrine; in connection with that, perpetual
reference to the universal harmony of Scriptural truth, as given by one
inspiring Spirit; and, finally, the appeal to the principles of the Faith as
held by the Catholic Church from the beginning.

1. Each inspired writer has his Charisma or Gift, his own style of phraseology
and of theological thought. For instance, while the inspired Apostles can have
but one doctrine of Christian Righteousness, St. Paul and St. James are
instructed to present it under a different aspect; as each also employs the term
Law with his own distinct shades of meaning. Now it must be a canon that the
interpretation of both be harmonized by understanding each according to the
analogy of his own general teaching. The rule applies with great force to the
New Testament: St. Paul uses many elect words, such as Grace, Law, Reckon, in
his own way; St. John has his terms also, such as Heart for Conscience; and the
law of analogy requires that this key be applied to every discussion of the
meaning of these writers respectively.

2. The same holds good throughout the Bible, whether of the Old Testament or of
the New. There is an analogy of Scripture: a rule or standard of doctrine,
pervading the entire oracles of God; and all exposition must be faithful to it.
This must govern the interpretation of the Divine Word as being a gradual
development of one harmonious Truth: there is one doctrine of the Trinity, of
the Person of Christ, of Sin, of Redemption, of Faith and Works, of the Holy
Spirit’s influence, of Immortality; and all these are in harmony with the one
keynote of the whole, the Reconciliation of God and Man in Christ. The
application of this canon is in one sense exceedingly difficult, in another it
is exceedingly easy. But, difficult or easy, it is an inexorable law, that the
exegesis of every sentence of Scripture must accord with its own supreme Rule of
Faith. Christ is everywhere. And, although the searching of the Scriptures in
order to find the testimony of Jesus in them may be and has been carried to
excess, it has been so only in the case of those who have not qualified this
canon or guarded it by the direct application of the others.

3. Once more, there is what may be termed, adopting St. Paul’s expression, the
Analogy of the Faith—katá teén analogían teés písteoos 1 —which is really the
analogy of Scripture as confirmed in the catholic belief of the best ages and of
the purest confessions of the Church of Christ. This canon is of great
importance, if rightly applied and duly guarded in the application. It
regulates, of course, only the exegesis of passages which involve fidelity or
unfaithfulness to the leading principles of the Gospel: these have been held in
every age by the Catholic Body, and their interpretation ought to have great
weight with us. The earliest creeds declare their belief in the leading
doctrines; their almost unanimous exposition of these has come down in a pure
tradition; and he is the wiser as well as the more modest interpreter who gives
their testimony some weight at least. This, however, leads at once to the third
canon, on which finally depend the life, truth, and security of Biblical
Hermeneutics.

1 Romans 12:6.

III. The Holy Spirit’s immediate presence in Holy Scripture— both as its
Defender and as its Interpreter—is in this science both a law and a guide of
interpretation: as such it is the corrective of the subjective spirit, whether
mystical or allegorical or rationalistic. The Inspiration of the Bible is its
Guardian also.

1. He is the Expositor within the Scripture itself; He ex-pounds the Old
Testament by the New: type by antitype; and ancient text by new style and form
of quotation. Nothing is more profitable to the human commentator than to follow
in the steps of the Divine: marking diligently how He expounds the ancient
oracles in the new ones, and faithfully making His methods theirs for the
exposition of both.

2. He continues His interpretation in the Christian Church, and to the minds of
all who steadfastly believe in the reality of His presence and guidance. He
preserves the regenerate spirit in its true and deep sympathy with the written
Word; or, in His own better language, gives the spiritual sense and discernment
on which the right understanding of Scripture depends. Its truths are
spiritually discerned. 1 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things. Moreover,
it is not fanaticism to believe that He answers every suppliant, especially
every minister responsible for the teaching of His people, who consults the
Oracle in simple prayer. In ancient times the Lord gave counsel to the leaders
of the congregation who inquired at the high priest’s breastplate of judgment. 2
The Christian Revelation has abolished the typical symbols of Urim and Tlummim;
but it has given us the reality of their Doctrina et Veritas, their Revelation
and Truth.3 And none ever sought or shall ever seek this Oracle in vain. For our
encouragement it is written: Ye have an unction from the Holy One.4 1 1
Corinthians 2:14-15; 2 Numbers 27:21; 3 Exodus 28:30; 4 1 John 2:20.

EXEGESIS AND THEOLOGY. The result of all these is Exegesis, either pure
exposition of the text or applied in the pastoral teaching of the ministerial
functions; Biblical Theology, or the systematic construction of Scriptural
doctrine, as such, and in its purely Scriptural forms and arrangements; and
Dogmatic Theology, containing the analyzed results of all later definitions and
developments.

I. Exegetical theology is the fruit of the application of Hermeneutics in
particular, and generally of all Biblical study, to the theological
interpretation of the text. Of course, there are commentaries which deal only
with its grammatical rendering; but with such we have nothing to do: the very
word, in its Greek form of exegesis or in its Latin form of exposition,
signifies more than that. It is the drawing out and presentation of the sense.

1. As such it occupies a large and abundant place in Christian literature:
ranging from monographs on detached passages and paragraphs, through expositions
of the several books, up to commentaries on the whole of Scripture. There cannot
be much doubt that the best and purest exhibition of Christian truths is to be
found in books devoted to the direct exposition of the Sacred Word; but the
value of these books is generally in the ratio of their concentration, and the
richest products of modern exegesis are the result of earnest and learned labor
on individual documents or on the writings of individual men.

2. Exegesis is applied in Practical Theology: the most important being that
which takes form in the ministry of the Word, or the pastoral teaching of the
congregation. The principles that govern the application of Hermeneutics to
preaching belong to Homiletics: which in modern times has been made a distinct
science, aiming to guide the Christian Pastor in the best methods of unfolding
the mysteries of the Faith to his flock, and of preaching the Gospel to those
who are without.

II. Biblical theology is the noblest superstructure erected on the foundation of
Hermeneutical science proper.

1. It arranges systematically, and in its unity, the boundless variety of truth
which in Scripture is presented under a process of development, at sundry times
and in divers manners. 1 Its systematic arrangement, however, aims rather to
exhibit the stages of development than the final results: though not excluding
the latter. It is occupied with the relations between the theology of the Old
Testament and that of the New: a subject of ever growing interest. It deals also
with the various schools of teaching and thought into which the inspired writers
may be distributed. Hence it is dispensational theology: exhibiting the
doctrines of every economy as it expanded the heritage of truth dispensed to its
predecessor. Especially in the New Testament it has an ample field: showing the
variations and harmonies that may be observed among the various writers. Hence
it presents the development of Christian Doctrine in its course of various but
orderly disclosure from Genesis to Revelation.

1 Hebrews 1:1.

2. Biblical theology lies at the foundation of Dogmatic, giving it its security
and its strength. From age to age Scriptural doctrine has assumed in the
Christian Church new forms of statement, arrangement, definition, and
terminology. When the development of Divine doctrine ceased, the development of
human dogma began. Doubtless one and the selfsame Spirit has presided over both
though His presidency has not been of the same kind. But the sole guarantee for
the soundness of our Systematic Theology, through all its branches, is its
fidelity to the exposition of the Word of God as the only standard of truth, the
only RULE OF FAITH.


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  CHAPTER 5: 07. VOL 01 - THE EXISTENCE AND NOTION OF GOD
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The Existence and Notion of God

GOD. THE EXISTENCE AND NOTION OF GOD THE BEING OF GOD: In what sense Innate and
Demonstrable IN THE CONSTITUTION OF HUMAN NATURE COSMOLOGICAL AND TELEOLOGICAL
ARGUMENTS;

Consensus Gentium LIMIT OF ALL ARGUMENT The Secret of Antitheism THE NOTION OF
GOD

Partial;

Real; and

Sufficient

GOD.

GOD is ALL IN ALL throughout the whole compass of Theology: everywhere both its
Subject and its Object and the unity of these. But there is a specific doctrine
of God which falls into two branches: first, the existence of the Supreme Being
as an object generally of human thought and knowledge; and, secondly, the more
specific revelation of His nature and attributes. It is obvious that these two
cannot be kept entirely distinct: each involves the other to a certain extent;
but they may be usefully distinguished as God’s revelation of Himself IN man and
TO man as consummated in Holy Scripture. THE EXISTENCE AND NOTION OF GOD. The
existence of God may be regarded either as an innate assurance or conviction of
the human mind that needs no proof, or as a verity that demonstrates itself to
reason by its credentials. According to the former view this eternal truth, the
sum of all truth, is a necessary element in man’s consciousness, as created in
the Divine image. But, in consequence of the disturbance of human reason, it is
necessary that theology should be prepared to arrange the elements of this
consciousness into a formal system of arguments in defense of His existence.
With this are inseparably bound up the reality and measure of the knowledge of
God possible to man. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. The Being of a God is at once an
innate idea and a truth demonstrable and to be demonstrated. Here we use popular
language which will receive its more full and sufficient explanation in due
course.

INNATE. The existence of God, God alone can reveal. He has wrought this supreme
truth into the constitution of human nature as its Creator. Scripture, which
never proves the being of the Eternal, appeals to this consciousness; it also
gives the reason of its disturbance, and thus by anticipation obviates the force
of every argument against it. The history of the human race demonstrates, by the
very perversions of the idea of God to which it bears witness, the fact that His
existence needs no demonstration. And there is no sound philosophical or
psychological reasoning which can withstand this principle, rightly understood
and adequately guarded.

I. The Scriptures, as addressed to man universal, assume that in his nature
there is a consciousness of a Supreme Being, on Whom he depends, and to Whom he
is responsible.

1. It gives the grounds of the sublime presupposition, of the knowledge which
from Genesis to Revelation, speaking to Jews and Gentiles and the whole human
creation of God, it everywhere takes for granted. It appeals to the law written
in their hearts, 1 which implies a Lawgiver; and to the sense of dependence
which feels after the Source of all existence, if haply they might feel after
Him, and find Him: 2 find Him, Who is already known, in order to the relief of
its fears and the satisfaction of its desires. But it goes even higher than
this, and everywhere teaches that in the day that God created man, in the
likeness of God made He him, 3 which has never been lost: for in Him we live and
move and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are
also his offspring. 4 And, although we must not press this testimony too far, it
most certainly declares this at least, that the very life of the dependent
creature is bound up with the idea of its Independent Source, the very thought
of God in man’s mind—to anticipate a future argument—assumes that God is. It
goes higher still, if possible. It declares that the eternal Logos or Word is
the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 5 And this
precedes, in order of time and of thought, that higher revelation which follows:
No man hath seen God at any time; the Onlybegotten [Son], Which is in the bosom
of the Father, He hath declared Him. 6 He is Himself the manifestation of the
invisible God, but only as revealing Himself to a preparatory consciousness in
mankind. ekeínos exeegeésato: the Son expounded in a final exegesis the original
text implanted in universal human nature.

1 Romans 2:15; 2 Acts 17:27; 3 Gen, 5:1; 4 Acts 17:28; 5 John 1:9; 6 John 1:18.

2. Every objection that may be urged against the universality of this
consciousness it obviates by showing that two reasons have obscured the truth in
human nature: through sin men did not like to retain God in their knowledge; and
therefore God gave them over to a reprobate mind, 1 or a mind void of judgment.
The only atheism that the Scripture admits is practical atheism: that which the
fool hath said in his heart. 2 St. Paul speaks of the Gentiles as átheoi en toó
kósmoo, ATHEISTS in the world. 3 But this is opposed to being in Christ; and
signifies rather forsaken of God than either denying Him or entirely ignorant of
Him, though these cannot be altogether excluded from the text.

1 Romans 1:28; 2 Psalms 14:1; 3 Ephesians 2:12.

3. Hence the general proposition that our evidence of the Supreme is innate and
connate. This does not mean that the full knowledge is formed in every mind as
an object of consciousness, but that the constitution of human nature is such
that it naturally develops a consciousness of God when God presents Himself,
even as it grows up into a consciousness of self and of the outer world. That
consciousness of the Infinite Being may be morally perverted, even as the
consciousness of self, and of the external world, may be intellectually
perverted by a false philosophy. It may assume a thousand forms, from the blind
fetish of abject superstition, through all the variations of Polytheism up to
Pantheism, or the materialistic theories that unwittingly make the eternal
evolutions of unintelligent law into the very Being Whom they reject. This leads
at once to the theological arguments in proof of this fundamental truth.

DEMONSTRABLE.

All processes of this argument rest finally on the analysis of that original
consciousness of God which is the birthright of man as a creature: hence they
are derived, first, from an appeal to the nature of the human spirit itself;
secondly, from a consideration of the relation of the human mind to the
phenomena of the universe: and, thirdly, from the universal Theism of the race
as the result of both. These arguments serve to show the groundlessness of all
atheistic theories, whether they negatively exclude God, or positively assert
His non-existence. But there is a limit to their demonstrative force as human
evidences: they require the enforcement of the Holy-Spirit’s influence as Divine
credentials; and must in every case derive their strength from the further
revelation of God as to His own essence and perfections. THE CONSTITUTION OF
HUMAN NATURE. The first and best credentials of the existence of a Supreme Being
are found in the elements of human nature itself.

1. The simplest form of the argument is to be sought in the moral constitution
of man, which in reason or conscience proclaims the existence of a Supreme
Lawgiver, and in its desires and aspirations the existence of a Supreme Object
for communion with whom it was made. These are elements of our nature and not
the result of education; they are primary, intuitive, and universal; refusing at
the outset all argument upon their origin. If conscience is the moral
consciousness—its only sound definition—it as much implies a spiritual world
into which man is born as consciousness generally implies the natural world. If
it is the reason or heart or central personality of man it gives a testimony,
supreme in the soul, to a Power Who rules in righteousness and hates iniquity.
The rational law of our nature is its moral law. It points to a Holy Governor,
Whom it suggests or to whom it appeals, above the visible world nothing in which
is capable of exciting its emotions. And the universal feeling of dependence on
a Being or a Person higher than ourselves reinforces this argument: the same
heart in man which trembles before an authority above him yearns to be able to
trust in Him. This may be called the MORAL demonstration.

2. This argument is known and read of all men. Another line of reasoning, also
based upon the constitution of our nature, is not, however so obvious or not so
immediately obvious to all minds. It is that there is in the spirit or reason of
man a clear idea of a Perfect Being: there must be an objective reality
corresponding to this. The argument is put in a variety of forms: for instance,
we cannot conceive the non-existence of space and time: there must be an
Infinite Substance, of whom these are the accidents or who must be at the ground
of these. The ideas of infinity, eternity, absoluteness must have a reality
somewhere: many who have denied the being of God have been obliged to invest
matter or the world with some of these qualities. They are primary laws of
thought; and strongly suggest what they may not be able to prove. They at any
rate silently protest against Antitheism in every form. To this class belong all
these impressive, and to some orders of mind most cogent, arguments derived from
it, the ideas of infinite goodness and of unchangeable truths in the soul; these
must have their ultimate ground in a Being of absolute and essential goodness
and truth. The Platonic Ideas, essential and not phenomenal, must be eternally
inherent in a Perfect Supreme. Multitudes of arguments have been reasoned out
which are only variations on this. They show both their strength and their
weakness in the position of Descartes that the thought of God implies the
existence of God. Such reasoning is called ONTOLOGICAL, and sometimes by abuse
of the term A PRIORI. It is too abstract for common use, and as usually put its
reasoning is really A POSTERIORI : it infers a Divine Being, from premises
already within; and strictly speaking belongs to the next department of our
demonstration. THE EXTERNAL UNIVERSE.

Arguments from the phenomena of the universe are divided into two closely
related and in some sense identical branches.

1. First, the COSMOLOGICAL reasoning demands a sufficient cause for every
effect; and is therefore sometimes called the AEtiological argument, from aitia,
cause. It has been used in every age, both within and without the sphere of
revelation. Augustine gave it noble expression when he said: Interrogavi mundi
molem de Deo meo, et respondit mihi: non ego sum, sed ipse me fecit. But the
first words of the Bible respond by anticipation to the appeal for a sufficient
reason of all things, a permanent Cause of all phenomenal and transitory
existence. The idea of causation is a primary law of thought: not arising from
the observation of sequence in things. The mind of man demands a cause of his
own being, of the universe around him: the Eternal First Cause is an absolute
necessity of thought. Discussions as to the nature of causality, and the origin
of our notion of it, have been many. All they have done is to help us by urging
that we have no right to assume that all existence must have what we call a
cause. They cannot overturn our conviction that every event and every effect
with a known origin must have a reason for its existence or occurrence. The
material creation is a universe: we only know it as such; as such science
demonstrates that it had a beginning and a law. There is nothing absolutely
permanent in matter as we know it; we cannot track it beyond its arrangements;
its ultimate constitution is a composition of atoms. And of the universe as we
know it there must have been a Cause of supernatural Power and Wisdom. This
holds good of every combination of molecules and of the stupendous universe
itself. No subordinate cause can be a cause properly speaking. The mind never
rests but in a Cause uncaused: free, intelligent, and, we may perhaps add,
omnipotent.

2. Secondly, the TELEOLOGICAL form of this argument—from telos, the end,
—observes the infinite proofs of a designing Mindin the laws and arrangements of
the universe. This is not a question of Final Causes, to which the human mind is
incompetent to ascend: that is of final in the sense of ultimate. It is a
question of the adaptations of everything to an end in itself, also of all
things to ends in relation to other things united in one aggregate or unity.
This physico-theological argument derives its materials from the creation
everywhere, as well as from the adaptation of man’s mental and spiritual
faculties to the world around. Hence the field in which it expatiates is
literally boundless. All the physical sciences unconsciously provide the
argument with its premises; and no sound science, physical or metaphysical,
rejects the conclusion. Mathematics, the alphabet of physical science, only
detects the quantitative laws of the universe. And every science without
exception shows that the order and adaptation and harmonies of nature are such
as make the chances no less than infinite against the supposition of Chaos, or
the absence of one designing intelligence. Newton’s words concerning astronomy
are true of all regions of science: Elegantissima haecce compages solis,
planetarum, et cometarum et stellarum non nisi consilio et dominio entis
cujusdam potentis et intelligent oriri potuit. And all that is said as to the
adaptations of inorganic and organic nature may be said of the relation of the
human mind to the whole. The cumulative argument is literally irresistible to
all but those who deny final causes altogether, and with that denial make
everything the result of chance. THE CONSENSUS GENTIUM.

These two classes of arguments, separately or in combination, consciously or
unconsciously, have largely swayed the general thought of mankind. The world has
been more or less THEISTIC from the beginning: the idea of a supernatural world
and supernatural beings has never been absent. This is the testimony of
Scripture; universal history consents; and the fact is itself a strong
subordinate auxiliary to all other reasoning. The modern science, so called, of
Comparative Religions has done good service in showing that even the forms of
the perversion of Theism bear witness to the truth: Polytheism and Pantheism,
which are only distortions of the one great idea, and have, for the most part,
divided mankind, are evidences almost universal of the force of the conclusions
drawn from the constitution of human nature and the evidences of inferior powers
controlled by the Supreme Power in the universe. Natural religion is at once
proof of the irresistible force of these arguments and itself an additional
argument.

LIMIT OF ALL ARGUMENT. This leads to a consideration of the value or sufficiency
of argumentation on this subject: in other words, of the question whether the
existence of God can be demonstrated at all.

There is a limitation which may be referred to the great question itself, as
also one that may be referred to the mind of him who disbelieves.

1. It cannot be denied that the perversion of the human intellect under evil
influence is such that it may refuse to accept, or be incapable of perceiving,
the evidence of the being of such a Deity as these arguments demonstrate. Man
may sink into such a state as to think himself an atheist: indeed, he may
suppress the idea of God in his nature altogether.

Although, generally speaking, pure atheism is rare, and still rarer anti-theism,
or the revolt against the possibility of the supremacy of One Ruler of the
universe, yet both are to be found among men of unquestionable strength of
intellect. This is a phenomenon of which a good account may be given. It may be
fairly said that the idea of God is generally rejected only in the sense of
being disguised. The unknown and unknowable Force of the philosophy of
Nescience, or the Pantheistic Absolute evolving itself in all things, is only
the Christian Creator under a most unworthy name. The modern Materialist whose
creed is, Matter I know, and force I know, but what is God? is unconsciously
asserting the Power he denies: he belongs to the class of men who hold the truth
in unrighteousness. 1 Their unrighteousness may not be deliberate defiance of
the eternal laws of morality; but it is most certainly injustice to the clearest
and most explicit demands of their own nature which cries out for the Living
God.

1 Romans 1:18.

2. But the argument that arises to prove the being of the Supreme is undoubtedly
beset with many difficulties. These are found mainly in the anomalies of the
moral world as under the will of a supposed Divine Providence: anomalies which
are as it were reflected in the physical world as the sphere of that Providence.
These difficulties we have to meet hereafter at many points where they specially
press. Meanwhile it is enough to say that such obstacles to faith produce
different effects on different minds. Some they lead to pure ATHEISM: that is,
the simple omission of the notion of God from the sum of things, nothing being
left but a material universe the highest form of whose blind and undirected and
causeless energy is thought. But this may take a skeptical form, and decline to
pronounce on the non-existence of God. It may object to the system of
MATERIALISM or POSITIVISM as unphilosophically positive, and content itself with
the assertion of NESCIENCE. But it may so brood over the obliquities of the
known universe as to reach the point of a desolate and bold ANTITHEISM,
pronouncing the existence of One Supreme, at once all-powerful and infinitely
loving, an impossibility.

3. One secret of this antitheistic sentiment among men is the failure to weigh
well the whole argument all round. No one demonstration is sufficient of itself.
Each gives and receives strength when viewed as one element in a reasoning which
has unbounded resources. A narrow view of things, fixing its thought upon some
one fascinating discord, may lead to the rejection of God: a large and wide view
of the whole, as by a necessity of thought under the supremacy of some vast
unity of government, can never accept either Atheism or Antitheism. But another
secret is that the disturbance of sin has rendered a Divine assertion of God
Himself necessary. Man may refuse to believe and argue himself into what is very
much like the ridding and baring his mind of all idea of Divinity. Hence,
secondly, all the demonstrations usually given of the existence of the Supreme
are simply the preliminaries to the revelation of the Divine nature by the
Eternal Word and the Eternal Spirit. In fact, and to speak boldly, they arc
rather for those who believe already than for those who believe not. At any
rate, the very best exhibition of arguments in favor of the existence of the
Deity leaves the subject imperfect, until the revelation of His nature and name
and attributes gives the demonstration its crown and completeness. THE NOTION OF
GOD.

Revelation is in the highest sense Theology, or the science of the knowledge of
God. This knowledge must be considered, first, as possible to man, and then as
imparted to him. The former involves the question in what sense man may know the
Supreme and Absolute Being; and the latter in what way this Being has revealed
His essence and His attributes to His creature capable of that knowledge. The
conception of the Divine nature which is possible to man is of necessity partial
and limited; but it is true knowledge, as corresponding to reality in its
Object; and, for the regulation of man’s life of faith, it is sufficient. The
establishment of these propositions will show the harmony between all sound
philosophy and Divine revelation. THE NOTION OF GODPARTIALBUT REAL AND
SUFFICIENT.

I. When Scripture speaks of God as dwelling in the light which no man can
approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, 1 it means what philosophy
means when it says that we cannot define in our thought the Infinite. We cannot
comprehend God in the sense of understanding Him in His essence, attributes, and
universal relations. Deus cognosci potest, comprehendi non potest. We cannot
search and find Him out unto perfection. He is and must be to every created
faculty, and that for ever, in some sense an UNKNOWN GOD. None but the Infinite
can know the Infinite. St. Paul’s testimony, as given above, may be said to
close the long array of Scriptural testimonies on this subject.

After an endless abundance of revelations, in which man’s knowledge of God is
asserted with almost every variation of the term knowledge, it declares that in
some sense He still remains incomprehensible. Something has been said on this
subject when Revelation was in question, and something will be said under the
Divine Attributes; it will be needful now only to show that the Biblical
doctrine of the unknowableness of God mediates between two extremes of
philosophical thought. On the one hand, it corrects the error that there can be
no knowledge of the Divine Being as an object of faith; and, on the other, it
corrects the error that the Divine Being is or can be perfectly revealed in the
reason of man.

1 1 Timothy 6:16; 1. However paradoxical it may seem, it is true that theology
has to defend the doctrine of the unsearchableness of Deity. There is a
Pantheistic and transcendental philosophy which in some sense makes man the
measure of God, and boasts that the human reason is capable of the knowledge of
the Supreme in the same sense and to the same extent as it is capable of any
other knowledge. This error may be viewed in two lights.

(1.) It exaggerates the prerogative of reason as an organ of truth. By reason is
here meant that transcendental faculty which is supposed intuitively to take
cognizance of the Infinite. According to Hegel, who with all his obscurity is
the best representative of this Pantheistic philosophy, God knows Himself in
man, the human consciousness of Him is His own consciousness finding expression
in human thought more or less distinct according to the measure of intellect,
but always a clear intuition of the Infinite. There is an infinite, impersonal,
and Divine reason in mankind of which each individual has his share; and in
short man’s knowledge of God is simply God knowing Himself in him.

Hence God is man in miniature, and man is a fragment of God.

(2.) This error makes man the measure of Deity, and reduces the Supreme essence
to a subjective creation of man’s own mind. The Infinite and Absolute One is
brought within the limits of human thought, being only the negation of the
finite or its correlative: the finite and the infinite being each a distinct
conception and finding their unity in the term God. But from this negative or
negation to the positive nothing of the older Pantheistic mystics there is but a
step. This philosophy, professing to make God simply what He is to us and in us,
really removes Him to a measureless distance: He is epekeina pashs ousias, the
superessential being which is of course no being at all. Thus extremes meet: the
Divinity Who is contracted within the limits of human thought, and brought too
close at hand, is really sent afar off. 1 Such an adventurous theory of a
perfect cognizance of the Infinite by a human faculty which is God Himself
within us really destroys the knowledge of the Infinite and Eternal Being
altogether.

1 Jeremiah 23:23.

(3.) Hence we must impress upon our minds the fact that all our knowledge of God
is limited: limited in us for ever as we are creatures, limited in its
impartation to us as we are creatures whose faculties of knowledge are in
themselves under the limitations of time and space, and limited still further as
our faculties are impaired and disturbed by sin.

2. Modern religious philosophy has betrayed a tendency to go to the opposite
extreme, and to exaggerate the unthinkableness and the unknowableness of God.
The limits of religious thought are defined by too narrow a theory, which
postulates three things: that there can be no knowledge of the Absolute whatever
as a Person, an absolute unconditioned personality being inconceivable and
incogitable; that what of God we cannot know we may nevertheless and must
believe in. despite of reason: and that consequently all our knowledge of God is
Regulative Knowledge simply, not answering to truth in Him but given us in this
life for the direction of our thoughts and lives. On this theory a few remarks
may be made, preparatory to the next principle that our knowledge of God is so
far as it goes real.

(1.) It begs the question throughout. It assumes to know that very absolute and
infinite which it professes not to know. It is itself thinking the unthinkable
and conceiving the inconceivable. How does it know that the Infinite cannot be a
Person, that infinity and personality are contradictory terms? How does it know
that personality is essentially a limitation and a relation? It is so in a
finite creature; but who that knows not the Infinite Being can dare to say that
it is so with HIM or with IT? Here the entire subject might be left: this
perilous hypothesis is at all points a glaring petitio principii.

(2.) It dishonors both the reason that it disparages and the faith which it
dignifies. It makes reason pronounce that an infinite consciousness is a
contradiction, that there cannot be an absolute cause of anything not itself;
and, at the same timer demands that faith should accept what reason absolutely
denies. This brings reason and faith into a most incongruous and mutually
degrading conflict. Were the position this, that reason is the faculty judging
according to sense, and faith the faculty that carries reason into the region of
spiritual existence, correcting its error and supplementing its defects, we
might understand and accept it. But that faith is obliged to accept what is not
merely above reason but directly contradicted by it, that faith is directed to
an Object utterly unknown and utterly unknowable, is an assumption that
undermines the foundations of truth.

3. This theory leads to very dangerous issues as it teaches the doctrine of a
merely regulative knowledge. The very word regulative indicates the peril: our
knowledge of God is given us for the direction not only of our thoughts but of
our lives also. If our thoughts of Him do not correspond to the reality, the
Author of our mental constitution forces us to believe what is not true. But God
who cannot err cannot deceive us. If our conscience and sense of responsibility
to a Judge, if our desires for communion with a Personal Father, have no
corresponding realities, where is our religion and where the Gospel on which it
rests? We cannot exaggerate the importance of what is at stake here.

II. Hence the knowledge we have of God is, therefore, a real knowledge. There
are many ways in which it pleases the Supreme to reveal Himself: but they all
imply that He gives us a true perception of His own nature so far as it goes. He
does not deceive us as to His being; and the mental conception of Himself to
which He trains us corresponds to the reality: thus our knowledge is real as in
us and real as of Him.

1. All here depends on the meaning and extent of the term knowledge; and again
much also depends on the distinction between knowledge generally and the
specific knowledge which in Scripture is appropriated for our use concerning the
Deity.

(1.) Knowledge is the true and right relation of the knowing mind to the object
known.

God is the absolute truth, and when our conceptions are conformable to that
object we know God. Now, it is of the essence of the Infinite that it passeth
knowledge; and the conception of a Being who cannot be fully comprehended in His
eternal nature is a true knowledge of Him, a knowledge in us conformed to the
truth in Him. The conception of the general term for God is true to His nature.
It is part of its truth that it does not profess to perceive by immediate
presentation His very essence. In no sense does it assume to see God. But it is
a true knowledge we have of Him, just as it is a true knowledge that we have of
our souls which we do not see, of the existence of matter which we do not see,
and of all other objects of our cognizance, so far as concerns their nature in
themselves and apart from their secondary properties. There is no definition of
knowledge which does not admit of our truly knowing God.

(2.) But it must be remembered that the Scriptures distinguish the knowledge
which is allied with true faith from every other kind of knowledge. It admits
that the Gentiles knew God; and their knowledge was in a certain sense connected
with their faith in the testimony of their own consciousness and of the external
world. That faith reached a very high point in some of the most enlightened of
the heathen; as for instance in Plato, whose definition of God has never been
surpassed in sublimity: Light is the shadow of the Deity, Lumen est umbra Dei,
et Deus est Lumen luminis. Nor need we doubt that the influences of the Divine
Spirit glowed in the minds of many of the ancient philosophers to whom, as
Jamblichus said, Esse nostrum est Deum cognoscere, to know God is our very
being. We must not, however, forget that since we have seen the Father in
Christ, both faith and knowledge have put on their perfection. 1 Faith in Jesus
has become strengthened to behold more directly than before its Eternal Object;
our dim conception has been transfigured into the certitude of knowledge:
gnosis, has become, so to speak, epignosis.

Man’s notion of the Divine Being has undergone its final change in this world;
and the reality of our knowledge has become more real. It may be said that the
most emphatic terms that could be used are used to describe our possible
acquaintance with the Divine Being.

1 John 14:9.

2. It is the true knowledge of a reality in God, of that ENS REALE which answers
to the ENS RATIONIS in the human mind here we must remember that we are not left
to ontological or metaphysical speculation. The assumption of our theology is
that God reveals Himself to man as made in His own image, and permits him to
infer the perfection in his Maker of what in himself is imperfect. The entire
course of Scripture sanctions and encourages this view. What is called
ANTHROPOMORPHISM is the style adopted by the Almighty when He speaks and acts as
a man. This is the prevalent method of the Bible; where God speaks to man as the
finite copy of His infinite Self. He says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, 1
but only in the sense of being nobler; and, neither are your ways My ways, but
only in the sense of being better. We are not deceived by Him 2 when we are
encouraged to think that the same things are true in Him and in us. Personality,
power, goodness, truth, love, are reflections in us of His image; realities in
us corresponding to realities in Him.

He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?He that formed the eye, shall He not
see?3 This is the poetry of Anthropomorphism; but it teaches the profound truth
that we are transcripts from an eternal Archetype, after which we are
refashioned by being conformed to the Image of the invisible God, the Son of God
incarnate, the Firstborn of every creature. 4 The Incarnation is the pledge that
human nature may have a true knowledge of the Divine.

1 Isaiah 55:8; 2 1 John 2:8; 3 Psalms 94:9; 4 Colossians 1:15.

III. The knowledge of which man is capable, and which he Sufficient receives, is
sufficient: sufficient for the purpose of probation in his present estate, where
he only waits, at the threshold of eternal knowledge, for the more direct vision
of God.

1. There is an important sense in which the modern expression Regulative
Knowledge is strictly appropriate, and may be rescued from its misapplication.
It is a disclosure adapted to our probationary condition; and as such is
sufficient for our worship and our duty, for our hope and our fear, for our
contemplation and our desire. For the present we have a reflected presentation
in a mirror darkly, we know in part. 1 But it must be remembered that the
Savior, the Only Revealer, has assured us how high is this regulative and
imperfect knowledge. It is that indeed, but much more than that: it is the light
of life.

2 He makes it most emphatically a continuation and bestowment of His own
Divinehuman knowledge: Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he
to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. 3 The Being Whom the New Testament
reveals is very different from the abstract and inconceivable form of being
which, rather than whom, modern philosophy would substitute. Such a God, without
form and void, neither the knowledge of the understanding nor the knowledge of
the heart will be content to receive.

1 1 Corinthians 13:12; 2 John 8:12; 3 Matthew 11:27.

2. Divines formerly distinguished between a THEOLOGIA VIATORUM and a THEOLOGIA
BEATORUM: the theology of the pilgrims and the theology of the beatified. Of the
future notion of God of which the beatific vision will be the medium the
Scripture tells us that it will be that which we now have made perfect. Then
shall we KNOW even as we ARE KNOWN: 1 the knowledge in part shall not be
exchanged for a truer knowledge, only for a knowledge more full. The one
knowledge is the preparation for the other, and will vanish away: 2 vanish only
as encumbered with symbols and images and innumerable restrictions of the flesh
which weighs down the incorruptible spirit; vanish only as the old law vanished
when it disappeared and yet reappeared in a new law, the law of the everlasting
Gospel.

1 1 Corinthians 13:12; 2 1 Corinthians 13:8.


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  CHAPTER 6: 08. VOL 01 - THE DIVINE ESSENCE AND PERFECTIONS
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The Divine Essence and Perfections THE DIVINE ESSENCE AND PERFECTIONS THE DIVINE
NATURE AND NAMES

ESSENTIAL NAMES Elohim and Jehovah, with their Correlation in the Old Testament
and the New

God’s revelation of Himself is given in names which declare His nature and His
perfections. Some of those names refer rather to the eternal Essence in itself
as the one and only real being, some to the Divine Existence and nature as
disclosed or revealed in His works, and some present God as the Substance
clothed with its attributes. From these, as progressively unfolded throughout
the Scriptures, we may humanly define the Essence of God, and arrange in
reverent order the Divine perfections.

1. The phrase in most common use, and the only one used in Scripture, is THE
DIVINE NATURE. This, according to its derivation, is scarcely applicable in any
other than an accommodated and conventional sense to God: indeed, the only
instance of its use in Scripture refers to our being made partakers of the
Divine nature, 1 meaning either the moral excellence of God or the Divine-human
spiritual life given in Christ. Neither the idea of phusis, from phuo, nor that
of Natura, from Nascor, comports with the unproduced and undeveloping
absoluteness of God. Even Pantheism, which has introduced the two correlative
ideas of NATURA NATURANS, or the sum of all things as producing, and NATURA
NATURATA, the sum of all things as produced, nevertheless finds these ideas
inconsistent with its high conception of the absolute ALL, and prefers the term
SUBSTANCE. The Scripture, however, knows no such abstract terms as Essence or
Substance. I AM IS BEING, indeed, in contradistinction to all phenomena; but it
is Being concrete in an Eternal Person. SUBSTANCE, Substantia, which is the
hidden reality that underlies attributes, is equally absent from Divine
revelation. In theology the word Nature is generally referred equally to the
eternal essence and to the moral character of God; the words Substance and
Essence, however, are more appropriate to the former. It may be added, though
apparently a refinement in thought, that being is a deeper word than
existence—which by its derivation includes the EX, the coming out of being into
definite manifestations, —and is therefore strictly the representative of the
absolute essence of the Deity.

1 2 Peter 1:4.

2. Though the Divine names are alone mentioned, it must be remembered that there
are other methods by which it has pleased God to present Himself to the thought
of His creatures. Some Scriptural references to His being are neither names nor
attributes: as when it is said that GOD IS SPIRIT; 1 that GOD IS LIGHT; 2 and
that GOD IS LOVE. 3 But those definitions, mediating between essence and
attribute, will find their appropriate place in a later department of theology.

1 John 4:24; 2 1 John 1:5; 3 1 John 4:16.

THEESSENTIAL NAMESOF GOD. The names which represent the unsearchable mystery of
the Eternal have been progressively revealed. Two of them, Elohim and Jehovah,
in their Old-Testament unity, declare that God is at once absolute and necessary
being, and the personal Source and Giver of all Divine life: these are supreme
among many other names running through the older revelation. They are continued
in the New Testament and consummated by the disclosure of a Name without a name,
that of the Triune God made known through the Incarnate Son: the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity.

ELOHIM AND JEHOVAH.

These two essential and personal names pervade the Scriptures as distinct, and
as related to each other, and as combined with other names. They convey to the
mind a representative idea of the Divine Being which, though standing for a
reality unsearchable in itself, effectually defends it from every perversion of
the notion of God.

1. The former elohiym, is the first and the pervading name of the Supreme Being
in the early revelations, and in this form limited to it. Its derivation,
whether traced to el, the more primitive type, signifying power, or to its
singular eloahh, signifying the effect of power in fear, is of secondary
importance: probably in its simplest root it is underived.

Occurring sometimes poetically in the singular, it is generally in the plural:
thus expressing the abundance, fullness, and glory of the powers of the Divine
nature: as it were intensive, or a plural of majesty; though, as always joined
with the singular verb, it is not consistent with such an abstract Monotheism as
would leave no place for the Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity.

2. The latter, Yhovah, denotes essential and absolute being, uniting what to man
is past, present, and future in one eternal existence. This name is explained by
God Himself: HE WHO IS, or HE WHO IS WHAT HE IS: 1 uniting as it were the
abstract idea of pure Being with the process of continual becoming through
revelation to His people. He is eternally steadfast in the perpetual revelation
of His nature and relations. It is of importance to remember that Jehovah, no
less than Elohim, lays the foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The
historical development of the nature of God in Scripture is always connected
with it: the Theophanies and Anthropomorphisms are always those of Jehovah. And
Jesus the God manifest in the flesh 2 is Jehovah, the Angel of Jehovah3 in the
Old Testament, even as He said of Himself, Before Abraham was IAmos 4:1-13 in
the New Testament.

1 Exodus 3:14; 2 1 Timothy 3:16; 3 Exodus 3:2; 4 John 8:58.

3. These appellatives are united from the very beginning of Scripture; and their
combination, the Lord God and God the Lord, declares the truth that the Elohim
or God Who created the universe is the personal Jehovah or God of His creatures:
therefore, when the fuller revelation was made through Moses, of the God of a
special covenant, the personal relations of Jehovah Who had been known indeed
from the beginning were made prominent over those of the Almighty God Whom the
fathers had formerly known. When they are united, Elohim is rather the abstract
and generic name, which might be given to false gods; but Jehovah is the proper
name that indicates absolute unity, personality, and saving relation to His
people and to individuals.

4. These are the two supreme names—given by Himself and not derived from
heathenism—of the Divine Being in the Bible. All others are variations on them,
or these with additional appellatives that link them with the attributes of the
Godhead. For instance: El Shaday, God Almighty, 1 or Shaddai alone; the Living
God; 2 Elohiym chayiym, the Most High; 3 El Elyown, the Lord, or the Lord God,
of Hosts. 4 There is one name which occupies a peculiar place: the plural,
Adonai, joined with Elohim and Jehovah. 5 This name of God denotes His dominion
as Lord, which Jehovah does not. The Jews mostly used the vowel points of this
word in writing and pronouncing the Name to them above every name, which they
thus veiled in reverence: hence it coalesced with the latter when it was
translated and passed into the New Testament as Kurios. The testimony of Thomas
to the Divinity of Christ, My Lord and my God, 6 unites this with an echo of
Adonai Elohai in the Psalms. St. John in the New Testament gives two new
definitions of the nature of God, both, however, including His attributes, like
those to which we have referred in the Old Testament: God is light and God is
love. 7 The same final witness records the last revelation of God in the words
of Christ which sums up these Divine names in one remarkable verse: Egoó eimi tó
álfa kaí tó Oó légei Kúrios ho Theós hooón- kaí-ho-eén-kaí-ho-erchómenos ho
Pantokrátoor. 8 Here are all the Greek representatives of the Hebrew names
Elohim, Jehovah, Adonai, Shaddai; with their relation to absolute and personal
being. And they form the transition, if our Lord Jesus Christ utters them, to
the second branch of our subject, the final and full revelation of the Triune
Name.

1 Genesis 17:1; 2 Job 5:17; 3 Genesis 14:18; 4 Jeremiah 5:14; Daniel 9:13; 5
Isaiah 40:10; 6 John 20:28; Psalms 35:23; 38:15; 7 1 John 1:5; 8 Revelation 1:8.

PROTEST OF THESE NAMES AGAINST ERROR. The two great perversions of thought
concerning the Divine nature which have been found wherever men have been left
to their own devices—Polytheism and Pantheism in all their forms —are by these
names explained at once and condemned.

1. POLYTHEISM is the human corruption of these Divine truths: Elohim, the God of
unbounded internal fullness of life and external manifestations of creative
wealth, becomes in heathenism a universe of deified and worshipped powers;
Jehovah in heathenism degenerates into the special and local imaginary god of
each worshipping nation. Or, in the Eastern systems of Dualism, Elohim was
perverted into the creative forces of darkness and evil, Jehovah into the
co-eternal God of light and goodness. Holy Scripture distinctly refers to these
corruptions of the truth, but only as corruptions. From beginning to end the
Bible contains no acknowledgment of the reality of other gods. It is true that
we read Jehovah is greater than all gods, 1 as the testimony of Jethro, a
heathen, and who is like unto Thee, 0 Jehovah, among the gods? 2 in the song of
Moses: as if declaring that no Elohim was above the Jewish Jehovah. But
throughout Scripture the other gods are Vanities or Nothings. 3 It can hardly be
denied however that according to the testimony of St. Paul, the Gentiles
sacrifice to devils, daimonions, the saiyr 4 of the Old Testament, and therefore
that evil spirits ruled over the empire of idolatry. But St. Paul, like all the
ancient prophets, makes the false gods and their idols identical: both being
nothing in the world. 5 The Lord our God is one Lord, 6 and His name one, 7 and
the only true God. 8This is the sublime testimony of the opening of Genesis, and
it is confirmed throughout revelation. The Pantheon of heathenism has its altar;
but that altar is erected to cuwniy, that which is not god.9

1 Exodus 25:11; Exodus 22:3; 2 Exodus 28:11; 3 Deuteronomy 32:21; 4 1
Corinthians 8:4; Deuteronomy 32:17; 5 1 Corinthians 8:4; 6 Deuteronomy 6:4; 7
Zec. 19:9; 8 John 17:3; 9 Deuteronomy 32:21.

2. PANTHEISM has in every age—in the East and West, in ancient and in modern
times— been the prevalent error of the philosophical intelligence in its
speculations on this high subject. Unlike Polytheism, it has aimed to simplify
the idea of the Supreme; but its simplification reduces Him to the ALL, to pan
kai to en, the unity of the world, or the UNIVERSE. As such Pantheism makes God
the sum of things in the sense of elevating Him above personality. The ancient
Pantheism, as introduced into the modern world by Spinoza, regards the All as
one substance, having mind and extension as its modes or attributes. There is no
becoming; all is pure being; and phenomena are only the modifications of that
being. Whatever the transcendental philosophy has superinduced on this notion,
resolving pure being finally into the unmodified NOTHING, of which no limiting
attribute can be predicated, has no element in common with Biblical theology.

Modern Materialism unconsciously adopts a Pantheistic character. Its unknown and
unknowable Force or Law is the irrational expression of the same thought; it
only gives matter the pre-eminence in its philosophy of Nescience.

3. ELOHIM-JEHOVAH is the Scriptural doctrine, expressed in symbolical names,
which protests against both perversions. However difficult it may be to receive
it, God is the one Absolute Personality. This is the teaching of both names,
especially in their union. Each denotes the soleness, the necessity, the
infinity of the Divine Being as a Spiritus Independens; and each is connected
with man and the creature in such a way as not only to permit, but to demand,
the most definite personality, or self-determining relation to the beings whom
He calls into existence. This double name expresses clearly all that Pantheism
has labored in vain to express during the course of its many evolutions; but for
ever precludes the error into which Pantheism has fallen. It avows an infinite
fullness of life and possibility in the eternal essence; but assigns all to the
controlling will of a Person. The Scripture scarcely ever approaches the notion
of an abstract entity; it invariably makes both Elohim and Jehovah the subjects
of endless predicates and predicative ascriptions. In Him we live, and move, and
have our being: in Him, 1 a Person to be sought unto and found. In fact, the
personality of God, as a Spirit of self-conscious and self-determining and
independent individuality, is as deeply stamped upon His revelation of Himself
as is His existence. We are created in His image: our Archetype has in eternal
reality the being which we possess as shadows of Him; He has in eternal truth
the personality which we know to be our own characteristic, though we hold it in
fealty from Him. THY GOD is the Divine word; MY GOD, the human response, through
the pages of revelation. No subtlety of modern philosophy has ever equaled the
definition of the absolute I AM; the English words give the right meaning of the
original only when it lays the stress upon the AM for the essential being, and
the I for the personality of that being.

1 Acts 17:28.

4. The same correction may be traced throughout the long succession of names
which are given to the Deity in the Old Testament: the gradual development seems
to show that the error, in both its forms, but especially the Polytheistic, was
confronted more and more fully from age to age. The variations which were
gradually introduced are all connected with appendages that guard the majesty of
the one God. When the name Jehovah was made prominent as the covenant-name for
His own people, certain peculiarities in its use taught important lessons.
Neither the people nor any individual might say, MY Jehovah: it was enough to
say MY Elohim, or Jehovah, my Lord. Nor do we ever read of THE Jehovah, as if He
were or might be one of many. The Scripture often speaks of the living God, 1 as
if in opposition to the gods which are dead nothings. But it never speaks of the
living Jehovah; though it is very frequent to make the eternal life of Jehovah
the highest oath: as the Lord liveth! 2 Very much importance has been attached
to the laws which regulate the use of Elohim and Jehovah respectively; and one
of these laws will be found by careful observation to be the assertion of the
unity of the God of the whole earth, and His peculiar relation to the entire
race of mankind as the God of a covenant of redemption yet to be revealed. After
all, the profound and glorious rebuke of all Polytheistic and Pantheistic errors
is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. And this Jehovah-Elohim prepares for
in many ways. The plural Elohim name lays the indefinite and mysterious
foundation for a plurality of Persons in the Godhead; while the singular Jehovah
for ever guards the unity of God. The absolute soleness of Deity is maintained
by the immutable name Jehovah; while, at the same time, it is that very name
which is linked with every Old-Testament manifestation of the Three Persons, and
is continued in the New-Testament revelation of the Three-One Jehovah, the
Father the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

1 Joshua 3:10; 2 Numbers 14:21.


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  CHAPTER 7: 09. VOL 01 - THE TRIUNE NAME
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The Triune Name THE TRIUNE NAME THE DIVINE UNITY

Polytheism;

Pantheism THE TRINITY AND TRIUNITY Development in Scripture ECCLESIASTICAL
DEVELOPMENT:

Ante-Nicene;

Sabellianism;

Subordinationism and Principatus of the Father;

Arianism; The Creeds; The Councils:

Mediaeval;

Reformation;

Modern Errors;

Practical Conclusions The perfect revelation of the Divine Name or Essence is
that which is given by our Lord Himself in the Baptismal Formula of dedication
to God and admission into His kingdom. This final testimony of the Revealer
declares that the supreme Object of Christian Faith is one, yet existing in a
threefold internal personality. As a testimony, it closes a long series of
progressive developments of doctrine, all pointing to a Trinity of personal
subsistences in the Godhead; and commences a revelation of God which connects
Three Divine Persons with the creation of all things, the redemption of the
world, and the administration of grace in the Church. Hence, a doctrinal
distinction may be suggested between the Absolute or Immanent Trinity and the
Trinity Economical or Redemptional. The latter must be reserved for a future
stage. It is with the former that we have now to do; and it will be sufficient
to establish from Scripture the essential Unity, the essential Trinity, and the
essential Triunity of the Divine Being. This will lead finally to a further
illustration of the doctrine by a reference to the controversies through which
it has passed, and the dogmatic definitions to which these have given rise. THE
DIVINE UNITY.

It is impossible to define the Unity of God: the word unity in human language
gives no adequate notion, barely serving to defend the doctrine from every
opposite error. Hence it is our wisdom to study it in the light of its
exhibition in Scripture: marking the uses to which the doctrine is applied, the
Scriptural method of stating it, and the confirmations of the truths which may
be everywhere found in the one and uniform economy of nature.

DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE.

Consulting God’s own revelation of His unity it is very instructive to observe
the forms the doctrine assumes there.

1. It is set forth as the basis of all worship: of devotion and obedience and
fear. Hear, 0 Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 1
This demands a perfect consecration which by the very terms only One Object can
claim. Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord He
is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. Thou
shalt keep therefore His statutes. 2 Here supreme obedience is exacted to one
sole Authority which can have no rival. There is no God with Me: I kill, and I
make alive: I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of My
hand. For I lift up My hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. 3 There is only
one Judge to be reverenced and feared for time and for eternity.

1 Deuteronomy 6:4-5; 2 Deuteronomy 4:39-40; 3 Deuteronomy 32:39-40.

2. It is often urged as the protest of the Supreme against false views of His
nature; especially in those parts of Scripture where Divine revelation comes
into collision with heathenism. Against the polytheistic creed and idolatrous
practice of the nations the one God appeals: Is there a God beside Me? yea,
there is no God; I know not any. 1 Everywhere, down to St. Paul’s testimony, We
know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but
One, 2 the One Being, Who asserts, but does not prove, His own existence,
asserts without proving His absolute unity. Against Dualism, the belief, not
known by name in Scripture, which has taken refuge in the notion of two
co-eternal elements of being, passively co-existent or struggling for mastery,
the Eternal more than once commands His prophets to deliver His own testimony.
Having its origin in Persia, this notion passed through later Judaism into the
heretical sects of Gnosticism, and spent itself out in Manichaeism. The God of
Israel condescends to utter His protest against this, perhaps the most natural
and widespread of all errors: I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the
light, and create darkness. 3 Here the very terminology of earlier and later
Dualism is used; but it is only to declare that no independent origin of evil
must be conceived. It may be impossible for the human mind to understand how He
in whom there is no darkness at all 4 could nevertheless create darkness. The
only answer is, there is none else. But darkness and light are also to be
under-stood by what follows, I make peace, and create evil. 5 The One God is the
Abolisher of sin by His peace, and its Punisher by His evil. Against Pantheism,
which perverts the doctrine of the Divine unity by making God the sum of all
personalities and forces, but not Himself a distinct personality, the Supreme
testified: He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye,
shall He not see? 6 This is an apostrophe to the ungodly in the form of an
appeal to the One Judge; but it is the Lord’s own refutation of Pantheism in all
its future or possible forms. Still more expressly, however, is the true unity
of God opposed to this system of false unity in all those passages which speak
of the, One Creator of all things: I am the Lord that maketh all things; that
stretch-eth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself.
7 1 Isaiah 44:8; 2 1 Corinthians 8:4; 3 Isaiah 14:6-7; 4 1 John 1:5; 5 Isaiah
14:6-7; 6 Psalms 94:9; 7 Isaiah 44:24.

3. In real consistency with all this, though in seeming discord, is the
undeniable fact that in many references to the Divine unity there is an
undertone of mysterious allusion to a plurality of Persons within the Godhead.
St. Paul, in the Epistle which declares the mystery of God manifest in the
flesh, proclaims that: there is One God, and one Mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus, or Jesus Christ,Man 1:1 And, in the final revelations of
our Lord, He asserts His Divinity in the very words which bespeak in the Old
Testament the unity of God: I am the First and I am the Last: 2 we may add here
also, Beside Me, there is no God. This is more fully seen when we go back to the
ancient words: Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and His Redeemer the Lord
of Hosts; I am the First, and I am the Last; and beside Me there is no God. 3
That the oneness or soleness of the Divine essence is consistent with an
interior intercommunion of persons is a truth which faith must receive. Human
reason is unable to grasp it. It is the mystery of God, 4 parallel with the
mystery of Christ. 5 Christianity is not in conflict with Judaism in this
essential principle of the earliest revelation. Even in this it is Monotheistic.

1 1 Timothy 3:16; 2:5; 2 Revelation 1:17; Isaiah 44:6; 3 Colossians 2:2; 4
Ephesians 3:4.

4. Lastly, it is asserted in connection with the doctrine of the Trinity, a
combination of the utmost importance. When our Lord has unfolded in His paschal
discourse the relations of the Three Persons, and immediately before He asks for
the glory which I had with Thee before the world was, 1 He declares This is life
eternal, to know Thee, the only true God.2 He gives the abiding formula of the
Faith in Three Persons as baptism into the ONE NAME.

1 John 17:3-5; 2 Matthew 28:19.

EXTRA SCRIPTURAL.

It might seem, after what has been said, superfluous to appeal for confirmation
to arguments extra-Biblical: especially as it is almost impossible to abstract
ourselves for a moment from the prepossessions which the Scripture has
interwoven into all our habitual notions of the Divine Being.

1. The human mind is so constituted as to be unable to conceive of more than one
Absolute Being. The same sure instinct of manor constitution of his nature,
which prepares him for the disclosure of God is unable to endure more gods than
one: the foundation or source of all being cannot, without contradiction, be
multiplied. Unity is not an attribute of Deity, not a quality of essence so much
as a condition of relation: the Supreme is related to His interior Self, and to
His creatures, but as God, is unrelated. The primary law of thought that
predicates the Infinite and the Absolute of the Divine Being demands His eternal
unity as a necessary postulate.

2. The term is used only by analogy. Though there is one Divine nature, the
unity of God is not a unity of kind, because there are not individuals of the
same species; and, therefore, as for other reasons, the word is inapplicable to
the Divinity. Of all other objects of thought we can imagine fellows or
reproductions. But in God there is absolute soleness, SOLEITAS; though what lies
hidden in the mystery of this essential ONENESS we know but partially. It is
wrong to dogmatise upon the nature of a unity to which we have no parallel, and
which we cannot define by comparison or illustration.

3. The constitution of nature, both physical and moral, confirms this doctrine
by innumerable evidences. Unity is stamped upon the entire creation: so clearly
that the whole system of science is based upon this presupposition; its latest
conclusions pointing to some one primitive and central force, which some in
their blind enthusiasm almost deify as the unknown God. And, as it is in earthly
things, so it is in things spiritual and heavenly. There is one conscience in
man, suggesting one law and one Lawgiver. There is evil, as there is good; but
they both pay homage to the supreme Will behind them, which is their equal
standard. Hence, the erring philosophy of the world, in the better tendencies of
its error, has seldom been Polytheistic or Dualistic: its universal tendency
towards Pantheism declares its indestructible conviction of the Unity of God.
This has been its snare, to carry the principle to the extreme of denying all
personality or creaturely existence outside of the One and the All. THE TRINITY
OF THE GODHEAD. The Christian faith receives and adores the mystery that the One
Divine Essence exists in a Trinity of coequal, personal Subsistence: related as
the Father, the eternal Son of the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally
proceeding from the Father and the Son. In the baptismal formula our Lord has
presented to Faith the name and nature of God in its perfect revelation. The
commission of the Apostles was to convert all nations from idolatry, and to
bring them to the Gospel salvation: that salvation was to be obtained in the
economy of redemption, through faith in the One Name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost, 1 to which all worship must henceforth be offered.
Christian baptism is to be administered into the Name, eis to onoma, into the
NEW NAME: not names as of many, but Name as of one. Yet the repeated kai, and
of, declares a spiritual distinction in the Godhead as the Object of faith,
trust, hope and full devotion: for baptism meant all this and nothing less. Men
were not to be called to believe in God and two subordinate gods: that would
have been only the introduction of a new form of Polytheism. Yet not in God, and
a Mediator, and an Influence: the names Son and Holy Ghost are not, the former
especially, simply names of office. But this great text, though central and
fundamental, does not stand alone. It must be viewed as the consummation of
preliminary and imperfect disclosures; as involving and sealing the Scriptural
doctrine, otherwise revealed, of the Deity of the Two Persons called the Son and
the Holy Spirit; and as the standard for the interpretation of later Trinitarian
passages in the New Testament: that is, it must be viewed first as looking
backward to a long development, then in itself and its own meaning, and finally
as looking forward to the later Apostolical Scriptures.

1 Matthew 28:19.

DEVELOPMENT IN SCRIPTURE. The doctrine of the Trinity, like every other, had, in
the mystery of the Divine education of the Church, its slow development.
Remembering the law that the progress of Old- Testament doctrine must be traced
in the light of the New Testament, we can discern throughout the ancient records
a pre-intimation of the Three-One, ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 No
word in the ancient records is to be studied as standing alone; but according to
the analogy of faith, which is no other than the one truth that reigns in the
organic whole of Scripture.

1 Peter 1:5.

1. The first distant hint of plurality, Let Us makeMan 1:1 is the plurality of
Three: God, and the Word by Whom all things were made, 2 and the Spirit of God
Who moved on the face of the waters, 3 brooding over the Chaos. The occasional
triple manifestations to the Patriarchs, as when the Lord appeared unto Abraham,
and, lo, three men stood by him, 4 also yield their suggestions, if no more.

1 Genesis 1:26; 2 John 1:3; 3 Gen. 1:1.2; 4 Genesis 18:1-2.

2. But there is more than mere suggestion in the Benediction and the Doxology of
the ancient Temple: the former literal, the latter symbolical, both belonging to
God alone by the very terms. Blessing may be bestowed by a creature as the agent
or instrument of Him Who alone can bless; but whenever the word is thus used in
Scripture there is plain indication that it is only ministerial. It is the
highest prerogative of the Supreme to pronounce blessings upon His people. So
also tributes of honor may be paid to exalted creatures; but God alone is the
object of doxology. The former of these distinctions is illustrated by the
Levitical office of benediction. The priests were commanded to put THE NAME of
Jehovah upon the people and bless them, 1 in the utterance of a three-one
benediction which, as we shall see, the Apostolic form echoes in the New Temple
and expounds. 2 So the response of the Doxology in the mystical temple, by the
angelic choir if not by man, cries Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts! 3
Behind the veil the Divine glory disparts into three, while all the disparted
rays blend again into one.

1 Numbers 6:27; 2 2 Corinthians 8:14; 3 Isaiah 6:3.

3. The prophecies concerning the Mediatorial Ministry assume a form explicable
only by the New-Testament doctrine: My mouth it hath commanded, and His Spirit
it hath gathered them. 1 He who proclaimed Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is
one Lord, 2 cries once more: Hear ye this: I have not spoken in secret from the
beginning, 3 — though My full Name hath not been known—from the time that it
was, there am I: and now— anticipating the fullness of time—the LORD GOD and His
SPIRIT hath sent ME. Of Whom doth the Prophet, or rather the voice of God
Himself, speak this? Prophecy could not retain its veiled and mystic character,
and speak more plainly than in such terms as these. The same mysterious Trinity
may be traced elsewhere in the prophets.

1 Isa. 39:16; 2 Deuteronomy 6:4; 3 Isaiah 48:16.

4. When the Old Testament blends with the New in the preliminaries of the
Incarnation, both the songs that herald it and the Incarnation itself declare
the Triune God: the Holy Ghost Who is the Power of the Highest 1 overshadows the
mother of our Lord; and His Incarnation-name is Immanuel, God with us, 2 Who
should be, and should be called the Son of God.

1 Luke 1:35; 2 Matthew 1:23.

5. Until the Resurrection permitted the full unsealing of the revelation of our
Lord’s relations to His Father, His teaching generally was intermediate between
the two Testaments: a principle that is not enough remembered in Biblical
theology. His exposition of every doctrine which was afterwards distinctive in
the New Faith illustrates this. We must, however, limit our view to that of the
Holy Trinity. This Jesus taught by degrees most fully and clearly: partly as
manifested in His personal history, and partly by His express words. At the
beginning of His ministry the Sacred Three are revealed around His own Person in
connection with His Baptism; and in His farewell discourse on the eve of His
passion He expanded the full significance of that revelation of which He had
been the centre. The former introduces the Father, acknowledging the Son and
sealing Him by the Spirit symbolically, preluding the baptism ordained for His
people. The latter is the Savior’s complete doctrine of the Trinity, showing
that the future Presence of God in His Church, collectively and in its
individual members, would be the inhabitation of the Father, His Son, and His
personal Spirit. This was the final preparation for the baptismal formula. THE
BAPTISMAL FORMULA. This fundamental text, which knows of no variations of
reading, unites two Persons with the Father in a manner of which there is no
example elsewhere in Scripture. It is unique and alone: a dignity becoming the
Revealer of the new Name, the revelation of the mystery itself, and the
transcendent solemnity of its relation to the Christian economy.

This, therefore, is the place for the consideration of what these names import
in relation to the Holy Trinity. It must be shown briefly that these Three
Persons, or rather the Second and Third, are in this Formula truly Divine; and
the best method of accomplishing this will be once more to regard these words as
dividing between a past imperfect revelation and the fuller revelation given in
Christ concerning Himself and His Spirit in the unity of the Father. THE SECOND
AND THIRD PERSONS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. The Older Revelation contains references
to the Son and the Spirit of God which, when the light of the New Testament is
shed upon them, plainly declare the distinct Divine personality of both in the
unity of the Godhead. We need not pause to ask why the name Father is not given
to the Deity in the Old Testament. It is not unknown there. Almost the last
appeal of Jehovah against His people—His son whom He called out of Egypt1 —was:
If I then be a Father, where is Mine honor? 2 But it was reserved to be brought
out in its depth and fullness by His Eternal Son.

1 Hosea 9:1; 2 Malachi 1:6.

1. The Second Person is almost as familiar a Presence in the Old Testament as in
the New: that is, when it is searched in the light of His own testimony
concerning its witness to Himself. At sundry times and in divers manners 1 He
appeared; but always in such a form as rejects every interpretation but that of
His equality with Jehovah, as being God and not a creation of God. His
manifestations were precisely consistent with His twofold relation, pretemporal
and incarnate, to the Trinity. As the Eternal Image of His Father’s Person, He
is Jehovah Himself, yet distinct from Jehovah: in sublime consistency with His
true nature. But, as anticipating His mediatorial character, He is the ANGEL OF
JEHOVAH, or the ANGEL OF ELOHIM, from the earliest dawn down to Malachi, where
He is the ANGEL OF THE COVENANT. By Myself have I sworn, saith Jehovah . . .
that in blessing I will bless thee. JEHOVAH-JIREH who gave to Abraham the great
Benediction was the Angel of the Lord. The Angel who wrestled with Jacob was to
him God face to face;2 as He was also to Hosea: He found him in Bethel, and
there He spake with us; even Jehovah, God of Hosts; Jehovah is His memorial. 3
One other testimony must stand for a long series: Behold, I send an Angel before
thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have
prepared. Beware of Him, and obey His voice, provoke Him not: for He will not
pardon your transgressions; for MY NAME is IN HIM. 4 Who can fail to think of
the Coming Redeemer, so like this Old-Testament Joshua, and as the New-Testament
Jesus so unlike! Throughout the Gospels, from Gabriel’s testimony to the Angel
greater than he downwards, there is no question that the Jehovah-Angel is
Jehovah Himself, and that Jehovah Himself reappears in the name LORD, very often
though not exclusively. Not Esaias alone, but all the Old-Testament writers, saw
His glory and spake of Him. 5 But the uncreated Minister of Jehovah’s will is
not generally in the Old Testament foreannounced as the Son, any more than
Jehovah is revealed as the Father.

This, however, is not quite wanting. The link that connects the ANGEL OF THE
FACE in the ancient with THE SON in the later Scripture is threefold. He is in
Psalms 6:1-10 and Prophecy 7 termed THE SON expressly, the WORD or ORACLE of God
or hypostatised WISDOM; and He is called ADONAI or LORD, 8 the MIGHTY GOD. 9 But
these more occasional testimonies flow into a general representation of the
future Messiah; and as such they must be reserved for the fuller exhibition of
the Mediatorial Trinity, and the Person of Christ.

1 Hebrews 1:1; 2 Genesis 32:30; 3 Hosea 12:4-5; 4 Exodus 23:20-21; 5 John 12:41;
6 Psalms 2:7; 7 Proverbs 8:23; 8 Psalms 110:5; 9 Isaiah 7:14; 9:6.

2. The presence of the Third Person equally pervades the Old Testament, as one
with God and yet personally distinct in the mystery of the Divine essence. The
Spirit of God 1 is active with the Word in creation: By the Word of the Lord
were the heavens made: and all the host of them by the Breath of His mouth. 2
The Spirit of God hath made me, and the Breath of the Almighty hath given me
life.3 He is no less active in providence: My Spirit shall not always strive
with [or rule in] man; 4 in whose renewed heart he dwells: take not Thy Holy
Spirit from me.5 His energy was felt in the inspiration of the prophets.

Joseph was, by Pharaoh’s testimony, a man in whom the Spirit of God is. 6 And
when the Spirit of God rested upon them they prophesied. 7 Upon Samson, and many
others, it is said that the Spirit of the Lord came mightily. 8 David bore
witness: The Spirit of the Lord spake by me. 9 He is omnipresent and omniscient:
Whither shall I go from, Thy Spirit? 10 The presence of God is the presence of
the Holy Ghost. And yet He is distinguished from the Lord Himself, as One whom
He hath sent and will send to man. Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? The
Lord God, and His Spirit, hath sent Me. As the Messiah is promised to the world,
so also is the Spirit. I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh. 11 And in the
New Testament, the fulfillment of the Promise of the Father is an event equal in
glory with the Incarnation. As the Angel of the past becomes now the Incarnate
Son, so the Spirit of the past becomes the personal Holy Ghost. The hour of Both
Persons is fully come.

1 Genesis 1:2; 2 Psalms 33:4; 3 Job 33:4; 4 Genesis 41:38; 5 Numbers 11:25; 6
Judges 14:6; 7 2 Samuel 23:2; 8 Psalms 139:7; 9 Micah 2:7; 10 Isaiah 49:16; 11
Joel 2:28. THE SON AND THE SPIRIT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. In the New-Testament
testimonies to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, these, the names of Divine and
eternal Persons, are so related to each other and to the Father as to establish,
by the fullest and most abundant evidence, the doctrine which has received the
dogmatic definition of THE HOLY TRINITY.

1. There is nothing in the Savior’s revelation more clear, nothing more
interwoven with all His teaching, than His annunciation of the new name of
FATHER as related to Himself in a sense unshared: unto MY FATHER, and your
Father. 1 This has its highest expression in the baptismal formula where He is
eternally related to the Father as His Son. He is the ONLY-BEGOTTEN, toú
monogenoús Huioú, This is first declared by St. John, in express relation to His
absolute existence in THE FATHER: ho oón eis tón kólpon toú Patrós, which is in
the bosom of the Father, and pará toú Patrós, of or from the Father, to be
compared with prós tón Theón, said of the Son as the WORD or LOGOS. 2 These
three prepositions, pros, para, eis, are one in their only true meaning: a
trinity of particles carefully chosen to express an unfathomable mystery, which
they cannot explain, though they may serve to protect it from perversion.
Afterwards our Lord proves to us that this eternal name, though retained in His
incarnation, was not derived from His incarnation: God GAVE His
Only-begottenSong of Solomon 3:1-11 which, in the only other instance of the use
of the term, is strengthened by the express connection with it of apéstalken;
God SENT His Only begottenSong of Solomon 4:1-16 The Jews understood Jesus to be
making Himself equal with God when He said that God was His proper and peculiar
Father, Patéra ídion. 5 The Holy Spirit gave this same word to St. Paul: He
spared not His own Son, toú idíou Huioú. 6 Of this Son, the Son of His love, it
is said that He is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn before every
creature, prootótokos, not prootoktiotos, not first-created but first-begotten:
before all things, and by Him all things consist. 7 He is the Effulgence of His
glory, and the Very Image of His substance. 8 Our Lord’s last prayer sums up the
whole argument: And now, 0 Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own Self—pará
seautoó, 9 in express contradistinction from the world or earth in which His
mission was—with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was, pará soi.
Here are all the elements of the doctrine of the ETERNAL SONSHIP, which is
sufficient to establish the relation of the Son to the Father as the Second
Person in the Holy Trinity.

1 John 20:17; 2 John 1:14; 3 John 3:16; 4 1 John 4:9; 5 John 5:9; 6 Romans 8:32;
7 Colossians 1:13; Colossians 1:16-17; 8 Hebrews 1:3; 9 John 17:5.

2. THE HOLY GHOST is a DIVINE PERSON, distinct from the Father and the Son. To
establish this, we need only to examine our Lord’s words, and collate with them
the ample and various testimonies of the entire New Testament.

(1.) The Son is the Revealer of the Third Person, as well as of the Father. His
final Trinitarian Discourse—for such is the character of the Paschal
Farewell—has left no question on this subject unsolved: before He was glorified
by the Spirit, He glorified the Spirit Himself, by establishing the first
principles of His personality, Divinity, and eternal relations in the Godhead.
The pronoun HE, EKEÍNOS, is applied to One who is another Comforter. 1 The
PERSONALITY of the Holy Ghost governs the Lord’s entire strain, and must
interpret those many passages in which by metonymy the influences of the
Spirit’s operation are identified with Himself. It is impossible to read
carefully in their context these sayings concerning the Coming Spirit without
feeling that the idea of a personification is a most hopeless expedient. Whether
Divine or not, a Person was foreannounced, as certainly as it was a Person whom
Moses predicted as the coming prophet. But the DEITY of the Third Person is
declared as that of an eternal procession from the Father. When the Comforter is
come WHOM I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which
proceedeth from the Father HE SHALL TESTIFY of Me. 2 Here the TEMPORAL MISSION
is clearly distinguished from the ETERNAL PROCESSION.

Between the two futures, marked by WHOM and HE, the pronoun which enters as a
parenthetical reference to the essential eternal relation, hó pará toú Patrós
ekporeúetai: PROCEEDETH, not shall proceed, in an ETERNAL PRESENT, the pará
being precisely the same as the pará Patrós of the Only-begotten, 3 while the
neuter hó is parallel with Hó eén ap archeés, spoken of the Eternal Son, that
Which was from the beginning. 4 These parallels must not be passed lightly over,
but carefully pondered. The Savior does not say that this procession is from the
Son as well as from the Father. But, reading on, we mark these memorable words:
All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take
of Mine, and shall show it unto you. 5 The Spirit’s glorification of Christ
extends to His Person as well as to His work, indeed, rather to His Person than
His work; and it was from His sacred Person that the Lord breathed on 6 the
Apostles the Holy Ghost. Hence this supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ 7 is
imparted in the symbol of a personal spiration or breathing; and the name SPIRIT
may be regarded as sanctioning the faith that the Third Person PROCEEDETH FROM
THE FATHER AND THE SON, —to anticipate the language of the early Creeds and
later Confessions of Christendom—though the Son in His humiliation mentions only
the Father. But on this topic more hereafter.

1 John 16:13; 19:16,17; 2 John 15:26; 3 John 1:14; 4 1 John 1:1; 5 John 16:15; 6
John 20:22; 7 Php 1:19.

(2.) Reserving for a future section the operations and influences of the Holy
Ghost, we have only to indicate that the whole of the New Testament is true to
the Revealer’s teaching on this subject. The Personality and Deity of the Spirit
shine everywhere through the veil of the Mediatorial work, which to a certain
extent hides the Trinitarian relations of the Second and the Third Persons
alike. The humiliation of the Son Incarnate has its parallel, though after
another manner, in the humiliation of the Holy Ghost, While we hear, He hath
shed forth THIS, 1 we read also that the Holy Ghost said, Separate ME Barnabas
and Saul. 2 The first hypocrites in the Acts are said to have lied to the Holy
Ghost, and therefore to have lied not unto men but to God. 3 In the Epistles to
the Corinthians, which dwell so much on the dispensation of the Spirit, St. Paul
declares that we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit
which is of God: 4 where ek toú Theoú, varies the phrase in a very significant
manner, as it were expressly distinguishing between the evil spiritual influence
breathed by the world and the Substantial Spirit coming out from the Deity. That
same Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God; 5 thus being
essentially personal and Divine. These testimonies are enough for our present
purpose, which is to show the relation of the Third, as well as of the Second
Person, to the ONE NAME into which Christians are baptised.

1 Acts 2:33; 2 Acts 13:2; 3 Acts 5:3-4; 4 1 Corinthians 2:12; 5 1 Corinthians
2:10.

APOSTOLICAL TESTIMONIES. The later testimonies to the Holy Trinity literally
pervade the New Testament. They will require to be considered when we come to
the Mediatorial Ministry, and the peculiar aspect in which it places our
doctrine. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to indicate generally the bearing of these
testimonies, illustrating them by leading examples. It must be premised,
however, first, that here also there is a certain development in the revelation,
and, secondly, that they are introduced not so much to explain the Trinity
Economical as to point out the proof of an Absolute Trinity underlying this as
its necessary foundation.

1. In the Acts the publication of the Gospel is connected with the Holy Trinity,
though under an aspect suited to the times of preparation. For, there is still
evidence after Pentecost of the same law of gradual development which reigned
before. The doctrine in this historical book is not fully revealed to those who
were not yet prepared to receive it: at least, not until they were fully
prepared. When we read St. Peter’s testimony before the Council, 1 and St.
Paul’s in his several missionary discourses, 2 we must remember that the Three
Persons whom they invariably introduce are the same of Whom the Lord had spoken
before He departed, and of Whom these Preachers afterwards more clearly wrote in
their Epistles.

1 Acts 5:1-42; 2 Acts 8:1-40.

2. The Mediatorial Economy, that is, the entire system of man’s return to
fellowship with God, is always described in harmony with this doctrine. For
through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father: 1 this great word
is the key to the general strain of the Epistles, and, if pursued into its
consequences, is sufficient to establish the Divinity of each Person. It is
utterly inconceivable that admission to the presence and knowledge and
acceptance of God could be given by any creatures as such. But this will be made
more emphatic when we consider that the mediatorial economy leads to union with
the Deity, which, whether regarded as our being in God, or God being in us, is
the highest blessedness of the creature. To be filled unto all the fullness of
God is in the Ephesian prayer the result of being strengthened with might by His
Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. 2 Here,
to the believing eye at least, is the INDWELLING TRINITY. Nor can any candid
mind resist this conclusion when other passages which do not unite the Three
Persons are collated: those namely which speak of Christ in you, the hope of
glory; 3 of our body as being a temple of the Holy Ghost Which is in you; 4 and
many others which will be referred to more fully when the Economical Trinity is
the subject. Suffice now to observe that it is the prerogative of God alone to
dwell in His creatures; that to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit
distinctively and equally this prerogative is assigned; and that to no other
beings or persons is it ascribed throughout the Scriptures. No principle is more
universal than this.

1 Ephesians 2:18; 2 Ephesians 3:16-19; 3 Colossians 1:27; 4 1 Corinthians 6:19.

3. The impartation of the Divine influences on which personal salvation and the
work of the Gospel depend is invariably connected with the Three Persons.
Generally it is invoked from God in the unity of this Trinity: The grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be
with you all. 1 This clearly answers to the priestly benediction, with its
general blessing, the grace of mercy and the effect of peace; though the order
is changed under the dispensation of the Son and Spirit. But all benediction,
like all power, IS OF GOD. 2 More particularly we see the same relation to the
Trinity in the dispensation of the special gifts: their diversities are of the
same Spirit; their administration is of the same Lord; their operation of the
same God. 3 It must be remembered that the graces and gifts of the Gospel are
besought in prayer; and are, especially throughout St. Paul’s prayers, so
besought as to show that the appeal is to each Person in the Trinity in the
unity of the Godhead. These examples introduce the Three Persons; but they may
be confirmed by some others, though their number is not great, which seek grace
from each Person respectively.

1 2 Corinthians 13:14; 2 Romans 13:1; 3 1 Corinthians 12:4-6.

4. The Apocalypse in its symbolical imagery closes the New Testament with its
peculiar but evident tribute to the Holy Trinity. The Incarnate Son, Whose grace
is invoked, is the First and the Last, and the Lamb in the midst of the throne:
1 there is no honor paid the Eternal which He does not share. The Seven Spirits
before, His throne, 2 in the midst of which is the Incarnate Lamb—like no other
among the ministering sevens—are or is invoked also as the Giver of Grace. The
unity of the Holy Trinity has no clearer expression in Scripture. This Sevenfold
or all-holy Spirit is distinct from the Lamb, 3 yet one with Him; and one also
with God. And the perfect homage of this book, disguised as it is in symbols,
returns in its form and language to the mystical worship of the ancient Temple.

It is the adoration of the Triune God: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,
Which was, and is, and is to come; 4 and thus indicates the profound truth that
the supreme praise of Paradise, though not forgetting the distinction of
Persons, needs no mention of their Personal names. And here we have an
illustration of the great saying of the Apostle, used in relation to the end of
the Mediatorial ministry, but inexhaustible in its meaning, that God may be all
in all.5 1 Revelation 22:13; 7:17; 2 Revelation 1:4; 3 Revelation 5:6; 4
Revelation 4:8; 5 1 Corinthians 15:28. THE DIVINE TRIUNITY.

Neither the term Trinity, nor any that expresses the notion of Triunity, is
contained in Scripture. But the mysterious truth that these words represent is
stamped upon the entire revelation of God, which, implicitly in the Old
Testament, and explicitly in the New, bears witness to a Divine Triad. The Lord
our God is one Lord; yet there are Three that bear witness in heaven, and these
Three are One: words which we can use for purpose, though they may be excluded
from the text of Holy Scripture. The term Triunity we might make the verbal
symbol of our faith. It guards us—and in this case there is no more that words
can do—against the perversions to which the true doctrine is liable. These
perversions are manifold. The unity may be so emphasized as to reduce the
Trinity to three manifestations of the One God, successive but in different
modes. Or the Trinity may be so incautiously apprehended as to commit the
thought to the notion of three independent Divine Beings. Or, the Godhead being
wrongly regarded as the unknown essence behind the Persons, four Gods may be the
consequence. Or a compromise may be effected by introducing the notion of One
God, the Fountain of Deity, and two beings of the same nature derived from Him.
The transition is then easy to the notion of two inferior beings issuing from
the Divinity, with not only a derived and subordinate, but also a created,
Deity. These various errors are known in theology by the names of Sabellianism,
Tritheism, Tetratheism, Subordinationism, and Arianism respectively. They will
be exhibited briefly in the following historical review; but it may be premised
that the first and the last are the two salient forms of heresy or of heretical
speculation on this subject; that is, concerning the Godhead regarded as a
Trinity. It may be added, moreover, that they do not occur in modern systems
always with these names: being often disguised, and that in the most subtle
manner. The first especially enters into many modes of theological thought which
know nothing of the name Sabellian. The second colors much theology which is not
conscious of its own tendency. The third, Tetratheism, has hardly ever existed,
save as the logical inference from other errors. Subordinationism may be made
consistent with the truth.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT.

It may be said that the history of all human opinion concerning the Supreme has
been, in some sense, a record of the struggles of speculation towards this
adorable mystery, or of its endeavors to grasp and formulate it as revealed.
Pantheism and Dualism both tended towards it in the East; and no form of
Polytheism has been altogether without some trace of it. But this is
emphatically true of the history of the doctrine concerning God as developed in
the Christian Church.

ANTE-NICENE. The ante-Nicene Church held the doctrine of the Divine Trinity,
though in an undogmatic form. The advocates of a permanent ecclesiastical
authority deciding the doctrines of the Faith, whether by tradition or
development, have joined the Rationalists and antiTrinitarians in exaggerating
the indefiniteness of the early statements of this truth. But the writings of
the Apostolic Fathers, and of the Apologists, at least faithfully reproduce the
tone of the New Testament; and a catena of their testimonies may be given which
will prove that they made a large advance towards later definitions. All forms
of the early Creeds direct Christian faith to Three Persons. Their doxologies
bear clear witness: as that of Polycarp, "I glorify Thee, through the Eternal
High Priest, Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, through Whom be glory to Thee with
Him in the Holy Ghost, both now and for ever." Athenagoras asks, "Why are we
called atheists, speaking as we do of the Father as God, and the Holy Ghost;
showing both Their power in unity and Their distinction in order?" and says
again, "The Father and the Son are One: the Son is in the Father, and the Father
in the Son, by the unity and power of the Spirit." Theophilus of Antioch gives
us the term " Triad, God, His Word, and His Wisdom," a term used after him by
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, and by Tertullian and Novatian
changed into Trinitas.

Tertullian’s language is very expressive: " All Three are One by unity of
substance, and the unity is developed into a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost;" and " We never suffer ’Two Gods’ or ’Two Lords’ to pass our lips, though
the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and. Each is God."
Many more might be given; but we may close with Origen, whose relation to the
subsequent development of the doctrine is very important. His testimony also is
worthy to close: " When I speak of the omnipotence of God, of His invisibility
and eternity, my words are lofty; when I speak of the coeternity of His
Only-begotten Son, and His other mysteries, my words are lofty; when I deal with
the mightiness of the Holy Ghost, my words are lofty: as to these only it is
allowed to use lofty words. After these Three, henceforth speak nothing loftily;
for all things are mean and low, compared with the height of the Trinity. Let
not then your high words be many, except concerning Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost." It is clearly an error to date the unfolded dogma of the Trinity from
the fourth century. It is found throughout the ante-Nicene age. But it cannot be
denied that the germ, and gradual growth, of these tendencies towards error are
soon apparent after the departure of the Apostles. All sprang from a vain
attempt humanly to reconcile the Trinity with the essential unity of the
Godhead; and what may be called MONARCHIANISM was the watchword of each.

SABELLIANISM. The first class rejected the distinction of Divine Hypostases or
Persons. Their watchword was the eternal supremacy of the Monas, or the hidden
God; it admitted, in the term Trias, that God was revealed in three prosopon, or
faces or semblances, according to the dispensations of the Father, the Son, and
the Spirit; As this doctrine was taught by Praxeas (160—180) and others, it was
at once rejected as abolishing the distinction between the Father and the Son
Who suffered; and they who held it were on that account named PATRIPASSIANS. But
Sabellius of Ptolemais, A.D. 250, more fully developed the error, which from him
has taken the name of SABELLIANISM; and from his peculiar theory, that of
MODALISM or the manifestation of the Deity in three personal Modes. Its
philosophical principle was Pantheistic; the same God who is the Father evolving
Himself in the Son and Spirit. Modern speculations have constantly reproduced
this conception. More popularly stated, the doctrine simply assumes that the One
God appeared first as Jehovah, then more clearly to the creature as the Son,
then more fully and spiritually as the Holy Ghost.

SUBORDINATIONISMAND THE PRINCIPATUS OF THE FATHER. The general idea of
SUBORDINATIONISM, or the introduction of a gradation in the Three Persons, took
various forms. Its beginnings were simply the result of indistinctness in
phrase. So Justin writes of the Son as en deutera chora, and of the Spirit as en
trith tazei.

It was aided by the gradual development of a Logos-doctrine, which distinguished
between the Logos endiathetos, eternal but impersonal reason in God, and the
Logos prophorikos, a personal existence begotten in the Divine essence as the
Firstborn of Creation and its Archetype. Opposition to Sabellianism stimulated
speculation of this kind to the utmost. Clement of Alexandria, and still more
Origen, did much to displace from the controversy the theological term Logos,
and to substitute that of the Son: a change which was pregnant with important
consequences. Origen established the Eternal Sonship: est namque ita aeterna, ac
sempiterna generatio, sicut splendor generativa a luce, almost the very language
of the Nicene Creed. It has been said that he laid too much stress upon the
origination of the Hypostases in the Eternal will. But this is hardly consistent
with his constant affirmation that "the Onlybegotten was ever coexisting with
God," and his interpretation of the day in which the Son was begotten as the
everpresent Now of eternity, and his protest against the Arian formula " Once
the Son was not" by anticipation. His followers certainly perverted his words,
and have done much to connect his name with that error. On the whole, both the
ante-Nicene and post-Nicene teachers labored with all their skill to preserve
the Monarchia, or Unity of the Divine essence, by representing the Father as the
Fountain of the Deity and its representative: so interpreting the eternal Gift
of life in Himself to the Son, and the Eternal Procession of the Spirit.

They laid great stress on the mystery of the derived but eternally derived
Divinity of the Son and the Holy Ghost, as rendering easy the descent of thought
to the subordination of Both Persons in redemption. But the term Subordination
came into use at a later time, as also that of the Principatus of the Father.
The latter is not quite unobjectionable: the former is obviously perilous, from
the difficulty of admitting a subordination in any sense which does not include
inferiority. But of this more hereafter when Arminianism is before us.

ARIANISM.

It was the doctrine of Arius that the Son was a pure creature, and Son only by
adoption, the perfection and origin of creation; made out of nothing, produced
before all worlds: the link or medium between God and the universe. This heresy
was condemned by the first (Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, A.D, 325. But a
modification known as Semi- Arianism arose and obtained prevalence as the result
of a certain indefiniteness in the language of the Nicene Council. The orthodox
watchword, omoonsios, OF THE SAME SUBSTANCE, was opposed, even by some of the
orthodox, as tending to Sabellianism.

Changing it into omoiousios, OF LIKE SUBSTANCE, some attempted to effect a
compromise; but in vain, as between consubstantiality with God and mere likeness
to the Divine nature there is an immeasurable gulf. The undue subordination of
the Spirit had not been taught by the earlier Fathers; though they were
sometimes lax in the figures they used, following a certain freedom in the
Scripture. It has been represented that they sometimes identified Him with the
Son; but it must be remembered that Theophilus, who is charged with this, speaks
of the Trias, preceding Tertullian’s Latinised Trnitas in the second century.
Origen’s teaching had erred more against the Spirit than it had against the Son.
Arius, of necessity, having reduced the Son to a Divine creature, taught that
the Spirit was the first creation of that Firstborn creature; though he
maintained that the Son and the Holy Ghost, both persons, were much more
intimately near to God than to the created universe. Semi-Arianism, which had
gone as far as it could in making the Son the unchangeable Image of the Father,
was not quite so solicitous to maintain the dignity of the Spirit. Macedonius,
one of that party, has connected his name with the sect called that of the
Pneumatomachoi or Enemies of the Spirit, which, after much private controversy,
was condemned at the second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, A.D. 381. But
this council, though it established or defended the Personality and Deity of the
Holy Ghost, did not determine His specific relation to the Father and the Son.
It was not until A.D.594. at a synod held in Toledo, that the term FILIOQUE was
added to the Nicene Creed, defining that the Spirit proceeded from the Father
AND THE SON by an Eternal Spiration corresponding to the Eternal Generation. The
assertion of this conjunction of the Son with the Father as the Eternal Origin
of the Spirit was one main cause of the permanent rupture between the Western
Church which held, and the Eastern Church which rejected, the Double Procession
of the Third Person of the Trinity.

DECISIONS ANDCREEDS. The ecumenical definition of the doctrine, as against
heresy, was the chief theological labor of the fourth century. The decisions
expressed in the Creeds gave birth to a discussion that settled the leading
theological terms which protect them.

THECOUNCILS. The Councils OF NICAEA, A.D. 325, and of CONSTANTINOPLE, A.D.
381—the first universal or ecumenical—vindicated for ever the doctrine of the
Trinity: the former in relation to the Son, the latter in relation to the Holy
Ghost. The former, the history of which should be carefully studied, was
summoned mainly for the condemnation of Arius, who maintained that the Son, "
before He was begotten or created, had no being; that He was brought into
existence by the will of God before the world: hon pote ote ouk hn ez ouk onton
estin, there was a time when He was not, and He was produced from nothing; being
not of the same substance with the Father, but as a creature mutable," and of
course therefore liable to fall. The answer of the Synod determined that the Son
was ek ths ousias tou patros, gennhtheis ou poihtheis, omoousios yo patri. This
last term, the Homousion, became the watchword of orthodoxy: the Son was of the
same essence or substance with the Father. After the honor of the Second Person
was vindicated, occasion soon arose for the like vindication of the Holy Ghost,
The teaching of Macedonius was to the Third Person what that of Arius was to the
Second. He called Him diakonos KAI UPHRETHS, but not in the sense of the New
Testament. The second or Constantinopolitan Council asserted that He was " the
Lord, the zoopoion, or Lifegiver, worshipped and glorified, with the Father and
the Son." His ekporeusis, or Procession, was from the Father; but, as we have
seen, two centuries later FILIOQUE, from the Son, was added. THE THREE CREEDS.
The THREE CREEDS may be regarded as the final and permanent expression of these
ecumenical decisions.

1. The NICENE, or, as enlarged at Constantinople, the NICAENO-CONSTANTINOPOLITAN
symbol, is the chief of these, as having a more definite theological character
than the Apostles’, and, unlike the Athanasian, being accepted by universal
Christendom, the Greek Church excepting only one clause. It defines, as
including the Toledan Filioque, the eternal generation of the Son, GOD OF GOD,
and the eternal Procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son: thus
establishing the true doctrine of Sub-ordination against Tritheism and Arianism.
It declares the equal worship due to the Three: thus establishing the true
doctrine of the Unity against Sabellianism.

2. The APOSTLES’ CREED, or Symbolum Apostolicum, was not finished in its present
form until after the Nicene; but, so far as concerns the doctrine of the Three
Persons, was the earliest, being simply an expansion of the Baptismal Formula.
The assertion of the Triune Name is limited to its historical revelation in the
creating and the redeeming work. The dogmatic definition of the Trinity, whether
absolute or economical, is absent.

3. The ATHANASIAN CREED, or Symbolum Quicunque; from its first word, was never
ecumenically adopted, being a private document of unknown origin: probably of
the sixth century, and of the school of Augustine. It contains the most
elaborate statement of the dogmatic relations of the One Divine Nature and the
Three Persons of the Triad, as well as of the Two Natures and the One Person in
Christ, that is to be found, and is an exquisite study of orthodox logical
distinctions. But its damnatory clauses are alien to the spirit of a profession
of faith; and, moreover, its doctrine of the Trinity, like that of the other
two, does not give due prominence to its redemptional aspect.

TERMINOLOGY.

There can be no doubt that the Holy Spirit watched over these decisions; but it
would be presumptuous to assert the same special Providence for the endless
dogmatic controversies that followed. It is impossible to summarize the history,
but the result may be given in the conventional application of a certain
Vocabulary which has had a fixed place in subsequent theology.

1. The terms Ousia in the Greek, and Essentia or Substantia in the Latin, with
Theotos, were reserved for the essential Godhead, or what may be called the
Nature of Deity. The terms upostasis, idiotos, and prosopon, were limited to the
distinction of the Persons: the first, which really means substantial reality,
was adopted in preference to the last, which, as meaning a form or presentation,
might bear a Sabellian construction. Persona in the Latin, was exposed to the
same objection; but it has triumphed, and has ever since shared with the
Latinised term Hypostasis the function of expressing the reality of the Godhead
of each Suppositum Intelligens, or self conscious Agent, in the Holy Trinity.
While the Modalist or Sabellian danger was thus avoided—allos kai allos, not
allo kai allo, —the Fathers of that age, of whom Athanasius was the leader in
the East, and afterwards Augustine in the West, did not teach that the Three
Persons represented a common nature as three men represent the common humanity.
They held that the unity was numerical; and that, in a sense unsearchable, the
entire Godhead is in each Person. To express this, they used the word
perixorhsis, which is sufficiently explained by the Latin equivalents,
Interactio, or Interexistentia, or Intercommunio.

2. The question of Subordination was at the heart of every discussion; but
neither Greek nor Latin gave a watchword for this. The same divines, however,
who laid stress on the numerical unity of the Divine essence, zealously
maintained the eternal derivation of the Son, quoad Son, from the Father: thus
teaching a subordination of relation, without involving inferiority of essence.
The following words of Augustine express the thought of antiquity on this
subject, which, nevertheless, as he admits, passeth knowledge: "Pater quod est a
nullo est: quod autem Pater est, propter Filium est. Filius vero et quod Filius
est, propter Patrem est; et quod est, a Patre est." But another sentence,
following hard on the former, shows the poverty of all thinking on this dread
mystery: "Filius non tantum ut sit Filius, quod relative dicitur, sed omnino ut
sit, ipsam substantiam nascendo habet." In one sentence the Person only of the
Son is of the Father; in the other the essence, as well as the Filial Property,
is begotten. The latter seems to have been the general strain of antiquity in
its method of treating this inscrutable question.

MEDIAEVAL. The Mediaeval Schoolmen exhausted their subtlety on this profound
subject; but added nothing of permanent value.

1. Their speculations tended to Tritheism or Sabellianism in the measure of
their leaning towards NOMINALISM or REALISM respectively. The Nominalist
philosophy, which allowed nothing but nominal existence to the essence or
general nature represented by the individual as a specimen, obviously though
unintentionally led to Tritheism. The Realist philosophy, which asserted the
reality of the nature behind the individual, was more faithful to the Trinity in
Unity. The controversy between Roscellinus the Nominalist, and Anselm the
Realist, was an important chapter in the history of an endless controversy,
which spread into a number of side-issues, embracing almost every point that has
over been raised. It will be at once perceived that the opposite extremes would
naturally suggest to some minds a compromise: the realist Essence and the
nominalist Three Persons, each both essence and individual, would naturally lead
to TETRATHEISM, Damian of Alexandria, and some others, fell into the snare of a
fourfold Divinity. But the general soundness of the Schoolmen may be gathered
from the terminology they established in their analysis: they introduced into
the expression of the dogma those distinctions of paternity, filiation,
community of nature, and relations, and properties which we shall find
reasserted in a better form by the Reformation divines.

2. Both the mysticism and the dialectics of the Middle Ages freely explored the
analogies by which the mystery of the doctrine might be reconciled with human
reason. This style of argument or meditation they inherited from the early
Fathers, and transmitted to modern philosophy after exhausting it themselves.
Analogies were derived from many regions. The light, radiance, and heat of the
sun, which is neither of the three alone, but one in their trinity; the
fountain, flux, and stream; the root, the stem, the flower; the intellect, will,
and feeling of human nature, as also its body, soul, spirit; thesis, analysis,
synthesis in the order of the one thought, or the subject, object, and identity
of the two: — all these were then brought into the service of an un-conscious
Rationalism and are in its service still.

3. The last of these trios suggests the modern semi-philosophical,
semi-Christian, views of the Trinity, which have lately carried the circle of
human thinking back to the speculations of the earliest Pantheism. The so-called
Science of Religion shows and proves that most if not all of the Theistic
conceptions of antiquity took the form of a Pantheistic Triad; feeling after if
haply they might find the Trinity, and so paying an important though
unintentional tribute to eternal truth. Thus the Hondo Brahm was the essential
Being; Vishnu, as revealed in the universe; Siva, as returning into being again.

Buddhism wanders from this in the direction of the Persian Dualism. Greek
philosophy, as represented by Plato, was cast in the same mould; so much so that
the Christian doctrine has been represented as a Neo-Platonist importation into
Christianity of Plato’s three Principia, derived from Parmenides: the first, to
on, the Cause of all things; the second, the Logos, the Reason and Ruler of all
things produced into existence; the third, the psuche kosmos, or the soul of the
world. Nothing can be more certain than that the Trinity of personal hypostases
glimmered in the writings of Plato; and that his speculations exerted much
influence upon ante-Nicene Christian thought and language, as they were
interpreted by the aid of Philo, and formed into a system by Ammonius Saccas.
But it requires only a very slight comparison to show that the doctrine of the
Trinity which the New Testament most clearly contains is in its very fundamental
principles a new revelation, and not merely an ancient speculation disencumbered
of some of its tributaries. Modern Pantheism has reproduced the old thoughts in
a new phraseology which is as baffling to the under-standing as it is opposed to
Scripture. It is impossible to put into other words than their own their
speculations. . But they are all variations on the notion of Hegel that the
Trinity is the formal expression of the movement of the Absolute Spirit, Who
becomes another in the universe and as Spirit knows Himself and returns into His
own being. Whatever change modern Pantheism has introduced into the older system
of thought is altogether in favor of the Christian doctrine, though the
Christian doctrine must utterly disavow its method of presenting it.

THEREFORMATION. The communities of the Reformation retained the Three Creeds of
antiquity, and were generally faithful to the doctrine of the Trinity, as in its
absolute so also and especially in its Redemption or Evangelical aspect.

1. The Lutheran and Reformed formularies contain nothing entirely new, but their
dogmatic standards in particular abound in careful analysis, the sum of which is
as follows. One Divine Essence subsists in Three Persons: the unity is
numerical, the plurality is hypostatical. The distinction is connected and
harmonized with the unity by the term Perixorosis (Circulation or Inter-action),
which signifies generally that in the Eternal Trinity the whole Godhead must be
regarded as in each Person, whether it respects nature or operation. The
hypostatic character of each Person may be referred to the essence or the
relation to each other. The internal properties of the Persons are five: to the
Father belong the words unbegotten (agennosia) and paternity, to the Father and
the Son, spiration; to the Son, filiation; to the Spirit, procession. The
internal Acts are two: generation and spiration. These are distinctive; but the
external acts are three, creation, redemption, sanctification, and these are
common to the Three Persons. All the elements of the dogmatic study of the
doctrine are here: the legitimate extension of the Athanasian Creed. But there
is this difference in favor of the dogmatics of the Reformation: their
exhibition of the Absolute Trinity has always interwoven with it an Evangelical
reference to the Redemptional aspect of the doctrine.

2. After the Reformation most of the ancient types of error reappeared in
various forms adapted to altered circumstances. Christian theology, which then
took a new departure, had to pursue its way through the same course of
controversy. But it may be said that the doctrine of the Trinity was now not so
much directly opposed as indirectly. It was not at first the object of curious
speculation in itself. Its enemies were now more pronounced; and, departing from
the truth in every form, appeared as Socinian Unitarians: denying the Divinity
of Christ with the Personality of the Holy Ghost, and thus reviving a form of
error which had long been unknown. The theological ground shifts to that of the
Person of Christ. But, in process of time; the ancient Sabellianism returned in
a tone of speculation and phraseology which has infected many communities, but
never formed a distinct community for itself. Modern Sabellianism assumed its
philosophical and mystical character in Schleiermacher’s theology; its almost
equally influential and scarcely less mystical expression in Swedenborgianism.

(1.) The fundamental principle of the philosophy of Emmanuel Swedenborg was the
unity of all things in the duality of physical and spiritual existence: these
two being, as it were, conjugates or counterparts, in perfect correspondence
with each other and eternally related. Pantheism reduced all to the unity of
matter and spirit; but Swedenborg, who was no Pantheist, simply made the
phenomenal universe the visible expression of spiritual realities, man being in
communion with the other world, or capable of communion with it, through a
certain spiritual body belonging to his nature which religion reveals to him
though religion does not create it. The theology based on this principle, which
Swedenborg professed to receive as a new revelation, affects every point of
Christian doctrine, and of course that of the Trinity. The Supreme Being also
has form as well as spirit, and His form is that which we know in ourselves as
human. In Him is a trinity of principles, but not of personal subsistences. As
the twofold body of man is one body with a spirit energizing outwardly, so the
distinction popularly called that of Father and Son is only the distinction of
the Eternal God-man and the Same taking a human body in the Virgin to make it
operative through the Holy Ghost. "Before the creation of the world this Trinity
did not exist, but it was provided and made since the creation, when God became
incarnate, and then centered in the Lord God." In Jesus this outward body was,
unlike ours, glorified into an infinite spirituality. Swedenborg’s speculations,
the most remarkable of modern times, are, as touching our present doctrine,
Sabellian. And every argument against that ancient system of thought is valid
against this modern representative of it.

(2.) The system of Schleiermacher is more Pantheistic than this, but it is a
Sabellianised Pantheism. Like Swedenborg, though on different principles, he
held Christ to be the only God: the Father in Himself or in the universe is the
Son in Jesus, the Ideal or Pattern man, and the Spirit is the same God in Nature
and in the Church. The introduction of the Divine life into humanity in or
through Christ makes God man and man God. There is no preexistence of the Son or
of the Holy Ghost. Translating all this into the language of philosophy, Deity
as the Absolute Being is the Father, He comes to consciousness of Himself in the
Son, and returns to Himself in the Spirit. In its simplest form this runs back
into the speculations of the Schoolmen and indeed of most deep thinkers from the
beginning: from Augustine and Anselm to Melanchthon, Leibnitz and Martensen. On
the ground that man is created in the image of God this style of thought
conceives of the Supreme according to the analogy of human nature, God cannot,
any more than man, be eternally self-conscious without being objective to
Himself and ’knowing the identity. In man the objective Ego is ideal, and the
same person as the subjective. But in the infinity of the Divine Essence this
analogy fails: He must as Trinity be Three Persons. But it is plain that
whatever service the analogy renders—and it has satisfied or seemed to satisfy
some of the profoundest intellects—it leads to a Sabellian conception.

(3.) It enters here only because the early Arian and Semi-Arian teachers laid so
much stress on the Theiotos or Divinity of the two subordinate Beings. They were
regarded as the bond, or rather the intermediary links, between the Absolute and
the conditioned, the Infinite and the finite: looking toward the creature they
were firstborn or rather first created before the worlds; but looking Godward
they were more directly emanations of the Monad than the creature. The doctrine
was a speculative substitution for the Gnostic errors of aeonic emanation. It
was and is wherever held a refuge in which philosophical thought, always
striving to reach unity, concinnity, and the solution of mystery, dreams of
explaining a God with triple gradation linking continuously the Finite and the
infinite, the Absolute and the conditioned.

3. The early Arianism also has been sporadic. It has molded opinion very
extensively in later Christendom: never shaping a formulary or founding a sect,
but; influencing the thoughts of many thinkers and coloring the sentiments of
poetry, and infusing itself into the devotions of many who are almost
unconscious of their error. The history of Arian tendency in England is an
important and instructive one: it brings in some great names in our
philosophical and theological literature; but it shows that the healthy common
sense of readers of the Scripture has never and never will accept this
compromise. Either the New Testament must be rejected as a final authority and
the Deistic Rationalism of Unitarianism accepted, or, the Scriptures being
received as the Rule of Faith, the FULNESS OF THE GODHEAD must be adored in the
incarnate Song of Solomon 1:1-17 This subject also belongs rather to Christology
or the Person of Christ.

1 Colossians 2:9.

4. Subordinationism was exaggerated by the Remonstrant divines, especially those
of the later age of Arminianism. The difference between the true doctrine on
this subject, as already exhibited, and the error into which it easily declines,
may be marked in the following words of Episcopius: "Patri soli proprie
divinitatis perfectionem seu akmon competere, quod eam a se ipso, hoc est, a
nullo alio habeat. Unde consequitur, Patrem sic esse primum ut etiam summus sit,
TUM ORDINE, TUM DIGNITATE, TUM POTESTATE." And, with less offence, in those of
Limborch "Dignius siquidem est generare quam generari, spirare quam spirari." It
is well known that the tone of Arminian thought on this incomprehensible subject
glided downwards by sure though imperceptible degrees towards Unitarianism.

PRACTICAL CONCLUSION. A close study of the variations in opinion on this topic,
following the bare outlines thus given, will lead to some important practical
conclusions.

1. The doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity is essential to Christianity: there
is no Theology, there is no Christology without it. That the one Divine essence
exists in three eternal, coequal, personal subsistences is the foundation of the
Christian Faith. This has been the catholic belief, as the catholic
interpretation of Scripture. Whatever exception may be taken to dogmatic
definitions, the eternal underlying truth is the life of the Christian
revelation. What will be hereafter exhibited as the Mediatorial Trinity is only
the mystery of the Absolute Trinity as revealed in the salvation of man.

2. Again, it cannot be denied that the best and purest teaching on this subject
has laid emphasis on the mystery of an eternal subordination, in the Scriptural
sense of the term, in the interior relations of the Two Persons of the Trinity
to the First, The simple statement of the Nicene Creed which asserts ONE GOD at
the outset, and that the Eternal Son is GOD OF GOD, expresses the faith of the
Church. But it is difficult to draw the line, either in thought or by word,
between truth and error here. Our Lord gives us a revelation in words which
suggests its defense, though they cannot reveal to the human intellect the full
conception of the truth. As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to
THE SON to have life in Himself. 1 These words refer to the Eternal Son. His
authority in time and human things follows with a change in the expression: and
hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is THE SON OF MAN.
And these together constitute the ground of an equal Divine reverence: That all
men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honored not the
Son honored not the Father which hath sent Him. 2 This subject, however, must be
remitted to the doctrine of the Person of Christ, where it will be seen that the
Eternal Generation of the Second Person is the sacred though most
incomprehensible link connecting Him with the Incarnation and our new sonship
derived from that. We may object to the language of earlier theology which
ventured to speak of the Father as the Autotheos, the Fons, Origo, and
Principium of the Divinity; as well as to that interpretation of My Father is
greater than I, 3 assigning an inferiority to the Eternal Son, which Hilary thus
expresses: " Et quis non Patrem potiorem confitebitur, ut ingenitum a genito, ut
patrem a filio, ut eum qui miserit ab eo qui missus est, ut volentem ab ipso qui
obediat? Et ipse nobis erit testis: Pater major me est. Haec ita ut sunt,
intelligenda sunt, sed cavendum est, ne apud imperitos gloriam Filii honor
Patris infirmet." This last clause is the sheet-anchor of our security. And,
always remembering this, we may give the ETERNAL SONSHIP and the ETERNAL
PROCESSION their place in our silent thought as an infinite solution of what is
still an infinite mystery, and accept the words of Bishop Pearson: " It is no
diminution to the Son, to say He is from Another, for His very name imports as
much; but it were a diminution to the Father to speak so of Him; and there must
be some preeminence, where there is no place for derogation. What the Father is
He is from None; what the Son is, He is from Him; what the first is He giveth;
what the second is, He receiveth. The first is Father indeed by reason of His
Son, but He is not God by reason of Him; whereas the Son is not so only in
regard of the Father, but also God by reason of the same."

1 John 5:26-27 : 2 John 5:23; 3 John 14:28.

3. While it is obvious, on the one hand, that no human language can utter this
mystery, Theology, both scientific and practical, demands that the Trinitarian
phraseology should be ordered with careful precision as at least guarding the
truth against the approach of error. After all that may be said as to the
inadequacy of human words, and the absence of definitions from Scripture, it
still remains true that many others besides those of the New Testament must be
used both in teaching and in worship. AS it regards the scientific terminology
of the doctrine it is well to be familiar with the terms that express the
relations of the One to the Three-in-One. No thoughtful student will either
discard or undervalue them. The Deity is the Divine

ESSENCE or SUBSTANCE or NATURE; the Three are SUBSISTENCES, HYPOSTASES, and
PERSONS: the, last words of these counterpart series are philosophically the
least exact, but they are the conventional and sacred language of the teaching,
preaching, and worshipping Church. So also with regard to our practical and
ordinary language. Nowhere is precision more necessary than in the ordering of
the phraseology of worship. The mind and the tongue must be so educated as to
recoil from such language as is tinctured with either the Tritheistic, or the
Sabellian, or the Arian error. One of the results of careful and reverent study
will be the discipline that shall make every word faithful to the equal honor of
each of the Three Adorable Persons in the unity of the Other Two, and in the
unity of the Godhead: adoring and praying to each with this sacred reservation.
But, after all, we must remember what the ancient Church was never weary of
enforcing in relation to this subject: the Nature of God is arrhtos, INEFFABILIS
unsearchable and unspeakable; the Godhead can be known only by him who is
hodidaktos, taught of God: and that knowledge itself is and will eternally be
only ek merouss, IN PART.


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  CHAPTER 8: 10. VOL 01 - THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
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The Attributes of God THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD RELATION TO DIVINE ESSENCE

CLASSIFICATIONS ATTRIBUTES OF ABSOLUTE ESSENCE

Spirituality;

Infinity;

Immensity;

Eternity;

Self - Sufficiency;

Immutability;

Perfection;

Observations ATTRIBUTES RELATED TO THE CREATURE:

Freedom;

Omnipotence;

Omnipresence;

Omniscience;

Wisdom;

Goodness;

Observations ATTRIBUTES RELATED TO MORAL GOVERNMENT Moral Attributes Generally;

Holiness and Love;

Holiness;

Righteousness;

Justice;

Truth;

Faithfulness;

Love;

Mercy and Grace;

General Observations on the Study of the Attributes By the Divine Attributes are
to be understood the full assemblage of those Perfections which God ascribes to
Himself in His Word: partly as the fuller expansion of His Names, and partly as
designed to regulate our conception of His character. They are to be
distinguished from the Properties of the Triune Essence, on the one hand; and,
on the other, from the Acts by which His relations to His creatures are made
known. Hence dogmatic Theology regards them, first in their unity as Perfections
manifesting the Divine Nature, and, secondly, in their variety as Attributes
capable of systematic arrangement.

RELATION TO THE DIVINE ESSENCE. As related to the essence of God, their unity in
variety is only the full revelation of the Divine nature in itself; their
variety in unity is the real, authoritative, and adequate revelation of it to
man. They are one in God, yet many to us.

1. No being or essence is conceivable apart from its attributes and qualities.
It is a primary law of thought that all phenomena whether of mind or matter are
manifestations of some underlying substance thus only known to us. What is true
of all other objects of our knowledge is true also of the Highest. Save in His
qualities and attributes God is not revealed to His creatures. The Eternal
unclothed in these is not a definite object of thought at all; that pure
unmodified being which Pantheistic mysticism presented as its highest conception
of God is reduced to nothing. Such super essential existence has no place either
in Scripture or in human reason. On the other hand, the entire Divine essence is
made known in the assemblage of His qualities predicated of it. The Bible never
distinguishes between the Being of God and the NAME or Names that reveal His
being. Its nearest approach to a distinction is in the constant use of the term
GLORY, which is the effulgence of the manifestation of the hidden essence; and
therefore by no means a synonym of the Divine attributes, as is sometimes said.
The Divine attributes may exist without their glory: a truth which lies at the
basis of the condescension and humiliation of the Incarnate Son. Theology adopts
the word Perfections, as they are attributed by God to Himself; Attributes, as
His creatures, Divinely instructed, assign them to Him. Moreover, these
attributes belong to ALL THAT is CALLED GOD: 1 that is, to the Triune Essence,
and each of the Persons of the Godhead. Hence it is well that the doctrine of
the Holy Trinity should have preceded the present subject. But, as referred to
the Trinity, the attributes must not be confounded with the Divine PROPERTIES,
which is one of the terms used to express the characteristics of the interior
relation of the Godhead, the Three Divine Hypostases, Subsistences, or Persons.

1 2 Thessalonians 2:4.

2. The variety of the attributes corresponds to a reality in the Eternal. Who
reveals Himself as He is neither leaving His character to the conjectures of His
creatures, nor putting into their minds notions of that character which are
fictitious and unreal. To make the several qualities of the Divine nature depend
only on our conceptions of them is to lose the Divine nature altogether: it is
to substitute for the only true God an imaginary Being incapable of definition.
The interminable discussions of the Schoolmen on this subject, which have been
continued in later times and revived of late with special reference to the
knowable-ness of God, are not without a profound interest. The Nominalists, who
regarded general terms as merely names of abstractions formed in our minds,
effaced the real distinction in the Divine attributes: to them God was in the
simplicity of His essence ACTUS PURUS, thought and act, or act and power, being
one in Him, and the perfections of the Divine nature existing only in our
thoughts, in which we assign to God something that is the cause of what we find
in ourselves. The Realists, on the other hand, who regarded general terms as
representing real objective existences, clung to the reality in God both of the
Triune Persons and of the various perfections He assumes. In every age those who
hold with them think of God as essential personality, as really invested with
His attributes in perfection as His creatures are invested with them
imperfectly. But here our safeguard is to remember that in the simplicity of the
eternal essence there can be nothing composite: the whole essence is in each
attribute: God is All in all, All in each. Accordingly it follows that we can
think of no such accidental attribute as may be and is in everything that is not
God; as man, for instance, may or may not have wisdom.

There is no perfection in the Supreme that is not of His essence. Thus, while we
reject what may be called the Sabellian theology of the Divine attributes—each
is distinct in the unity of the supreme nature—in the Glory of God all the
several components of His nature blend into one.

3. Hence it may be said that only through the way of the Divine attributes can
we reach a definition of the Divine nature. There is a sense indeed in which the
being of God is absolutely undefinable, because absolutely incomprehensible.
But, as to define is rather to separate or distinguish from everything else than
to explain what is thus defined or marked off, there is nothing more amenable to
definition than the nature of God. Of course, to think of genus and species is
here out of the question. But we may speak of God as a subject with all good
predicates, and with these in their infinite perfection: of no other object of
knowledge can we speak with equal confidence. In His essence He is the Being of
beings: the Source, Sustainer, and End of all things that are. But this already
expresses His difference from all that is not Himself. To express that
difference fully is to enumerate the perfections of His nature. We cannot
sanctify Him in our hearts from every other object without thinking of or naming
His attributes. The moment definition begins these are absolutely necessary.
Indeed, we have no notion of Deity which does not connote some idea which severs
the conception from all other conceptions. Every thought of God involves the
thought of His attributes: without these He is verily and indeed an unknown and
an unknowable God.

CLASSIFICATION. In systematic theology the attributes require classification.
Our best guide, the Scripture, gives hints and specimens of an arrangement of
its abundant materials; and such an arrangement tends, as will be seen, to
elucidate their connection with the various branches of the system of
revelation. To exhibit them merely in an orderly series involves too great a
sacrifice to simplicity. But it is as difficult as it is important to determine
the guiding principles of such a classification.

1. The favorite method has been to make a division into two counterpart classes.
Hence they are distributed as natural and moral by a distinction which the
meaning of neither of these words will allow: both are inappropriate to the
Deity, and the harshness is not removed if metaphysical and ethical are
substituted. The instinctive objection we feel to these terms is not felt to the
correlatives of absolute and relative, immanent and transitive, internal and
external: these distinctions furnish the right clue and are sound so far as they
go; but they do not suggest those special manifestations of God which give their
peculiar glory to Christian theology. It is dangerous to speak of positive and
negative attributes; for while there is no positive excellence in Deity which
does not imply negation or its opposite, the negative ideas of infinity and so
forth are really and truly positive. Lastly, when they are classed as
communicable and incommunicable, it must be remembered that, as attributes, all
are alike incommunicable to the creature.

2. Secondly, the names and perfections of God have been ordered with reference
to the method by which we attain, or may be supposed to attain, our conceptions
of them. The Mediaeval doctors taught that we arrive at adequate notions of the
Divine perfections, first, "via negationis:" by the instinctive denial of
limitation and defect to the Supreme; secondly, " via eminentiae:" by ascribing
to Him the most eminent possession of what in us or in our idea is good;
thirdly, " via causalitatis," by making Him the actual, virtual, or permissive
cause of every effect observable in the economy of things. This scholastic
method has always commended itself by its simplicity, though it is liable to
some of the objections that render the former method doubtful: especially it
fails in its application to the attributes which are concerned with human
redemption.

3. Thirdly, it has been sought to make our own nature the basis of the
distribution of His attributes in Whose image we were created: " Qualis homo,
talis Deus." Man is conscious of his own substantial being and identity through
all changes: this suggests that God exists, apart from all phenomena. But man is
conscious of three orders of selfmanifestation or modes of consciousness: the
three constituents of his existence are intellect, sensibility, will. Hence a
threefold classification of the Divine attributes, so far as they are
distinguished from His eternal essence. In modern times, and especially by the
followers of Schleiermacher, the demands of man’s religious need have been the
regulator: a sense of dependence implying the absolute attributes, a sense of
sin the moral perfections, and the whole being consummated by the revelation of
love in Christ. Here, then, is undoubtedly a ground of truth. Every rational
human thought of God springs from man’s knowledge of himself. This is the grand
prerogative of human nature that it is a reflection of the Divine. We either
ascribe to our Maker the perfection of what is imperfect in ourselves, or we
deny to Him what in ourselves we count evil. But it is obvious that there are
relations of the Infinite to the finite, of the Creator to the creature, and of
the Holy God to sinners, which forbid the carrying out of this principle of
classification. It is enough to say concerning these methods that they have too
much tendency to make man the measure of the Deity.

4. Guided by these principles of analysis, though not bound to any of them, we
shall, first, consider the attributes pertaining to God as an absolute or
unrelated Being; then, those arising out of the relation between the Supreme and
the creature, which indeed require the creature for their manifestation; and,
finally, those which belong to the relation between God and moral beings under
His government, with special reference to man. The justification of this
arrangement will appear in due course.

ATTRIBUTES OF THE ABSOLUTE ESSENCE. The Divine essence, or the Absolute,
regarded in itself and in itself alone, is to be conceived as pure spirit,
unlimited by time or space, independent of all other existence, in its perfect
self knowing no change or process of development. As these are the attributes of
a personal Being they may be summed up as Spirituality, Infinity, Eternity,
Immensity, necessary Self-sufficiency, Unchangeableness, and Perfection. These
great words, carefully examined, are or suggest all the attributes of God which
are immanent, independent of the creature, and essential to a right conception
of His nature.

THESPIRITUALITYOF GOD.

Spirituality is the attribute which most nearly and fully expresses the very
essence of God as the one eternal substance in which all other attributes
inhere. Hence the Scripture does not tell us that the Divine nature is
spiritual; but our Lord, the only Revealer, declares that Pneuma ho Theos, GOD
is SPIRIT: 1 the only definition He ever gave. This may be understood in two
ways: first, positively, as the perfection of all that we know of spirit in our
own consciousness; and. negatively, as excluding all that is inconsistent with
our conception of pure spirit

1 John 4:24.

1. The human spirit was created in the image of God. By the testimony of our
consciousness the Father of spirits 1 is a real, substantial Person, Whose
personal selfconsciousness is that of a thinking or intelligent self determining
Agent. The Scripturesabound with testimonies, pervading their whole structure,
that He holds intercourse with man as a Spirit with spirit. This is and ought to
be accepted as the foundation of all religion.

1 Hebrews 12:9.

2. This attribute is not generally asserted of God in an abstract manner, or as
defining His nature. It is appealed to for two-purposes: to guard our
conceptions of the Object of our worship from everything that would debase it;
and, to impress upon us a sense of the dignity of our origin and the grandeur of
our vocation as worshippers of the One, Triune, Eternal Spirit.

(1.) Of what pure spirit is we can form no notion. The word gives little help,
as it simply expresses the breathing forth which in its influence is pneuma: an
invisible energy, known by its effects. All pure being, especially spiritual
being, as underlying its phenomena, is beyond our grasp. But, in thinking of the
highest Spirit, we put away every idea of the limitations which belong to our
own spirit. The attribute gives us the simplicity and unity of the Divine
uncompounded nature; its immateriality, immortality, and invisibility. Therefore
the term is, after all, the predicate of a personal God, distinct from the
material and created universe. Pantheism has always seemed in words to deny
this: seldom in reality. Some of the greatest leaders of Pantheistic thought
have been better than their creed: filled with the idea of a universal directing
Spirit, but forgetting that He is and can be in His own nature only Spirit.

(2.) Of that God in His Triune essence, and of each Person in the unity of the
Godhead, as the object of worship, spirituality is predicated. This attribute
belongs to the absolute Godhead as before all creaturely existence. But it is
brought into relation with the economy of redemption. Of the Father, and also
the Son, it is said, Whom no man hath seen nor can see! As before: Unto the King
eternal (of the worlds and dispensations, ton aionon), immortal, invisible! 1
The Son is the Spirit. 2 The Holy Ghost, holy in His function and relation to
redemption, is by His very name to Pneuma. 3 Hence the worship of God must be
spiritual: not indeed as formless and void and without material aids, but as the
homage of spirit to Spirit: 4 They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit
and in truth. 5 The Apostle Paul teaches the Gentiles, through their own
teachers, that we are also his offspring; 6 and the Epistle to the Hebrews
speaks of that God as the Father of spirits. 7 In the former passage the
inference is a remarkable one: from the spiritual essence in man to the
spirituality of God and of His perfect service. In the latter, which echoes the
words of the Old Testament, The God of the spirits of all flesh, 8 the duty of
subjection and; the privilege of LIFE in the fullest sense are connected with it
God only hath immortality—that is, the essential incorruptibility of Spirit—and
of His incorruptible immortality the indivisibility and indestructibility of the
human spirit is an image and a gift.9

1 1 Timothy 1:17; 2 2 Corinthians 3:17; 3 John 4:24; 4 Deuteronomy 4:15-19; 5
John 4:24; 6 Acts 17:28; 7 Hebrews 12:9; 8 Numbers 16:22; Numbers 27:16; 9 1
Timothy 6:16.

THEINFINITYOF GOD.

There is no idea concerning God more necessary to the human mind than that He is
Infinite in His being and perfections and all that is His: that whatever is to
be predicated of Him is to be infinitely predicated, or without limitation. But
while this is an indispensable requisite of every thought concerning the
Supreme, it is, at the same time, an idea that must for ever overwhelm the
finite mind which must nevertheless entertain it.

1. The notion of the Infinite belongs only to God, to Whom alone of all objects
of thought it is, strictly speaking, applicable. No other subject of this
predicate has or can have a real existence. There is no meaning in the terms "
infinite space " and " infinite duration:" space is nothing save as occupied,
but what occupies it must be limited; and duration implies some limited thing
that endures. It is only when it is made the attribute of a Being, and one
Being, that the word has, strictly speaking, any meaning.

2. Infinity is a positive notion in a negative form: that it is a mere negation
of limits springs from the finite nature of our own understanding; that it is a
positive judgment or affirmation of our minds, and in our own in destructible
conviction something more than mere negation, is a tribute to the essential
nobleness of the human intellect. When we say that we ourselves are finite we
mean more than a mere denial of our infinity: we express a real judgment
concerning our own and every creaturely existence to which the standard of
infinity is applied. So when we say that God is infinite we express the sacred
thought that He is beyond the circumscription and the comprehension of our
understanding.

3. It is important to remember that the word infinite is one of our own making,
and not employed in Scripture. It must be narrowly watched and guarded in its
application to the Supreme. It belongs to Him not as abstract essence but as a
Personal Spirit. Nothing but confusion can arise from applying it to the nature
of God as if that were capable of diffusion and its expansion regarded as going
on to infinity. The human mind is not capable of thinking save under the
conditions of time and space. The Infinite is revealed to faith as above the
condition of time, and of this Eternity is the expression; as above the
conditions of space, and of this Immensity is the expression. Infinity in
philosophical precision has nothing to do with God’s relation to the economy of
created things; nor is it right to ask how anything can exist which is not God
if God be infinite. This term belongs rather to His attributes than to Himself.
An infinite Spirit is infinite in the attributes of spirit: in knowledge, in
power, and in what we call in human language resources. If it is urged that an
unlimited Being must include all being, the only answer— besides the unfailing
acknowledgment of our utter incapacity to argue on such subjects—is that an
infinite Spirit must by the very term be able to create finite existences. His
power is unlimited.

THEIMMENSITYOF GOD.

1. The Immensity of God is only once declared in Scripture; but when it is said
that Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, 1 a formula
is used which expresses the universal sentiment of revelation and precisely
defines the supremacy of the Eternal Spirit over all conditions of space. It is
not that He fills immensity with His presence: He is the only Immensity, all
things created being measurable and limited. The universe CANNOT CONTAIN Him:
not because His essence stretches beyond the confines of created things, but
because His eternal Spirit transcends and is inconsistent with all notions of
space. Space is born out of His immensity, as time out of His eternity: but none
can declare the generation of either. This incomprehensible attribute of the
pure and absolute Divine essence is the ground of His omnipresence, hereafter to
be considered: because, while above and independent of all space, He can, when
space and all that it inherit come into existence at His fiat, fill all with His
presence. It can hardly be said that the Immensity of God is the negative of
which His ubiquity is the positive. Both are positive conceptions; strictly
related to each other and yet very different. The former lifts our thought to
the overwhelming contemplation of a Being above all created existence; the
latter teaches us to draw the necessary inference that the Creator of all things
is present to every creature, or, putting this in a better form, that every
creature throughout space is present to Him.

1 2 Chronicles 6:18.

2. This eternal attribute is in Scripture appealed to for two purposes: first,
to bring near the thought of the Divine omnipresence; secondly, and chiefly, to
guard us against unduly localizing our conception of the Object of worship. In
Him we live and move and have our being:

1 as our time is enfolded by the Divine eternity, so our place is in the bosom
of the Divine immensity. Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar
off? Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him? saith the
Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. 2 The response is that of
holy fear: Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy
presence? 3 and of holy confidence: Because He is at my right hand, I shall not
be moved. 4 But when the Temple was dedicated, in which Jehovah would dwell with
His people, the Holy Ghost inspired Solomon’s sublime appeal already quoted: But
who is able to build Him a house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot
contain Him? 5 It is not enough for us in our worship to remember that our God
is everywhere present, that He is oar Father in heaven; we must remember also
that He is beyond and above even the heavens: Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is
My throne, and the earth is My footstool. 6 It is a high flight to the thought
of a Being Who is everywhere present; it is a still higher thought that we are
in the presence of One Who is above all space and time.

1 Acts 17:28; 2 Jeremiah 23:23-24; 3 Psalms 139:7; 4 Psalms 16:8; 5 2 Chronicles
2:6; 6 Isaiah 66:1.

THEETERNITYOF GOD.

1. What the Divine immensity is to space the Divine eternity is to time. That
God is eternal is the constant declaration of Scripture: in fact this is a
predicate more habitual than any other, being the first revelation of Himself to
His people, I AM THAT I Amos 1:1-15 and continued in a variety of other forms
down to the end, when it returns to the first, Which is, and Which was, and
Which is to come, the Almighty. 2 It must be remembered, however, that very few
of the passages which introduce the word assign the absolute attribute we are
now considering to God. The Name that declares His essential, necessary,
underived being sufficiently sustains the doctrine of the Divine eternity. In
one memorable passage it is said that Abraham called there on the name of
Jehovah, the Everlasting God, or THE GOD OF ETERNITY, Yahweh ’Eel `Owlaam, 3
which once more occurs in the prophet: Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,
that the everlasting God, the Lord—owlaam Yahweh Bowree’, the God of eternity,
Jehovah—the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? 4
Undoubtedly in these, and some other passages, the word eternal has its profound
meaning of time HIDDEN in the abyss of eternity. But it will be found that all
the terms generally used carry with them the notion of successive duration
indefinitely extended, and therefore fall short of the pure conception of
eternal. Hence they are explained with that meaning by many paraphrases: such
as, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God, 5 where
duration to come and duration past are alike unlimited; and mean, though they do
not say, that Jehovah is above all time, wª-Nisaa’, the Lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity. 6 The variations are very sublime on the idea of duration
lost in timelessness, before and after creation: I am the First and I am the
Last; and beside Me there is no God, where still the idea of duration enters.
One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day:
here duration is all but gone. St. Paul calls God the King eternal, immortal,
invisible: here it is the King of ages, just as it is said that He made the ages
or worlds. From all this it is plain that, while the abstract idea is wanting in
Scriptural expression, it is not wanting in the Scriptural doctrine. Eternity is
expressed in finite terms.

1 Exodus 3:14; 2 Revelation 1:8; 3 Genesis 21:33; 4 Isaiah 40:28; 5 Psalms 90:2;
6 Isaiah 57:15.

2. But the perfect idea of eternity, as it is in the human mind, cannot tolerate
duration or succession of thoughts as necessary to the Divine consciousness. And
this is the deep perplexity of our human intellect, which however must accept
the profound meaning of the name I AM, as teaching an eternal now enfolding and
surrounding the successive existence of time. The personal Jehovah once and once
only declared His pure eternity. His name is the only word which human language
affords in its poverty to express that thought: such terms as eternal and
everlasting have temporal notions clinging to them; and all our phrases go no
further than that the Supreme fills all space and time, and that He was before
them, the very word before carrying duration with it. But I AM—before Time or
Space was, 1 AM—has in it all the strength of eternity. It is literally the
assertion of pure existence, without distinction of past and present and future:
that is, of past and present and future as measured in time and regulated by
motion in space. We must accept this doctrine of God in all its
incomprehensibleness, as the only one that satisfies the mind. The Eternal in
Himself knows no succession of time any more than He knows circumscription of
space; and, when He created all things, His being remains as independent of
duration as it is independent of locality. No attribute, however, has given rise
to more discussion than this. The deepest thinkers of all ages have consented to
annihilate in the Divine essence all that we mean by time and succession of
thought. They have agreed to speak of a Duratio tota simul, of an AEternitas in
which fuisse et futurum esse non est sed SOLUM ESSE. And the name Jehovah—the
Name of God and of each of the Three Persons in the Godhead—demands and
sanctions this. It is utterly vain to attempt to penetrate this abyss of
mystery: it is equally fruitless either to fight against it or to illustrate it.

3. Opponents of this truth deny that there can be duration without succession;
but duration is succession; both words are equally inappropriate to the Eternal
who simply is.

They insist also that to take from a personal being the act and operations of
successive thinking is to destroy its personality. But that is simply arguing
from our finite nature— which cannot think but under conditions of time and
space—to the Infinite which by the very definition knows no such limits. The
only answer possible to all such objections is the common apology required
everywhere by this subject: we cannot search out the Divine Being unto
perfection; though the perfection in which we are lost allows no past to recede
before God and no future to rise before Him. When the argument takes another
form, and we are pointed to the tenor of Scriptural representations that speak
of the Eternal as having purposes which have been fulfilled and are in course of
fulfillment, our reply must be cautiously and yet boldly given. Time is the
creation of the Eternal God, Who made the ages. 1 It is, with all its endless
phenomena and laws, a reality to Him Who brought it into being; and all its
succession unfolds in His presence as past and present and future. Our only
difficulty is to hold fast the truth that He sustains two relations to time. As
the abiding Eternal One He views it in its place, Himself absolutely unconnected
with it. As the God who works out for the creature and with the creature His own
purposes He beholds, directs, and controls all things as under the law to time.
This is of course a deep mystery to human thought: that is, to conceive of
eternal willing and temporal acting, of a timeless and succes-sionless Agent
working out and watching the evolution of His plans. But the mystery, such as it
is, is only that of the Incarnation anticipated; and, as we receive this, we may
receive that. We may dare to say that the Eternal inhabits eternity; and yet
that in the Son, the Firstborn before every creature, He inhabits time also. As
in the incarnation God is manifest in the flesh, so in the creation God is
manifest in time. And as God will be for ever manifest in His incarnate Son, so
will He for ever have in and through His Son, the Vicegerent of created things,
a manifestation in time: that is to say, in plain words, eternity and time will
henceforward and for ever coexist. Something pertaining to time will cease: its
change and probation and opportunity. In this sense chrónos oukéti éstai, 2 but
in no other sense than this.

1 Hebrews 1:2; 2 Revelation 10:6.

4. Illustrations are on this subject of no great value. And yet they are not
utterly worthless. One has just been used, the analogy with the Incarnation. No
exception can be taken to this: as the Son thinks and feels and acts as a man
while still the Eternal God, so the Eternal God thinks and feels and acts amidst
the creaturely conditions of time. The phenomenal universe is a rehearsal of the
Incarnation. But in this case the illustration is as unfathomable as the thing
illustrated. Other illustrations are frequently suggested which involve a
disguised Pantheism, and should therefore be steadily avoided For instance, when
it is said that time is the shadow of eternity, or the element of continuity
amidst changing phenomena, the successional existence of God is made eternal.

Pantheism asks nothing more than this. There is indeed a dim and fleeting but an
impressive adumbration of the sublime idea nearer home, in the very constitution
of our nature. An apocryphal writer says that "God created man for immortality
... an image of His own being." The canonical Preacher, after describing all the
ordinances and arrangements of time in their season, adds in a mysterious
sentence: He hath made everything beautiful in his time. Also He hath set
eternity in their heart, haa`olaam naatan, so that no man can find out the work
that God worketh from the beginning to the end. 1 The thought or the instinct or
the desire of eternity for ever points the worker in time to an unfathomable
mystery of the Divine purpose beyond time. Man knows or feels that he is linked
with eternity and surrounded by it. This deep mystery in his inmost soul gives
him desires and anticipations that transcend time and space. Sometimes this
sense of the infinite or of the eternal seems for a season to annihilate the
succession of his thoughts, and his contemplation of God raises him above all
limitation. From this sublime ecstasy, however, he evermore awakes; but not
without a dim presentiment of what time will be when it is swallowed up, without
being lost, in the abyss of eternity.

1 Ecclesiastes 3:11.

THESELFSUFFICIENCYOF GOD. No notion we can form of God is more important in its
meaning and in its issues than that He is self sufficient, or that of His
necessary eternal autarkeia.

1. We use our own feeble words when we say that it is a necessity of thought
that the Being who is the ground of all existence should be Himself an eternal
necessity. All things have their cause and their end in Him: He can have no
cause nor end out of Himself. He is the one, sole, self originated, independent,
unconditioned and absolute Being. Here the eternal name JEHOVAH, I Amos 1:1-15
again comes in. The idea of causation carries us to One Essential Existence; but
cannot go behind that It is a very loose employment of the term to add that He
is Causa Sui, His own cause: He simply, purely, and eternally IS. Before Me
there was no God formed! 2 To all the best thoughts and instincts of our created
nature He may say: Ye are even My witnesses, Is there a God beside Me? I am the
First, and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God!3 1 Exodus 3:14; 2
Isaiah 43:10; 3 Isaiah 44:6; Isaiah 44:8.

2. Although this immanent and absolute attribute by its very name shuts out the
creature, and points to a Being Who needs nothing to complement or complete His
perfection, it nevertheless implies that in the infinity of His resources are
all the possibilities and potentialities of the created universe. When we
exchange the terms Necessary, Independent, Self existent, for that of All
sufficient, we begin to think of the eternal resources that are in the Deity; of
His eternal power and Godhead. 1 The word Nothing vanishes before both His
essence and His power. His sufficiency knows no limit but what He Himself by
word or act assigns to it. Of an eternal creation we dare not think; but we may
speak of the eternal possibilities of creation: of which more hereafter. From
the creation of the world His invisible things have been dearly seen, being
understood from the things that are made: these postulate an infinity of the
invisible things behind.

1 Romans 1:20.

3. By self-sufficiency we understand all that philosophy means by the notions of
the Absolute and the Unconditioned No relation in which the Supreme may place
Himself— He only becomes the Supreme by relation—throws any limitation around
His being. No relation is a necessary relation: in saying this we say all that
is needful. Some current definitions of the Absolute have literally no meaning.
The philosophy which admits that the finite cannot comprehend the Infinite, yet
asserts that the Infinite cannot be a Person, cannot be conscious of a self,
because it cannot have an object over against itself as subject, is philosophy
falsely so called. It must issue either in Pantheism or in Atheism. It has never
been proved, it can never be proved, that self-consciousness necessarily implies
consciousness of something not self. Even granted that it is so in the creature,
the leap in the inference from the creature to the Creator is as unreasonable as
it is certainly unscriptural. The Divine I and Thou are heard both in eternity
and in time. But this leads to the next consideration.

4. The self-sufficiency of the Eternal is not fully acknowledged unless we bear
in mind that within the dread sphere of His being there is a plurality of
Persons. The personal Subsistences in the Godhead are eternally related to each
other: and this of itself banishes the term Unconditioned. The distinction of I
and Thou goes up to and enters the original Fountain of life. And here emerges
the central and most glorious application of the term all-sufficiency. The
Infinite Being is not the vast and unrelieved monotony of existence that
Pantheistic mysticism defined as the abstract Nothing. It has in it infinite
life, and, if such language be lawful, infinite variety of life, in the mutual
knowledge, love, and communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It
was so—to use human words—before the creature existed; and it is so now that the
creature exists: to this our Lord bears witness when He says, As Thou, Father,
art in Me, and I in Thee! 1 And when He adds that they also may be one in us, He
raises our minds to the thought that the communion of the creature with the
Creator is the reflection in time of that communion which subsists among the
Persons of the Godhead in eternity.

1 John 17:21.

5. Here, then, we locate the attributes which, when creatures begin to exist to
name them, we call Majesty and Blessedness. By the former we ascribe to Deity
the glory of perfections which are essentially above the creaturely excellence:
not placing Him at the summit, but above all; as Michael, the highest creature,
by his very name cries, Who is like unto God? By the latter we ascribe to Him
the most absolute freedom from all that can impair well-being and the infinity
of that which by its communication makes the creature blessed. Who is over all,
God blessed for ever! 1 expresses both, assigning most emphatically both to the
Second Person in the Unity of the Three.

1 Romans 9:5.

THEIMMUTABILITYOF GOD.

After what has been said few words are necessary on the un-changeableness of the
Divine essence. The Word of God makes few references to it save as it is implied
in the eternal name: its allusions to the subject are generally connected with
the steadfast perpetuity of the Divine counsels, and will be considered
elsewhere. But there are some points of theological importance arising out of it
for which this is the appropriate place.

1. There are sublime passages which lift our contemplation to the thought of the
unchangeableness of the Eternal as contrasted with the fleeting phenomena of the
universe; and therefore must be interpreted of the absolute Divine essence.
These combine the infinity, eternity, and immutability of God in their glorious
aggregate. One only need be quoted, the peculiarity of which is twofold: first,
that it most expressly marks the beginning or the very earliest foundations of
all created phenomena; and, secondly, that it is quoted from the Old Testament
in the New and assigned to the Son of God Who became incarnate. Thou, Lord, in
the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the
works of Thine hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they all shall
wax old as doth a garment. And as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up and they
shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.1 1
Hebrews 1:10-12.

2. This attribute excludes all process of becoming, or development, and whatever
is meant by change, or the possibility of change. In His essence and in all the
attributes of His essential being, God is for ever the same. And of Him alone
can this be predicated: any creature, whether spirit or matter, or a union of
the two, becomes what it was not, and reaches a fixed state only by the Divine
will: if indeed development does not belong to it for ever. And the interior
mystery of the Triune Personality does not affect this truth, which is
consistent with an eternal generation of the Son, and procession of the Spirit,
in the interior essence of Deity.

3. In the incomprehensibility of the Divine nature, this attribute is also to be
reconciled with unbounded activity or mobility when it is brought into relation
to the creature; and, in relation to the moral creature, with the changeable
manifestation of an eternal purpose. As to the former, more will be said on the
Freedom of the Creator; and, as to the latter, we meet the immutability of the
Moral Governor in His Fidelity to His own fixed decrees, whether of judgment or
of mercy. That philosophical theology which loses the personal God in the
abstract Absolute has greatly erred in its conception of this attribute. As the
Eternal conducts the creaturely universe through an economy of time, in which
His eternity is reflected, so also He conducts it through an economy of change,
behind and below and above the variations of which He can say: I am Jehovah, I
change not.1 Argument is utterly useless here. It is the highest reason to
submit to this necessary antinomy or paradox.

1 Malachi 3:6.

4. Though there is no process of development in the essence of the Godhead, it
must be remembered that the profoundest and sublimest mystery of the Faith
proclaims an evolution of the Divine nature as manifested in redemption. To
return once more to the essential Name, I AM THAT I AM means also I AM WHAT I
WILL TO BE, 1 and forbids our limiting in any way the possibilities of Divine
manifestation as exhibited in the Mediatorial Trinity, and especially in the
exinanition of the Son. Concerning Him, Jehovah-Jesus, it is said that He is the
same yesterday, and to day, and forever. 2 But He emptied Himself before He took
upon Him the form of a servant: 3 He changed before the Incarnation, or in the
Incarnation, the mode of His existence and surrendered the glory of attributes
which were nevertheless immutably His. The unchangeableness of the Divine nature
is not affected even by this; though no created intelligence can fathom the
secret. The eternal generation of the Son becomes another generation in time:
This day have I begotten Thee in human nature was said to Him in His human
existence of Whom in His Divine eternity it is said Thou art My Son!

1 Exodus 3:14; 2 Hebrews 13:8; 3 Php 2:7.

THEPERFECTIONOF GOD.

We sum up all when in our own speech we say that the Divine Nature is Perfect As
God is the Being of beings, His supreme perfection is the perfection of all
perfections. This attribute consummates and harmonizes all the rest:
representing, as it were, the undivided glory of the several rays of the Divine
character. The perfection we reverently ascribe to God is unique and employs the
term in a sense applicable to no other being. It is absolute, not relative; it
is one, and not the result of the combination of qualities; it is necessary, and
excludes the possibility of defect; it is supreme and immutable, not the finish
of a process; it is the ground and standard and source of all other perfection.
By these poor sentences we labor to express the essential difference between the
perfectness of God and the perfectness of the creature. But the importance of
this attribute is found in its use as a reverent defense of the adorable nature
from all that would dishonor it in our thoughts or in our theological systems.
If we sacrifice any one attribute to any other we derogate from the perfection
of God Who is the Being in whom every attribute has its supreme existence and
manifestation. As it belongs essentially to God in Himself, so it impresses its
stamp on all the Divine works, and must give the law to all our theological
views of His character. Holy Scripture, which dwells so much on the absolute
perfections of the Godhead, does not often, perhaps never does, call Him in His
eternal essence perfect. This needs no assertion, nor does it need
demonstration. The only passage in which the attribute is given Him is one of
the very few instances in which the Incarnate Son assigns anything like a
specific character to His Father and our Father: Be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father Which is in heaven is perfect.1

1 Matthew 5:48.

OBSERVATIONS.

Before leaving this class of Divine essential perfections, we must impress upon
our minds the following observations: 1. They are all and alike incomprehensible
and unfathomable, though each conveys a definite notion both to reason and to
faith or rather to that consummate reason which is faith. In studying out these
absolute attributes we are in the presence of a God Whom we strive to think of
as existing in the awful solitude of His own essential being; and of Him we must
needs say, with more than the prophet’s meaning: Verily Thou art a God that
hidest Thyself. 1 Here, if anywhere, we move in the region of pure thought; and
of thought which is more passive than active. We use certain terms, but when we
strive to shape them into concepts we are utterly baffled. We speak of infinity,
eternity, immensity or spacelessness, immutability; but our words return upon us
without the exact ideas they define. By no possibility can we grasp their
meaning. And yet it is the glory of our created intellect—stamped with the image
of God— that we still persist in believing that our ideas of Deity are sound and
true: that there is a Being of Whom all this may and must be said. Our reason is
our faith; for we believe in the indestructible convictions of our consciousness
of God. Our faith is our reason; for every argument leads to the conclusion that
such a Being must be. This is the valid inference we deduce from our own
finiteness, which is strictly speaking nothing but a negation of the Infinite:
not the converse. Our very idea of limitation implies an Unlimited with which we
compare ourselves. Every thought of finite imperfection implies a standard of
infinite perfection: what other meaning can these words have?

1 Isaiah 14:15.

2. But, whenever we think of God as the perfection of what in ourselves is
imperfect, we think as persons, and must needs think of Him as a Personal Being.
Here we find a special difficulty: though it may be said that the difficulty is
self-created, or rather that it springs very much from the poverty of our words.
All these attributes of the eternal essence of God are described by terms that
are not very appropriate as referred to personal spirit. Thus when we speak of
the immensity or of the immutability of the eternal God we are applying language
derived from the relations of material things to One Who is a pure spirit; and
the impropriety of the terms reflects its difficulty on the doctrine. The
material notion inhering suggests the thought of a vast monotonous essence
extending beyond all limit that we can assign, and undergoing no process of
living development. If we change the terms we get rid of this anomaly. God is a
Personal Spirit, infinite and eternal, ever the same in His nature and mode of
being, and not thinking or acting of necessity under the limitations of time and
space. Reference has been again and again made to the difficulties of
speculation which wonders at the idea of the Absolute or Infinite being defined
off from all that is not Himself by personality; but without the Infinite I
speaking to the finite Thou there can be no science of God and no religion.

Theology at least should have no difficulty here. It must either renounce itself
and abdicate, or accept a personal God, of whom these absolute attributes are to
be predicated only as they are made consistent with His personality. The vain
attempt to reconcile an impersonal Absolute with a personal thinker about it
must be left to philosophy; though all philosophy worthy of the name rejects and
disdains the task. The question will for ever return upon it: How can
personality, conscious of itself and of its origin from something not itself,
spring from impersonality? 3. Once more, it is an observable fact that this
class of attributes, which we predicate of the absolute Deity, as yet unrelated
to any creature, is brought into very express and clear connection with the
Triune God as such. It has been seen, and we need now only to impress the fact
again, that the Scriptures plainly declare the Personal Son to be eternal and
immutable; and the Third Person to be an eternal spiritual essence, the Holy
Spirit preeminently. To us there is no Deity but the Triune; and these absolute
attributes are predicated of all that is in God. It would be hardly too much to
say that they are as often and as distinctly referred to the Son as to the
Father, and to the Holy Spirit as to the Son. No one can carefully read the
Scriptures without seeing that the supreme Name which binds this class of
primary perfections into one is given to the Three Persons distinctively and in
their unity. 1 The one Jehovah—the Eternal, Infinite, Immutable Spirit—is the
Three-one God. Proofs have already been given of this most fundamental truth, on
which hangs the whole fabric of the Christian revelation. And, in harmony with
it, we have done well to study the doctrine of the Trinity before entering on
that of the Divine attributes.

1 Hebrews 1:2; Hebrews 1:10; Hebrews 13:8.

4. They are the basis on which rest, or the source from which spring, all our
other ascriptions to the Divine Being as related to the universe. In other
words, the perfections to which we next pass are these in another form and
application: not other perfections, but yet new as exhibited towards the
creature. In dwelling upon the attributes of the Divine essence, as they are
brought within the range of their finite operation, it must always be remembered
that the essential, immanent, incomprehensible prerogatives form the dread
background of every representation. If the Divine Being gives His character and
works a human exhibition—if, by what is called anthropomorphic language, He
speaks AS A MAN, or adopts creaturely language—His eternal and infinite nature
is behind as the standard and regulator of all: a truth of boundless importance,
too often forgotten.

ATTRIBUTES RELATED TO THE CREATURE. The attributes which connect the Supreme
Being with the created universe, or which derive their new names and
applications from that connection, are such as may be understood by the terms
Freedom, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience, Wisdom, and Goodness. To blend
them all in one proposition: The God of the universe is a self determining
Agent, using unbounded power, which is everywhere operative, is guided by
infinite knowledge, displayed in perfect wisdom, under the law of never-failing
benevolence. It must be remembered that, while including all and excluding
nothing that may be regarded as belonging to the perfections of the Supreme
revealed in His works, we keep as yet out of view the modifications of some of
these attributes, especially of the first and last, which are introduced in the
relation of God to moral agents in probation as such.

THEFREEDOMOF GOD.

We cannot pass from the absolute God to the God of the universe without paying
our homage to the Freedom of the Divine will as assigning the sufficient reason
why anything not God exists at all. This is the anti-Pantheistic attribute.

1. When we ascribe to God a will, we begin at once, as we have not done before
to study His spiritual nature in the light of our own, as created after His
image. Whatever else we regard as characteristic of an intelligent spirit, we
cannot exclude from it selfdetermination, implying a faculty of willing or
deciding its own course of conduct, the exercise of the will as expressed by
purpose, and the result in act. These are summed up and assigned to God in one
saying of the Apostle: Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will,
1 where we have the theleéma, or will in exercise, the bouleén, or determination
of that will, and the issue-as the act of the energoúntos. St. Paul makes all
things absolutely the result of this will in the Deity, and he only sums up in
one remarkable expression the unanimous testimonies of all Scripture. It is
important to remember that we speak here of a will in God in the strictest sense
of the term, not including the other attributes of God which may be more or less
closely connected with it: such as His power and His complacency or love.

1 Ephesians 1:11

2. The freedom of the Divine will might seem to need no proof. But, in regard to
an attribute which forms as it were the link between the absolute perfections
and the perfections related to the creature, this needs to be correctly
understood. It means that the reason of the purpose arid act of God going
towards the creature is to be sought only in Himself: the will indeed is in the
necessity of His essence, like the attributes already considered, but it is
itself under no necessity. We may think indeed of a freedom in the eternal
essence which is absolute necessity; and of an absolute necessity which is
perfect freedom. So it is sometimes said that God wills Himself necessarily.
This is an expression which is capable of a sound interpretation: but only if
the will includes complacency. A perfect spirit must have a perfect will, and in
a sense will its own perfection; but it is not, strictly speaking, more true to
say that God wills Himself than to say that He is His own cause or CAUSA SUI.

3. Though the cause of all things not God is to be sought in His free will, in
the eternal purpose of the Holy Trinity as an absolute essence, we cannot even
speak of the freedom of that will without descending at once into the creaturely
universe, the result of His free volition. There could be no necessity to
create; no necessity to create what is created; no necessity to uphold. The
existence of all things according to the infinite variety of their constitution,
in parts and as a whole, is a display of the freedom of the Divine Artificer.
The necessity of the laws of nature is the freedom of the God of nature.

4. Although the relation of this attribute to moral beings will have to be
considered again hereafter when the Divine perfections are viewed in the light
of redemption, yet it is right to view it now in relation to the moral
government of God over His creatures as such.

Here once more we must observe that absolute necessity is perfect freedom: and
we cannot conceive otherwise than that all intelligent beings are created under
the obligation of obedience to a law of holiness. His moral will is the free
expression of His holy nature. The ground of our obligation to goodness is
simply the ground of our obligation to obey that will which is God Himself. But
we dare not say with equal confidence that all moral intelligences are created
by a free necessity which must make them probationary beings.

Here comes in the liberty of the Divine will in another and more unrestricted
sense. It has pleased Him to make His creatures free; and to suspend their
ultimate destiny on the right use of freedom. From this it follows that, in the
mystery of the eternal will, its own liberty is bound up with that of the
creatures. As it is no disparagement to the Divine power that it cannot do what
cannot be done, nor to the Divine Omniscience that it knows contingent things as
contingent, so it is not inconsistent with the absoluteness of the Divine will
that its decrees are sometimes adapted to the conditionally of events. However
derogatory it may seem to what is called the Sovereignty of God, the freedom of
the supreme will is linked with conditional events, and is conditional with
them. The entire Scripture proclaims this from beginning to end, and the history
of all the dealings of Heaven with men confirms it. That God, Who willeth that
all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth, 1 nevertheless
does not actually save all men. Probation would cease to be probation were not
the freedom of the Divine will adjusted to the freedom of the human. False views
of the absolute and unconditioned pervade the philosophy of religion: and they
are nowhere more obnoxious than here.

1 1 Timothy 2:4.

5. Lastly, this attribute of God as presiding over the creaturely universe is
the attribute of a perfect Being: and we may be sure that what would be contrary
to morality in our own use of the will ought never to be imputed to the Author
of our nature. It is possible to make the Divine freedom conflict with some
other equally necessary attributes which we have yet to mention. His liberty
cannot be His creatures’ bondage: His freedom cannot be their necessity. There
is a sense in which absolute sovereignty in God is not only consistent with His
perfection, but essential to it. He is free to appoint the conditions and
circumstances of the probation of every human or intelligent being; to reveal
when He will, and according to what measures, His hidden purposes, or His
decretive will, or good pleasure, as distinguished from His preceptive will or
command. His preceptive will itself is under the government of freedom: positive
precepts may be given or withheld, may be appointed and withdrawn, may be
modified or relaxed, or suppressed altogether. But the freedom of God cannot
decree the unconditional misery of any creature that He has formed, even for the
manifestation or supposed manifestation of what may be called the glory of His
justice.

6. Finally, leaving these reflections, which belong to a later stage, let us
return to the more immediate application of this attribute. It is placed first
in the order of perfections which connote the created universe because it is
really the first in the order of our thought. Without it the formula God and the
universe has no meaning. It translates the Eternal from the region of abstract
necessity and uniformity of existence into the reality of a Personal Spirit
acting with free intelligence. It accounts for all things as they have been, as
they are, and as they will be. Before it the Moira, or Fate, of eternal
necessity binding the universe vanishes. Before it Pantheism flies, which allows
no personal will either in God or in what seems, but seems only, to be His
creation. Before it also, when rightly interpreted, recedes, or ought to recede,
every system that makes the probation of intelligent creatures only the
circuitous evolution of a fixed purpose called the sovereign will of God.

OMNIPOTENCE. The Divine Omnipotence follows hard on the Divine Freedom: indeed
it is but the expansion of the result of will in effect; in this case its
expansion to infinity. It is the attribution to God of power to do all that He
wills to do; according to the simple formula of the prophet: There is nothing
too hard for Thee.1 He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased. 2 He can do all
that He wills to do; He wills to do all that He does. Potest quod vult, in its
application to the Deity, is sound theology; though the converse, that He wills
all that He can, is to be rejected. Proceeding from this principle, we may dwell
on a few important inferences.

1 Jeremiah 32:17; 2 Psalms 95:3.

1. The omnipotence of God is the ground and secret of all efficiency, or what we
call causality. No argument, however specious, can rob us of the indestructible
conviction that there is such a power in the nature of things as we call cause:
that there is a connection between events which is more than mere sequence. As
in regard to almost every attribute of God, but in this case with more than
usual distinctness, we perceive in ourselves the finite reflection of the
Infinite. We are conscious of producing effects as ourselves their cause. From
that, remembering two things, we rise to the Divine Omnipotence. First, the
range of our direct causation is exceedingly limited: very decisive so far as it
extends, it soon reaches its term. In the interior economy of our spiritual
nature it is comparatively great; in the government of our bodily constitution
less; in our action upon others it has decreased rapidly; and in our action upon
external nature it is gone. To the Supreme there is no limit: with God all
things are possible follows, in our Lord’s words, with men this is impossible, 1
and may have the largest application. Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He
in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and in all deep places. Jehovah spake and
it was done; 2 He commanded and it stood fast. 3 Secondly, all power in us is
derived from Him: He is the absolute source of all causation. It is not simply
that He can do all things; for all things that are done are done by the
operation of causes that owe their efficiency to Him, though in many cases the
efficiency is contrary to His will But this leads to another view: the necessary
limitation or condition—if such language may be used—of the Divine omnipotence.

1 Matthew 19:26; 2 Psalms 135:6; 3 Psalms 33:9.

2. As to the display of Almighty power, it is and must be, if the Divine freedom
is maintained, for ever restricted. It is not indeed a limitation that
omnipotence cannot accomplish the impossible: the impossible is impossible
because His nature makes it so; even as it is inconceivable that His holiness
should tolerate evil. It is more important to bear in mind that the Infinite
Cause can never exhaust itself: the actual must always fall short of the
possible: Lo, these are parts of His ways: but how little a portion is heard of
Him! Were it otherwise, the Divine freedom would be gone, and Pantheism reign in
its stead. To assume that the sum of finite things is the full expression of the
Divine Almightiness is to confound the faculty with its exercise: that which is
irrational in relation to man is equally irrational in relation to God. This
error is really based upon a notion of the Absolute which is impatient of
admitting that it can have any project which requires means for its
accomplishment and thus involve the thought that God is equal, so to speak, to
the production of what He wills. Holy Scripture assents to what is true in this:
it is everywhere faithful to the original declaration: Let there be light, and
there was light.

It may be granted that the will of God is His act, that is, when He wills that
it should be so; but the converse is equally certain, that He may will not to
act, and infinite varieties of being are not in existence that might be. Nothing
is gained by transcendental speculations as to the identity in God of will and
act. Such speculations simply trifle with words: if will means will and act
means act, they fall to the ground. The same remark as to dishonest or unreal
use of words is in other respects of wide application.

3. Once more, the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme conditionate His
omnipotence.

Here, then, is a twofold range of suggestion: one more simple and
comprehensible; the other bringing us to the threshold of unfathomable mystery.
It is not difficult to understand that in the providential arrangements of the
universe omnipotent agency is limited by wisdom. There is a definite and clear
distinction between what is sometimes called the POTESTAS ABSOLUTA, or the
absolute power that creates all at first, and places it under the government of
secondary laws which represent the POTESTAS ORDINATA. This distinction between
the supreme and the economical omnipotence of the Creator is important in many
applications. It does justice to the regular, orderly, uninterrupted process of
created things, in which occasional interventions are rare, and indeed no more
than exceptions to general rule. But it gives room for these interventions in
creation itself, and in the miracles which sometimes introduce a new creation
into the old. The one idea of the Divine Omnipotence reconciles the two and
harmonizes with both. But there is another aspect of the subject before which
the human mind must bow down in amazement. In the infinite wisdom of God things
contrary to His will in one sense are permitted by His will in another. This
leads us up to the original mystery that the Almighty created beings capable of
falling from Him; and down again to the present mystery that omnipotence
sustains in being creatures opposing His authority; and then forward to the same
mystery in its consummate form that omnipotence will preserve in being, not
indeed active rebels against His authority, but spirits separated from Himself.

It is the solemn peculiarity of this attribute, in common with wisdom and
goodness, as we shall see, that it is traversed and thwarted, so to speak, by
the creatures that owe to it their origin. But the same three attributes are
conspicuous in the redeeming economy: of which more hereafter.

THEOMNIPRESENCEOF GOD. The Omnipresence of God is no other than His Immensity
referred to the creature, and restricted, so to speak, within the universe.
There are three ways in which we may regard this attribute, as we find it
everywhere presented in Scripture.

1. It is the actual presence of the Deity in every part of created nature. Do
not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. 1 This is one aspect; and it
asserts that the Divine Essence, though not extended nor diffused, is to be
regarded as present to every portion of the universe, whether more material or
more spiritual. God is not present by circumscription of space; nor by the
occupation of any one locality rather than any other. He is present in every
force or energy of created things; nor can He be absent from any region of the
universe or any act of the beings He has created. This, with all its inevitable
consequences, may be called His absolute, or, so to speak, natural omnipresence.

1 Jeremiah 23:24.

2. But there is another view of the matter which we may profitably take. In Him
we live, and move, and have our being, 1 which makes God’s omnipresence the
presence of every creature to Him. The relation is rather of the creature to Him
than His relation to the creature. Before His perfect Divinity, not extended but
in its one and unextended perfection, every creature stands and moves and runs
its course; every thought is conceived, every word is spoken, and every deed is
done. It is this aspect of the attribute that the Word of God constantly bids us
remember.

1 Acts 17:28.

3. And there is yet another, which connects it specially with the Divine
omnipotence.

Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold,
Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall
hold me. 1 This makes the God of the universe present wherever the special
operation of His power is. Thus we may speak of Him as present in the mightiest
and in the gentlest forces of nature, which no physical science can account for
or explain without this fundamental supposition. Thus also we may speak of His
special presence in places set apart for the manifestation of His glory or of
His grace: The Lord is in this place. 2 Where two or three are gathered together
in My Name, there am I in the midst of them. 3 And thus also we believe in a
presence peculiar to heaven, and in a presence in the humble spirit of the soul
that trembles at His word: the saints are filled into all the fullness of God. 4
1 Psalms 139:7-12; 2 Genesis 28:16; 3 Matthew 18:20; 4 Ephesians 3:19.

4. All these must be combined in our reverent study of this attribute. God is in
all things; all things are present to Him; and His energy is everywhere felt,
though not everywhere alike felt. Thus the attribute is protected from Pantheism
on the one hand, and from every limitation of the Divine Essence on the other.
But this subject will be more fully treated under the next.

THEOMNISCIENCEOF GOD. The attribute of Omniscience assigns to God the perfection
of that which in us is knowledge, the intellectual apprehension of things in
their truth: His understanding is infinite. 1 We must consider the plain
Scriptural presentation of it; then our necessary theological distinctions, and
the collision of omniscience generally with certain philosophical notions.

1 Psalms 147:5.

I. This perfection is closely allied with that of the Divine omnipresence: The
eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good: He knows
all things as they are, because all things are present to Him. Sheol and
destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children
of men? 1 This, so far as things present go, gives a most simple and clear view
of the subject what to man his consciousness is, and what the testimony of his
senses tells him, all things in the universe are to Him Who is a present witness
of all. All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have
to do. 2 It is the taking knowledge, or the marking of the procession of events,
especially in this world the thoughts and conduct of men. Thus have ye said, 0
house of Israel; for I know the things that come into your mind, every one of
them. 3 But it leaves that attribute behind when it includes what is to us the
past and the future as well as the present. Scripture ascribes to His infinite
mind the intuitive, simultaneous, and perfect knowledge of all that can ever be
the object of knowledge: embracing in one eternal cognizance the actual, the
possible, the contingent: Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of
the world. 4 In our apprehension and interpretation of it, the Divine
omniscience is the knowledge of the past as past, of the developing present as
present, and of the future as future. Particularly, as to the future, it is
Foreknowledge, which must however be carefully kept distinct from
predestination: between these there is no necessary connection. Whom He did
foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of HisSong of
Solomon 5:1-16 This foreknowledge of persons extends also to all events, not
only known from the beginning of the world, but to the end of it. Prophecy is a
constant element of revelation; and, whereas prediction might be supposed to
refer to certain events of signal importance predetermined in the Divine
counsel, the insight into all futurity is expressly assigned to God. Jehovah,
confounding the false god, cries: Show the things that are to come hereafter,
that we may know that ye are gods. 6 On the other hand, He appeals to His own
foreknowledge as absolute: Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new
things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them. 7 He sees the
thoughts of men very far off, even to the end of time. What is wanting in
express declaration on this subject is implied in the whole current of testimony
concerning the infinity of the Divine understanding, and His inhabiting
eternity, and seeing the end from the beginning. 8 As to the past, becoming the
past, it is the infallible storing of the deeds of His creatures in what we may
call, though Scripture does not, the infinite memory of God. And this leads to a
final observation, that the attribute of omniscience is, for the most part,
brought into relation with the Divine moral government, as a large number of
passages might be brought from Scripture to prove. Indeed, this is the
predominant purpose for which this perfection is appealed to throughout
revelation.

1 Proverbs 15:3; Proverbs 15:11; 2 Hebrews 4:13; 3 Ezekiel 11:5; 4 Acts 15:18; 5
Romans 8:29; 6 Isaiah 41:23; 7 Isaiah 42:9; 8 Isaiah 46:10.

II. No attribute of God occupies a more important critical place in theology
than this of the Divine omniscience. Its systematic presentation in dogmatic
systems varies of course with the systems themselves. We may reduce all to two
questions, relating respectively to the reality of knowledge generally in God
and to the relation between the Divine foreknowledge and the Divine
predestination.

1. Pantheism, and all theological speculation tinctured with Pantheism, tends to
the denial of any knowledge in God properly so called. Knowledge in man is the
intellectual apprehension of an objective thing known by a subject knowing it.
Even when the object is the subject, as in the knowledge of consciousness, this
distinction between subject and object must be maintained. But, on any
supposition, the God of Pantheism cannot know with an infinite knowledge. He is
conscious only in the consciousness of finite creatures; and that can never be
infinite. In fact, there is no personal Being into whose one distinct
consciousness may be gathered up the many consciousnesses of all creatures; and
as to all phenomena that are not spiritual they are not known at all, save in
finite parcels by the creature. But as soon as we accept the fact that the
Infinite Creator has made intelligences reflecting His own personality, they
must become objects to Him the Subject knowing. The same may be said of all
material things. Meanwhile, the Infinite is eternally the Object known to
Himself. And thus we have all the elements of the Divine omniscience.

2. The Predestinarian view of the Christian Faith has required the entire
removal of any distinction between foreknowledge and foreordination. If from
eternity God has foreknown all that is to be, it seems hard to separate this
from an immutable destiny appointed for all things. Whatever is foreknown truly
must come to pass as it is foreknown. But—granting the unsearchable mystery that
to the Divine mind all processes are already results— we may be bold to say that
logically there is no ground for such a conclusion. It is not the Divine
foreknowledge that conditions what takes place, but what takes place conditions
the Divine foreknowledge. We have seen again and again that the God of eternity
has condescended to be also the God of time, with its past, and present, and
future. Instead of saying with the Schoolmen that to God there is only an
eternal now, it were better to say that to God as absolute essence there is the
eternal now, and also to God as related to the creature there is the process of
succession. Predestination must have its rights: all that God wills to do is
foredetermined. But what human freedom accomplishes God can only foreknow:
otherwise freedom is no longer freedom. The other or determinist view is only
Pantheism Augustinianised. So Augustine says: " What is prescience but the
knowledge of future things? For what can be future to God, who transcends all
time? As to the knowledge God has of things themselves, they are not to Him
future, but present, and consequently it cannot be called prescience but only
knowledge." This is not Pantheism, but only Pantheism could teach it. The same
humble submission we pay to the union of Infinite and finite in the Incarnation
must be offered to the mystery of an Infinite knowledge which, not in words
only, but in very deed is voluntarily subjected to finite forms. The analogy is
perfect.

3. We have some theological and philosophical compromises on this subject which
demand brief attention.

(1.) The Lutheran divines formulated the whole subject with their wonted skill
in analysis. They distinguished in relation to the objects of the Divine
omniscience between His necessary knowledge of Himself and of all things
possible as determined by Himself, and His free knowledge of all things
conditionally dependent on His will: the former was the Scientia necessaria vel
naturalis; the latter Scientia libera vel visionis. But this left room for
another division, due to the sagacity of the Jesuit divines, opponents of
Jansenist Predestinarianism. This they termed Scientia media, and it has been
generally held by all anti-Predestinarian theologians. It is the Divine
knowledge of the hypothetical or conditional as such: scientia eorum quae neque
facta neque futura sunt, sed sub conditionibus quibusdam vel fuissent vel
forent. There is not so much importance in this distinction as is sometimes
ascribed to it. If of the Fuissent and the Forent we take the latter, then we
have simply the foreknowledge of men’s acts on certain conditions: that such and
such men will embrace the terms of salvation when presented to them. If we take
the former, we are led to a subtle speculation which seems to some without much
profit in it. When our Lord says, in His apostrophe to Capernaum, If the mighty
works which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have
remained until this day, 1 this, if the Savior used more than merely figurative
or hypothetical language, is an instance of Sciatica media, or intermediate
knowledge. He knew what would have been but never was. But, when He goes on to
say, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the Day of Judgment
than for thee, we cannot but feel that this middle or conditional knowledge may
have a most important influence on the destinies of men. At any rate, it
constitutes a most important element in the Divine omniscience.

1 Matthew 11:23-24.

(2.) The Socinians, on the other hand, boldly denied that free or contingent
acts can be known beforehand, or known at all as such. They were misled by a
false analogy with the omnipotence of God: as He does not accomplish all that He
could accomplish, so He voluntarily wills not to know what is contingent: in
other words, He knows things knowable as He performs things possible. Here we
see the importance of the distinction already introduced: between the absolute
attributes of God and the same attributes as related to the creature. The Divine
all sufficiency is the power of doing what He will; the Divine omnipotence is
the power to do all that His creation and sustentation of the universe demands,
and no more. So the Divine eternity embraces in perfect knowledge all that has
been, is, or may be; but the Divine omniscience knows according to the
conditions of time, and all things future as what we call contingent. The free
acts of His creatures are known to Him as certain though He foreknows them as
free and not as dependent on His own will. Nothing can be imagined more
derogatory to the perfection of God than that He should be made ignorant of
contingent events. To Him they cannot be contingent: contingency is altogether a
creaturely term. The notion is incompatible with any foreknowledge of human
acts; for in a certain sense every one of them is contingent Even shortsighted
man can be all but certain of some contingent events lying in the immediate
future. In God the memory of the past, the vision of the present, the prescience
of the future, are alike perfect: the very fact of creation involves all this.

THEWISDOMOF GOD. No attribute is more abundantly ascribed to the God of the
universe than Wisdom. This, in human affairs, is intimately connected with
knowledge: in man there can be no wisdom without knowledge, though there may be
knowledge without wisdom. The analogy is only a faint one: yet we may speak of
God only wise, 1 who applies His infinite knowledge with infinite skill to the
accomplishment of the highest ends by the best means.

1 Romans 16:27.

1. The analogy of the human artificer wisely adapting his resources must not be
pressed too far. The human agent has means at his disposal which he prudently
uses to help his own weakness, and the highest skill is shown in achieving the
greatest results by the smallest instrumentality. But in the case of the Supreme
both the end and the means are created; and, while a final cause must be assumed
for all, every arrangement in nature is a final end with reference to some most
important purpose. The means are ends while the ends are means. The fundamental
objection urged by many Christian philosophers against this attribute falls away
when this is steadfastly remembered. It can never be said of this or that
particular law of nature that it is used by the Supreme for the accomplishment
of a certain purpose: it is itself, whatever it may be, a display of omnipotence
and a final end of some kind. That ten thousand times ten thousand ends converge
to one supreme and ultimate purpose displays; wisdom indeed, but not the
weakness and patience of wisdom humanly so called. As the attribute is sometimes
described, some ground is given for the assault of a philosophy which counts it
derogatory to the Supreme to have need of means.

Every, the slightest, part of the infinite economy of means is a display of the
Divine glory, and as such cannot be degraded to the level of mere expedient.
There is no experiment in the wisdom of God.

2. The Word of God abounds in every possible strain of expatiation on the wisdom
of God in the construction of the universe, in its variety of adaptations to
intelligent creatures. Whatever objection we may instinctively feel to making
the Omnipotent a skilful artificer, His own Word delights in the representation.
With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding. 1 This, true of
man, is applied to God: With Him is wisdom and. strength, He hath counsel and
understanding. Very much of the praise of Jehovah in the Old Testament is only a
variation in the theme: 0 Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou
made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches. 2 But if we note carefully, we
shall find that it is everywhere taken for granted that what appears like the
adjustment of means to ends is no other than the evolution of an infinite series
of ends all expanding and converging to an ulterior and perfect end in eternity.

1 Job 12:12-13; 2 Psalms 104:24.

3. Hence, while in the Old Testament the economy of nature is the sphere of the
Divine wisdom, in the New it is the economy of grace in which it most gloriously
reigns. In the provisions of redemption for the accomplishment of His supreme
end we have the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God
ordained before the world began. 1 Here is wisdom in the deepest sense: the very
foolishness of God is wiser than men. 2 The attribute, studied in the light of
the Cross, puts on its highest perfection.

It is now far beyond the adjustment of means to an end: it is that, but it is
infinitely more than that. It is the infinite knowledge of the abysses of His
own Triune Being, and of the possibilities of reconciliation with the sinner
through the resources of His own essence, brought into exhibition in a counsel
of infinite wisdom. Hence this attribute has given its name both to the Gospel
and to the Lord of the Gospel: Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. 3
Here, however, we are going beyond the strict limits of the present class of
attributes; and further enlargement on this subject must be postponed.

1 Ephesians 1:8; Ephesians 3:10; 2 1 Corinthians 2:7; 1 Corinthians 1:25; 3 1
Corinthians 1:24; 1 Corinthians 2:6-7.

THEGOODNESSOF GOD.

Goodness, as the last of this series of attributes, expresses the Divine
sentiment which wills the good of all creatures as such.

1. It is not His excellence in Himself, which is ascribed to Him in other forms;
but His benevolence in willing good and His beneficence in doing good to every
work of His hands in need of both. The Fountain of life is the fountain also of
loving-kindness: The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. 1 His tender
mercies are over all His works. 2 It is no less than a law of the Divine nature
to make the universe minister to the happiness of its inhabitants, and to
communicate happiness to all creatures capable of it. This is demanded by the
ascription of goodness to God as a perfection of His nature in its relation to
the creature. To this relation we now limit ourselves; and may boldly say,
guided by the Word of God, that His diffusive goodness is everywhere illustrated
in creation as such. As such God saw everything that He had made, and, behold,
it was very good: 3 in all things, man included, there was the happiness that
responded to His beneficent design in the original creation.

1 Psalms 33:5; 2 Psalms 145:9.

2. Here we might pause, as we are treating of the Divine perfections related to
the created universe. But the tremendous difficulty arises that evil exists. The
goodness of God is the attribute which this fact most directly confronts: not
His love, which does not emerge in its glory from the ground of His
loving-kindness until sin already exists; not His holiness, which likewise
implies the existence of what He for ever rejects; not His wisdom, which has its
grandest illustration in its making evil subservient to His designs. But it is
for ever argued that a Creator of unbounded benevolence and power must, or
might, or ought to have prevented the origination of evil There are only two
possible solutions of this profound difficulty. Either the desperate expedient
must be adopted of renouncing a Supreme God altogether: a solution this which is
really no solution, for atheism solves nothing but dissolves all. Or, accepting
the testimony of God Himself, we must bow down before an unfathomable mystery,
and seek our refuge in the harmony of the Divine attributes. On this subject
more will be said in the next department of the perfections of God, now waiting
to be revealed; as also when the doctrine of Sin comes formally before us.

3. Meanwhile, it may be well to consider briefly some compromises or palliatives
which are current, and, after considering their strength and weakness, make a
few closing reflections.

(1.) So far as concerns our present subject, it is enough to impress the
following considerations. First, we must be bold to reject every theory that
makes evil and its development a form of the manifestation of Divine goodness:
to that goodness evil is an unsearchable mystery of opposition. It might seem
impossible that such a notion should be entertained: it has not only been
entertained, but has been defended by very plausible arguments. Some have gone
so far as to deny the objective reality of evil, and even of sin the cause of
it. They make it the necessary form of limited nature: which, created by Divine
power guided by benevolence, is under a law of development through sin and guilt
and evil to a predestined perfection that will leave all stages of wandering
behind, swallowed up in the eternal realization of the Divine good pleasure. The
final end of the creation being the happiness of being, we are bound to
believe—they tell us—that a Perfect Creator has so ordered it that what we call
sin and misery should subserve in this best possible universe the purposes of
His goodness more fully than a world without misery could have done. But the
sufficient answer to all this is—for those at least who hold the Bible in their
hands—that sin is the abominable thing that God hateth. It cannot be a designed
and appointed element in the display of His goodness. Moreover, supposing it
granted that for those who are ultimately delivered from sin the process will
result in greater happiness than if it had not existed, this is no argument for
the unsaved portion of the race.

(2.) Nor does it much help us when Predestinarian divines, abhorring this method
of vindication, set up another very much like that which they condemn. They tell
us that the Divine glory is the only end of creation, and NOT the happiness of
the creature: instead of saying, as they ought, the Divine glory IN the
happiness of the creature. They affirm, consistently, that sin as permitted in
order that the justice of God might be made known in its punishment, and His
grace in its pardon and removal. But we venture boldly to affirm by anticipation
that both the justice and the grace of the Eternal, if we may so speak,
sublapsarian in their relation to sin. These attributes were not to be
illustrated by the permission of evil; but, evil being permitted, are
illustrated in contending with it. When we all say alike EVIL BEING PERMITTED,
we must alike confess that an absolute solution is not by the finite creature to
be found. But we cannot agree to relieve the difficulty by regarding sin as
either permitted or ordained to glorify God. Moreover, it must not be forgotten
that there is something inherently selfish in this argument, in whatever form
put. It leaves out of view the inferior races of the creature, and all their
innumerable calamities: calamities suffered also on account of the sin of man.

(3.) Meanwhile, we must submit to the clear and tranquil teaching of Scripture
that the Divine benevolence is in all its manifestations controlling the evil of
sin: this is the law of all His dispensations. Not indeed that He purposes to
abolish it for ever; not that He has so controlled it in other parts of the
universe as to save the fallen spirits from it. We have only to do with our own
province of the created universe; and for ourselves we know that the
lovingkindness of God is still over all His works. He maketh His sun to rise on
the evil and on the good 1 both His natural sun, as the symbol of His universal
benevolence and His spiritual Sun, the Friend of publicans and sinners. The
history of this world is the history of unwearied benevolence for ever bringing
good out of evil. However perilous it may be to speak of the ultimate happiness
of the universe being heightened by the remembrance of the evil through which it
has been reached, it is safe to say that the sin of man has given scope for the
display of the Divine lovingkindness in forms and in resources which otherwise
would never have been known. It is the glory of faith to believe that, in spite
of the woeful results of the Fall, the goodness of God endureth continually.2 1
Matthew 5:45; 2 Psalms 52:1.

OBSERVATIONS, The attributes thus summarily exhibited are here regarded as
intermediate between the first series, which belong to God regarded as Alone or
without the creature, and a third order, to which we shall presently proceed. A
few remarks will be appropriate at this point upon their relation to both.

1. They must be understood to bring the absolute perfections of the Eternal
Being into relation with the universe, and, in fact, to derive their character
and name from that relation. Three illustrate this by the composition of the
terms that define them: they are the Omni-attributes, and imply the existence of
all things to which they refer. The omniscience and omnipresence of the Deity
especially have no meaning on any other supposition. But we must be careful not
to assume that every absolute attribute has its creaturely form. The Divine
all-sufficiency becomes-omnipotence in the universe; but the infinity and
eternity of God have no attributes of finite and temporal to correspond with
them. On the other hand, when we speak of the lovingkindness and wisdom of the
Creator, we cannot point to any absolute perfection on which these are founded,
unless indeed we base them upon the perfection of the Divine Being generally.

2. Those attributes make prominent the personality of the Supreme: not indeed
that the personality of God is in any sense originated by His relation to
creatures whom He calls into a quasi-independent existence. There is no sound
philosophical reason why the Eternal Spirit, contemplated before and apart from
the creaturely universe, should not be a Person. With such a Being, however, we
never have had, and never can have, to do in the nature of things. But every one
of the attributes which we ascribe to the Creator, Director, and End of the
universe belongs to a Person of Whose personality we may think as we think of
our own limited and imperfect selves: saving, of course, the difference between
a finite and an infinite subject.

3. It may seem arbitrary to separate this order of Divine attributes from a
third having relation to moral beings. The distinction is not perhaps so clear
as that between the former orders: still it serves an important purpose. With
those which we have just considered the enumeration would cease were there no
law of probationary trial, and no fall among the facts of the universe. Had evil
not entered into the creation here the display of the Divine attributes would
have closed. Wisdom and goodness would have provided for the eternal blessedness
of all the intelligent worshippers of God. But the moral government of the Lord
of all gives a new aspect, and in some respects a new name, with an application
most affectingly enlarged, to these attributes. Our study must now be conducted
in the light of redemption.

ATTRIBUTES RELATED TO MORAL GOVERNMENT.

There are some attributes, hitherto unmentioned which belong to the Divine Being
as He is the Moral Governor of intelligent creatures. These are revealed
especially in connection with the economy of redemption, and derive their names
and characteristics mainly from that connection: though they are displayed in
the relations of God to His probationary creatures universally, they must be
viewed by us especially in the light of the mediation of Christ, and in their
aspect towards mankind. All the perfections of which we speak may be said to
hang upon two, Holiness and Love, the mutual relations, harmony and unity of
which are bound up with the clear apprehension of the mystery of the Gospel.
These supreme central attributes stand at the head, respectively, of many others
which spring from them, or may be regarded as pertaining to the same family.

Holiness is the name which defines the essential perfection of God as opposed to
all that is not in harmony with it, and therefore connotes the actuality or the
possibility of sin. Its first representative in the moral government of God is
Justice, which, as Righteousness, enters distinctively into the redeeming
economy of that government and gives it one of its named. This is itself
represented and supported by the attributes of Truth and Fidelity. The essential
Love of God, by virtue of which He communicates Himself to His creature, capable
of blessedness in union with Him, is most perfectly displayed in the revelation
of Jesus. It is represented by Grace, as the favor which rests upon the
undeserving; and this in the varieties of its display gives many attributes to
the Triune God of redemption, such as Compassion, Longsuffering, and Mercy.

THEMORALATTRIBUTES OF GOD. In the two former series of perfections we have had
no reason to consider their relation to moral goodness: whatever has been
introduced as bearing that aspect has entered only by anticipation. But now we
are altogether in a moral region: every attribute has reference to the assertion
and maintenance of ethical goodness. We find that the Supreme assumes the glory
of all moral excellence; that He ascribes to Himself the absolute perfection of
every quality that He requires in us. We find, moreover, that the Lord of all
appears before us in His word as often in His moral attributes, perhaps oftener,
than in His absolute perfections. Are we to regard all this as unreality, and
suppose that the God of our life is giving us an imaginary picture of Himself?
We know that He sometimes speaks as if He had our bodily organization; and
sometimes as if He were the subject of passions and affections of which we know
Him to be incapable. May it be that the entire moral presentation of the Deity
from beginning to end bears the same anthropopathic character? Does some unknown
Being educate mankind according to certain principles which He has made binding;
and, in order to carry on the process, teach by example as well as by precept?
by an example, however, altogether fictitious? This question has been discussed
already in the notion of God possible to man; but a few observations may be made
here on its relation to this class of attributes.

1. Every objection to the ascription to God of a moral character rests upon that
false and unreal idea of the Absolute which saps the foundations of all
theology. Carried out to its legitimate conclusion this would rob the Deity of
every attribute, and reduce or elevate Him or It to an abstraction incapable of
definition: the very term definition, or distinguishing from what it is not,
being treason to the majesty of the unconditioned Entity. But, however
inexorable may seem the logic that establishes such a notion of the Divine, it
vanishes at the touch of common sense: at any rate, before the common sense of
the man who listens to conscience within his heart, and has the Bible in his
hand, and believes in the incarnation of the Son of God. With Atheists,
Antitheists, and Pantheists we have not here to do: to them all and alike the
attributes of God are nonentity. But it is necessary to warn believers in
revelation against the mischief of refining away the reality in God Himself of
those eternal qualities of right which His nature and His will unite to make
binding on every creature. If God is manifest in the flesh, then He brought with
Him those principles of holiness which are the glory of His human manifestation:
He did not create the eternal principles that underlie morality, nor learn the
first elements of morals from His creature.

2. It may be argued that all morals suppose a free submission to an external
authority or law, with the possibility of doing wrong. This is perfectly true of
the ethical relations of probationary creatures. It is not true in the abstract:
it is not true of God. The Supreme Governor of the universe is a moral being,
but He is not responsible to any behind Himself. He is the foundation of all
law, Himself its eternal embodiment. Nor can it be established that morality
implies the possibility of evil. We are accustomed to such a thought, being
ourselves what we are; but a little consideration will show that perfect liberty
and perfect necessity may be and are one in the moral character of God,
Necessity has two meanings: it may be compulsion from without; and it may be
compulsion from within, which is hardly to be distinguished from the absolute
certainty of an immutable principle. This is the highest necessity of the
highest liberty in God. This also was the character of the moral development of
the Son of God incarnate, Who descended to the region of our human morals with
the spontaneous obedience of a will that was incapable of sin: sinless, as born
in the flesh by miraculous generation; impeccable, because He was the Son of
God.

3. But the fundamental and more obvious difficulty here is to understand how the
Immutable God can be capable of impressions from without, which the idea of
passions and emotions requires. Part of this difficulty is obviated by
remembering that after all much of the Biblical language on this subject is
anthropopathic, an accommodation to human infirmity. Thus the unchangeable God
represents Himself as hoping and fearing, uttering and suspending His wrath,
vacillating in suspense, and repenting of His purposes. It is not difficult to
understand all this. Woe unto thee, 0 Jerusalem! 1 is the expression of a holy
wrath that suspends its execution. Wilt thou not be made clean? is the offer of
mercy in consistency with that holy wrath, the intervention of a Redeemer being
supposed. When shall it once be? is the language of a seeming suspense between
hope and fear. The Psalmist says: Who is a Rock save our God? As for God His way
is perfect. 2 He is unchangeable in His perfection. But he also says: With the
merciful Thou wilt shew Thyself merciful; with an upright man Thou wilt shew
Thyself upright; with the pure Thou wilt shew Thyself pure; and with the froward
Thou wilt shew Thyself froward. As it were all things to all men; but we must
not misunderstand the word shew Thyself. As to the so frequent repentance of
God, Samuel the prophet gives us a typical example.

He also says: The Strength, or the Rock, of Israel will not lie nor repent; for
He is not a man that He should repent. 3 But he afterwards, using the same
words, says: And the Lord repented that He had made Saul king over Israel. But
we must be careful not to carry this explanation too far. There is a real, and
not merely a conventional, difference between the attributes of the absolute
Godhead and the attributes created, or the manifestation of which is created, by
the creation itself and with it. We cannot understand this; nor can we
understand the Incarnation. We cannot fathom the mystery that the God of
eternity, ’Eel`Owlaam, 4 inhabits time also, and waits on its processes as the
God of patience; 5 nor can we fathom the mystery that the impassible God should
mourn and rejoice, and be angry.

It is a relief to us to see that in His Son incarnate God does tabernacle with
us, and rejoice with us who rejoice, and weep with us who weep. The
Old-Testament anthropopathy may be an anticipation of the New-Testament reality.
Or—and perhaps it is better to say this—the New-Testament exhibition of a God
clothed with human morality, and of like sinless passions with ourselves, may be
only the manifestation unto perfection of a mystery that was before
unmanifested.

1 Jeremiah 13:27; 2 Psalms 18:31; Psalms 18:30; Psalms 18:25-26; 3 1 Samuel
15:29; 1 Samuel 15:35; 4 Genesis 21:33; 5 Romans 15:5.

HOLINESS AND LOVETHE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTES. The manifestation of God in His
moral government has in every age made prominent two classes of attributes which
have for their root and principle respectively the holiness and the love of the
Supreme: His holiness, which separates Him from us, and His love, which
nevertheless communicates itself to the sinner. The Nevertheless here points to
the most essential and profound mystery of the Atonement.

1. Throughout the Old Testament we mark the ascendancy of these two perfections
in their mysterious, and as yet not fully explained, union and harmony. The
beginning of revelation displays the righteous anger of God against sin, and His
gracious dealings with the sinner; but it was not until the Jehovah of the
covenant-people laid the foundations of the Theocracy, the formal preparative
for the full redeeming economy, that the two leading attributes were placed in
their correlative position. The first reference to the Divine holiness is in
connection with the giving of the Law. He is never the Holy One in Genesis; but
at the very commencement of His redeeming relation to the typical people, He is
glorious in holiness. 1 But the holiness of the jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children, 2 is blended with the love of the
same God shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My
commandments. When Jehovah renewed His covenant, after the first violation of
it, the two-leading attributes are again made prominent in His revelation of His
name and glory. But the love now comes first. The LORD passed by before him, and
proclaimed, the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and
abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy far thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. 3 What
this meant was then further explained: Thou shalt worship no other god: for the
Lord, whose name is JEALOUS, is a jealous God. 4 Throughout the remainder of the
Old-Testament economy the two great families of attributes belong respectively
to Him of Whom Joshua said He is an holy God; He is a jealous God, 5 God, to the
Lord God, merciful and gracious. 6 Sometimes the families of attributes are kept
apart; sometimes they are united, and their union, through the propitiation
typified in the Temple, distinguishes the Psalms and the prophets who anticipate
the Gospel. Bless the Lord, 0 my soul; and all that is within me bless His HOLY
NAME: 7 this leads the way in the Psalm; but mercy takes up the strain and
continues it to the end. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy. 8 This may represent the psalmists: let Hosea stand for the
prophets. Mine heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together. I
will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, I will not return to destroy
Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee. 9 It will
be observed that the holiness and the mercy are so blended in these passages,
and others like them, that it might seem as if they crossed hands: the holiness
forgiving the sin and not the mercy. This has misled many theologians who forget
that the union of the two attributes, and not their confusion, is the glory of
redemption. Apart from this, however, it is plain that throughout the Old
Testament the holiness and the mercy of God are supreme: on these two hang all
the redeeming attributes.

1 Exodus 15:11; 2 Exodus 20:5-6; 3 Exodus 34:6-7; 4 Exodus 34:14; 5 Joshua
24:14; 6 Exodus 34:6; 7 Psalms 103:1; 8 Psalms 103:8; 9 Hosea 11:8-9.

2. Assuredly it is the same in the New Testament. To illustrate this would
anticipate the whole doctrine of the Atonement. Suffice that our Lord and His
Apostles gave the same pre-eminence to the two attributes. In St. John’s Gospel
the Savior begins by God so loved the world 1 and ends with Holy Father! 2 St.
Paul makes the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, 3 the God of
holiness, and the free offer of His grace through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus, 4 the keynotes of the whole Evangelical system. St.John, in his
First Epistle, which is the last revelation of the Bible, singles out the two
Divine perfections, Holiness and Love, for the definition of what may be called
the moral nature of God. These two are the only terms which unite in one the
attributes and the essence of God. This, then, is the message which we have
heard of Him, and declare unto you, that GOD is LIGHT, and in Him is no darkness
at all. 5 The revelation of the Word incarnate is the supreme Holiness of God:
He is Himself the glory of all goodness, and the negation of all that is not
good. A second revelation of the Word is this: GOD is LOVE.6 Never before in all
the Scriptures had this attribute been identified with the very being of God:
prophets and apostles, and the Son Himself, had approached this truth, but had
not spoken it; but St. John here gives the bold and blessed interpretation of
their meaning.

These two perfections we may then consider in the true order which the Apostle
indicates, and show their harmony in redemption.

1 John 3:16; 2 John 17:11; 3 Romans 2:5; 4 Romans 3:24; 5 1 John 1:5; 6 1 John
4:8.

THEHOLINESSOF GOD. That absolute perfection which belongs to God in His eternal
essence is, in His moral relations with creatures in whom sin is possible or
present, who are to be kept from sin or saved from it, Holiness: His nature is
the sum and the standard of all goodness; and it is eternally opposed to all
that is not good in the creature. Thus the term unites the positive and negative
ideas: always with latent or avowed reference to what is or may be contrary to
the Divine will.

1. That God is holy expresses the perfection of moral excellence as existing in
Him alone, the emphasis lying on the alone, whence it follows that every
approach to Him must be marked by reverence and awe.

(1.) The first time the attribute is given to Him this idea appears: Who is like
unto Thee. 0 Lord, among the gods? who is like Thee, glorious in holiness,
fearful in praises, doing wonders? 1 And also the last time: Who shall not fear
Thee, 0 Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy! 2 Through a
multitude of intermediate passages there runs the invariable meaning that God by
His holiness is marked off from every human being: alone in His moral
perfection, in the presence of which all faces gather blackness and all
creature? are convicted of impurity. This meaning of the word as referred to God
is too often forgotten: holiness is regarded as synonymous with perfection
generally, without the concomitant of separation from evil: or it is by some, in
the interest of a special theology, made to mean the opposite of what it really
means, the communicative goodness of the Deity.

1 Exodus 15:11; 2 Revelation 15:4.

(2.) Hence, that God is qodesh, resplendent in the glory of unshared holiness,
and Agios, fearful in His sanctity, is the special ground of the peculiar
adoration of the creature, especially of the sinful creature. Holy and reverend
is His name! 1 His name in the worship of His people is the Holy One of Israel.
2 It is this attribute which surrounds with awful glory God in His temple,
whether the heavens or the temple of earth.

Righteousness attends Him in His judicial court; but holiness belongeth to His
house, which is therefore His sanctuary, the Holy place; where He takes refuge
from all unholiness, while He provides the expiatory means by virtue of which
the unholy may approach Him. It is emphatically seen in the trisagion of
Isaiah’s mystical temple; in the dread which seized the heart of the worshipper;
and in the purifying of his lips that he might join in the worship of the
angels. This leads us to notice that it is the attribute of the Triune as an
object of worship: Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is
full of His glory! 3 to which the New-Testament echo is: Holy, holy, holy, Lord
God Almighty, Which was, and is, and is to come! 4 Hence it is obvious to
observe how strong confirmation this gives to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity:
this is the only thrice-uttered perfection. Neither this nor any other
perfection is reserved from the second and third Persons: holiness, however, is
in a peculiar and pre-eminent sense ascribed to them in common. The Son
addresses the Holy Father; 5 He is Himself as Incarnate the Holy Servant; 6
while the Spirit of God is the Holy Ghost 7 pre-eminently.

1 Psalms 109:9; 2 Psalms 71:22; 3 Isaiah 6:3; 4 Revelation 4:8; 5 John 16:11; 6
Acts 4:30; 7 John 14:26; 2. All this implies that this attribute is always,
directly or indirectly, related to the creature; and, as such, is the standard
of goodness and the expression of the Divine abhorrence of evil. It cannot be
denied that it severs God from the creaturely nature, apart from its evil. But
even in that case there is silent reference to the pollution of sin which has
entered the universe, of which all the worshippers, whether of heaven or earth,
are conscious. In the direct reference of the attribute to mankind, however,
there can be no question that the holiness of God is displayed always on the
dark background of sin. It is the law and obligation of all ethical good; it is
the eternal repulsion of all ethical evil.

(1.) It is the nature of God that declares what is morally good; that is the
only Nature of Things which we dare think of. After all that has been said as to
the foundation of goodness and the reason why good is good, we are shut up to
one only view. God alone is holy: not because He submits to a law binding on Him
and on all: but because holiness has its eternal standard and sanction in Him.
It is of no moment to ask whether the Divine nature or the Divine will is the
ground of moral obligation. Be ye holy; for I am holy! 1 is the only answer. As
every intelligent moral agent is created in the image of God, the Divine nature
is the only ground of his obligation to be holy: he knows of nothing behind the
nature of his God. As he is a subject of the moral government of the Supreme,
the Divine will is the ground of his obligation to be holy: he knows nothing
behind the will of his God. But these two aspects are really one.

1 1 Peter 1:16.

(2.) Hence, as the Divine holiness is the standard of goodness, it is the
eternal opposite and the eternal condemnation of sin. Thou art of purer eyes
than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity. 1 This attribute cannot be
separated from the idea of its inviolableness and assertion of its own rights.
Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? 2 The conscience, which in the
guilty is faithful in its response to the Divine holiness, cries in every
sinner: Woe is me, for I am undone! 3 The whole tenor of Scripture—not less the
New Testament than the Old—is faithful to the conception of this attribute,
which makes it not merely retire before unholiness, but also turn against it
with abiding displeasure. It not only admits no fellowship with evil, but is
eternally repelling, rejecting, and condemning it. Our God is a consuming fire.
4 As the thought of the sin from which it is for ever defended is always latent
in the ascription of holiness to God, so also is the thought of His abiding
wrath against it.

1 Habakkuk 1:13; 2 1 Samuel 6:20; 3 Isaiah 6:5; 4 Hebrews 12:29.

3. We should not, however, do justice to this attribute were we not to point out
that it is revealed towards men only through an economy of grace which renders
it possible that sinners, trembling before the Holy God, may become partakers of
His holiness. 1 Throughout the entire Scripture there runs one perpetual strain:
Be ye holy, for I am holy.2 The ancient people heard it in this form: Sanctify
yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God, and ye shall
keep My statutes and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you. 3 And it was
promised to them: Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation. 4
The awful holiness of Jehovah was revealed, and for ever kept prominent by every
token and symbol; and yet a sinful people might be sanctified from the world and
from sin to a peculiar fellowship with the Holy One. The God whose glory filled
the Temple, and revealed only the unholiness of all who approached Him,
nevertheless bade the unholy draw near to be sanctified. Was it then by the rays
of His holiness shining upon and around them? Most assuredly not. The mystery of
this paradox, that the attribute which separated God from sinners is
nevertheless the bond of union between sinners and Himself, is solved only by
the system of sacrificial expiation typifying the great Atonement, which through
a satisfaction offered to the Divine righteousness opened the fellowship of love
between God and man. But this leads to the next attribute, or another exhibition
of holiness.

1 Hebrews 12:10; 2 1 Peter 1:16; 3 Leviticus 20:7-8; 4 Exodus 19:6.

THERIGHTEOUSNESSOR JUSTICE OF GOD. The Justice or Righteousness of God is the
Divine holiness applied in moral government and the domain of law. As an
attribute of God it is united with His holiness as being essential in His
nature; it is legislative or rectoral, as He is the righteous Governor of all
His creatures; and it is administrative or judicial, as He is the just Dispenser
of rewards and punishments. Under these three heads may be distributed all that
the Scripture teaches us on this most important subject.

I. The Justitia Interna, or essential righteousness of the God of holiness, need
not be dwelt upon at great length.

1. It is His holiness regarded as subject to test; also as exhibited in His
dealings with man; moreover, and lastly, it is rather the positive expression of
what in holiness is negative separation from evil. All is said in that first
ascription to Jehovah in the Song of Moses. I will publish the name of the LORD:
ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all
His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right
isHebrews 1:1-14 The last words are Tsadiyq w’yaashaar huw’ in the Septuagint
dikaios kai osios, and in the Vulgate, justus et rectus. The Hebrew words mean
nearly the same thing: straightness and lightness, when measured by the standard
of perfection.

Very frequently the Holy One condescends to let men apply the standard, and then
the attribute of righteousness is always vindicated. After every test it is
faultless, and far above human censure or rivalry: Thy righteousness is like the
great mountains: 2 as much above man’s as heaven is above earth.

1 Deuteronomy 32:3-4; 2 Psalms 36:6.

2. But it is, like the holiness of God, to be imparted to man. When we come down
to the psalms and prophets, we find the righteousness of God almost taking the
place of His holiness, as the attribute for the revelation of which the ages
wait. When we so often read, I bring near My righteousness;1 or My righteousness
is near;2 or My salvation is near to come, 3 and My righteousness to be
revealed, 4 we must understand more than that God’s faithfulness to His covenant
would be approved in the latter day. The coming of the Lord our Righteousness 5
would bring in the everlasting righteousness of His saints made righteous
through Him in the possession of the righteousness of God, 6 the imputation and
impartation of a righteous character in God’s own way. Hence, as the great
Atonement was to be a glorious manifestation of the Divine holiness in the
expiation of sin, so also it would be a glorious manifestation of God’s
righteousness given in free mercy to those who were ungodly, and a perverse and
crooked generation.7 1 Isaiah 46:13; 2 Isaiah 51:5; 3 Isaiah 56:1; 4 Jeremiah
23:6; 5 Daniel 9:24; 6 Romans 10:3; 7 Deuteronomy 32:5.

II. The Legislative or Rectoral Righteousness of God is the attribute that
stamps perfectness on all the laws by which He carries on the government of the
universe, whether in other worlds or in this; and whether His laws are revealed
in the constitution of man’s heart, or in the written revelation of His will.
What the ancient people rejoiced to remember, in their distresses, the whole
world may rejoice in: The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord
is our King: He will save us. 1 The entire rectoral administration of man’s
affairs has been conducted with reference to the great salvation gradually
revealed; and this must be remembered in every estimate of the moral
administration of Jehovah. We are required to believe that His law is perfect: 2
perfect as the expression of the Divine holiness: perfect therefore as the
standard of right: perfect in its universal adaptation; perfect in its
requirements; perfect in its sanctions. All this is summed into one sentence by
St. Paul: The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. 3
Returning back, however, to the attribute of the Lawgiver, we are bound to
believe that all ordinances are righteous: first, with regard to the
constitution and nature of His subjects; and, secondly, as answering strictly to
His own Divine aim, whether understood or not. To believe these two things is by
anticipation to answer every objection. Thy righteousness is an everlasting
righteousness, and Thy law is the truth.4 Because He is righteous, His law is
true both to Himself and to the nature of His creatures.

1 Isaiah 33:22; 2 Psalms 19:7; 3 Romans 7:12; 4 Psalms 119:142.

1. It is necessary to believe that under a righteous Lawgiver no living creature
is overburdened with obligation: in other words, whether we discern it or not,
God is a righteous Lawgiver in every department where He reveals His law. Upon
every rational spirit He creates He imprints the law of obedience and love
perfect and supreme; and that law is in strict harmony with creaturely nature:
it is the Creator’s right and it is right to the creature. But He is pleased as
the Moral Governor of the universe to ordain for each a term of probation: in
His righteousness He makes dependence upon His Spirit the law of continued’
obedience and happiness; and the penalty of separation from His will, or sin, is
separation from His presence. And, apart from the commentary upon this which
history gives, every creature must say Amen: even so, Lord God almighty, true
and righteous are Thy judgments. 1 Nothing is imposed upon creaturely duty, or
demanded of the creaturely will, that is beyond the creature’s capacity and
obligation.

1 Revelation 16:7.

2. The righteousness of Divine laws implies also that they are conformed to His
aim and purpose, and in this sense right. It is well to believe that they are
equal and just in their relation to the creaturely nature. But that is not all.
They must be measured by another standard: they are right in their perfect
adaptation to the Divine plans. Here comes in our apology for the Divine
Lawgiver: His own supreme Theodicy, or vindication of Himself.

It is not given to us to understand the mysteries of the hidden rectoral
administration of God. We must believe now that it is righteous; as we shall
certainly one day know that it is. Clouds and darkness are round about Him: 1
unbelief forms out of these clouds, and writes upon this darkness, innumerable
matters of questioning. But righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His
throne: behind, all is clear, steadfast, and perfect right. This must terminate
human strife with the Divine Law-giver. This must settle all our disputes about
the difference between legislation for angels and legislation for man; the law
of Paradise with its sanctions; the gradual and slow revelation of the Divine
will to the world; the eternal enactments of Sinai and the special and limited
enactment for the Theocracy, with its occasional statutes that were not good, 2
not good, that is, for permanent application. Ten thousand difficulties are
swept away, rather are obviated, if we remember that the righteousness of God’s
moral government is to be measured, not only by the creature’s nature, —it will
always bear to be thus measured, — but by the design and final end of the
economy of His will.

1 Psalms 97:2; 2 Ezekiel 20:25.

III. The judicial administration of His own laws demands this attribute of
righteousness in the equal bestowment of reward and punishment. This is called,
in human affairs, Distributive Justice: Remunerative, on the one hand, and
Punitive on the other.

1. The Administration of God the Judge of all 1 takes up the sanctions of His
law as imposed upon moral beings in probation, and cannot be separated from its
relation to sin.

It indeed gives the Supreme the new office of JUDGE, even as His love gives Him
the new name of Savior. It is Judicial righteousness as it assures us of the
eternal rectitude of the administration: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right? 2 This appeal of Abraham, in the beginning of history, expresses as a
question the faith of all who believe in God to the end of time, and will be
confirmed for ever at the close of history. Reverence accepts this necessary
truth and commits to it with confidence the destinies of all that exist. But the
idea of God’s judicial righteousness must be analyzed into some of its
applications.

1 Hebrews 12:23; 2 Genesis 18:25.

2. This is the attribute of a Personal Judge: and all that His personality
demands must be remembered. Those who deny that the Absolute Being can think,
and feel, and will, and judge, renounce the God of the Bible. Even if they take
refuge in the thought that He hath committed all judgment to the Son, the very
committal to the Son is a personal act. Or if they fall back upon the notion
that justice in the Judge means only the law according to which sin is made its
own punishment and goodness its own reward they gain nothing by this. It is a
personal Judge Who ordains this connection and sees that it is not interrupted.

There is but a step between this idea and that which makes God and the universe,
physical and ethical, subject to the eternal law of the fitness of things. This
reduces the Supreme to the position of an administrator of a law higher than
Himself, after the manner of a human judge. But the very expression "Nature or
Fitness of Things," betrays its own inconsistency. Admitted difficulties swell
into contradictory absurdities and even blasphemies, if we forget that the
Administrator of His own laws is a Judge. He does not merely watch the current
that sets in for righteousness, and guide it; nor watch the current that sets in
for evil, and restrain it. He is a personal Divider between good and evil: in
the perfection of that principle which human nature acknowledges in itself and
never can be robbed of, that every good and every evil deserves its reward or
punishment, and that justice requires every man to have his own.

3. God is the righteous Judge in His constant administration in the present
world. This introduces us at once to the question: How can a personal Ruler of
strict righteousness administer His holy laws and yet permit sinners to live?
The answer is given by the blessed truth to which all the attributes converge,
that the mediation and sacrifice of Christ secures His righteousness in the
administration of mercy. He is just in the punishment of all sin; His incarnate
Son was made sin for us; 1 and the infinite worthiness of the sacrificial
obedience unto death of Jesus Christ the Righteous is the propitiation for our
sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world, 2 to the
end of time. He is just in the pardon of sin; for the atonement of Christ
belongs to everyone who makes it his by faith: That He might be just, and the
Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus; 3 Faithful and just to forgive us our
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 4 Moreover, He is just during
the present dispensation in mingling the punishment of sin with that corrective
and disciplinary chastisement of offenders which still labors for their
reformation, and so deters them from ruin. The intercession of the Most Holy Son
of God, so precious to His Father, has its unbounded rights; and justice to them
is the secret of that mingled mercy and judgment which makes up the Divine
government of the present world. But the absolute righteousness of the Judge has
its rights also; and those who resist and reject the Atonement perish. But these
are topics which belong to a later stage.

1 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 1 John 2:2; 3 Romans 3:26; 4 1 John 1:9.

4. The judicial righteousness of God waits for its final manifestation until the
great day, the solemn characteristic of which will be its vindication of the
absolute justice of the Supreme in retribution of reward and punishment. The
subject of the Future Judgment is far in advance. But we may here consider its
relation to this attribute of the Judge.

(1.) Generally, the justice of God will then, as it must now, be maintained in
its stern consistency with itself. We have all along regarded it as looking with
equal eye on the good and on the evil; assigning to each its right. So will it
be on the great day. The anomalies of the present dispensation will be
corrected, and shown to have been only the apparent confusion which prepared for
perfect harmony. Justice will be clear when it judges finally; and from its
decision there will be no appeal. As an attribute of God, it will assert its
reality and integrity. Two mistakes are often made on this subject. One is, to
regard justice as dealing only with the sin of man. Now, it is true that one
branch of the whole family of terms belonging to this attribute has been almost
entirely appropriated to punishment and doom. But God is the just Judge in His
rewards as well as in His displeasure. Another is, on the contrary, to merge
justice in benevolence: as if the righteous displeasure of God against sin,
restrained by His mercy, was limited to the reformation of the offender, the
fatherly correction of his fault, the prevention of sin in others, and so forth.
Up to a certain stage it is true that mercy and judgment work together so
unitedly, so inseparably— both rejoicing while the gentler attribute has the
richer joy— that it might appear as if God had forgotten to be angry with sin.
Until the blow finally falls in this world, and not always even then, we know
not if the punishment has not been only correction. But at the great day there
will be no longer doubt.

Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness:
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are
chosen. 1 The unclothed sinner is not cast out for reformation here. We avoid
both errors when we hold fast distributive righteousness. There is no respect of
persons with God, Who will render to every man according to his deeds.2 1
Matthew 22:13-14; 2 Romans 2:6; Romans 2:11.

(2.) There is a profound and awful reality in the vindicatory, retributive
justice of God. The specific nature of final punishment we have not now to do
with: only with its righteous character. In that attribute let all who are
oppressed by the dread of the prospect rejoice: let them feel its strong
consolation. Be the doctrine what it may, and the language in which it is
announced be clothed with whatsoever terror, still it remains that all the
multitudes of the creatures whom God shall judge will fall into Righteous Hands.
But theological speculation finds it hard to repose in this. It strives to take
from the notion of justice what is of its essence; and would make it only
goodness tempered by wisdom. "In justitia punitiva bonitas cum sapientia
administratur; notio justitiae resolvitur in notionem sapientiae et bonitatis."
This idea has played a great part in modern theology, though its first clear
expression was Origen’s: " Ex quibus constat, unum eundemque esse justum et
bonum legis et evangeliorum Deum, et benefacere cum justitia et cum bonitate
punire." Again let it be said that prevention of sin and correction or amendment
of the sinner are not of the essence of justice: this idea is imported into it
by the definition. It required the awful sacrifice of the Son of God to unite
justice and mercy; but no new definition of either is introduced by the
Atonement. Within the range of the cross the definition may be accepted on
certain terms. But the cross is not within the view of either God or man for
ever. Those who project its benefit into the intermediate world have no
Scriptural ground for their charity. But the whole strain of Scripture is
against those who deny that there is, in the strictest sense of the term, a
Justitia Retributiva et Rependens at the day of final and eternal judgment.

(3.) The rewards of a righteous judgment are always dispensed to those who merit
them. But it is obvious that here we are on ground which must be carefully
ventured on. The righteousness of the Judge in acknowledging all that is good in
man is as abundantly asserted as His righteousness in the awards of punishment.
But whatever of praiseworthy there can be found in human nature is of God,
whether as the effect of His preventing grace or the fruit of His renewing
Spirit; while the evil within him is his own. There can be no mention of merit
in any case, save as the word is used in the Divine condescension.

He Who only crowns the work of His own hands in glorifying the sanctified
believer, nevertheless speaks of his own works of faith as matter of reward. God
is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love. 1 This term adikos is
used once more concerning God the Judge: Is God unrighteous Who taketh vengeance
(I speak as a man)? God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? 2 In
both cases the impossibility of any injustice in God, whether as ho epiféroon
teén orgeén, or as being capable epilathésthai toú érgou humoón, is left to the
natural inference of every reason. He cannot, in the nature of things, that is
in harmony with His own nature, be unjust in either respect. The rewards of the
distributive righteousness of God are reckoned not of debt but of grace;3 and
the whole tenor of Scripture proclaims that the allotments of the last day will
be measured out according to the strictest rule of right: hekástoo katá tá érga
autoú. St. Paul calls the last day the revelation of the righteous judgment of
God,4 dikaiokrisías toú Theoú, the only instance of this impressive word. He
teaches here as elsewhere that, as the punishment of evildoers will be the fruit
of their own doings, and also the direct infliction of judgment, so likewise the
reward of the blessed will be the righteous decision of judgment, as well as the
harvest of their own sowing.

1 Hebrews 6:10; 2 Romans 3:5-6; 3 Romans 4:4; 4 Romans 2:6.

THETRUTHORFAITHFULNESSOF GOD.

These attributes—which are really one under two aspects-are, as it were, the
supporters and guarantees of the Divine Justice. It may be affirmed that they
are never referred to save in connection with that supreme economy which reveals
the Righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.

1. Truth as a Divine perfection represents the absolute correspondence of all
His revelations with the reality; and it may be referred to His representations
of His own nature, to His revelation of the great system of grace under which He
governs the world, and to His word of revelation generally whether in whole or
in part.

(1.) God is the true God, 1 and the only true God. 2 It is observable that in
both these passages, which are unique, the revelation of God is connected with
the Son. He is the only veritable God, in opposition to every fictitious being;
and He is the God of veracity in thus revealing Himself. We have here a sublime
petitio principii: our God is the only real God, because He Who is true declares
it. But the attribute is not here objective: it is rather the subjective Divine
veracity in all His revelations of Himself. As to His nature, His Triune
essence, His attributes, our relations to Him and His to us, and all that
concerns the essentials of our theology, we are dependent on the truth of the
Creator, Who hath formed us in His image and implanted those instincts and that
consciousness of Him which cannot deceive us. Our faith in universal religion is
bound up with our faith in the veracity of God Who speaks the truth to us
concerning Himself and our own relations to Him.

1 John 5:20; 2 John 17:3.

(2.) The truth of God is pledged to the stability and eternity of the redeeming
economy as a whole. This is His absolute immutability translated into the sphere
of His saying revelations. One great purpose for the good of mankind is
announced from generation to generation; and to that the Eternal declares
Himself true, uttering every variety of appeal to His own steadfastness from age
to age. In early times the universal purpose seemed limited to one people; and
to them He represents His truth. He is the Bock, His work is perfect: for all
His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right
isHebrews 1:1-14As the great system is further disclosed in the psalms and
prophets, the coming salvation is pledged with ever-increasing strength: The
Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endureth to all
generations. 2 When it is consummated, it is by Him who is THE TRUTH; 3 and it
is confirmed by the oath of an immutable counsel in which it was impossible for
God to lie. 4 Hence it may be said that the attribute of truth is assigned to
God mainly as the God of the one eternal covenant in Christ.

1 Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Psalms 100:5; 3 John 14:6; 4 Hebrews 6:18.

(3.) But it is also referred to His spoken and written revelations generally,
which are declared to contain only the truth of God. Speaking to His Father, He
Who is the Truth said Thy word is truth. 1 There is no doubt that the Old
Testament, which was then the Bible, was regarded by all who read it as
containing the infallible sayings of the undeceiving God of truth. The truth of
Scripture we are not now, however, pleading: only for the attribute in the
Supreme that insures the absolute correspondence of every word spoken by Him
with the essential reality of things.

1 John 17:17.

2. The Faithfulness of God has a more limited application than His truth. It is
the attribute that pledges to man in infinite condescension—for it is the most
anthropopathic of all the attributes—the fulfillment of every specific promise
based upon the economy of His righteousness. Appeals to His own fidelity on the
part of Jehovah, and responses to the appeal on the part of man, crowd the
Scriptures. It may suffice here to refer to three most interesting illustrations
of it in the economy of grace. Sinners repenting of their sin, and confessing
it, are assured that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. 1 Believers
oppressed by the weariness of the way, and their own instability, are reminded
that The Lord is faithful, Who shall stablish you, and guard you from the evil
one. 2 We are encouraged to aspire to perfect holiness of body and soul and
spirit, are assured that, faithful is He that calleth you, Who also will do it.
3 These passages carry the Divine fidelity into the entire process of personal
salvation from beginning to end. It is remarkable that this attribute is never
expressly connected with the fulfillment of the Divine threatenings, though
equally applicable to them. Hence, though we have located it in the family of
Righteousness or justice, it forms the transition to the other and more gracious
family of Love.

1 1 John 1:9; 2 2 Thessalonians 3:3; 3 1 Thessalonians 5:24.

THELOVEOF GOD.

Like His holiness, the love of God has its most direct and express relation to
the creature, and especially to the intelligences under the moral government of
God. But love has in this the pre-eminence, that it has an eternal and essential
seat in the Triune Essence.

1. Hence we read that GOD is LOVE: in the secret of the Divine Self-sufficiency
and Blessedness we have already seen the mysterious intercommunion of Three
Persons whose mutual love gives God one of His Names and defines His nature. 1
If in the created universe it for ever seeks to impart itself to all who are
capable of receiving it, and delights both in giving and receiving, that is
because in the ever-blessed Trinity love is, as in all who reflect the Divine
image, the bond of perfectness. 2 We may, we must, transfer our finite feeling
to the Infinite, and believe, not that the Triune God was, but that He is,
existing in an eternal sphere of love, into the fellowship of which the finite
and creaturely universe is received.

Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world:3 if these words are
connected with those which immediately precede, and hast loved them, as Thou
hast loved Me; 4 and these again with the assurance, as the Father hath loved
Me, so have I loved you; and these once more with the command, That ye love one
another, as I have loved you, 5 it will appear how perfect is the identity in
kind between finite and infinite love, between the reflection among us and the
reality in the essential Trinity, and how profound is the meaning of those
words, Love is of God: hee agápee ek toú Theoú estin, 6 a form of expression
used of no other grace. The Son is ever—not was, ho oón— in the bosom of the
Father: 7 in the unity of the Holy Ghost one Spirit with the Father even as he
that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit 8 with Him. Thus we may boldly repeat
that more glorious things are spoken of the Divine perfection of Love than of
any other. It is not said that God is holiness: for, in His eternal Triune
Essence, there is no room, there is no reason, for the attribute that sets up
the standard of good and eternally repels evil As soon as we think of holiness
we think of the creature on the way from evil to good, or on the way from
perfection to still higher perfection. But GOD IS LOVE; 9 and this attribute,
which is both nature and attribute, forms the link between the absolute Godhead
and the manifestations of God to His intelligent creatures. The Divine holiness
springs, as it were, out of His perfection to meet the creature; and is in a
most important sense created with it. But love is of God, and is in the Divine
relation to the universe only a hidden mystery revealed.

1 1 John 4:16; 2 Colossians 3:14; 3 John 17:23-24; 4 John 15:9; 5 John 13:34; 6
1 John 4:7; 7 John 1:18; 8 1 Corinthians 6:17; 9 1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:16.

2. The love of God rested upon the world also from its foundation: upon every
intelligent creature as the love that communicates itself and takes complacency
in its object. But the book of revelation, which is the record of the Divine
dealings with a redeemed race, — redeemed in the very act of its fall, —reserves
the attribute for redemption. It does not indeed speak of it familiarly,
scarcely speaks of it at all, until its last expression in Christ is ready.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son
[to be] the propitiation for our sins. 1 This sentiment or feeling in God,
originating and directing the economy of redemption, was not fully revealed
until the Lord Himself revealed it. And, when revealed, it is reserved for one
service: to preside over the Cross and the Recovery of mankind. No record or
register of the Divine perfections, related to the created universe as such,
contains that of love. His goodness and His loving-kindness are often alluded to
as the nearest approach to the attribute that is never turned towards any but
the objects of redeeming love. But at length the set time came for the new
revelation, or at least the fuller revelation, of the attribute that governs all
the rest: that which, to adopt St. James’s word, is the nómon basilikón, the
royal law 2 in God as in man. And love when it is revealed takes many names, or
rather is the mother of a new and blessed family of attributes.

1 1 John 4:10; 2 James 2:8.

3. But, whatever other manifestations love may take, or whatever other name it
may bear, it is the moral attribute in God which is His most blessed gift to the
individual soul: in the administration of the Holy Ghost it is the bond between
God and the redeemed, as it were their common ethical principle. We are said to
be made partakers of the Divine nature1 generally, and with special reference to
the two great moral attributes of holiness and love. We are partakers of His
holiness 2 as being purified from sin and sanctified to His service. Bat a
stronger word is used about our participation of His love. St. John points our
thought to the invisible essence of God, No man hath seen God at any time, 3 but
only that he may tell us in what sense we become one with the Invisible: If we
love one another God dwelleth in us, and His love is fulfilled in us. 3 Soon
afterwards he utters the profoundest word the Bible contains as to the relations
and privilege of the saints: God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth
in God, and God in him. 4 It may be added here in conclusion that the indwelling
of the Holy Ghost is the real bond of fellowship between God and the believer:
He that is joined unto the Lord is One Spirit. 5 Our partaking of the Divine
holiness is the sanctification of the Spirit; 6 and our partaking of the Divine
love is explained to be because He hath given us of His Spirit. 7 1 2 Peter 1:4;
2 Hebrews 12:10; 3 1 John 4:12; 4 1 John 4:16; 5 1 Corinthians 6:17; 6 1 Peter
1:2; 7 1 John 4:13.

GRACEAND ITS RELATED ATTRIBUTES.

What the righteousness is to the holiness of God, that His grace is to His love:
the firstborn of its strength and its minister in the things pertaining to
salvation. Love retains its distinction to define both the nature and the
attribute. The supreme principle or feeling, governing the Divine dealings with
sinners, is in the Christian dispensation grace.

1. This word is in some respects a creation of the Gospel God was, in the Old
Testament, a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and plenteous
in mercy and truth;1 but there is something in the Evangelical term that
surpasses all these. In the New Testament this unwearied agent of Love appears
as the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is only another form of the love of
God, and this again only another form of the communion of the Holy Ghost. 2 The
love of the Triune God is communicated by the Spirit through the redeeming grace
of Christ. As holiness comes upon the scene of atoning administration under the
aspect of justice, so love comes under the aspect of grace, which is the Divine
love with an emphasis upon the ill desert and utter impotence of those who
receive it. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us: 3this is the best
interpreter of the grace that represents in the active work of redemption the
love of God which provided the redemption itself. It may be added in conclusion,
that as an attribute of God each Person of the Holy Trinity shares it. We read
of the grace of our God, AND the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Spirit of grace.4
1 Psalms 136:15; 2 2 Corinthians 13:14; 3 1 John 4:10; 4 2 Thessalonians 1:12;
Hebrews 10:29

2.It is needless to enumerate the other attributes or modifications of grace
with which God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, 1 is clothed in
the whole of Scripture, and specially in the Gospel. They are as many as the
aspects of sin and the need of sinners. Here practical theology may multiply its
epithets: gathering from the abundance of the Bible, or framing them anew
according to Biblical analogy or precedent. The grace that seeks the well-being
of the whole race is the Divine philanthropy or kindness to humankind. 2 That
which looks upon man in his sin and misery and waits to be gracious is
Compassion and Pity. The Grace that waits for the sinner’s return and
submission, restraining the deserved judgment upon evil, is Forbearance, or
Long-suffering. That which forgives him when he comes is Mercy. It is well seen
that in the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through
Christ Jesus. 3 God invests Himself with every attribute that is sanctified to
the service of lovingkindness generally, and that there is not much exact
discrimination in their use. Finally, the grace that rejoices over the recovered
and renewed spirit with delight and complacency has no name, but returns again
to the source of all these perfections, the Divine and original love of our
Father in heaven.

1 2 Corinthians 5:19; 2 Titus 3:4; 3 Ephesians 2:7.

HOLINESS AND LOVE AS COMBINED IN REDEMPTION.

These two attributes preside over the redeeming economy; their harmony in the
Atonement, whether in the decree of heaven or in the ministry of Christ on
earth, will hereafter appear. Meanwhile some prospective observations are here
demanded as it respects that harmony, which is the topic of most importance. The
word must be taken in its strictest meaning, and without fear of any
consequences: this is a question on which the light of Scripture is so clear
that we ought not to speak timorously.

1. These attributes must need, or must have needed, what we in our human speech
call reconciliation in God Himself. But we should be careful how we understand
and use the term. It is necessary here to carry up our thoughts into the nature
of the Triune God, Who, in relation to the world as sinful, foreordained the
Incarnation as the provision or expedient both of holy justice and of merciful
love, Redemption is said to have been the eternal purpose which He purposed in
Christ Jesus, and therefore eternal redemption: before the ages in its virtual
accomplishment and after the ages in its results. The Lamb was slain from the
foundation of the world: 1 more than that, before the foundation of the world. 2
Therefore whatever exhibition of wrath against sin and love to the sinner we now
read in the cross must be only the expression of the same wrath and love in the
mind of the Holy Trinity before the world was. Nothing has been added, nothing
has been taken away from it, since. The whole matter or word of redemption was
settled in heaven. 3 The actuality of sin has not aggravated or intensified the
holiness that for ever burns against evil; nor has the actuality of human misery
deepened in any sense the tenderness of the Divine benevolence. If there was
reconciliation or harmonizing of wrath and mercy at the cross, there was
precisely the same in the heart of the God Who would create man. All that the
Atonement means was transacted in the bosom of the Deity before the world was.

Then it was a reality. We dare not think otherwise, however hard it may be even
to seem to disturb the eternal rest of the Divine nature. There is great danger
to many minds of being tempted to soften this away: in fact, to render to heaven
all the love of the Atonement, and to make the wrath the offspring of earth; to
regard love as the one only attribute in eternity, and justice as an invention
or accommodation of time.

1 Revelation 13:8; 2 1 Peter 1:20; 3 Psalms 119:89.

2. But the fact that the Atonement was settled in heaven—the pattern in the
Mount of all that was wrought out below — teaches us what is meant by harmony:
it is not the reconciliation after contest, nor the agreement after stipulation,
nor the accordance on certain conditions, that is meant; but the perfect
concurrence of two eternal principles of the Divine perfection, — which as to a
creaturely universe are called wrath and love, — in the mission of the incarnate
Son and His union with the guilty world. The purpose of the Atonement was one
purpose, which did not require, as we should say, two thoughts: successive,
reconciled, and finally one. Hence, in speaking of holiness and love, we must be
careful not to assign priority or preeminence to either. If God is Love, God
also is Light, as has been seen, and that Light even a consuming fire. 1 If it
was the love of God that sent the only-begotten Son, it was His holiness that
demanded the sacrifice. Hence the co-ordination of the two attributes in St.
John’s words: Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
sent His Son the Propitiation for our sins: 2 love sent Him already the
expiation required by holiness. Hence also the fact that Righteousness and Grace
— the two forms that Holiness and Love assume in redemption — give their names
severally to the atoning work of Christ: it is the Grace of God that bringeth
salvation to all men, and therein is revealed a Righteousness of God by faith
unto faith.3 1 Hebrews 12:29; 2 1 John 4:10; 3 Romans 3:21; Titus 2:11; Romans
1:17.

3. But here again arises the necessity of yet another qualification. However
perfectly one in their harmony, these attributes or principles of action in the
Divine nature are to be kept apart in our thoughts. There is a real distinction
between the two. They are not merely, as many have attempted to prove, diverse
presentations of the same attribute. It is very common to say that holiness is
love guarding the majesty of the Divine nature, and love the same holiness
communicating itself; while justice or righteousness is a combination of the
two: as, to quote an illustration, the Apostle following the Septuagint makes
the sure mercies of David into the holy things, tá hósia, of David. 1 Some, who
find an unreality in this, give love the pre-eminence as expressing the nature
of God, and regard holiness as its opposite pole: wrath is the love of the holy
Deity for all that is good in its energy as opposed to all that is evil. There
is a sense in which this is perfectly true; but it is a truth which is very
liable to be perverted. It is well to remember that each of these perfections is
kept distinct in the redemptional language of Scripture, and that we do not find
there any justification for this habit of thinking and speaking. The wrath of
God is revealed from heaven: 2 not the love of God manifesting its wrath. We
were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest: — BUT God, being rich in
mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us. 3 The strongest argument,
however, against this absolute unification of the two attributes is the fact
that everywhere in Scripture the Atonement is referred to neither alone. Where
the one is the other is not far off: so to speak as its necessary counterpart or
qualification. Certainly it would be wrong to say that this truth is ever matter
of argument in the New Testament It does not amount to that. But it is
abundantly shown, nevertheless, that neither of these attributes alone would
have secured the salvation of mankind. Certainly not holiness in itself, which
is a consuming fire: nor as righteousness, which would not be just in passing by
transgression; nor in faithfulness, which must fulfill its threatening; nor in
any form that any of its family of attributes might assume. And love would have
been equally powerless; for it is as vehement as holiness itself in chastising
its object for his good, and no disciplinary correction could have met the case
of sin against God. Hence whenever in revelation we find either of these supreme
attributes connected with the Atonement the other is sure to be near at hand.
There is no exception to this; no exception, that is, where the atoning work of
Christ is mentioned. Take the passage which might seem more than any other to
give love the sole honor: But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 4 It follows immediately: Much more
then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through
Him. An earlier passage might seem to give the pre-eminence to the justice that
required propitiation: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through
faith, in His blood, to declare His righteousness. 5 This is, however, preceded
by being justified freely by His grace. Some of our Lord’s earlier words might
appear to make the Father’s love the one spring of mercy in His own mission. But
we must remember that as He approached the cross He paid the most solemn tribute
to the will of the righteous judgment which rested upon Him instead of sinful
man. The last attribute He ever gave His Father was RIGHTEOUS.6 1 Acts 13:34;
Isaiah 55:3; 2 Romans 1:18; 3 Ephesians 2:3-4; 4 Romans 5:8-9; 5 Romans 3:25;
Romans 3:24.

4. But after all there is a most blessed sense in which love must have the
pre-eminence. It has been seen that in the records of that accomplished
redemption there is undoubtedly an ascendancy given to the love of God which no
worthy theological interest is concerned to deny. In a sense the origination of
our recovery is ascribed to the Divine charity: God so loved the world that He
gave His only-begottenSong of Solomon 1:1-17 It is true that God so hated sin
that He sent His Son, the Propitiation: this, however, is never said, however
profoundly true.

Walk in love, St. Paul says, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given
Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice: 2 he does not anywhere otherwise
than indirectly tell us that Christ so hated sin that He gave Himself. This also
is the truth: He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity;
3 and, Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity: therefore God, even Thy
God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. 4 But it is
rather His love of sinners than His love of righteousness that is appealed to
and magnified throughout the New Testament. GOD is LOVE; and we must, in our
homage to this perfection, reverently think that it was not the holiness which
asked, in the eternal counsel, what love could do, but the love which offered
the unspeakable gift: Cháris toó Theoó epí teé anekdieegeétoo autoú dooreá. 5
And. as in the origination of the redeeming economy, so also in the process and
final issues of it, love has the pre-eminence. It is everywhere magnified by God
the Father and His incarnate Son; and we must magnify it. Mercy and judgment are
on either side of the cross; they co-operate in all the administration of the
Gospel; and they will preside at the final day. But evermore judgment executes
the will of mercy, or love, the royal law; 6 even when justice may seem to use
the ministry of love. Our theology, like David, must sing of mercy and judgment.
7 But still Mercy rejoiceth against judgment: 8 exults or triumphs not OVER it,
indeed, but yet AGAINST it. The same Moralist among the Apostles who made love
the law, says: katakauchátai éleos kríseoos.

1 John 3:16; 2 Ephesians 5:2; 3 Titus 2:14; 4 Hebrews 1:9; 5 2 Corinthians 9:15;
6 James 2:8; 7 Psalms 101:1; 8 James 2:13.

HOLINESS, RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND LOVE.

Finally, we may consider the union of these attributed in the Atonement as
administered in the Gospel. That administration is mediatorial: while the
attributes are the perfections of each Person in the Godhead, they are generally
regarded as displayed by the Father, through the intercession of the Son, by the
ministry of the Holy Ghost. And they are displayed in three departments of the
economy of grace. The Supreme Judge presides in the mediatorial court where
righteousness reigns; as a Father He dispenses grace in the household and family
of His adopted and regenerate children; and as God in His temple He sanctifies
His worshippers to Himself: all through the mediation of the incarnate Son, and
the influences of the Holy Spirit. To the first answers the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ; 1 to the second the love of God; and to the third the communion of
the Holy Ghost.

1 2 Corinthians 13:14.

1. In what we hare termed the Mediatorial Court, God’s relations to man, or
rather man’s relations to God, are altogether those of law. God is the Judge;
there reigns His righteousness; the Atonement is a satisfaction to justice;
Jesus Christ the Righteous is the Advocate; sin is transgression; repentance is
conviction; acceptance with God is the righteousness of faith, imputed and
imparted; and the whole Christian system is the new law of faith. Now in this
Evangelical court, all the Divine-moral perfections which cluster around or
arise out of His justice have their manifestation, and are glorified.

2. In the temple of Christianity the presiding attribute is holiness. There the
holy God reigns over the propitiatory, sprinkled with the blood of expiation.
There the Redeemer is the High-priest of our profession. Sinners polluted
approach the altar and are sanctified, purified, consecrated to the Divine
possession, fellowship, and service. The Christian system is the consecration of
a holy life, and Christians partake of the Divine holiness.

Over a large variety of terms describing the Evangelical privilege this
sanctuary attribute presides, uniting God and His saints in one most holy
communion.

3. Midway between these, and yet as the crown and consummation of both, is the
household and family of God, where He dwells as a Father in the midst of His
adopted and regenerate children, united to Him in His Son the Firstborn among
many brethren.1 There His love supremely reigns. It reigns, indeed, in the court
and the temple; but here it supremely reigns, glorified in the face of the
Incarnate, and from it shining upon all His children. The Christian system
becomes now a family discipline: the sons of God are imitators of Christ, and
keep the commandments as children obeying their Father’s voice in love. Here we
may reverently say is the perfection of the Christian economy as a display of
the perfections of God in Christ. The Atonement— an expiation in the temple, and
a satisfaction in the court—is the reconciliation: the reconciliation of the
Father and His prodigals in the Son incarnate. Through this reconciliation, and
the indwelling of the Spirit of the Son, believers are restored to the image of
Him Who is the Image of the Father: changed into the same image from glory to
glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord,2 and thus reaching the goal of their
destiny whom He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of HisSong of
Solomon 3:1-11 1 Romans 8:29; 2 2 Corinthians 3:18; 3 Romans 8:29.

4. But, though we thus decompose and distribute the Divine attributes in
redemption, they combine into one harmonious glory of grace. The three are one;
and the bond of their perfectness is Love. To this subject we return in due time
when the administration of redemption is our subject

SUMMARY. A few closing remarks may be made, both dogmatic and practical, on this
inexhaustible subject.

1. The meditation and study of the Divine Attributes lies at the foundation of
theology, which is by the very term the doctrine of God contemplated in Himself
and in His universal relations, or in the universal relation of all things to
Him. The whole superstructure of this holy science might be reared upon the
several names and perfections of the Most High; and, whether formally aiming at
it or not, our divinity is sound only in proportion as it is remembered. There
is not a single truth of our dogmatics or ethics which might not be assigned as
it were to its natural place under the several heads of the preceding
distribution. But the attempt to do this, as it would overtax in many respects
our ability, so it would not on the whole conduce to our advantage as students
of systematic theology. Hence we must be content to make the Divine nature and
perfections part only instead of the whole. But, for this very reason, a
treatment of the various attributes, more elaborate and comprehensive than that
which has been attempted, is needless at the outset: just as their rays are
diffused and blended throughout the Scripture, so are they, as it will be found,
more or less interwoven with all the topics we shall hereafter discuss.

2. As the consistent and universal exhibition of the Divine perfections in their
harmony is the glory of our science, so all its confusion, and dimness, and
vexation have been due to the errors of men’s conception of them: the history of
the heresies, major and minor, of the Christian dogma is little more than the
history of the systematisation of such unworthy apprehensions of those
perfections. Hence, their equal honor and perfect harmony should be the standard
of our aspiration in every step that we take: abstaining from the invention of
attributes that God has never given to Himself, we must evermore seek to do full
justice to all and to each of those which He has revealed. The safeguard of
truth is in this harmony. It is a standard to which by the help of the
Scripture, nowhere more rich than on this subject, we may constantly and. safely
bring our views of Divine things. For instance, an attribute of Sovereignty, or
Absolute Sovereignty, is sometimes assigned to the Divine Being in a peculiar
meaning for which the Scriptures-give no warrant. Most assuredly the Supreme is,
by the evidence of this very name, high above all restraint, the uncontrolled
Disposer of all events. He is the Only Potentate. 1 There is a sense of course
in which all things that are to take place may be traced to the Divine will,
which we may reverently term absolute if we desire. Moreover, with reference to
some events, and some providential arrangements, the Word of God does sometimes
represent Him as pointing to His sovereign pleasure, from which there is no
appeal, and into the reasons of which no mortal must seek to penetrate. But it
may be denied that any such attribute as that of Sovereignty is to be found
mentioned in Scripture; certainly that it is placed, where much human theology
places it, at the head of all the attributes, alone sternly ruling the whole
economy of revelation. At any rate God is pleased to order His wisdom and His
love, and His grace which is the expression of both, in most affecting
juxtaposition with His uncontrolled and uncontrollable will: He Who is the Only
Potentate,2 is also the Only wise God, 3 and God is love. 4 On the other hand,
this last attribute of love itself has sometimes assigned to it an absolute
sovereignty of its own which dissipates the gloom of the other system by a light
not borrowed from heaven. This we have sufficiently seen. And it may be enough
generally to repeat, what cannot be too profoundly pondered, that the Holy
Spirit has displayed the economy of the Divine perfections in such a way as to
forbid every exaggeration of any one of them, and to encourage us to harmonies
the whole.

1 1 Timothy 6:15; 2 1 Timothy 6:15; 3 Jude 1:25; 4 1 John 4:16.

3. Once more, the study of the Divine perfections should be conducted
habitually, reverently, and most devoutly, with reference to our own
edification. The benefit of this is literally incalculable and inexhaustible, if
we contemplate them with a never-failing reference to our soul’s good: either
endeavoring to rise to them or bringing them down to ourselves. We cannot indeed
reach them; they are high and they are deep. But the very contemplation of
perfections which oppress the mind strengthens the mind which it oppresses. To
be amazed, and confounded, and baffled by our thoughts of God is the noblest
discipline of the human regenerate spirit. But, though we cannot attain to them,
we may—in the right sense of the word, however—bring them down to us. What this
means is best taught by Scriptural examples. Let two stand for an endless
series. Mark Job’s struggle and submission in the presence of the Divine
Omniscience. His consolation is that, though God is inscrutable to His creature,
His creature is perfectly known to Him: Behold, I go forward, but He is not
there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: on the left hand, where He doth
work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand that I cannot
see Him. But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me I shall come
forth as gold. 1 And David’s more tranquil and equally sublime reduction to
himself of the Divine Omnipresence. Meditating upon the presence of God which
fills the universe, from which nothing is or can be concealed, he cries: Such
knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it. 2 He
despairs of pursuing this track; and we all despair with him. But his meditation
regards God as thinking of his own poor destiny and interests: How precious also
are Thy thoughts unto me, 0 God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count
them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with Thee.
3 And then he places the secrets of his own spirit in the light of that
omniscience. He brings that awful attribute to bear upon himself. Search me, 0
God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any
wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

1 Job 23:8-10; 2 Psalms 139:6; 3 Psalms 139:17-18; Psalms 139:23-24.

4. But the way everlasting suggests a truth which every Christian theologian
should remember: that the Divine perfections must be contemplated as they are
manifested and made incarnate in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is the sum
of Divine attributes in human nature. In Him the infinite and the finite are
everlastingly one. The Incarnation is an eternal fact: in purpose before time
was, in reality now and for ever. We are not called to study the absolute and
immanent perfections in themselves, nor in Himself the Being Who is invested
with them. We have as men no God Who is not revealed in Jesus; nor need we ever
contemplate Him apart from our own nature in Christ. We shall never see and
never know God save as revealed in the face of His incarnate Son. In Him we see
these attributes which connect the Supreme with the creature under a most
blessed and peculiar aspect; especially those of omnipresence, omniscience, and
omnipotence: the omni-attributes. In Him, reflected from His face, and reflected
through His work, we see the glory of the perfections that bring the Divine into
relation with human redemption from sin. We all with unveiled face reflecting as
in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to
glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 1 It may be supposed that what is
primarily meant here is our common reflection of the moral image of God
exhibited in the human virtue of the Son’s holiness. But we have no right to
limit our view rigidly to this. One with the Son—He that is joined unto the Lord
is One Spirit 2 — we are, in a certain sense, in Him one with the Holy Trinity,
and made partakers of the Divine nature. 3 In the likeness of the Triune we were
originally formed. The finest dust of the material universe contributed the body
which connected us with the other orders of the Creature; but it was the Spirit
of God Who gave us the higher essence on which was stamped the Divine image. In
our perfection in Christ we shall be restored to the most consummate reflection
of every attribute of the Creator which is possible to the creature. As to the
absolute attributes, and our reflection of them, there is a mystery at present
unfathomable. But as to the attributes which depend on the holiness and love of
the Divine nature, we must study them not only in the volume which reveals the
Supreme but in the Person and Work of the Son, In His work they have their
atoning aspect; and there we study them as the ground of our redemption and
hope. In His Person they have their passive and active exhibition as the perfect
example of human holiness. Beholding and reflecting the glory of the
Divine-human character of Christ, we study the attributes of God where alone we
can study them unto perfection. No department of Scriptural Theology, as such,
is so abundant as that which trains our minds to contemplate the perfections of
the Supreme, and to dwell upon the works and ways of God as manifestations of
His character, or of His glory. The several attributes are constantly set before
us, some for our adoring wonder, and some for our imitation; and they are
blended into the unity which is the glory of that Divine nature of which we may
be partakers.

1 2 Corinthians 3:18; 2 1 Corinthians 6:17; 3 2 Peter 1:4.

5. Finally, though the incarnate Son has fully revealed the Father as such, and
the Triune secret of the Divine essence, He has introduced no change in the
exhibition of the Divine attributes generally. There is nothing more remarkable
in the Bible as a whole than the substantial unity and identity of the Being
Whom it describes in a series of revelations running through thousands of years.
The consistency of the Holy Scriptures in this respect is one of its most
glorious characteristics, and one of its strongest credentials.

There is nothing in all the religious literature of mankind—and that literature
is very large—which can be brought even into comparison, much less into
competition, with them. This is true of the Scriptural names of the Deity; but
it is more abundantly true of the perfections in which those names are
enshrined. The noblest conceptions of the Godhead to be found outside of the
Bible are found connected with the most degrading; nor is there one hymn, or one
meditation, in all Gentile theology which gives a presentation of the Divine
character either perfectly honorable to God Himself or perfectly satisfying to
the soul of man. But from the beginning to the end of the revelation which we
accept as Divine there is not one discordant note; the Being Whom it presents
may not be at all points what human fear or hope could in its diversified moods
desire; but He is ever the Same, a Being in whose presence unholiness is rebuked
and all goodness or tendency to goodness is encouraged and quickened into life.
From that almost the first announcement to a personal worshipper, I am the
Almighty God; walk before Me and be thou perfect, 1 through all the annals of
Scripture, there is the same God Whose character is the standard of perfection,
Whose almightiness or all-sufficiency is the source of strength, and Whose
manifested Presence is the light and joy of life.

Everywhere we find the great quaternion of names which combine His essence and
His attributes. God is JEHOVAH, 2 the absolute Being; He is SPIRIT, 3 the
personal object of worship: He is LIGHT, 4 repelling all impurity; He is LOVE, 5
diffusing His goodness as grace for ever.

1 Genesis 17:1; 2 Exodus 6:3; 3 John 4:24; 4 1 John 1:5; 5 1 John 4:8.


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  CHAPTER 9: 11. VOL 01 - CREATION
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Creation GOD AND THE CREATURE.

CREATION THE CREATION: GOD The Holy Trinity;

Divine Attributes in Creation PRIMARY OR PROPER CREATION

OPPOSED SYSTEMS

Pantheism;

Polytheism;

Dualism;

Materialistic Atheism;

Antitheism;

Agnosticism;

Scientific Materialism;

Positivism SECONDARY CREATION, OR COSMOGONY THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY EXTRA-BIBLICAL
COSMOGONIES

EVOLUTION Cosmical and Organic Development MOTIVE AND END OF CREATION THE
CREATED UNIVERSE ANGELS AND SPIRITS THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE:

Matter and the Cosmos

MAN

Divine Image;

Natural and Federal Unity;

Hypothesis as to his Origin;

Unity, and Antiquity on Earth;

Elements of Human Nature

CREATION

PROVIDENCE. THE discussion of the Divine Attributes has prepared us for a
universe that is not God, but brought into existence by His power, and the
object of His providential conservation, care, and government. The two
departments of our present subject are, therefore, the Creature and Providence.
The former will include all the several orders of created nature; and the
latter, the general principles which are revealed as controlling their destiny:
in other words, the What and the Why of the universal Creation of God. THE
CREATURE. The creaturely universe, embracing immaterial intelligences or angels,
the world of material elements, and man uniting the two in himself, owes its
being to the act of the Triune God, Whose will called it into existence. The
revelations of Scripture on this subject may be distributed under the two heads
of the Creator in regard to the act of creation, and the several orders of the
creatures as the result of His creating act. THE CREATOR.

Creation is in Scripture assigned to the One Almighty God, in the Trinity of His
essence: the Son and the Holy Spirit having the same special relation to the
production of all things which they afterwards bear to the redemption of the
world. The creating act displays the glory of the Divine attributes, but freely
as an act of will, and with the diffusion of happiness as one end attained by
the resources of infinite wisdom. Absolute creation is the effect of
omnipotence; but the origination of creaturely existence is a mystery which is
revealed for adoration only, no other account being given or possible but the
all-sufficiency of the Creator. Secondary creation, or the Formation of the
material part of the universe into order, exhibits Divine wisdom also and love
as preparing the scene of Providence for all living creatures, of probation for
all moral intelligences, and of redemption for fallen man. THE TRINITY IN
CREATION.

Allusion has been already made to the Redemptional Trinity as the manifestation
of the Eternal Triune One in the salvation of man. Between these may be
interposed an Economical Trinity, in some sense mediatorial, but not
redemptional: the revelation, that is, of Three Persons after a special manner
and order in the production of the universe.

1. Each Person is in Scripture plainly connected with the act of creation:
plainly, that is, according to the universal law of gradual development that has
been so often referred to. The Old Testament dimly but not uncertainly gives its
evidence, when its words are interpreted in the light of the New. My Father
worketh hitherto, 1 is our Lord’s testimony, and I work: not so much indicating
successive stages as claiming for Himself all Divine acts, and making them His
own: the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do. The
Father here is the eternal Father; for, the eternal Second Person, both as The
Word and as The Son, is expressly asserted to be the author of creation. All
things were made by Him. 2 St. John’s witness is repeated and confirmed by St.
Paul, All things were created by Him; 3 and this in a passage which declares
that the Son of His love was the Firstborn of every creature: prootótokos,
begotten before all creaturely existence.

These passages in their combination lead our minds to our Lord’s only other
reference to creation: Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world. 4 To
this give all the Scriptures witness. Carrying the evidence back now to the Old
Testament we find that it renders to the Spirit the same tribute which the New
renders to the Son. Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created; 5 and,
before the words Let us makeMan 1:6 we read that the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters. The doctrine of the Essential Trinity gives harmony and
consistency to the whole. Without it the entire fabric of Scripture is
unintelligible: it ceases to be a fabric; it is itself without form and void,
and darkness rests upon its entire face.

1 John 5:17; 1 John 5:19; 2 John 1:3; 3 Colossians 1:15-16; 4 John 17:24; 5
Psalms 104:30; 6 Genesis 1:26-27.

2. But there is evidently an Economical Trinity here, the foreshadowing of the
Redemptional. What man’s word is to his act, the expression of his will, the
Eternal Word was in creation: By Whom also He made the worlds, 1 where the Word
is the Son who is the Mediator of the creation of the aioónas, or orders of
worlds, which He sustains by the word, toó reémati, of His power. His
omnipotence as God and His mediatorship as the Word in the created universe are
one. The dia, generally used, also indicates this. He is the Mind and Will and
Act of His Father. This economical relation does not so expressly extend to the
Holy Spirit; but we have seen that of Him also as of the Son it may be said,
without Him was not anything made that was made. 2 All this is revealed for the
suppression of the notion that matter, or the substance of the visible universe,
is eternal; or, supposing it created, that any inferior Demiurgus was employed
in the creation; also for the establishment of our faith in the worthiness of
all created things: and, finally, to show that the scene of creation was
prepared as to be in due time the scene of redemption also.

1 Hebrews 1:2; 2 John 1:3. THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES IN CREATION.

We have already anticipated our present subject when considering the Divine
Attributes in relation to the creature. It is enough to say here that the
omnipotence of God, as the outward manifestation of His interior
all-sufficiency, is enough for the original production of matter in what may be
called absolute creation, that His wisdom and power are seen in the secondary
creation or formation of matter into worlds; and that the end of all is the
expression of the Divine perfections or their reflection in the works of His
hands.

CREATION PROPER.

It is only in the Divine All-sufficiency that we can find the ground of the
origin of all things that exist not being God Himself. In this we must be
content to seek the possibility of all forms of being, spiritual or material;
known to us or unknown; our own universe, so far as we may call it ours, and
other universes that may be behind it, with others that may follow it. The
utmost that human thought can rise to is this, that with God all things are
possible: 1 that is, all things possible may, at His will, become actual. In one
sense there is no NIHIL to infinite resources, and the maxim "Ex nihilo nihil
fit" must either be converted into "In nihilo omnia fiunt," or limited to
created agents, with regard to whom it is undoubtedly true. It is the uniform
testimony of Scripture, and its fundamental error in the opinion of modern
Pantheists, that the Eternal and only Being by His will and word brought all
things that are not Himself into an existence which in no ultimate elements they
had before. The testimony to this supreme truth is positive and negative.

1 Matthew 19:26.

1. Positively, the beginning of revelation asserts this: In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth. 1 These words concerning the old creation are
repeated when the new creation is introduced: In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things were made by Him. 2 In that beginning, which baffles human
thought to apprehend, the Son already is as God, and all things BECOME or are
made. Hence the same revealing voice which declares the Divinity of the Son
declares in contrast the origination in time or with time of all things. We may
pass over the many passages which assert the Divine origin of the ordered
Cosmos: they might be supposed consistent with the existence of a substance out
of which it was arranged. But the incarnate Savior prays, Glorify Thou Me with
Thine own Self with the glory which 1 had with Thee before the world was: 3
where pará soí corresponds with the glory as of the Only begotten pará Patrós. 4
And in this light the many testimonies to the creation of all things must mean
the bringing them into existence proper. By Him were all things created, that
are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers: all things were created by
Him and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. 5
The contrast between the essential being of the Son in the Father, and the
created existence of all things else, could not be more clearly laid down. In a
very remarkable passage St. Paul declares the possibilities of God to be Tá
aórata autoú, the invisible things of Him. 6 What He in the freedom of His
omnipotence brings into visible existence proclaims His eternal Power and
Godhead: the dúnamis here preceding, and measuring, and, as it were, determining
the theiótees, while, on the other hand, the theiótees, or divineness of God, is
the substratum of that dúnamis, the resources of which are infinite. What has
been clearly seen from the creation of the world is but the manifestation of an
invisible infinity of power behind. But there is a still nearer approach to the
calling all things out of nothing in another word of St Paul concerning God Who
quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were:
Rom tá meé ónta hoos ónta. 7 Hence we may accept our very term "ex nihilo " from
the Vulgate: " Peto, nate, ut aspicias ad coelum, et terram, et ad omnia quae in
eis sunt; et intelligas quia ex nihilo fecit illa Deus, et hominum genus;" thus
rendering a passage which the Apostle might have in view, ex ouk onton epoihsen
auta ho Theos. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the first article of the faith is
the primitive creation as distinguished from the formation of all things.
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so
that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear: eis tó meé
ek fainoménoon tó blepómenon gegonénai. 8 The construction and the absolute
origination of all things seen are, in fact, separated, and then united. The
creating word of God is set over against both: all things were formed by the
Divine word in order that faith might lay hold of the truth, which reason cannot
penetrate that the created universe did not spring by development from things
previously existing, but from the invisible creating power of One afterwards
referred to as tón gár aóraton, Him Who is invisible.9 With this the revelation
of Scripture has spoken its last word, after which the first word of science
must begin.

1 Genesis 1:1; 2 John 1:1-3; 3 John 17:5; 4 John 1:14; 5 Colossians 1:16-17; 6
Romans 1:20; 7 Romans 4:17; 8 Hebrews 11:3; 9 Hebrews 11:27.

2. Negatively, the Scripture precludes any other doctrine than that of an
absolute creation of all things by the direct act of the Divine will. It omits
any allusion to pre-existing forms of matter, animate or inanimate, out of which
the present universe was through long periods developed. Physico-theological
speculation may interpose universe after universe, or rather universe before
universe, to carry up the continuity of cause and effect nearer to the final
source; but at length it must come to the unsearchable chasm between phenomenal
things and the eternal essence. Platonic ontology may go farther and contrast
phenomena as they are made to appear with the eternal ideas appearing only to
God Himself; but the kosmos nohtos in the Divine mind is not creation, and it is
of creation we now speak The negative argument is found in all those many
passages which bring the Jehovah-name into relation with created things. This is
the Scriptural method of proclaiming the infinite and to us unthinkable chasm
between necessary being and existence phenomenal. The Bible does not say, in
philosophical language, that the Unconditioned One remains the Unconditioned
while He creates the conditioned, or that the one Necessary Being cannot have
other necessary existence, co-eternal with Himself, which He forms into the
universe. But it simply says, in Nehemiah’s language, which is the language also
of psalm and prophet: Thou, even Thou, ART JEHOVAH ALONE ; Thou hast made
heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things
that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them
all. 1 Its doctrine is everywhere that the Eternal can clothe Himself with what
garments visible He will; in modern language, it teaches that the creating act
is the finite expression of the Infinite. The creation is referred to as its
free exercise: all things requiring God as their First Cause, but the First
Cause not requiring the creation by any necessity of His nature.

Speculations as to the necessary connection of power and act in the Immutable
Being, and therefore as to the necessity of an eternal creation—speculations
which forget the difference between the Infinite and the finite, a difference
which is to us at once conceivable and inconceivable—are utterly unknown in
Scripture.

1 Nehemiah 9:6.

THEORIESCONTRADICTINGTHE DOCTRINE OF CREATION.

It is at this point that we are met by those hypotheses which flatly contradict
the doctrine thus laid down as Scriptural, and as alone consistent with the true
notion of God and His universe. These have been alluded to in their relation to
the doctrine of God Himself; but briefly, as the present is their proper place.
It may be boldly asserted that Pantheism and Materialism, with a third class of
intermediate theories that are composed of elements derived from both, owe their
origin not to an anti-Theistic sentiment, but to the difficulty of accepting God
as the Creator, primarily and absolutely, of anything that is not God.

What is here said about them will be confined to a brief consideration of their
bearing on the subject of creation.

PANTHEISM.

Many definitions may be given of this system of thought, which has had the
longest, the most diversified, and the most persistent sway in the annals of
human error. But no definition does justice to it which forgets that it is a
theory of the universe making God supreme in it without being its Creator:
identifying, in fact, God with the universe, or the universe with God: to par
Theos esti. But there are two kinds of Pantheism, which are not perhaps
distinguished as they should be in reviews of its history. All Pantheism is not
the same Pantheism.

1. It cannot be said of the ancient Indian philosophies that they made God and
the universe one. What to the Hondo in every age—as long before the Christian
era as since—has been the Supreme God, or the abstract Brahm without predicate,
exists without a necessary finite created system. This eternal, infinite,
immutable Being is sublimely above all creaturely nature. When the repose of
incalculable ages is broken, He or It comes as to the creature into existence,
is developed to creaturely thought in manifold forms for long ages, and then
withdraws into Himself or Itself the whole panorama of phenomenal being to be
remembered in their forms no more. Now in this wonderful system of thought, the
essential idea of creation cannot be concealed or suppressed. The Hondo Trinity
itself, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, is only a representative personification of
the Supreme in acts which are not far wide of the Scriptural ideas of creation,
preservation, and destruction, at least as far as the two former are concerned;
all the phenomena of the universe, on the way to nothing, are surely supposed to
be brought into separate existence that the Infinite may appear in them before
they go hence; and that separate existence, as separate, they lose when they
cease to be. It is true that the entire system may be called, in modern
language, pantheistic. But there is a vast difference between its view of the
supremacy of the Original of all things which He again withdraws from being and
the pure Pantheism that identifies and makes one whole God and the universe.

2. No form of ancient Greek philosophy was Pantheistic in the fullest and
deepest sense of the word. From Thales through Plato down to the last of the
Stoics the philosophers were occupied with the origin of things. Some denied
creation, but they denied also God: such were the earliest of the Ionic school,
who strove to find the unity of all phenomena, whether in water, or in air, or
in fire; but whatever they called the soul of the world, animating and
controlling the endless flux of things, it was not the god of Pantheism. Their
system was Materialism in disguise. Others, as those whose names are the glory
of the Socratic school, laid too much stress on the supremacy of the
all-controlling mind to be counted Pantheists: moreover, they were always
haunted by the notion of an eternal húleen, or matter, as it were something
mediatory between matter, as we know it, and pure spiritual being. What they
called the Soul of the World, the active principle, namely, which frames and
forms and fashions all things, could never be detached from the Stoic conception
of matter, and so far their system might be called Pantheistic But their Natura
naturans, or ho phusis technikh, was, by the term, an operative mind, as Cicero
says: " Natura, non artificiosa solum, sed plane ARTIFEX ab eodem Zenone
dicitur; consultrix, et provida utilitatum opportunitatumque omnium. Censet enim
artis maxlme proprium est creare et gignere, quodque in operibus nostrarum
artium manus efficiet, id multo artificiosius naturam efficere." The Natura
naturata, or living Kosmos, was indeed identified with the former, and nature
became god. This theory of the universe has been called HYLOZOISM, and has
played a conspicuous part in every age. It is really the theory of that class of
modern materialists who yield to the evidence of purpose in nature, though only
as IMMANENT DESIGN, which is a contradiction in thought, or a refuge from the
conception of an external Designer that has no meaning. But design in any form
is foreign to the strict notion of Pantheism.

3. Pure Pantheism, as an account of the existence of the universe, assumed its
final and only consistent development in Christian times, and in a philosophy
that has been in avowed opposition to Christianity from the beginning.

(1.) Its new foundations were laid in Neo-Platonism, an eclectic system which
strove to combine all that had been taught in previous schools of philosophy
concerning the relation of being to phenomena. It pronounced more boldly than it
had ever been pronounced before, that one only indescribable Being exists Who
reveals Himself in all things, in the soul of the world, in the universal
reason, and in the spirit of man: all seemingly independent things being only
transient phenomena, and all personalities being destined for reabsorption into
God. While the Fathers of the Christian Church were establishing against early
heresy the doctrine of the Trinity, the Second Person being the First begotten
before every creature, and the Arche, or source of the creation brought into
existence by the energy of the Third Person, Plotinus and Porphyry and Proclus
were establishing another trinity: the One absolute, its manifestation in the
universe, and its thinking itself in universal reason. Their ideas found their
best expositor in John Scotus Erigena, the idealistic Pantheist of the ninth
century. His book "De Divisione Naturae " was the first manifesto of the modern
system. It makes God " that which neither creates nor is created." " With God
being, thought, and creating are identical" " In God it is one and the same
thing to know what He makes before it is made, and to make what He knows.
Therefore to know and to do is one in Him." "Man is a certain intellectual
notion in the Divine mind eternally created. This is his most approved and most
true definition: and it is not so only of man, but of all things which, in the
Divine wisdom, were made. The entire visible and invisible creature is a
Theophany: it may be called, that is, a Divine apparition." According to this
conception the thought must not linger on the existence of anything apart from
God; for while we think of it has changed, and of it at any moment existence
cannot be predicated. The spirit of man is on the same phenomenal way to its
home. The tendency of this system, as of Pantheism in every form, is to abolish
sin and responsibility. But that tendency took two directions. In the one it
degenerated into the worst mystical antinomianism of the Middle Ages. In the
other it was counteracted by better principles; and, with strange inconsistency,
the men whose theory made their soul only a spark on its way to a necessary
extinction in God were absorbed in the most strenuous endeavors by perfect
self-renunciation to bring themselves into a most blessed union with their
Maker. But we have here to do only with theories of creation.

(2.) Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, carried the wavering dialectics of his
predecessors to their legitimate conclusion. He made the principle of Descartes,
that the consciousness of our existence is the first and only certainty, his
starting-point. But, whereas the founder of Cartesianism argued to the real
existence of a universe and a God, the founder of modern Pantheism argued in the
opposite direction. He fell back upon the assured consciousness of one only
substance, besides which there could be nothing. That substance may have
attributes and modes; but the attributes and modes of that infinite substance,
including the entire universe of mind and extension, are not reality but
phenomena. Of these phenomena, including ourselves, we may predicate attributes;
but not of the infinite All. According to the favorite adage of the system,
which is a profound untruth, " Omnis determinatio est negatjo;" and to speak of
the Infinite as being this or that, is to make Him less, or It less, than
infinite. To assert that God creates or is a Creator is to deny Him His Deity:
in diametrical opposition to St. Paul’s testimony that phenomenal things from
the creation of the world declare His eternal power and Godhead. What in the
Christian teaching—and in the Christian teaching alone—is creation, is in
Pantheism an eternal and necessary evolution of the One Sum of things:
everything and every person is but a mode of the existence of Being absolute;
everything in its manifestation, and every person in his act, is determined by
the necessity of the Divine nature, if such a term may be used at all. "Without
the world no God; and no God without the world." Spinoza’s mathematically
systematised Pantheism has been idealised in the philosophy of Germany, the
keynote of which is that the Infinite is for ever coming to consciousness in the
finite, the absolute which in itself is nothing coming to true objective
existence in the creature, by an eternal movement which the thinking mind of man
requires for the explanation of all being, and in which it finds rest. God is
not Himself personal, but He is the sum of all personalities. This system
strives to make itself Christian by terming Christ the mediator or reconciler of
the Infinite and the finite in Whom God is the universe and the universe is God:
the synthesis of all possible opposites.

(3.) With the endless evolutions of modern Pantheistic thought we have not to
do. Suffice that it proves one thing most clearly, that the Christian doctrine
of creation lies at the basis of all religion. Although the derivation of the
word from Religare, to bind to, or to restrain from, be etymologically insecure,
that idea is nevertheless rooted in it; and the terms Lex, or law, and
Obligation are not far off. But Pantheism knows no bond between Creator and
creature, because these terms are gone. Sin is no longer sin: freedom has
eternally vanished from the whole economy of things. Immortality is the loss of
what seemed personality, and absorption into the abyss of being, without that
consciousness of absorption and rest which was the blissful dream of the best
mystics, whether in the East or in the West. The universe is not the sphere in
which a Creator moves, but the form in which He, by an eternal necessity,
evolves Himself. The world of man cannot be the domain of Providence or
redemption in which a personal God holds fellowship with His creatures. There
are no creatures, nor is God He; for all the terms of personality ought to
disappear, if they do not, from the system. Man is part of God’s existence —if
we may return to the name God, —but God is equally part of man’s existence.
There is no preeminence on His part, nor is there inferiority in His creature,
if we may call man such.

Spinoza says: "Hence it follows that the human mind is part of the infinite
intelligence of God: and, forsooth, when we say that the mind of man perceives
this or that, we only say no more than that God, not as He is infinite but as
far as He is unfolded by the nature of man, or as far as He constitutes the
essence of the human mind, has this or that idea." "Accordingly in the human
mind there is no absolute or free will. The mind is a sure and determined method
of thinking, and therefore cannot possibly be the free cause of its own
actions," The only sin the system allows is imperfection on its way to
perfectness: it is the loss of that which is the only good, that is, of being.
In the evolution of God there is a struggle, and the transient survival of the
fittest. " By how much the more anyone can preserve his share of being the
greater is the virtue with which he is endowed; conversely, so far as anyone
neglects to conserve his being he is impotent." Spinoza, like many other devout
Pantheists, had exalted notions of the deification of man in God as His
transient representative in the process of His eternal incarnation. But at the
point of his highest elevation into union with the Deity, finite man is in this
system lost in the infinite. There is no Christian glorification of the creature
in God, but only reabsorption into the source whence his fleeting personality
came. This is pure Pantheism, creationless, and therefore without a Creator. Man
has no distinct existence for ever, because he and his home, and all that is
his, must be drawn back again into the ocean that other similar waves of
existence may follow. Ancient Hinduism went near to this; but it may be doubted
whether it ever went so far. " I am Brahm," was the language that expressed in
it the highest consummation of unity with Real Being; but still the I remained.
Pantheism proper has no I, either for God or for man.

SUB-PANTHEISTIC SYSTEMS.

It cannot be said that all the errors of mankind as to the created universe in
its relation to the Creator may be summed up as Pantheism and Materialism. These
are the extreme poles, but there are zones between of great importance in which
we find the most abundant development of human speculation and practice. These
can only be alluded to here, and that for two reasons: first, they do not enter
into theology proper: and, secondly, they are not now predominant errors against
which theology as such has to contend.

POLYTHEISM.

Holy Scripture, which is the revelation of the absolute religion, does not trace
the history of man’s descent from the worship of one God to the worship of gods
many: nor does it shed much light upon the various forms which Polytheistic
idolatry has gradually assumed. But there is nothing in the Word of God
inconsistent with the following two truths: that Polytheism sprang out of a
Pantheistic perversion of the feeling of mankind after one Supreme in nature and
yet over nature; that it has always coexisted with a more or less indefinite
sense of one Deity; and has in its best forms worked towards the absolute
supremacy of the only and true God.

I. The modern Science of Religion aims to trace the development of the instinct
or faculty in man for the infinite and eternal through all the records of the
races: starting generally from the principle that began by investing the visible
and invisible forces of nature with supernatural attributes, and then, as that
religion became more dialectic, gradually emerging into Monotheism or Pantheism,
in many cases drifting into Atheism by the way. Some of these teachers of
Comparative Theology proceed on the theory of evolution. Taking man from the
hands of the physical evolutionist, as having been slowly developed into a
sentient, moral, and even religious creature, they then carry onward the
principle into all the phenomena of what may be called the spiritual history of
mankind.

Others take up the theory without its tremendous preliminary assumptions.

1. The testimony of Scripture is explicit here. We might infer from its early
records that the successive heads of mankind, and founders of the nations,
carried everywhere with them the knowledge or tradition of one Creator; and the
tendency of the whole of the record supports that inference. But the New
Testament, which in the fullness of time clears up the mysteries of earlier
revelation, gives us a clear account of the origin of Polytheism and idolatry.
St. Paul, directly dealing with this subject, speaks of the heathen as of men
who hold the truth in unrighteousness. 1 He expressly says, that the created
universe carried with it to the mind of man a revelation of its one Creator;
that their heart was darkened and they became fools; their folly being their
idolatry: they changed the glory of the incorruptible God to an image like unto
corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 2
Here we have a kind of programme in brief of all the Polytheistic systems of
antiquity. Returning from the moral corruption of the Gentiles to their
idolatry, the Apostle says that they changed the truth of God for a lie, and
worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed for
ever. Amen. 3

Every word here is significant. They changed, —for this was their own and their
fathers act—the truth of God, the reality of the One God, or the me revelation
He had given of Himself, into the Lie, the one lie of Polytheism, and worshipped
in their perverted sentiments, and served in their outward idolatry, the
creature besides, or above, or instead of the Creator: pará tón Ktísanta. It may
be insisted on that this pará, interpreted by the context, shuts out the service
of the Creator altogether; but the sacred writer would have found a more
forcible way of asserting that. The essence of idolatry throughout Scripture is
not the absolute exclusion of the thought of one Supreme; but the giving
imaginary representatives of Him the glory due to His one name. That was the
idolatry charged against the covenant people themselves; and that, in principle
at least, is the idolatry of which superstitious Christendom is found guilty. It
is that identification of the Creator with the creature which is the soul of
Pantheism. The Holy God does not count His created universe sinful in itself;
but in His holiness He is eternally separate from the creature, and will be
honored as such. Hence the Scripture warrants our introduction of this subject
into the relations between God and the creature.

1 Romans 1:18; 2 Romans 1:23; 3 Romans 1:25.

2. The history of Polytheism confirms all this. Men early lost the supremacy of
faith and were surrendered to sense. But the faith only lost its supremacy, and
sense was not wholly sense. They never lost that within them which verified
three things, let modern philosophy say what it will: the reality of their own
dependent existence; the reality of an outer universe not themselves; and the
reality of an Infinite Something, Being or Person, beyond that. But the
distinctness of these was lost their perfect confusion was pure Pantheism;
which, however, was the growth of later ages. At first, the self was distinct;
but God and the creature were blended. The One Being was everywhere felt and
seen, but not as one being: His energies were distributed, and Naturism, or
nature-worship, was the result: the term worship being here conventionally used.
The two extremes lie before us in the history of mankind. There is Fetichism, a
term invented in the last century to describe the abject superstition which
attaches to an endless variety of objects a mysterious connection with
supernatural powers, making them symbols of spiritual influences haunting all
nature. This takes its most grotesque form in Western Africa, but has pervaded
all ages and races, from the Teraphim of Mesopotamia to the Shamanism of
Tartary. At the opposite pole is the dread magnificence of the Oriental Greek
and Scandinavian Mythologies, where Fetichism is expanded, etherealised, and
developed into its grandest proportions. But everywhere, and in all its forms,
it is the idolatry of the creature which loses the Creator: in multiplicity
forgetting the unity, though the unity was never far off. From that mankind had
wandered, and to that must they, after long wanderings, return.

II. The history of the religious beliefs of mankind bears witness that there
never was a national or tribal Polytheism which did not, more or less,
consciously give the supremacy to one, and only one being.

1. The most wonderful, certainly the earliest system of mythology—if such a name
may be allowed—is that of the primitive Aryans, whose strong religious feeling
deified all the forces of nature. Every object in which they felt the presence
of the invisible and the infinite was raised into something supernatural, into a
Deva, bright being; Asura, a living thing; and Amartya, an immortal. By degrees,
the multitude of gods approximated to a deification of universal nature; but by
degrees also the strong tendency of the Indian religion was to find its refuge
in a kind of Atheism which was really a protest in favor of one God, or in
aspirations after one God by name.

(1.) As the Aryan theology is the grandest outside of the Bible—how entirely
outside of it we shall see—a few illustrations may be derived from it of the
principle we are considering, that the One Creator has been always unconsciously
groped for in every system. In the Indian religion we may see in epitome, though
in a vast epitome, the entire evolution: so absolutely the entire evolution,
that it may be selected to represent the whole. We cannot determine what thought
concerning the Supreme was behind the earliest Vedic worship; it may have been
that the early hymns to Aditi, the boundless or the infinite One, were
remembrances of a primitive Monotheistic religion. But certainly in process of
ages the whole tide of Hondo thought and feeling set in towards One Highest God,
in the noblest, if not the most beautiful, monarchical form of Polytheism. The
supreme sway of the Unknown God, however, was of no avail, so long as He had
crowds of representatives nearer than He, The time of reformation came: but it
led: to a philosophical Atheism, or to Buddhism and Pantheism. The only religion
that India never knew until Christianity brought it near is Monotheism. To that
there has always, however, been a steady tendency; though, neither in India, nor
in any part of the world, will Polytheism give place to the worship of one God
until that God is accepted in the Holy Trinity.

(2.) Professor Max Muller has invented a new word to express a certain
peculiarity, as he deems it, in the evolution of Indian thought concerning God:
his own description will be given, especially as it is almost applicable to all
the more enlightened nations of heathenism. " If we must have a general name for
the earliest form of religion among the Vedic Indians, it can be neither
Monotheism, nor Polytheism, but only Henotheism, that is, a belief and worship
of those single objects, whether semi-tangible or intangible, in which man first
suspected the presence of the invisible and the infinite, each of which as we
saw was raised into something more than finite, more than natural, more than
conceivable." . . . "This is the peculiar character of the ancient Vedic
religion which I have tried to characterize as HENOTHEISM or KATHENOTHEISM, a
successive belief in single supreme gods, in order to keep it distinct from that
phase of religious thought which we commonly call Polytheism, in which the many
gods are already subordinated to one supreme God, and by which therefore the
craving after the one without a second has been more fully satisfied. In the
Veda one god after another is invoked. For the time being all that can be said
of a divine being is ascribed to him. The poet, while addressing him, seems
scarcely to know of any other gods. But in the same collection of hymns,
sometimes even in the same hymn, other gods are mentioned, and they also are
truly divine, truly independent, or, it may be, supreme. . . . But what
interests us at present is how that intention was realized; by how many steps,
by how many names, the infinite was grasped, the unknown named, and at last the
Divine reached. Those beings who are called DEVAS in the Veda are in many places
not yet even the same as the Greek theos; for the Greeks, even so early as the
time of Homer, had begun to suspect that, whatever the number and nature of the
so-called gods might be, there must be something supreme, whether a god or a
fate, there must be at least ONE Father of gods and men. In some portions of the
Veda, too, the same idea breaks through, and we imagine that as in Greece,
Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, so in India also, the religious craving after the
one would have been satisfied by a monarchical Polytheism. But the Indian mind
soon went, and we shall see how in the end it was driven, to a denial of all the
devas or gods, and a search for something higher than all the devas, Dyaus
himself, or Varuna, or Indra, or Pragapati not excluded . . . The process which
we have been watching in the case of the sun, we can watch, again and again,
with regard to most of the Vedic deities. Not, however, with regard to all. The
so-called semi-deities, the rivers, the mountains, the clouds, the sea, others
also, such as the dawn, the night, the wind, or the storm, never rise to the
rank of supreme deity; but of Agni, the fire, of Varuna, the covering sky, of
Indra, Vishnu, Rudra, Soma, Pargaanya, and others, epithets are used, and whole
descriptions given, which, to our mind, would be appropriate to a supreme Deity
only."

(3.) There was another stage of development. " First of all, we find that
several of these single deities, having sprung from one and the same source,
have a tendency, after a very short career of their own, to run together. Dyaus
was the sky as the ever-present tight Varuna was the sky as the all-embracing.
Mitra was the sky as lighted up by the sun of the morning. Surya was the sun as
shining in the sky. Savitri was the sun as bringing light and life. Vishnu was
the sun as striding with three steps across the sky; Indra appeared in the sky
as the giver of rain; Rudra and the Maruts passed along the sky in
thunderstorms; Vata and Vayu were the winds of the air; Agni was fire and light,
wherever it could be perceived, whether as rising out of darkness in the
morning, or sinking in the darkness in the evening. The same applies to several
of the minor deities. Hence it constantly happened that what was told of one
deity could be told of another likewise; the same epithets are shared by many,
the same stories are told of different gods." " Another expedient adopted by the
ancient poets, and which seems quite peculiar to the Yeda, is the formation of
dual deities" " A third expedient was to comprehend all the gods by one common
name, to call them VISVE DEVAS, the all-gods, and to address prayers and
sacrifices to them in their collective capacity." (4.) " Lastly, there was that
other expedient, which to us seems the most natural of all, in order to bring
the craving for one god into harmony with the existence of many gods, viz. the
expedient, adopted by the Greeks and Romans, of making one of the gods supreme
above all the rest: thus satisfying the desire for a supreme power, the eis
koiranos esto, and not breaking entirely with the traditions of the past, and
the worship paid to individual manifestations of the divine in nature, such as
were Apollon and Athena, or Poseidon and Hades, by the side of Zeus." . . . Here
we have an almost universal phenomenon, and one that pays a deep homage to the
truth of the Scriptures, and the revelation of the one only Creator: the
peculiarity of the homage being that every such unconscious homage to the one
Supreme was paid to Him as the Originator of all things.

There was among the Vedic Aryans the same tendency to establish supremacy among
the gods, a one Creating God, as we find in the mythologies not only of Greece
and of Rome, but of Germany and Scandinavia. "There are a few hymns addressed to
Visvakarman, the creator, and Pragapati, the lord, in which there are but small
traces left of the solar germ from whence they sprang. Some of them remind us of
the language of the Psalms; and one imagines that a deity such as Pragapati or
Visvakarman would really have satisfied the monotheistic yearnings, and
constituted the last goal in the growth of the religious sentiment of the
ancient Aryans of Indra. But this, as we shall see, was not to be." This was not
to be; because men having lost their faith in the one supreme Creator could not
return to Him until they were taught to abandon their false gods, forsake their
Pantheon, and give back to the True God the glory due to His name. Meanwhile, in
evidence that Polytheism has always struggled unconsciously towards the truth,
we may quote the Vedic hymn referred to: "He the One God, whose eyes are
everywhere, whose mouth, whose arms, whose feet are everywhere; he, when
producing heaven and earth, forges them together with his arms and with the
wings." " Beyond the sky, beyond the earth, beyond the Devas and the Asuras,
what was the first germ which the waters bore, wherein all gods were seen?" "You
will never know him who created these things; something else stands between you
and him. Enveloped in mist, and with faltering voice, the poets walk along
rejoicing in life." There are a few such tributes to the creator dispersed in
the Rig-Veda, which, notwithstanding that they are addressed to different
beings, are proofs that the true God never left Himself without a witness. To
quote Max Muller once more: " With such ideas as these springing up in the minds
of the Vedic poets, we should have thought that the natural development of their
old religion would have been towards Monotheism, towards the worship of one
personal God, and that thus in Indra also the highest form would have been
reached which man feels inclined to give to the Infinite, after all other forms
and names have failed." 2. These extracts have been given as illustrating the
most interesting and affecting phenomenon in the history of the race: its
struggles to return from its wanderings to God. On a smaller scale the same
evolution has been going on, and, alas, is still going on, throughout the earth.
And the science which makes this history the basis of some great generalizations
is called the Science of Religion or Comparative Theology. The study is of great
importance, and yields great advantage to the Christian Cause, though it is
generally prosecuted in a spirit of opposition to the exclusive claims of
Christianity.

(1.) It brings boundless evidence from every corner of the earth and from every
tribe of humanity that it is of the very nature of man to inquire after the
Creator of the world he lives in. The entire sphere of sensible objects around
him, and of perceptible forces above him, have been deified only in the service
of a higher and nobler desire to penetrate through all these to the One beyond:
appealing to Him always as Creator, or at least thinking of Him and addressing
Him as the Author and Disposer of all things. As the ancient Vedic poets
perpetually uttered their protests against the Devic idolatry, so all the bards
and prophets of every religion have shown their sense of something behind the
crowded sphere of their lower divinities. Either as the Great Spirit of the far
West, or the Aditi, the Infinite, of the far East or the Moira, Destiny, of the
Greeks, or the Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the Romans, there is in every religion
or mythology some name that stands as a symbol of the One Supreme as yet
unknown. There are thought to be a few exceptions: in the early religion of the
Chinese and of the Germans it may be hard to trace these tendencies to
Monotheism. But this is mainly because the archives are wanting to complete the
evidence. And certain it is that the process of time and of reformation has
brought out the latent tendency. This last point is of importance: almost every
ancient form of religion has had its eras of reform; and most of those reforms
have been Monotheistic in the long run if not immediately so. China might seem
to deny this; it was in the earliest ages more Pantheistic than any other
nation, and, after receiving the reformation of Confucius, fell under the
influence of Buddhism. But through all Chinese philosophy there runs the idea of
the Primitive Force, Yang, and primitive matter, Ju.Ischuhi in due time rose
above this dualism and regarded these as the two faces of one sole primitive
being, Tai-Ky. This seems pure Pantheism; but Pantheism, whether in East or
West, has been the refuge of the minds of men from many gods in one Eternal Self
of the universe, its one Cause if not its Creator.

(2.) The study tends greatly to serve the cause of the Christian religion by
showing the incomparable superiority of the records of revelation. The Bible is
the sole book of the so-called sacred books of the world which contains one, and
one only, and one consistent account of the origin of all things. The difference
between that account and every other extant in literature is not simply one of
degree: the degree cannot be estimated. In every other document, even the
noblest fragments of the Veda not excepted, the hints are obscure and
inconsistent, the tributes are paid to different beings, or to the same being
under different names, and sometimes there are most incongruous associations
introduced. But in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments there is one
most heavenly hymn to the Creator which has no single discordant note from the
first verse of Genesis In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth 1
down to the last hymn of revelation: Thou art worthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory
and honor and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they
were and were created. 2 1 Genesis 1:1; 2 Revelation 4:11.

DUALISM. This generic word embraces all those systems of antiquity which strove
to explain the contradictions manifest in the universe by tracing all things up
to two irreconcilable principles; In respect to creation, it assigned to matter
in some form an eternal independent existence, or, if not an existence
independent, at least an existence as necessary to human thought as that of the
Eternal Energy that moulds it. This is its differential element in relation to
Pantheism. The one says that God is in all things, or that all things are God;
the other says that God MOVES in all-things, either as their soul in their
harmony or as their controller in their discords. Hence the distinction is a
sound one that has termed Pantheism MONISM, and the system we now consider
DUALISM. But we have many subdivisions of Dualism.

1. There is a sense in which the notion of a perpetual conflict pervaded all the
religious ideas of antiquity. The sovereignty of one God not being firmly held,
there was no settled theory either as to creation or as to the supremacy of one
Being in the midst of its disharmonies. Even in the best philosophies the world
was the theatre of a mysterious struggle between light and darkness, good and
evil, and the step was easy from this to a contest between powers above visible
nature, and the evil that was manifest in nature itself. Running through all
species of ancient Pantheism and Polytheism there is a stream of Dualism that
cannot be hid, There is hardly a form of ancient mythology which did not, more
or less distinctly, set over against each other two opposite forces, and
distribute its higher powers accordingly; though sometimes introducing a
mysterious synthesis of the two by a profound instinct of the truth. We may go
farther, and say that this idea unconsciously plays its part in almost every
system of thought, Pantheistic or Polytheistic, in ancient and modern times.

2. The most remarkable expression of the principle, in itself the most elaborate
and in its influences the most lasting, was that of Zoroaster, the reformer of
Persian Dualism.

Before his time Iranian religion was Polytheistic, with a tendency to divide all
spiritual powers into two conflicting orders, good and evil; his reform, about
twelve hundred years B.C., aimed to bring back a more Monotheistic view, by
making both Ormuzd and Ahriman spring from a higher existence, Zeruane Akerene,
the infinite and timeless existence, and by teaching the future annihilation of
evil. But, whatever the secret philosophy of this Persian religion might be, its
open teaching and practical developments were Dualistic. How far its principles
touched the question of the eternity of matter has been much questioned:
probably that part of the system was derived rather from Buddhistic and Grecian
speculation.

3. Certainly the Dualism which we meet with in the Gnostic heresies of the early
Christian ages was not more nearly related to Zoroastrianism than to the later
speculations of Greek philosophy. From the former it derived the idea of an
eternal opposition of light and darkness; and of the Divine operation conceived
as the emanation of rays or aeons of existence decreasing in intensity until
they reach the darkness of matter, where all evil is. From the latter it derived
its philosophical idea of matter, as a certain indeterminate and undefinable
principle, existent, and yet not existing, having in it the possibility of all
things, not personal, without intelligence, and the material out of which
phenomena are woven. The creation in the Gnostic systems was not the work of the
Eternal God. Nor was it eternal in any sense, save as spiritual existences for
ever flow from the source of light. As matter it was already eternal, in the
shape of the kenoma, or empty void, outside of the plhroma, constituting the
perfect revelation of the God of true existence. The bridge between the Abyss or
buthos of substantial being and the material visible world was the fall of the
last of the emanations into matter, and producing the Demiurgus (or
Earth-former), or soul of the world. The infinite varieties of the Gnostic
systems were efforts to account for the contact between the Eternal Spirit and
matter, the seal of all darkness and source of all evil. The result was a
Creator, who, first conceived of as unconsciously carrying out the Divine
purposes, is at last made the diametrical opposite of God. The history of
Gnosticism, in which the Dualist idea sought to Christianize itself, but in.
vain, which the Christian Church cast out, stage after stage, until its final
overthrow as Manichaeism, is worthy of profound study. But a few remarks in
relation to our present subject are all that is necessary here.

(1.) The whole system was a vast and bewildering attempt to bridge over the
impassable gulf between the Infinite and the finite. It was one contribution
towards solving a problem that has taxed the human mind and baffled it from the
beginning. Starting from a principle, the origin of which no man knows, that
matter is inherently evil, the question was to account for its existence without
disparaging the Supreme. It was assumed that the Eternal Being permitted an aeon
from Himself to transgress the oros, or boundary of His own essence, and produce
from matter, either by creating it, as some said, or quickening it as others,
all creaturely existence. In human souls good and evil elements were mixed; and
to undo the work of the Demiurge or creator of this confusion was the work of
redemption. The task of the Christ, a new aeon sent forth to assume the docetic
semblance of matter, was to bring back the stray emanations that had become
imprisoned in the world, to release man therefore from the body, his
resurrection being "past already," and either to annihilate matter absolutely or
to leave it to its empty chaos. The wildness of these systems was only equaled
by their inconsistency. They left the impassable oros where they found it. They
sought to trace what, in modern times, would be called the law of continuity
from the creation upwards to the Deity, or from the Creator downwards to the
creation. And they thought they found it in the gradual attenuation of the light
emanations until they passed over the boundary, and mixed with the darkness of
matter beyond. But they were for ever vexed by two great anomalies.

First, the Divine Pleroma was supposed to give out aeons urged by love and
desire which degraded the eternal essence down to the point of lusting after the
material void. And, secondly, they either regarded that material void as
eternally existing, or they supposed that the Supreme permitted the Demiurge to
create it as the element of all future evil.

(2.) The sublime doctrine of the relation of the Eternal Son to the creature is
the only secret of the continuity which is taught, the only bridge between the
Creator and the creature. He is the Mediator—if such a use of the term may be
allowed—between the Infinite and the finite, between God and the creature. With
their eyes on the rising Gnosticism that was to disturb the Church St. Paul and
St. John often use expressions which cannot be well understood but as laying
down the truth concerning the Son, as the Archeegón teés Zooeés and the Archee
tees ktiseos, 1 which the dualistic heretics perverted. St John taught that God
is light, and in Him is no darkness at all; 2 but he also taught that Jesus, as
the true Light which enlighteneth every man, was coming into the world, 3 not,
however, as an aeon or emanation; for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. 4 Every word of this last sentence of St. Paul contradicts the
Gnostic speculations as to the Demiurgus: the entire pleérooma of the Godhead,
and not an emanation, dwelt in Him and did not descend upon Him bodily, and not
in semblance. And He Who was the First begotten before every creature, 5 was
such as the Archee or Beginning, in Whom and through Whom creation began. By Him
were all things created: as if in Him the Absolute God, or the Father,
originated the creaturely existence, upholds it and administers it; by an
incarnation before the Incarnation. We cannot conceive how the creaturely
universe should have this specific relation to the Son, and how in Him the
Infinite became-finite, before God became flesh; but we must receive the mystery
and adore it. Our Lord was the Firstborn of the new creation when He began its
life in Himself; and He is the First begotten, or the Beginning of the creation
of God, which had its origin in Him.

1 Acts 3:15; 2 1 John 1:5; 3 John 1:9; 4 Colossians 2:9; 5 Colossians 1:15-20.

MATERIALISTIC ATHEISM. At the opposite pole of Pantheism stands Materialism as
the philosophical or scientific antagonist of the Scriptural doctrine of the
Creator and creation: opposite poles, however, of one and the same sphere of
thought. Pantheism gives the notion of God the preeminence, all things
phenomenal being His eternal but ever-changing vesture; Materialism gives matter
the pre-eminence, as the only substance that is, and regards what men call God
as the unknown law by which that substance is governed in all its evolutions.
Strictly speaking, Materialism proper has no place here. It is simply a question
of science and scientific speculation; being, as touching the created universe,
a pure negative, that can neither prove itself nor disprove anything else.

COMMON PRINCIPLES.

Certain fundamental principles are common to the Materialism of all ages.
Denying the distinction of matter and spirit it denies the existence of spirit
altogether; and soul or spirit, being only one particular form of the existence
or function of matter, is immortal only in the sense that matter is
indestructible and in some form or other will for ever go on producing the same
phenomena. Religion has no place in this system. It makes that the strange
fantasy which it is the unaccountable habit of the brain of man almost
universally to beget: all its hopes and fears and aspirations perish with the
organism that gave them birth. Discarding religion, it nevertheless has always
prided itself on being a philosophy. As such, it must of necessity investigate
the origin of things. One of the eccentricities of what we call thought is that
matter must seek to know its own beginning, and the reason of its existence. Its
futile speculations perish, like its religion, with every individual thinker’s
brain; yet, like its religion, these are transmitted from age to age. But its
questions are never answered. Thinking matter can only say of itself that it
must always have existed since it now exists; that it knows nothing about any
power that could have brought it into being; that it has no explanation whatever
of the difference between itself as inanimate, and itself as endowed with life;
and, in short, that it can only say, unconsciously echoing the eternal truth
which it will not receive, " I am that I am." If it is not its own creator it at
least will know of no other. But the very word creation is abhorrent to the
system from beginning to end.

HISTORY OF MATERIALISM.

These fundamental principles, however, have been variously molded, from
generation to generation. There is a history of Materialism as there is a
history of Pantheism and Dualism. With that theology has nothing directly to do,
but it may be of indirect advantage to indicate the lines of development as they
have been directed consciously or unconsciously by opposition to revealed truth.
All the principles of Materialism were laid down by ancient heathenism; they
have been asserted in direct opposition to Christianity as a revelation of God;
and, lastly, they are now sought to be established in the interests of pure
science, which answers every Christian suggestion by either perfect indifference
or an appeal to universal nescience. A few words on each of these points in its
order.

ANTIQUITY. The Materialism of ancient times was atheistic; and, as such, in
professed antagonism to the predominant schools of thought, Eastern and Western.
Epicurus, an Athenian philosopher of the fourth century before Christ, is
sometimes regarded as its founder. . From the remains handed down to us we
gather that his system contained most of the ideas which rule modern thought on
this question. He set out with the principle which Lucretius, his disciple, has
thus formulated: Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti. The universe he
regarded as infinite: infinite in the number of bodies, infinite in the space
that holds them. The elements of which all bodies are constituted are
indivisible, atom, and unchangeable, ametablhtoa. These atoms, endowed from
eternity with movement which makes them meet, combine into aggregates, whether
smaller or larger as in the celestial spaces. As to this world, to pan esti
soma. What we know we know through our senses; and when the organs perish the
functions perish. Epicurus entirely dismissed the idea of Providence. If he
admitted the existence of gods, it was only in the interest of prudence, the one
criterion of his morals. " All is false that is commonly said about the gods:
there is no truth in the chastisements they are supposed to inflict on men, nor
in the rewards they assign to the good." " There are gods, and the knowledge we
have of them is certain; but they are not what the vulgar suppose. The impious
man is not he who refuses to believe in the gods of the common people, but he
who accepts them as they do." His was an Atheism disguised, as Cicero says: "
Video nonnullis videri Epicurum, ne in offensionem Atheniensium caderet, verbis
reliquisse deos, re sustulisse." Thus Epicurus gathered up the fragments of
Leucippus and Democritus, and gave them through Lucretius a form ready for
future science. And, as his physical system anticipated much that modern times
have more fully formulated, so his moral system was a favorable sketch of the
highest ethics of Materialism. With him virtue is only the means, the prudential
means, to the end of peace and tranquility. While Plato sought the sovereign
good in resemblance to God, and Zeno in conformity with universal law, Epicurus
went no farther than the attainment of as near an approach as possible to the
tranquil rest of nature, and the utmost enjoyment of life.

Let us eat and drink, far to-morrow we die, 1 is St. Paul’s account of the
ethics down to which this system surely descends or gravitates by its own
inherent tendency.

1 1 Corinthians 15:32.

ATHEISM OR ANTITHEISM. When we speak of Atheism proper, we speak of a phase of
the controversy touching a great First Cause of creation, which has, for reasons
hereafter to be given, almost passed away. The word is not in favor; it is
renounced even by those whose reasoning naturally lead to it; let other terms be
used and they have no objection to a disguised god, either nameless or with the
name they prefer; but Atheism they reject as unphilosophical. But, before
reaching this more modern phase of the scientific Materialistic form of it, we
must make some remarks on Atheism proper, which has aimed to rid the creation of
a Creator and of a God.

1. The question may be fairly asked, is blank Atheism or Antitheism possible to
the human mind? And the answer must be finally given that it is not. The appeal
may be made to Scripture: an appeal which ought to be allowed, whether for the
conclusion of all strife or not, since it is undeniable that the Bible contains
the largest and noblest collection of the world’s religious thoughts. Throughout
the whole of this book, which gives its testimony to the whole variety of human
error, there is no single allusion to men from whose minds the thought of God is
erased. The book demonstrates everything about the Deity but His existence: it
never descends to argue with an Atheist, for it never supposes that it speaks to
such a man. Besides the wicked who say onto God, Depart from us, for we desire
not the knowledge of Thy ways, 1 it singles out the fool who hath said in his
heart, there is no God; 2 but these are evidently, as the context proves, the
same persons. The theoretical Atheist is not in the Bible. Nor will a believer
in revelation allow that he exists in the world at large. Wherever the word of
revelation is sent its mission is to proclaim, not the existence of God, but the
sin of man, the need of a Deliverer, and a Deliverer provided. All nations are
supposed to require only that the Unknown God, Whom they ignorantly worship, be
declared unto them. And in every part of the world that faculty to receive the
supernatural has been found, which is, if not the belief in God, yet at least
the denial of Atheism. The appeal must be made to fact and the testimony of
history, past and present: " What people is there 1 said Cicero, " or what race
of men, which has not, without traditional teaching, some presentiment of the
existence of gods?" That nations may have been found in the past, and tribes of
savages now, which have no clear notion of one Supreme Being, and no worship of
any kind, may be admitted. But the very lowest waifs and strays of humanity have
always manifested the existence of that hidden mystery of its origin which owns
affinity with the supernatural. And that is all our present argument requires.

1 Job 21:14; 2 Psalms 53:1.

2. Atheism proper, as distinguished from other forms of the error that goes
astray from God, has mostly sprung from moral causes, and denotes therefore a
system of thought which the healthiest instinct of mankind has always abhorred.
The early history of our race bears witness that the Atheist was counted
unworthy of any respect. The denial of the existence of the gods was proscribed
and punished. Even those systems of thought which tended to the removal of faith
were careful to disguise their attack on the gods.

Epicurus in words acknowledged their possible existence. After the appearance of
our Lord professed atheism was very rare, until the general corruption of
society in the last century. And, in fact, the term in theology is reserved for
a state of feeling produced by many diversified moral causes, which culminated
in the excesses of the French Revolution.

3. Since that time Atheism has been scientific, philosophical, and generally
disguised under the name of AGNOSTICISM: certainly the most refined of all its
forms, and that which most directly mocks and insults the dignity of human
nature. It shrinks from avowed Atheism; and will not dare to say there is no
God. It shrinks from Materialism, and will not dare to say that the forces of
matter account for all phenomena. It simply declares the impossibility of
knowing what the tremendous FORCE is that controls all things. There is no more
deadly form of the great error of mankind than this which undermines every
foundation.

4. There may be said to be a modern ANTI-THEISM, that is not content with
throwing off the fetters of a Deity, but must needs argue against the
possibility of the existence of such a God as the Scriptures present. Atheism is
content with the privative particle, Antitheism is active and aggressive. There
is, however, a restraint upon the minds of men, and a decency in society, which
forbid the explosion of this kind of sentiment. When it does appear it is at
best, or at worst, little other than a modern Manichaeism or Dualism. The
existence of God is not blankly denied; but the evil that exists is made an
argument that, if a God is, He must be limited in many respects, and not by any
means the Being Whom we reverence and adore. There is much latent Manichseism in
society and in literature; many fall back upon two deities who are hardly
conscious of doing so. However, the God Whom the Scriptures reveal must be
accepted as He is, even though He says, I form the light and create darkness.1 1
Isaiah 14:6-7.

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

If what has been said is true, then Materialism, makes matter its god. There
must be absolute existence: matter is eternal, self-sufficient, infinite,
necessary, and the only being. Scientific Materialism, strictly so called, is
based upon two principles which it sometimes postulates, though unreasonably,
and sometimes seeks to prove, but unsuccessfully. One of them is negative, that
there is nothing but matter in existence; and the other is positive, that matter
in its combinations and modes of evolution is an adequate cause of all
phenomena. It may be objected that this is inverting the order of materialistic
argument, which first proves that nothing but the laws of matter are needed to
give a reason for all that exists, and then by the principle of the "sufficient
reason " renounces all other existence. Yielding to this objection, though
denying its truth, let us glance at the principles of the positive argument, and
then at the negative conclusion: abstaining, however, from scientific
controversy, which is generally not within our compass.

1. We need only mention two necessary demonstrations at which Materialism aims,
in which, however, it signally fails: the correlation of physical and vital
forces, and the correlation of these with mental and what we call spiritual
forces. Here are the stumblingblocks of Materialism, over which it has hitherto
fallen, and must for ever fall. Until these are established this system has no
claim to be considered as based on inductive science. For simplification, we may
drop the last link, that of the mental forces; and then the question becomes
this: Is life one mode of the motion of that force which is supposed to be one,
persistent and indestructible in the universe of material atoms? Scientific
Materialism has at length, though not without diffidence and many haltings, come
to the conclusion that it is so. Taking the material sun for its god— for every
theory, like every man, must have a god—it finds in it the original force,
potential everywhere and kinetic everywhere, of every movement in the sum of
human things. Of the power beyond that made the sun what it is—the god behind
the god— it has nothing to say. Now, so long as this law is limited to physical
changes, it may be accepted: it has to fight its own battle. But when it carries
the law into the sphere of life, it not only denies the truth of Scripture, but
ceases to have even that measure of probability which the theory of the
interchangeableness of physical forces has. For a considerable time the argument
from analogy was relied on. It was thought unphilosophic to stop short, after
having discovered the one secret up to the limits of vital force: at any rate,
the temptation was very strong to include the forces of life and thought under
the one law. But the phenomena rebelled. It has been found utterly impossible to
carry it into this other region. Life and thought have never submitted to
measurement and quantification. Dead matter has never been changed into living.
It is idle to speak of the correlation of physical and living or mental force,
until the latter can be measured by the same standard as the former. The
entrance of life into the sphere of matter is the annihilation of Materialism.
It cannot explain that secret whereby something in the individual appropriates
dead matter, suitable to its own type of existence. Materialists themselves
acknowledge that this secret is hid from them; and vainly disguise their
impotence by adopting such terms as " directive agency," or " architectonic
principle/’ or " formative impulse." Whence comes this principle of eternal
difference between dead and living matter? Though denying it in words,
Materialism touches, nevertheless, in reality the interaction of another set of
forces besides those which reign in physics. This it will be driven finally to
acknowledge. Materialists have done service by fixing attention upon the deep
truth that there is a correlation between these forces; a most mysterious and
wonderful interaction between the phenomena of physical and spiritual life. Well
for them if they would learn, on their side, to distinguish things that differ.

2. Meanwhile, the system is chargeable with the utmost possible outrage upon the
rational convictions of mankind. It is essentially atheistic in its tendency, if
all who espouse these principles are not Atheists. There is a large number of
those who bind up with matter and molecular action all kinds of life and thought
while they admit the possibility of an inscrutable force behind or above all
this; but they either deny the possibility of knowing anything about this
unknown power, or they absolutely limit it to a force which has no operation
save through matter. It may be safely affirmed that those who adopt the leading
principles of Materialism either are or soon become Atheists. And, renouncing
God, everything that confers dignity on man or worthiness on life is gone. The
system denies the existence of anything beyond matter: it takes away from man
his spirit, his immortality, his all. It ought to deny him the consciousness of
personal identity; its principles lead that way; for if man is only material,
and the particles of his physical self are every moment changing, and undergo a
total change in the course of a few years, what can be the substratum of his
identity? It dares not take that away; but it takes away all that makes it
important Materialism is the most irrational error that ever misled the human
mind; and to the holder of it, if to any, applies the Apostle’s apostrophe,
áfroon!1 Yet we have now to see this made into a philosophy.

1 1 Corinthians 15:36.

POSITIVISM.

Positivism has been dignified by the name of a philosophy. Its founder, Auguste
Comte, was a legacy of the eighteenth century to the nineteenth, and of French
Encyclopsedism and St. Simonianism to modern science. The result of his labors
is a philosophy of the physical sciences which is almost entirely limited to
induction, renouncing all thought of the causes of things, tracing simply the
sequences of nature, and so ascertaining its laws, with a professed rejection of
everything that is merely speculative or probable, and stern limitation of
knowledge to what can be demonstrated beyond doubt, and is therefore Positive.
To construct such a philosophy certain fundamental principles were adopted,
which, however, are far from being positively determined: such as that nothing
exists of which our senses do not assure us; that there is nothing existent but
matter; that all phenomena are subject to invariable laws which it is the
business of science to register, and only to register; that these laws are
simply relations of succession and resemblance; that in the cerebral phenomena
of mind they are as absolutely physical in their necessary sequence as any other
observed phenomena, only that they require greater care in observation; and that
the highest aim of science should be to forecast by scientific prevision the
certain future of human actions, just as the courses of the planets may be
predicted. Hence the Positive Philosophy, interpreting the possible future by
the past, and the necessary laws of human action which it has discovered, exults
in the ambition to reduce the infinite complications of human freewill and
congregated action to the exactness of a physical science. " I will venture to
say that sociological science, though only established by this book, already
rivals mathematical science itself, not in precision and fecundity, but in
positivity and rationality." This assertion of Comte was not empty declamation.
Both he and his followers have surveyed the history of the world on this
principle, and are full of confidence that by mastering the laws of human action
they will provide the ordained rulers of the world’s social fabric. But
Sociology is never far from Religion; and the Positive Philosophy is no
exception to the universal rule that every system of thought that commands human
attention must deserve it by at least attempting to account for the principles
that men call their faith. What then is the relation of this philosophy to
Religion? 1. First, Positivism has its method of accounting for the religions
that now are, before it substitutes its own. It sets out with the broad
generalization that the human race passes through three stages of intellectual
evolution. First comes that in which the supernatural haunts the thought,
seeking for causes of things, and inventing a Deity with all His court to
account for them: this theological stage works itself slowly upwards from abject
superstition, such as Fetichism, through the Polytheistic and Pantheistic ’
systems, up to Christianity. Secondly comes the Metaphysical stage, in effect
only a modification of the first: that in which the ideas of abstract forces, or
occult powers, are introduced to account for the phenomena of the universe by
those who have rejected the idea of a Creator. Thirdly and lastly, comes the
Positive stage, in which the mind, ashamed of its superstitions, and wearied of
its ontological researches, limits itself to the arrangement of phenomena When
this generalization is examined it explodes immediately. It is not true
historically; nor has it any right to govern a philosophy of history. It is
undoubtedly correct as an explanation of the career of many individual minds,
which have passed through the phases of simple faith in God, and metaphysical,
pantheistic, or dualistic subtitles that have been substituted for it, ending in
a dreary determination to accept only what is, and to leave the rest to
nescience. The celebrated "three stages" have not the slightest value, save as
registering the progress of faith through skepticism to unbelief.

2. The Positive Philosophy has its religion. For, in its fidelity to the
observation and record of positive facts, it finds nothing more positive than
the universal aspiration of mankind towards the unseen and the all but universal
practice of some kind of worship.

Now these facts must not be accounted for theologically or metaphysically: that
is to say, there must be no God; nor must any force, making for what it may, be
substituted. It is a positive fact which must be dealt with philosophically and
socially. But, looked at in either light, the Positivist way of treating man’s
religion is a gigantic inconsistency.

(1.) This last development of the scientific spirit refuses to carry the
inductive principle into the region of the mental and emotional and active
phenomena of mankind. It observes and notes these things; but with the foregone
conclusion that they are the result of a certain combination of material atoms,
and development of these forces not yet perfectly accounted for. Forced by its
hypothesis to exclude all metaphysical or occult causes on the one hand, and
swayed, on the other hand, by the despotism of the desire to find the unity of
all things, it notes and registers all the mental and spiritual phenomena of
mankind, the thoughts that penetrate the lowest depths, and the aspirations that
shrink not from the highest heights, as so many new facts concerning matter. Now
here is the deep inconsistency of the whole system. The innumerable phenomena of
thought, feeling, and will are as much facts as gravitation, cohesion, and
molecular motion. The same consciousness guarantees both: the one as referring
to the self, and the other as belonging to not-self. The testimony of conscience
asserts that the continuity is broken between these; that they go together up to
a certain point, and then separate; not taking two paths, however, for there is
an illimitable gulf between. The world of concepts, imaginations, feelings, and
emotions, absolutely unallied with matter, is a real world, and ought to be
dealt with as such. Positivism shuts its eyes to the positive fact that this
ideal world governs the other material world, and is not governed by it.

(2.) Socially, Positivism uses, or would use, the religious instincts—by
whatever name known—of mankind for the good of the body corporate. It must have
its objective creed; and the only positive thing to believe in, venerate, and
worship is Humanity: " The Great Collective Life of which human beings are the
individuals. It must be conceived as having an existence apart from human
beings, just as we conceive each human being to have an existence apart from,
though dependent on, the individual cells of which his organism is composed.
This Collective Life is, in Comte’s system, the Etre Supreme; the only one we
can know, therefore the only one we can worship." This being the first article
of the New Creed, its last, as the substitute for Resurrection and Immortality,
is " Living in the remembrance" of survivors. Here, it must strike everyone, is
another proof of a fact that has forced itself upon us everywhere, that no
system is without its god: the human mind can no more think without that
condition than without the conditions of time and space. Positivism must have
its something beyond, and above, and surviving its material nature. What is its
abstract humanity but the creature worshipped para ton Ktisanta, instead of the
Creator?

SECONDARY CREATION, OR COSMOGONY. The Wisdom of God, accompanying His Power,
presides over Creation as secondary, that is, as Formation. It is necessary to
establish a distinction between the first production of matter and its
subsequent elaboration, if such a term may be used, into the Cosmos, which
brings us into the region of Cosmogony or Cosmology. It is important to consider
whether the terms used by the inspired writer permit the distinction. Generally,
it may be said that asah kara and to in the Hebrew, are used interchangeably for
both, answering to ktizo in the Greek, and that they do not distinguish between
the first creation and the second each being equally the act of omnipotence. But
the double expression Created and Made 1 seems significantly to indicate a
distinction which is not clearly defined; and a careful examination of later
passages in which they are used together or separately will confirm this
supposition. It must be remembered, however, that this secondary creation, or
continuous formation, is in the truest sense production into being, as the
infusion into the primitive matter of new forms and types of life, from the
lowest trace of it scarcely discernible by science up to the soul of man. Hence
the gradual construction of which the Scriptural Cosmogony speaks at length is
in reality creation proper to us.

1 Genesis 2:3 THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. The authoritative account of Creation found
in Genesis is not, of course, what in modern language would be called
scientific. It is given in the form of an express revelation from God Himself,
before man or his science existed; given as the basis of all subsequent
revelation to Israel, for the Hebrew observance of the Sabbath is essentially
bound up with it; but given also for all mankind, the Genesis out of which all
human history sprang.

Receiving it as such, we have first to consider its own teaching: its relation
to other systems is a subordinate matter, but must be looked at also in its
place.

1. It is important to remember that it furnishes an account of all creation,
whether primary or secondary; but with special reference to the latter, in the
preparation of the earth for the history of man and redemption. Strictly
speaking, there is no distinction between these; the six days’ work, we are told
subsequently, included the universe: In six days the Lord made heaven and the
earth. 1 However the days are interpreted they embrace the sum of things. What
basis of truth there is in the general theory of evolution, which, as working in
the great cosmical forces of inanimate nature, takes the form or many forms of
the Nebula Hypothesis, and, as working in animated nature, takes the form or
many forms of Development, must be made consistent with this doctrine of
creation. But the Scriptural Cosmogony makes the will of God, expressed in fact,
first the origin of all things, and then the Law behind these other laws. Before
our Biblical Chaos and above it and around it there was a steadfast and tranquil
cosmical system, the result of secondary creation acting through the natural
laws which it fixed: it was only the earth that was without form and void. 2 And
the six days of our account exhibit this truth with special reference to our
economy. There was a development from term to term, but each stage marks a new
creation in this development. When this evolution of species ended, and all
types were consummated in Man, creation closed, and God rested and was
refreshed; 3 but only to begin again, in a third sabbatic economy, the
continuous uncreating regulation of all minor evolutions: My Father worketh
hitherto. 4 The record in Genesis thus includes both primary and secondary
creation. Its opening words alone declare the former: In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth. 5 Between that beginning and the chaos of the
second verse, when the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, 6
some have interposed a space, giving the widest possible or necessary latitude
for the geological ages demanded by modern science. On this principle of
interpretation the second verse itself leaves the operation of the forming and
fashioning Spirit indeterminate. The light of revelation has risen only with
dimness as yet upon the scene. The record has not for its object the details of
creation as such; but only so far as they concern the coming history of mankind.
This is thought to be obvious from the distinction between heaven and earth in
the first verse, and the suppression of heaven in the second. The silence that
reigns after the first great declaration is regarded as at once a warning and an
encouragement both to theology and to geology: only there can the reconciliation
be sought, and there it may be found. But, whatever of truth there may be in
this, it still remains that the six days’ work of creation blends the primary
and secondary in one: the sabbatic commandment in the Decalogue being witness.

1 Exodus 31:17; 2 Genesis 1:2; 3 Exodus 31:17; 4 John 5:17; 5 Genesis 1:1; 6
Genesis 1:2.

2. The interpretation of the days must conform to this truth. Accordingly, we
may understand the sublime description to mean that the enormous cycles of
creative activity, the epochs of God whose periods are not as ours, are
presented to us in our history as human epochs. There is then a double series of
days, an upper and a lower, the one corresponding to the other. The upper and
heavenly are the great cycles of creation which ended in the sabbatic cycle of
the reconstructed economy with man at its head. The lower and earthly are the
form they take to us in the representation of literal days, ending on the
seventh day, hallowed for ever: each of our working days being used to symbolize
its own term in the secondary creation of God, and our literal Sabbath His rest.
The first day is the most comprehensive, including all down to the production of
light: one period of untold duration which it pleased God to call a human day,
with its evening and morning. The last day is the long sabbatic rest with God,
with man it is the hallowed day of rest. It is quite consistent with this that
the record of the first day is left in such obscurity. It is in harmony with the
simplicity of the early record to leave the unwritten history of the primitive
earth to the researches of science, for which the Spirit of revelation has
reserved this honor; and to regard the narrative as specially limiting the
HEXAHE-MERON, or sixdays’ work, to the fashioning of the earth as the future
abode of man. While the days of the Biblical Cosmogony are creative days, in the
most comprehensive sense of the term, they throw the emphasis on the periods of
a new creation, or of a new formation, superimposed each on an earlier and, as
it were, perished order of things. In the final creation all was very good; 1
hence every trace of the rapine and death which, through some unknown cause, had
existed in its earlier epochal stages, were removed, to be detected, however,
afterwards, and to be explained. It must be remembered that in this record every
day of formation was a day also of absolute creation. No theory of evolution or
development that seems to trace a regular succession of forms through which
organic existence has passed, in obedience to a plastic law originally impressed
upon matter, can be made consistent with Scripture. The days of the first
chapter of Genesis are creative days: they spent their cycles and ended, the
cycles being shorter and shorter, but each having on earth its memorial day. The
last in which creation ceased is running its course now, and will run on to the
new creation.

1 Genesis 1:31.

3. The glory of the Mosaic Cosmogony is its testimony to God, Who reigns supreme
in it from beginning to end, whether as the Elohim of the first chapter, or the
Jehovah-Elohim of the second. He is the Absolute Creator of a universe which is
not Himself, evolved according to laws which in this record are exhibited as
successively communicated by a series of fiats or impulses. The beginning of
each great development is marked, and nothing more. So long as we hold fast this
principle we shall find the original document unassailable: if we attempt to
harmonies the order of the days with the exact results of scientific discovery
we undertake a needless and a doubtful task. Science has nothing to object
against a Creator of matter and of life: it knows no other origin of existence
phenomenal. Whether, and at what points, the creating impulse infused new
energies into the order of nature, science is utterly powerless to say. But the
Bible distinctly, most distinctly, gives its answer: what science may call
permanent causes were necessarily introduced: no induction has ever proved the
contrary, however sometimes longing to do so. The reign of law is a favorite
scientific notion: the adaptation of everything to its specific function, and
the invariable submission of all things to its rule. The Scripture is no less
precise: He commanded and they were created; He hath also stablished them for
ever and ever; He hath made a decree which shall not pass. 1 The beautiful idea
of Development has also full justice done to it in Scripture: a development that
proceeds through its evenings and mornings, each good but leading to that which
is finally very good in the consummation of man, and followed by a rest of
formative activity which science admits, but admits sometimes to pervert. At
this point we are met by two different classes of objection: one to the order of
the development as given by Moses; the other to the general principle of
successive impulses.

1 Psalms 148:5-6. THE ORDER OF THE MOSAIC CREATION.

1. The record of Genesis divides the creation into two parts: the inorganic and
the organic. Each begins by the creation of light: on the first day, light
cosmical, the radiating force of light and heat, with its medium of ether; on
the fourth day, light as connected for man with visible light-bearers. No valid
objection arises here: science knows nothing of the amazing quantity of light
which is dispersed from the son and stars, an infinitesimal portion only of
which is intercepted by attendant planets; nor can it give any account of the
origination of light and heat in the sun. On the second day, the earth was
individualized as such, by the creation of its atmosphere; against this also
there is no scientific argument. On the third day the earth’s surface was
constituted, and vegetation began. The Biblical relation of land to sea is in
harmony with geological conclusions. But the question is, whether all the
previous conditions of the terrestrial economy were sufficient to bring plants
into existence without a creative fiat. Science admits a VITAL force in the
plant: how many forms or types were created we are not told; herbs and trees are
distinguished, but what after his kind 1 may include we cannot determine. In the
order of nature, as well as in that of Scripture, plants, the food of all
animals, must precede the animal creation. Geology has failed to prove that the
fossil representations of the vegetable world are not, in some parts of the
earth, below the remains of any animals. With the fifth day animal life began,
for which the partial organic life of the vegetable prepared the way; and on the
sixth day the inhabitants of the earth were formed, including man, but created
according to a larger variety of types. The whole account is in the simplest
form of words; but bears witness to a profound method. Each era preludes that
which follows; each day is prophetic of the next; and while man is included
among the mammalia his pre-eminence is asserted, as we shall hereafter see. The
whole bears precisely the relation to science which we should expect in a record
dated before science was known: giving the great outline which He alone could
furnish Who was there from the beginning, and which He gave to a chosen people
to be the first fragment of revelation.

1 Genesis 1:1.

2. He alone was there from the beginning; but as the days moved on in their slow
procession His works were watched by other intelligences whose creation belonged
to the first day; though of that the record gives no distinct account, being
intended for man alone. What the book of Genesis may be in other worlds we know
not. Our record is limited to ourselves. But we mark the chasms in it which we
cannot supply: or which we can supply only by dangerous speculation. The great
convulsion in the spiritual world is omitted: the fall of the angels, and its
possible connection with the destiny of our earth. It has been a favorite
hypothesis to assume that between the first verse and the second there is a
break; that the words the earth was without form and void 1 indicate a
disorganization and ruin which had come upon all things for reasons unknown;
that the six days were periods of readjustment, or of a first restitution of all
things answering to that restitution of all things 2 which will take place at
the end. But tohu does not necessarily mean ruin: He created it not in vain,
tohu, He formed it to be inhabited. 3 Moreover, this theory does not solve, it
only evades, our great difficulties. In the strata of the earth’s crust there
lie the remains of animals which had lived under the dominion of disease, and
rapine, and death: a prelude of human history which is as deep a mystery, and
must remain so, as that other prelude, the sin of angels.

1 Genesis 1:2; 2 Acts 3:21; 3 Isaiah 45:18.

EXTRA-BIBLICAL COSMOGONIES. In almost all the religious annals of mankind there
are to be found traditions of the creation, which, for the most part, are
entirely independent of the Hebrew Scriptures as to their origin, while their
form is often strikingly parallel with the Mosaic account They are found among
nations to which the Hebrew Scriptures could never have penetrated, from the
ancient Aryan tribes to the islands of the Pacific. Yet a few points, common to
all, seem to indicate one primeval Cosmogony, of which, as we believe, the
Biblical is the genuine text. In the Indian Vedas the Eternal One thought " I
will create worlds," and water came into existence, with the germs of all life;
but we read of the original chaos, the formless mist, in which being was
mirrored, and the creative word. In the Persian Zendavesta, Ormuzd, the god of
light, as well as Ahriman, the god of darkness, arose out of the abyss of
primitive being; the former fashioned the world in six long successive periods,
a remarkable parallel with the account in Genesis. With this agrees most
strangely the Etruscan cosmogony from quite a different quarter. In the
Egyptian, as handed down by Diodorus Siculus, the moving wind separated heaven
and earth out of chaos, and the successive periods of formation followed. In the
Phoenician the origin of all was a dark, windy chaos, on which the Spirit
rested; producing the original matter of creation. Hesiod’s Theogony begins with
the universal void, and goes on with an order of production that strangely
agrees with our record, though many of the details are inverted. Not unlike this
is the Latin, according to Ovid’s version. In all these the chaos, the brooding
spirit, and the successive separations and creations of Genesis, appear in some
form or other. But there the parallel mostly ends. The grotesque and utterly
extravagant conceits from which every instinct recoils, and of which the
imagination is ashamed, — the " world-egg " playing a prominent part from China
to the South Seas—place a great gulf between all the cosmogonies of the world
and the sublime simplicity of the record in which faith hears the voice of God
and nought beside.

EVOLUTION. With the modern, or rather the revived, theories of Evolution, the
Cosmogony of science, we have nothing to do save as they are related to
theology. They are considered at this point, because they are not necessarily to
be placed among Pantheistic, Dualistic, or Materialist errors. Undoubtedly, they
are propounded by many in these three several interests, or rather in the
interests of the first and last of the three. But it cannot be too distinctly
remembered that their entire terminology, almost from beginning to end, implies
that they are describing the production of all things phenomenal out of things
that do not appear through the operation of some laws which necessarily connote
a power guiding the law. Evolution is either the law by which that power
constructs the inorganic universe, or that by which it orders the development of
life in all its manifestations.

COSMICAL EVOLUTION.

Bold hypothesis, sustained by mathematical science, has assumed that elementary
matter existed in a highly attenuated state, for the expression of which every
material word is too gross. This nebula, fire-mist, or dust of creation had in
it or received all the powers and potentialities of the vast future. Some flash
of energy threw this silent depository of all known laws into eternal activity.
Rotation, radiation, cooling, produce centrifugal force which detaches the
nucleus of future planets, and these by known laws necessarily seeking their
origin again are thrown into orbits, meanwhile throwing off in their turn,
during the process, attendants of their own. On the vastest scale this is the
universe; on a smaller scale the solar system; on the smallest scale our little
earth with its endless molecular, chemical, and dynamical laws. But the central
fires are not lighted to burn for ever. The dissipation of heat must sometime
bring all motion to a standstill; for that heat, so far as science knows, does
not return to its place. Systems must therefore collapse, to engender heat for
other great evolutions into system. But this cannot go on for ever. The
beginning of any system can be calculated; so can its end. This rough sketch of
the Nebular Hypothesis gives us a Cosmogony which is not inconsistent with the
Scriptural Genesis as to its beginning; nor is it inconsistent with the
prophecies of Scripture, as to its end. But the gigantic fallacy is that such
mathematicians as Laplace should think that they have no need of the hypothesis
of a God; and that such philosophers as Hegel should say that the final cause of
the universe is only its inward nature. Whence the forces residing in matter?
Whence the beautiful order into which it falls? Whence the variety of elementary
substances with all their endowments of gravitation, chemical affinity, and
magnetic attraction? And how could these evolve the minds that make them all
objective, and, by becoming their historians, show that they are themselves of
another and a higher order?

ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT.

One of the most remarkable evolutions of modern science is the attempt to
account for the phenomena by assuming the principle that from one primordial
germ all the infinite varieties of organic life have been developed through a
very long series of ages. Perhaps, it would be more fair to say that students of
natural history have thought themselves justified, by a great number of
observations, in supposing this to be the law of the living universe. But
whether they work downwards from a bold hypothesis, or work upwards by bold
generalizations, the fact remains the same, that this is what the theory known
as the Darwinian aims at. If, however, the law is not absolute, if there are
exceptions anywhere, the simplicity of their cosmogony is gone, and the
principle of the Mosaic creation must be conceded. The theory is most exacting.
It is held by pantheistic Positivists, who imagine they believe in immanent
final causes, and undirected evolution; it is held also by the Agnostic
thinkers, who muse over the unknowable force that displays such cunning; and it
is held by men who assume that the Eternal Creator simply appointed this method
of evolving His universe. These last believe that Heredity, the inscrutable
power of transmitting peculiarities; Natural Selection, or the survival of
nature’s best types; and, lastly, a Law Unknown in human knowledge, conduct the
great development under the eye of the Eternal Whose rest, as the Creator of
all, began not on the seventh day but on the first.

1. The continuity of this development suffers a fatal breach at the outset: it
has no link between the inorganic and the organic worlds. The Mosaic Genesis has
that link; it tells us that the Creator has prepared the material world by
progressive stages to be the habitation of life. And the New-Testament Genesis
tells us that the development is yet proceeding towards a consummation when all
things will again be made new. The modern hypothesis desires that this should be
left an open question: it may hereafter appear that under certain conditions
inorganic matter may be formed into cells containing the germ of life, in which
case the continuity would be complete. Meanwhile, the doctrine of Biogenesis,
that all life comes from life, holds the field against all experiment, or rather
in the strength of all experiment. Spontaneous generation has never yet been
attested. But that is not the only gap. The genesis of a new species of any
kind, whether of plant or animal, has never been observed by man: has the
universe come to its consummation, and reached its sabbatic rest? Again, it is
the opinion of the majority of those competent to speak that there are absolute
limits to the variability of species; that many fossil transitional forms are
utterly and most conspicuously absent. And, most fatal gap of all, the leap from
the highest approximate to the appearance of man himself is one over a great
gulf as fixed as that between Paradise and the lower Hades. But of Man we must
speak hereafter.

2. As held by its best advocates this theory pays a high tribute to the truth
against which it seems to contend. No writings have done so much, certainly none
have done more, to open men’s eyes to the infinite variety, and beauty, and
wonderfulness of the adjustments of the vegetable and animal worlds, than those
which are written in opposition to the doctrine of occasional Divine
interventions in the economy of things. Moreover, they have called attention to
some truths that are too generally neglected as to the degree in which it has
pleased the Creator to use the principle which they so much dishonor by
exaggeration. He has committed much to development. Within certain limits the
fauna and the flora of our earth are replenished and beautified by manifold
variations, through which, however, His original types are clearly seen by every
unbiased eye. They have also taught us to appreciate the wonderful relation in
which man is placed to the creatures whose all is bound up with the earth; that,
as created out of the dust, he is a development of older physical types, a final
development on which evolution has spent itself, found worthy at last to be the
receptacle of an immortal spirit By tracing so elaborately the dim and
impersonal reflections of our mental and moral characteristics in the lower
creatures, it has read us some important lessons: pre-eminently, the necessity
of accurately distinguishing between instinct and reason; between the only "
unconscious cerebration " of which we ought to speak and the thought of a
personal thinker; between the animal soul, which, using a physical brain, may
have its resemblances in the brutes that have brains also, and the immortal
spirit whose consciousness and conscience and feeling for the infinite can have
nothing resembling them in the lower economy. But, when this theory of long,
slow, cyclical development is burdened with the production of all things, the
growth of moral and spiritual sentiments included, it has two unrelenting
opponents: Science cannot allow time enough since the calculated beginning of
the solar system; and Religion protests in the name of God, and for the honor of
His incarnate Son, and for the dignity of man himself; the descendant of Adam,
[Which was] the son of God.1

1 Luke 3:38. THE MOTIVE AND END OF THE CREATION.

Supposing the Scriptural doctrine of creation established against Pantheism,
Dualism, and Materialism, and as the free act of an Infinite Spirit, it remains
to ask concerning the purpose of God in the production of finite nature. As soon
as we are disencumbered of the pantheistic and materialistic notion of an
immanent necessity of all things being as they are, and separate the finite from
the Infinite, we are compelled by the constitution of our nature to ask the Why
of creaturely existence. We must seek and cannot rest till we find a cause of
all things before they are, and a reason of all things when they are. The
question of the final cause is as urgent in the human spirit as the question of
the originating cause. The latter is easily answered, and we have been satisfied
as to that. But the former, the final cause of all things, is not so easily
answered. It might be reserved for the doctrine of Providence, to which it
strictly belongs. But it cannot be altogether omitted here. To the humble reader
of Scripture nothing seems more obvious than at once to answer: The universe was
brought into being for the display of the Divine glory in the diffusion of His
communicative goodness. But, simple as this solution seems, each branch of it is
burdened with difficulties, and the whole must be supplemented by another
clause: according to a design the issues of which are to human reason now, and
possibly may be for ever, unfathomable.

1. No reverent mind can doubt that the manifestation of the Divine glory is a
worthy end of all things. But it must be remembered that the Scriptures, our
only guide, do not make this the only end: they speak of the glory of God as
being proclaimed, and of all creatures as brought into being for His pleasure,
and for Himself; but they do not, in express terms, assert that the final cause
of creaturely existence is the display of the Divine attributes.

We can hardly sever from such a thought the idea of a necessary manifestation:
His glory must be revealed, and ought not to be made subject even in appearance
to the law of design and final causes. And, to speak with reverence, it is
difficult to avoid the conclusion, that, if the manifestation of Deity is the
final end of creation, creation must be made eternal. But the free determination
of a personal Spirit to bring a universe into being must have some place in its
design for that love which neither in God nor in man seeks only its own things.
Hence the true heart of all catholic theology has added the second clause: in
the diffusion of His communicative goodness.

2. On the other hand, while a motive of creation was undoubtedly the
communicative goodness of God, which brought numberless beings into existence to
rejoice in them and make them blessed, the mind cannot rest satisfied in this
alone; for the world was created in the foreknowledge of its evil. Men who make
Divine benevolence the supreme motive in the creation are tempted to reduce the
evil of sin by making this, as Leibnitz did, the best possible world, on the
whole, for the ultimate diffusion of happiness. This is termed OPTIMISM, and is
harmonized with Christianity by assuming that the great Restoration in Christ
will make the evil subserve an infinitely greater good. Moreover, those who
insist that, the nature of God being love, the creation of objects of that love
was a necessity in the Divine Being Himself, forget that in the Infinite essence
love has its own interior satisfaction eternally in the intercommunion of the
Three Persons.

3. The only sufficient answer, therefore, is that the ultimate final cause of
creation is unfathomable. The supreme design is a secret not yet unveiled. When
our Lord said, in reply to a question which closely bordered on the origin of
evil, that the works of God should be made manifest, 1 He suggested the display
of all God’s perfections, including His love, but put His answer in such a form
as to shut out any further human inquiry. The Creator has given being to a
finite universe for the display of all His perfections, for the glory of His
name. But we are limited to our own portion of it. To us the universe is our own
world; and we know that creation and redemption are bound up in one. He Who
created mankind was the Same Who redeemed the race; He Who redeemed it created
it for redemption. And we believe and are sure, though the mystery is
unfathomable, that God’s name will be glorified for ever in the issue of
redemption, under the sovereign ascendancy of love. So, with regard to the wider
universe of creation generally, we must repose in the assurance that it is the
sphere of the manifestation of Divine perfections, under the sovereign
ascendancy of His goodness, but with an ulterior end transcending all finite
thought. For the rest, this subject links Creation with Providence, and will
return upon us.

1 John 9:3. THE CREATED UNIVERSE.

Sundry comprehensive terms are used in Scripture to embrace and describe the sum
of creaturely existence. The most convenient theological distribution of the
entire Creation for our present purpose is that which divides it into the
Spiritual World, the Material Universe, and Man as uniting both in himself. The
Old Testament begins its announcement of the creation of all things by saying
that God created THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH, 1 and retains that designation
throughout its whole compass to the end. The New Testament adds many other
general descriptive definitions: pánta and ta pánta all things, 2 modified as
things visible and things invisible; 3 ktíseoos, the creation of God; 4 kosmos,
the world 5 in its form and order; aioónas, the worlds, in their secular
succession. These expressions approach very nearly the classical to pan 6 of
ancient philosophy, the Universum, or the modern term Universe as the system of
created things.

1 Genesis 1:1; 2 John 1:3; 3 Colossians 1:16; 4 Revelation 3:14; 5 John 17:5; 6
Hebrews 1:2.

ANGELS AND SPIRITS.

Revelation gives a large place to an order of intelligences higher than man: the
history of creation, the records of providence, and the economy of redemption,
connect them with mankind in various ways. We now consider them simply as part
of the creation of God, and as to their place in the economy of things. They are
everywhere designated Spirits and Angels. Being Spirits they are represented as,
to a certain extent, independent of matter; highly exalted in their faculties;
diversified in their range of existence; under a law of probation; and, as a
result of that probation, distributed into two classes of good and evil. As
Angels, they are represented as attendants on the Supreme, employed in the
service of His providence; and especially as connected for good or evil with the
history of the Divine purpose in redemption, from its origin upon earth
throughout all its processes to its close at the final judgment.

SPIRITS. The name Spirits is given to these creatures of God to denote their
specific nature, concerning which we are of necessity shut up entirely to the
teaching of Holy Scripture.

1. They occupy a sphere of existence less closely connected with the material
universe than that of man in his present estate. Their spirituality, however,
must not be misunderstood. It seems to be synonymous with invisibility in the
only passage which directly links them with the creaturely universe, or records
their creation: by Christ were all things created, that are in heaven, and that
are in earth, visible and invisible. 1 God alone is pure essential Spirit: these
created spirits are clothed upon with ethereal vestures, such as Paul describes
when he says, There is a spiritual body. 2 Thus our Lord tells us that the
children of the resurrection are isángeloi, equal unto the angels. 3 Having a
more subtle organization than man, they are at present higher in their range of
faculties: greater in power and might 4 and angels that excel in strength. 5 But
what their faculties are, what organs they use, and what is the bond between
their psychology and our own, we know not. They were created at once and in a
wide variety of grades. Though the description thrones, dominions,
principalities, powers, 6 partly refers to their ministerial offices, there are
other indications of a boundless range of existence in the super-terrestrial
world, answering to the abundance and diversity of life upon earth; but without
the law of species, and admitting of no increase by generation or development:
they are all and individually, as created at once one by one, sons of God 7 by
direct filiation. Hence the revelation of Scripture discloses precisely such a
continuation upwards of the scale of being as analogy would suggest: as in the
lower orders the species is all and the individual nothing, as in man the
species and the individual are blended, so in the upper world the species is
lost, and each is apart and alone before God: all, however, being marshaled and
distributed into orders of the laws of which we know nothing save that they do
not include species and generation.

1 Colossians 1:16; 2 1 Corinthians 15:44; 3 Luke 20:36; 4 2 Peter 2:11; 5 Psalms
103:20; 6 Colossians 1:16; 7 Job 1:6.

2. All spirits were created in the image of God: and their first estate was
probationary: this law of the moral government of the Most High seems to be
universal. In the constitution of their nature lay the possibility of falling
from their allegiance. The issue of probation was the fall of a portion of these
spirits, with One as their head. These, sharing his rebellion, were condemned
with him. We read once of the condemnation of the devil:1 a remarkable
expression, which can have but one meaning, as no created being has the
authority to condemn. Hence we gather that Satan, before a tribunal of which we
have no record, was convicted of pride and cast out of his high place; doomed to
a degradation commensurate with the height of his former dignity. Many fell into
his apostasy, and were condemned to the same ruin: how many we need not ask,
though it is observable that all the notes of multitude which the Scripture uses
are employed to swell the numbers of the good spirits. On the other side we hear
one say, my name is Legion, 2 and that they constituted the third part of the
stars of heaven: 3 words on which we cannot lay any stress. But their sentence
is for mysterious reasons not yet fully executed: they are reserved for a last
judgment and sentence: know ye not that we shall judge angels? 4 The great
majority—not of the angels that sinned 5 —were confirmed in their state of
holiness for ever: they are, therefore, elect angels; 6 elect, as in the case of
man, not through preordination, but through approval and separation from the
doomed of their own order.

Hence, they are also termed Saints: He came with ten thousands of saints. 7 The
whole economy of the angel world as known to man is divided into two orders,
retaining severally their orderly ranks, as a good and an evil hierarchy. The
Epistle to the Ephesians, which gives in compensation to those who burned their
books of curious arts the most explicit revelation touching the spiritual world,
refers in the beginning to the ranks of the better class, and in the end to the
ranks of the fallen. But it must be observed that the evil are generally
designated spirits, the good are almost invariably angels: the exceptions on
either side are few. The spirits of evil are pre-eminently Satan or the Devil,
and demons, or unclean spirits; 8 Satan the first sinner, the first tempter, the
true Antichrist, and, retaining one of his archangel names, the prince or god of
this world; 9 and devils, daimónia, who in great numbers troubled the bodies and
souls of men while their Head assailed the Redeemer. When we reach the doctrine
of Sin it will be necessary to introduce these higher intelligences again.

1 1 Timothy 3:6; 2 Mark 5:9; 3 Revelation 12:4; 4 1 Corinthians 6:3; 5 2 Peter
2:4; 6 1 Timothy 5:21; 7 Deuteronomy 33:2; 8 Mark 1:27; Zechariah 13:2; 9 John
14:30.

3. While the good and unfallen spirits are generally the Holy Angels, and the
evil spirits of Scripture are not generally termed by that name, yet these are
also represented as subserving the purposes of the Supreme. Even if they are the
servants of their prince, both they and he alike must directly or indirectly, by
command or by permission, do the behest of the only Supreme Will. In the mystery
of that will they are left in the free restraint or the restrained freedom of
the sphere of the redeeming economy. Satan is the prince of the power of the
air, 1 and his hosts are spiritual wickedness in high places; 2 but both the air
and the high places are within the Savior’s domain: His authority compasses our
world, and no line limits it outward. Still more strange is it that both in
ancient and in modern revelation the ministers of evil are exhibited as in the
upper spiritual world: a true wonder in heaven. 3 But the term is used here
symbolically for the spiritual sphere only. It may be noted, finally, that while
the Divine Being uses the good spirits to chastise wickedness, almost always the
evil spirits are used to discipline the offending righteous.

1 Ephesians 2:2; 2 Ephesians 6:12; 3 Revelation 12:3.

ANGELS. The denomination Angels, which runs through the Scriptures as
pervadingly as the name of God Himself, before Whom they stand, is used with
reference to their ministerial service; as the Hebrew mal’ak and the Greek
aggelos signify. With the exception of some few passages, such as the Devil and
his angels; 1 Messenger, 2 or angel, of Satan; the Dragon fought and his angels
3 — which do not use the term in an official sense, and are therefore scarcely
exceptions, — the angels are the attendants on God and ministers of His will
throughout all the economies of His government. This gives them their glory and
their grace in the Bible.

1 Matthew 25:41; 2 2 Corinthians 12:7; 3 Revelation 12:7.

1. There can be no higher description of them than that they wait upon God. The
Lord is the Lord of hosts, 1 and the holy angels are His sons: 2 all the sons of
God shouted for joy. 3 Their joy is the joy of worship: they sing the doxology
to the Holy Trinity —to man as yet unrevealed, but revealed to them—in Isaiah’s
mystical temple; 4 they receive the commandment, which they were quick to obey,
to worship the Son when He was brought into the world; 5 and they descend to
sympathies with, if indeed they do not join in, the devotion of the Church of
God among men. So near are they to the manifested Divine glory, and so do they
reflect it, that they are called gods: —worship Him, all ye gods!6 though this,
as in the case of human judges, receiving the same designation, may refer rather
to their representative character as executing their functions in the Divine
name. In this character they are known as Cherubim: forms which are symbolical,
rather than descriptive, and signify the forces of the created universe,
attendant upon God, but not God Himself; and Seraphim, also representing the
creature before God and extolling His perfections, as unslumbering Watchers, 7
burning with Divine love. But the highest honor conferred upon them is this,
that the Supreme unites them with Himself as His court: — Let us go down! 8
includes them, though the US points to another mystery. Throughout the Old
Testament the Lord is in the assembly of His saints; 9 into which even the
representative of evil spirits might enter, before Christ came to cast them out
finally: and Satan came also among them. 10 But this leads to the ministry of
these blessed spirits of heaven.

1 Isaiah 47:4; 2 Job 1:6; 3 Job 38:7; 4 Isaiah 6:1-13; 5 Hebrews 1:6; 6 Psalms
97:7; 7 Daniel 4:17; 8 Genesis 1:26; 9 Psalms 89:7 : 10 Job 1:6.

2. They are called ministering spirits, leitourgiká pneúmata: 1 ministering to
God, that is, in His general government of the universe, in the economy of
redemption, and in His providence over the saints. As to the first, we have no
power to determine the extent of their operation in the physical universe; but
we read of such occasional interventions — for instance, the slaying of the
Assyrian host, 2 the phenomena at Mount Sinai 3 — as forbid any doubt concerning
their rare and occasional ministry in this domain: if, indeed, rare and
occasional, of which there is no proof. But in the history of redemption they
appear as statedly and fixedly as Prophets and Apostles themselves: especially
at the great crises, the Creation, the Lawgiving, the History of the Incarnate
Lord, seen of angels, 4 and the dread solemnities of the Last Day. In this high
service they seem to have always acted in the order of a hierarchy. For the
loftiest functions—for the guardianship of Israel in the old economy, the
announcement of Christ and the protection of His kingdom in the new—there are
Archangels, though so called only in the New Testament.

First Michael, 5 Who is like God? whose name declares that he, the highest in
the scale of created beings, the first-born OF every creature 6 as Christ is the
First-born BEFORE every creature, for ever remembers his finite creatureliness.
He accordingly vindicates Monotheism in the Old Testament and is the conqueror
of Satan in the New: Who is like God? Then Gabriel, 7 Hero of God, the supreme
representative in the heavenly host of God’s executive will, who in both the Old
and the New Testaments announces the coming of the Christ: the angelic
Forerunner, as the Baptist was the human. It is probable that Satan, then
Lucifer, or known by some name that he has lost, was the third in this angelic
trinity. Daniel’s princes of Grecia and Persia may without violence be
interpreted of human potentates. 8 The highest angels seem alone in the Old
Testament to have been employed in human service: always, however, in
subordination to One Who, called an angel, is the Lord Himself. He, as will
hereafter be seen, was the Angel Jehovah, or the Angel of Jehovah, the Angel of
the Covenant, a Divine Person Who, before He became man, appeared in human form,
taking the name though He never took the nature of angels. Always distinguished
from Him are the pre-eminent ministers from the spiritual world in the
Old-Testament economy, who were thus prepared for the higher service of
ministering to the Lord when He came, Whose entire incarnate life was seen of
angels.9 Especially they drew near to Him in His sorrow: absent at the
Transfiguration, but necessary to Gethsemane. They do nut attend the Holy Spirit
on the day of Pentecost: they are comparatively lost in His higher dispensation,
and their absence on that day preludes their absence now. Not that they are
wholly absent: they still and ever are ministers for them who shall be heirs of
salvation. 10 Not as GUARDIAN ANGELS in the strict sense of the word; it is
rather for the sake of the heirs of salvation that they minister. Their angels
are not the guardians of children individually, any more than Peter’s angel11
was his specific guardian. Hence while the tenor of the Word of God permits us
to include angel-ministry among the all things which work together for good, 12
it is careful so to describe and define their service to mankind as to render
both unreasonable and sinful every form of the worshipping of angels.13

1 Hebrews 1:14; 2 2 Kings 19:35; 3 Deuteronomy 33:2; 4 1 Timothy 3:16; 5 Daniel
10:13; 6 Colossians 1:15; 7 Luke 1:19; 8 Daniel 10:20; 9 1 Timothy 3:16; 10
Hebrews 1:14; 11 Acts 12:15; 12 Romans 8:28; 13 Colossians 2:18.

HISTORICAL.

Whatever else of theological interest belongs to Angelology may be touched upon
in a brief notice of its historical aspects: with reference, first to
Superstition, and secondly to Infidelity.

1. The Jewish and the Christian Churches have their respective developments of
superstition on this subject, the former being the basis of the latter. After
the Captivity, Jewish theology betrayed to some extent the infection of its
contact with foreign speculations, especially in Persia: the Apocrypha abounds
with evidences of a departure from the simple teaching of the Old Testament, as
that takes its last form in Daniel.

During the interval before the final settlement of the New-Testament canon there
appears a tendency in the Christian Church to honor the angels unduly. The
seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, A.D. 787, concedes to them proskuneései,
though not the Divine latreúoo. The Nicene Creed, issuing from an earlier and
better Council, had declared that they were created; and Irenaeus had protested
against invocation of angels. But the evil made steady progress in the general
corruption of Christian doctrine, and received its final confirmation at Trent.
There is no error more distinctly guarded against in Scripture: Hóra meé, See
thou do it not . . . worship God. 1 Superstition has made the world of evil
angels also its domain. Forgetting the great change that the coming of Christ
has effected, and that the influence of evil spirits has been more effectually
controlled than it was before, the Christian Church during almost its entire
history down to the Reformation was haunted by an unevangelical idea of their
operation in all regions of the Divine Government, physical and spiritual. Hence
the place given to Satan, as having a right to the redemption price, in the
doctrine of the Atonement; hence the elaborate ceremonials of exorcism; hence
the abject dread of the powers of malign spirits in the infliction of the
natural calamities of life: hence the notion of personal contacts with the Evil
One; and hence, lastly, the judicial treatment of witchcraft and sorcery down to
a recent time.

1 Revelation 19:10.

2. But infidelity sweeps away, not only the superstitious appendages of the
revealed truth concerning angels, but the revealed truth itself. In its more
reckless form it has renounced the whole economy of the angel world. Though the
Biblical revelation only confirms the inferences of analogical reasoning and the
universal instinct of mankind, skepticism not only doubts but denies the
existence of beings superior to man: thus rejecting in fact the whole Bible with
the very fabric of which this revelation is interwoven. It specially argues
against the personality of Satan: either returning to the Manichsean delusion of
an independent power autothuhs and agennhtos, or making him merely the
personification of evil which undeniably exists. But here Rationalistic
Christian theology joins the infidel. It is enough to say that the person of the
Enemy of Christ is as distinctly presented in the history of revelation, though
not so fully described, nor so constantly present, as the Person of the Lord
Himself. There is nothing more remarkable, nothing more worthy of study, than
the parallel development of the representative of sin and the Redeemer from sin
throughout the Bible. In the same way the argument against demoniacal possession
may be met. Though Scripture allows that suffering, as part of the penalty of
sin, is, like death itself, in some respect in the ministry of Satan, it makes a
distinction between all trouble or wickedness arising from within, and the
torment inflicted by evil spirits from without. There are in the New Testament
daimonizouenio, persons demonized, who, in body and soul, if not in spirit, are
under the special influence of daemons. That this was a reality, and not a style
of language accommodated to Jewish notions, is evident from the combination of
healing diseases and casting out devils in the Savior’s commission, as also from
His habitually addressing Himself to personal beings when He cast them out.
There is a grand consistency in the Scriptural revelation on this subject. The
Old Testament gives some distant indications of such possession; when our Lord
appears there is an outbreak of these powers on earth: but the chief enemy is
always pre-eminent, as appears in the fact that the last Evangelist withdraws
his attention from all besides him, never mentioning the daemons. And it is an
illustration of the same consistency that their full force in human affairs has
never been felt since the Conqueror said: Now shall the prince of this world be
cast out. 1 How far they are still permitted to seduce men, and what part they
play in the modern devices of so-called spiritualistic science, which professes
to call them in as evidence of another world, we need not now inquire.

1 John 12:31.

3. This last observation will apply to the whole topic which is here closed: the
angels have retreated from their high preeminence. The doctrine concerning them
belongs to the entire scheme of revelation, as in course of delivery, and
pervades every part of it. The angel world is around us everywhere in Biblical
theology, and we must prepare ourselves by a firm faith at the outset for the
reappearance of its representatives as we proceed through the several doctrines.
It has been viewed here only or chiefly in its relation to the universe as
created, but at every stage in our future course it will meet us again.

Meanwhile, it may be well to observe at this point that the ANGELOLOGY of the
Bible is always subordinated to human interests; and, saving as they are
connected with redemption wrought out and administered, spirits good and evil,
or rather spirits and angels, need not and should not be too curiously
investigated. Why askest thou thus after My name? said One in the Old Testament.
Seeing, it is secret, He added, doubtless for a higher reason than what is here
suggested: His name was as yet concealed, and in a certain sense is concealed
for ever. But the caution is generally appropriate. The student, and the
preacher especially, should in this matter limit himself to the clear
testimonies of the Oracle, not keeping back the truth from the skeptic, but not
pandering to a false Spiritualism, as the modern word is. Both evil spirits and
angels may, on these conditions, most fruitfully and profitably enter into
practical theology, even as they necessarily occupy a large and important place
in dogmatics. THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE. The material universe as such occupies a
considerable place in revelation, which establishes a few cardinal principles of
great importance to theology. Matter is declared to have been created by God,
though no name is given to it; fashioned into the orderly arrangement of
systems, it is the Kosmos; these are the result of successive creations, which
are indicated by the term worlds. We are taught that the universe of matter was
ordained to be the scene of life, passing through its several stages up to life
spiritual; but the inhabitation of other worlds, and their relations to
redemption, are questions which have little light thrown upon them in the Word
of God. Lastly, as the revelation of Scripture concerns only that part of the
universe which belongs to man, we cannot draw any certain conclusion as to the
final destiny of the universe of matter from the testimony of prophecy
concerning the end of our heaven and earth: we are left to the inferences of
analogy. These general principles may be usefully applied to many current
theories and cosmical speculations.

MATTER.

Matter, or ulh, has no name in Scripture: it is indicated there generally as
having been at first without form and void, diffused, unorganized, and lifeless.
Science is left free to discover and give its own names to the primary elements.
The atoms of the universe and their molecular arrangements are never once
alluded to: they are left to man’s discovery. But the same God Who is the Father
of spirits was the Creator of pure matter. He impressed their unchangeable
properties upon all the particles of the universe, created, in their number and
potentialities, like the angels, at once. Before this truth Materialism, ancient
and modern, in its variety of forms as a theory, vanishes. In ancient philosophy
it was the anima mundi, or soul of the world, or natura naturans that took the
place of God.

Modern Materialism, through all its phases down to Positivism, makes everything,
including the phenomena of mind, physical; and, while acknowledging that it is
as yet far from being able to account for the facts, and that the molecular laws
of mind, feeling, and will are perhaps undiscoverable, it nevertheless asserts
that they are the results of changes in matter and governed by invariable laws,
directed by something inscrutable and unknowable behind. Materialism has been
the same in every age: modern science has not advanced one step beyond ancient
philosophy; except in this, that it gives up that vestige of instinct towards
God that Pantheism exhibited. The ancient theorists thought of a plastic soul in
things: pan-Theism. The modern theorists think only of matter as the vehicle of
energy: pan-Materialism. One of its tendencies is to resolve matter into a
congregation of forces; by which it unconsciously argues itself in a circle back
to God.

Scripture, which asserts that the beginning of the living creature was a new
Divine act, vindicates the reality of matter from the philosophy which would
resolve it into nothing.

Idealism and Realism preside over the whole range of speculation on this subject
respectively. The former as represented by Berkeley denies the existence, or the
possibility of proving the existence, of any substance behind the phenomena
which affect our senses: these senses being ordained to see either in God
Himself, or according to some unknown laws, what seems to be matter. But,
however that notion may be qualified, it falls before the early testimony which
tells us that the material universe was formed before there were any creatures
to receive its impressions. So all the more recent theories of force which would
annihilate objective substance as the vehicle of energy must yield to the
evidence of a creation which preceded all life. This hypothesis seems to breathe
into the inorganic universe a kind of life, called force, which preceded its
organic forms; but it has no support It would seem, like Berkeley’s theory, to
be a useful ally of the theologian, in as far as it saves us from the necessity
of believing in a creation apart from God; but the testimony of Genesis confirms
the universal realistic instinct of man, that there is a substance behind the
phenomena of matter. As it regards the scientific theories of the persistence of
force, the conservation of energy, and the correlation of its physical
manifestations, they do not in the slightest degree affect theology, until they
penetrate the region of life. When it is affirmed that physical and vital forces
are correlated and convertible—in other words, that all the phenomena of
thought, and feeling, and will, are only transformed forces of matter—sound
reasoning is violated as well as Scripture. It may be said that the material
basis of animal and vegetable life is something in the molecular arrangement of
its particles; and this may be called protoplasm. But it cannot be shown that
anything but living matter communicates or feeds life. Spontaneous generation is
a figment that Materialists have made their as yet unknown God. The true God
giveth life, and breath, and all things. 1 But, as man’s body was created for
the instant inhabitation of his living soul, so the matter of the universe was
intended to be the instant abode of life. That life was breathed into it by the
Spirit Who brooded over our chaos: He is the Lord and Giver of life in every
manifestation of it, from the most elementary protoplasm up to that which
beholds the face of God.

1 Acts 17:25.

OTHER WORLDS. The testimony of Revelation to the universe of other worlds than
ours is limited. But what we have is consistent with every discovery and every
rational hypothesis of modern science. The heavens have their host: to us an
ambiguous word, which refers either to the worlds or to the inhabitants of those
worlds, but is in the Scripture limited to the physical universe. As ordered in
systems the universe is a kosmos, as in our Lord’s words, before the foundation
of the world: 1 the ancient use of the term to signify the ordered whole of the
heavenly bodies is retained in the New Testament, though the common use limits
it to man’s world. Hence it is too pan, the universe; which, however, is never a
unity in the Bible, heaven and earth being sundered. Viewed in the orderly
succession of its creations the universe is made up of the aiones: through Whom
also He made the worlds, 2 that is, the worlds which fill the ages of so-called
past eternity. One of the first exercises of faith is said to embrace the fact
that these worlds were framed, kateertísthai, 3 as the phenomenal, or in their
present appearance, ra pXeiroficva. The silence of the Scripture as to the
inhabitants of these worlds is unbroken. But there is nothing either in its
words or in its silence that forbids the reasonable inferences of analogy. The
one point at which the vast extent of the peopled realms of the universe touches
theological faith is the immeasurable dignity conferred on man’s insignificance
by the Incarnation. More than once the ancient Scripture seems to be oppressed
though not overwhelmed by this truth.

"We can interpret our meaning, at least, into those passages which so often bid
the children of the earth to lift up their eyes and behold the innumerable hosts
of heaven.

What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? 4 But in the Creator’s relations to
His creatures there is no great and small, no greater and less: the transcendent
mystery of the Divine condescension must be regarded in itself, and without the
most distant reference to the insignificance of man in relation to the universe.
The Old Testament derives a lesson from the contemplation that knows no doubt or
dismay or fear: its faith is strengthened rather than endangered by every view
of the steadfast and unviolated ordinances of heaven. Lift up your eyes on Ugh,
and behold Who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by
number: He calleth them all by names, by the greatness of His might, for that He
is strong in power; not one faileth. 5 All are equally great in His sight: NOT
ONE FAILETH; each has the burden of its own glorious destiny.

1 John 17:24; 2 Hebrews 1:2; 3 Hebrews 11:3; 4 Psalms 8:4; 5 Isaiah 40:26. THEIR
COMPARATIVE INSIGNIFICANCE.

There is no grander truth revealed than the comparative insignificance of the
creature as material. All the constellations of systems in the universe—or, as
the Scripture says, the heavens —are the work of the Divine hand, which shall
roll them up as a garment, and they shall be changed. 1 They are of less value
in all their vast extent and grandeur than one immortal spirit, And with the
utmost tranquility it is said that all the phenomena of creation will pass away,
be dissolved. 2 In the spirit of Jonah we take pity upon the great works of man
which are to be destroyed. But the greater works of God are destroyed, and it
costs the Supreme no thought! As to the substance behind the phenomena, and its
reconstruction, more will be said hereafter.

1 Hebrews 1:12; 2 2 Peter 3:11.

MAN.

Man, or mankind, occupies the noblest and most ample section in the history of
creation as revealed in Scripture. This is in harmony with the central place
which he occupies in Divine revelation generally, as the object around whom all
revolves. His pre-eminence as a creature is noted in the circumstantials of
dignity attending his origin; and in the relations he bears to the other orders
of the creature. But it is chiefly seen in the constituent elements of his
nature, reflecting the Divine Image in which he was formed. this being the basis
of his dignity and prerogatives as the head of the earthly creation; in the
organic unity of man as constituting one species; and the connection between the
original estate, fall, and redemption of mankind as he was a probationary
creature. This department is sometimes called ANTHROPOLOGY, a term which in
science means the zoological and biological study of human nature. Not including
formally, though not absolutely excluding, the physical, physiological, and
psychological study of our species, it is its theological bearing that we mainly
keep in view. This, however, must not be too narrowly limited; such topics as
the Original State of Man, the Image of God in Man, Man before the Fall, do not
exhaust it. It is better to regard the whole as a wide field of which these
subjects are only sections. THE NATURE OF MAN. The Divine record represents to
us our first father, Adam, as the end and consummation of all creating acts, and
gives his twofold nature a peculiar relation to both the spiritual and the
material worlds. In the unity of body and soul, the one taken from the earth and
the other breathed into him by his Maker, he is the link between these two great
spheres.

1. The bringing of man into the world is in Genesis the result of a special
design. And God said, Let Us make man: 1 the first intimation in Scripture of
the Divine counsel preceding the act. Of the other creatures it is said, Let the
waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life 2 . . .. Let
the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind; 3 but every word
touching the origin of the human race indicates the issue of all former
purposes: the creation of A NEW THING. Hence the emphatic double account of
man’s beginning: generally in Genesis 1:1-31 the introduction of the race with
its pre-eminent dignity into the system of things, and, particularly, in Genesis
2:1-25. the physical details of his origin with specific intervention for the
formation of the Mother of all living. Hence also the clause in the second
account which returns to the creating act to show that the body of the first man
was immediately fashioned out of the dust, and that the origin of his life was
the breathing into him of a living soul. 4 The same Divine act produced both
body and soul, without any interval. This is said of no other creature; though
the real distinction between man and the lower creation is not in the words of
this verse, but in the first note of man’s origin: Let Us make man in Our
image.5 1 Genesis 1:26; 2 Genesis 1:20; 3 Genesis 1:24; 4 Genesis 2:7; 5 Genesis
1:26.

2. This gives breath of lives a higher meaning: there is a spirit inMan 1:1 as
well as an animal life. And the high distinction of human nature is that in its
constitution it is a union of the two worlds of spirit and matter, a reflection
of spiritual intelligences in the material creation. The immaterial principle is
the soul or psuche as connected with matter through the body, and the spirit or
pneuma as connected with the higher world. There is in the original record a
clear statement as to the two elements of human nature. Man derives his name
from the word earth, one of the constituents of which his body was formed:
yatsar connected with adamah earth. 2 But this was not as yet, though it
afterwards became, a name of humiliation, for the inbreathing of life or lives
gave him his essential dignity; this Adam, or Man, the person and the nature he
represented, became a living soul, lnepesh chayaah. 3 Though the same word is
used concerning other creatures, which have the abortive rudiments of
intellectual life, it is here used with a special emphasis. His name is Man,
from the earth; his nature is that he is a living soul, which is also an
immortal spirit. But it must be remembered that the two substances are distinct.
The Bible confirms the instinctive belief in the difference between mind and
matter: the unsearchable mystery of the nature of the union between soul and
body, and the secret of the action of the one on the other, or rather of their
mutual action, are left unsolved. Whether the term soul or the term spirit be
used, there is throughout Scripture the most emphatic testimony to the unity and
dignity of the higher element of human nature. This Dichotomy is quite
consistent with a certain measure of truth in the theory of Trichotomy which
separates between soul and spirit. It will hereafter be seen that St. Paul
adopts that distinction for practical purposes: when he does so, the soul and
spirit are distinguished as one the immaterial principle in relation to the
world of sense and the other in relation to a world of spiritual realities; just
as the flesh as the material and the body as the organization are distinguished
when occasion demands.

1 Job 32:8; 2 Genesis 2:7; 3 Genesis 2:7. THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. The Image of
God is made the first note and attribute of human nature: the first revealed
truth concerning our race declares the peculiarity of man as a new thing in
creation to be this, that he should bear in himself the likeness of his Creator.
It was the Divine purpose, spoken before the creating fiat was executed, that
this should be his distinction from every other creature. Hence this image must
belong to his inmost creaturely constitution. As such it was Essential and
Indestructible: the self-conscious and self-determining personality of man, as a
spirit bearing the stamp of likeness to God and capable of immortality, was the
reflection in the creature of the Divine nature. While all creatures up to man
reflect the perfections of their Creator, it is man’s distinction, made emphatic
in the act of his creation, that he alone should bear His image. This therefore
is the ground of his dignity, and, while that dignity belongs to his nature as a
whole, it necessarily is found in that part of his nature which is not material,
and therefore imperishable. From beginning to end the holy record regards this
image as uneffaced and ineffaceable, and still existing in every human being.
But it also speaks of the renewal or restoration of that image in its moral
lineaments. There is a sense then in which it was also Accidental and Amissible:
the free spirit of man reflected the Divine holiness in a perfect conformity of
mind, feeling, and will, which was lost through sin: not utterly lost only
because redemption intervened. The Image of God was, according to the sacred
narrative, concreated in man: it was in his nature, and no part of it was
super-added after his creation. Finally, as the Eternal Son is, in the supremest
sense, Himself the Image of God, Adam as the representative of mankind was
created in or after that Image. And, thus in his creation related to the Second
Person of the Trinity, he was also united to the Triune by the gift of the Holy
Ghost, that breath of God which gave him life eternal.

1. It is usual to distinguish between the Natural or permanent and the Moral or
accidental image of God in man; it must be remembered, however, that the moral
image in a true sense was also natural, and that in the creation there could be
no distinction. But the distinction between the image that was indestructible
and that which might be lost has an unqualified and necessary truth. It lies in
the very notion of a created free personality: the freedom of the created spirit
is the purest reflection of the Divine nature, but that same freedom involves
the possibility of its excellence being lost. That which is its highest glory
contains the secret of the possibility of its deepest degradation. Theology
cannot take a second step unless this is admitted in its full force.

2. The distinction runs through the entire fabric of Scripture. It is in the New
Testament, however, that we find the elements of the complete doctrine on this
subject as on every other connected with the original and the restored condition
of mankind. It speaks of the renewal of the regenerate into the image of the
Creator as that consisted in Original Righteousness, or the moral image. The two
cardinal passages which must regulate our views are in the Epistles to the
Colossians and the Ephesians. In the former the Apostle speaks of believers as
having put on the new man, which is renewed (or in process of renewal) unto
knowledge after the image of Him that created him. 1 In the latter the
description becomes an exhortation: be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and
that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true
holiness. 2 These passages must be united and carefully compared, as they
supplement each other.

They both distinguish between the first creation and the second in Christ,
between the ktísantos and the ananeoústhai. The latter verb refers to the
restoration of what the former describes as originally given but lost. Both
passages make the knowledge of God—that is, the spiritual knowledge of God—the
object of the restoration. This the latter and more amplified passage unfolds as
righteousness and holiness: the first man knew the Creator’s law, his will was
conformed to it, and he was righteous in principle; he knew the Creator’s
holiness, loved Him as holy, and was holy himself in principle. Thus the moral
image of the Creator lost in the Fall is restored through the putting on of the
same image as presented in Jesus Christ, the eternal Image of God manifested in
human nature. Each of the passages speaks of putting off the old man, which is
the fallen and corrupt nature as derived from Adam. In the former, the process
is regarded as gradual; in the latter, the new image was stamped upon the soul
in its regeneration. But the second passage adds what the former omits, that the
Holy Spirit Who was the conservator of the holy image in Paradise is the agent
of its renewal in redemption: be renewed in the Spirit, the seat of whose
working is in the mind. Hence the New Testament never speaks of a renewal of the
Divine image in man’s nature as he is man: only in his fallen nature. The
indestructible image is in both Testaments always referred to as existing still
in man universal. Men which are made after the similitude of God 3 is the
language of St. James. And St. Paul, referring to the heathen, and quoting the
testimony of their own poets with approval, For we are also his offspring, 4
goes on most expressly to argue from the likeness of the children of men to
their Creator that their thoughts of God ought to be altogether spiritual:
rebuking idolatry as contrary to the instinct of the Divine image within us. So,
also, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts with the utmost
generality that God is The Father of spirits. 5 And this is in harmony with the
Old Testament. After the Flood there is a most impressive remembrance of the
abiding and permanent dignity of the chastised race. The waters had not washed
away the original image; nor was it created anew in those who were saved. No
clearer evidence of the indestructibility of the Divine likeness could be given
than that of the sanction thrown around human life; it is inviolate, for in the
image of God made HeMan 1:6 Of course this does not decide the question whether
or not immortality was part of the indestructible image, though it might seem
that we affirm it by using the term indestructible. We are told by St. Paul, in
one of the few passages which speak of athanasía, that it is God Who only hath
immortality, 7 but He Who is the life hath given to man in His Son to have life
in himself.

1 Colossians 3:10; 2 Ephesians 4:23-24; 3 James 3:9; 4 Acts 17:28; 5 Hebrews
12:9; 6 Genesis 9:6; 7 1 Timothy 6:16.

3. It is of great importance to remember that whatever is meant by the image of
God was at once concreated in man. In the Middle Ages a distinction was
established between the Image and the Likeness, between the two Hebrew terms
btsalmeenuw and kidmuwteenuw. This was formulated by the catechism of the
Council of Trent thus: Tum originalis justitiae donum addidit. The doctrine of
Rome is that immunity from concupiscence or victory over it was a supernatural
and added gift, like immortality; that over and above his " pura naturalia"
there was a righteousness in which Adam was " constitutus." Hence all that he
lost or could lose was the gift of his original righteousness, which left the
natural conflict between flesh and spirit without the restraint of the added
gift. Man has still all that in which he was created as such. The effect of this
view will be hereafter seen when we reach the doctrine of Original Sin.
Meanwhile, it is sufficient now to assert the Scriptural doctrine that whatever
belonged to his likeness to God was stamped upon man in his original character:
he received both the image and its superscription.

4. The doctrine of this Divine image is carried to its highest point, and beyond
the Old Testament record, when it is connected with the Eternal Son as the
original, absolute, archetypal Image of God. This description of the Second
Person in the Trinity is next to that of Son the most common in the New
Testament: it almost becomes a proper name.

He is the eikoón toú Theoú, 1 the IMAGE or GOD, as the outbeaming of all the
Divine glories and the full expression of the Divine nature towards the
creature, regarded as possible or as actual. In the image of that Image was man
created. Both in his first and in his second creation the Son was the archetype
and pattern. It was this specific relation of the Son that made it possible,
becoming, and appropriate, that He should be the Redeemer of the fallen race: a
truth that may be pondered profitably, if it is not perverted into the doubtful
notion of a necessary incarnation, apart from sin, of the Second Person.

1 2 Corinthians 4:4.

5. But this doctrine is incomplete without the addition of the supernatural gift
of the Holy Ghost: if that may be called supernatural which belonged to the
union of God with this His Elect Creature. The Holy Trinity must be connected
with every stage of the history of mankind. As the Protoplast was formed in the
image of the eternal Image—a son of God,1 after the likeness of the
ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON—so he was under the spiritual and natural government of the
Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. He Who brooded over the
chaos, presided over all the successive dispensations of life in its advancing
stages towards perfection, and was the supreme life inbreathed into the highest
creature, took full possession of that new creature. He did not add the moral
image, but He guided the principles of action of man’s soul created in that
image. This solves the difficulty sometimes expressed as to the creation of a
character which, it is said, must of necessity be formed by him who bears it.
Man was led of the Spirit, 2 Who was the power of love in his soul, already in
his first estate as now in his last estate. How long this holy discipline lasted
we are not given to know; but we do know that the Fall was its departure as a
free and perfect education. This explains also the wonderful endowments of Adam,
who reasoned and formed his language, and understood and gave names to his
fellowcreatures below him. The LORD GOD of the garden was the Holy Ghost in the
human soul. The Spirit in man’s spirit must not, however, be confounded with the
image of God as such: the gift was distinct, but the true complement and
perfection of every other gift. This is, as will be afterwards seen, the secret
of the trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit in human nature.

1 Luke 3:38; 2 Galatians 5:18.

6. From all this it appears that the expression Image of God, in relation to the
original constitution of Adam, is a very broad one. A few particulars are not
enough for its statement. It includes the whole sum of man’s dignity and
prerogative, and it brings all that belongs to God into some relation with this
His highest reflection in the creature.

There is nothing Divine that is not reflected in some most wonderful sense: the
Holy Trinity, and all the Attributes, in the unity of light and love. THE
NATURAL AND FEDERAL UNITY OF THE RACE.

Adam was created as the head of a race, to descend from him by natural
generation. He represented that race in his supremacy over the lower world; as
also in his subjection to a probationary law. Thus he was, in a certain sense,
both the natural and the federal head of mankind: in him both the natural and
the spiritual development and destiny of the human species were decided.

1. As one of the laws of man’s combination of spirit and matter, he propagates
his species in the integrity of its individual members. Adam begat a son in his
own likeness, after his image. 1 This sentence, following on the account of the
creation, and connected with it, proves that there were not two or more
simultaneous creations of man, or creative centers: the lines of Cain, Abel, and
Seth meet in Adam. It shows also that immediate creation, as in the case of
angels, was no longer the law. It seems to favor what is known as the theory of
Traducianism, the propagation of the entire being of man by natural generation;
though it does not preclude the theory of Creationism, which regards the
individual spirit as in every case created by God, the Father of spirits. 2 Both
theories must be in a certain sense true, but the secret of their unity is past
our finding out The doctrine of the Pre-existence of human souls, which, after a
fall in a supersensible state, were sent for punishment, trial, or expiation,
into human bodies, is altogether contrary to the record of Genesis.

1 Genesis 5:3; 2 Hebrews 12:9.

2. The human race in Adam was invested with supreme prerogatives over the lower
creation. The first man was the representative of God upon earth. It yielded its
secrets to his knowledge, its fruits sprang from his cultivation, and its
inhabitants were consigned to his government. It is difficult now to estimate
the dignity of this prerogative: it was not the image itself, but was its
necessary consequence. Much of the miseries of our race is due to its
forfeiture. The history of science and civilization is the history of the
struggles of mankind to repair the loss. The remembrance of it as a vanished
estate and the anticipation of its return unite in the poetry of the nations.
The poetry of the Bible finds the same expression in Psalms 8:1-9, specially as
touching the past; and the Epistle to the Hebrews expatiates upon it in
reference to the future, 1 when the second Head of mankind shall restore to the
race what it has lost.

1 Hebrews 2:8 3. The first man was in a certain sense the federal representative
of his race as placed in a state or condition of trial with two sides of a
tremendous alternative before him.

Hereafter we must consider this more fully: suffice now that the record in
Genesis, interpreted by St. Paul to the Romans, represents the dealings of God
with our first parents as regarding their posterity in them. Adam was in a state
of probation, and man was in a state of probation: that is, the garden was a
scene of test to the whole estate of mankind. The failure of man was foreseen;
but it was permitted, because of the new creation and new probation which a
second Adam would introduce: here is the profoundest problem of our origin and
destiny. With all this, however, we have not yet to do. Enough that the entire
human race was as one organic unity represented in Adam, even as it was as one
organic unity represented by Christ. If one died for all, then were all dead or
all died: 1 this is equally true of the first and of the Second Adam.

1 1 Corinthians 15:14.

4. It might seem as if God, in the creation of man, took account of his coming
fall and decreed redemption. The dust was ready to receive him when he returned
to his earth, and the spirit to return to the God Who gave it. In the New
Testament St. Paul tells us that the first man is of the earth, earthy, 1 and
that in him the natural body was given to man; adding further that the Second
Man is of heaven, and became a life-giving Spirit, whereas Adam became a living
soul. The comparison of Genesis with St. Paul’s comment shows that there was a
development of being, as it were, purposed and suspended in Adam: that he was to
have enjoyed immortality through the gradual or sudden spiritualization of his
bodily frame; but that it required the Last Adam to come to accomplish the
design of creation. Through the Fall, the first Adam became to us all the father
of a dying nature: he bereft himself and us of the quickening Spirit Who would
have rendered the resurrection needless. But this glance into the coming mystery
of the Cross is anticipating.

1 1 Corinthians 15:45-49.

HUMAN HYPOTHESES. This Divine account of man’s origin displaces every other
devised by man’s science.

Accepting the testimony, as we believe it, of the Creator Himself, we have only
to stand on the defensive. " Neganti incumbit probatio." And it may safely be
said that no other hypothesis of the production of mankind has yet proved its
case. Those which deny the general principles, of creation have been already
considered, as also those which have given other accounts of the origin of our
race. One thing it settles definitively: that it has not been produced by any
development of the principle of life in matter, whether the theory takes its
earliest rude form that man is terrigena, autochthon, a production of the soil,
or the scientific evolutional form of later days; that his history has not been
a gradual ascent from the savage state, but that the savage condition is a
descent from his original; and that he was created in one type, the
representative of a single species. The slightest doubt on any of these points
is inconsistent, not only with the subsequent matter of theology, but with the
primitive record, the only one we possess, of the creation of mankind. According
to the principle we adopt, and must adopt, it is not directly necessary to
examine the hypotheses of scientific Anthropology; for science has no generally
accepted hypothesis which fundamentally contradicts Scripture. On all the points
just mentioned, and especially the unity of the race, the best representatives
of science are on our own side. THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

Speculations as to the Origin of Man upon the earth have been more or less bound
up with those on the origination of life generally. Antiquity had its vague
theories, half poetry, half science, of the necessary evolution of all forms of
life from the soil. Men were autochthones, terrigenae, born of the earth. The
Pantheism of every age has held the same idea, but dignified it by the
supposition of an internal source of life which moulds matter into forms
innumerable, and that of man among the rest: assuming its highest known
immaterial expression in the human subject. Materialism inverts the process, and
makes man an organism in which matter exhibits its perfection in the phenomena
of thought and conscious personality. Modern speculations on this subject differ
generally from the ancient, in consequence of their being constructed on a
theory that does not necessarily exclude a personal God, the origin of all life.
Placing Him at the ultimate point where life originated, they regard the
evolution of all the forms of life as the operation of forces impressed upon
matter, or constituting matter itself: some making the long time up to man, and
his high intelligence, a continuous advance of nature upon itself, naturally
selecting and making permanent its best types; others regarding the original law
as having provided for a series of leaps from species to species: but all,
whether they intend it or not, practically denying the creation of the human
soul or spirit as a substance distinct from matter. It is impossible so to state
the theory of evolution as to preserve the integrity of the higher element in
man’s nature. But the true theory of that nature requires that something was
superadded to the physical and immaterial life that lay behind it in the history
of the creation. The Scriptural account is plain and express: man was created in
the image of God. 1 This was the formal character of his nature as new in the
Divine economy: and modern science will never find rest until it is
acknowledged.

1 Genesis 1:27.

UNITY OF THE RACE. The UNITY of the race, or the human species, is a subject
which brings much modern science into collision with Scripture.

1. The holy record declares that the species of man is one, and that it sprang
from one common ancestor: Adam being the personal name of the first man, and the
generic name of mankind. This truth is the common foundation of the doctrines of
sin and redemption. By one man sin entered Mo the world; 1 and death the
consequence of that has passed upon all men. There was no other centre of the
same species: God hath made of one blood all nations of men. 2 Christ is the Son
of Man; and He the One died for all the entire history of Revelation, and the
whole economy of human development as that of sin and recovery from sin, is
based on this assumption.

1 Romans 5:12; 2 Acts 17:26.

2. No results of modern science disprove, or even render doubtful, this truth.
On the contrary, evidences converge from all quarters to confirm it. Whatever
criteria are applied to test the unity of species—whether physiological or
psychological—the human subject sustains. And the history of the race furnishes
a multitude of corroborations. In two lines especially, those of language and
religion, the argument, if argument it may be called, gathers its endless
materials. Comparative philology and comparative theology, the science of
language and the science of religion, both throw wonderful light upon the past
of mankind; but upon no truth does that light fall more brightly than upon the
unity of the human race. Meanwhile, the sacred record gives a clear account both
of the central unity and of the manifold diversity of the languages of men; both
of the fundamental unity and endless variations of their religious beliefs.

ANTIQUITY OF MAN. The antiquity of man on the earth is simply a chronological
question. Christ came at the end of the world 1 and in the fullness of the time;
2 but over how long a series of ages the preparations for His corning extended
is not expressly declared. Provided the unity of the race be maintained, the
length of its past continuance on earth is a subordinate matter. If longer, it
only enlarges the number of the Redeemer’s subjects, though of course it deepens
the mystery of His long delay. Whatever is now, however, or may hereafter be,
absolutely proved as to the antiquity of the human species in this world,
Christian theology is prepared to receive. But it is impossible to forget that
with this question is bound up a congeries of hypotheses most degrading to the
dignity of our race as such, and most perilous to the doctrine of its unity.
This chronological inquiry takes several forms. One weighs the evidence derived
from the early remains of mankind; another estimates the time requisite for the
gradual formation of their various race distinctions. And the question remains
whether the chronology of the Bible, so far as it contains a chronology, meets
the reasonable demands of the results of both investigations.

1 Hebrews 9:26; 2 Galatians 4:4.

1. It cannot be denied that the tendency of modern scientific opinion is in
favor of a very long past history of the race of man upon earth. But it is
equally undeniable that the induction of evidence is of the most precarious
character; that its elements are not only composite, but mutually inconsistent;
and that all the value it has is bound up with the assumption that man began his
history at the first remove from the mere animal life. The most substantial
evidence would, of course, be the discovery of human remains—whether the bones
of man or his instruments— in juxtaposition with those of extinct races of
animals. But that evidence is contradicted by some of the best observers:
geology has no peremptory law for the rate of deposition, on the one hand; and,
on the other, the methods of accounting for the collocation of human remains in
connection with other remains in caverns are not exhausted. Moreover, the
inferences defeat themselves. They require, for example, at least a hundred
thousand years for the existence of man on the earth; but the known laws of
population would account for the present numbers of the race in six or seven
thousand years; while, on the other hand, even supposing him to have risen from
a state of savagism, there is no reasonable account to be given of his remaining
sostationary during so many tens of thousands of historical years. Linguistic
arguments are equally precarious. Languages without a literature change very
swiftly. As to the requirements of ethnological variety, we have no means of
judging how soon the early varieties would receive from surrounding
circumstances their final impress: under our own eyes a very few generations
suffice to produce great changes and make them permanent. But we must take
higher ground. We doubt not that in due time scientific researches will answer
many of the scruples of science; and the Holy Record gives us reason to believe
that many special interpositions of Providence account for much that we cannot
quite harmonies. Though the God of creation rested, the God of providence
worketh hitherto; and we do not know all the secrets of man’s gradual descent to
the present term of his life, of the Flood, of the extraordinary impress upon
the second originals of the race, the phenomena of Babel, and the dispersion of
the nations.

2. The received chronology of our earliest sacred books is not rigorous.
Estimates perfectly orthodox have added to the commonly received term of the
duration of human life upon earth a sufficient number of centuries to allow time
enough for all race and linguistic variations. The question has theological
interest only as affecting the truth of Scripture; and, before the Scriptural
chronology is attacked, both friends and foes must agree as to what it teaches.
But it is no disparagement to the Old Testament to say that we have not yet a
certain key to its dates. That they do not harmonies with Egyptian, and Chinese,
and Indian chronology is of no importance: no reliance can be placed upon the
latter, when they go back beyond about three millennia B.C. But the laws of
reckoning generations in the Book of Genesis are not clearly determined; nor on
what principles we are to reconcile the Hebrew original and the Septuagint,
which latter allows nearly two thousand years more. The genealogies for the most
part mark the descent, and not always the regular succession. Hence there are
multitudes of estimates given by Jewish and Christian chronologists of the
period elapsing between Adam and Christ. The longest of them would allow all the
latitude we need. THE ELEMENTS OF HUMAN NATURE.

1. Discussions have never been wanting as to the constituents of human nature.
The early Christian Church inherited the ancient philosophical Trichotomy, as
expounded by Plato. The soul was regarded as the principle of animal life,
common to man and the lower orders, and the spirit as added by the Divine
inbreathing to be man’s special prerogative: whether as a new substance or a new
qualification of the soul was never determined. But this distinction, which is
adopted for practical purposes by St. Paul, was perverted to heretical ends. The
Gnostics taught that the spirit in man was an emanation from the essence of God,
and therefore incapable of being defiled by matter: thus undermining the true
doctrine of the fall, and the very foundation of redemption. Apollinaris availed
himself of it to rob the person of Christ of the human spirit: the Lord’s
sensitive soul being a sufficient vehicle for the Divine Logos. In later times
the doctrine of original sin was embarrassed by this distinction: a theory was
very prevalent, and still is, which limited the transmission of sinful bias to
the sensitive nature only. Hence the healthier tone of Christian teaching,
especially in the West, found it needful to hold fast the Dichotomy of human
nature: body and soul, flesh and spirit, being interchangeable expressions for
the dual nature of man. It will be obvious, however, to those who weigh well the
utterances of Scripture, that, provided the original constituent elements of
human nature are only two, the whole religious history of man requires a certain
distinction between soul and spirit: his one personality being connected by his
soul with the world of sense, and by his spirit with the world of faith. Yet
soul and spirit make up one person.

2. There is a modern theology, orthodox in all other respects, which assumes
that the spirit in man is the prerogative of the regenerate only: an attempt to
reconcile the two theories which Scripture does not sanction. It is true that in
the Old Testament the terms lnepesh chayaah and Wnishmat, answering to psuche,
soul, and pneuma, spirit, are used both of men and animals; but in the fuller
revelation certainly the pneuma is never given to the beast, and never denied to
man. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the
beast that goeth downward to the earth? 1 is a question which would be put in
the New Testament into different terms. The Ego of man is now pre-eminently the
spirit, inasmuch as that is the sphere in which the Holy Spirit dwells
pre-eminently; but it must not be forgotten that the person of man is below and
behind all these: the body, and soul, and spirit are his as a personality
embracing all.

It is true also that St. Paul says that the first man, Adam, became a living
soul; the Last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. 2 But the Apostle speaks here
only with reference to the resurrection; and leaves out of view the fact, that
the first man was in another sense also made a possessor of the quickening
Spirit. Most certainly when the personality of man is crowned in regeneration
with the Holy Ghost fully restored his soul becomes, in a sense in which it was
not before, the Godward principle in his compound nature.

1 Ecclesiastes 3:21; 2 2 Cor. 15:45.

3. Adam was generic humanity as well as the personal Adam: that name in the
Hebrew never knows inflection. Scripture uses no such abstract term as human
nature; though St. James speaks of every fúsis of beasts that hath been tamed
teé fúsei teé anthroopínee 1 the bestial nature is under the human nature, or
mankind. In the ancient discussion between the Realists and Nominalists the
question arose whether there is not in the Divine mind, and in human thought
reflecting the Divine mind, a reality of human nature, of which every living man
is an expression and representative. As there is an abstract theioths, of which
the Three Persons are representatives, so there is a human nature which the
Second Person represented in the Incarnation, rather than as becoming a personal
individual man.

Granting the truth of this mysterious principle—not the less true because we
cannot fathom it—every man descended of Adam presents his own personal
individualization of a generic character impressed by its Creator on mankind;
and receives into himself the generic evil of original sin, which is the sin of
the race in Adam. But this is anticipating.

1 James 3:7.


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  CHAPTER 10: 12. VOL 02 - ORIGIN OF SIN IN THE UNIVERSE AND ON EARTH
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Origin of Sin in the Universe and on Earth

SIN.

ORIGIN OF SIN IN THE UNIVERSE AND ON EARTH IN THE UNIVERSE: the Original Sin IN
THE WORLD: the Fall of Man interpretation of the Narrative

Theories The Probation and Fall Fall Active and Passive THEORIES OF ORIGIN AND
NATURE OF SIN Dualism or Necessary Principle of Evil Finite Limitation

Sensuous Nature Free Personality THE discussion of Providence has exhibited Sin,
the destruction of which was the object of the redeeming counsel, as
contemplated from eternity in connection with the origin, development, and
destiny of mankind. It is therefore as a doctrine interwoven with all the
subsequent stages of theology, being in fact one centre from which the whole may
be viewed. But it has its own range of independent topics, making it a distinct
study. We ascend first to the mystery of its Origin, in the universe and on
earth, this leading of necessity to the consideration of its Nature in itself
and of the Theories devised to account for it: then follows the relation between
Sin and Redemption, or rather the mitigating effect that the coming redemption
throws back upon the evolution of evil; thus introducing, finally, its
universality in mankind, or Original Sin, the sin adhering to the race as such
and to every member of it naturally born into the world From hamartia, the
general New-Testament denomination of sin as subjective or in the soul, has been
derived the term HAMARHOLOGY, occasionally used for this entire department. It
appears in some systems as PONEROLOGY, from ponhron or ponhria, which indicates
rather the objective character of sin or evil in its manifold relations and
consequences. It is useful to note these terms, though they are not much used in
English theology THE ORIGIN OF SIN By a necessity of thought we commence with
the origin of sin. The sacred record declares that it began in the universe with
the fall of free intelligences, failing in their probation: and that it began on
earth with the disobedience of our first parents, which brought them the
knowledge of evil as guilt and as punishment uniting in death. The history of
the first transgression, whether of angels or of men, is so presented in
Scripture as to show that the origination of evil is with the creature itself.
Whatever differences there are in the two Falls, and however much of mystery
remains in both, they unite in one thing: they preclude every theory that seeks
the principle of sin in any other source than the freedom of the spirit created
in the Divine image IN THE UNIVERSE The Scriptural account of the origin of sin
in the external universe is very brief, but very distinct; and what it lacks is
supplied by the fuller history of the fall of mankind. One Original Sinner is
indicated, who was the cause of sin to his fellows, and the instrument of its
introduction into this world

1. The absolute beginning of evil, and of sin as the cause of evil, is directly
traced to the fall of the Devil and those who are called his angels. Satan is
the representative of evil as it had its beginning in him. There are passages of
Scripture which in a marked manner make him the father of all iniquity. It is
true that many of these refer to his connection with sin in this world: for
instance, the testimony that he was a murderer from the beginning, 1 which sends
us to the history of the human Fall. He was the instrumental cause of death to
the first man; and therefore in one sense first in the transgression, 2 behind
Eve who was first in another sense. But there are some which intimate darkly
that the first spirit separated from God was his. Our Lord, who came into the
world as the Antagonist of the evil one, gave His disciples on a memorable
occasion a single hint of large meaning: I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from
heaven. 3 While we must understand these words as condensing into one flash of
revelation the whole history of the conflict with the powers of darkness, so far
as it concerns this earth, we must also regard them as giving testimony to the
fact of the primal fall of one intelligence, so essentially the first and most
prominent that he stands for the whole company who followed him. He was the head
of those angels who kept not their first estate, 4 of those angels that sinned.
5 Of him our Lord, who knew what was in devils as well as what is in man, said:
he abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. 6 This absolute
negation of any element of truth in Satan is made more emphatically positive:
when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father
of it. The lie is here essential evil, the denial of the truth of a creature’s
relation to God: he is the father of the universal lie, the father of evil and
sin. And this is made more probable by the allusions to the Devil and his
angels, 7 as comprising all the beings for whom final and irreversible judgment
waits, having been prepared 8 for them alone. Always there is assigned to one
Power a pre-eminence over a multitude of others who owed their sin to him: not,
however, through the inheritance of a propagated bias to evil, but by each one
independently yielding to his temptation or following his example. On this
subject we can say but little; suffice, that the Devil is both directly and
indirectly regarded as the Prince or archon of iniquity in the universe as well
as in this world. His was the original sin; it was the misuse of freedom; it was
the mysterious birth in his nature of an ambition to rival God, or the Son of
God, an ambition which was transferred to this world after his exclusion from
heaven; it was imitated by many others; it was irreparable, at least we hear of
no redemption or hope; and, lastly, it was the fountain of temptation to our
race 1 John 8:44; 2 1 Timothy 2:14; 3 Luke 10:18 : 4 Jude 1:6; 5 2 Peter 2:4; 6
John 8:44; 7 Matthew 25:41; 8 Jude 1:6

2. Of Satan’s relation to other worlds we know nothing. But the introduction of
evil into the world of mankind, and its history through all our generations, are
in a special manner bound up with his first apostasy, the Original Sin. The link
between the pride which caused his ruin and the transgression of our first
parents, was this: ye shall be as gods!1 Our sin is, so to speak, a reflection
or continuation of his. Hence he retains his empire and headship as the lord and
representative of the principle of evil. He has set up a kingdom of which he and
not Adam is the head. Of this more hereafter; for the present it will be enough
to enumerate the names of the original sinner, whose relation to the lapse of
mankind is his aggravated condemnation, but not the excuse of human depravity.
(1) As the representative of evil or sin in itself he is called That Wicked One,
2 absolutely; and of the propagation of all the innumerable seeds of sin it is
said: the enemy that sowed them is the Devil 3 (2) As the representative and
lord of the empire of sin, he is the God of this world, 4 the Prince of this
world,5 the Prince of the power of the air, 6 the Spirit that now worketh in the
children of disobedience; 6 a collocation which places him in solemn antithesis
to the Persons of the Holy Trinity respectively, the first with the Father, the
second with the Son, and the third with the Holy Ghost; especially when his
kingdom 7 is taken into the account. (3) As the representative of the spirit of
enmity to goodness he is Satan, or the Adversary, the Devil, and the Tempter. 8
(4) The tenor of the New Testament makes him generally the embodiment of sin:
its origin, lord, promoter, witness, and executioner. Always and everywhere he
and his angels are real persons: the personality of no agents is more expressly
revealed or spoken of in terms less liable to misapprehension But this question
enters here indirectly 1Genesis 3:1; 21 John 3:12; 3 Mat. 8:39; 4 2 Corinthians
4:4; 5 John 14:30; 6 Ephesians 2:2; 7 Matthew 12:26; 8 Job 1:6 THE FALL OF
MANKIND The Mosaic account of the Probation and Fall of the First Pair is an
inspired narrative of the origin of sin in the human race; it is not a
collection of early traditions or myths; nor an allegorical method of teaching
the moral history of sin in man; nor a combination of history, allegory, and
legend; but an historical narrative of facts, which, however, are bound up with
symbols that must have their interpretation as such. In that interpretation the
utmost caution is necessary. But no exposition can pretend to solve every
difficulty, or obviate every objection; because in our estate of sin we have no
experience of the original condition of our first parents, and therefore have
not the key to the solution of the mystery of their temptation and subjection to
evil. The brief account records that man was placed in a state of trial, with
the consciousness of the possibility of sin or separation of his will from the
Divine will; it describes the circumstances and the nature, external and
internal, of the temptation from without; and it sets before us the
preliminaries, the act, and the immediate consequences of the first
transgression or what in our human annals is the Fall of Man THE NARRATIVE The
Record gives its account of the ruin of mankind as history; that of a beginning
which flows on without break into the subsequent course of redemption. As a
narrative of simple facts it is seldom alluded to in either Testament; but such
allusions as we find assume its historical reality. Our Lord gives His sanction
to the account of the creation, quoting its very words, and indirectly including
the Fall itself. St. Paul again and again refers to the incidents as recorded in
Genesis. The history is tacitly recognized as history—primitive, fragmentary,
Oriental, it may be, and deeply symbolical, but Divine—throughout the sacred
oracles

I. The few references in Scripture are very explicit. The more carefully they
are observed, in their context, the more obvious will it be that the account of
the first transgression must be received in its simplicity, with its commingled
facts and symbols, by all who hold sacred the authority of our Lord and His
Apostles 1. In the Old Testament there are few undeniable allusions to the
circumstances of the Fall. We read in Job: if I covered my transgressions as
Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom. 1 To conceal iniquity is after the
manner of men, but there appears to be a marked reference to the colloquy
between Adam and his Maker. A passage in Hosea has been often quoted in favor of
the Paradisaical covenant of works: but they, like Adam, have transgressed the
covenant. 2 This however may be, and is, translated, like men Throughout the
older economy Adam is merged in his posterity; and the fall of mankind, like the
sin which caused it, is everywhere assumed as a postulate. The Old Testament is
not constantly laying again the foundation, rather it may be said to cease to
speak of the first principles 3 of its doctrine. Hence, as in the two passages
quoted above, man is Adam, and Adam is man 1 Job 31:33; 2 Hosea 6:7; 3 Hebrews
6:1

2. In the Gospels there is literally not one express allusion to the narrative
of the first catastrophe. It needed not our Lord’s corroboration and therefore
did not receive it. But if we weigh well His words, on the question of divorce,
we must conclude that the whole record has His supreme sanction as historical.
Have ye not read that He which made them at the beginning made them male and
female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 1 They, who read this as
history read as history what immediately follows; and the Redeemer’s
declarations, already quoted, concerning the murderer from the beginning, 2
refer obviously to the very narrative of Genesis 1 Matthew 19:4-5; 2 John 8:44

3. St. Paul, who inherited the later Jewish doctrine, and gave much of it
Christian sanction, more than once confirms the literal texture of our
narrative. So must we interpret his words, as the serpent beguiled Eve through
his subtlety; 1 where he means Satan, who was and is transformed into an angel
of light 2 instead of creeping on the earth. So also his prophecy and prayer,
the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet, 3 which is an echo of the
first promise given to man through the condemnation of the Devil. Here it may be
observed, in passing, that the Apostle by the use of the term transformed gives
us the only solution we need of the difficulty of temptation through the voice
of a serpent. St. Paul, moreover, as we shall see, founds his argument of
Original Sin on the literal narrative of the Fall 1 2 Corinthians 9:3; 2 2
Corinthians 9:14; 3 Romans 16:20

4. The comparative reserve of the rest of Scripture as to the facts and symbols
of the narrative is broken through in the last book. The Apocalypse returns back
to Genesis, and quotes almost every particular in such a manner as at once to
sanction the literalness of the account and to relieve it of some of its
difficulties. The final promise to the first Church of the Seven is: to him that
overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the
paradise of God. 1 Here the literal Eden of man, and the literal tree from which
he was excluded, reappear in their heavenly significance; but the spiritual,
which is afterward, implies the reality of the natural which was first. The doom
upon Satan has also its spiritual and eternal meaning: and the great Dragon was
cast down, the old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the
whole world. 2 His seduction of our first parents is merged in his universal
temptation from the Fall downwards; but the tremendous reality of the conflict
between him and the Seed of the Woman through all the ages of redemption is
based upon, it flows from, the first literal triumph permitted of God. The light
of the apocalyptic glory shines through all intervening ages up to the darkened
paradise of the Fall, not relieving it of its impenetrable mystery, but
confirming its literal truth. It bids us study the narrative in the spirit of
simple faith: leaving to God Himself the vindication of His righteous judgments
and unsearchable ways, and rejoicing only that the leaves of the Tree of Life
are for the healing of the nations, and that there shall be no more curse 3 to
those who enter the heavenly Paradise 1 Revelation 2:7; 2 Revelation 12:9; 3
Revelation 22:2-3

II. The two theories of interpretation termed Mythical and Allegorical are
really one; with this important difference, however, that the former denies the
Divine authority which the latter admits or does not exclude

1. The Mythical theory appeals to the universal traditions of Paradise and the
Golden Age, the unhistorical character of the Serpent, the trees, the walking of
God in the evening, and other features of the detail, as all indicating a
legendary origin. It is said that the Hebrew narrative is only one tribal
version of an idea common among the early nations. We accept the truth that
underlies this false theory. The traditions of many nations contain mythical
accounts which have been woven out of the threads of a primitive tradition; but
they declare their legendary character on the surface. There is no Myth in the
Bible, as has been already shown; and the traditions of the early history of the
world recorded in Genesis are in no way connected with any particular people.
They profess to have been revealed to the first writer of the Biblical
documents; and are incorporated into Scripture as such. They belong to the
archives of the race, and not of any one family in it: Divine Tradition before
all human traditions

2. The Allegorical method of explaining this first chapter of human history has
been adopted by the mystical school, from Philo, Clemens Alexandrinus, and
Origen downwards, through Maimonides, to modern times. It admits the Divine
origin of the Mosaic account of the introduction of sin; and supposes that the
whole scene is figurative, representing by a continuous allegory the facts of
the Fall, but having no more connection with those facts than the allegory of
the Vine brought out of Egypt had with the redemption of Israel. Now it is
undeniable that the essential meaning of the whole narrative may be extracted
from it on this principle, as may be seen in some of the best expositions of the
Alexandrian school. But this canon of interpretation is repudiated, as will be
seen, by the clear and unclouded testimony of later Scripture, as well as by the
strict literality of the style of the opening chapter of Genesis in general.
Fact and Parable are Divinely interwoven

3. The purely historical character of the narrative may be maintained in perfect
consistency with a full acknowledgment of the large element of symbolism in it.
It must be remembered that the scene of Paradise, though introduced into human
history, belongs to an order of events very different from anything that human
experience knows or can rightly appreciate

While the narrative is true, and every circumstance in it real, there is not a
feature of the Paradisaical history of man that is purely natural, as we now
understand the term. The process of human probation, whether longer or shorter,
was supernaturally conducted by symbols, the deep meaning of which we know now
only in part, though our first parents perhaps understood them by express
teaching. The garden enclosed; the sacramental Tree of Life, the nourishment of
conditional immortality; the mystical Tree of Knowledge, the fruit of which
would reveal the profound secret of freedom; the one positive precept,
representing the whole law; the symbolical serpent-form of the Tempter; the
character of the threatenings and their fulfillment on all the parties; the
exclusion from the garden, and the flaming defenses of the forfeited Eden; all
were emblems as well as facts, which almost without exception recur at the close
of revelation in their new and higher symbolic meaning. Both in Genesis and in
Revelation they are symbols or signs with a deep spiritual significance. The
remembrance of this serves two purposes. It suggests that our first parents were
bound to their Creator by a religion which made all things around them
sacramental, and some things more especially such. And it protects the simple
details of the Garden from the contempt of unbelievers, who see in them nothing
but what appears on the surface of the narrative. The water of baptism and the
eucharistic bread and wine are slight and common things in relation to the
amazing realities they signify. But the infidel spirit finds nothing in these
symbols to object against as such. Then why should it be thought a thing
incredible that the two trees of Paradise should have borne sacramental fruit?
(2.) This leads to the consideration that the history of the Fall is described
to us with constant reference to the coining redemption: it is the first chapter
in the history of man, but of man as redeemed. The whole requires to be read in
the light of the great salvation even then ready to be revealed. The penalty of
death not at once executed; the expulsion from Eden with a prophecy of future
deliverance; the Providential conditions under which the transgressors are sent
forth into the world, all indicate that the narrative of the Fall and the end of
the first probation is really the narrative of the beginning of the Gospel and
the second probation of mankind

(3.) Once more, this record describes the Fall in terms taken, so to speak, from
man’s later history. What form commandment would assume to the mind of an
unfallen creature, what the idea of the alternative in good and evil would be,
how temptation would address itself to the will which had never yet been in a
state of rebellion or vacillation, we cannot understand; for these things are
not revealed. The posture of the pure spirit in a state of probation and on the
verge of falling, but hitherto unconscious of sin, is a secret lost to us: no
mortal has since the Fall been in such a posture; nor will ever be, since
temptation will not belong to our future heaven. The same inability to apprehend
and state the truth applies to the history of the scene in our Lord’s
temptation. With regard to the temptation of both the first and the second Adam
the record adopts the language known to man as a sinner. In the case of the
sinless and impeccable Redeemer, His indwelling Divinity, or rather His
essential and not merely indwelling Divinity, was an infinite safeguard against
His undergoing what is of the essence of probationary temptation. But the
language used concerning His more than fiery trial adopts the terms with which
our sin has made us familiar. He was tested, and declared to be the Son of God
with power according to the Spirit of holiness, 1 thus to apply St. Paul’s
words. It was manifested through this ordeal that He was sinless and incapable
of sin; just as it was proved in Gethsemane that no pressure upon His spirit
could make it waver in the will of God. The hour of His highest honor on the
Mount of Transfiguration was His temptation also, in the sense of trial. He was
searched through and through by the glory of the Father and declared to be the
Beloved Son, in whom, though He was that night anew consecrated to the cross,
God was well pleased. But the temptation of our Lord is always spoken of in the
same terms which would be used concerning a holy one among ourselves. Unless we
bear the same thing in mind in reading the account of the first human trial all
will be most perplexing. There was no evil concupiscence in man’s nature; but
the woman is addressed as if it were latent in her and might be excited. The
meaning of God’s words in the threatening is discussed by the Tempter before Eve
as if she had been accustomed to compare truth and falsehood, and deduce the
inferences of suspicion. The process of first admitting the possibility of the
Divine word being untrue and His commandment not good, and then of consulting
the appetite and its decision as to the desirableness of the tree, and then of
actually taking the fruit, are all described after the manner of ordinary human
temptation. So also is the immediate sense of guilt and shame. So also is the
suggestion to Adam, and his yielding to the seduction of his temptress. The
whole process could not be described as it actually took place in the minds of
our sinless first parents: the phraseology is derived from our later guilty
experience. We are taught in the only way in which we could be made to
understand what it concerns us to know; and must submit to the limitations of
our fallen faculties

1 Romans 1:4 THE ORIGINAL PROBATION

Nothing is said concerning the degree of knowledge imparted to Adam and Eve as
to the nature, terms, and limits of their probationary estate. The record is
very simple: containing only such a bare outline as it pleased God to
communicate to the infancy of the world. But the fact of PROBATION is as plain
as words can make it. Placed in the garden to dress it and to keep it as the
centre of cultivation that might overspread the world, Adam, and the human race
in him, was on his trial. He represented his posterity; but not as a mediator
between God and them; and therefore the ordinance of probation had not the
nature of a covenant. The so-called COVENANT OF WORKS has no place in the
history of Paradise. It cannot be thought that moral creatures introduced into
existence are dealt with as parties to a covenant: the covenant idea belongs to
a different order of things, and requires a mediator. Our first parents were
simply placed under the law of their Creator, and the penalty of disobedience
made known to them. The counterpart of this, the establishment in a fixed and
consummate eternal life, may be regarded as reserved in the Divine counsel The
circumstances of the Probation were a positive commandment with its sanction,
and temptation from without: both appealing to a will consciously free or
unrestrained, and as yet under the direction of a reason on which the law or
obligation of obedience was supernaturally written

1. The one absolute law had a negative and a positive form, as connected with
the two symbolical trees of the garden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of
Knowledge. The eating of the one was a positive condition of continued life and
every benefit of creation; abstinence from the other was the negative condition.
It must not be supposed that the trees had any inherent virtue: the one to
sustain life for ever; the other to poison and corrupt the nature of man. The
solemn eating of the fruit of the tree of life was only a sacrament of
immortality; it was to the eating of every tree of the garden 1 what the
Christian Supper is to all other food. The fatal eating of the tree of knowledge
was only the outward and visible sign of a sin which, by the Divine law
inwrought in human nature, would have been followed by shame and guilt and fear
had no such tree existed Through eating its fruit man came to the actual
knowledge of good and evil, to the knowledge of his misery: a knowledge which
made him acquainted with his own power over his destiny—as if he were his own
god—and at the same time taught him that this power, independent of God, was his
ruin

1 Genesis 2:16

2. Temptation from without was more than symbolized by the instrument—fallen now
like the real tempter himself from its first estate—of that old serpent, called
the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. 1 The distinctness of this
record is of great importance. It establishes a difference between the original
sin of earth and the original sin of the universe. We need not, indeed, assume
that the angels who fell were only tempted from within: there is every reason to
think that, as through envy of the Devil came death into the world, so through
the same envy, excited by another Object in heaven, death entered among the
angels. It cannot be that sin should have its origin within the spirit of a
creature of God independently of solicitation from without. But, in the case of
man, the agency of Satan is made prominent from the beginning of Scripture to
the end: not as reducing the guilt of the first transgression, but as mitigating
its punishment, and suggesting at least a difference put between sinful angels
arid the human race 1 Revelation 12:9

3. As to the conduct of the first assault we have a very clear account, so far
as it was external: the internal element of the temptation is not referred to,
nor is the mysterious beginning of sin, the point where temptation finds,
because it creates, something to lay hold on. In other words, the origin of sin
in the as yet uncorrupt nature of man, like the origin of evil in the as yet
uncorrupt universe, finds no solution in the revelation of God. How the pure
desire of knowledge became the lust of independent forbidden knowledge, how the
natural sensibility of the soul to the enjoyment of the Tree could become evil
concupiscence, is not told. We are shut up to the solemn fact THE FALL The Fall
into sin was internal and external; the sin first of the human spirit and then
of the human flesh. Hence it may be further viewed as a voluntary or active, and
as a passive or judicial, degradation from the high estate in which man was
created I. The original lapse was at once both internal and external

1. Separation from the Supreme Will was consummated within before it was
exhibited in act. The inmost principle of sin is the severance of the self from
God: the entertainment, therefore, of the question Yea, hath God said? 1 was the
beginning of human evil. This was the first Formal Sin, though not alluded to in
Scripture as such. The outward act was the look of concupiscence towards the
tree, which had in itself the guilt of partaking, and was followed by the
partaking itself. Hence in all New-Testament references to the original sin its
principle of disobedience is made prominent. The woman being beguiled fell into
transgression: en parabásei. 2 And when Adam yielded to the enticement of Eve,
he only proved that he had already consented to her act; he also fell into
transgression His sin was disobedience, paráptooma and parakoeés: for, Adam was
not beguiled.3 1 Genesis 3:1; 2 1 Timothy 2:14; 3 Romans 5:15-16

2. Hence the first offence was spiritual and sensuous: these being united
inseparably, but, according to the Scriptural account, the sensuous temptation
taking the lead in the transgression, though the more spiritual took the lead in
the enticement. The Tempter’s suggestion appealed to what was highest and to
what was lowest in the elements of human nature: to its unbounded capacity of
knowledge and to its sensibility of the pleasures of sense. When the woman saw
that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a
tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof. 1 It must
not, however, be inferred from this that the Fall of man was simply a decline
into the slavery of sense. There is no sin that does not begin in the spirit,
though it may be made perfect in the flesh. The first sinners rejected the
restraint of God’s Holy Spirit, and made themselves independent in thought and
will, before the fruit of the forbidden tree could become a real temptation.
This hidden mystery of iniquity, behind the act of transgression, was only
brought to light in the recorded Fall

1 Genesis 3:6

3. The immediate consequences of the lapse into sin are plainly disclosed,
though still in a style partly symbolical and figurative. The first effect is
described in language with which the inmost experience of men makes them
familiar. It was the immediate knowledge of good and evil: 1 the birth of evil
conscience, the moral consciousness disturbed by a sense of guilt; the beginning
of shame, or the sense of degradation and vileness. This double consciousness
was, as it were, a new birth unto unrighteousness: the first realization in
experience of the distinction between good and evil, a distinction, however,
which had been theoretically made known by revelation to our parents while yet
untransgressing, Thus we see the external relations and the internal at once
depicted: guilt before their Judge and pollution in His sight. These drove the
transgressors from the presence of their Maker, which was the converse of the
sentiment of one of their descendants: depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 0
Lord! 2 They fled from God, because God had departed from them. They hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord God: 3 not as if they had sunk so low
as to think it possible that the trees should hide them, but from the sentiment
of spiritual fear. They felt at once that they were, unless the Creator Himself
should interpose, for ever separated from Him. Hence we have in the simple
record of the effects of the first transgression all the elements of the
doctrine of sin. It was the internal deviation of the will from the will of the
Supreme; it was objective guilt, the Divine vindication of eternal law in the
conscience; it was guilt subjectively, as the consciousness of personal fault
and obligation to punishment; and it was the expression of a sense of
separation, for the time of hopeless separation, from the presence of God: the
supreme penalty of sin 1 Genesis 3:5; 2 Luke 5:8; 3 Genesis 3:8

II. The term FALL is probably derived from the sublime description of Wisdom and
her works in an apocryphal book which contains some other references to the
beginning of sin, showing how much the later Jewish theology was occupied with
the subject. She preserved the first formed father of the world, that was
created alone, and brought him out of his Fall. Here, indeed, the fall is that
of the individual first father; but the true instinct of interpretation has
always made Adam and mankind one, and therefore adopted the expression FALL OF
MAN. It was the voluntary descent of the human will from its unity with the will
of God; it was the consequent degradation of mankind from the high prerogatives
belonging to the Divine image in which man was created. Both the active and the
passive meaning of the word, as introduced into theological language, must be
retained

1. As to the former, a superficial glance at the scene that begins human history
in the garden has led many to the conclusion that our first parents were the
victims of circumstance; that they were deceived, and unwittingly stumbled; that
mighty temptation from without co-operated with the simplicity of their own
unformed and undisciplined conscience to ruin them unawares. Bat it must be
remembered that the beings whose free personality the Righteous God tested were
created upright. Their liberty was perfect: that is, not merely they possessed
the faculty of willing or choosing indeterminately, as unconstrained by
necessary law from without; but their formal will was filled by its mi object,
fixed upon God Himself. The very nature and the terms of the test show that they
understood the alternative of good tad evil: they were taught that good was
perfect obedience to the Divine will, and that evil—which they knew and yet knew
not - was disobedience to that will. Though it was the Enemy who said, Ye shall
be as gods, knowing good and evil, 1 it was not he who first introduced to the
human mind the most tremendous of all alternatives. For God’s warning was, in
the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. 2 What other teaching
they had we are not informed; but certainly we may conclude that they were not
left in ignorance of the relation between the solitary positive precept and the
more general unspoken law of their duty as creatures of God Nor do we know what
education they had received, nor how long they had received it, from communion
with their Maker and the teaching of the Holy Ghost. We only know that on the
part both of Eve and of Adam there was a willful revolt against the Almighty;
that the act of their will was not simply the abuse of the liberty of
indifference—which in their case could not exist—but the actual wresting of it
from its determined and rightful Object; that never has human will been more
absolute in its working than theirs; that it was, so to speak, the concentrated
will of humanity turned from good to evil 1 Genesis 3:5; 2 Genesis 2:17

2. The passive Fall was commensurate with so great an evil. Viewed apart from
the Rising Again in Christ, it was a total descent of mankind from its high
destination; involving the very earth in its consequences; and deepening the
doom of the chief agent of temptation, not omitting the degradation of the
subordinate agent which he had employed. Man was no longer the image and glory
of God; 1 for, though he retained his human nature inviolate as created in the
Divine image, the glory of that image was lost His nature—using that term in its
secondary sense as the moral quality of its disposition invariably appearing in
every reproduction of the original type—became entirely perverted. Nor was woman
any longer the glory of theMan 1:2 in the best sense of that word: the relation
of woman to man was deprived thenceforward of its highest perfection Man fell
from his destination: that of an eternal progress from glory to glory in sinless
fellowship with his Creator. He declined into a lower sphere: out of communion
with heaven, into a life of external discord and internal misery. He lost his
intuitive vision of God, no longer held discourse with his Maker through the
symbols of nature, and had to begin, he and all that should be his, the very
first principles of a spiritual world. But we know not how great was the Fall:
after the first words of the Divine displeasure, not another comment is made on
the subject. Its further influence on the race, and its mitigation through the
universal Atonement is before us, but not immediately. If that Fall was not
total, it was because the Redeemer’s unseen Hand arrested it. The, Child Jesus,
already the new Father and Head of mankind, was even then set for the falling 3
and RISING UP of the human race. More, however, on this brighter aspect of the
subject must be reserved for the doctrine of Original Sin 1 1 Corinthians 11:7;
2 1 Corinthians 11:7; 3 Luke 2:34

3. In this fact—the coming redemption, or rather that redemption which was
revealed before Paradise, was shut on our first parents—we have the only answer
that can be given to the protests which have been honestly or dishonestly urged
against the narrative of the Fall. We are not indeed at a loss to vindicate the
justice of the Holy God in His deep displeasure at the first offence. But we
have not to do with the holiness of God apart from His love. From the beginning
mercy glorieth against judgment. 1 The Mediator is already between the Judge and
the sinner. And if God’s justice turned the first transgressors to destruction 2
when He drove out theMan 1:3 from the Paradise of His presence forfeited by his
sin, His mercy is still heard, following hard upon His wrath, Return, ye
children of men 1 James 2:13;2 Psalms 90:3; 3 Genesis 3:24 THEORIES OF THE
ORIGIN OF SIN

Philosophical speculation propounds various theories to account for the
derivation of sin, which, as one of the most universal facts in experience, must
have some common cause These theories combine its origin and its nature in one,
it being impossible perfectly to separate the two ideas. The most desperate of
all expedients boldly assumes an eternal principle of evil, which in its
creaturely workings becomes sin. The most specious solution makes what seems to
be evil merely the creaturely limitation on its way to perfection. Between these
and combining them is the less philosophical theory that makes sin the effect of
the residence of the spirit in the flesh of concupiscence. A consideration of
these hypotheses will lead to the true cause of sin as given by Scripture, and
confirmed by man’s common sense, the abuse of the gift of liberty ETERNAL
PRINCIPLE OF EVIL The first and most ancient speculations accounted for the
existence of sin by assuming a necessary PRINCIPLE OF EVIL in the universe

1. Inherited from the remote east, this notion was held in the Gnostic sects of
early Christianity, in Manichaeism, and in certain systems which sprang up in
the mediaeval Western Church. Zoroaster (Zarathustra), the real or imaginary
founder of the religion of Parsism, about the time of the later Jewish prophets,
represented Ormuzd (Ahura-Mazda) as the author of all good and Ahriman
(Anra-Mainyus) as the author of all evil in the nature of things. These were
independent personal spirits, ruling absolutely each in his own dominion; yet
not so absolutely as to be unrelated to each other, since they were in perpetual
conflict, and all created beings are called to make choice between them. This
ancient speculation struck deep roots in human thought, and reappeared in the
Gnostic systems of early Christian times. But in these it was modified. The evil
principle became the active agent in the creation of the material universe; he
was the Demiurgus of a matter eternally existing as ulhe, Hyle, the substance of
all evil; man was a product of the two kingdoms of light and of darkness: having
affinity with the former in his spirit, with the latter in his soul and body.
Human sin was the necessary defilement contracted by the spirit from its
alliance with matter; and redemption was the deliverance from this bondage.
Manes in the third century revived this dogma of Gnosticism, and from him it
derived the name of Manichseism: he laid stress however upon this, that these
were not two eternal gods, but two eternal principles. In the twelfth century it
appeared in the Paulician heresy; and in all ages has had its supporters among
those who have rejected Pantheism, and yet have refused to accept the personal
God of the Scriptures

2. Whatever form this old theory has assumed, it has paid its unconscious
tribute to the truth. If that principle of evil is a Person, as in Persian
Dualism, there can be no infinite and eternal God. If it is Hyle or Matter, then
its eternity as the material of evil involves a denial of every Divine
attribute. The human mind has never found rest in this conception Parsism itself
betrayed a tendency to struggle upward to the thought of an eternal essence
beyond and above Ormuzd and Ahriman, in which they had their unity and in the
process of ages would find their reconciliation. Nor are there wanting traces of
the teaching that Ahriman fell like Satan by an act of will. Though these latent
protests did not affect the essential Dualism of the whole system, they were
silent expressions of the deep conviction of reason, that there is and must be
One absolute Being, and that evil, whatever its source may be, is essentially
wrong and in conflict with what man surely knows to be right, or, in other
words, that sin is the worse eternally opposed to the better Hence, finally, it
may be said that there was a certain nobility in this ancient error contrasting
favorably with that to which we shall next turn. It admitted that there is an
awful reality in sin; it represented man as passing through a tremendous
probation; it had a dim and shadowy presentiment of guilt, thus making a great
step towards the perfect doctrine of Scripture; and it aspired towards the still
grander idea of a full and eternal redemption LIMITATION OFFINITENATURE The
necessary LIMITATION OF FINITE NATURE is a popular philosophical expedient for
the solution of the mystery. However stated and however limited, this theory
must needs make the Author of finite nature the author of sin: either absolutely
or as the necessary process of creaturely development towards the supreme good
in Himself

1. As held by the various modifications of Pantheism this speculation abolishes
sin altogether, and merges it in the general notion of the necessary development
of the nature of things. But the nature of things is God Himself, who is at once
the one eternal substance and an eternal development in two modes, thought and
matter. There is no creature, for all things are the evolution of one
substantial Being. What therefore seems to be the finite is only the infinite in
phenomenal exhibition. During its transitory appearance it is subject to the
metaphysical evil of limitation: the more of being is in the thing undergoing
development the nearer it is to perfection; the less of being it has the more it
is infected with evil, or what men call sin. But all things are only
manifestations of the One; and what seems to us contrary to the will of God is
only the process through which the end of return to the infinite essence is
reached. Pantheism knows no sin, no moral obligation; it recognizes only an
eternal necessity of accomplishing through phases of metaphysical evil the
transitory destiny of what man calls the creature 2. But something like this
theory has been, held by deep thinkers who are not Pantheists

These fall into two classes: such as make evil a necessary accident of the
creature as limited, retaining its character as sin; and such as make it a
necessary accident, but at the same time the Divinely appointed process through
which by antagonism good is evolved

(1.) The radical principle of the former class is that sin is merely a negation
of being, a quantitative less of the strength of existence. The creature cannot
be perfect: its knowledge is liable to error, its will is liable to deviation.
And this very liability is metaphysical evil: it cannot be conceived to be
protected from the possibility of sin, and the possibility in the severe logic
of facts is the sin itself. But that sin is only a negative thing; it has no
positive existence, and needs no EFFICIENT cause for its origination. If any
cause is needed, a DEFICIENT cause may be invented for the purpose. This
philosophical expedient, it may be observed, was much countenanced by Augustine
and others of the earlier Fathers; it is the strength of the Theodicy of
Leibnitz; and both in ancient and modern times has been resorted to for the
vindication of the Divine character in the permission of evil

(2.) Many modern writers have dwelt much on a theory which accounts for sin on
the principle of a necessary antagonism, or the operation of a universal law of
action and reaction. As life and death, light and darkness, attraction and
repulsion, the centripetal and centrifugal energies of the universe, are
opposites which in their interaction make the perfection of things, so virtue
and vice, evil and goodness are opposites which cannot be separated in our
estimate of probation. The Eternal purposed that there should be a knowledge of
good and evil: of good as the survival in the contest with evil. There is no
virtue but as the victory over vice; no goodness but as the victory over evil.
The pilgrim to this Jerusalem must needs go through Samaria: it is the order of
Providence that all creatures shall find their way thus to Himself. This is a
theory which simply adopts into the moral domain the physical principle of
evolution. It is one which has much fascination for superficial speculatists who
do not examine the eternal principles of religion in their own nature, and who
are content to renounce the plain teaching of the Word of God. The sentimental
notion that human development cannot be conceived save as a process through evil
to perfection, is disproved outside of our race by the angels who fell not, and
within it by the Sinless Redeemer of mankind

(3.) Whatever form these schemes assume they either abolish sin altogether as
such, or they make God its Author. From this dilemma they cannot escape. It is
true that many who have maintained these views have found in them a refuge for
minds weary of the desperate struggle with the anomaly of evil in the universe
of a holy and almighty Creator. But they have only given additional evidence
that such a struggle was not appointed for the finite faculties of man. God does
not sanction, nor does He bless, the attempt to pry into this mystery. It is
true also that these theories—apart from their pretension to solve the mystery
of evil—contain many elements of truth. The possibility of sin and error is most
assuredly an attribute of the creature as such, and human freedom is the secret
of human error; but metaphysical imperfection is not necessarily moral evil, and
the negative evil of being imperfect is not the germ of sin. Undoubtedly, since
the Fall, and presupposing that the antagonism of good and evil works out
through the discipline of grace the highest perfection of the creature, it may
be that the conflict with sin will issue in a kind of holiness and knowledge of
God unknown to the unfallen. But the Father of spirits can never, by the
Christian thinker, be supposed to have created intelligent creatures under the
law of a necessary imperfection in which evil is bound up

SENSUOUSNATURE

Another theory combines the two former, at least in some of their elements; it
derives human evil from the SENSUOUS NATURE of man, and makes it the antagonism
between the flesh and the spirit, the ascendancy of the former over the latter
explaining both the origin and the nature of all sin

1. This hypothesis has assumed many forms, and reigned very extensively in
Christian speculation. It suggests a Gnostic origin, so far as it seems to
regard matter as the seat and source of sin; but differs from Gnosticism in
making the ascendancy of the flesh question of personal and free choice. It
enters into all the systems which regard evil as a necessary stage of the
development of a free intelligence; but differs from those already spoken of in
this, that it makes the flesh only the accidental instrument through which the
inherent weakness of the higher powers is shown. In the mediaeval doctrine,
which took its final form in the Tridentine dogmas, the lower nature was
regarded as being restrained by the supernatural gift of righteousness, the
withdrawal of which released and set in operation the concupiscence of the
flesh. The most elaborate exposition of this theory is that of Schleiermacher,
who sets the God-consciousness in man over against the selfconsciousness as
related to the world. In the Divine purpose the flesh, or the consciousness of
self in the world, was by development to be brought into perfect submission to
the God-consciousness. This development was hindered by the Fall; and the
knowledge of failure in it is the sense of guilt or sin. In Christ, the Ideal
Man, Who presents the reality of what human nature never reached apart from Him,
the Godconsciousness is perfectly ascendant; and becomes so in us through
communion with Him. It is obvious that in this nebulous system we may trace,
beneath a cloud of words, the elements of all the errors already mentioned. The
general theory takes a more rational form in those writers who speak of sin as
simply the result of a surrender of the will at the first dawn of conscious
responsibility to the dominion of the objects of sense which solicit it at the
very threshold of life and thus have the advantage of the first appeal. All
these modifications, however, agree in the fundamental principle that in some
way or other the sensuous or fleshly nature of man is the source and occasion of
evil

2. The refutation of this superficial solution involves the doc-trine of
Original Sin, Postponing, therefore, any more full examination of it—which
indeed that doctrine will render need-less—we may make a few remarks, especially
on its appeal to the sanction of Scripture. An examination of the various forms
which the contrast of flesh and spirit assumes will show that nowhere is sin,
even by implication, assigned to the flesh as its seat, much less as the secret
of its origin

(1.) The flesh is opposed to the spirit in man—the sarx to the pneuma—just as we
distinguish the body as the organ of the soul! connected with the outer world,
and the spirit which holds communion with invisible realities. In our present
estate, the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak; 1 but both the
weakness of the flesh and the inability of the spirit to overcome its weakness
are alike the result of sin. St. Paul speaks of that same weak spirit as itself
in bondage to the law of sin which is in my members. 2 It is true that he lays
emphasis on the sin that dwelleth in me, that is, in my flesh; 3 but the
indwelling evil cannot be the same as the tabernacle in which it dwells. So the
BODY of sin is the body of SIN; 4 not that the fleshly body is the sin, but its
instrument only. There is no support in this class of passages for the notion
that the flesh is only the prison house of a spirit, holy in itself, though
fettered to a body of sin and death 1 Matthew 26:41; 2 Romans 7:23; 3 Romans
7:17-18; 4 Romans 6:6

(2.) But the flesh and the Spirit are also contrasted; and in this case the
flesh signifies the nature of man, his entire nature, as fallen from God. Though
the sins of the lower part of his constitution give the name, spiritual sins are
included: the works of the flesh 1 include vices which are wholly independent of
the body; and ally the human transgressor with the unclean spirits who can have
no fleshly lusts. When therefore St. Paul distinguishes between the carnal man,
as sarkinos, and the spiritual man, as pneumatikois, 2 he is referring
respectively to him whose whole nature is under the sway of sin and to him whose
whole nature is under the sway of the Holy Ghost. The Divine Spirit possesses
the whole man, but inhabits his spirit especially; and through His sanctifying
grace the whole spirit and soul and body 3 of the believer is made sinless, and
preserved blameless. The superficial view of sin, therefore, which makes it the
triumph of the lower portion of man over the higher, the sense over the reason,
has no support in these passages. It is directly discountenanced and condemned
by them 1 Galatians 5:19; 2 1 Corinthians 3:1; 3 1 Thessalonians 5:23

(3.) Lastly, the flesh is the designation of mankind as subjected to vanity,
weakness, and decay and death. He also is flesh 1 is the first testimony to
this, and throughout the Scriptures the infirmity of man’s whole estate is thus
marked: all flesh is as grass. 2 But this is the effect and not the cause of
human sin. The Lord Who received power over all flesh, 3 was first made flesh 4
Himself. And this very fact for ever disproves the notion that in this is the
necessary seat and source of sin. Jesus Christ is come in the flesh 5 was St.
John’s witness against Gnosticism in every form; and in Him is no sin. 6 After
this we need no further witnesses. It may be said, indeed, that the flesh, as
assumed by our Lord, was preserved by His indwelling Deity from the uprising of
its evil; emphasis being laid on His coming only in the likeness of sinful
flesh. 7 But we must remember that He condemned sin in the flesh, and restored
it to its original freedom from evil as our first father possessed’ it. He was
manifested in the flesh to take away our sins; 8 and to vindicate, for Himself
and for us, the sanctity of the flesh as it was made the tabernacle of the human
spirit 1 Genesis 6:3; 2 1 Peter 1:24; 3 John 17:2; 4 John 1:14; 5 1 John 4:2; 6
1 John 3:5; 7 Romans 8:3; 8 1 John 3:5

ABUSE OFFREEDOM The only theory that remains—if it may be called a theory— is
that which seeks the cause of evil in the abuse of the freedom of the will. Of
every phenomenon we ask the cause; and it is impossible to avoid asking the
cause of this the worst of all phenomena. But causes are variously defined as
originating, efficient, formal, instrumental and final. Of evil we dare not ask
the originating cause, save as it passes into the efficient; and that is the
will of the created spirit. The formal cause, which makes evil to be evil, is
the abuse of the freedom of that will separating itself from God. An
instrumental cause there could not be, in the case of the original sin of the
universe. As to the final cause we must not speak save to quote tremblingly our
Savior’s words, spoken on the only occasion when the permission of evil was
proposed to Him as a problem, that the works of God should be made manifest.1

1 John 9:3

1. The ORIGIN OF EVIL in its ultimate and final cause—its absolute beginning and
its purposed end—can never be matter of theory, or even conjecture. It is a
secret which is not revealed, not probably ever to be revealed. It has excited
human speculation from age to age only to baffle it. The genesis or birth of
evil, whether physical or moral, is a MYSTERY OF INIQUITY: of that there can be
no question to any sound mind. But how the first little cloud in the holy
universe arose which has covered the heavens and overspread the earth, and why
evil was permitted to enter and go no more out for ever, we may ask, but there
is none to answer. It is the dignity of our created nature that we may struggle
with the problem; it is equally the necessary limitation of our created nature
that we are overpowered by it

2. But when we study sin in ourselves as the subject of it we may at least
arrange the elements of our ignorance, and analyze the mystery which we cannot
solve. In our human participation of the great calamity we have an instrumental
cause, the temptation introduced from without. But that temptation found no
element of sin, though it found the possibility of it, in human nature. As yet
Satan came and had nothing in man. The insoluble mystery remains among the
secret things of the Divine counsel; like the general fact of probation itself,
a mystery which underlies all the rest. The origin of all sin, and therefore of
all evil, which in one sense includes sin and in another springs from it, is to
be sought in the FREEDOM of the created will. Conscious freedom in the
origination of action, and the choice of the end of action, whether ultimate or
subordinate, belongs to the PERSONALITY of our spirit stamped with the image of
God. The Divine law in the creation of intelligent moral beings seems to be that
they must voluntarily make the supreme end of life their own by a free
self-determination; that, after a longer or shorter test, this freedom should
become a necessity of nature; and perfection be found—whether by the operation
of some spiritual law within, or by the vision of God without—in the relative
bondage to good which is perfect freedom: the highest idea we can form of
resemblance to our Creator. Thus that likeness of God which is the note of our
highest dignity involved the possibility of our deepest degradation. But when we
are finally created anew in the image of the Son to which we are predestinated
to be conformed, 1 probation will have ceased, and our freedom will be the
necessity of goodness, like that of God. Himself

1 Romans 8:29


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  CHAPTER 11: 13. VOL 02 - NATURE OF SIN
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Nature of Sin

NATURE OF SIN Self-Separation from God

Guilt Consciousness of Sin and of Obligation to Punishment

Death Spiritual Physical. Eternal

Sin, having been considered in its origin as matter of revelation and faith, may
now be viewed as matter of experience in its nature and development. Here we are
shut up to the definitions of Scripture, generally given in a variety of names
by which sin is characterized. These names, which are few but distinct and
clear, describe it in two ways First, with reference to God, it is the voluntary
separation of the human will from the Divine, expressed in disobedience to His
law. Secondly, in relation to man, it is guilt, as the consciousness of personal
wrong and personal liability to punishment. It will be found that all the
revelations of the Word of God concerning sin as such, and apart from its
peculiar aspect as original sin, or the sin of the race, may be reduced to these
simple elements SELF-SEPARATION FROM GOD The essence of that mystery in the
created spirit which we call sin is its voluntary separation from God: that is
and must be the root and reality of all evil in the creature

1. It may be questioned whether any Scriptural term expressly indicates this
ultimate secret, behind the act of disobedience to law imposed. But more than
one of them seem to point towards it. Thus shataatiy and won, sin and iniquity,
united in the iniquity of my sin, 1 both signify deflection from the true aim:
the former rather denoting the missing of the mark, the latter the perverse-ness
in aiming wrong. So the leading Greek term amartia means also the missing of the
mark, with the idea of deviation from it, as is seen in amartein, intransitively
to become separate, and thus to fail of its object. Still, the primary and
fundamental quality of sin, that it is voluntary separation from God, is not
absolutely expressed; it is everywhere implied as the hidden fountain of all the
rivers that make sad the life of man

1 Psalms 32:5

2. Almost every definition of sin in the Scripture marks it as transgression of
law. It is enough to refer to St. John’s first epistle, which contains the
profoundest doctrine of sin and redemption: hee hamartía estín hee anomía, sin
is lawlessness or breach of law. 1 How fearful sin is, as the darkness which is
not in God, the Apostle has shown at the outset; but here at the end we have his
only express definition, and with it the Scripture closes. A great variety both
of Hebrew and of Greek terms unite in this central idea, that sin is departing
from the prescribed way of duty, the disobedience to express commandment: as
Cicero says, Peccare est tanquam lineas transilire. St. John’s definition is
important, as showing the difference between the act of transgression and the
state of transgression. The words mean that the act is the result of the state,
and the state also the result of the act Sin is only the act of a primitive
transgressing will, but that will forms the character behind the future will,
and shapes its ends. This final statement of St. John may be divided into its
two branches, each of which will shed light upon the general terminology of
Scripture. Sin is the voluntary separation of the soul from God: this implies
the setting up of the law of self actively, and passively the surrender to
internal confusion

1 1 John 3:4

(1.) Though the essence of sin is not selfishness, that is its, first
manifestation. Self is set up in the place of God; it is anomia, lawlessness in
principle, having thrown off the Divine restraint; parabasis, transgression in
act; adikia, iniquity; amartia, deviation from the way or end appointed of God,
regarded both as an act and as a state; asebeia, godlessness. While some of
these terms are negative, expressing the deflection of the will from its harmony
with that of the Supreme, Whose nature and will are one, either or both being
the ground of eternal moral obligation to the creature, they still describe sin
as the positive condition of the soul: not indeed as any real entity within it,
but as the active direction of the will. In the Old Testament this positive
element is very prominent. In paasha sin is active lawlessness or willful
transgression, as in the words of Job: for he addeth rebellion unto his sin. 1
It is revolt against rightful authority: they have . .trespassed against My law.
2 In raa’at or ra’, which is one of the earliest terms, we have the ideas both
of perverseness and of universal evil: and God saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth. 3 There are some other words which include the thought
of a violent revolt against Divine authority. By shgeeniy this is connected with
wandering from God; probably it occurs in one of the earliest and most solemn
accounts of the effect of sin: in their wandering they are flesh. 4 It may be
said that the great mass of the definitions in both the Old and the New
Testaments stamp it as the active uprising of the human will against the
ordinances of Divine law written either on the heart or in positive statutes 1
Job 34:37; 2 Hosea 8:1; 3 Genesis 6:5; 4 Genesis 6:3

(2.) It may be doubted, however, whether in the Old or in the New Testament
there is any one term for sin which expresses its activity as a principle,
without a side reference to its privative character and the ruin which it
involves. Such terms as epithumias, lust in concupiscence, echthra eis Theon,
enmity against God, and ta eauton zeeton, seeking one’s own, seem only positive
and active; but they regard sin under special aspects, and certainly include its
internal perversion. Though its energy as the root of human evil is all but
unbounded, it is an energy in evil which is also the misuse of faculties created
for good alone. Hence, sin is in Scripture inward confusion, discord, disease,
wretchedness, vanity: especially, as will hereafter be seen, in the habitual use
of sarx or flesh to express both the vanity and the sinfulness of human nature.
The term poneria, evil, itself testifies to the labor and wearisomeness and
vanity of sin, as it is related to ponos, labor. In the Old Testament a
considerable number of words express the same characteristic of conscious
turbulence, disorder, and unrest. Such are aamaal: they conceive MISCHIEF 1 (or
vexation) and bring forth vanity; aawen, evil or depravity, as the result of
wrongdoing; resha’, wickedness, pointing to its restless activity whether as
internal or as affecting others: the wicked are like the troubled sea when it
cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, saith my
God, to the WICKED; 2 eeyn indicating the nothingness or vanity of sin: he that
soweth iniquity shall reap VANITY; 3 and they that plow iniquity and sow
wickedness reap the same. 4 These words do not exhaust the catalogue of terms
which define the quality of sin as substituting for the obedience of the Divine
law a state of internal anarchy, as throwing the whole soul into confusion, as
creating disturbance around, and ending in vanity and wretchedness both physical
and spiritual 1 Job 15:35; 2 Isaiah 57:20-21; 3 Proverbs 22:8; 4 Job 4:8
CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT

Viewed more particularly with regard to its effect upon man’s relation to God’s
law sin is guilt, or the human consciousness of a Divine imputation: first, the
consciousness of PERSONAL responsibility for the sin as committed by self; and,
secondly, the consciousness of personal RESPONSIBILITY for the sin, as an
obligation to punishment on account of it. These two inseparable attendants on
the act of transgression are in reality one; but may be conveniently
distinguished

I. How truly the idea of Guilt is distinct and unique may be seen in the
language by which it is expressed in Scripture, first, with reference to the
Divine imputation of sin, and, secondly, in the human echo of that imputation in
conscience

1. The universal testimony of the Bible, from the first revelation of sin down
to the last revelation of redemption from it, declares that the Holy Lawgiver
imputes man’s evil to man as its author; and will reckon to him the violation of
the law and the dishonor done to the majesty of His own holiness. The evil that
is in the natural world—that is, what evil has been brought into it by the
Fall—He reckons only indirectly to the human transgressor, but his sin He
reckons directly to him. There is no THOU more direct than that which excited in
the two first sinners the sentiment of guilt: Adam, where art thou? 1 Because
THOU hast done this, thou art cursed! Because thou hast done it: here is guilt
in the sense of CULPA or fault. Thou art cursed: here is guilt in the sense of
REATUS or penalty. That sin is guilt in both these senses, and that guilt in
both these senses is sin, the Old Testament teaches in its entire doctrine of
expiation. Offence against God passes not away with the act, it clings still to
the transgressor, and can never be put away from him save by his rendering
satisfaction. That satisfaction he can render only by the endurance of the
penalty: either in his own person or through the intermediation of other
satisfaction counted as his own. He must carry the burden of his sin with him,
or bear his iniquity. 2 There is one word, ashaamow which, as connected with
chataatow, expresses constantly the idea of guilt attaching to every sin.
Although in many passages it has a limited sense, designating the
trespass-offering appointed to be brought for offences committed through error,
negligence or ignorance, yet that very limitation serves to impress all the more
significantly the deep meaning of guilt as such. The trespass-offering, or, as
it should be rendered, the guilt-offering, was itself guilt as the
representative of guilt: it was ASHAM; and so in the supreme Offering our Lord
was made sin for us. 3 It is enough to refer to one text, which may stand for a
large number. If a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden
to be done by the commandments of the Lord; though he wist it not, yet is he
GUILTY (PECCATI REUS), and shall bear his iniquity; and he shall bring a ram
without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass-offering,
unto the priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his
ignorance wherein he erred and wist it not, and it shall be forgiven him. It is
a trespass-offering: he hath certainly trespassed against the Lord. 4 Here we
discern distinction in guilt — as the Vulgate translates, juxta mensuram
aestimationemque peccati, — in relation to the theocratic laws of the old
covenant. But the underlying trespass, the heart and root of all offences, is
the same. Hence when we pass into the New Testament, which makes sin exceeding
sinful 5 in the light of the finished Atonement, the distinction is done away.
The sin-offering and the trespass-offering are united in the One Sacrifice for
sins. 6 The highest conception of guilt is that of man’s hupódikos géneetai toó
Theoó —that all the world may become guilty before God. 7 Though there is a
sense in which the Gospel still marks the sin of him that knoweth to do good and
doeth it not, 8 and makes a difference between that servant which knew his
Lord’s will 9 and him that knew not, between the debtor who owed five hundred
pence and the debtor who owed fifty, 10 yet all sin is debt, for which
satisfaction must be made. The new covenant has introduced this new, term, and
teaches the exaction of the uttermost farthing: 11 teaching it all the more
rigorously because the secret of a full satisfaction and a frank forgiveness is
at hand. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven; 12 and the guilty are
children of wrath. 13 The law accompanies the Gospel, and makes the offender in
one point guilty of all, 14 pántoon énochos, or, in our Lord’s language, guilty
or in danger of eternal sin. 15 Hence this phrase, which expresses the
New-Testament idea of guilt most emphatically, includes the two meanings with
which we set out: personal guilt as breaking the law, and personal obligation to
endure its punishment: pántoon énochos and énochos Thanaton. These last words
suggest the most affecting illustration of the distinction. We are guilty in
both senses: our Holy Savior was only guilty of death. 16 all is expressed in
our word SIN; according to its most probable derivation from the Latin SONS,
nocens, that which is the guilty cause of death to the soul

1 Genesis 3:9; Genesis 3:14; 2 Leviticus 5:1; 3 2 Corinthians 5:21; 4 Leviticus
5:17-19; 5 Romans 7:13; 6 Hebrews 10:12; 7 Romans 3:19; 8 James 4:17; 9 Luke
12:47-48; 10 Luke 7:41; 11 Matthew 5:26; 12 Romans 1:18; 13 Ephesians 2:3; 14
James 2:10; 15 Mark 3:29; 16 Matthew 26:66

2. The Conscience in man bears its own clear testimony. This faculty of our
nature, or representative of the Judge in our personality, is simply in relation
to sin the registrar of its guilt. It is the moral consciousness, rather of
instinct than of reflection, though also of both, faithfully assuming the
personal responsibility of the sin and anticipating its consequences. Such is
the Scriptural meaning of the word. It is not the standard of right and wrong
set up in the moral nature. St. Paul speaks of that as written in the heart of
universal man: the Gentiles show the work of the law written in their hearts. 1
He goes on to speak of their conscience also bearing witness, by its accusing or
else excusing, undoubtedly looking upward to a Judge and forward to a judgment.
What St. Paul calls suneideéseoos, St. John calls kardia, meaning however, not
the heart, in which St. Paul seats the law, but the consciousness of the inner
man. The conscience is the self of the personality, in universal humanity never
excusing, but always accusing, and is the conscience of sins. 2 But of this we
need not speak further now. It is enough to establish the distinction between
the standard of right and wrong which may be defective and is not conscience
proper, and that moral consciousness which infallibly unites the fault and its
consequences in the consciousness of the sinner 1 Romans 2:15; 2 Hebrews 10:2
GUILT AS FAULT AND PUNISHMENT

We may now look more particularly at the idea of guilt under its two aspects:
observing, however, preliminarily that what is here said has reference only to
sin generally, without including those modifications of its phenomena and
degrees of its guiltiness which are concerned rather with the doctrine of
Original Sin THE PERSONAL FAULT

Guilt is the personal consciousness of being responsible for the wrong: the
transgressor violating the commands of the law acknowledges the law and its
rights against himself

1. This is the sense of the forensic term aitia: the sinner is and knows himself
to be the agent and the cause of his own sin. Hence it is defined as reatus
culpae; or guilt in respect to its fault. The eternal alliance of sin and guilt
in human consciousness cannot be too deeply pondered. This consciousness refutes
all those theories of the origination of sin to which reference has been made:
it exonerates God; it honors the law; while it does not excuse the Tempter, it
lays not upon him as the instrument the guilt of which it assumes the
responsibility. In this conscience of sin the devils tremble. This is the
deepest secret in the heart of every human transgressor: the mouth may deny it,
not knowing what it says; but the inner man is true to its moral instinct The
first evasion of guilt was only an evasion; and it was Adam’s guilt that said,
The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did
eat. 1 This was the knowledge of evil which had been threatened, and the very
attempt to transfer the guilt of self to secondary agents was proof that evil
was known. Job represents all men when he speaks of the self-deception of
covering sin with a covering not of the sanctuary: If I covered my
transgressions, as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom. 2 When Eve said,
The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat, 3 it was her guilt that spoke. The
English term Guilt has affinity with the term Beguiled, but with a far deeper
meaning 1 Genesis 3:12; 2 Job 31:33; 3 Genesis 3:13

2. This sure and unerring consciousness of wrong speaks in conscience; but
conscience maybe suppressed, may speak inarticulately, or may be perverted in
its decisions. The whole economy of law is designed to revive it, to restore it
to its sobriety, and constrain it to give its clear witness against self. The
sinner takes his first step towards return to God when he acknowledges himself
inseparably identified with his past transgression, and owns that himself and
his sin are one. St. Paul’s words, making out of his own experience an example,
are very clear: I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came,
sin revived, and I died: 1 I DIED. When afterwards he might seem to cover his
sin like Adam, Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,
2 he does not impute to sin as another agent the guilt due to himself. He only
speaks as one who was no longer under the absolute bondage of sin, no longer
insensible to its enormity, but struggling to get free. No more I only means
that his better self, still guilty—O wretched man that I am! —Was striving,
though as yet in vain, to be free: the evil which I would not THAT I DO. But at
present we are only considering the conscience of sin awakened by the conviction
of the Spirit: the results of that awakening are in the future 1 Romans 7:9; 2
Romans 7:17; Romans 7:24 THE PUNISHMENT

Guilt has another meaning. It is the sure obligation to punishment; or what is
sometimes called the reatus poenae. We must remember that it is here regarded as
absolute, without reference to any atoning provision; that it is the penalty of
a living soul, and not annihilation: and that it is the penalty of the human
spirit informing a human body. The soul that sinneth is GUILTY OF DEATH, or of
being sundered from the Holy Spirit of life: the death of the spirit separated
from God, involving the separation of soul and body, and in its issue eternal.
This is a hard saying, taken alone; but its mitigation will come in due time

I. SPIRITUAL DEATH is the departure of the Holy Spirit as the bond of union
between God and every living soul. Through His withdrawal the spirits, whether
of angels or of men, are separated from fellowship with God, retaining the
natural elements of His image, but no longer reflecting His holiness. This
penalty we are now considering in the abstract, and without reference to its
character as affected by redemption. It is enough to say that in itself it is
the departure of the life of the soul as the soul was created to exist in God
This is not only the penalty of sin, but also gives it a specific nature, and
leads to those manifestations of it which are the best and only definitions of
spiritual death. As by the law is the knowledge of sin 1 positively, so also the
absence of the Holy Ghost negatively makes its evil known in all its forms and
characters

1 Romans 3:20

1. Instead of the Divine Spirit, SELF becomes the ascendant and ruling principle
of the life: the mystery of sin in its origin was the severance of the free
spirit from God and the aspiring to become its own god. Now the mystery is
revealed: the spirit of man, without the Spirit of God, is surrendered to Self.
The life and activity of the self, or selfishness in all its forms, is, whether
among angels or among men, the death of the soul. Hence, as will be hereafter
seen, the process of recovery from that death is the return of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus, when the I no longer lives. If any man will come after me
let him deny himself. 1 He that loveth his life doth lose it, and he that hateth
his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. 2 Such sayings point to
the principle that true and essential death is the living to self 1 Matthew
16:24; 2 John 12:25

2. According to the original constitution of man the flesh was, in its innocent
alliance with the things of sense, subject to his spirit governed by the Divine
Spirit: the penalty of sin is the forfeiture of that dominion, as over the outer
world generally, so over his own physical nature. Hence the FLESH gives one of
its prevalent denominations to sin as manifested in man and in this world. The
restoration of the Holy Ghost to human nature restores it to spirituality again:
to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life.1 1 Romans
8:6

3. The absence of the Spirit, making the heart of man an interior temple and all
nature a temple external, surrenders man to IDOLATRY. He is a being formed for
worship; and his instinct, even in its perversion, is that of a creature bowing
down to something above himself. We can hardly imagine the lost spirits without
this: there may be something corresponding to human idolatry among the fallen
intelligences who followed the revolt of the archangel. But, as to man, while
self becomes his interior god, the outer world becomes a vast Pantheon. Hence
this positive idolatry is also UNGODLINESS, the meaning of which, as the word
tells us, is being without the worship of God, and therefore estranged from His
holy nature

4. Sin also becomes a governing PRINCIPLE, capable of end-less development. This
springs from the great fact that the elements of human nature were constructed
for unlimited progress: if not from glory to glory, then from shame to shame.
There is a fearful self-generating power in evil, which grows unto more
ungodliness. 1 It may not be lawful to say that sin is punished by sin; but most
surely spiritual death to good has in it all the fullness of spiritual life to
evil. This accounts for the infinite varieties of transgression, from the secret
fault known only to God, up to the sin against the Holy Ghost 1 2 Timothy 2:16

5. Lastly, it must be remembered that, whatever sin is, it is the accident of a
nature that is not in itself changed. It is only the separation from God; but
the soul going out of His presence still bears in its wanderings His image, the
natural characteristics of which are not marred by the introduction of any new
faculty created for evil alone. There is nothing new introduced into the fibers
of our being as human. In other words, sin must be left altogether to the region
of tendency and bias of the WILL, as formed by the character and as forming it
in return

II. PHYSICAL DEATH is the penalty of human sin: not however in itself, but as
connected with death spiritual: connected with it in some sense as resulting
from the same deprivation of the Holy Ghost, Whose indwelling 1 regenerate man
is the pledge of the physical resurrection, even as it is the principle of the
spirit’s resurrection to life. But it is declared to be expressly the penalty of
sin in man; who was on its account subjected to the vanity that was the lot of
the lower creatures, denied access to the Tree of Life, and surrendered to the
dissolution that had already been the natural termination of the existence of
the inferior orders of the inhabitants of earth. From the moment of the entrance
of sin death reigned, as afterwards in Adam’s descendants, so in himself: for
death means mortality, and includes all the innumerable evils that introduce it.
It must be remembered that we have no experience of this doom as absolutely
unrelieved by the Gospel; but here we have only to do with the punishment
itself. As the penalty of spiritual death gives new characteristics to sin, so
also does the penalty of physical death

It stamps upon it the attributes of impotence and misery; especially, as we have
seen, in Old-Testament definitions. To this we must refer again. Meanwhile, it
is enough to say that, whatever our first parents may have understood, the
sentence pronounced upon their sin could not have been primarily even, certainly
not alone, the separation of soul and body. Moreover, physical death in the
sense of the annihilation of man’s whole physical nature, as he is soul and
spirit, is never once alluded to throughout the Scriptures. To die never in the
Bible means extinction

1 Romans 8:11 III. DEATH as the doom of sin is of itself necessarily ETERNAL

1. This penalty is now regarded in the abstract, pronounced upon sin as such. It
is the separation of the soul from God, looked at apart from redemption, and
therefore a sentence in itself unrelieved and unqualified. This dread truth may
be viewed negatively and positively. The withdrawal of the Holy Spirit is a
penalty which leaves the sinner without the possibility of self-restoration; and
in that is everlasting death. But it is also the positive decree of the
Righteous Judge Who separates evil for ever from Himself. In harmony with this
distinction are certain well-marked definitions of sin in the New Testament. It
is enmity against God, 1 and that implies in itself an eternal severance, as in
the case of the unredeemed spirits. It is BONDAGE to evil: that is, the free
spirit, never losing its power of self-determination, is determined by the
presence of the sinful principle to only evil continually. 2 And in the
combination of these again lies the element of eternal death. As the favor of
God is life, so death is His displeasure; the sense of guilt, uniting the
personal responsibility and the apprehension of punishment, is capable of
unlimited continuance. And when it is said that the wrath of God abideth on 3
the unbeliever, we need no other account of the penalty of eternal death 1
Romans 8:7; 2 Genesis 6:5; 3 John 3:36

2. As a sentence pronounced upon sin, death was not declared to be eternal in
the beginning, nor ever announced as such until the Redeemer brought life and
immortality to light. 1 It was a suspended decree, as indeed every part of the
sentence was suspended Physical death immediately took effect, but only in its
preliminaries: the deceiver spoke half the truth when he said that, in the day
they ate of the fruit, the Protoplasts should not surely die. 2 Spiritual death
took effect at once, but that also, as we shall see, not without alleviation.
That the severance of the soul from God should endure for ever was not
pronounced, because the provisions of mercy might reverse that part of the
decree. But with those provisions of mercy we have not yet to do. However, when
the grace of God bringing salvation to man was fully revealed, it most solemnly
supplemented what had been lacking in the primitive denunciation, and unfolded
its deep hidden meaning. It is the Scriptural characteristic of this second
death 3 that it is never foreannounced as a threatening sanction, but always
predicted as a consequence of impenitent sin: it is not so much declared to be
the penalty of guilt as the penalty of redemption rejected. The Gospel to them
that are perishing is a savor from death unto death: 4 death spiritual deepening
into death eternal 1 2 Timothy 1:10; 2 Genesis 3:4; 3 Revelation 2:11; 4 2
Corinthians 2:15-16

3. But though the sentence of eternal death is bound up with the scheme of
recovery, as the sanction of a rejected Gospel, it must be remembered that it is
everywhere declared to be the necessary issue of sin as the opposite of all that
is called life. Life is nowhere in the Word of God made equivalent to
continuance in being: were it so eternal death would be eternal annihilation.
Life is communion with God, and its consummation is eternal; death is the end of
unrighteousness, and its consummation eternal. For the wages of sin is death;
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 Doubtless
there are great varieties in the application of the term death, as there are
also of the term life; but the applications of the two terms run parallel. Our
Lord’s words are emphatic: Verily, verily, I say unto you, he, that heareth My
word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into condemnation. 2 Here the contrast of life and death eternal is
exhibited. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh and now is, when the,
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. 3
Here it is the contrast of spiritual life and death. Marvel not at this: for the
hour cometh in the which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and
shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the, resurrection of life, and
they that have done ill, unto the resurrection of damnation. 4 Here the physical
life is made eternal, and the spiritual is between the two. It is in the light
of these sovereign words that the contested passage of St. Paul must be read: as
by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. 5 Here physical death
is the penalty of sin; but spiritual and eternal death cannot be excluded, as is
evident from the context which surrounds this text in the Apostle’s great
chapter of Sin

It closes with the sentence: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might
grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. 6
In the earlier part of the chapter which deals with sin generally, before coming
to Original Sin, we have four terms that express its whole nature, both in
itself and in that penalty of death in its spiritual and its eternal sense from
which the Atonement rescues us. Referring expressly to the state in which we
were found by redemption, St. Paul calls men generally hamartolois,
transgressors of the law in their very nature; asebes, ungodly and cut off from
the favor, presence, and service of God; asthenes, without strength, essentially
impotent; and, finally, echthros, enemies, the objects of a positive displeasure
or wrath of the Supreme which apart from the mediation of Christ will endure for
ever. This quaternion of terms must be carried on into the latter part of the
chapter where it is shown how the first transgression paved the way for them. In
their light sound exposition cannot limit death as the penalty of sin to the
death of the body 1 Romans 6:23; 2 John 5:24; 3 John 5:25; 4 John 5:28-29; 5
Romans 5:12; 6 Romans 5:21;

4. But this leads at once to the connection between moral evil and redemption;
the consideration of which will clear the path for the doctrine of Original Sin.
In interposing the following section we follow the guidance of St. Paul himself,
who passes, in turning from his most complete description of sin generally to
his most complete account of its relation to our race, over that sacred bridge:
we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom we have now received
the Atonement. 1 Not only he but every writer of Scripture, as well in the New
Testament as in the Old, constantly connects evil with the system of deliverance
from it. Sin is always discussed, defined, dwelt upon in all its development and
issues, at the foot of the Altar in the old economy, and at the foot of the
Cross in the new. It is a fact which has been alluded to already, and will recur
hereafter, that many of the Hebrew and Greek terms for sin itself are used also
to express the expiation of sin, while in some phrases the bearing of iniquity
and its forgiveness are actually one. It is sufficient to quote one instance. In
Leviticus it is said: Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin, 2 wnaasaa’
chet’ow. Of the Servant of God we read, He Himself bare the sin of many, 3 Whuw’
cheet’- rabiym naasaa’; this, if compared with the words concerning the
scapegoat, to bear upon him all their iniquities to a land not inhabited, 4
shows that the bearing sin was also the bearing it away by atonement. Then we
hear the pardoned penitent crying, Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin, 5
W’ataah naasaa’taa `won chataa’tiy of the utmost sin, the perfect propitiation
provided for it, and the assured sense of forgiveness, are all signified by the
same profound phrase. Passing by this, however, we must impress on our minds the
blessed truth that we at least, as sinners of mankind, never need study sin save
in the direct light of redemption 1 Romans 5:11; 2 Leviticus 24:15; 3 Isaiah
53:12; 4 Leviticus 16:22; 5 Psalms 32:5


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  CHAPTER 12: 14. VOL 02 - SIN AND REDEMPTION
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Sin and Redemption SIN AND REDEMPTION No Element of Redemption in Sin Redemption
from without Possible

Probable

Certain

Under whatever aspect viewed—whether as to the Being offended or the sinner who
offends—there is no principle and no hope of redemption in sin itself. But, on
the other hand, there is much both in the nature and in the development of human
evil that suggests the possibility, probability, and certainty of a redemption
from without. And the fact of this redemption gives a special character to the
general doctrine of sin in all its branches

I. Sin has in itself no element of redemption, whether we think of the Divine
character which makes sin what it is, or the human spirit in which the principle
of evil resides

1. The Divine nature as holy must eternally abhor and can never be reconciled to
it. God is of purer eyes than to behold evil, 1 save to condemn and remove it
from His presence Man’s fallen nature itself bears witness to this; its true
instinct is Depart from me, for I am a sinful man! 2 The God of love is a
consuming fire 3 to all that is contrary to His purity; and if that consuming
fire becomes a saving destruction of evil, that belongs to the mystery of grace,
which is not yet in question. But the Holy Being is also a righteous Lawgiver;
His nature and His will are in the revelation of the righteous judgment of God,4
not only against the abominable thing itself, but against the soul that doeth
evil. 0 wicked man, thou shalt surely die! 5 is an Old-Testament word that finds
its New-Testament confirmation: Cursed is every one that continueth not in all
things which are written in the book of the law to do them. 6 And here again the
universal conscience of man finds that book of the law his own heart, where is
written or engraven the sentence which, so far as it knows, is irrevocable. God
cannot deny Himself; 7 nor does the human spirit deny Him His eternal opposition
to sin. The justice of God Himself does not more faithfully guard His law than
it is guarded by the conscience of man. Neither can conscience deny itself

1 Habakkuk 1:13; 2 Luke 5:8; 3 Hebrews 12:29; 4 Romans 2:5; Romans 2:9; 5
Ezekiel 33:8; 6 Galatians 3:10; 7 2 Timothy 2:13

2. Nor has the sinner any power of redemption in himself. He has indeed in every
age wrestled with the sin that rests upon him, but in vain: wrestled with it,
knowing it to be wrong, and under the unconscious influence of a grace of which
he knows not naturally the secret. He has striven to expiate its guilt by an
endless variety of sacrifices that have never availed to take away the
conscience of sin: he has never been satisfied with the propitiation either of
his substitutionary offerings or of his own personal sufferings. His experience
has always denied that sin could by its acts or sacrifices or sufferings put
away its guilt. He has striven also to redeem himself by the discipline of
philosophy and repentance. But equally in vain: he has never even professed to
find holiness in philosophy, or to be capable of a true repentance. The fact
that he has always combined these two-— the offerings for expiation and the
attempt to mend his own nature—has attested the universal consciousness of our
fallen race that both are necessary; the fact of universal failure has proved
that in himself the sinner has no help. The altars of expiation in the temples
of an unknown God, and the schools of philosophy hard by, were heathen
anticipations of the Gospel that unites expiation and renewal, by one provision
meeting both the guilt and the defilement of transgression. They were most
impressive and affecting as such; but in themselves, and as evidences of the
inherent hopelessness of sin, supremely monitory

3. More modern theories, borrowing the light of the Atonement they reject, have
argued that Repentance is both expiation and recovery; they have not only
appealed to a human instinct that accepts the penitence of an offender, but also
to the language of Scripture itself which describes God as always accepting the
penitent. Thus they contradict both the propositions which we have been
establishing: neither is the nature of God eternally opposed to sin, nor is
man’s nature incapable of putting it away. As to the former argument, that of
the analogy of human tenderness towards repentance, it omits to consider the
difference not of degree only but of kind between our offences against each
other and our sin against God; it forgets that there is no strict relation of
sin but as between the Supreme God and His creature; no human analogy here
suffices. As to the latter argument, that Scripture represents our Heavenly
Father as always ready to meet His returning prodigal, it neglects to observe
that wherever repentance is thus spoken of, an atonement either typical or real
is always implied. The parable which brings the Father of spirits and the
returning son to a midway place of reconciliation was spoken by Him whose name
is the Mediator; His cross is stamped upon it though as yet unseen; and it is
recorded in the same Gospel in which the Redeemer says, This cup is the new
testament in My blood, which is shed for you. 1 If, in St. Luke’s Gospel of free
grace, the penitent went down to his house justified, after having only cried,
God be merciful to me the sinner! 2 we must remember that his very word
hilastheeti savors of the propitiatory sacrifice, that he spoke his contrition
in the presence of the altar of atonement, and that he is justified according to
the gracious non-imputation of sin which rested upon a satisfaction for human
guilt as yet unrevealed. Both arguments fail to remember that man has no power
to repent in the fullness of the meaning of the word; and that repentance is the
gift of God, procured by the very Atonement that it is made to supersede: the
Atonement of Him who was exalted to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of
sins. 3 1 Luke 22:20; 2 Luke 18:13-14; 3 Acts 5:31

II. All this being true, it is obvious also that sin and redemption have been
intimately bound up together in the history of man. Sin exists in God’s universe
elsewhere; but, as it is found running its course upon earth, it gives tokens of
a scheme of deliverance possible, probable, and certain

1. This may indeed be said of all evil, that, if a method of abolishing it can
be found which shall be consistent with the Divine perfections, making objective
atonement to His justice, and allowing His love subjectively to destroy the sin,
it will be found by the Divine wisdom. The same instinct of our nature that
assures us of the eternal hatefulness of sin to God teaches us that IF IT BE
POSSIBLE 1 it will be removed. It may be said that we are arguing here in a
circle: that we are supposing the very redemption that we assume to be a priori
contemplated as possible. The objection must be accepted; but it strengthens our
position, that there is inwrought by some means or other in the human mind a
daring trust that for man at least some infinite resource in God is available.
The entire system of revelation tells us that in the internal mystery of the
Trinity such a method has been found. And here lies the unutterable preciousness
of the doctrine of the Triune Essence. It is difficult to avoid anticipation at
this point. The glory of the future Cross already shines upon the chaos of moral
disorder. Christ Jesus, the Representative of man in the eternal counsel, if not
in His eternal nature, has by His oblation of Himself once offered absorbed the
punishment of sin and rendered its utter destruction certain in all those who
make His Atonement their own by faith

1 Matthew 26:39

2. We need not complicate the question with the fact that lost spirits are
unredeemed: they tempted us to sin but must not tempt our faith to doubt our
recovery. Certainly there is nothing in the condition of human nature that shuts
out the possibility of redemption Its depravity, taken at the worst, is not a
total extinction of every element that grace might lay hold on. In fact, the
development of moral evil in the world has such a character as to suggest that
man’s nature was not found unredeemable, that it has been once the object of a
mysterious intervention, and is ever undergoing the discipline of a process of
recovery The universal sentiment among men that God may be and in some sense is
propitiated; the refusal of human guilt to give up its case as hopeless; the
almost impossibility of persuading men generally that their sin is unpardonable;
the voice of conscience speaking in every language under heaven, in the accents
both of fear and of hope; the irrepressible yearnings after some great Deliverer
and some great Deliverance, all proclaim that there may be redemption for man,
and confirm the testimony of the Bible that for the face of human transgressors
God has found a ransom.1

1 Job 33:24

III. Now the entire doctrine of Sin takes a new aspect from this gracious
intervention, from this mystery of atoning love. In how many ways it affects
that doctrine as displayed in the scheme of the Gospel we shall hereafter see.
Meanwhile, it has this preliminary effect, that it shows us moral evil as the
penalty and infection of a race continuing from generation to generation, and
counteracted and vanquished as such. But this leads us directly to the doctrine
of Original Sin, which marks the special peculiarity of evil in the family of
man: at once its universality as surely propagated and the gracious alleviation
it receives


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  CHAPTER 13: 15. VOL 02 - ORIGINAL SIN
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Original Sin

ORIGINAL SIN: the Sin of the Race as Redeemed IN RELATION TO THE FIRST ADAM

Guilt.

Depravity IN RELATION TO THE SECOND ADAM the Free Gift and the Consequent
Modifications of Sin IN ITS RELATIONS GENERALLY to Theodicy to Government of
Nations to Christian Doctrine to Human Nature to Sin in its Varieties HISTORICAL
REVIEW

Profane

Jewish

Patristic Pelagian Controversy

Scholastic

Tridentine

Lutheran.

Calvinistic

Arminian

Methodist

Socinian

Rationalist The effect of the Fall upon the posterity of Adam is described in
Scripture as the universal diffusion of death as a condemnation, and of a bias
of human nature towards evil. The Scriptural doctrine finds its expression in
the theological term Original Sin: the hereditary sin and hereditary sinfulness
of mankind derived from Adam its natural head and representative, but derived
from him as he was under a constitution of redeeming grace and connected with
the Second Adam, the spiritual Head of mankind

Here we must first exhibit the testimony of inspiration, and then the historical
development of the dogma. It may be observed at the outset that the doctrine of
Original Sin is in an important respect the doctrine of sin itself; there is no
aspect of the subject which is not more or less directly connected with the
quality of evil as belonging to the race. Hence, many questions arising out of
the subject generally will find their place here, having been indeed specially
reserved for this section THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE The relation of the
universal hereditary sin of mankind to the original sin of Adam, its relation to
the covenant of redemption in Christ, and its character as resulting from both,
are the topics now before us ORIGINAL SIN IN RELATION TO THE FIRST ADAM

St. Paul teaches that through one man sin entered into the world. It entered as
bringing with it the condemnation of universal death: the guilt of the first
transgression is reckoned in its consequences upon all the race represented by
the first transgressor. But not apart from their own sin: all are not only
regarded as sinners, but made sinners also through the inheritance of a nature
of itself inclined only to evil. Thus the transmission of the penalty is both
direct and indirect HEREDITARY GUILT

Hereditary guilt is not expressly stated in the form of a proposition: the
phrase is of later than Scriptural origin. But where St. Paul establishes the
connection between sin and death as its comprehensive penalty, he teaches that
the condemnation of the first sin reigns over all mankind as in some sense one
with Adam

1. After saying that death passed unto all men, for that (ef hoo, on the ground
or presupposition that) all have sinned (or, all sinned), 1 thus asserting that
in Divine imputation all, in some sense, sinned originally in Adam, the Apostle
goes on to show that the death fell upon them that had not sinned after the
similitude of Adam’s transgression. 2 It passed upon those who did not in Adam
commit his offence, who did not, moreover, offend personally as he did. They
sinned in Adam, though not guilty of the act of his sin: this then is hereditary
condemnation, on those who were not personal transgressors and on them all.
Here, it is obvious the penalty is primarily regarded as physical death. Every
member of the race is involved in this consequence of the original sin of
mankind 1 Romans 5:12; 2 Romans 5:14

2. Then follows the parallel with the Second One, Jesus Christ, to the same
effect: If by the trespass of the one, the many be dead (or died), much more the
grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by One Man, Jesus Christ, [hath]
abounded unto many. And not as through one that sinned (the many died), so is
the gift: for the judgment came of one to condemnation, but the free gift of
many trespasses unto justification. 1 In the three verses which follow the same
deep truth is exhibited in three more forms, each increasing the strength of the
preceding, and all culminating in the doctrine that as by one man’s disobedience
the many were made (or constituted, both in fact and by imputation) sinners, so
by the obedience of One shall the many be made righteous. 2 Five paraphrases of
the same statement declare that, in whatever sense the Redemption was an act
external to the race and for its benefit, the Fall was external to the
successive generations of mankind and for their condemnation. Here, it is
obvious, or ought to be obvious, that the condemnation and the life are
correlatives: the judgment is the opposite of the reign in life as the result of
abundance of grace. It is this which St. Paul, the Christian expositor of
original sin, stamps by a series of cumulative variations having no parallel in
his writings 1 Romans 5:15-19; 2 Romans 5:19

3. In the Epistle to the Corinthians the connection between the doom of death
and the sin of Adam is stated in almost the same terms; but the reference seems
more limited to physical death than in the Epistle to the Romans. A careful
examination, however, will show that there also death has the same deep and wide
meaning. The central text is: for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall
all be made alive. 1 Here that process of death is going on which in the Romans
passed forth as a decree once for all: it is pántes apothneéskousin, but yet en
toó Adám, in the one historical Man, and through their connection with him. The
bodily resurrection is the argument of the chapter. The first man Adam became a
living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. 2 From the former we
derive a corruptible body animated by a living soul, which through sin lost the
provision for its continued immortality: it is not taught that Adam received and
transmitted only an animal or natural existence. From the Latter we receive the
new gift of immortality, for soul and body, through the Spirit of life
proceeding from Him. But the direct argument is limited to the bodily
resurrection. Indirectly, how-ever, it asserts the great contrast between the
sentence of eternal life and the sentence of eternal death The chapter ends by
saying that the sting of death is sin: 3 it was the poison of that serpent which
brought physical mortality into the race; but Christ died for our sins, 4 and
not only for our resurrection from the grave as one penalty of offence. Death is
abolished only AFTER THe resurrection: But when this corruptible shall have put
on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be
brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 5
Universal death is, to the saints, lost in the victory of life

1 1 Corinthians 15:22; 2 vs. 1 Corinthians 15:45; 3 vs. 1 Corinthians 15:56; 4
vs. 1 Corinthians 15:9; 5 vs. 1 Corinthians 15:54

4. St. Paul, to whom we owe the leading elements of this doctrine, does not
carefully distinguish in what various senses the imputation of sin rests upon
the race as death. The question will be raised in the historical controversies
on the subject. Meanwhile, it may be observed that the strong word is
hamartooloí katestátheesan hoi polloí, 1 which winds up his discussion, after
the same idea had been several times left unexpressed, as the italics in our
translation will show. Sinners all men were once for all accounted, or made, or
constituted: they were placed in the category of transgressors. Sometimes this
verb has the meaning of being made in the sense of being set or appointed by
authority, but it never has that of being made through a process of becoming. In
the glorious parallel, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous,
2 the term does not, strictly speaking, lose this meaning of establishment by
imputation; for, whatever may be the righteousness imparted to the justified in
Christ, they will, both in this world and the next, be accounted righteous
through the One meritorious obedience. But, neither this strong word nor any
other used in Scripture precludes the thought that those who are constituted
sinners by their unity in Adam make his act their own in another sense: all the
individuals of the many are accounted sinners, because they also, like Adam,
have transgressed the covenant. 3 Still, the root of their offence is deeper
than their individual life. Physical death precedes personal individual guilt.
All men are altogether born in sins:4 in this the Jews spoke more truly than
they intended. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; 5 and cannot as such
see the kingdom of God, for they that we in the flesh cannot please God. 6 But
to be born of the flesh is now, to speak reverently, the ordinance of God. Of
the eternal penalty we speak not yet: [the free gift came] upon all men unto
justification of life, of eternal life; 7 but justification presupposes a
condemnation to be removed. And this must teach us not to soften down that
strongest phrase of St. Paul on this subject: and were by nature the children of
wrath, even as others, tékna fúsei orgeés.8

1 Romans 5:19; 2 Romans 5:19; 3 Hosea 6:7; 4 John 9:34; 5 John 3:6; John 3:3; 6
Romans 8:8; 7 Romans 5:18; Romans 5:21; 8 Ephesians 2:3

5. Though St. Paul has been spoken of as the teacher of original guilt, it must
not be understood that he alone is responsible for this doctrine. He introduced
nothing which he did not receive; and the Lord’s words already quoted sanction
his teaching. It is not upon one isolated passage that the doctrine rests. It
pervades the Scripture. It interprets the tone and spirit of the whole testimony
of the Bible as to the fallen family of the first father who sinned; and
especially it interprets the relation of the Redeemer to mankind, a relation
which absolutely requires the condemnation of the race as its basis. But of this
we shall speak more particularly HEREDITARY DEPRAVITY The inheritance of a bias
to evil is much more abundantly, though not more clearly, dwelt on in Scripture.
The doctrine of a transmitted moral depravation or corruption pervades all the
dispensations of revealed truth 1. In the Old Testament the proofs are ample and
explicit

(1.) Its historical narrative takes it for granted that the root of individual
personal life is sinful; it abounds with testimonies both to the universality of
the sinful taint and to the propagation of it in the race. In the beginning of
human history we find a book of the generations of Adam. 1 There it is stated
that in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; that
the two first parents of mankind were one Adam as the head of the race: male and
female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day
when they were created. The narrative then proceeds to say that Adam lived an
hundred and thirty years, and begat (a son) in his own likeness, after his
image. 2 This kind of language is never repeated, and, regarded as the preface
to the history of the human corruption that ended in the Flood, may be quoted as
probably the earliest text of the hereditary sinful tendency of mankind. The
records of depravity which follow speak always of man as such, even when it
excepts the godly. My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also
is flesh: 3 this verse is capable of another rendering, My Spirit shall not
always govern in man; in their wandering they are flesh; which rather
strengthens the denomination of mankind as flesh, resisting as such the Spirit
of grace. It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth; 4 for every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 5 At the
Flood this was the case with the ungodly, and the saved family of Noah were by
nature no better than the rest. The history does not teach us that there were
two races of men, one untainted by sin and the other corrupt. The sons of God 6
were those who began to call themselves by the name of the Lord. 7 Their father,
as they were distinguished from the progeny of Cain, was Seth, whom Adam begat
in his own likeness. 8 Their best descendant and representative was Noah, who
was saved to continue the race, not because he was without sin, but because he
found grace in the eyes of the Lord,9 like Lot afterwards, who said, Thy servant
hath found grace in Thy sight, and Thou hast magnified Thy mercy. 10 Noah, the
new head of mankind, proved that he continued the hereditary taint. He was
accepted after the Flood through sacrifice. And the Lord said in His heart, I
will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; though the imagination
of man’s heart is evil from his youth. 11 Here the very words which described
the deep corruption of the race before it was swept away are used to describe
the germ of the same corruption surviving the Flood

1 Genesis 5:1; 2 Genesis 5:3; 3 Genesis 4:3; 4 Genesis 6:6 5 Genesis 6:5; 6
Genesis 6:2; 7 Genesis 4:26; 8 Genesis 5:3; 9 Genesis 6:8; 10 Genesis 19:19; 11
Genesis 8:21

(2.) There is no question that the course of sin is regarded as running on from
generation to generation among the nations of the earth. That it continued among
the chosen people to be the law is proved by the institute of circumcision,
which, whatever other purpose it served, was the ordained memorial of the sin
connected with the propagation of the race, as well as by the series of
ceremonial purifications that attended the birth of every child For the whole
world—to anticipate—baptism carries the same signification

(3) Individual testimonies are not wanting. Job, the patriarchal theologian,
asks, Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. 1 This question is
elsewhere answered by another: What is man, that he should be clean? and he
which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? 2 In sin did my mother
conceive me, 3 is the confession of one for all; in which David responds to Job,
and almost literally to Bildad, how can he be clean that is born of a woman? 4
It is needless to quote other texts 1 Job 14:4; 2 Job 15:14; 3 Psalms 51:5; 4
Job 25:4 2. The New Testament throughout confirms this truth

(1.) Out of the heart, the Redeemer declares, proceed evil thoughts, 1 followed
by the catalogue of sins in the life. The heart is the centre of the
personality, of which the infallible Teacher says, If ye, then, BEING EVIL, 2
and that in connection with the good still remaining through the secret of grace
in human nature. Why man is thus fundamentally evil, our Lord tells us in one
emphatic text, which is the key to the early testimony of Genesis and to many
others, especially in St. Paul: that which is born of the flesh is flesh.3 This
word has stamped Christian phraseology: it takes the emblem of physical ruin,
the flesh or mortal nature of man, to signify likewise his spiritual mortality;
the flesh is the nature as tending not only to death but also to sin. What
dissolution of soul and body is, the dissolution of harmony between the flesh
and spirit is. But it more than hints at the derivation of the taint from
natural descent: that which is born. 4 Thus also we have borne the image of the
earthy, 5 and not only in our corruptible bodies. This testimony of Jesus, who
knew what was inMan 1:6 — a most profound word, — is the supreme demonstration

It declares emphatically, what is nowhere else so plainly stated, that men are
evil, because they are born evil, and pursue their way of life according to that
evil beginning The Master has Himself taken the responsibility of this deep
utterance, to which, after He has spoken it, the guilty and sinful nature of man
responds: it reveals the thoughts of many hearts. It need not be said that He
Himself is excepted who declares this fact of human generation. When He
testified, Ye are from beneath, I am from above, 7 it may be thought that He was
contrasting His spirit with that of His enemies; but when He added, Ye are of
this world, I am not of this world, He proclaimed the universal difference
between Himself and the children of men. The negative or apologetic appeal which
follows, Which of you convinceth me of sin? 8 is for His enemies; those who
believe in Him know that it was uttered from the consciousness of the Holy One
of God, the only Person in human history of Whom it could be said, IN HIM IS NO
SIN. 9 And to them the highest confirmation of the doctrine of hereditary human
depravity is the sinless conception of the Redeemer Who was manifested to take
away our sins

1 Matthew 15:19; 2 Matthew 7:11; 3 John 3:6; 4 Genesis 5:5; 5 1 Corinthians
15:49; 6 John 2:25; 7 John 8:23; 8 John 8:46; 9 1 John 3:5

(2.) St. Paul, though he did not hear the Lord’s words, faith-fully draws out
their meaning on this subject. He uses the expression Flesh in this connection
more than any other writer, and in such a way as to establish the propagation of
a corrupted nature, Lest this should be misunderstood, that flesh is said by St.
Paul to be the carnal mind,1 what in St James is not the fróneema, or thought, 2
but, in a less dignified expression, the epithumían, the concupiscence or lust 3
of the flesh. He calls it a law in my members, and the law of sin and death; and
sin that dwelleth in me, 4 in the Me of the flesh. All these words, as following
the Lord’s, show that the bias to evil is congenital. It is in the heart, as the
representative of man’s being generally, and in his flesh, as the representative
of his fallen estate, that sin dwelleth; not indeed as a revolution of the
elements of human nature, but as a depravation of its tendency. ’ The Apostle
has given our theology its term, Indwelling Sin. The sin which reigns in the
human race, transmitted from father to son, dwells in every individual. It is an
inmate in the soul, and an inmate only: in me, that is in my flesh, 5 in me as
under an alien dominion, in me who may be delivered from it wholly But it
belongs to every man that cometh into the world as a descendant of Adam, and it
is bound up in his nature until the full deliverance is wrought: we may,
therefore, with his full consent, invert the Apostle’s words, and write them, in
my flesh, that is, in me. St

Paul’s exposition of original depravity, as illustrated by his own example, is
closely connected with his struggles as a convinced sinner to find his way to
the Redeemer. If we want the naked strength of his doctrine, we find it in other
words, the carnal mind is enmity against God, tó fróneema teés sarkós échthra
eis Theón, 6 the terse epigrammatic force of which is matched by what precedes,
Tó gár fróneema teés sarkós thánatos, for that carnal mind is death 1 Romans
8:7; 2 James 1:14; 3 Romans 8:2; 4 Romans 7:17; Romans 7:23; 5 Romans 7:18; 6
Romans 8:7

3. It is to be observed that the Scripture never disjoins the condemnation from
the depravity: the one is always implied in the other, while both are generally
connected with the great salvation. It is impossible to conceive the two former
apart from each other; though the precision of Scriptural language suggests
rather that those who are born with a sinful bias are therefore condemned than
that being condemned they are necessarily depraved. There is one passage that
strikingly illustrates this. The Apostle speaks of the Ephesian converts as
having been under the sway of the flesh, in the full sense as given above, and
thus showing that they were by nature the children of wrath. 1 The depravity and
condemnation of the natural estate are here once brought together: it is the
solitary instance in which man’s nature is said to be under wrath; but the wrath
is upon those who lived after that nature rather than upon the nature itself;
and both are brought into close connection with Christ, the light of whose
coming redemption already shineth, though the darkness is not yet wholly past

1 Ephesians 2:3 ORIGINAL SIN IN RELATION TO THE SECOND ADAM The teaching of the
later Scripture is summed up and confirmed by St. Paul, to the effect that Jesus
Christ, the Second Adam, was given to the race of mankind, as the Fountain of an
Original Righteousness that avails to efface and more than efface the effects of
Original Sin in the case of all those who should be His spiritual seed. Hence
this primitive Gift was an objective provision for all the descendants of the
first sinner, the benefits of which were to be applied to those whose faith
should embrace the Savior. But it is important to remember that it took the form
of an original Free Gift to the entire race, before transgression began, and
that it has in many respects affected the character of Original Sin: suspending
the fall strength of its condemnation, and in some degree counteracting its
depravity

I. When St. Paul calls Adam the figure of Him that was to come, túpos toú
méllontos, 1 the word has its full significance. The type must precede the
antitype in historical fact, but the antitype must precede the type in the
Divine purpose: hence the Second Adam might be called the First; and the sin of
Adam cannot be disjoined from the righteous obedience of the Deliverer. The
virtue of the Atonement began when the evil of sin began. The Gospel was first
preached when sin was first condemned: preached to the first offenders through
the sentence passed upon Satan, the instrumental cause of human sin, thus
meeting sin in its very origin. While connecting it with Eve, its second
original, the Apostle omits the Serpent, omits Eve herself, and makes Adam the
fountain of sin to mankind, that he may draw the parallel between the first and
the Second heads of the human race. He shows that, at all points and in all
respects, the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by One Man, Jesus
Christ2 — the chárisma and the doorea — are more abundant than the effects of
the Fall. The provision of redemption from the disobedience meets it as sin and
in its consequence as death. All human life and destiny is bound up with the
relations of these two: the First and the Last Adam 1 Romans 5:14; 2 Romans 5:15

II. But the gift of righteousness to the race before the succession of its
history began was of the nature of a provision to counteract the effects of sin,
when original sin should become actual. It did not at once abolish the effects
of the Fall in the first pair, whose original sin was also in their case actual
transgression; it did not place them in a new probation, nor did it preclude the
possibility of a future race of sinners. The great Atonement had now become
necessary: as necessary to these parents of the race as it was after they had
spread into countless multitudes. The Redeemer was already the Gift of God to
man; but He was still o mellon, the Coming One, 1 as St. Paul once only calls
Him in relation to this very fact: making the first sinner the first type of the
Savior from sin The Atonement does not put away sin 2 in the sovereignty of
arbitrary grace, but as the virtue of grace pardoning and healing all who
believe. It began at once to build the house of a new humanity—a spiritual seed
of the Second Adam—the first Adam being himself the first living stone of the
new temple. And with reference to the life bestowed on this new race St. Paul
strains language to show how much it super abounds, how much it surpasses the
effect of the Fall. It might have been replied by the objector that the virtue
of the gift fell short of the infliction of the first sentence; inasmuch as the
sin sent forth death with absolute and unconditional effect upon all, while the
grace reigns only in those who seek it and find it. But St. Paul, always quick
to catch the tones of objection, whether of the vainMan 1:3 or otherwise, does
not think fit to notice this. He sees in the fullness of his theology only the
fact of a new and gracious probation in which superabundant life is provided for
the race; and speaks precisely as if the benefit was accepted by all who needed
it. Not that he forgets the distinction between the provision and the
application of it. His precise use of the terms eis pantas and hoi polloi shows
that he kept that in view

While he says that many were made sinners, 4 meaning all men, he changes the
tense when he adds shall many be made righteous, not meaning all. But in the
verse preceding there is no such difference: as by the offence of one judgment
came upon all men to condemnation; and even so by the righteousness of One [the
free gift came] upon all men unto justification of life. 5 It is true that our
translation clothes the bones of the naked original here; but the naked original
still more strongly stamps the antithesis: as by me offence, unto all men, to
condemnation; even so, by One righteousness, unto all men, unto justification of
life 1 Romans 5:14; 2 Hebrews 9:26; 3 James 2:20; 4 Romans 5:19; 5 vs. Romans
5:18

III. Hence it follows of necessity that the benefit of the Atonement provided
before the foundation of the world 1 was a free gift to the coming race of
mankind. That gift was the restoration of the Holy Spirit: not indeed as the
indwelling Spirit of regeneration, but as the Spirit of enlightenment, striving,
and conviction. Man did not set out on his way of sorrow without this
preparatory Comforter. This was as it were the chárisma pneumatikón, the
Spiritual Gift, which was freely bestowed on mankind before sin, strictly
speaking, began its history, before the original sin of Adam had become original
sin in his posterity; which has therefore controlled and lightened the curse
upon sin through all successive ages and generations. That blessing of Abraham 2
bestowed on the Gentiles through faith was the blessing of Adam 3 also, bestowed
as yet without faith. And as the Spirit has been from the beginning the Spirit
of Christ, 4 He is the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world. 5 When it was predicted that Christ should be for salvation unto the end
of the earth, 6 the prediction, like many others, was a step in the revelation
of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began. The glory of His
people, the new and sanctified race, is and has ever been a light to lighten the
Gentiles. 7 There was an earnest or pledge of the Coming Spirit given to the
world as certainly as an earnest of the Incarnate Son was given. But we have to
do specifically with the effect of this gift on the innate evil of our race. As
it will finally for the saved super abound, abolishing the principle of sin as
well as all innumerable transgressions, so from the beginning it restrained,
controlled, and mitigated that evil, whether in the mind of God, or in the heart
of man, or in the course of history. Without this there is no consistent
exhibition of Original Sin 1 1 Peter 1:20; 2 Galatians 3:14; 3 1 Peter 1:11; 4
John 1:9; 5 Isaiah 49:6; 6 Romans 16:25; 7 Luke 2:32

IV. The doctrine in the light of redemption receives certain important
modifications. This may be best shown by pointing out a few apparent
contradictions which it reconciles and explains: these being referred to the two
heads of condemnation and depravity and to the general relation of human nature
to its penalty of evil 1. The nature is condemned, and yet it is universally
redeemed

(1.) However difficult it may be, we must receive the fact of a human nature,
abstracted from the persons who inherit it, lost or marred in Adam and found or
retrieved in Christ

It is said of our Lord that He came, not only in the likeness of men, 1 but also
in the likeness of sinful flesh. 2 This impressively connects the Incarnate One
with our fallen humanity, not as partaking of its sin — for He was God manifest
in the flesh 3— but as assuming our nature, without its sin and with its
infirmity. Now, that fact assures us of the arrest of the effects of the Fall.
In order that He might take our nature, and be made like unto His brethren, 4
the nature common to Him and us must be saved from utter revolution. It may be
said therefore that the first effect of the redeeming intervention was to
preserve the nature of man from sinking below the possibility of redemption:
indeed rather that intervention was itself its preservation. Hence, not only was
the natural image of God retained: the eternal sense of right and wrong and good
and evil was not suffered to be effaced, and thus the elements of the moral
image also were shielded from absolute violation. It is impossible to define
what the difference was between the ruin of angelic intelligences and the fall
of human nature: suffice that that difference is to us an infinite one; our life
is in it. The Fall was the utter ruin of nothing in our humanity; only the
depravation of every faculty. The human mind retains the principles of truth;
the heart the capacity of holy affections; the will its freedom, not yet the
freedom of necessary evil

All this we owe to the Second Adam. It is said, indeed, that He came only in the
likeness of men; but He could not have come even in their likeness, if men had
lost every trace of good. He could not have even tabernacled in our nature, if
it had been in the worst possible sense corrupted and doomed to destruction 1
Php 2:7; 2 Romans 8:3; 3 1 Timothy 3:16; 4 Hebrews 2:17

(2.) The condemnation resting upon the race as such is removed by the virtue of
the one oblation beginning with the beginning of sin. Our nature received the
reconciliation1 once for all; God in Christ is reconciled to the race of Adam;
and no child of mankind is condemned eternally for the original offence, that
is, for the fact of his being born into a condemned lineage. Of this immunity
baptism, conferred upon all who enter the race, is the sign and the seal.
Personality, virtual in all who are born, does not actually begin until the Will
consciously assumes its responsibility. And for individual personal guilt
forgiveness is provided, which ratifies the pardon of the one original
transgression and super abounds for the many offences.2 Hence, though we do not
assume a second personal fall in the case of each individual reaching the crisis
of responsibility, we must believe that original sin as condemnation in the
fullest sense, and as an absolute doom, never passed beyond Adam and the
unindividualised nature of man. It was arrested in Christ as it regards every
individual, and changed into a conditional sentence. As it is the penalty of
physical death it is in one sense without mitigation: in Adam all die. But in
another sense the penalty is lightened, relieved, and abolished; for in Christ
shall all be made alive.3 1 Romans 5:11; 2 Romans 5:19; 3 1 Corinthians 15:22

2. And as certainly as the Free Gift qualifies the condemnation of original sin,
so certainly it mitigates the depravity inherited by man. That depravity is
universally admitted to be twofold: the absence of original righteousness and
the bias to all evil. But these are one in the withdrawal of the Holy Ghost, the
original bond of the soul’s union with God. Now the Spirit was as surely given
back to the race as the Atonement was given to it: given, that is, like the
Atonement, as a provisional discipline of preparation for the fuller grace of
redemption

(1.) The Spirit’s universal influence qualifies original sin as He is in every
responsible soul a Remembrancer of a forfeited estate, the Prompter to feel
after God and regain that communion which all history proves to be an
inextinguishable yearning of mankind. He suffers not the spirit of man to forget
its great loss. It is through this preliminary universal influence that guilt is
naturally in man ashamed of its deformity. If the descendants of Adam and Eve
inherit their nature despoiled of righteousness, they inherit the sentiment also
by which they knew that they were naked; 1 though this part of the inheritance
comes from the original grace that the first offenders could not transmit.
Shame, and the sense of despoilment and loss, are united with fear in the sacred
phenomena of conscience, which must be essentially bound up with the doctrine of
original sin

1 Genesis 3:7

(2.) But conscience suggests the thought, at least in man, of recovery; and the
same Spirit who moves towards God in conscience, through fear and hope,
universally touches the secret springs of the will. Original sin is utter
powerlessness to good: it is in itself a hard and absolute captivity. But it is
not left to itself. When the Apostle says that the Gentiles have the law written
in their hearts, and in conscience measure their conduct by that standard, and
may do by nature the things contained in the law, 1 he teaches us plainly that
in the inmost recesses of nature there is the secret mystery of grace which, if
not resisted and quenched, prompts the soul to feel after God, and gives it
those secret, inexplicable beginnings of the movement towards good which fuller
grace lays hold on. In fact, the very capacity of salvation proves that the
inborn sinfulness of man has been in some degree restrained; that its tendency
to absolute evil has been checked > and that natural ability and moral
ability—to use the language of controversy—are one through the mysterious
operation of a grace behind all human evil 1 Romans 2:14-15

3. Hence, in conclusion, the great antitheses of this doctrine are reconciled in
the statement, carefully guarded, that original sin is the sin of Adam’s
descendants as under a covenant of grace. What it would otherwise have been we
can never know; there would then have existed no federal union of mankind. The
souls of Adam and Eve would have only added two more to the spirits of evil. As
we know the doctrine and the fact, it is the harmony of truths in our being
otherwise irreconcilable. Human nature is lost, and yet we are still the
offspring of God. 1 The natural and moral image—essentially one in creation—has
departed in its glory, and yet it is recognized as in some sense still existing

Every man is born condemned, and yet he is bidden not to put from him life. He
is by nature able neither to think nor feel nor act aright; yet he is throughout
Scripture appealed to as if his duty were simply matter of his will. In short,
original sin and original grace met in the mystery of mercy at the very gate of
Paradise

1 Acts 17:29 THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN IN ITSGENERAL RELATIONS

These points being established, we may view the doctrine that results from the
combination: in its aspect towards the moral government of God and the
vindication of His attributes; as explaining the Providential government of the
human race; as related to the several doctrines of the Christian Faith; in its
bearing on the constituent elements of human nature; and, lastly, in its effect
upon the doctrine of sin generally, and in its particular manifestations, as
under the discipline of the Gospel

I. Holy Scripture only in an indirect manner refers to the objections that may
be urged against the righteousness of the Divine procedure in relation to the
fundamental principles involved in the doctrine of original sin

1. St. Paul’s thoughts, before and after the express treatment of the subject,
seem to hover over this awful question of the vindication of God. But, under the
guidance of inspiration, he leaves it where we must leave it, —among the
unsolvable mysteries of the Eternal Will. No one, however, can fail to see that
in the strict connection of the doctrine of universal sin with that of universal
grace he finds rest to his own soul, and teaches us to find rest also. Every
express delineation of the universal evil of mankind is, without exception,
connected with redemption. This is the only vindication of the Righteous God
from the tremendous charge brought against Him by the judgments of men. God’s
own Theodicy, or vindication of Himself, is exhibited in the free gift of the
Second Adam

Original sin sprang from the federal constitution of the race; one in the unity
of the unlimited many. But the many are one in recovery as well as in sin. As
surely as sin and death passed through to the race, so surely from Christ did
grace pass through

2. Other expedients for the reconciliation of the Divine economy with human
judgments are adopted even by those who accept a doctrine of original sin: we
may say, other methods of stating St. Paul’s vindication. There are those who
hold the THREE IMPUTATIONS which lie at the basis of human history—the
imputation of Adam’s sin to the whole world, the imputation of the sin of man to
the Holy Representative of mankind, and the imputation to man of the benefit of
His redemption—who nevertheless so held them as to increase the great difficulty
instead of lessening it. The several reckonings are made to flow from an
absolute sovereignty in God, giving no account of His matters

Though the word has a judicial sound it involves an arbitrary idea, and one
which adds a superfluous harshness to our doctrine. The imputations are not
equal and uniform: while the sin of the first Adam is imputed to all his
posterity, the righteousness of the Second Adam is imputed only to a
predetermined fragment of mankind. If it is said that the sins of those only
were reckoned to Christ who receive the benefit, that does not lighten the gloom
of the subject. The want of correspondence between the imputation in Original
Sin and the imputation in Christian Righteousness lays a tremendous burden on
the doctrine common to the two. Are not My ways equal? 1 This is the Lord’s
vindication of Himself; and, as to the theology which beclouds His justice, He
says to it, are not your ways unequal?

1 Ezekiel 18:29

3. It may be rejoined, that St. Paul himself adopts the very method which we
denounce, by making the federal covenant with man in Christ the correlative of
the federal covenant with man in Adam. But he invariably asserts the
universality of the benefit of grace, so far as concerns the intention of God.
As to the why of this federal constitution, and the why of evil generally in the
dark background, there is no solution given to man, because it is not possible
to the creature. That mystery, like redemption itself, will in some sense be for
ever hid in the Divine nature. It is, however, a mystery that is not lightened
by rejecting the doctrine of original sin

II. Thus is explained the economy of God’s providential government of the
nations. If the exhibition of original sin is cut off from the universal gift,
there can be no intelligible account given of the times of this ignorance which
God winked at. 1 All heathenism, past and present, is on that theory
inexplicable. The world has been ever groping after God: universal sinfulness
must be reconciled with that fact. Not blank atheism, but the superfluity of
superstition has been the law: a polytheistic superstition to which the nations
were given up, because they resisted God’s inner light; unspeakable degradation,
and the almost unlimited change from dishonor to dishonor, marked the history of
the heathen world; but only as the result of a rejection of influences that have
striven with men. And light has been seen rising in the deepest dark-ness.
Neither the Savior’s intercourse with Gentiles, nor the Apostles’, permits the
supposition of such a total and unrelieved corruption, ruin, and abandonment of
human nature as some dogmas of original sin and the "massa perditionis" assume.
Tertullian’s "anima naturaliter Christiana" may be set against this, as the
opposite exaggeration: the truth lying in the middle. The absolute corruption of
the roots of our nature is a Manichaean error, revived in Flacianism, but
contradicted by the whole doctrine of original sin as taught in Scripture. Apart
from Christ, and in hard theory, the ruin of man is complete. But man has never
been in such a far country as not to hear the appeal of the Father: the far
country2 is still the land of Emmanuel 1 Acts 17:30; 2 Luke 15:13

III. The connection between original sin and the Christian system is fundamental
and universal. Upon it is based the necessity, the possibility, the universality
of the Atonement, by the obedience of the Last Adam, Who bore in His own Person
the consequences of the sin which He never shared. From original sin He was
free: for, though His human nature was born of a woman, born under the law, 1 as
bearing the consequences of human transgression, it was not begotten of man, but
of the Holy Ghost

Hence the same Divine necessity that exempted Him from the sin of our nature
demands that none other be exempt, not even His mother after the flesh. The
sinlessness of Jesus is secured by the miraculous conception, His impeccability
by the hypostatic union; hence His active and His passive righteousness are
united in one, the former rendering the latter possible and sufficient.
Regeneration also derives its double character from the doctrine of original
sin: it is the new creation of life in the soul, while it is at the same time
the renewal of the original image of God; it is regeneration as the Divine
commencement of a new life, renewal as the resulting process. But, before this,
apart from this, and yet concurrently with it, Justification meets original sin
as the reversal of its condemnation with the guilt of all that flows from it at
the bar of God. And Ethical Sanctification in its beginning, process, and final
issues, is the full eradication of the sin itself, which, reigning in the
unregenerate, coexisting with the new life in the regenerate, is abolished in
the wholly sanctified

1 Galatians 4:4

IV. It is expedient at this point to glance briefly at the constitution of man’s
nature as it is now found: of that nature namely, which alone we know as human.
A few leading terms give us the general character of the humanity that sin has
transmitted unimpaired as human nature, but entirely corrupt in its unassisted
development as fallen and sinful nature

1. The term Human Nature is not used in this relation in Scripture. St. James
alone speaks of teé fúsei teé anthroopínee, translated Mankind. 1 The word
Nature signifies the condition or law of preappointed development, and thence
the essential character and constitution with which every created thing comes
into existence. It may therefore be applied to man in two senses, both faithful
to the original meaning of the word: either to the constituent elements of his
being, as differencing him from every other, or to the moral development of that
being as growth from within, and apart from external influence. As to the
latter, every individual of mankind is born with a nature which, without
external influence upon it, is morally degraded and corrupt. The bias to evil—
that is, to forget God, to serve the creature and to live for self—is innate and
congenital; and this makes it the nature of man, as being inherent and not
accidental. But, in the former sense of the term, sin is an accident of
humanity: it came from without; it is not "das Gewordene," but "das Gemachte."
It is not in harmony with the original constitution of man: conscience, and the
law written in the heart or reason which is its standard, being witness. The
distinction is always remembered in Scripture

1 James 3:7

2. The disturbance in the very essence of human nature may be regarded as
affecting the entire personality of man as a spirit acting in a body. He is born
with a nature which is— apart both from the external Evil One and from the
external renewing power of the New Creation—under the bondage of sin. That
bondage may be regarded with reference to the lower nature that enslaves the
higher, and to the higher nature that is enslaved

(1.) Fallen human nature is Flesh or sarx: the whole being of man, body and
soul, soul and spirit, separated from God, and objected to the creature. The
autos ego of Self is without God, but only in the sense of being without Him as
its God; and in the world, 1 as its false sphere of life and enjoyment. This is
the slavery of sin to which man is naturally born, and to which he is naturally
predetermined. For I know that in me, (that is in my flesh,) dwelleth no good
thing: 2 this contains the truth concerning our fallen estate expressed by St.
Paul as its representative. It is slavery, or a yoke imposed: I am carnal, sold
under sin; 3 this I being the same person who can say, with the mind, I myself
serve the law of God, 4 and what I hate, that do I. 5 It is, however, an innate
or inborn or predetermined slavery: the Apostle calls himself sárkinós, carnal,
or fleshly, or fleshy, a strong word, which forbids the thought of his meaning
the slavery of habit. If he wrote sarkikos, this term, as the antithesis of
pneumatikos, 6 denoting an inherent characteristic of the law, would also point
to an inherent quality of fallen nature. Again he refers to the sin that
dwelleth in me: 7 not merely the sin that has gained an ascendancy from without
And all this is confirmed by the strong words: for I delight in the law of God
after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members. 8 Such is the meaning of the flesh as the designation of depraved
humanity enslaved to sense. Another use of the term, signifying human nature as
mortal and frail, underlies the former; but this use is not directly connected
with sin. In this latter sense Jesus Christ is come in the flesh;9 as to the
former, He was sent only in the likeness of sinful flesh.10

1 Ephesians 2:12; 2 Romans 7:18; 3 Romans 7:14; 4 Romans 7:25; 5 Romans 7:15; 6
Romans 7:14; 7 Romans 7:17; 8 Romans 7:22-23; 9 1 John 4:3; 10 Romans 8:3

(2.) This slavery, however, has its more spiritual aspect. Starting from the
same idea of the one personality in man, we may view the effect of original sin
upon the autos ego in its higher principle, distinct from the flesh, though not
apart from it. The one spiritual agent in man, operating through the three
elements of his nature, body, soul, and spirit, and the three functions of his
rational soul, the mind, the affections, and the will, is fettered and impotent
to good. Hence its fallen dignity evermore utters the cry, Talaípooros egoó
ánthroopos; 0 wretched man that I am! 1 The I of this wretched man is the
personal representative of mankind, in whom original sin—sin that dwelleth in
me2 — has been brought by the application of law from a latent state into
activity. In me is qualified in two ways: that is, in my flesh; 3 and with the
mind I myself. 4 Therefore the one personality has a double character: the
inward man of the mind, to which to will is present and the flesh,5 or the body
of sin, in which how to perform that which is good I find not. But the one
person, to whom these opposite elements belong —an inner man, a reason, a will
to good; a carnal bias, an outer man, a slavery to evil—is behind all these,
behind even the inner man. And in him, in the inmost secret of his nature, is
the original vice which gives birth to these contradictions. The Apostle adds
three views of his own state with regard to this inherent sin; or, in other
words, three views of that sin in regard to him. First, without the law he was
alive, and sin was dead; 6 whatever difficulty there may be in explaining this
of St. Paul, it precisely describes the sin that lies virtually latent in every
human spirit, though abounding in dead works, 7 until the consciousness of
sinful-ness is roused by the pressure of Divine law on the conscience. Secondly,
the latent sin revived, or sprang into life, and he died, 8 both under its
depravity and its condemnation: it wrought in me all manner of concupiscence:
the original evil in him put forth all its varieties of form, and overwhelmed
him with the proofs of its despotism. The indwelling sin which the law revealed
reduced him to such impotence as could be defined only by death: the slavery of
the natural man could not be more impressively exhibited Thirdly, there is the
state of deliverance from the law of sin and death9 in regeneration

One important fact runs through the whole description: the absolute bondage of
the nobler faculty, here called the mind, to the flesh, rendering the will
powerless to perform its ineffectual desire

1 Romans 7:24; 2 Romans 7:17; 3 Romans 7:18; 4 Romans 7:25; 5 Romans 7:22;
Romans 7:25; Romans 7:18; 6 Romans 7:8-9; 7 Hebrews 6:1; 8 Romans 7:8; 9 Romans
8:2

(3.) In this picture of the original corruption of human nature there are some
features which must be intently regarded: they will be only mentioned in passing
now, as their fuller consideration belongs to the economy of grace and the plan
of salvation. It teaches most distinctly the freedom of the will, and at the
same time the inability of man to do what is good. The harmony of these seeming
opposites is most manifest: the faculty of willing is untouched in any case, and
the influence of conscience prompts it to will the right; but this is bound up
with a miserable impotence to good, and results in both a natural and a moral
inability to do what the law of God requires. It shows most impressively that
man, in his natural state, or in the flesh, must be under the Divine displeasure
as the voluntary agent of the sin that seems nevertheless a law in the members
only. Here there is a paradox in the Apostle’s words: Now if I do that I would
not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me:1 this is the
outcry and protest of the soul against its slavery; but it is slavery still,
bringing the ME into captivity to the law of sin, and into a captivity to evil
with which a sense of guilt is inseparably connected. It shows that the
corruption of the nature is consistent with the presence of an unextinguished
sense of right, and even desire for it, which the Good Spirit through the law
excites. St. Paul may be said to be describing not a state of nature, but a
state of conviction produced by the Holy Ghost. This is certainly true, though
the Apostle does not make the distinction. But it must be remembered that the
inward man and the law of my mind 2 are expressions which do not mean anything
increated by Divine influence through the law The Holy Spirit speaks to a dead
or sleeping man within the sinner, and revives a law that may have been long
silent, obsolete, and in this sense dead 1 Romans 7:20; 2 Romans 7:22-23

3. Against this gentler interpretation arise two classes of objectors. First,
there are those who make original sin the absolute destruction of the image of
God and of the capacity of good in man: of these much has been already said, and
it will hereafter be shown, when we come to the Gospel of grace, how
inconsistent this view is with the universal benefit of redemption. Secondly,
there are those who interpret the primitive Fall to have been the loss of the
Spirit as an essential element of human nature, given sacrameritally back
through the incarnation of Christ applied: these also must hereafter be referred
to. Finally, in defense of our position generally, it may be said that the
misery of the wretched man, bound to the body of death, is only aggravated by
the fact that there is a better nature beneath the worse. This does not mitigate
original sin as misery, impotence, and the source of condemnation; but it makes
the exhibition of it consistent with the universality of redeeming grace

V. It remains now to trace the connection of this doctrine with the history and
development of sin generally. Original sin cannot be distinguished from its
personal and actual manifestation. It is the source of all the varieties of sin
that are known in experience and described in Scripture: that other fountain
originally opened for sin and uncleanness, the streams of which in human life
are infinitely diversified

1. The sin of our nature, indwelling in the soul, is its HABITUAL state, as
opposed to ACTUAL transgressions. The former is sinful-ness, the latter more
properly sin. Hence there is a secret filthiness of the flesh and spirit,1 as
distinguished from the works of the flesh which are manifest. 2 The habitual or
original principle of evil may remain after its works have ceased, waiting for
the act of grace which shall entirely extinguish it 1 2 Corinthians 7:1; 2
Galatians 5:19 2. Actual transgressions may be variously summarised.

(1.) They may be offences of the heart’s desire and imagination; of the words
and of the acts; or, since the words are at once expressions of the thought and
themselves acts, we may say sins of the thought and of the deed.

(2.) They may be viewed in relation to the Divine law, and be divided into
offences against God, against our neighbor, and against ourselves. These three
are really one, since there is no sin but against God; but the Decalogue, and
the general strain of Scripture, suggest the distinction.

(3.) Estimating them, by the temptation that leads to the act, we have the
division of selfishness, carnality, and worldliness; the first, however,
according to St. James, being the root of all: Every man is tempted when he is
drawn away of his own lust. 1 Every act of sin is the expression of the heart’s
consent to some solicitation; but the solicitation may appeal directly to the
internal affection, or come through the medium of the eye which desires to have,
or tempt the spirit alienated from God and absorbed in its own pride. Hence St.
John’s definition of the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life. 2 It is impossible to distinguish with certainty between the
transgressions to which Satan directly tempts, and those to which inbred sin
alone excites. Great spiritual skill, however, may be attained in this by those
who, in the spirit of St. Paul’s words studying the Tempter, are not ignorant of
his devices, 3 on the one hand, and, on the other, remember his exhortation
prove your own selves.4 1 James 1:14; 2 1 John 2:16; 3 2 Corinthians 2:11; 4 2
Corinthians 13:5 3. As it respects measures of guilt, there are two views which
the Scriptures harmonies

He who breaks any commandment is guilty of all; 1 and the distinction between
MORTAL and VENIAL is essentially unfounded. Yet differences are marked,
according as the will, the final principle of all transgression, enters into the
act of the soul.

(1.) Not only are there sins of OMISSION and COMMISSION, but there are sins
VOLUNTARY or willful, and sins INVOLUNTARY, the result of ignorance and
infirmity. 2 The supreme Judge reveals Himself as taking those differences into
account. Hence there is an evangelical doctrine of mortal and venial offence.
All sin is mortal, as the wages of sin is death; all sins are venial, inasmuch
as Christ died for the expiation of all.

(2.) But thrice the Scripture declares that there is the possibility of deadly
and unpardonable sin in this world. Our Lord speaks of such a sin AGAINST THE
HOLY GHOST, and that in three Evangelists: 3 the Epistle to the Hebrews adds
another, and St. John gives his final testimony in his First Epistle. In the
Gospels, it is the state of the heart hardened against Divine grace, blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost, and therefore of necessity hopeless: in this world it
refuses forgiveness, and in the world to come its eternal condemnation follows.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is the sin against the Atonement, the absolute
rejection of which by equal necessity shuts out all hope, seeing they crucify to
themselves the Son of God afresh.4 In St. John’s words this last sin is simply
against God who provided the rejected Atonement, and sent the despised Spirit:
it is a sin for which intercession may be vain: I do not say that he shall pray
for it. 5

(3.) The stages by which actual and willful transgression reaches this
unpardonable height may be profitably marked. There is a condition in which the
soul thwarts the influence of Divine grace, referred to throughout the Scripture
as being constantly in opposition to the Spirit: ye do always resist the Holy
Ghost. 6 This is perhaps the most universal characteristic of active sin, as the
monitions of the Supreme Convincer are bound up with all the activities of
conscience and the Word of God. Successful opposition to His influence produces
two opposite effects, conspiring however to one result. The soul’s sensibility
declines, and that state follows which is described in Scripture as the sleep of
indifference or carnal security: having their conscience seared with a hot iron,
entangled in the snare of the devil, 7 and taken captive by him at his will, 8
and willing and able to turn away their ears from the truth. 9 St. Paul shows
that this condition is consistent with a pretence to religion: speaking lies in
hypocrisy. 10 The Savior’s denunciations of the hypocrites for whom His sternest
woes were reserved, teach us what a fearful connection there may be between
utter insensibility to Divine grace and devotion to the semblance of godliness.
But the obverse of this selfengendered deadness to the Spirit’s influence is die
direct hardening of the soul through the judicial withdrawal of that influence.
Upon this follows the secret of utter antagonism to truth: that decisive
reprobation which overtakes those who in a special sense have turned aside after
Satan, 11 and learned like him to call evil good. But this specific sin against
the Spirit can have been committed by none who have grace enough to dread its
commission, or who have the slightest true desire of return

1 James 2:10; 2 Psalms 19:12-13; 3 Matthew 12:31, Luke 12:10, Mark 3:29; 4
Hebrews 6:6; 5 1 John 5:16; 6 Acts 7:51; 7 1 Timothy 4:2; 8 2 Timothy 2:26; 9 2
Timothy 4:4; 10 1 Timothy 4:2; 11 1 Timothy 5:15

4. Lastly, moral evil in the renewed soul has a distinct character. Here again
we have a reconciliation of opposites. On the one hand, there is no sin in the
regenerate spirit: whosoever is born of God sinneth not. 1 The evil of his
nature still remaining is not reckoned to him, and he keepeth himself from
actual transgression: that wicked one toucheth him not. On the other hand, the
new spiritual life only makes his residuary corruption more intolerable. The
sanctified mind knows iniquity, through the revelation of the law of grace, as
the unsanctified cannot know it. Thus original sin is in reality perceived in
its utter vileness only by those who are not condemned for it, and who, with all
their hearts, are seeking its destruction. Here comes in the distinction between
defects of infirmity or secret faults which do not exclude from grace, not
having in them the true nature of sin, and offences committed in spite of His
remonstrance which grieve the Holy Spirit, and if persisted in cause Him though
slowly to take His departure. It is the sure characteristic of regeneration that
it is impatient of remaining impurity. He that is joined unto the Lord is one
Spirit: 2 his deep desire, the strongest sentiment of his new nature, is to be
delivered from that which cannot be common to himself and his Lord. The penitent
seeking his first pardon sets his expectation on the Lamb of God Which beareth
the sin of the world. 3 But the renewed and forgiven believer keeps his eye
fixed on the perfect holiness of his Savior. The children of God know that He
was manifested to take away our sins, 4 and not only to bear away our guilt.
They read the words that follow as containing the Divine encouragement of the
ambition of faith: IN HIM IS NO SIN. 5 He alone was and is without the original
offence; and by His grace we may come to the high experience that as He is so
are we in this world. 6 It is of this new commandment also the Apostle of
perfected love says, or may be understood to say: hó estin aleethés en autoó kaí
en humín, what is true in Him and you. 7 Hence, we must be careful to remember
the Scriptural modifications of the terms that define original sin as lingering
in the regenerate and doomed to destruction. It is no longer, strictly speaking,
INDWELLING Sin. It is not, in any sense, the law in my members. 8 Nor is it the
carnal mind, which is enmity against God. 9 But it may be described as the old
man, or, as the Rabbins said, the Old Adam, made old by the new nature; and this
old man has a body of sin which is crucified, in order that it may be destroyed,
that henceforth we should not serve sin. 10 St. Paul’s chosen term is the flesh
with its affections and lusts, which they that are Christ’s have crucified.11

1 1 John 5:18; 1 John 3:9; 2 1 Corinthians 6:17; 3 John 1:29; 4 1 John 3:5; 5 1
John 4:17; 6 1 John 2:8; 7 1 John 2:8; 8 Romans 7:20; Romans 7:23; 9 Romans 8:7;
10 Romans 6:6; 11 Galatians 4:24

HISTORICAL The doctrine of Sin, especially of Original Sin, occupies a large
space in historical theology, inasmuch as it touches at some points almost every
other branch of the Christian system. There is, strictly speaking, no
development of dogma: only the exhibition of a successive series of collisions
between the Scriptural statements and the current opinions of the Church. A few
points may be noted in their chronological order

I. It may be said, at the outset, that the fundamentals of our doctrine have
been most firmly held by mankind universally. This is a point of great
importance, connecting the most profound revelation of Scripture with the
theology of nature

1. The brief reference already made to the Theories of Evil has shown that
Pantheism and Dualism have successively ruled ancient and modern thought on the
subject. But it cannot have escaped notice that neither of these theories gave a
good account of the unlimited influence of sin in the human race. Indeed neither
of them could confront the question, inasmuch as the fundamental principles of
both were opposed to an absolutely universal power of the evil principle. Not
attempting to define sin, and with a very vague idea of its true nature, the
systems of ancient mythology — Egyptian, Phoenician, Vedic, Hellenic—all
accepted a certain composite of light and darkness, good and evil, which made up
to their imaginations the sum of things in Nature. Forces of evil equally with
forces of good were acknowledged and worshipped; and the very same names, as in
the case of the DAEVAS, came to be applied to both

2. Meanwhile, it cannot be doubted that there was a gradual preparation in the
human mind for the final teaching of the Word of God. While the Eastern systems
of thought shaped more and more distinctly, in Persia the idea of one Personal
Righteousness, and in Buddhism the essential evil of existence as self-separated
from God, Hellenic thought, expressed in its drama especially, developed the
conception of a stern and awful Nemesis, the Vindicator of moral order. Falling
immeasurably below the ethical grandeur of the Bible, the tragedians and
philosophers of Greece, and the historians of both Greece and Rome, abound in
presentiments of the truth. As to the inherent sinfulness of the race, in
particular, the following words are forcible. A line of Sophocles says:
Anthropois gar tois pasi koinon esti touxamartanein. As to the origin of this
universal sin Thucydides makes the vigorous remark: pephukasi apantes kai idia
kai dhmosia, amartanein. And one more striking still is found in a fragment of
Euripides: emphutos pasin anthropois kakh, rendered by Horace, Nam vitiis nemo
sine nascitur. So Tacitus: Vitia erunt donec homines. But though the sense of
sin is variously and unequally expressed in various nations and various
literatures, in none is the testimony to its universality wanting. While so many
traditions, however, point to a past age of uprightness and of man’s declension,
none contain hints of the great revelation of the Bible, that the whole race of
mankind had its probation and fall in one progenitor

II. The Ancient Church, both under the guidance of inspiration and in the
Rabbinical age, has held the essentials of the doctrine of moral evil in itself,
and of original sin in particular

1. It has been seen that the Old-Testament Scriptures maintain one consistent
and uniform teaching as to the nature of sin generally, and as to its universal
power over mankind. The history of the Flood gives its evidence both in clear
testimony and in awful judgment The covenant rite of circumcision significantly
declared the hereditary sinfulness of man The entire system of the Levitical
economy was based on this assumption: while its trespass-offerings had more
specific reference to individual offences, its sin-offerings had general
reference to the deeper root of universal sin. The Psalms and Prophets abound in
testimonies to the same effect: not only asserting the universality of past and
present sin among men, but also asserting it with equal confidence concerning
the unlimited future, One Being only excepted, the Righteous Servant of Jehovah.
Generally it may be said that on no one subject is the teaching of the ancient
Scriptures at once more elevated above all extra-Biblical ideas, and more
steadfast and uniform in itself than on this. It proclaims that EVIL, or ra, the
permitted consequence of sin, is under the Divine disposal, and not independent
of the Divine will: I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and
create evil; I the Lord do all these things. 1 But the same evil, in respect to
the SIN, which causes it, is evermore traced to the willful rebellion of the
human will: And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil (ra)
continually. 2 There is hardly here the usual development of Scriptural
revelation. The progressive dispensations expand the doctrine into abundant
details to meet the gradual development of the method of atonement; but the
fundamental idea of SIN is unique in its hard simplicity throughout the
Scriptures 1 Isaiah 14:7; 2 Genesis 6:5

2. And it is equally certain that the later Jewish doctrine exhibited the
outlines of the truth, even in some respects more clearly stamped than in the
ancient Scriptures themselves. Rabbinical authors make much use of the typical
relation of Adam to Christ: Quemadmodum homo primus fuit primus in peccato, sic
Messias erit ultimus ad auferendum peccatum penitus. And Adamus postremus est
Messias. The Book of Ecclesiasticus declares that every man from his youth is
given to evil;1 Philo abounds in mystical accounts of its origin and universal
influence; and a long-descended ancient tradition is summed up by one of the
Rabbinical commentators on Genesis: The first man was the cause of death to all
his descendants

1 Ecc. 17:16

III. The early Christian Church exhibits the truth as it has been deduced from
Scripture, but with the germ of every subsequent error here and there appearing.
Before the Pelagian heresy the Greek and Latin fathers generally held the Vitium
Originis, as Tertullian first called it, but laid stress upon the co-operation
of the human will enlightened by teaching and grace. The Latins were still more
decided as to both. For instance, Ambrose says: Omnes in primo homine
peccavimus; and, Nulla species cujusquam virtutis occurrit, quae vel sine dono
Divinae gratiae vel sine consensu nostrae voluntatis habeatur. So Lactantius:
Non neces-sitatis esse peccare, sed propositi ac voluntatis. With one consent
they held the doctrine of Tertullian as to the image of God in man, of which it
is said that non tam extinguitur quam obum-bratur. Origen broached the old
notion of a pre-existent state and fall of the soul: this has been revived again
and again, but adds to the difficulty which it seeks to remove

IV. The PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY of the fifth century in most of its bearings and
issues turned upon the doctrine of Original sin. Pelagius, and his followers
Caelestius and Julian, taught that transgression can be regarded only as the
independent act of the free will of the individual; that Adam was created
mortal, his offence having hurt himself alone; and that his descendants are born
in precisely the same moral condition; that the prevalence of sin in his
descendants is the result of following his example: in eo quod omnes peccaverunt
exemplo Adami; and by a longa consuetudo vitiorum it comes that vitia quodammodo
vim habere naturae. All the stress was laid upon the free selfdetermination of
every man living to good or evil, the perfection of good being attainable by
every independent individual through the grace of his nature and the law and the
example of Christ. But Augustine, at the other extreme, taught that in Adamo
omnes peccaverunt, omnes ille unus fuerunt: we all were that One, and SINNED IN
HIM 1 (by a mistranslation of Romans 5:12ef hoó pántes heémarton). The
corruption of nature — peccatum originis — beginning in Adam was concupiscentia,
the ascendency of the flesh over the spirit; it introduced a certain necessity
of sinning, the freedom of the will having no meaning save as opposed to
external compulsion: and this, transmitted to his posterity, makes them sinners
and guilty in themselves as well as in Adam. SEMI-PELAGIANISM strove to mediate
between these two extremes. It admitted original sin so far as concerns the
weakening of the power to will and to do; limited the death of the Fall to
physical death: regarded man’s residual energies as sufficient to set him upon
the beginnings of salvation, but the Divine grace as absolutely necessary to
carry on and perfect it. The Augustinian doctrine gained the ascendancy, and
still reigns in all Predestinarian systems

Pelagianism pure and simple has never held its ground, at least among those who
have any faith in the Christian Scriptures. Semi-pelagianism however has, on the
whole, exerted the widest influence: it reappeared dogmatically in the Lutheran
Synergism, and in the spirit at least of its teaching has pervaded all
communions which have denied the dogma of individual predestination

1 Romans 5:12

V. The Mediaeval controversies were mainly transitional. The Schoolmen spent all
their subtlety upon the questions involved; but they simply furnished the
materials for future confessions. Among the new topics which they raised are the
following. The punishment of original sin was supposed by some to be the
negative loss of the vision of God: the utmost point Augustine, fairly
interpreted, had in his day reached. But to the poena damni, or loss, was added
the poena sensus, even in the case of children unbaptised: for strongly
maintaining this Gregory of Ariminum was branded with the name of Childtormentor
The law of the propagation of evil was also much contested. Peter Lombard
advocated the theory known as CREATIONISM: the immaterial spirit infused into
the begotten organism of the soul and body contracts defilement and becomes
guilty. Anselm and Aquinas asserted TRADUCIANISM: Persona erat Adam, natura
homo; fecit igitur persona peccatricem naturam. Adam’s person corrupted the
nature; and in his descendants the nature corrupts the person. In favor of the
latter is the whole doctrine of original sin, and especially the incarnation of
Christ, Whose human nature was created and not transmitted to Him. Against the
former is the danger of making God the author of human evil; while it may be
thought to be defended by the dignity of the rational soul, the name FATHER OF
SPIRITS 1 given to God, and the tendency of the opposite theory to Materialism
The IMMACULATE CONCEPTION of the Virgin was early introduced into the question:
it divided the Schoolmen, many of the best of whom recoiled from the thought
that one member of the race should be made holy without the intervention of
atonement; and was left among the "Pious Opinions" of the Church, until, in
1854, it was made an article of faith by Rome. Freewill and its relation to
grace were largely discussed. The distinction expressed in the term "Meritum
condigni et congrui" was invented in order to show the value set by God upon the
workings of nature towards grace: they have a merit which it is congruous with
the Divine justice to reward by further gifts, and this is a Meritum de congruo;
while, after his justification, the works of the Christian have a higher merit,
a Meritum de condigno, earning eternal life. But the source of good in man since
the Fall is the Divine Spirit, and all merit is excluded. One of the authors of
the distinction, Peter Lombard, left this noble sentence: Libertas a peccato et
a miseria per gratiam est; libertas vero a necessitate per naturam. Ipsa gratia,
voluntatem praevenit praeparando ut velit bonum, et praeparatam adjuvat ut
perficiat

1 Hebrews 12:9

VI. The dogma defined in the Council of Trent combines the Augustinian Realistic
identification of Adam and the race with the semi-Pelagian negative idea of the
effect of the Fall. Adam, created in the image of God, with the endowment of
freewill, and perfect harmony in the purely natural elements, had the gift of
original righteousness added; " CONDITUS in puris naturalibus" he was then "in
justitia et sanctitate CONSTITUTUS." Original righteousness was a supernatural
added gift, and the loss of it threw the race back into its created condition of
contrariety between flesh and spirit, without the superadded restraint. In
baptism the guilt of the original offence which incurred the loss is taken away,
and yet the concupiscence that sprang from transgression and leads to
transgression remains untaken away, not having, however, itself the essential
quality of evil: " this concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes denominates
sin, the Holy Synod declares the Catholic Church never understood to be called
sin because it is really and truly sin in the regenerate, but because it is from
sin and inclines to sin." Against this the Reformed Confessions all protested,
asserting that concupiscence has in it the nature of sin. For the rest, the
Roman theory admits that the natural image has been clouded through the Fall:
man’s whole nature being wounded, and propagated as such. These points were
referred to when the First Estate of man was the subject, and we must again and
again return to them

VII. The Lutheran standards deny the Tridertine doctrine. Under the influence of
a dread of semi-Pelagianism as tending to the idea of merit in man, the
formularies were constructed in the Augustinian spirit. Original sin is defect
of original righteousness, and a depraved concupiscence in the higher faculties
towards carnal things. In the Smalkald Articles " the corruption of nature is so
profound and dark as to be past human comprehension, but must be received as
matter of revelation and faith." In the Formula of Concord two opposite
tendencies are met and opposed. On the one hand, the Synergists, who insisted on
a certain measure of co-operation in the human will, sunergein, were withstood
by the affirmation that, while in natural things man may do good, in spiritual
things his will is entirely bound; on the other hand, the doctrine of Flacius,
that original sin is a corruption of the substance of nature, the actual image
of the devil, was opposed by the affirmation that sin is only an accident of the
nature, the act and not the essence of the soul

VIII. Calvin and the Reformed Confessions make no distinction between the
imputed guilt and the inherent depravity of man’s fallen estate. But much
controversy arose afterwards as to the nature and order of the two imputations.
The Reformed school of Saumur, represented by Placaeus, held that " vitiositas
praecedit imputationem:" there is a MEDIATE or consequent imputation, following
and dependent on individual corruption But the other theory, IMMEDIATE or
antecedent imputation, has predominated: this makes the sin of Adam, as the
federal head of the race, the exclusive or prior ground of condemnation. The
FEDERAL theology of the vicarious representation of mankind by Adam, in virtue
of a covenant of nature or of works (foedus operum, foedus naturae), is divided
into two classes, according as it makes prominent the realistic identity of
mankind with Adam, or otherwise: in the former case, there is a moral as well as
legal imputation; in the latter, the imputation is altogether forensic. But both
separate too sharply the supposed covenant of works from the real covenant of
grace in Christ. The more forensic and representative imputation has taken, in
later years, the form of a forfeiture on the part of Adam of CHARTERED
PRIVILEGES which, through his fault, all mankind have lost: this loss being
original sin. But such speculations as these stand or fall with the general
principle of a specific covenant with Adam as representing his posterity, a
covenant of which the Scripture does not speak. There is but one Covenant, and
of that Christ is the Mediator

IX. The Arminian doctrine in its purest and best form avoided the error of the
previous theories, retaining their truth. It held the Adamic unity of the race:
" in Adam all have sinned," and "all men are by nature children of wrath." But
it maintained also " that the most gracious God has provided for all a remedy
for that general evil which was derived to us from Adam, free and gratuitous in
His beloved Son Jesus Christ, as it were a new and another Adam. So that the
baneful error of those is plainly apparent who are accustomed to found upon that
original sin the decree of absolute reprobation invented by themselves." This "
evil" is " eternal death together with manifold miseries." " But there is no
ground for the assertion that the sin of Adam was imputed to his posterity in
the sense that God actually judged the posterity of Adam to be guilty of and’
chargeable with (reos) the same sin and crime that Adam had committed." These
words of the Apology for the Remonstrant Confession are confirmed by those of
Arminius: " I do not deny that it is sin, but it is not actual sin . . .. We
must distinguish between actual sin and that which is the cause of other sins,
and which on that very account may be denominated sin." The Canons of the Synod
of Dort (1618) gave the most concentrated Calvinistic contradiction to all these
views. As to freewill and grace Limborch says: " Grace is not the solitary, yet
is the primary cause of salvation; for the cooperation of freewill is due to
grace as a primary cause; for, unless the freewill had been excited by
prevenient grace, it would not be able to co-operate with grace." Accordingly,
he and the other leaders of Arminianism asserted the universal diffusion of
prevenient influences of the Spirit; the acceptance in every age of those who
strive after natural uprightness, " honestati naturali operam dent"; and, above
all, the Free Gift to the whole race in Christ, which is the foundation of their
whole system

X. The Methodist teaching on this subject is sometimes set down without any
qualification as Arminian; sometimes it is charged with being semi-Pelagian

1. It differs from the Remonstrant doctrine, where that doctrine, in its protest
against the decisions of the Synod of Dort declined from the earlier teaching of
Arminius. The later Remonstrants laid great stress on the physical impurity of
our nature, denied that this corruption of that nature has in it the true
characteristics of sin, and attributed too much to the "innate liberty of the
human will," as able to co-operate of itself with Divine law

Methodism accepts the Article of the English Church: " Original sin standeth not
in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk); but it is the fault
and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the
offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from Original Righteousness
[quam longissime distet], and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the
flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born
into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation And this infection of
nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the
flesh, called in Greek phronhma sarkos, which some do expound the wisdom, some
sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to
the law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and
are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of
itself the nature of sin." Hence it holds that whatever power there is in the
human will—in its ability as well as in its choice—comes from the redemption of
Christ

2. It holds, with the purest Arminianism, earlier or later, that no ability
remains in man to return to God; and this avowal concedes and vindicates the
pith of original sin as internal The natural man—whether his naturalness is
described by the sin of his flesh, carnal, as he is sarkikos, or the sin of his
soul, sensual, as he is psuxikos—is without the power even to co-operate with
Divine influence. The co-operation with grace is of grace. Thus it keeps itself
for ever safe from Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism

3. It has, however, more fully and consistently than the Remonstrant system
connected the universality of grace with the universality of redemption: knowing
nothing of the Augustinian COMMON GRACE A few extracts will make this plain

(1.) Mr. Wesley, whose treatise on Original Sin is one of the most faithful and
stern reflections of the Scriptural doctrine that our language contains, dwells
upon this universal gift in very many passages of his writings. For instance, in
his sermon on the Scripture way of Salvation: " So that the salvation which is
here spoken of might be intended to be the entire work of God, from the first
dawning of grace in the soul till it is consummated in glory. If we take this in
its utmost extent it will include all that is wrought in the soul by what, is
frequently termed natural conscience, but, more properly, preventing grace; all
the drawings of the Father; the desires after God, which, if we yield to them,
increase more and more; all that light wherewith the Son of God ’enlighteneth
every one that cometh into the world;’ showing every man ’ to do justly, to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with his God;’ all the convictions which His Spirit,
from time to time, works in every child of man; although, it is true, the
generality of men stifle them as soon as possible, and after a while forget, or
at least deny, that they ever had them at all." In another passage in the sermon
on Working out our own Salvation: " For, allowing that all the souls of men are
dead in sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man that is ’in a
state of mere nature; there is no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that
is wholly void of the grace of God. No man living is entirely destitute of what
is vulgarly called natural conscience. But this is not natural: it is more
properly termed preventing grace. Every man has a greater or less measure of
this, which waiteth not for the call of man." " That by the offence of one
judgment came upon all men (all born into the world) to condemnation is an
undoubted truth, and affects every infant, as well as every adult person. But it
is equally true that by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men
(all born into the world—infants and adults) unto justification." Finally: "I
assert that there is a measure of freewill supernaturally restored to every man,
together with that supernatural light." So Mr. Fletcher: "As Adam brought a
general condemnation and a universal seed of death upon all infants, so Christ
brings upon them a general justification and a universal seed of life." Mr.
Watson, in his " Institutes," largely treats on this subject. The following are
a few sentences from the close of his discussion

(2.) "But virtues grounded on principle, though an imperfect one, and,
therefore, neither negative nor simulated, may also be found among the
unregenerate, and have existed, doubtless, in all ages. These, however, are not
from men but from God; Whose Holy Spirit has been vouchsafed to the world,
through the Atonement. This great truth has often been lost sight of in the
controversy. Some Calvinists seem to acknowledge it substantially, under the
name of ’ common grace;’ others choose rather to refer all appearances of virtue
to nature, and thus, by attempting to avoid the doctrine of the gift of the
Spirit to all mankind, attribute to nature what is inconsistent with their
opinion of its entire corruption. But there is, doubtless, to be sometimes found
in men not yet regenerate in the Scriptural sense, in men not even decided in
their choice, something of moral excellence, which cannot be referred to any of
the causes above adduced, and of a much higher character than is to be
attributed to a nature which, when left to itself, is totally destitute of
spiritual life. Compunction for sin, strong desires to be freed from its
tyranny, such a fear of God as preserves them from many evils, charity,
kindness, good neighborhood, general respect for goodness and good men, a lofty
sense of honor and justice, and, indeed (as the very command issued to them to
’repent and believe the Gospel,’ in order to their salvation, implies), a power
of consideration, prayer, and turning to God, so as to commence that course
which, persevered in, would lead on to forgiveness and regeneration. To say that
’ all these are to be attributed to mere nature’ is, to surrender the argument
to the semi-Pelagian, who contends that these are proofs that man is not wholly
degenerate . . .. The Scriptural proof that the Spirit is given to ’ the world’
is obvious and decisive. We have seen that the curse of the law implied a denial
of the Spirit; the removal of that curse implies, therefore, the gift of the
Spirit, and the benefit must be as large and extensive as the Atonement." 4. On
the whole, it may be said that the doctrine, thus stated, is the only one that
is in harmony with all the facts of the case: it omits nothing, softens nothing,
and evades nothing. This position may be further fortified by a comparison with
some other leading systems which have been referred to

(1.) With the Tridentine decisions it has many points of agreement, but more of
difference. The teaching of Rome is not consistent with itself in its view of
the actual state of man as affected by the Fall. It holds original sin, the
corruption of human nature, and the imputation of Adam’s offence as a
condemnation of the race. The Roman Catechism affirms that we are oppressed by
the vice of our birth, "naturae vitio premimur,’ and that the virus of sin
penetrates to what is strongest in our souls, "rationem et voluntatem, quae
maxime solidae sunt animae partes." Yet it more than hints that the departure of
Original Righteousness has simply thrown man back into the position in which he
was created, as if a natural antagonism between flesh and spirit was the normal
state of humanity in the purpose of the Creator. The negative loss and the
positive strength of evil are not harmonized. Again, maintaining rightly that
the condemnation of the original offence is removed by baptism — that is, more
correctly, by the atoning efficacy of which baptism is the seal—it further
declares, as has been seen, that concupiscence in the baptized, that is, the
regenerate, is not of the nature of sin: as if baptism could make that which is
essentially sinful cease to be such; as if the perversion of the will, which
constitutes us formally sinners as soon as we feel and assent to its operation,
were not in itself sinful. The Council correctly lays down that without the
preventing grace of God men cannot exhibit those graces which prepare for
justification; and that they can co-operate with this preventing grace, can
assent to or reject it. So far well; but the taint of semi-Pelagianism is seen
in the stress which Romanist divines lay on the negative character of original
sin, and on the necessity that the absolute will and consent of an intelligent
agent should concur to constitute sinfulness before God

Whether the formal teaching of the Council asserted it or not, the current
Romanist doctrine denies that men are born into the world with anything
subjective in them of the strict nature of sin. The taint also appears in the
merit of congruity, as opposed to the subsequent merit of condignity, the
co-operator with Divine grace bringing the former to approve him for
justification. The doctrine we have established goes far with the Romanist as to
the non-imputation of the guilt of inbred sin in the regenerate; but altogether
leaves it by asserting that there is inherent and innate evil in every
descendant of Adam, that concupiscence, remaining in the believer, is offensive
in the sight of God, that it must as sin be abhorred and mourned over, and as
sin be put away by human discipline and Divine grace

(2.) In virtue of this principle the true doctrine is opposed also to every
account of sin which insists that it cannot be reckoned such by a righteous God
save where the will actively consents; and that none can be held responsible for
any state of soul or action of life which is not the result of the posture of
the will at the time. There is an offending character behind the offending will.
In St. John’s definition of sin it is not only transgression, but want of
conformity with the law. Our Savior speaks of the evil heart, and of the corrupt
tree: and of men as being evil, even when giving good things to their children.
To teach that there is no such thing as a sinful state or condition or
potentiality is semi-Pelagianism: an error which has deeply infected much modern
theology in America and England. Those who have been taught by the Scripture the
depths of sin steadfastly refuse to admit this principle. They believe that the
race of mankind is ruled by a common generic will, which is averse from God; and
that the application of the law only makes the discord manifest. The influence
of the Spirit which appeals to the law written in the heart teaches every man
who listens to His teaching that he is not only a transgressor of the specific
commandment, but a transgressor in himself, and before he knows the law that he
transgresses

(3.) In the light of this doctrine the harshest form of Augustinianism is
condemned, while the principles of eternal truth which it contains are upheld.
That system makes the soul of man passive as a stock or a stone, into which by
the act of regeneration the principle of life is infused through a sovereign
exertion of electing grace, and takes no account of the preliminaries of
goodness which are wrought in man by the selfsame Spirit Who is afterwards the
Spirit of regeneration. The notion of "common grace" is a solution that the
common sense of mankind will not accept. One of the rebukes which Simon Peter
received told him, what God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. 1 ough the
manifestations of a better mind which human nature exhibits are not evidences of
its thorough cleansing, they are tokens of a cleansing prepared for it. While it
is denied that they are good works, it is denied also that they are strictly
speaking evil. They are not fruits of the tree of life in man, yet they are not
fruits of the corrupt tree as such. But this subject, as well as the function of
the human will in salvation, must be reserved: meanwhile, we must hold fast the
deep truth of Bernard’s aphorism; "Tolle liberum arbitrium, non erit quod
salvatur. Tolle gratiam, non erit unde salvetur."

1 Acts 10:15

(4.) Finally, the Methodist teaching on this general subject derives its value
from its strict conformity with the doctrine with which St. John’s First Epistle
closes the Scriptural testimony. In its third chapter we have the fullest and
most exhaustive statement of the New Testament as to sin generally, its origin,
its nature, its manifestations, and the process of its destruction. The
counterpart of St. Paul’s fifth chapter to the Romans, it deals less with the
human original of evil, but more with its entire destruction as the design of
the manifestation of the Sinless One, and as accomplished in the perfectly
regenerate. The purpose of redemption is to take away our sins, 1 according to
the good pleasure of the Eternal Love of the Father Who sent His Son, the
Propitiation for our sins: 2 not to be or to become, but as already, the
Propitiation from heaven. Also for, this purpose the Son of God was manifested,
that He might destroy the works of the devil: 3 He came, not to relax but to
fulfill all righteousness; the works of Satan He came to undo and destroy (hina
lusee). In St. Paul’s chapter the source of our evil is traced no higher than
Adam, and the Fountain opened for our cleansing sends forth its streams parallel
with those of the fountain of our defilement. In St. John’s chapter the source
is traced still higher, to Satan the sinner from the beginning; and the Redeemer
Whom St. Paul makes the Second Adam St. John makes the Antagonist of the
Original Enemy of righteousness The whole design of redemption is the abolition
of sin as transgression of law: the perfect vindication of law, whether by the
judicial satisfaction of its claims or by the restoration of its authority.
Neither of the Apostles speaks of the destruction of the works of Satan apart
from their operation in man; and neither speaks of any destruction of those
works save as accomplished in believing mankind. But, omitting any reference to
the vast residuum of Satanic works with which the Judgment will deal, both dwell
with deep emphasis on the annihilation of sin in the regenerate. St. John,
however, is the more full and explicit. In his doctrine the design of the
manifestation of the Son is the entire removal of iniquity from human nature in
the present life; and upon this Methodist teaching fastens with strong tenacity.
That design is to be wrought out in those who believe, through their conformity
with the Savior in Whom is NO SIN. 4 Every man in Christ is to be made
righteous, even as He is righteous; 5 to become pure even as He is pure; and,
between his justification and his sanctification, the regenerate Christian doth
not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is
begotten of God. Thus, in the Divine court of law, and household, and temple,
respectively, the dark history of sin in man has its end. And, despite every
argument to the contrary, Methodism holds fast and proclaims this great hope 1 1
John 3:5; 2 1 John 4:10; 3 1 John 3:8; 4 1 John 3:7; 1 John 3:3; 1 John 3:9; 5 1
John 3:5

XI, The Socinians, Modern Unitarians, and Rationalists generally revert to the
old Pelagian theory, which is really not a doctrine of original sin, but a
denial of it in every form. In rejecting the Scriptural teaching, however, they
have no substitute to bring. They admit the facts of human depravity. They
cannot deny that evil is universal, and that all the differences among men as
its subjects and agents are only differences of degree. They allow that the
entire fabric of human legislation and government is based upon the postulate
that universal man requires restraint; that all men know and instinctively
recognize each other as sinners; that the mortality of the race is not more
confidently presupposed than its bias to evil; that education universally deals
with children as having innate or inwrought principles of error; and that, in
fact, a deviation from the perfect standard is hereditary in our nature. They
can give no account of this that will bear a moment’s consideration. The
influence of example may explain much, but this of itself demands a reason for
the facility with which example is followed. In short, there is no doctrine of
our most holy faith which so irresistibly and universally appeals for its
confirmation to the common conscience and judgment of mankind. It shines by its
own light, though alas its light is as darkness


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  CHAPTER 14: 16. VOL 02 - THE DIVINE PURPOSE OF REDEMPTION
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The Divine Purpose of Redemption THE MEDIATORIAL MINISTRY. THE DIVINE PURPOSE OF
REDEMPTION THE ETERNAL COUNSEL Origin and Foreannouncement GRADUAL UNFOLDING OF
THE ONE COVENANT OF GRACE its Mediator its Three Forms its Dispensations

ACCOMPLISHMENT the Mystery Revealed HISTORICAL REVIEW Ante-Augustinian

Mediaeval

Calvinistic Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism

Arminianism

PRELIMINARY. THE most appropriate superscription of the department of Theology
on which we now enter is THE MEDIATORIAL MINISTRY. This term defines the
relation of our Savior’s Person to God and man, separated by human sin: as it is
expressed in the word Mediatorial. It embraces also the whole compass of our
Saviour’s work on earth and in heaven: this is better described by the Lord’s
own word, Ministry, than by any other. A thorough survey of the subject
includes, first, the historical development of the Divine eternal counsel of
Redemption as exhibited in a series of dispensations or covenants of which
Christ, whether unrevealed or revealed, is the sole Mediator. Secondly, it
presents to us the full manifestation of the Mediatorial Trinity: the several
functions and relations of the Three Persons in the incarnation and redeeming
work. This leads, thirdly, to the Person of Christ as the Mediator, whose Divine
personality continues in His assumption of human nature and gives its perfection
to all that He does and suffers for mankind. Fourthly, what our Lord
accomplished once for all, and is still accomplishing, must be viewed in its
historical process through a succession of redeeming states and offices.
Fifthly, we close with the study of the Finished Work of His objective
mediatorial ministry as distinguished from the subjective application of it in
the individual and in the Church through the Holy Ghost. In discussing these
topics, the very fundamentals of the Gospel, we must adhere rigidly to the
revelations of Scripture. But, in this as in other departments, and perhaps more
than most others, it will be necessary as we proceed to study the ecclesiastical
development side by side with the Scriptural. THE DIVINE PURPOSE.

We cannot approach the accomplished work of redemption save through the eternal
counsel from which it sprang, and the successive dispensations which connected
it with that eternal purpose. Before the world existed Christ was ordained to
take human nature in order to its renewal; not therefore as a necessary
incarnation for the perfecting of the idea of humanity apart from sin. The
mystery of the Divine counsel has been gradually unfolded through a series of
economies, which occupied the times of preparation for the Gospel. These may be
viewed under two aspects. First, the whole world of mankind has been dealt with
according to the terms of a covenant dating from the Fall, but not yet fully
revealed: a covenant of grace given as a simple promise to our first parents,
renewed to Noah, and once more ratified to Abraham, as each the representative
of mankind. This may be called the economy of the Gentiles inasmuch as the world
was undergoing a negative preliminary discipline for Christ, the Desire of the
nations, and at the same time enjoying a certain measure of benefit from His
mediation. Secondly, a series of positive dispensations or covenants were given
supernaturally to a chosen people, in which the coming Redeemer was foreshadowed
and prepared for: in the Mosaic covenant as the law with its expiations, and as
prophecy with its Gospel promise. Both the law and the prophets of the Mosaic
economy incorporated and carried on the older promise or decree of redemption
until the fullness of time when Christ blended all into the unity of the new
covenant. THE ETERNAL DECREE.

Redemption is in the New Testament declared to have been a purpose of God in or
from eternity. This design, having reference solely to the Saviour’s work, and
apart from its application by the Spirit, is regarded in Scripture as an
absolute decree of man’s salvation virtually accomplished from the beginning: a
mystery reserved for gradual revelation, but a reality underlying all human
history.

1. By many various terms is the original design of man’s salvation set forth.
Love is in the van and in the rear of the long array. God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son: 1 here outo and oste mark the design of love
as accomplished in the mission of the Only-begotten. 2 That love is viewed as
the spontaneous, absolute, decretive will of God: neither taking counsel nor
giving account outside of Himself. The counsel of His own will 3 is simply the
decree of His supreme volition: the bouleen is the expression of the Theleema;
it represents our redemption as the primitive norm or rule according to which
God worketh all things, rather than as a scheme or expedient itself evolved in
the Divine mind. Those passages which are sometimes quoted in the latter sense
refer to the gradual evolution of the heavenly counsel, the conditions on which
personal salvation is suspended, and the methods of the Spirit’s administration.
In regard to these, there is certainly a plan of Salvation, but not so strictly
a plan of Redemption: the latter is as simply a fiat of will as creation: Lo, I
come to do Thy will, 0 God.4 1 John 3:16; 2 1 John 4:10; 1 John 2:7; 3 Ephesians
1:11; 4 Hebrews 10:9.

2. This decree had its effect in itself and was virtually accomplished: we
cannot say from the time of its origination, for it was not a project of time.
The fall of the world and its recovery were never separated. The history of
mankind is a history of redemption. The Lamb was both foreordained before 1 and
slain from the foundation of the world, 2and the virtue of the Atonement, like
death, passed through to all men, the heritage of the race. It was the love of
God our Savior towardMan 1:3 His filanthroopía, that appeared in Christ as a
mystery revealed. And another of St. Paul’s last testimonies speaks of God our
Savior; who willeth all men to be saved, 4 as proved by the mediatorship of
Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
Under a decree of redemption virtually accomplished the whole world has lived
and moved and had its being. The self-devotion of the One Mediator dated back
before He became Christ Jesus Man: 5 His incarnation was the testimony in time
of an eternal fact in the Divine counsel.

Man has no history apart from Him.

1 1 Peter 1:20; 2 Revelation 13:8; 3 Titus 3:4; 4 1 Timothy 2:3-4; 1 Timothy
2:6; 5 1 Timothy 2:5. ITS PROGRESSIVE UNFOLDING. The Decree was, however, a
mystery slowly revealed, and in a variety of ways: by gradual prophecy and
gradual preparation, both of which assumed the form of a series of covenants, or
covenant economies.

1. The eternal purpose was preserved in the remembrance and hope of mankind by
constant FOREANNOUNCEMENTS. The Gospel was preached from the beginning. The Lord
Himself declared it to our fallen parents in words which have therefore been
called the PROTEVANGELIUM, or First Gospel. It was said to the serpent: And I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed;
It shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise His heel: 1 this first
prediction of a coming Deliverer, Who should undo the work of Satan, went forth
into all the world, and was mingled with the traditional hopes of all the
nations. It was renewed in the new world to Abraham: In thy Seed shall all the
nations of the earth be blessed. 2 This promise was given in prospect of the
Atonement on the mount, and, like that Atonement, must carry its meaning
backward as well as forward: in the Seed of the woman, limited to the stock of
Abraham, all nations, not only should be but were and had been already blessed.
Again, the Seed was further limited to the line of David, who transmitted to the
prophets the decree which was declared to him. Thus the great prophecies which
went before on Christ were restricted to one people who received them as their
guardians for the world, and those prophecies kept the Oath and the Promise of
God with always increasing clearness before the minds of men.

1 Genesis 3:15; 2 Genesis 22:18.

2. There was also a continuous PREPARATION. This was negative in the
demonstration of the sin and impotence of the world, whether of Jews or
Gentiles: as to the latter, when the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe; 1 as to the
former, the law given to them was added because of transgressions, till the Seed
should come to Whom the promise was made; they were kept under the law, which
was a schoolmaster . . . unto Christ. 2 Hence the great preparation running
through the ages is summed up: the Scripture hath concluded all under sin. It
was also a positive preparation. The history of the ancient economy was one long
arrangement for the manifestation of the redeeming purpose. For that the
peculiar people was chosen; for that the holy land was prepared; for that the
entire system of typical and symbolical ceremony was ordered; for that both the
land and the people were finally given into the hands of the heathen. For of a
truth against Thy holy child Jesus, Whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and
Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered
together, for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to come to
pass. 3 This first hymn of the Christian Church sings the fulfillment of a
decree for which all events had prepared and in the accomplishment of which all
the most diversified agents conspired.

1 1 Corinthians 1:21; 2 Galatians 3:19; Galatians 3:23-24; 3 Acts 4:27-28.

3. The gradual development of the Divine counsel of human salvation is in
Scripture the unfolding of a COVENANT OF GRACE. Reserving for the present the
fuller treatment of this subject in its application to the work of Christ and
its administration in the Gospel, we must now fix our thought upon its
connection with the history of that development.

(1.) The term itself bears a special Messianic meaning, as always having in view
the fidelity of God to the design of human redemption through the sacrifice of
His Son. The Hebrew beriyth, almost always translated in the LXX by diatheékee,
signifies, not a compact as between man and man, but the Disposition or
Arrangement assumed by the One Supreme purpose of grace. It employs analogically
the language of human covenants; and is an example of the anthropomorphic mode
of speech which expresses the Divine dealings with our race, in Christ the
Mediator. Unlike human compacts it is invariably connected with sacrifice. The
original Hebrew word is derived from barah or bara, in allusion to the custom of
cutting and passing between the parts of a divided animal on the ratification of
a covenant: hence the Greek orkia temnein, and the Hebrew bariyt kaarat. The
first express revelation of the covenant to Abraham gives the key to all its
history. There all is based on a free Divine promise. 1 The animals divided
denoted the two parties to the great transaction; and the flame passing through
was God, in His future Son, the Shekinah, uniting the parties alone, and thus
ratifying His own covenant. The New-Testament term diatheékee does not preserve
the original allusion; but it is never disconnected from the idea. The one
covenant of grace has been ratified by an eternal sacrifice; which is at the
same time the death of the Testator,2 who disposes the promise of eternal
inheritance according to the counsel of His own will.

1 Genesis 15:18; 2 Hebrews 9:16; Hebrews 9:15.

(2.) This covenant of redemption or of grace has been always connected with
Christ its unrevealed Mediator. As its MEDIATOR or mesítous, He is the medium
through Whom or rather in Whom all its blessings are conveyed: that GRACE, which
is the one name and one blessing of the covenant, the free bestowment of favor
on sinful man, or the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Therefore the term,
which has a wider meaning than its relation to a compact, may be applied to
Christ as the yet unknown Redeemer who was at once the ground of the covenant,
and its promise, and its virtual administrator. After He came and was revealed,
it is the term SURETY or egguos that more precisely expresses His mediatorship
in the order of grace: in His Divine-human atoning personality He is the Pledge
to man of the bestowment by God of all blessings procured through His atoning
work, and the Pledge to God on the part of mankind of compliance with all the
conditions of the covenant. In the Old Testament the future Redeemer is not
termed either the Mediator or the Surety; though He was in the profoundest sense
both as the Angel or Messenger of the Covenant, 2 and Himself the embodied
Covenant reserved for the future: I will preserve Thee, and give Thee for a
covenant of the people, 3 having all its blessings committed to Him as a great
Promise for the last days. What was thus given to Him by promise becomes the
heritage of His people through faith, who as Christ’s are heirs according to the
promise.4 1 Hebrews 7:22; 2 Malachi 3:1; 3 Isaiah 49:8; 4 Galatians 3:18-19;
Galatians 3:29.

(3.) This one Covenant has taken three forms in the history of revelation, (i.)
As entered into with mankind, represented by Christ, its revelation began with
the Fall, was ratified for the world with Noah, and was confirmed to Abraham, as
the representative of all believers to the end of time, (ii.) But the covenant
with Abraham for the world in all ages also introduced the special compact with
his descendants after the flesh. This latter was established through Moses its
mediator; and blended the covenant of grace with a covenant of works. The law
was given by Moses; 1 and, as an appended form or condition of the original
institute of grace, perpetually convicted the people of their sin and impotence,
drove them to take refuge in the hope of a future grace, the ground of which was
kept before them in the institute of sacrifice, (iii.) Finally, the New
Covenant, established upon better promises, 2 was ratified in the death of
Christ. It was at once the abrogation of the Mosaic or later Old Covenant, so
far as concerns its national relation and its legal condition, and the renewal
unto perfection of the more ancient covenant, always in force and never
superseded, with mankind: of which more particularly hereafter.

1 John 1:17; 2 Hebrews 8:6.

(4.) This one institute of mercy, as progressively revealed, distributes the
history of revelation under a series of DISPENSATIONS, which are sometimes
called the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian. Dispensation and Economy
are translations of the one word oikonomia: the former referring rather to the
degrees of the Divine bestowment, and the latter to the various forms it has
assumed in the arrangements of the one Church. In relation to this, the
documents of the former economies are called, after the precedent of the Mosaic
book of the covenant, 1 the books of the Old Covenant or Testament, and those of
the last dispensation, the New Covenant or Testament. But it must always be
remembered that through these dispensations the virtue of the one covenant of
grace flowed. They were all preliminary and imperfect, but substantially
effectual, revelations of the Gospel. Grace reigned through righteousness in
every age. All who have been saved, have been saved through the Atonement,
unrevealed or revealed. And in this sense we may add to the series above given a
GENTILE dispensation, of which something has already been said, and more will be
said hereafter.

1 Exodus 25:7.

ACCOMPLISHMENT. The Divine Purpose was fulfilled in the Mission of Christ,
including His incarnation and death: the Decree, that is, of the redemption of
the world. This fulfillment is the fullness of time; its consummate secret being
the ratification of the new and better covenant: new, in contradistinction to
the old which was in its final form limited to one people; and better, because
revealing all the provisions of grace, for time and eternity, in Christ the
Mediator made perfect, on behalf of the entire race of mankind.

1. Our Lord’s advent introduced the last days, 1 or the dispensation of the
fullness of times,2 or the economy of the mystery (oikonomian tou musteerion
riou), 3 or the fulfillment of the promise which was made unto the fathers, 4 or
the revelation of the mystery5 . . . made known to all nations for the obedience
of faith. 6 Everything in the coming of Christ had its end. The entire current
of New-Testament revelation glorifies God in the full manifestation of the
Eternal Purpose for the salvation of the human race. The LAST DAYS are in the
Epistle to the Hebrews connected with perfected Revelation: God hath in these
last days spoken unto us in His Son; 8 in St. Peter’s First Epistle with the
revelation of the Atonement: the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of
the world, but was manifest in these last times; 7 and in the Pentecostal sermon
with the outpouring of the Spirit: It shall come to pass m the last days, saith
God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh. 9 But in all these three
summary instances the accomplishment of a Divine decree of redemption is in the
context. What was set forth to Himself in the Divine mind was set forth on the
scene of human history in the Passion of Christ. This is the sense of St. Paul’s
classical passage on the subject: where we have the ETERNAL COUNSEL 10 (on
proetheto), set forth or proposed to Himself by God; the gradual WITNESS OF THE
LAW AND PROPHETS, on the one hand, and, on the other, the pretermission of sins
in the Divine FORBEARANCE AS YET UNACCOUNTED FOR; and, lastly, the NOW of the
Gospel times, with the full revelation of the objective and subjective
Redemption. This is the emphatic doctrine of those other words: When the
fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son . . . to redeem them that
were under the law, 11 where ina must have its full force. The Son was sent to
accomplish a predetermined design. And the new covenant is spoken of as a
finished transaction. The days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new
covenant: 12 instead of the diatheékeen of the Septuagint we read suntelesoo and
will complete or bring to perfection. It is not that which decayeth and waxeth
old.

1 Hebrews 1:2; 2 Ephesians 1:10; 3 Galatians 4:4; 4 Ephesians 3:9; 5 Acts 13:33;
Acts 13:32; 6 Romans 16:25-26; 7 1 Peter 1:20; 8 Hebrews 1:2; 9 Acts 2:17; 10
Romans 3:21; 11 Gal. 4:4 12 Hebrews 8:8; Hebrews 8:13.

2. It must be remembered, however, that this fulfillment refers only to the
objective work of redemption. The great purpose was accomplished, and the Divine
counsel exhausted, in the Tetelestai, It is finished. In the death of the
Mediator there was a fulfillment of the one great promise on which all others
were suspended. The supreme secret of the ages was made manifest. The mystery of
the Gospel, or the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, 1 being the mystery of Christ, 2 or, as elsewhere, the mystery of God,
Christ,3 was in one sense a mystery no longer, though in another sense to remain
for ever such a mystery as the angels desire to look into.4 1 Ephesians 6:19; 2
Ephesians 3:4; Ephesians 3:9; 3 Colossians 2:2; 4 1 Peter 1:12.

3. It is also true that the purpose still runs on, waiting for another
accomplishment, which connects it with the Spirit’s work in the administration
of redemption. Often the accomplished purpose of human salvation is confounded
with the final realization of all the Divine Plans. We must endeavor to keep
these two distinct. The language of the New Testament when speaking of the
actualization of the Divine decree in the mission of Christ is different from
that which is used concerning the gradual fulfillment of other purposes
dependent upon that. However difficult it may be to make the distinction it is
necessary. The processes of the gradual administration of grace will issue in
the salvation of a certain portion of mankind, according as He hath chosen us in
Him before the foundation of the world. 1 But the gradual gathering of the
elect, and the gradual salvation of each of the number, is represented as the
result of a plan and method in the Gospel.

Whereas of the redemption of man’s race or mankind, that is, of all who have
ever borne or shall ever bear the name’ of man, the Scripture speaks in
definitive terms as having been once for all accomplished. We have seen—said the
last writer in the last document— and do testify that the Father sent the Son,
the Savior of the world: and not only to be the Savior.2 1 Ephesians 1:4; 2 1
John 4:14.

HISTORICAL.

1. The Nicene Creed expresses the sentiment of the first Christians, that Jesus
Christ was incarnate FOR us MEN AND FOR OUR SALVATION, DI HMAS TOUS ANTHROPOUS;
and that the Divine purpose united redemption and creation. So Athanasius: " The
Restitution could take place only in that the original Pattern after which man
was created was manifested for his salvation." A long series of divines, from
Irenseus to the present day, assume that the Incarnation would have taken place
if man had not sinned; an opinion of speculative theology which disturbs the
free grace of the eternal counsel.

2. The early Church held fast the universality of the object of the redeeming
purpose. From the Apostolical Fathers downwards there is a clear testimony. "
Ideo autem passus est, ut tolleret peccatum mundi. Si quis autem non credit in
Christum, generali beneficio se fraudat." These words of Ambrose represent the
strain of ante-Nicene theology, which knew nothing of a restriction in the
Divine purpose of salvation.

3. But his disciple Augustine did not follow his teacher. He first laid down the
principle that God in His sovereignty decreed the separation of a certain number
from the mass of fallen mankind unto salvation, including the special,
irresistible, and inadmissible grace that leads to it: for them and for them
alone He provided and sent His Son. This view of the eternal purpose was
exaggerated by the followers of Augustine; it gave rise to Pelagian and
semi-Pelagian extravagance in the opposite direction. Early Augustinianism made
grace dependent on the prodestination of its object; semi-Pelagianism made grace
dependent on the Divine prevision of man’s good use of it. The Synod of Arausio
rejected both, and at the same time condemned " cum omni detestatione," the
doctrine of a predestination to evil; and that of Chiercy (853) under Hincmar
spoke still more decidedly. The ninth century was full of this controversy,
Gottschalk being the representative of Augustine, and the link between him and
his still greater representative, Calvin.

4. The Scholastic divines took opposite sides as to the Divine decrees: Thomas
of Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury (1349), and Wyclif after him, prepared
the way for the rigorous doctrine which Calvin stamped with his name. But the
general tendency of mediaeval doctrine was towards the universal redemption
which the Council of Trent laid down, and from which the Greek Church had never
deviated.

5. Calvin carried the ancient theory of Augustine to its logical conclusion:
cadit homo Dei providentia SIC ORDINANTE, sed suo vitio cadit. This is
SUPRALAPSARIANISM: the doctrine that God predestined the fall of the race as
well as the salvation of some to the glory of His grace and the reprobation of
others to the glory of His justice.

INFRALAPSARIANISM seems to have been the accepted method of putting’ the dogma
of Augustine: it modifies the former so far as to connect the fall with God’s
silent permission, instead of His foreordination. But the admission of this
distinction goes far towards the subversion of Augustinianism. It renounces the
absolute Sovereignty, which cannot consist with a mere permission to fall; the
whole system is dissolved when the iron bonds of Sovereignty are withdrawn.
Accordingly, many of the Reformed have sought to mitigate in various ways their
master’s severe dogma. France, especially, Calvin’s own country, made desperate
attempts to shake itself free from the yoke. What has been known as the theory
of HYPOTHETICAL REDEMPTION originated in Saumur with Amyraut (1664). Its
watchword was the DECRETUM UNIVERSALE HYPOTHETICUM: that is, Christ has made the
salvation of all men possible if they believe; but, though the Son’s
intervention is of universal value, God’s efficacious grace is given only to a
certain number. This unhappy compromise has found advocates in England also.

6. The Remonstrants of Holland, or Arminians, were the first who, in modern
times, protested against the Augustinianism which had found its way into some of
the Formularies of the Reformation. Their principle was that the decree of God
in Christ was in favor of mankind as such; and that that decree was accomplished
in the offering of Christ for the redemption of the whole race. The Lutheran
Formularies, especially the later, assert the same universality; as also do the
Methodists everywhere. Against this Calvinism or Augustinianism urges that the
decree of redemption was in favor only of those who are actually redeemed; that
redemption in purpose had not and could not have reference to those who perish;
and that, if general appeals and exhortations are found in the Word of God, this
anomaly is to be explained by the fact that there is a secret decree behind the
open declaration of the Divine Purpose.

7. It is obvious that inscrutable mystery rests upon this whole subject. Its
chief difficulty, however, lies in the Scriptural application of the doctrines
of vocation and election in their connection with general redemption. In other
words, while the eternal will of the Love of God to provide a Deliverer and an
atoning deliverance adequate to meet the ruin of mankind is placed beyond the
possibility of doubt, the revelation of the Bible thus responding to the
instinct of the human heart, it may seem hard to reconcile such a catholic
purpose with the partial, progressive, and limited announcements of that supreme
truth. But this branch of the subject has its appropriate place hereafter; and
it will receive fuller treatment.


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  CHAPTER 15: 17. VOL 02 - THE REDEMPTIONAL OR ECONOMICAL TRINITY
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The Redemptional or Economical Trinity THE REDEMPTIONAL OR ECONOMICAL TRINITY
Unity of Triune Purpose Covenant of Redemption Absolute and Redemptional Trinity
Relation of the Three Persons of the Father of the Son of the Spirit

Subordination The gradual unfolding of the mystery of redemption is also the
gradual unfolding of the mystery of the Triune God. While the Divine essence is
revealed as unity of nature in trinity of personal subsistence, the work of
human salvation is so related to the Triunity and to the several Persons that
the Redemptional Trinity may be made a topic of separate discussion: with the
reservation, however, that the Economical Trinity is only the Absolute Trinity
as manifested in the present dispensation, and that all the New- Testament
exhibitions of it are to be interpreted accordingly. We have to consider, first,
the common relation of the Triune Godhead to the Mediatorial Work, and then the
relation of each Person: both in the light of Scripture alone

I, The redemption of mankind sprang from the eternal purpose of God the Triune:
Let Us redeem man! was silently one with Let Us make man! God is not divided. As
the creation is a Divine work, while each Person is Creator, so redemption is a
Divine work in which the Three Persons unite. God . . . hath visited and
redeemed His people: 1 words to the Jews which the Apostle confirms: After that
the . . . love of God our Savior toward man appeared. 2 These are the key to all
those passages which connect God absolutely and independently of the hypostatic
distinctions with our salvation, down to the end: God shall be all in all,3 the
TRIUNE GOD. From this some inferences follow 1 Luke 1:68; 2 Titus 3:4; 3 1
Corinthians 15:28

1. The Divine attributes that required and provided an atonement are the
attributes of the Three Persons: no distinction can be admitted between the
holiness and love of the Father and the holiness and love of the Son. There is a
perfect perichoorosis in the Redemptional Trinity, even as there is in the
Absolute. I and my Father are One is a testimony that may be carried higher than
the foundation of the world

1 John 10:30

2. Hence there is no support for the theory of a COVENANT OF REDEMPTION between
the Father and the Son, according to which the Three Persons concerted the plan
of salvation: the Son undertaking on His part to undergo the penalties of the
law for His people, and the Father pledging Himself to give the Son His own
glory and His people’s souls as His recompense, and the Spirit witnessing in
order to administer this covenant. The Scripture speaks only of the will and
purpose of God’s love to redeem mankind, which will was the will of the
undivided Trinity. The sayings of the Word of God on this subject do not sustain
the representations sometimes made of a harmony effected between the mercy and
the justice of the Father through the intervention of the Son in the eternal
Trinity before the world was. The reconciliation of those attributes must indeed
be regarded as preceding the manifested work of redemption; the Atonement was a
reality in the Divine mind before it was accomplished on the cross. But it was
not an Atonement offered to one Person in the Trinity by Another and witnessed
by a Third. The Son Incarnate came to do the will of God: His own will, and the
will of the Holy Ghost, as much as the will of the Father. The words Covenant,
and Scheme, and Plan belong to the manifestations of the redeeming economy in
time. We must not transfer them to eternity. There is an impenetrable veil over
what is so often called the Council of the eternal Trinity; and the Scripture
does not take our thoughts behind it: save only when the Son speaks of a glory
which He had with the Father before the world was, and His disciple of an
atonement foreordained before the foundation of the world. 1 When another writer
introduces the actual atonement the pro katabolees becomes apo katabolees: not
before the foundation but from the foundation of the world was the Lamb slain. 2
Now a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is One: 3 if such an
application of St. Paul’s hard saying may be permitted. No interior mediation,
in the strict sense of the term can be conceived within the Godhead 1 1 Peter
1:20; 2 Revelation 13:8; 3 Galatians 3:20 II. The Three Persons of the Trinity
are revealed in most strict and definite relations to the economy of redemption

1. These relations are so clearly defined that it is necessary at the outset to
show that the Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity is really independent of the
work of Christ. The Three Persons are connected with creation almost as closely
as with redemption; in this economical, though not as yet redemptional, Trinity
the Word or the Son is the Agent of the Father’s creating will; and the Spirit
connects the Father and the Son with the visible universe. The same names are
given to the Son and Spirit in their pre-temporal being as are given to them in
the dispensation of grace in time. The Word who was with God in the beginning 1
was made flesh; 2 and His Divinity is the Spirit in which His oblation was
offered. The baptismal formula conjoins the Son and not the Son incarnate with
the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost. 3 In the mystery of the internal
relations there was the eternal possibility of the Absolute Trinity becoming the
Redemptional: there is no deeper or more adorable secret in the Christian Faith
than this. The Father could send the Son, while the Son could give Himself; and
the Holy Ghost, neither the Sender nor the Incarnate Sent, could in His distinct
personality rest upon the Son made flesh, and be the Minister to Him who
ministered to us 1 John 1:2; 2 Hebrews 9:14; 3 Matthew 28:19

2. This being so, there is a never-failing consistency in the exhibitions of the
Redemptional Trinity as distinguished from the Absolute

(1.) The eternal generation of the Son is the ground of the generation by which
the Son was made flesh. The words This day have I begotten Thee 1 cannot refer
either to eternity or to the resurrection of the Lord’s human nature: they
express the profound truth that the Only-begotten was now the same eternal Son
begotten again in our human nature: this day being the one day of the
incarnation finished and made perfect in the resurrection

Hence the Father of this Incarnate Son in the Mediatorial Trinity is always the
supreme Representative of the Godhead. God and the Father are terms used
interchangeably: St John says that God sent His Son and immediately afterwards
The Father sent theSong of Solomon 2:1-17 This is a law of phraseology which may
be traced through the New Testament. The entire economy of redemption is always
referred to God or to the Father as its origin, fountain, and head. What belongs
to all the Persons of the Absolute Trinity alike is in the Trinity Redemptional
assigned to the Father alone. Hence He receives the doxology of the Church, and
prayer is generally offered to Him 1 Acts 13:33; 2 1 John 4:10-14

(2.) And the Spirit never assumes any relation to the person and work of Christ,
but that of One Who, consubstantial with the Father and the Son, is yet the
Agent of the will of the mediatorial Father. The Double Generation is taught in
Scripture; and analogy would be almost enough to establish the Double Procession
as the ground of the Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost. He is always sent
forth: Himself like Christ an apostslos.1 Before the Incarnation He prepared the
way of the Lord, as the Spirit of the Christ. 2 In the miraculous conception, He
is the Agent by Whom the Father begets His Incarnate Son, and by Whom the Son
partook of our flesh and blood. 3 During the Saviour’s ministry He presides over
all its processes as the Intermediary between the Son and His Father: precisely
as if He were the Director and Disposer of a passive Christ. It was through the
Holy Ghost that our Lord had given commandments unto the Apostles. 4 Even after
the ascension the Spirit in the redemptional Trinity is still the Agent of the
Father sent by the Son, and never is represented as independently revealing
Himself. But to the Holy Spirit in His administration we must again refer 1
Hebrews 3:1; 2 1 Peter 1:12; 3 Hebrews 2:14; 4 Acts 1:2

(3.) As to the Son incarnate His place in the Holy Trinity is for a season
merged in His mediatorial relation to God and His Father. He Himself never
swerves from the language of subordination. Even in those sayings which, as it
were, undesignedly manifest forth His Divine glory, there is still the
recognition of the Father’s will which He has come into the world to finish, and
a perpetual remembrance of the obedience which He must learn But of the
Redeemer’s humbled estate it is not needful to say more now. Suffice that
throughout the entire economy of redemption, and until the end when the Triune
God shall be all in all, and the mediatorial distinctions of office in the
Trinity cease, the predominant character of the Second Person is and will be
that of Mediator, through whom we draw nigh to God: under the authority of the
Father, and having the Holy Spirit under Him. The last Gospel, which is the most
distinctively Trinitarian, is also the most express on this subject. Its earlier
chapters exhibit Him under authority; of which such passages as these are
specimens: as the Living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, 1 when
the mediatorial life is signified; for I came down from heaven, not to do Mine
own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.1 Its later chapters show that the
Spirit is under Him; He had always spoken before of Himself as declaring what He
was ever hearing of the Father, as I hear IJudges 2:1-23 and now He uses the
very same language of the Spirit in relation to Himself: whatever He shall hear
that shall He speak . . . for He shall receive of Mine. 3 And intermediately we
hear Him declaring the absolute unity between the Father and the Son: I and My
Father are One.4 1 John 6:57; John 6:38; 2 John 5:30; 3 John 15:13-14; 4 John
10:30 3. It is important to remember this truth in the study of the mediatorial
economy

Illustrations will hereafter be given of what needs now only to be stated: that,
with certain occasional reservations and saving clauses which abundantly declare
the supreme Divinity of the Son and the Spirit, the general strain of the
phraseology of the New Testament represents the Second and Third Persons of the
Trinity in their economical subordination to the Father as the representative of
the Godhead. It must always be borne in mind that the theology of the Bible is
the theology of redemption: before the application of this principle that
peculiar difficulty which springs from the comparative rarity of direct
allusions to the Trinity as such vanishes. In fact the difficulty becomes a help
to faith when it is looked at in this light. The sublime theory of a
redemptional subordination of the Two Persons is maintained, generally and down
to the minutest detail, with an exact consistency of which only Divine wisdom
could be the author


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  CHAPTER 16: 18. VOL 02 - THE PERSON OF CHRIST
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The Person of Christ THE PERSON OF CHRIST THE DIVINE PERSONALITY OF THE
INCARNATE

Divine Names

Two Natures Divine and Human, united in the description of the Incarnate Person
His Humanity Flesh His Godhead Spirit Divine Attributes and Worship THE DIVINE
SON the Eternal Sonship, Continued in the Incarnation Unity of the Person of the
Son for ever THE PERFECT MANHOOD Without Defect and without Excess Sinless
Development THE DIVINE-HUMAN PERSON or Hypostatic Union Scriptural Formulas of
Indivisible Person its Unity Abiding Distinction of Natures DEVELOPMENT OF
DOCTRINE OF ONE PERSONALITY IN SCRIPTURE ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT

Early Errors Ebionites Precursors of Modern Unitarianism, Nazarenes of Socinians
Monachianism of Second Century Gnostic Heresies assailing both Divinity and
Humanity Arianism and Apollinarianism dishonouring the Divine and the Human
Natures respectively Nestorianism and Eutychianism affecting the Union of
Natures as such Chalcedonian Formula Later Development

Monophysitism

Adoptianism The dogma of the Person of Christ has not been always defined and
limited with sufficient strictness. It is the formal statement of what the
Scripture teaches concerning the indivisible unity of the two natures in the One
Christ. It is not therefore the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity as such, though
that is included. Nor is it the doctrine of His perfect Manhood as such, though
that also is involved. It simply treats of the Person resulting from the union
as Divine-human or Incarnate. The Word of God does not assign a term to this
union which might indicate its nature: it does not use the expression Person of
Christ, any more than it uses that of Trinity. But the former has the same
relation to the Redeemer that the latter has to the Triune Essence. Sometimes
those who do justice to the distinct dogma of the Person of Christ enlarge it
unduly: including in it much that belongs to the Estates and Offices of Christ
as the Subject of an historical development. It will be well to confine our
present topic to the Divine Personality of the Son who assumes our nature, to
the verity of the human nature which He assumes, and to the Divine-human Person,
with its new and eternal composite personality, which is the result. Whatever
does not fairly come within this scope must be referred to a subsequent stage
The doctrine of the undivided and indivisible unity of the Incarnate Person is
taught by the Holy Ghost in two ways: first, by the language used concerning the
Christ, and, secondly, by the ascription of the virtue and qualities of each of
the two natures to the Saviour’s work. As to the former: while neither of the
two natures ever gives its attributes to the other, the one common Person is
clothed with both classes of attributes interchangeably. As to the latter: in
all that the Savior does and suffers each nature has its distinct functions
unconfounded, while both are the functions of the one common Person, whose
Divine personality gives them Divine virtue: some are Divine, some human; but
all are Divine-human. These general truths were anciently summed up as follows:
Christ is truly God, perfectly Man, unconfusedly in two Natures, indivisibly in
one Person Later developments of dogma pursue the subject into a multitude of
subtitles which have made no real advancement towards the solution of what
remains THE MYSTERY OF GOD EVEN CHRIST THE DIVINE PERSONALITY

God became incarnate as the Second Person of the Deity. Hence the sole,
continuous, abiding, and everlasting personality of the One Christ is that of
the Eternal Son, who retains His unchangeable Godhead in His human estate,
throughout His mediatorial history, and for ever. Christ is Divine; His Divinity
is that of the Son; and it is the personality of the Son which is the Subject in
the act and issues of the incarnation

DIVINE The Divinity of the Son eternal in the essence of God has been already
established: now we have to do with the Divinity of the Son in the Person of
Christ. As incarnate the Redeemer is called by Divine names; His mediatorial
relation supposes His truly Divine nature, which is ascribed to Him in
connection with human, and as distinguished from it; and the Divine attributes
are ascribed to Him, with the homage which those attributes demand

I. In some passages—few, but among the clearest in the New Testament—the
Redeemer in His human manifestation is called GOD. And in a larger number He is
called LORD, with all the meaning of the ancient JEHOVAH in the term. In a still
larger number He bears the third of the early designations of the Deity, ADONAI
or Lord: that is, in all those wherein the term Lord is not the representative
of Jehovah, but indicates only the jurisdiction over all things which is given
to the Eternal Son. It needs hardly to be said that neither the term GOD, nor
the term LORD as Jehovah, ever defines in Scripture a dignity conferred on
Christ

1. The New Testament begins by applying to Jesus the prediction of Immanuel,
1which being interpreted is, God with us. 2 And the light of fulfillment thrown
back upon the same prediction shows that the Incarnate Son is the mighty God. 3
So with regard to the forty-fifth Psalm: Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and
ever, 4which the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to the Incarnate Mediator. 5 In
the beginning of his Gospel St. John speaks of the Word made flesh as God, and,
in the best reading, as God Only-begotten; 6 he also gives prominence to the
confession of Thomas: My Lord and my God. 7 Two passages are doubtful: the
church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood, 8 may be perhaps read
the church of the Lord. God manifest in the flesh is rather Who was manifest. 9
But it is scarcely permissible to read otherwise than that Christ is over all,
God blessed for ever. 10 And the closing testimony of St. Paul is that
Christians look for the appearance of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.
11 These are only a few texts; but their fewness is in their favor as evidence.
The mediatorial economy is based on a subordination of the Son Incarnate; and
the name God is given to Christ only in occasional ascriptions serving to
protect the eternal truth which, for a season, seems of necessity veiled, and
therefore liable to perversion

1 Isaiah 7:14; 2 Matthew 1:23; 3 Isaiah 9:6; 4 Psalms 45:6; 5 Hebrews 1:8; 6
John 1:1; John 1:18; 7 John 20:28; 8 Acts 20:28; 9 1 Timothy 3:16; 10 Romans
9:5; 11 Titus 2:13

2. The Incarnate is JEHOVAH; and His name of LORD, not always, but sometimes, is
therefore the name of His highest supremacy, attributing to Him an essential and
necessary Divine being. Here again, and for the same reason, the instances are
only occasional. Perhaps, with the exception of Thomas’s confession, which as it
were prepared the way for what follows - the link between the confession of the
Gospel days and that of the Epistles—it was not assigned to our Lord until after
His ascension. The prayer of the church of the ten-days’ interval was to Jehovah
Christ: Thou, LORD, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these
two Thou hast chosen. 1 St Stephen’s testimony, strongest in death, is LORD
Jesus, receive my spirit. 2 Believers were baptized in the name of the LORD
Jesus, 3 and afterwards call on this name. 4 The Evangelists abound in
fulfillments of Scripture which imply that the Jehovah of creation and promised
redemption in the Old Testament is Christ in His mediatorial Person. Thou, Lord,
in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth. 5 The Baptist prepared
the way of Jehovah, 6 that is, of Christ. The prophet Isaiah saw the glory of
the Lord: he saw His glory, 7 that of Christ. St. James terms Him the Lord of
glory. 8 He is the New- Testament prophet, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
This passage, however, may be classed with St. Peter’s sublime parenthesis He is
Lord of all, and St. Paul’s To us there is . . . one Lord, as the transition
from the Jehovah of absolute lordship to the Adonai of as it were delegated
authority. In the great majority of passages, with which we have not now to do,
Christ is Lord in the sense of an exalted Divine-human representative of Divine
authority over all things. These passages unite the two in one. But, it may be
said that even these texts of a delegated lordship proclaim the Divinity of
Jesus: even as the Adonai of the Old Testament was equally with Jehovah a Divine
name 1 Acts 1:24; 2 Acts 7:59; 3 Acts 8:16; 4 Acts 9:21; 5 Hebrews 1:10; 6
Matthew 3:3; 7 Isaiah 6:1; 8 James 2:1

3. The Incarnate is JEHOVAH AND GOD. He Himself did not assume these titles, for
a reason that will hereafter be more fully seen. But He so spake as to give
matter of pondering which would ripen in due time into a full faith in His
Divinity: as, for instance, when He said that wherever His disciples might meet,
there am I in the midst of them,1 I AM; before Abraham was, 2 I AM. And He kept
silence also when these terms were ascribed to Him: His silence was His
acceptance. Perhaps the grandest testimony to the Savior is that given Him by
His most doubting disciple: My LORD AND MY GOD, 3 which was meant to express,
and accepted as meant to express, the homage of his soul to the Jehovah and God,
the Searcher of hearts, the Witness of all human secrets, and the Savior of the
most guilty and undeserving of men. This was the last public confession, at
least of any individual; and it gave the note of all subsequent New-Testament
homage. Of the two supreme names which sprang from the lips of Thomas only one
was currently used, and that one capable of a lower meaning: the reason of this
belongs to the subject of our Lord’s mediatorial subordination 1 Matthew 18:20;
2 John 8:58; 3 John 20:28

II. As Mediator between God and man Christ is necessarily Divine. Having all
that belongs to the one represented nature, He must also have all that belongs
to the other

What His mediatorial work required His mediatorial Person supplies: perfect
equality and oneness with both parties between whom He mediates. And the best
demonstration of the Divinity of the incarnate Redeemer is to be found in the
passages which exhibit His two natures in their combination and unity. Of these
there are several classes; but we must limit ourselves to those which in express
words unite while they distinguish the Divine and human natures, after the
incarnation. This excludes, for the present, Old-Testament predictions, the
testimonies at the incarnation, and even the indirect allusions of our Lord and
His Apostles: these will be referred to when the one personality is the subject.
In fact, we have only for our appeal the three Apostles who are the pillars of
Christological doctrine

1. St. Paul distinguishes in the Person of Christ the Flesh and the Spirit; the
higher and the lower natures: born of the seed of David according to the flesh;
and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of
holiness. 1 That the Divine nature of Christ should be termed Spirit is what
might be expected: God is a Spirit: 2 Now the Lord is that Spirit. 3 He Who was
manifest in the flesh was justified in the Spirit.4 The same distinction
virtually occurs in the Epistle to the Hebrews, though the human nature is
referred to only by implication: through the eternal Spirit 5Christ offered His
blood. St Peter also uses the same antithesis: Being put to death in the flesh,
but quickened by the Spirit.6 1 Romans 1:3-4; 2 John 4:24; 3 2 Corinthians 3:17;
4 1 Timothy 3:16; 5 Hebrews 9:14; 6 1 Peter 3:18

2. St. Paul also makes the antithesis the Flesh and God: of Whom as concerning
thefleshChrist came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever. To this might be
added the mystery that God was manifest in the flesh; 1 but the reading Who was
manifest is preferred, and the antithesis is in the Spirit that follows. 2 He
also conjoins while he distinguishes the Divine Being Who was in the form of God
and equal with God 3 and the likeness of men which He assumed 1 Romans 9:5; 2 1
Timothy 3:16; 3 Php 2:6

3. Both St. John and St. Paul collocate the two natures as that of the Son of
God and Flesh. God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. St. John in
his Gospel adds the designation Word: And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among
us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father).
And in his first Epistle Jesus Christ come in the flesh is, as the context
shows, the Son of God manifested

4. To these might be added many other passages in which the two natures are
collocated by implication: such, for instance, as those indirect statements in
which our Lord was wont to indicate both His heavenly and His earthly origin.
These, however, must be reserved for the present; as they will be used to
illustrate the unity of His person in the two natures. It is better to fix
attention upon the comparatively few texts in which the Person of the Incarnate
is resolved into its two elements. These are probably the best and most obvious
demonstrations of the Divinity of our Lord; and that for two reasons. In the
first place, they clearly manifest the design of the writers to give prominence
to the distinction; and, by so doing, to assert the reality of the Godhead while
the manhood is asserted. In other passages the supreme dignity of the Redeemer
is only taken for granted, and impresses its stamp upon the texture of the
language. But in these the set purpose to declare His Divinity is plain.
Secondly, they bring that Divinity into formal and express connection with the
one person of the Christ, thus obviating the double danger against which we have
so often to guard our thoughts: the resolution of Christ into two distinct
persons, on the one hand, and, on the other, the tendency to fuse the two
natures into one new nature as well as person, neither God nor man

III. The incarnate Person is invested with Divine attributes and receives Divine
honor. It will hereafter be seen what the limitation of this is, and the reason
of this limitation. But, apart from and behind the reserve of our Lord’s humbled
estate, and bursting through the veil of His self-humiliation, there are
evidences most ample of His Divine attributes, and of the honor paid to Him and
accepted by Him which only God can claim

1. It is enough to show that every class of the Divine perfections finds its
representative in Him: in other words, that the Divinity which has been already
established is such in the full sense of the word, and not a divinity
subordinate and impaired. Nothing that pertains to the notion of God is wanting
in the ascriptions to Christ as manifest in the flesh. The absolute attributes
of God are His: spirituality and eternity of existence especially, as He is the
eternal Spirit, 1 and the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, 2 and the
Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. 3 The relative attributes, such as
Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Wisdom, and Goodness, are asserted of
Him even in His earthly condition, and much more in His exaltation: He is
addressed as knowing the hearts of all men 4 as the Omniscient, has all power, 5
is the Wisdom of God in 6 Whom all its treasures are hid. 7 And the attributes
which connect God with the moral universe are His in the unity of the Father: He
is the Holy One, and the Just, 8 and His Love, which passeth knowledge, 9 is
always dwelt upon as entirely co-ordinate with the love of the Father: the same
in its eternal depth, in the object it contemplates, and in the means it uses

1 Hebrews 9:14; 2 Hebrews 13:8; 3 Revelation 1:11; Revelation 21:6; 4 Acts 1:24;
5 Hebrews 1:1-2; 6 1 Corinthians 1:24; 7 Colossians 2:3; 8 Acts 3:14; 9
Ephesians 3:19

2. The worship and honor due to the one God our Lord as incarnate was ordained
to receive: He claims it for Himself; and that it is given Him we have ample
proofs derived from every part of the New Testament

(1.) Let all the angels of God worship Him! 1 He commands who again bringeth in
the Firstborn into the world. They had worshipped Him before, for He was the Son
upholding all things by the word of His power. At the incarnation they adored
the God Only-begotten made manifest in the flesh; and throughout His history
their ministry was the ministry of adoration. But it was to the church of
mankind that the ancient command was given: He is thy Lord, and worship thou
Him! Him Whom the Father addressed as on His throne: Thy throne, 0 God, is for
ever and ever.2 1 Hebrews 1:6; 2 Psalms 45:11; Psalms 45:6

(2.) Our Lord claims an honor due only to God. He claims it throughout His life
and ministry by the silent majesty of His Divine character, by His wonderful
works literally wrought in God, 1 and by the plain declaration that the Father
committed to Him, the Son of man, all judgment, that all men should honor the
Son, even as they honor the Father.2 And He who taught afresh the first and
great commandment required of His disciples perfect self-sacrificing love to
Himself, which is the fulfilling of worship as well as of law. He accepted all
kinds of homage from all kinds of worshippers: already on earth; and still more
above, from things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.3
1 John 3:21; 2 John 5:23; 3 Php 2:10

(3.) Accordingly, there is literally no reserve in the supreme homage paid Him
by His servants. He is invoked as God for His Benediction, the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ;1 He receives as God the Doxology: over all, God blessed for ever;2
to Him be glory both now and for ever. 3 The last book of Scripture gives the
exalted Son the same tribute that the Father receives. But the best evidence is
the unbounded homage, devotion, loyalty, and love that are concentred on the
Person of Christ throughout the Epistles: Whom having not seen, ye love; in
whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of glory. 4 Such love could be given only to God and only God could
inspire such joy, 1 2 Corinthians 13:14; 2 Romans 9:5; 3 2 Peter 3:18; 4 1 Peter
1:8 THE SON

While the Incarnate Person is the God-man, or manifestation of God in the flesh,
the Divine personality is only that of the Son, the Second Person in the
Trinity. As a distinct Person in the Godhead He brings the entire Divine nature
into humanity, and continues His eternal personality through all the processes
of His development and mediatorial work for ever

I. Into the mystery of the eternal distinction in the Deity which rendered it
possible that the Father should send and the Son be sent we dare not enter. Nor
into that of the intercommunion by which the whole Divine nature is in each of
the Persons, and therefore descended to earth in the Son. Nor into the specific
relation of the Son in the Godhead, the Eternal Logos or Word, to the
manifestation of God in the creature and in man. These questions lead into a
province of speculative theology which is neither encouraged, nor guided, nor
rewarded, by any sacred oracle. It is our wisdom to confine ourselves to what is
revealed

II. It has already been proved that the Eternal Son, as such, was sent by the
Father, in the Divine counsel and act of the Trinity; that He came therefore
spontaneously, to save mankind. It is necessary now only to show that the one
eternal personality is continued in the new manifestation of God among men

1. We naturally turn to the account of the incarnation itself for the evidence
of this. But, in receiving this evidence, we must remember that the subsequent
Scripture, especially the prologue of St. John, sheds its light upon that
narrative. Men here interpret the voice of angels. The Only-begotten of the
Father 1 was the Word Who was made flesh; 2 God gave His Son, Only-begotten, by
sending Him into the world; and of that Son, Onlybegotten, it was said in the
great annunciation: That Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called
the Son of God. 3 This Son of the Highest, 4 therefore, did not become the Son
of God in the incarnation; He brought His sonship into our nature with Him. No
argument can evade this conclusion. It may be said that in many passages which
are sometimes pleaded in behalf of the Eternal Sonship the term Son refers to
the historical and manifested Christ: for instance, Our fellowship is with the
Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 5 But when we read that God sent His
Only-begotten Son into the world, and immediately afterwards the Father sent the
Son to be the Savior of the world, 6 the simple and obvious meaning ought not to
be mistaken. The Father Who is God, and God Who is the Father, sendeth. God does
not become the Father by sending the Son 1 John 3:16; 2 John 1:14; 3 Luke 1:35;
4 Luke 1:32; 5 1 John 1:3; 6 1 John 4:9-14

2. This gives the law for the interpretation of the names, derived from that
sonship, which the Lord Himself and His servants habitually use. Whatever titles
He adopts or receives in relation to His office, the term Son always enters into
the designation of His Person His pre-eminent name is throughout the New
Testament the Son of God, or the Son absolutely. If He calls Himself the Son of
Man, we can hardly disjoin the Eternal Sonship even from that title. For the Son
of man literally He never was: His true paternity and filiation were Divine: and
as the Son, even in the fashion of man, He was still the Son of God in humanity.
Hence, omitting the predicatives OF GOD and OF MAN, the simple name THE SON
preserves to Him His eternal and everlasting character as the Second Person of
the Trinity made manifest in the flesh. A Person in the Godhead continues His
personality in the human nature, which is therefore of necessity itself
impersonal or without any personal existence independent of the Divine. That
Person is not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son. Accordingly it will
be found that in the greater number of passages in which the term Son,
absolutely, is used, the reference is to the Incarnate Person, Who is not only
the Son of God and the Son of Man, but the Son uniting the two

III. The importance of remembering that the Divine personality of the Son runs
on, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, is very great, and may be
illustrated in many ways

1. It gives unity to the Person and unity to the work of the Redeemer. It
preserves the Divinity of both. While it leaves to the human nature its
perfection, it denies to it a distinct personal existence. The manhood was taken
up into the Godhead, not the Godhead received by a human person. The Lord is not
united in fellowship with a human subject. He does not hold communion with His
lower nature as distinct from His Divine Self. It is true that in the
humiliation of His impoverishment for us He speaks and acts from a human
consciousness. But the condescension was voluntary; and all that belongs to it
He makes His own Divine act. Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience: 1
this statement has no such emphasis in it as the writer designed, if the
voluntary condescension of a Son equal with the Father is not in it. Thus this
truth, on the one hand, saves the Person of Christ from the unimaginable
surrender of anything that belonged to Him as the Son of God, while, on the
other, it prevents our assigning the humiliation of Christ to a human nature the
sufferings and acts of which the Son made His own only by imputation. He learned
all that His passion taught as in the flesh, but He learned it as the Son. Hence
the simplicity with which the mission of the Son from heaven to earth is always
alluded to. Sometimes reference is made to the nature He assumed in order to
accomplish His work; but sometimes, indeed still oftener, the purpose of the
Son’s commission is represented as if accomplished by that Son alone. God sent
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins: 2 the nature that gave Him His
sacrifice is not mentioned. In fact, the Scripture assumes that the SUPPOSITUM
INTELLIGENS, the self-determining and responsible Agent, the Person who saved
us, is the Son of God 1 Hebrews 5:8; 2 1 John 4:10

2. And it shows us the bond between the Divine Sonship and our own. The perfect
design of Christianity, and that which is so to speak its peculiarity, is to
bring God near to man as a Father: to restore His Fatherly relation to mankind.
And the soul of personal Christianity is the adoption which makes us as
regenerate the sons of God. Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit
of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.1 By the virtue of His Divinity
the Savior redeemed us with His precious blood; by the power of the Holy Ghost
He sanctifies us from all sin to Himself; but the new life with its privileges
to which He introduces us in His Gospel is the virtue of His Divine Sonship in
us: His eternal filial life poured afresh into our human nature

1 Galatians 4:6 THE PERFECT MANHOOD The human nature that our Lord assumed, the
human conditions under which He appeared, included all that properly belongs to
man. The integrity of His manhood admitted no defect in any of its elements, nor
any superfluity; He was man, but in the sinless development of pure humanity.
Human nature in Him was perfectly realized; and He subjected Himself to all the
conditions of human life

I. The Manhood of Christ is declared in Scripture to be perfect in the sense of
possessing all that belongs to human nature. He is the Man Christ Jesus, 1 or
Jesus Christ, Man: the strongest and clearest declaration on this subject in the
New Testament. He is the Son of Man; He was partaker of flesh and blood; 2 and
came in the flesh; being made of a woman; 3 in the likeness of men; and in the
likeness of sinful flesh: Man, but in the likeness of men; Flesh, but in the
likeness of sinful flesh 1 1 Timothy 2:5; 2 Galatians 4:4; 3 Romans 8:3

1. More particularly, His human nature had each of the constituent elements of
that nature. Our Lord was conceived of the Virgin, nourished of her substance
during gestation, and born as other men. His body was real: even after the
resurrection He said, A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have. 1 He
possessed a human spirit, the seat of intellect, sensibility, and will. Of
intellect, limited of necessity: Jesus increased inWis 2:1-24 and of some things
was ignorant; of sensibility: His soul was exceeding sorrowful, 3 and He was
meek and lowly in heart; 4 of will: not as I will, but as Thou wilt.5 And, so
far as a threefold distinction may be admitted in human nature, He was,
essentially and of necessity, what we become through His Spirit, sanctified
wholly and kept blameless throughout body, soul, and spirit. Reason was in Him
the limited reflection of His own eternal Logos; His spirit was the abode of the
Eternal Spirit restored in Him to our race; and through His soul He allied
Himself with the needs and infirmities of sensuous human nature. He appropriated
all its elements in their unity that He might redeem all 1 Luke 24:39; 2 Luke
2:52; 3 Matthew 26:38; 4 Matthew 11:29; 5 Matthew 26:39

2. From this it follows that as Man our Lord added nothing to His Manhood by
assuming it into the Godhead. The Divine Logos neither displaced the human
spirit, nor raised it to a condition transcending human limits. Upon this truth
rests, as we shall see, the possibility of the Saviour’s language of
subordination

II. The human nature of our Lord underwent a sinless process: a development in
common with other men, but, unlike that of other men, without sin. That is to
say, on the one hand, the union with Divinity did not arrest the natural
evolution of the humanity; and, on the other, that union did avail to secure the
perfect development of the lower nature, under the conditions, however, of
making its infirmities the instrument and medium of the atoning Obedience and
Passion. These topics will be touched upon under the Mediatorial History: at
present it is required to state them only so far as they are essential to a
right view of the Perfect Manhood of Christ

1. Our Lord was perfectly Man: teleios His human nature was the perfect
realization of the eternal idea of mankind. Hence He calls Himself the SON OF
MAN; and by St. Paul is termed the Second and better, or Last Adam:1 ho eschatos
Adam. While immortality in Adam was a gift conditional, in Christ it was
absolute: in Him was life. 2 But He was sent to exhibit the perfection of a
human existence in the world of sin, and therefore the course of His life
underwent the common development. Reserving the mystery of His introduction into
our race, He was ever after in all points as one of us 1 1 Corinthians 15:45; 2
John 1:4

2. But He came in the likeness of sinful flesh: 1 in the flesh of infirmity and
capability of suffering and death. He surrendered His right to the immortality
of His holy Manhood, and of Himself laid down His life. But there is another
meaning of the Flesh in Scripture which has nothing in Christ: that of the
seventh chapter of the Romans, In Him was the mystery of all the consequences of
sin as the endurance of sorrow without the sin itself that causes sorrow. The
development of His human nature was absolutely sinless: because it was that Holy
Thing 2 which belonged to and was called and is the Son of God, 1 Romans 8:3; 2
Luke 1:35 THE DIVINE-HUMAN PERSON The Divine-human Person is the union, the
result of the union, of the two natures; or rather the personality that unites
the conditions of Divine and human existence. This personality is one and
undivided; as is testified by the phraseology which assigns both to the Person
and the work of Christ attributes taken from either nature, while the Subject of
all predicates is one. The two natures of the one Person are not confounded or
fused together; this is guaranteed to reason by the eternal necessity of the
case, as also by the fact that none of the attributes of either of the two
natures is ever in Scripture assigned to the other This union of the two natures
in one person receives no name in the New Testament

Theology designates it the HYPOSTATICAL UNION. This term is derived from the
later use of Hypostasis to represent the Personal subsistences in the Godhead in
contradistinction from their common Substance or Essence. Hence it signifies
that only one Hypostasis or Person is the resultant of the union of the two
natures. It defines no more than that. And it is therefore only the theological
expression of the truth concerning Christ which, without a definition, pervades
the Scripture. But there are two errors against which it must be guarded, or
rather against which the two words of the term guard the doctrine respectively.
As the union is HYPOSTATICAL, it is not the conjunction of two natures by any
bond that allows them to be conceived of as separate. As the Hypostasis results
from a UNION, there can be no blending of the two natures into a composite which
should be no longer either, but something between God and man

I. The undivided and indivisible unity of the ONE CHRIST stamps the phraseology
of Scripture, in its references both to His Person and to His work. Let us
consider each in its order

1. Whether He speaks of Himself or His Apostles speak of Him, it is the rule
that, whatever name may be given to our Lord as the subject, predicates are
applied to it taken from both natures or interchangeably from either of them. A
few illustrations will be sufficient; but these must be carefully classified, as
the induction by which we gain our general principle or formula

(1.) In all those passages, already referred to, which unite in one sentence the
Divine and the human, the subject is Jesus Christ, and the predicates are taken
from both natures. The church of God, which he hath purchased with His own
blood: 1 He, the subject, has for predicates God and the Manhood the blood of
which was shed. So also when it is said that they would not have crucified the
Lord of Glory. 2 In fact, all the passages that have been quoted as illustrating
the general proposition, and others that might be added, contain virtually
attributives from both natures 1 Acts 20:28; 2 1 Corinthians 2:8

(2.) In some, however, the one subject has specially a Divine predicate. The Son
of Man, the subject, has for its predicate which is in heaven.1 The glory which
I had with Thee2 comes under the same law; and many others, such as before
Abraham was, IAmos 3:1-15 1 John 3:13; 2 John 17:5; 3 John 8:58

(3.) In other passages—in the nature of the case the abundant majority—the
predicate is simply and purely human. Jesus was asleep,1 Jesus wept, 2 His soul
was exceeding sorrowful, and He said after the resurrection Touch Me not.3 These
enter of course into the very substance of the history of His humbled estate;
and the last and most mysterious illustration is the double cry with which the
Savior finished expiation: My God, My God, Why hast Thou forsaken Me? 4 and
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit!5 1 Mark 4:38; 2 John 11:35; 3 John
20:17; 4 Matthew 27:46; 5 Luke 23:46

(4.) If we carry this law with us into the New Testament we shall find that One
Person everywhere appears, who speaks and is spoken of sometimes as God,
sometimes as man, sometimes as both; and without the slightest care to obviate
possible misapprehension The One Christ, with His two classes of attributes, is
always taken for granted as familiar to Christian consciousness

2. This unity appears also in all that is said of the Redeemer’s work. His
entire mediatorial agency is not that of the Son of God only, not that of the
Son of Man, but that of the Theanthropos, the GOD-MAN in His whole Person,
undivided and indivisible

(1.) It is to be observed that, negatively, Scripture never draws a line of
demarcation between Divine acts and human in the mission and functions of Jesus.
It does distinguish, as we have seen, between the natures, and that in a very
elaborate way, which makes the absence of the other distinction more marked

(2.) Every possible variety of names is given to the One Agent in redemption;
and every aspect and act of His work is ascribed to each appellative: the Word,
the Son, Jesus, Christ, Jesus Christ, all represent Him who took flesh and
became man, redeemed the world, rules in the present dispensation, and will lay
down His mediatorial authority when the end shall have come

(3.) Sometimes language is used which allies the humanity with the Divinity in
the preexisting state. The Incarnate Lord seems to be in heaven before the
ascension, before the incarnation, before the world was: He, the Second Man, is
[the Lord] from heaven; 1 and the condescension of Christ Jesus, as the example
on earth of self-sacrifice, St. Paul carries up to the eternity of His existence
in the form of God. 2 In Him, the Incarnate Head of the mystical church, the
saints are regarded as predestinated unto the adoption 3 in an eternal purpose.
So the Lamb was slain, and redemption wrought, before the foundation of the
world. 4 Sometimes, on the other hand, terms are employed which might seem to
bring the eternal existence of the Author of redemption into time, as when the
Son is said to be fully begotten this day in our nature: This day have I
begotten Thee.5 1 1 Corinthians 15:47; 2 Php 2:6; 3 Ephesians 1:5; 4 1 Peter
1:20; 5 Acts 13:33

(4.) But always and everywhere the Agent is one: one in personality, one in the
operation or energeia thandriko. All that was done and suffered was done and
suffered by the one Redeemer: the Son of God, the Son of man, the Son, Jesus
Christ Man, the One Mediator

He is one: by a bond between His natures that has no similitude or analogy in
the compass of human thought, save that of the union between the soul and body
of man And here lies the foundation of the whole superstructure of the redeeming
work: all is Divine in its infinite virtue and efficacy, all is human in its
validity for mankind. The One Christ who redeemed the world may be distinguished
as to His natures; but in His work the distinction vanishes again

II. While the Person is one in the unity of Divinity and manhood, the Scriptures
never confound the two natures themselves. This appears first in the fact that
positively the two elements are placed in antithesis to each other; and,
secondly, that negatively none of the attributes of one nature is ever applied
to the other

1. For the former we may refer again to the passages already cited as proving
the distinction of the natures, of which St. Paul has given, so to speak, the
formula: Who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared
to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness. 1 The
antithesis is to be assumed in all those texts which speak of the Son or the
Word becoming flesh or becoming man. This applies to St. John especially, in
whose language was made or became is equivalent to come into: The Word became
flesh2 is equivalent to Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.3 Flesh and Spirit are
not more absolutely distinct in the unmaterialistic teaching of the Bible, and
in the philosophy of common sense, than the two natures of the Redeemer 1 Romans
1:3-4; 2 John 1:14; 3 1 John 4:3

2. Negatively, appeal may be made to the careful decorum of Scripture, which
never predicates of the Deity of Christ in the abstract the attributes of
humanity, nor of Christ’s Manhood in itself the attributes of the Godhead. When
it is said: to feed the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own
blood, 1 God, or the Lord, as the reading may be, is the Person of Christ whose
human blood and not His Divinity as such purchased the church. This
phraseological rule has no exception

1 Acts 20:28

3. There needs, however, no proof of either of these positions. In the nature of
things the Infinite cannot become the finite, save in the irrational
speculations of Pantheism. The Divine nature and the human are essentially and
eternally distinct. It may be said that there is communion between us and God,
and union between man and God in Christ. But in the God-man Himself this union
is communion too: communion of the natures in the union of the Person SCRIPTURAL
DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE The passages which have been cited in confirmation
of the several propositions concerning the Person of Christ render needless any
lengthened examination of the Scriptural testimony. But it will be useful to
take a general view of the several forms of the doctrine as gradually revealed
by the Holy Ghost: of the course of development by which the MYSTERY OF GOD,
CHRIST, 1 was gradually made known to the apprehension of faith while still
re-served as a mystery not to be comprehended of reason. The bare outline of the
subject is all that will be given: first of the Old-Testament preparatory
teaching; then of the Saviour’s testimony to Himself; and, lastly, of the mature
Apostolical teaching after Pentecost. It must be remembered that we have only to
do with the indivisible unity of the Saviour’s Person in the two natures 1
Colossians 2:2

I. Our Lord on two occasions emphatically declared that the Old Testament
testified concerning Himself. First, when He gave this solitary commandment to
search the Scriptures, 1 this was the enforcement and reward of the injunction.
After the resurrection He Himself searched the Scriptures 2 with two of His
disciples as they were never searched by any other; and gave them in that
unpreserved discourse the outline we have to fill up. We find in the ancient
records intimations of the human nature and the Divine running parallel but
distinct at first; and in the later Old Testament these are united in the
predictions of one Incarnate Person Who, as Servant of Jehovah, unites the two 1
John 5:39; 2 Luke 24:27

1. He is THE SEED: a term which pervades the Bible as signifying the element of
man’s nature in its development, the symbol of its continuity as a race; and, as
applied to Christ, has a specific relation to His position in mankind as its
representative. First, He is the Seed of the woman: 1 this First Gospel contains
a promise of a Divine Conqueror of Satan, but it declares only as yet the
representative manhood of Christ. Secondly, He is the Seed of Abraham: in thy
Seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. 2 Thirdly, He is the Seed of
David: I will set up thy Seed after thee . . . and I will stablish the throne of
His kingdom for ever. 3 These several predictions are severally interpreted in
the New Testament of the One Christ, Who was the Son sent forth made of a woman,
4 concerning Whom it had been said by St. Paul just before that the promise to
Abraham referred to ONE, And to thy Seed, Which is Christ, 5 Who is the Seed of
David according to the flesh, but the Son of God with power. 6 They are three
converging prophecies which recur in the Psalms and in the Prophets in various
forms 1 Genesis 3:15; 2 Genesis 22:18; 3 2 Samuel 7:12-13; 4 Galatians 4:4; 5
Galatians 3:16; 6 Romans 1:3

2. Concurrently and running parallel with these He is the ANGEL or JEHOVAH Who
appeared to Abraham and promised to him the coming of Himself the Seed. My Name
is in Him. 1 He is the ANGEL OF THE FACE OF JEHOVAH; 2 and the prophet Hosea
recalling His wrestling with the patriarch terms Him Jehovah God of Hosts. 3 He
is the Angel of the Covenant 4 in Malachi; and this name looks back upon the
earlier Theophany or manifestation of the revealing Song of Solomon 5:1-16 in
angel form, and looks forward to His future appearance in His own elect form of
Man. Accordingly in the New Testament He is the Jehovah Who, as Incarnate, came
to His literal temple, and Whose voice Isaiah had heard in the temple mystical,
when he saw His glory and spake of Him.6 1 Exodus 23:21; 2 Isaiah 63:9; 3 Hosea
12:5; 4 Malachi 3:1; 5 Isaiah 6:1; 6 John 12:41 3. The two natures are also
united in the later Old Testament

(1.) Three Psalms may be selected as pre-eminently conclusive: not as exhausting
the subject, but as the key indicated by the New Testament for the solution of
the ancient mystery of Christ. 1 Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee:
2 the former part of this sentence is declared in St. John to refer to an
eternal Son-ship; 3 the latter by St. Paul to refer to His revelation in the
flesh perfected and demonstrated in the resurrection.4 The LORD said unto my
Lord: 5 here Jehovah at the beginning and Adonai at the end both belong to the
Supreme; and the Lord of David is in His Incarnate Person exalted to the right
hand of God. Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever 6 . . . God, Thy God, hath
anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. The name of God is
here given to the Eternal Son, Whose human excellence, in union with the
Godhead, finishes the incarnate character and stamps the incarnate supremacy of
Him concerning Whom it is said to the, Church: He is thy Lord; and worship thou
Him.7 1 Ephesians 3:4; 2 Psalms 2:7; 3 John 1:14; 4 Acts 13:33; 5 Psalms 110:1;
6 Psalms 14:6-7; 7 Psa. 14:11

(2.) The testimony of Jesus through the Spirit of prophecy is still more
distinct in the prophets proper. The Jehovah of Isaiah’s vision is that Christ
Who is the Child born and the Son given: 1 as the latter THE MIGHTY GOD; as the
former, or rather in His incarnate Person, Wonderful, the Prince of Peace, 2 a
wonder to the adoring contemplation of faith, the peace of its satisfied
possession. Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His
name IMMANUEL: in this name, which our Savior never bore as a personal
designation, the full mystery of the Christ of God is announced. Micah speaks of
the Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting
. . .. And this MAN shall be the peace. 3 Jeremiah prophesies of the Redeemer,
And this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS: 4
raised up to David as the Incarnate Righteousness He is JEHOVAH; 5 and gives His
name to the Holy City, the Church, as inheriting the righteousness of God in
Him. The Divine testimony to the Man that is My Fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts,
in Zechariah, is plain in its profound meaning when connected with they shall
look upon ME whom they have pierced, 6 and with the New-Testament quotations
both of the Redeemer and St. John. Daniel first gives Jehovah incarnate the
title Son ofMan 1:7 and exhibits Him as invested with supreme dominion: One like
the Son ofMan 1:8 must be paralleled with The form of the fourth is like the Son
of God. 9 Our Saviour’s application of Daniel’s titles will vindicate for him
perhaps the highest place among the ancient testimonies. Malachi closes them in
the Canon with the prophecy of that Angel of the covenant 10 who in the
fulfillment is Christ coming to His temple: this may be regarded as the last and
crowning demonstration that the Jehovah of the Old Testament is the LORD of the
New

1 Isaiah 9:11; 2 Isaiah 7:14; 3 Micah 5:2; Micah 5:5; 4 Jeremiah 23:6; 5 2
Corinthians 5:12; 6 Zechariah 12:10; 7 Matthew 24:30; 8 Revelation 1:7; 9 Daniel
7:13; 10 Malachi 3:1

(3.) It must be added that the Incarnate Person thus foreshadowed, and more than
foreshadowed, in the earlier Scriptures is both in psalm and prophecy exhibited
as the subordinate Agent of the work of the Mediatorial Trinity. Reserving the
fuller treatment of this for its own place, we need only to indicate that the
future Christ is the Lord’s Anointed, 1 or Messiah; the Minister of God: Behold
My Servant, Whom I uphold. 2 The Word of the Lord 3 in Samuel’s days is the
eternal Wisdom, God Himself and yet distinct: personified in the Proverbs 4:1-27
He is incarnate by that name in the New Testament; but in both the revealer of
the Divine counsel. These latter terms, however, like that of the Angel, are not
specifically connected in the Old Testament with the human nature of our Lord.
They belong rather to His unrevealed Divine-human Person: the ANGEL-SERVANT or
the SERVANT-SON of Jehovah 1 Psalms 2:2; 2 Isaiah 42:1; 3 1 Samuel 3:21; 4
Proverbs 8:30-31

(4.) The Old-Testament testimony, read in the light of the New, is thus most
abundant and most clear. But the incarnation of the Son of God was a mystery
until He came. Later Jewish theology does not indicate that it was anticipated
by the nation. And St. Paul tells us that Christ was the mystery of God, 1 even
as the revelation of salvation to the world was, until the fullness of the
time.2 1 Colossians 2:2; 2 Galatians 4:4

II. Our Lord’s witness to His One indivisible Divine-human Person is in the
nature of things supreme: it explains the pre-intimations of the Old Testament,
and it gives all the elements which, under the teaching of the Holy Ghost, were
more or less developed by Evangelists and Apostles. It is to be sought simply
and only in His own sayings upon earth and from heaven

1. The testimony given by Jesus concerning this mystery while on earth has been
anticipated in the earlier treatment of the One Personality. It may be stated
more fully, though in epitome, and with necessary repetition, as follows: — (1.)
He adopts for Himself three names, THE SON OF GOD, THE SON OF MAN, and THE SON
The first, employed but seldom, refers to His Divine nature; the second,
habitually used, makes Him one with mankind; and the third is very generally if
not always applied to His indivisible Person as including the two former

(2.) While this is generally true, it is true also that each of these three
names is referred by the Redeemer to His One Person as pre-existing in an
equality with the Father; as Man among men; and as one and the same in time and
in eternity, in heaven and upon earth His use of them may be studied with
advantage 2. This may be illustrated by a few passages which give our Lord’s
self-revelation as found in the Evangelists

(1.) The term Son of God He seldom Himself used; but He accepted the title, in
its Divine significance, from His disciples and from His enemies. The latter
understood Him to make Himself equal with God; 1 and this our Lord confirmed,
both then and on many other occasions: That all men should honor the Son, even
as they honor the Father. 2 I and My Father are One. He that hath seen Me hath
seen the Father. 3 He was accused of blasphemy for calling Himself the Son of
God. He had not given Himself the name; but He accepted it and appealed to His
works for evidence that it was His right: the Father is in Me and I in Him. 4
But, as the Son of the living God He is also the Son of Man; and, when Simon
Peter uttered that confession, 5 His Master declared the knowledge of His
Divine-human Person to have been given by the revelation of the Father Himself.
Only once does the Lord as it were spontaneously term Himself the Son of God;
and then He offers Himself to the healed blind man in the Temple as a human
speaker: Dost thou believe on the Son of God? . . It is He that talketh with
thee. 6 This is a very remarkable instance 1 John 5:18-21; 2 John 10:30; 3 John
14:9; 4 John 10:38; 5 Matthew 16:16-17; 6 John 9:35; John 9:37

(2.) Generally He speaks as The Son absolutely: always with reference to the
Father, but always in His incarnate relation. It is needless to quote any other
passages than those in which the One Lord, the Son, declares His pre-existence
and equality with God. As the Son He said: Before Abraham was IAmos 1:1-15
declaring both His pre-existence and His eternity. So also when He claimed to
have from the Father life in Himself: 2 life originated in the Father, but
eternal or without beginning. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son:
3 the Son in His incarnate person as Man alone revealeth the Father. And it is
the Son approaching the cross as man who prays: glorify Thou Me with Thine own
Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.4 1 John 8:58; 2
John 5:26; 3 Matthew 11:27; 4 John 17:5

(3.) But, as the name Son of Man was that which the Redeemer elected for
Himself, so it is that which brings into fullest expression the unity of the
Incarnate Person. He assumed it instead of the more limited Messiah or Christ:
as being the Messianic designation that allied Him with all mankind. And it is
the subject of an endless variety of predicates taken from His two natures
interchangeably. This has been already sufficiently shown. It may suffice to
appeal once more to His first use of the Name He loved so well. And no man hath
ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man
which is in heaven. 1 Here are the pre-existence, the descent, and the return of
Him Who in His one person is the Son of Man. Another saying recorded by St. John
as spoken at the end of the Saviour’s ministry transfers this to the Son
absolutely: I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I
leave the world, and go to the Father.2 The entire doctrine of our Lord’s Divine
and Divine-human Sonship is here 1 John 3:13; 2 John 16:28

3. The testimony given from heaven is the supplement of that in the Gospels; and
it removes any slight vestige of doubt which some of the sayings uttered in His
subordination may have left. Of it we may use the Apostles’ words: now speakest
Thou plainly. 1 The final Apocalypse, or Revelation concerning Jesus Christ, was
given by Jesus to St. John, and through him to the Church for ever. The Redeemer
Himself appears in His final and most glorious manifestation in His human form,
as One like a Son of man; 2 but says as God, Fear not, I am the First and the
Last. And, after many words which show that He is still the exalted Servant of
the Trinity, He leaves lingering in our ears the last of all His testimonies: It
is done.... I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the
Last. 3 Thus the supreme witness is His own 1 John 16:29; 2 Revelation 1:11 3
Revelation 22:13

III. The testimony of the Evangelists and Apostles is that of the Savior Himself
through the Spirit: it is the fulfillment of the promise, He shall glorify Me.1

1 John 16:14

1. The Evangelists take precedence. But, as St. John’s must be regarded as
Apostolic testimony, there remains only that of the Synoptists. St. Matthew and
St. Luke give them in the Genealogies. In the former, the Seed of David is
Immanuel, God with us; 1 in the latter, the Seed of the Woman is the Son of
God;2 the former connects Him with Joseph, His reputed father, with Judaism and
the Old Testament, the latter with Mary, with the World and the New
Dispensation. The Synoptists and St. John perfectly agree; though St John, as
will be seen, makes more direct reference to the Divine nature of the Incarnate
1 Matthew 1:23; 2 Luke 1:35

2. It is common to the Apostles to call their Master LORD, a title which bases
the mediatorial supremacy of the Redeemer upon the fundamental dignity of
Jehovah the LORD; and it is common to them also to assign to Him attributes and
to demand for Him homage which imply His Divinity. The distinct types of their
teaching as to the One Person may be briefly indicated

(1.) St. Peter, preaching in the Acts to strangers gathered into Jerusalem,
proclaims the Messianic authority of Christ in general, and does not as yet
dwell on the mystery of the Divine-human origin of the Man approved of God. 1 He
accumulates names which imply Divine dignity, such as the Holy One and the Just,
the Prince of life; 2 but the subordination of the Servant of God of Whom Isaiah
spoke is uppermost: God, having raised up His Son, paida, 3 not the Son
absolutely, but the Servant-Son. In his Epistles he continues the tribute to the
mediatorial Messiah, and opens with a benediction of the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. 4 Afterwards he speaks of Christ as put to death in the
flesh, but quickened by the Spirit; 5 here bringing the two natures into
conjunction by the same formula which St. Paul uses. In the Second Epistle we
read of the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ; 6 believers are
said to partake of His Divine nature; and with the Lord a thousand years a/re as
one day. 7 Moreover St. Peter closes his ministry with a Doxology, which only
God can receive: Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and
for ever. Amen. 8 St. James calls the Savior the Lord of Glory: 9 that worthy
Name which belongs to Deity alone. And St. Jude ascribes to the only wise God
our Savior glory and majesty.10

1 Acts 2:22; 2 Acts 3:14-15; 3 Acts 3:26; 4 1 Peter 1:3; 5 1 Peter 3:18; 6 2
Peter 1:1-4; 2 Peter 3:8; 7 2 Peter 3:18; 8 2 Peter 3:18; 9 James 2:1; James
2:7; 10 Jude 1:25

(2.) St. Paul has an order of testimonies peculiar to himself. Most of them,
however, have been already quoted; and those which belong to the subordination
of the Person of Christ must be reserved. The Epistle to the Romans is
pre-eminently the Mediatorial treatise, and contains the clearest expression of
the unity and distinction in the two natures. In the beginning it is thus
stated: The Seed of David according to the flesh, 1 or the human nature, and
declared or defined to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of
holiness, or the Divine. Here is a twofold sonship and a twofold nature. The
same distinction is varied afterwards: Of whom as concerning the flesh Christ
came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever. 2 There cannot be a doubt that it
is the express design of the Apostle to unite the two natures here. Between
these there is another of great importance. God sent His own Son, the Son of
Himself, in the likeness of sinful flesh; 3 that own Son whom He spared not,
where the idiou Huiou corresponds to the Patera idion of the Jews’ correct
inference: He called God His own Father. 4 In the Corinthian Epistle, remarkable
for the fullest expression of the mediatorial subordination, there are some
plain announcements of the Divine-human dignity. Christ is the Lord of glory5
Whom as to His human nature the princes of this world crucified. And where His
subordination is most expressly taught He is the Lord from heaven and a
quickening Spirit 6 in His Divine nature, while the second Adam in His human.
The Lord is that Spirit, 7 Who is God; and it is at the close of these Epistles,
in which the head of ChristisGod, 8 that the Trinitarian benediction is
pronounced, placing the Incarnate in the Trinity as the channel of all the grace
that flows from the love of God, and is made the common possession of believers
through the Holy Spirit. The Epistles of the Roman Captivity — the three
Christological Epistles proper — contain another type of expression: in harmony
with that of St. Paul’s previous and subsequent writings but very different. In
that to the Colossians the Person of Christ, the Son of the Father’s love, is
the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of (or before} every creature; 9
and in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. 10 Now these
wonderful words describe the Incarnate Person; not rising however from the lower
nature, as in the Romans, but descending from the higher. It is said of Him
Whose blood redeemed men that HE is the Image of God: Himself invisible as
Spirit but manifesting the Godhead in the flesh; that HE IS the Firstbegotten
before every creature—for in Him were all things created, and He is before all
things, —but also the Firstborn of the created human race as the heir and
representative of all: Firstborn in two senses. The Ephesian Epistle contains no
express statement on this topic. But, as the special document of the Mediatorial
Trinity, it assigns to our Lord a place in relation to God and to the Church and
to the individual soul which belongs to no creature. It is observable that here
alone St. Paul joins St. Peter in blessing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, 11 words that might seem to refer the former appellation to the humanity
and the latter to the Divinity of Christ, but really belong to the doctrine of
His subordination. The Epistle to the Philippians is peculiar as giving the only
passage in which St. Paul approaches the mystery of the incarnation. Christ
Jesus 12 is the one subject of every predicate in that paragraph where the whole
career of the Redeemer is condensed into one sublime example of condescension.
As to His Divinity He was, or rather is, in the form of God: hupárchoon
establishes the consubstantial Deity, and morpho Theou the personal subsistence
in the Trinity. As to His manhood, He is in fashion as a man; rather, as Man in
the likeness of men. The word made connects the passage with those words to the
Galatians, made of a woman, 13 and more remarkably with St. John’s, The Word was
made flesh; 14 while St. Paul’s likeness of men shows us that St. John’s
expression must not be misinterpreted into declaring a real change from one
nature into another. The form of a servant expresses the unity of the
mediatorial subordinate Person. The Pastoral Epistles contain the Apostle’s
final testimony: his FAITHFUL SAYINGS. One or two new forms of the doctrine
appear. The glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior: 15 these words
are not absolutely unparalleled in St Paul; they are the final echo of that
early God over all, blessed for ever. 16 The words God and Savior grammatically
belong to one person, just as the God and Father of Christ is one in the
Philippian Epistle. Theologically, they belong to the one Person Who is God,
and, as Incarnate, our Savior. It must not be forgotten that God our Savior 17
has been before made synonymous with Jesus Christ our Savior. In the First
Epistle to Timothy there is a new example of the method of conjoining the two
natures: the Mystery of godliness Who was manifest in the flesh, justified in
the Spirit. 18 And this throws its light back on those words: for there is one
God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 19 or Christ
Jesus, MAN. The two passages mutually explain each other In the last of these
Pastorals the Apostle takes his farewell of the subject in the doxology in which
he invites the universal Church to say Amen: And the Lord shall deliver me. 20
TO WHOM BE GLORY FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN

1 Romans 1:3; 2 Romans 9:5; 3 Romans 8:3; Romans 8:32; 4 John 5:18; 5 1
Corinthians 2:8; 6 1 Corinthians 15:45-47; 7 2 Corinthians 3:17; 8 1 Corinthians
11:3; 9 Colossians 1:15-17; 10 Colossians 2:9; 11 Ephesians 1:3; 12 Php 2:6; Php
2:8; 13 Galatians 4:4; 14 John 1:14; 15 Titus 2:13; 16 Romans 9:5; 17 Titus
1:3-4; 18 1 Timothy 3:16; 19 1 Timothy 2:5; 20 2 Timothy 4:18

(3.) The Epistle to the Hebrews adds nothing positively new to the form of the
doctrine; but it is abundantly clear in the doctrine itself. The first chapter
is simply an exhibition of the Divinity of the Incarnate as such. It begins with
another reading of St. Paul’s teaching to the Colossians: the Son incarnate—for
God hath spoken in HisSong of Solomon 1:1-17— is the effulgence of His glory,
and the express image of His person. 2 He is called God by the Father, Who seats
Him on His mediatorial throne; and to Him is ascribed the production of all
phenomena, which He creates and lays aside, being Himself THE SAME. 3 The second
chapter exhausts the verity of our Lord’s manhood. Both He that sanctifieth and
they who are sanctified are all of one. 4 He took part of the same; the
children’s flesh and blood. 5 After the two chapters have dwelt on the two
natures severally, we are called upon in the third—the mystery of the junction
of the two natures being behind the veil— to consider the Apostle and High
Priest of our profession, [Christ] Jesus. 6 This Person, from God to man Apostle
and from man to God High Priest, through the eternal Spirit offered HIMSELF: 7
that is, as Divine, His eternal Spirit offered His humanity as a sacrifice. And
the Apostle at the close revolves back into the thought which closed the first
chapter, in words which condense the whole doctrine of the Indivisible Person:
Jesus Christ, the Same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.8

1 Hebrews 1:2 2 Hebrews 1:8; 3 Hebrews 1:10; 4 Hebrews 2:11; 5 Hebrews 2:14; 6
Hebrews 3:1; 7 Hebrews 9:14; 8 Hebrews 13:8

(4.) St. John’s personal testimony—apart from his record of our Lord’s—is found
in the Prologue and Appendix of his Gospel, in his Epistles, and in the
Apocalypse. The Prologue assigns to the Divine nature of the Redeemer three
names: the Logos, the Son, the God Only-begotten. 1 The human nature is called
Flesh. And the union is described as the being made, or becoming, flesh; and as
the dwelling in that flesh as a tabernacle: He dwelt among us. The Logos is a
term which signifies what Wisdom signified in the Old Testament; it had become
current in Jewish theology, and had been perverted; St. John vindicates it, and
then uses it no more. The Son is the revelation of the Only-begotten God in the
flesh. He became flesh; but not by any transformation, for He only dwelt among
us: here the future Eutychian error is obviated. He dwelt among us} but not as a
Stranger, for He became flesh, and is glorified in the flesh: here the future
Nestorianism is condemned. The high words of the introduction to the Gospel must
interpret the whole

After the Prologue St. John rarely speaks; but when he does it is nearly always
to exhibit the Divine glory of the Incarnate which, he says, we beheld. 2 Having
recorded the first miracle, he adds that Jesus manifested forth His glory. 3
Again he comments on the words of the Lord, He spake of the temple of His body:
4 an evident remembrancer of the tabernacling with us. Similarly the private
note on the Lord’s symbolical teaching of the mystery of His incarnation: Jesus
knowing . . . that He was come from God and went to God. In the First Epistle
St. John takes up his Logos term, but combines with it the life: the Word of
life. 5 As in his Gospel, he soon passes from that designation, and rests on
that of Son. The verity of the union of the two natures is declared by the whole
tenor of the opening paragraph: the Life was manifested and we have seen it. He
Who in the Gospel is said to have been made flesh is here said to have come in
the flesh. 6 It is remarkable that the Epistle, which begins with the Word of
Life that was manifested, ends with the same: This is the true God, and eternal
life. 7 And Who is the true God? St John’s answer is his last testimony, and
perhaps the last testimony of the Bible: we are in Him that is true, in His Son
Jesus Christ.8 1 John 1:1-10; 2 John 1:14; 3 John 2:11; 4 John 2:21; 5 John 8:3;
6 1 John 1:1-2; 7 1 John 4:3; 8 1 John 5:20

(5.) But, with regard to St. John as to all the other recorders of the Saviour’s
history and work, the best argument of their teaching concerning the unity,
uniqueness and supremacy of the Divine-human Person is the general tone and
character of their common presentation. It is not so much the result of a fair
estimate of the meaning of certain passages, nor the induction derived from a
comparison of many, as the impression made upon the thoughtful reader,
especially if he is a devout reader, by the spirit and manner of their
communications. Wherever we enter the presence of Jesus we feel that we are
before One Who is God and yet not only God, man and yet not only man. There is
scarcely a page or an incident on a page which can be understood on the theory
of either nature being alone in Christ: always some residuum requires the other
nature. There is nothing similar in all literature; it is a conception that has
no parallel. And that all the writers so wonderfully agree in their testimony as
to One Person Who is God and man must be ascribed to the fulfillment of His
promise. He shall testify of Me.1

1 John 15:26 ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE

Generally speaking, it may be said that discussion concerning the Two Natures of
Christ has occupied the Christian Church more or less from the beginning; but
the controversies that bore upon the One Person as such were limited to the
first five centuries. The theories and opinions of those who have denied the
Divinity of our Lord do not in strict propriety come into consideration here,
since they admit no Person of Christ as our theology understands it. We have to
mark, first, the heresies that erred concerning the Two Natures respectively;
and, secondly, those which misapprehended the nature of their Union I. The
controversy touching the question of the Divinity of Jesus enters here only in
an indirect way

1. It took its first form in the Ebionites and Nazarenes, Christians with the
old leaven of Judaism not purged out. The EBIONITES derived their name either
from Ebion or an adjective signifying poverty, and asserted that Christ was only
man; the NAZARENES improved upon this abject view by adding that He was
miraculously conceived and endowed. Thus these primitive precursors of
HUMANITARIAN doctrine were respectively the representatives of the Socinianism
of the sixteenth century and the later Unitarianism of our own age. SOCINIANISM,
akin to the Nazarene opinion, allowed that Christ was miraculously born, that He
had transcendent fellowship with God in heaven during His life, and that after
His resurrection He was exalted above every other creature. It held the
inspiration of Scripture, which however it endeavored by a new translation and
strange comments to harmonies with its views. By slow degrees this ancient
Socinianism lost its distinctive and nobler features, and descended into modern
UNITARIANISM, akin to the Ebionite view. Thus the Humanitarian error has
completed its circle, ending in these latter days where it began in the
post-Apostolic age

2. During the second and third centuries these primitive errors were revived and
combined. Theodotus and Artemon in the second century, 180, asserted that Christ
was mere man, psilon anthropon, but supernaturally born of a virgin. Paul of
Samosata, in the third century, 261, held the same view; but admitted that the
Logos was in Him as a spirit in a higher sense than in the prophets. But the
opinions of these heretics were bound up with their erroneous views of the
Trinity, and vanished from the Church or were merged in other forms of error

II. Of the early heresies which assailed the natures of our Lord, while all
retaining faith in His Person, some erred as to both the Divinity and the
humanity, and others as to each of these respectively

1. The Gnostic errors were very various, but they agreed generally in making the
Godhead of Christ an emanation and His manhood a semblance only of man. The
Divine in Him was an AEon, and the human not a material body, but a psychical or
ethereal appearance that had nothing to do with the substance of the Virgin.
These heretics were therefore termed Docetae (from dokeo). In the earliest form
of Docetism, that of Cerinthus, condemned by St. John, the Man Jesus had a true
body on which the Christ descended at his baptism, to abide with him only till
his death. Hence the emphasis of the Apostolic statement that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh: 1 not in the mere likeness of flesh

1 1 John 4:2

2. The heresies of Arius and Apollinaris dishonored the two natures
respectively: the former denying our Lord’s eternal con-substantiality with the
Father, the latter denying to Him the human spirit; the former impairing the
Godhead, the latter the Manhood. These errors were, however, intimately
connected

(1.) Both had their preliminaries in the ante-Nicene age. Origen asserted the
eternal generation of the Logos, and gave its due prominence to the doctrine of
the Eternal Sonship; but by laying undue stress on the subordination of the Son
in the Godhead he paved the way for Arianism. His followers forgot the eternity
in his doctrine of the Sonship and his watchword God-man. And when once the
Logos in Christ was regarded as a created essence it became in their theory only
an earlier and nobler edition of the human spirit, which might well take the
place of the reason and intellectual nature of man in man’s great Representative

(2.) The doctrine of Christ’s Person, as taught by Arius, a presbyter of
Alexandria, assigned to the Divine Sonship an origination by the will of God
before time and the world existed: the Son hon pote ote ouk hon, and was
generated not phusei, but Homoousion. He was the First Creature, though
distinguished from the creation as the mediator between God and it. The Nicene
Creed (A.D. 325) gives in its defensive clauses the best explanation of the
heresy it condemned: BEGOTTEN NOT MADE, OF ONE SUBSTANCE WITH THE FATHER. The
term omoousion, OF ONE SUBSTANCE, became the watchword of orthodoxy as
represented by Athanasius and the Nicene Council. The Semi-Arians softened this
into omoiousion, OF A LIKE SUBSTANCE. The difference, however, between the two
terms, though indicated by a single letter, is really unlimited: no creature can
be in essence like God. From the Nicene Council downwards there has been no
community of Arians, nor any creed of Arianism, in Christendom

(3.) It was soon proved that the Homoousion, "of one substance," was as
important for the human nature of Christ as for the Divine. Apollinaris, Bishop
of Laodicaea (A.D. 362), so defended the Divinity of Christ as to take from Him
the integrity of His manhood. The human nature was in God before the
incarnation, and brought with Christ from heaven And the incarnation was only
the assumption of the flesh and animal soul of man. The Divine nature rendered
the human spirit needless: the Person of Christ was a composite of God and two
elements only of human nature. Hence the true God was retained, but not the true
nature of man. It was urged against Apollinaris by the great divines of the
fourth century that man could not be redeemed without the redemption of his
spirit. The Article HE DESCENDED INTO HELL in the Apostles’ Creed was in due
time inserted for the defense of the separate spirit in Christ; but the
condemnation of the doctrine was formally proclaimed at the Second (Ecumenical
Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381. It is observable that this Council, which
asserted the integrity of the human nature of Christ, proclaimed also the
Divinity of the Holy Spirit. The Apollinarian errors reappeared, as will be
seen, in later forms

III. The heresies which assailed the union of the two natures of our Lord in His
one person were two, the Nestorian and the Eutychian: the latter, confounding
the Natures, was a recoil from the former, which divided the Person

1. Nestorius was Patriarch of Constantinople (A.D. 428), and a bigoted opponent
of heresy. He took offence, however, at one of the current watchwords of
orthodoxy, which termed the Virgin the MOTHER OF GOD, THEOTOKOS. He had been
trained in the Antiochian school of theology; as a presbyter in Antioch he had
imbibed the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia—the real founder of
Nestorianism—who laid much stress upon the union of the Logos with a man who was
born of Mary. Nestorius conceded to his opponents that the Virgin was MOTHER OF
CHRIST; but he denied the personal union, taught that a perfect man became the
organ and instrument of the Logos, or the temple in which He dwelt. The
tendency—perhaps only the tendency—of his teaching was to represent Christ as
two persons, united by a bond not essentially different from that which unites
God with any other pre-eminent organ of His will. The two natures in the
Redeemer were in this theory united by an asugchutos sunapheia: not in one
personality, but by a conjunction merely, though of an undefinable nature.
Nestorius was formally condemned at the Third (Ecumenical Council, held at
Ephesus A.D. 431. His chief opponent was Cyril of Alexandria

2. The followers of Cyril, who died A.D. 444, exaggerated his statements as to "
the union in one hypostasis of the Logos from the Father and the human flesh."
The mystical Alexandrian school of thought, represented by Eutyches, refused to
admit that anything pertaining to Christ was otherwise than Divine after the
incarnation. His avowal was this: "I confess that, before the union, our Lord
was of two natures (EK DUO PHUSEON); but, after the union, I confess only one
nature." The tendency—perhaps here again only the tendency—of this doctrine was
not to merge the Divine in the human, nor the human in the Divine, but to
establish a composite nature, neither God nor man: one Nature and one Person;
not One Person in two Natures. The history of the controversies which led to the
assembling of the Fourth (Ecumenical Council, held at Chalcedon A.D. 451, is a
painful record of human infirmity overruled by the Spirit of Truth

3. The Formula drawn up at that Council gives in its careful statements the best
explanation of the two opposite errors. " Following the holy Fathers, we
unanimously teach one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect as to His
Godhead and perfect as to His manhood, truly God and truly Man, of a reasonable
soul and human flesh subsisting: consubstantial with His Father as to His
Godhead, and consubstantial with us as to His manhood: like unto us in all
things, yet without sin; as to His Godhead begotten of the Father before all
worlds; but, as to His manhood, in these last days born, for us men and our
salvation, of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God; one and the same Christ; Son,
Lord, Only-begotten, known and acknowledged in two natures, without confusion,
without severance, and without division; the distinction of the natures being in
no wise abolished by their union, but the peculiarity of each nature being
maintained, and the two concurring in one Person and Hypostasis. We confess not
a Son divided and sundered into two persons, but one and the same Son, and
Only-begotten, and God-Logos, our Lord Jesus Christ, even as the prophets had
before proclaimed concerning Him, and He Himself hath taught us, and the symbol
of the Fathers hath handed down to us." The four terms in the original Greek
deserve careful attention. The two natures are said to be united, asugchutos,
without commixture, and atreptos, without transmutation or conversion: these as
against Eutyches. The One Person is retained, adiairetos, undividedly, and
achoristos, inseparably: these as against Nestorius. Thus was concluded, at the
Chalcedonian Council, the long controversy concerning the Person of Christ:
"truly" God, " perfectly " Man, "inseparably" One Person, " unconfusedly" in Two
Natures. The Athanasian Creed added an analogy: " One not at all from confusion
of substance, but from unity of person. For as a rational soul and flesh is one
man, so God and man is one Christ." Later controversies, and later decisions,
were but feebler reproductions of these bold, strong, and incontrovertible
statements

IV. The later developments of the Christological dogma have to do rather with
the doctrine of our Lord’s Two Estates than with that of His One Person. So far,
however, as they affect the latter, they must have brief notice

1. Eutychianism reappeared, or rather continued, in the Monophysite and
Monothelite heresies which long disturbed the Eastern Church

(1.) The MONOPHYSITE theory is, as the name imports, that of "One Nature" in
Christ. It was held with many subtle distinctions by a number of sects, which
concurred in blending the Lord’s Manhood with His Godhead, and differed
according to their views of it as a property or as an accident of the Divine
nature. These sects have continued to the present day as represented by
Jacobites, Copts, Abyssinians, and Armenians

(2.) The MONOTHELITE variation turned upon the question as to the unity or
duality of the Redeemer’s will. The Sixth AEcumenical Council, at
Constantinople, A.D. 680, condemned the doctrine of One Will in Christ: the
Catholic Church, East and West, agreed that in two natures there must be two
wills, and that in Christ the Divine and the human wills harmoniously
cooperated, the human following the Divine. Much controversy issued in the
rejection of the Monothelite heresy, which allowed no place for limitation in
knowledge and human temptation or moral test in Christ. With it was rejected
also—in ecclesiastical formula at least—the compromise aimed at in the
expression mia Theandriko energeia, " one Theandric or Divine-human operation."
But, though this term was not accepted generally, it alone expresses the truth
of the one mediatorial agency of that Person in Whom the Divine will governed
the free volitions of the human. This heresy also has lingered among the
Oriental sects to the present time

2. Nestorianism reappeared, long after the Chalcedonian decision, in the West,
as Eutychianism reappeared in the East. Two Spanish bishops, Elipandus of Toledo
and Felix of Urgella, taught that in His human nature the Redeemer was Son of
God only by adoption: an adoption which was the seal of His excellence, foreseen
at the incarnation and consummated at the resurrection. The arguments of Alcuin,
and other theologians, based upon the impersonality of our Lord’s human
nature—"in adsumtione carnis a Deo persona perit hominis, non natura"—were
sufficient to secure the condemnation of this form of Nestorian heresy, which is
known as ADOPTIANISM, at the Council of Frankfurt, A.D. 794

3. It may be said that no controversy concerning the Person of Christ has since
the Sixth AEcumenical Council disturbed Christendom. The decisions of the
Council of Chalcedon, the Fourth AEcumenical, were really decisive. Mediaeval
discussions revolved around philosophical and mystical theories of the
incarnation, but issued in no new development of dogma and in no very definite
new heresy. The discussions in which the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches were
engaged, and those which divided the Lutheran divines, touched rather the
relation of our Lord’s two natures respectively to His two Estates of
humiliation and exaltation; and therefore belong to another section. They were
all agreed as combatants, and agreed with the Roman and Greek Churches, in
holding the Unity of the Divine-human Person as in some inexplicable way
resulting from the assumption of the human by the Divine. They differed only as
to the measure in which the attributes of the Deity were hidden or suppressed.
It is true that the more modern forms of this controversy involve questions
which, seeming to touch only the Humiliation of our Lord, really touch the
perfection of one or other or both of His natures. For instance, the theories of
many German and French divines which regard the Son of God as literally limiting
Himself for a season to the bounds of a human spirit are certainly reproductions
of what has been described as Eutychianism. But to this subject we must return
when treating of the Two Estates of the Redeemer


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  CHAPTER 17: 19. VOL 02 - THE MEDIATORIAL WORK IN ITS PROCESS
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The Mediatorial Work in its Process THE MEDIATORIAL WORK IN ITS PROCESS: THE
INCARNATION Permanent Foundation of the Redeeming Work

Between the Person of Christ and the Finished Work of Redemption we must
interpose the process of the Mediatorial Ministry. The New Testament is a
history of the Redeemer’s mission, delivered partly in facts and partly in
commentary on those facts. It sets out with the Incarnation as the basis of the
whole; pursues the progress of the Christ through His Two Estates of humiliation
and exaltation; describes His assumption of His Mediatorial Work, and His
accomplishment of the functions of its three offices of Prophet, Priest, and
King. After considering these topics in their order, it will be well to close
with a review of our doctrine on the unity of the Person of Christ in all His
estates and offices and work, as exhibited in the variety of names assigned to
Him in Scripture and theology. This will prepare for the doctrine of the
Atonement

There is no method of studying the theology of redemption at once so interesting
and so effectual as that which connects it with the successive stages of our
Lord’s history. This does not, however, demand the presentation of what is
commonly called THE LIFE OF JESUS. Modern literature abounds with attempts to
depict the Life which is above every life: a career which was spent under
conditions that must needs render the attempt abortive. But to these we may
apply the ancient apostrophe in another sense: Who shall declare His generation?
1 and the words of the Apostle also that the things of God knoweth no man, but
the Spirit of God. 2 Only the Holy Ghost is or should be the Recorder of that
history. And He has given it in its own unapproachable and undefiled perfection
as it hath pleased Him. It is true that the effort to exhibit the Holy Character
has been made in some works of edification which have preserved the spirit of
reverence, aiming to portray the Redeemer as at once a Savior and an example.
But often it has been the unbeliever who has undertaken the task; and the
replies which he has originated under the same title have sometimes fallen into
the errors against which they protest. Yet there is an historical review of the
Saviour’s career which may be made the basis of the entire system of evangelical
theology. The life of our Lord was the manifestation of His Person and of His
work, as begun below and continued above; and, remembering that the Acts and the
Epistles and the Apocalypse supplement the Gospels, even as the Old Testament is
their preface, we shall pursue our study of the Mediatorial Ministry in strict
connection with the stages and processes of the Lord’s history on earth and in
heaven, before and at and after the Fullness of Time 1 Isaiah 53:8; 2 1
Corinthians 2:11 THE INCARNATION The mystery of the Incarnation occupies its own
solitary place in theology. It has been seen that in the fullness of time the
Eternal Son assumed human nature, conceived by the Holy Ghost; that the mystery
is revealed as a fact, and denned by a variety of expressions which leave it a
mystery still: no theories availing to explain it. We have now to do with its
relation to the entire work of Christ, a relation which is fundamental, and of
such a character as to make it the basis of all other acts, and co-ordinate with
none: this truth, however, needing to be carefully stated and guarded. The
Incarnation, as the foundation of our Lord’s redeeming ministry, with all its
offices, is everlasting and unchangeable, common therefore to the two estates of
humiliation and exaltation THE INCARNATION A PERMANENT CONDESCENSION

I is the infinite condescension of the Son of God and the glory of man that the
union of the two natures in Christ is permanent. He became man once for all: our
manhood is a vesture which He will not fold and lay aside. IMMANUEL is His name
for ever. This being so, it is scarcely right to speak of our Lord’s alliance
with our race as part of His mediatorial humiliation: were it such, His
humiliation would never terminate. It is true that the effect of His
condescension will never cease. He will be one with mankind to all eternity: as
it were expressly to declare this, to keep it in the minds of His people and
prevent misconception, that one profound saying was placed on record: then shall
the Son also Himself be subjected to Him that did subject. 1 His union with us,
which is the same thing as His kingdom or His tabernacle with us, shall have no
end. We know Him only as Immanuel. Every reference, or nearly every reference,
to His pre-existent state connects Him with man as man’s predestined Head.
Certainly every one of our Lord’s own allusions does this. Let His last word
stand for all: the glory which I had with Thee before the world was; 2 where the
I of Him who prays, addressing the Father and not man, is the Incarnate I,
transferred as it were and carried up into eternity. It is true that the
exinanition, or self-emptying, which St. Paul attributes to the Son while as yet
in the form of God, 3 preceded the incarnation in the Divine counsel. But that
surrender of the manifestation of His glory was only a purpose until the actual
descent; and must not be included in the Messianic humiliation that followed
upon earth. The estates of humiliation and exaltation belong to the Incarnate
Person as He is the Christ, and in the world of human affairs. As the Eternal
Son, in the bosom of the Father, 4 He could not be abased, though He might be
emptied of His glory. There is a distinction between the acts of Divine
condescension and the acts of Divine-human humiliation: found in fashion as aMan
1:5 the Lord might humble Himself; but not before. It belongs to the freedom of
the Divine Being that He can, in a certain sense, limit Himself if He will: for
instance, the Triune God becomes the Author of a universe that existed not
before His will added it to His self-manifestation; and He condescends to
specific relations with the creature, though Himself the Absolute God. But in
this condescension there is no humiliation. So also, though the analogy is
imperfect, One Person in the Godhead, by Whom were all things created, 6 might
condescend and has condescended to unite Himself with His creature

Hence His assumption of our human NATURE as such is not of the essence of His
humiliation: it was His literal assumption of the FLESH in the miraculous
conception that added the element of self-abasement 1 1 Corinthians 15:28; 2
John 17:5; 3 Php 2:6; 4 John 1:18; 5 Php 2:8; 6 Colossians 1:16 THE FUNDAMENTAL
BASIS OF THE REDEEMING WORK The Incarnation is not so much one of the stages or
acts of the Redeemer’s history as the necessary basis of all. By incarnation is
here meant, not the literal taking of our flesh, but that union with our nature
to which the Scripture does not give a name. The truth on this subject also may
be stated in two propositions. The assumption of our manhood by a Divine Person
was the accomplishment of the purpose of salvation; it was also the means in
order to that salvation. These two are inseparable 1. When the Son of God became
man the human race was declared to be a saved race The ancient predictions
concerning His advent into the flesh always announced His coming as that of a
Redeemer and Deliverer who had already saved the world in purpose and in effect.
The first Gospel declared that the Seed of the woman should bruise the Serpent’s
head. The entire strain of the Psalms and Prophecies predicts the coming of One
Whose coming was deliverance: so the great Fulfillment says, He hath visited and
redeemed His people.1 The most distinct and emphatic prophecy of the birth of
Jesus unites in one sentence unto us a Child is born and His name shall be
called The Mighty God, The Prince of Peace. 2 The first New-Testament name of
Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. 3 The song of the angels heralds a Savior whose
advent is the pledge of an accomplished salvation. To say all in one word, the
incarnation of Christ is never regarded as one stage in a work that is to be
wrought, however true that may in a certain sense be. Certainly there is no hint
of any uncertainty or contingency in the issue: thus it must be 4 reigns over
all the mission which He who voluntarily came in the flesh undertook 1 Luke
1:68; 2 Isaiah 9:6; 3 Matthew 1:23; 4 Matthew 26:54 2. But the other proposition
is no less true: the Incarnation was a means to an end

Though the early announcements dwell rather on the accomplishment of the Divine
purpose in the gift of His Son, we find as the history of Christ proceeds more
and more distinct intimations that the Savior entered the body prepared for Him
in order to achieve the reconciliation by an atoning death. He who was the
Mediator in His incarnate Person, exhibiting in Himself the union of God and
mankind, must also be the Mediator in His sacrificial work, effecting or
realizing that ideal union. The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. 1 Hence, when we reach the
Epistles we find that the Incarnation is always closely connected with an
atoning design: not indeed generally as one stage towards the Atonement, but as
essentially connected with it. JESUS is not the perfect Savior until He becomes
CHRIST When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. 2 Our Lord is
our Representative; forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and
blood He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He
might nullify him that had the power of death. 3 This passage with its entire
context impressively shows that the Incarnation was the way to the cross. Three
terms are used, each of great importance. It was to abolish death, by taking his
power from its representative and lord, that is, the devil. This, however,
required that He should take our flesh in order that He might taste death for
everyMan 1:4 and thus deliver them who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage: 5 this deliverance being accomplished by His
sacrifice of reconciliation, as the words apallaxee and enochoi sufficiently
prove. Only as man could He be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things
pertaining to God to make expiation for the sins of the people, eis to
hilaskesthai. In order to accomplish these results—the destruction of death, the
reconciliation of offenders subject to death, and the propitiation required in
order to both—He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham: 6 He taketh to Himself,
epilambanetai, not angels, but men; mankind, however, being viewed here as the
saved church of humanity, or the blessed with faithful Abraham, 7 and the seed
of Abraham My friend. 8 But it was that He might taste of death uper pantos

1 Matthew 20:28; 2 Galatians 4:4; 3 Hebrews 2:14; 4 Hebrews 2:9; 5 Hebrews 2:15;
Hebrews 2:17; 6 Hebrews 2:16; 7 Galatians 3:9; 8 Isaiah 41:8

3. A careful attention to the language of Scripture will help us to avoid some
prevalent errors: that of those, on the one hand, who regard our Saviour’s
assumption of the flesh as His first step in an experiment for human salvation,
translating the cry at the end It is decided instead of It is finished; 1 and
that of such, on the other, as make the Incarnation itself the bestowment of
salvation on mankind, the death of the Savior being needed chiefly for its moral
influence as an example; and, lastly, of many who, on Sacramental principles,
give the Incarnation of our Lord an undue preponderance, and regard the
extension of that Incarnation in the life of believers as the essence—as the
fountain and process and end—of the Christian life. These errors are only
alluded to here: they will meet us again

1 John 19:30 THE INCARNATION IN SCRIPTURE The Scriptural references to the
Incarnation are comparatively few; but they refer to it as a mystery which had
more than any other been hidden from the mind of man. In the Old Testament it is
the subject of dim and mysterious prophecy which only the Fulfillment has
explained. In the New Testament it is historically recorded by two of the
Evangelists; and, their record being presupposed, it is then theologically
stated in a considerable variety of phrases which may be profitably studied and
classified. As these, however, have been considered under the Person of Christ,
it will be sufficient to refer to them only in a very general way

I. The Incarnation of the Son of God, the supreme fact in human history,
bringing the Eternal Generation into a human birth in time, was an event which
the Spirit of prophecy never revealed until it took place. There is no one word
in the Old Testament which plainly declared that God would become Man. On the
other hand, there is no event recorded in the New Testament that is more
expressly and variously announced as the accomplishment of ancient oracles

1. This paradox is partly solved by an examination of the predictions themselves
which foreannounce the coming of a Divine Seed born NOT OF THE WILL OF MAN, BUT
OF GOD.1 Only the fullness of the time2 — therefore the fullness of time because
this was its great secret—declared why it was said, not of the seed of Adam but
of the seed of Eve, It shall bruise thy head; 3 and now we know that the
Incarnation was the first accent of prophecy

Many later predictions spoke of the Seed of Abraham and of David; but the New
Testament explains that the line of Abraham and David furnished only the human
mother of our Lord. Isaiah, who sheds so clear a light on the earthly end of the
Messiah, sheds a light equally clear on His earthly beginning: Behold, a Virgin
shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel. 4 This oracle
also veiled its own meaning. A certain ambiguity in the term almaah has always
been wrested by the Jews to the suppression of the truth, as by Kimchi: " non
est virgo sed puella. Puella vero haec uxor prophetae, vel uxor Achazi, quod
probabilius videtur." It was never charged against the enemies of Christ that
they misunderstood this and some other passages: such as, Unto us a Child is
born, unto us a Son is given, 5 and the testimony of the Servant of the Lord to
Himself, the Lord hath called Me from, the womb; from the bowels of My mother
hath He made mention of My name. 6 But these are all with the utmost exactness
explained in the New Testament of the Incarnation of the Son of God 1 John 1:13;
2 Galatians 3:13; 3 Genesis 3:15; 4 Isaiah 7:14; 5 Isaiah 9:6; 6 Isaiah 49:1

2. Another solution may be found in the fact that the ancient revelation was
pervaded by a certain presentiment of the appearance of God in human form. The
early Theophanies, or manifestations of the Supreme, were in the likeness of
men. The Angel of Jehovah, or the Angel of the Face, had, so to speak, the form
of the Son of man. The general anthropomorphic style of the Old Testament was a
perpetual indirect prophecy of the Incarnation. The same Jehovah who constantly
interdicted the formation of any image of Himself — ye saw no similitude, only
ye heard a voice 1 — nevertheless commanded His people to seek His face. 2 The
WISDOM of the Proverbs is so described as to suggest the coming revelation of a
Personal Representative of the Godhead dwelling by more than a mere Divine
influence with the sons of men.3 The supreme SERVANT OF JEHOVAH in Isaiah is all
but declared to be Jehovah in human form. It is certain that the later Judaism
did, in a confused manner, grope its way towards this truth; misinterpreting
these hints and the symbols with which they were connected. Not to dwell upon
this, the Christian reader of the Old Testament—and only to the Christian reader
does it yield its true teaching—feels everywhere that time is laboring with a
secret that is ready to be revealed: IMMANUEL, 4 GOD WITH US. This, however,
must not be carried too far. When the Dayspring arose the world was not prepared
to comprehend it. St. Paul furnishes his testimony in a remarkable passage which
looks both ways. God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of [Jesus] Christ.5 This is the Face or Divine Presence which shines
everywhere by anticipation in the Old Testament; but its revelation in the New
is, as it were, light arising in darkness 1 Deuteronomy 4:12; 2 Psalms 105:4; 3
Proverbs 8:31; 4 Matthew 1:23; 5 2 Corinthians 4:6

3. There are some passages in Scripture which suggest the question how far the
uncorrected traditions of men, perverting the original promise, expected an
incarnate God as the Desire of all nations, 1 or that the gods might come down
to us in the likeness of men. 2 It cannot be doubted that no thought is more
universal in mythology than that of the union of Divinity with humanity: whether
by the apotheosis of man, ascending to the fellowship of the gods; or by the
descent of Divine beings to earth. The science of Comparative Theology is able
to adduce evidence from all parts of the world, and from every age, that a dim
presentiment of the Incarnation has existed among men; but, generally speaking,
strangely blended with the notion of metempsychosis and transmigration

Among the Egyptians animals, rather than man, were the medium. The mythology of
the Hindus exhibits a boundless variety of incarnations or avatars: one of
which, that of Krishna, represents the Deity as man bruising the head of a
serpent, while the serpent bites his heel. Buddhism was based upon a Pantheistic
evolution of the Infinite in the finite the object of which was to destroy
sacrificial religion, and lead the spirit back to its original abyss. Lamaism in
Tibet added the idea of hereditary incarnations. The classical metamorphoses
exhibited the notion in its most degraded form, though the name given to
Jupiter. Zeus katabatoos, maintains the truth that underlay the perversion.
Scandinavian mythology has its many variations on the same thought. And so also
have the American religions, especially that of Mexico, which contains
unmistakable traditions of an incarnation of the highest god through a human
mother. The thoughtful study of all these, and numberless other, fantasies of
heathenism, will force upon the mind a conviction that the original promise of
the Seed of the woman had been diffused among all nations, responding to the
profound instinct of mankind longing for communion with a personal God, but left
to its unregulated groping until the fullness of the time 1 Haggai 2:7; 2 Acts
14:11

II. The Incarnation as an accomplished fact was in due time committed to record
by two chosen writers, St. Matthew and St. Luke, who, under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, collected and made permanent the sacred tradition of the first
disciples: the one representing the Jews, the other the Gentiles

1. The narrative itself is the most wonderful in human annals. It is given in
two forms: by St. Matthew, less as an historical account than as an exhibition
of the fulfillment of prophecy; by St. Luke, as an avowed narrative of the
fundamental event in human redemption. The most searching criticism is
constrained to admit that the chapters of the Incarnation have precisely the
same authority as the rest of the books in which they appear. No history in
Scripture is more clear and explicit than that which narrates the miraculous
advent of the Son of God as the Divinely-begotten Son of a human mother

Superficial objections may be raised against the narratives themselves,
especially as compared with each other; but, to those who believe in the
Incarnation first, and who believe secondly in the superintendence of the Spirit
over the preservation of its record, those objection vanish. St. Matthew begins
with the Abrahamic and Davidic descent of the Messiah; and then describes His
birth and infant history as the fulfillment of five distinct Old-Testament
prophecies, omitting much that a mere chronicler would have inserted. He gives
the, public registry of the Davidic descent of Joseph, son of David, 1 s
privileges being inherited by Jesus, concerning Whose birth of Mary, however,
the language suddenly changes: ton andra Marias ez ees agennbotho toosous,
IMMANUEL, GOD WITH US. St. Luke adopts a new and evangelical method of his own
in giving the genealogy. He traces it upward through Heli, the father of Mary,
through all generations of men to God Himself: we must read his words, being a
son (as was supposed, of Joseph) of Heli; 2 e son being the grandson, through
Mary. St. Luke makes Mary the centre, and the Incarnation is for all the world,
that of the Seed of the woman. St. Matthew makes Joseph the centre, and the
Incarnation is that of the Son of David, the Christ. The details of the harmony
need not here be entered into. Suffice that the two records may be woven into
one continuous history of the supernatural advent, conception and birth of the
Son of God in humanity. And this history records an event which, in its
essential character, had never entered into the mind of man 1 Matthew 1:20; 2
Luke 3:23

2. It is remarkable that after this most full and explicit narrative, the
mystery of the miraculous conception by which God became incarnate is never once
alluded to. But it is always presupposed, and in such a variety of ways as to
confirm the truth of the record which the subsequent silence of the New
Testament is supposed to contradict. In fact, the decorum of Scripture treats
this supreme Miracle with a reticent dignity that gives a law to us: proofs are
abundant of the death and of the resurrection and even of the Divinity of the
Redeemer, but His generation in the flesh of man is left to the vindication of
God

Direct evidences we are forbidden to seek for; the indirect abound everywhere in
the Gospels themselves. For with God nothing shall be impossible: 1 this one
word should be a sufficient answer to all possible preliminary objections that
sense or reason may urge But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in
her heart: 2 this sentence sheds light upon much that follows. The blessed
Mother of our Lord was the human custodian of the mystery, nor did she depart
until the light of Pentecost confirmed her witness; though a veil, which we must
not penetrate, falls upon her communications. It was part of our Lord’s
lowliness to bear the reproach which sprang from the paradox of His human birth:
His cross began from His conception, and His mother bore it with Him, the sword
piercing her soul also from the beginning as well as at the end. 3 This reproach
He has endured at the hands of both Gentiles and Jews to this day; but reverence
forbids our further examination of it. Once more, the silence of our Lord and
His disciples as to the fact may be explained on the general principle that the
Divinity of the Redeemer was to be independently demonstrated, and that again
would demonstrate His Divine birth

Lastly, the supreme evidence of the Human Conception was reserved until it was
perfected in the resurrection, with which birth from the dead St. Paul connects
the ancient word: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee! 4 The Person
and the Work of the Incarnate Son were both consummated then: He was at length
perfectly raised up and begotten in our nature. Meanwhile, whatever His
disciples knew, Jesus Himself always spoke and acted as One who made of a woman
5 knew that God was His only Father: evidence of which abounds from His first
testimony to Himself, Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business? 6
down to the end, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father!7 1 Luke 1:37; 2 Luke
2:19; 3 Luke 2:35; 4 Acts 13:33; 5 Galatians 4:4; 6 Luke 2:49; 7 John 14:9

3. The Fact of the Incarnation is throughout the later Scriptures referred to in
a variety of ways: always as the basis of the entire Mediatorial economy. The
classification which is theologically most useful is perhaps that which views it
in relation to the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity respectively

(1.) The Father, or, what is in the New Testament the same, God, is connected
with the miraculous entrance of the Son into human nature only in a general
manner. He is said to have sent forth HisSong of Solomon 1:1-17born of a woman
and in the likeness of sinful flesh; 2 and, especially, to have raised up
HisSong of Solomon 3:1-11 among men. This day have I begotten Thee 4 refers to
the incarnation only as it is perfected in the resurrection: the raising up of
the advent and the raising up from the dead thus encircle the whole historical
manifestation of the Son of Man Who is [the Lord] from heaven.5 1 Galatians 4:4;
2 Romans 8:3; 3 Acts 3:26; 4 Acts 3:33; 5 1 Corinthians 15:47

(2.) The relation of the Son Himself to His Incarnation is carefully to be
studied. It was His voluntary act. He condescended to be made flesh, but only as
God who dwelt among us: 1 these sayings must be blended, as mutually qualifying
each other. He came into the flesh and He came in flesh: 2 these also have their
several shades of meaning. He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham and took part
of the same flesh and blood of which the children are partakers: 3 these also
are mutually complementary. It must be noted that in this series of counterparts
the active and the passive side of the Son’s assumption and submission are made
emphatic. As to the latter He says, a body hast Thou prepared Me;4 as to the
former, I came down from heaven not to do Mine own will, 5 and Lo, I come (in
the volume of the book it is written of Me,) to do Thy will, 0 God. 6 1 John
1:14; 2 1 John 4:3; 3 Hebrews 2:14; Hebrews 2:16; 4 Hebrews 10:5; 5 John 6:38; 6
Hebrews 10:7

(3.) That Body was prepared by the Third Person of the Trinity whose relations
to this mystery of godliness is theologically the most important. The Son sent
of the Father, and voluntarily coming to His own new nature, is yet CONCEIVED OF
THE HOLY GHOST. Into the subordinate question which here arises, as to the
relation between the Son’s assumption and the Spirit’s preparation of the
Humanity, we dare not enter at large. A few suggestions only may be reverently
made. The human nature of our Lord must be separate, from sinners: 1 in the
Christian economy the Third Person is the Sanctifier; He hallowed the flesh into
which our Lord entered, and also so sanctified the Virgin Mother as to make her
meet for her high function. Again, the act of the Holy Ghost demonstrated that
the Redeemer became literally Man among men, and did not bring from heaven His
pre-existing humanity, as many affirm that He did. Once more, the Spirit’s
relation to the new manhood laid the basis of the Redeemer’s subordination. In
the unsearchable mystery of our Lord’s Person, while His human nature is His
own, and one with His Divinity, it is also a human nature which is to be led of
the Spirit through all its processes to the end. Hence, lastly, the Holy Ghost
has a specific relation to His humanity as it is received on behalf of the race
with which He is allied. The Spirit of the Son, out of Whose fullness we all
receive, is the Holy Ghost Who created and dwells in His human nature from the
beginning; and is the sacred link between us and our Head, even as He is the
sacred bond between us all and the Father. These are interior subtitles of the
Redemptional economy of the Triune God which none who would understand the
Scriptures may despise, though none can find them out unto perfection

1 Hebrews 7:26


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  CHAPTER 18: 20. VOL 02 - HISTORICAL MANIFESTATION OF THE REDEEMER
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Historical Manifestation of the Redeemer HISTORICAL MANIFESTATION OF THE
REDEEMER: THE TWO ESTATES Humbled and Exalted THE HUMILIATION, as to the
Redeemer’s Person

Exinanition the Humiliation as to His Work Subordination, Passion, and Death THE
ESTATE OF EXALTATION its Stages the Descensus the Resurrection as to the
Redeemer’s Person and Work as to His Incarnation and the Evidences of Religion
the Ascension and Session SCRIPTURAL DEVELOPMENT HISTORICAL THEORIES OF THE TWO
ESTATES Monothelitism Adoptianism

Nihilianism Necessity of Incarnation Lutheran Communicatio Idiomatum and
Ubiquity Krypsis and Kenosis

Depotentiation Modern Theories and Speculations THE THREE OFFICES THE CHRIST OF
PROPHECY Anointing Symbol;

Messianic Predictions of Scripture Moulded in Later Judaism Expectation of the
Christ THE CHRIST OF FULFILMENT The Personal Unction

One Mediator The Official Unction Baptism of John and of Holy Spirit Gradual
Assumption of Offices THE PROPHETIC OFFICE

Personal

Permanent

Universal THE PRIESTLY OFFICE The High Priest, and His Function The Sacrifice
Its Rites Presentation, Sprinkling, Burning, Meal Its Various Kinds
Burnt-offerings, Peace-offerings,

Sin-offerings.

All united in Christ Sacrificial Seasons Passover, Day of Atonement, Combined
Intercession and Benediction the Jewish and Christian Temples THE REGAL OFFICE

Prediction

Assumption

Function The process of the Saviour’s history passes through two stages of
Humiliation and Exaltation, and His mediatorial work divides into three branches
as He is Prophet, Priest, and King THE TWO ESTATES The history of the Redeemer
is the history of redemption; and the history of redemption fills, so far as
concerns man, both eternity and time, both heaven and earth. The stages of the
Lord’s progression, most comprehensively viewed, have, to speak paradox, no
beginning and no end. His goings were from everlasting. From His pretemporal,
eternal existence, He descended to become the second Head of mankind; was for
ages an unrevealed Reality in human affairs; in the fullness of time became
incarnate; finished His work upon earth; ascended into heaven; and will, when
His work is a second time finished, assume a final manifestation which only the
day will declare. Thus His estates are manifold. But as the revealed Redeemer,
as the Christ under the burden of His Messianic office, His estates are two:
that of Humiliation and that of Exaltation THE ESTATE OF HUMILIATION The Estate
of Humiliation may be viewed, first, with regard to our Lord’s Person, and,
secondly, with regard to His work: a distinction, however, which must not be too
precisely maintained, inasmuch as the two are inseparable HUMILIATION OF THE
INCARNATE PERSON The humiliation of the Person of Christ began with His
miraculous conception, and ended with His session at the right hand of God. But
it may be unfolded as the humble development of His human nature, and the
obscuration of the Divine and personal Sonship

I. Our Lord took our manhood in its sinless perfection; but under the law of its
development, and with the natural infirmities to which sin had reduced it

1. The term Development, as applied to human nature in contradistinction from
the Divine, and also as differenced from the angelic, is of wide application.
Humanity has a purely physical development: the beginning of which was not in
the first man, who passed only through its later stages. It has an intellectual
development, pertaining to the soul as acting in bodily organization. It has a
moral development: which, though we know it only as a restoration from sin to
holiness, may be predicated of sinless human nature. It has an historical
development: the union of all the former processes in the accomplishment of the
end destined for mankind in the eternal idea. To all these our Lord submitted.
He might have assumed our nature in its ultimate perfection; but then the design
of redemption would have been either unpurposed or unaccomplished. He took into
personal union with Himself the germ of all that is called Man; and in His
sacred Person the human nature was unfolded to its final perfectness in His
ascension. He was found in fashion as a man; 1 even as we shall hereafter be
found conformed to the fashion of His glorified humanity

1 Php 2:8

2. Our Lord’s manhood was subject to the infirmities of our mortal condition. He
was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh. 1 Sin bruised His heel before He
bruised its head. He was a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, 2 in a
lower as well as in a higher sense: He experienced, that is, the griefs and
sorrows of our common human condition which we can understand as well as the
griefs and sorrows of His Messianic burden which pass our knowledge. After
recording His descent from the Mount, St. Matthew begins his record of His
miraculous cures of human disease by quoting the prophecy concerning the
Righteous Servant: Himself; took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. 3
This passage has no other design than to include our physical distress in the
benefit of the great vicarious intervention. The Scripture preserves the silence
of Divine decorum as to the literal participation of our Lord in the ills of the
flesh. But it reveals to us His humiliation in assuming a nature of itself
unshielded from infirmity 1 Romans 8:3; 2 Isaiah 53:3; 3 Matthew 8:17; Isaiah
53:4

3. The communion of natures, or their incomprehensible union in one Person,
requires us to regard both the development and the infirmity of the lower nature
as the humiliation of the Son Incarnate. That an integral part of Himself should
pass from stage to stage towards perfection, and in that passage should be
marred as well as perfected, was the voluntary abasement of the Eternal Son:
after being, found in fashion as a man, He HUMBLED HIMSELF; 1 and that
particular element of humility, which pre-ceded and was the condition of every
other, did not cease until the heavens received Him to glory

1 Php 2:8

II. Nor must we shrink from applying the term humiliation to our Lord’s Person
as Divine: not to His Divinity, which is immutable Eternal Spirit; but to His
Person as Divine-human, and therefore to the Divinity as hiding for a season the
manifestation of its glory under the veil of the flesh

1. We must begin with a qualification. If, in the Person of the Mediator, we
require the verity of the unchanged Manhood, much more must we insist upon the
verity of the unchangeable Godhead. Sound theology is as tenacious of the Divine
as of the human reality in the One Christ. Any theory of the Redeemer’s
humiliation which assumes the possibility of His relinquishment or even
suppression of any Divine attribute is selfcondemned

Much more must we reject any theory that would make the Eternal Son voluntarily
reduce or retract His Divine Self into an abstract potency or principle made
concrete in human nature. It is only due honor to the God Who was manifest in
the flesh1 that this proposition should be left undefended: God in Christ is
immutable, the same yesterday and to-day and for ever.2 1 1 Timothy 3:16; 2
Hebrews 8:8

2. But the Person of the Christ was humbled during His sojourn on earth; and
that humiliation continued until He finally entered the heavens. Hence while the
Son tabernacled with us He did not in the exercise of His ministry and in the
work of redemption manifest His Divine attributes beyond the extent to which His
perfect human nature might be the organ of their manifestation. The glory as of
the Only-begotten 1 witnessed by the Apostles was only what might be seen in the
Incarnate Person: He manifested forth His glory, 2 but not to the uttermost.
This may be more clearly formulated in three ways 1 John 1:14; 2 John 2:11

(1.) The Incarnate Son was SUBORDINATE TO THE FATHER in a specific humiliation
which did not continue, as touching His Person, after the ascension. Undoubtedly
there is a sense in which His subordination still continues, as there is a sense
also in which it will continue for ever in His fellowship with human nature.
But, until the hour when He could say, all power is given unto Me in heaven and
in earth, 1 He was, as the Servant of God and of man, in a deeply humbled and
very special state of subjection. From the first words concerning His mission, /
must be in My Father’s will, 2 down to the last, My Father is greater than I, 3
this truth rules all the Redeemer’s relations to His God and our God 1 Matthew
28:18; 2 Luke 2:49; 3 John 14:28

(2.) He was UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT during His earthly life rather
than under the independent agency of His Divine personality. Our Lord’s human
nature was sealed and consecrated and enriched with sevenfold perfection by the
Spirit given to Him not by measure.1 This particular subordination ceased when
He who received became the Giver of the Holy Ghost: indeed, it may be said to
have ceased when the Redeemer laid down His life OF HIMSELF, and through the
ETERNAL SPIRIT, 2 His own essential Divinity, offered Himself to God for us.
Until then, however, the Son as such did not act through His human nature alone.
His own Divine supremacy is in abeyance, and, as the Representative of man, He
is, like us, led of the Spirit.3 1 John 3:34; 2 Hebrews 9:14; 3 Galatians 5:18
(3.) Hence the marked prominence which He gave always to His

HUMAN NATURE as the organ of His self-revelation. Until the ascension, He spoke
of Himself chiefly as the Son of Man: a title which at once declares His unity
with the human race as its Representative and His submission to humanity as the
sphere, and as it were the only sphere, of His temporary and temporal
self-manifestation

These are the elements and factors in the humiliation of the Divine-human
Person. Their combination presents to us an un-fathomable mystery. Separately
and conjointly they pervade the evangelical narrative, and equally the later
Scripture based upon it. From deeper and bolder investigation we are repelled by
the limitation of our faculties

Moreover, all that can be further said must needs occupy attention when the
humiliation of the Redeemer’s work is considered, and the historical
controversies on the subject rise before us HUMILIATION OF THE REDEEMING WORK

Viewed in relation to His work the humbled estate of Christ began with His
baptism and ended with His descent through death into Hades. It may be regarded
as His personal submission to be the Representative of a sinful race; and as His
obedience to the Father’s redeeming will. These converge to His Passion and
Death, in which the Redeemer’s humiliation was perfected THE REPRESENTATIVE OF
SINNERS That our Lord humbled Himself to be the REPRESENTATIVE OF SINFUL MAN is
the first key to the solution of His entire history on earth. God sent forth His
Son, made of a woman, made under the law; 1 made under law generally, the Mosaic
only included; and made under law: genómenon, the same aorist participle that is
used for the Incarnation, thus showing that He was born under conditions of law.
Now Christ was man, the Seed of the woman, before He was Jewish man, the Seed of
David: as the Seed of Abraham He was both in one

1 Galatians 4:4

1. The history of the Messiah gives us His humiliation as exhibited in His
Israelitish relations first; or rather His human humiliation first under its
Israelitish aspect. Of this His CIRCUMCISION was the sign and seal. THAT HOLY
THING1—our Lord’s human nature— underwent the rite that signified at once
initiation into the Hebrew covenant and the obligation to put away human sin.
This rite was in the case of our Lord the symbol of all obligation to the old
law until He Himself abrogated it, and His unconscious submission to the
imputation of sin even as His baptism was His conscious submission to it. Hence
He was presented in the Temple, though Greater than the Temple; became in His
twelfth year a Son of the law; and honored down to the end every Divine
ordinance and legitimate tradition in the old economy

1 Luke 1:35

2. But He was the Representative of sinful mankind. When He appeared unto Israel
He appeared to the race of man. His Baptism and Temptation were of universal
import in this respect. He came to His BAPTISM as the Lamb of God which taketh
away the sin of THE WORLD:1 though sinless, and incapable of sin, He was in the
river Jordan already numbered with the transgressors. 2 Not until He had thus
fulfilled the requirement of all righteousness 3 did He receive the attestation
from heaven which declared that sin had nothing in Him otherwise than as
imputed. In the TEMPTATION, also, He represented the sinning race; while He
demonstrated that in Him is no sin, 4 nor the possibility of sin

He repelled temptation as the Son of God incarnate, Who, by the necessity of His
Divine personality, could not be tempted with evil; 5 but He repelled it in
terms of human rejection, giving His example to tempted mortals by the use of
Scripture appropriate to sinners. He was made under law in this sense too, that
He underwent the human probationary test in which He was not found wanting. In
the SINLESS HOLINESS of His life, also, He was the Representative of sinful
humanity: presenting to God the perfect obedience due from mankind, and to man
the perfect example which, through the virtue of His expiatory death, man should
be able to imitate. But here we must modify the sense in which He was under law.
It is the characteristic of evangelical righteousness that it is not under the
law; 6 that its obedience is from within; and if this is true of the servants,
much more was it true of the Master. His holiness was not the fulfillment of
duty imposed on Him; but the new and Divine expression in His life of the
commandment itself In Him, as in us, it was the perfect love of God and perfect
charity to man: love in Him, as in us, was the fulfilling of the law. 7 Finally,
in His VICARIOUS PASSION, in His voluntary endurance of the penalty of human
sin, He was the Representative of sinners: literally made under the law. 8 How
literally is proved by three passages, which may be combined into one: Christ
was made sin for us. Who knew no sin; 9 hath redeemed us from the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us; 10 was made under the law, to redeem them that
were under the law.11

1 John 1:29; 2 Isaiah 53:12; 3 Matthew 3:15; 4 1 John 3:5; 5 James 1:13; 6
Romans 6:14; 7 Romans 13:10; 8 Galatians 4:4; 9 2 Corinthians 5:21; 10 Galatians
3:13; 11 Galatians 4:4-5

3. Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself: 1 the voluntary
humiliation which made the Holy One a Representative of sinners extended over
His whole life. It is impossible to point to any crisis when it began. The
shadow of His cross fell upon His entire path, though it did not betray its
influence on His thoughts and feelings and words until the hour approached;
until about the period when from the Tabor of His transfiguration He lifted up
His eyes and saw the Moriah of His sacrifice, after which He began to speak to
His disciples of His coming betrayal and death. Nor dare we curiously inquire
into the secrets of our Lord’s internal consciousness as bearing this relation
to mankind. Suffice that through this His visage was so marred more than any
man; that this made Him a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. 2 To be
numbered with the transgressors; and that, not only by the transgressors
themselves, but by His Father, Who put Him to grief! 3 1 Php 2:8; 2 Isaiah
52:14; 3 Isaiah 53:3; Isaiah 53:12; Isaiah 53:10

OBEDIENCE

All this finds its fuller Scriptural expression in the OBEDIENCE which the
Incarnate Son rendered to the Mediatorial Will of the Father. The term is
generally limited to the active and passive righteousness; but, before
considering it in that more restricted sense, we may refer it to the general
subordination of the Redeemer during the whole course of His humbled estate

1. He who is the Lord of all entered the world as the Servant of God. I came
down from heaven, not to do Mine own mil, but the will of Him that sent Me. 1 He
was under a discipline of submission peculiar to His person and office. The
commandment received of My Father 2 was one not written in any code of laws
appointed for man, but belonged only to Himself. In keeping that great Messianic
commandment He was alone: the law was one and unique, the obedience one and
unique. This supreme submission is the theory of the Redeemer’s history on
earth. It explains His invariable deference to the Father: My Father is greater
than I; 3 His references to God as distinct from Himself: there is none good but
one, that is, God; 4 His abnegation of the use of Divine names and attributes:
but of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father; 5 His calling the Father His God: I
ascend unto My Father, and your Father, and to My God, and your God; 6 and His
habitual adherence to the title Son of Man. All this is profoundly consistent
with His Divine prerogatives apart from the subordination. As the Son of God He
is equal with God, knoweth all things, and claims equal honor with the Father.
In His mysterious subordination He is the Servant of the Holy Trinity, and the
current of His self-revelation is faithful to that fundamental principle of His
mission 1 John 14:28; 2 John 10:18; 3 John 14:28; 4 Matthew 19:17; 5 Mark 13:32;
6 John 20:17

2. But the Obedience of Christ may be more specifically viewed as the one great
act of reparation to the Divine law which He accomplished on the behalf of
mankind: His Active and Passive Righteousness, which are one. In His active
obedience He perfectly fulfilled the obligation of righteousness as the love of
God and man; and thus it was proved that His atonement was not needed for
Himself. In His passive obedience He endured the penalty of human transgression.
But the relation of His one obedience to the Atonement and our justification
must be reserved for a later stage. Meanwhile it is sufficient to mark the three
cardinal passages in which it is referred to. For as by one man’s disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous:
1 this includes the whole mediatorial work of Christ as the Second Adam,
superabounding against the sin of the race in the First Adam. Though He were a
Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered: 2 this makes His
great submission the voluntary act of the Eternal Son, Who needed it not for
Himself. Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross: 3 this makes it the
Divine-human act of the Redeemer consummated in death.Uniting the three, we
gather that the entire obedience of our Savior was one work, that it was the act
of the Divine Son, but voluntarily rendered in the nature of mankind 1 Romans
5:19; 2 Hebrews 5:8; 3 Php 2:8 THE PASSION AND DEATH THE DEATH of Christ was His
perfect humiliation. Its atoning character will be hereafter dwelt upon. For the
present we must consider it as an act of supreme submission, selfrenunciation,
and abasement. It was His Passion generally, and His Crucifixion in particular

1. The Passion or Suffering of the Redeemer must be separated in thought from
the precise manner of His decease. He was obedient unto death. 1 His soul was
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. 2 He was made a little lower than the
angels, for the suffering of death.

3 This was the penalty of human sin: not the destruction of soul and body
merely, but that severance of the spirit from God the uttermost terrors of which
no mortal has ever known. It was this which our Lord underwent. His physical
dissolution was after the manner of men: not of that did He say, Behold and see
if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow! 4 His passion, or suffering, as a
voluntary sacrifice for sin, brought with it the death of the body as one of its
effects. That crisis would have taken place in Gethsemane—for there its awful
signs began —but His hour was not yet come. In His Old-Testament lamentation the
future Redeemer cries, Reproach hath broken My heart.5 The blood and water 6
which followed the piercing after death gave token that this was literally true.
Though it was ordered that a bone of Him shall not be broken, 7 this did not
extend to the fleshy protection of His sacred heart, rent by the pressure of
intolerable woe. Thus far our own human experience gives us light. But no
further: the appeal, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? 8 was the
exceeding bitter cry that sprang from the Redeemer’s infinite perception of what
lies in eternal abandonment by God That was the death of redemption

1 Php 2:8; 2 Matthew 27:38; 3 Hebrews 2:9; 4 Lamentations 1:12; 5 Psalms 69:20;
6 John 19:34; 7 John 19:36; 8 Mark 15:34

2. The death of the Redeemer cannot, however, be separated from His Crucifixion.
He became obedient unto death, EVEN THE DEATH OF THE CROSS.1 he sacred details
of the scene of which the cross is the centre are given by all the Evangelists,
who here at last converge to a perfect unity: the harmony of their narrative is
broken by a few seeming contradictions, which appear on a superficial view, but
vanish before deeper investigation. The only one of these that deserves mention
is the apparent difference between the Synoptists and St. John as to the actual
day of our Lord’s death. Collating their several accounts with St. Paul’s to the
Corinthians—Christ OUR PASSOVER was sacrificed for us, 2 it were on 14th Nisan,
and rose THE FIRST FRUITS, 3 as it were on the 16th Nisan—and marking that the
Synoptists speak of the day of crucifixion as the Preparation 4 of the great
Sabbath of 15th Nisan, and not on the feast day itself, 5 we are led to the
conclusion that the Last Supper was, as St. John records, before the feast of
the Passover, 6 and that the Crucifixion took place on Friday, the 14th Nisan.
The disciples who, according to the Synoptists, on the first day of the Feast of
unleavened bread, put their question, Where wilt Thou that ice prepare for Thee
to eat the Passover? 7 prepared the meal on the 14th Nisan, but before the 13th
had ended, that is, on the evening of Thursday, the 13th Nisan, and on that same
evening the Lord anticipated the Passover which He so much desired to eat 8 with
them. The exact date of the world’s redemption may, with near approach to
absolute certainty, be assigned to the Friday, 18th March, 14th Nisan, in the
year of Rome 782, A.D. 29

1 Php 2:8; 2 1 Corinthians 5:7; 3 1 Corinthians 15:23; 4 Luke 23:54; 5 Matthew
26:5; 6 John 13:1; 7 Matthew 26:17; 8 Luke 22:15 3. Viewing the Passion in its
relation to the Crucifixion, we may venture to make a few further remarks

(1.) As entering into the fulfillment of the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, 1 the crucifixion may be said to have been an accident of
the Passion. The Father made the soul of His Servant an offering for sin, 2 and
His Son sin for us; 3 but in what way that oblation should be offered was
predetermined only in the foresight of human malignity. The immolation on
Calvary is never spoken of save as the act of man. The shame and ignominy of the
cross was endured by Jesus as the expression of man’s rejection: by wicked hands
4 He was crucified and slain. The princes of this world, in their ignorance and
in the infamy: of their pride, crucified the Lord of glory. 5 But this was
foreseen and made the subject of type and prophecy; though of such type and
prophecy as required the event for their full explanation. It was the death that
was predestined; the cross was only foreknown: a distinction sustained by the
usage of Scripture 1 Acts 2:23; 2 Isaiah 53:10; 3 2 Corinthians 5:21; 4 Acts
2:23; 5 1 Corinthians 2:8

(2.) The crucifixion of our Lord was, therefore, the fulfillment of prophecy:
whether the acted prophecy of type or the spoken prophecy of prediction. Isaac,
the only son of Abraham, bore the wood of the burnt offering 1 to Mount Moriah,
even as the Onlybegotten bore His cross. The serpent lifted up in the wilderness
was the type of the Son of Man lifted up. 2 While the prophets fore-announced
the sacrifice of the Lamb, they indicated that His death would be unlike that of
the ancient victim. He was WOUNDED for our transgressions. 3 They shall look
upon Me Whom they have PIERCED; 4 and they PIERCED My hands and My feet. 5 These
words were spoken as from the heart of Jesus in the Old Testament. It was
reserved for Himself to utter the first express prediction of the Cross, which
He had hinted at to Nicodemus, but began to speak of, for Himself and all His
followers, when He was about to ascend the Mount on which He lifted up His eyes
and saw His Other Mount in the distance. 6 The history of the crucifixion shows
that the minutest details were ordered as it had been written concerning Him:
signifying what death, poíoo thanátoo, He should die.7 1 Genesis 22:6; 2 John
3:14; 3 Isaiah 53:5; 4 Zechariah 12:10; 5 Psalms 22:16; 6 John 12:33; 7 John
18:32

(3.) The Providence took up into its plans the death of the Cross as that which
alone could unite the whole world in its perpetration. To this end was I born,
He said—and we may add for this purpose He died—to bear witness unto the truth.
1 He was a Martyr to the eternal truth of God. And His martyrdom was the act of
the world which, like Satan its prince, abode not in the truth. 2 It was the
deed of the Jews, for they delivered Him to Pilate; it was the deed of the
Gentiles, for they alone crucified their malefactors. The combined wicked hands
of mankind universal cast out the Eternal Word. They CONSCIOUSLY rejected the
Divine Witness; they UNCONSCIOUSLY offered up the Eternal Victim, and
consummated the world’s iniquity in the very act which obtained the world’s
salvation. He who knew what was in man prayed for them: they know not what they
do! 3 1 John 18:37; 2 John 8:44; 3 Luke 23:34

4. Hence the cross was to our High Priest simply the awful form which His altar
assumed. His own Self bare our sins in His own body on the tree:1 epi to xulon,
as St. Peter invariably terms the Cross, and he only. The most affecting type of
the Eternal Son incarnate bore the wood on his shoulders to his Calvary, and
that wood became the altar on which in a figure 2 he was slain, and from which
in a figure he was raised again. St Peter has indicated this in the most
impressive phrase of the New Testament, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, not
mentioning the cross, alludes to it when it says that Jesus suffered without the
gate, 3 and that we have an altar. On that altar our High Priest offered His
oblation; and put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."4 1 1 Peter 2:24; 2
Hebrews 11:19; 3 Hebrews 13:10; Hebrews 13:12; 4 Hebrews 9:26

5. But, while the cross on which human malignity slew the Holy One is really the
altar on which He offered Himself, and we forget the tree in the altar into
which it was transformed, the Cross still remains as the sacred expression of
the curse which fell upon human sin as represented by the Just One. God made Him
to be sin for us Who knew no sin; 1 and, though it is not said that He made Him
a curse for us, it is said: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth
on a tree. 2 In His Holy Person sin was represented, and its penalty endured. It
was condemned in the flesh. 3 But, He who endured the cross, despising the
shame, 4 thus cast down the powers of evil, triumphing over them in it. 5 His
Cross is now the glory of Christianity. It is the seat whence the Prophet
teaches His highest lessons. It is the altar of His continually availing
sacrifice. And it is the throne of His Power as King in the universe. But the
Cross is no longer His or His alone. It is Divinely in a figure transferred 6 to
us. All our religion is the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable
unto His death, 7 and bearing His reproach. 8 Our sub-exemplar said, I am
crucified with Christ

1 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 Galatians 3:13; 3 Romans 8:3; 4 Hebrews 12:2; 5
Colossians 2:15; 6 1 Corinthians 4:6; 7 Php 3:10; 8 Hebrews 13:13 LIMITS OF THE
HUMILIATION The humiliation of the Redeemer, therefore, embraces the whole
process of His incarnate life, from His Conception to His Burial. These two
extreme terms, however, must be carefully defined. The first requires a
distinction to be made between the Incarnation and the Conception; the second,
between the Burial and the Descent into Hades. (1.) The Son of God might have
exhibited His incarnate Person in majesty from the beginning; in which case the
Transfiguration glory would have been the rule and not the exception

But, condescending to become incarnate, He was conceived of the Holy Ghost and
born after the manner of man. The distinction between the Incarnation generally,
and the humble manner of His assumption of flesh, is subtle but not unimportant.
(2.) And the end of His abasement was reached when He became obedient unto
death. 1 Obligation went no further than the dissolution of soul and body. That
separation was attested by His entombment. But the burial itself has two
aspects. It was the descent of the body to the sepulcher; where the flesh of the
Holy One of God saw no corruption, being still part of His incarnate Person.
Humiliation was arrested at the moment that Death received the sacred Form, as
the Baptist received the Heavenly Candidate for baptism: COMEST THOU TO ME? 2
Meanwhile the exaltation of the Redeemer had already begun. For, His spirit,
also part of His incarnate Person, quickened by the Spirit of His Divinity, went
down to the nether world and received at the very moment of its severance from
the body the keys of Hades and of death. 3 1 Php 2:8; 2 Matthew 3:14; 3
Revelation 1:18 HUMILIATION OF PERSON AND WORK ONE

Having distinguished between the humiliation of our Lord’s Person and that of
His work, it is expedient that we efface the distinction and regard His Person
and His work as one

Apart from the ministry of redemption there is, theologically, no Person of
Christ. Some important results follow from this truth: first, the redeeming
submission makes the personal humiliation a profound reality; secondly, the
inalienable Divine dignity of the Redeemer gives its glory to the submission

1. There is a sense in which the Person of the Incarnate, as such, was incapable
of abasement. His assumption of a pure human nature, by" which the centre of His
being, that is His Personality, was not changed, was an act of infinite
condescension, but not of humiliation strictly so called. The self-determining
or self-limiting act of the Godhead in creating all things cannot be regarded as
a derogation; nor was it such in the specific union of Deity with manhood. But,
as we shall hereafter see that the Descent into Hades was the moment which
united the deepest abasement and the loftiest dignity of the Christ, so the
moment of the incarnation in the womb of the Virgin united the most glorious
condescension of the Second Person with His most profound abjection. His work
began as a suffering Redeemer, with the submission to conception and birth.
Hence the Person and the work cannot be separated. And the humiliation which the
Redeemer underwent must be regarded as the humiliation of the God-man. He
assumed it, even as He assumed the nature that rendered it possible

2. As the glory of our Lord’s Divinity was manifested forth in His Person and
work, so that glory shines through all the narratives of His humbled estate.
Many lesser evidences might be adduced; but we may be content with the three
testimonies given by the Father from heaven at the three great crises of that
humiliation, and occasional assertions of our Savior as to the voluntary and
Divine character of His submission

(1.) At the Baptism, which has been hitherto viewed only as it was received by
the Representative of sinners, the Divine attestation was given: This is My
belovedSong of Solomon 1:1-17 Here was more than the perfect complacency of the
Father in His Son now incarnate, and the acknowledgment of the sinless
development of the past; it was also a symbolical exhibition of the Holy Trinity
as to be revealed in redemption; and the Triune glory, though it vanished from
human observation, rested for ever on the Saviour’s work

Midway in His career, or rather when preparing to enter the path of final
sorrow, our Lord received from God the Father honor and glory 2 on the holy
mount. That glory rests, slanting along a double perspective vista, upon the two
intervals, backwards to the Baptism and forward to the Passion. Whatever other
lessons the Transfiguration taught, it certainly declared that the Holy Sufferer
was the Divine Son; and that the brightness of the Father’s glory in Him was
only withdrawn or hidden, or veiled for a season. Finally, the hour of our
Saviour’s preparatory passion was magnified by a third demonstration of the
Father’s honor put upon His Son. He heard the Voice which others did not
distinguish; the Voice which declared that all the past of the Redeemer had
glorified the Divine Name, and that the still greater future would still more
abundantly glorify it: I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. 3 1
Matthew 3:17; 2 2 Peter 1:17; 3 John 12:2

(2.) On many occasions He asserted for Himself the Divine dignity which
coexisted with His humiliation. A Teacher come from God, 1 He re-uttered the law
on the Mount as His own, and the entire fabric of the Sermon asserts His
supremacy. While He vindicated His own observance of Sabbatic ordinance as real
and true, He declared Himself Lord also of the Sabbath; 2 and, honoring the
Temple prescriptions, proclaimed Himself Greater than the Temple. 3 Complying
with an exaction of men as subject to the powers that be, He intimated that as
the Son He was free from tribute. 4 He ever made it known that His life was in
His own hands, that He did not and could not renounce the prerogative of life in
Himself, 5 that He laid down His life with Divine freedom, that He had power to
lay it down, and power to take it again. 6 And what He declared in life He
proved in death: for, though the Father’s rebuke of sin broke His heart, He
spontaneously yielded up His soul, or gave up the ghost, 7 parédooken tó pneúma,
even as He voluntarily gave up His body to those who came to capture Him. 8 It
was part of the commandment received of My Father that our Lord should sometimes
assert, what His consciousness could not be bereft of, His absolute independence
of the creature with which, for the sake of redemption, He had so closely bound
Himself. Hence He declares His self-abnegation to be the example 9 which He gave
His disciples, nor does He ever once speak of it save for that purpose

Before He bequeathed His peace He left them this legacy, showing by its most
affecting illustration in Himself the eternal connection between humility as the
source and peace as the result. The Feet washing was the symbolical
representation of His entire way of lowliness; and in it the Master and Lord 10
set the seal of Divine dignity on His earthly condescension. When, drawing very
nigh to the lowest limit of His abasement, He said, Believest thou not that I am
in the Father, and the Father in Me? 11 and, more than that, He that hath seen
Me hath seen the Father, He Himself declared that the whole of His past career
had been a manifestation of God in the flesh: I and My Father are one. 12 We
have not, however, isolated passages only to rely on. The whole history of our
Lord’s humbled estate in the Gospels, and the exposition of it in the Epistles,
alike proclaim that in the mystery of His condescension to the lowest depth His
glory was revealed. As the Incarnate Son He said of Himself: Ought not Christ to
have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? 13 But the
glorification of Divine love waited not for the ascension The Divine majesty of
the Son was most richly and blessedly manifested IN the redeeming sorrows and
not alone AFTER them. To the Christian sentiment the obscuration of the Cross is
the very darkness which God makes His secret place. 14

1 John 3:2; 2 Luke 6:5; 3 Matthew 12:6; 4 Matthew 17:26; 5 John 5:26; 6 John
10:18; 7 John 19:30; 8 John 10:18; 9 John 11:15; 10 John 13:13; 11 John 14:10;
John 14:9; 12 John 10:30; 13 Luke 24:26; 14 Psalms 18:11 THE ESTATE OF
EXALTATION The Redeemer’s Estate of Exaltation may be viewed in its historical
stages as a process: the Descent, the Resurrection, and the Ascension; and with
reference to its completeness as affecting the Person and the Work of the
Redeemer. These, however, need not be separated: the latter branch may be merged
in the former, partly because it has been anticipated in the Humiliation, and,
partly, because it enters into the discussion of the Three Offices The process
of the Redeemer’s exaltation, like that of His humiliation, is matter of
Scriptural testimony alone. We are taught that it began with the Descent into
the invisible world; that it was continued in His Resurrection; and that it was
consummated in His Ascension and Session at the right hand of God THE DESCENT

Between the lowest point of our Lord’s humiliation and the beginning of His
glorification there was, there could be, no interval. In fact, the critical
instant of His death was at the same time the critical instant of His commencing
triumph. Here we must consider what the Descent into Hades imports, and how it
belonged to the exaltation of Christ: but in few words, as the light of
Scripture here soon fails us

1. The phrase Descent into Hell, Descensus ad Inferos, is not in the New
Testament. St. Peter, bearing witness to the Lord’s resurrection, quotes the
words of David: 1 Thou wilt not leave My soul in Hades; neither wilt thou give
Thine Holy One to see corruption. 2 The Greek "Aidos Hades, answering to the
Hebrew Sheol, signifies the Unseen State; which again corresponds with the
English Hell, according to its simple original meaning of Covered or Hidden
Depth, and without reference to punishment endured in it. Into this State of the
Dead our Lord entered: as to His body it was buried and concealed in the
sepulcher or visible representative of the invisible Hades into which He entered
as to His soul. It is observable, however, that St. Paul, making the same use of
the Psalm, does not distinguish between the grave and Hades. He speaks only of
the body: they laid Him in a sepulcher; 3 and thinks it enough to quote, Thou
wilt not give Thine Holy One to see corruption. Undoubtedly the entombment of
our Lord, and His passing into the condition of the dead, are the one meaning of
these passages; and they signify that His death was a reality, and that so far
His burial belonged to His humbled estate 1 Acts 2:30-31; 2 Psalms 16:10; 3 Acts
13:29; Acts 13:35

2. But that this descent into Hades was at the same time the beginning of His
exaltation is evident from the following negative and positive considerations

(1.) Negatively, when our Lord cried It is finished! 1 The abasement of the
Representative of mankind ended. The expiation of sin demanded no more: it did
not require that the Redeemer should be kept under the power of death. After the
tribute of His voluntary expiation death had no more dominion over Him. 2 He
triumphed over all the enemies of salvation on the cross. Death was at once His
last sacrifice, His triumph, and His release; it was not possible that He should
be holden of it: 3 not only because He was the Prince of Life, but because the
law had no further claim. When He offered up His holy spirit, wrath to the
uttermost was spent upon human sin; bat He Himself was never the object of
wrath, and the Father received the spirit commended to Him as a sufficient
sacrifice. The Holy One could not endure the torments of the lost: the thought
that He could and did is the opprobrium of one of the darkest chapters of
historical theology. Not in this sense did He make His grave with the wicked.4 1
John 19:30; 2 Romans 6:9; 3 Acts 2:24; Acts 3:15; 4 Isaiah 53:9

(2.) Positively, He triumphed in death over death. First, in His one Person He
kept inviolate His human body, which did not undergo the material dissolution of
its elements: not because, as it is sometimes said, He was delivered from the
grave before corruption had time to affect His sacred flesh; but because the
work of death was arrested in the very instant of the severance of soul and
body. As His spirit dieth no more, 1 so His body saw no corruption. 2 The
unviolated flesh of our Lord was, till the moment He was quickened, a silent
declaration of perfect victory: His Divinity never left His body, any more than
it forsook His spirit in its passage to the world of spirits. Secondly,
according to the testimony of two Apostles, our Lord triumphantly descended into
the lower world, and took possession of the kingdom of the dead. To this end
Christ both died, and, having died, lived, that He might be Lord both of the
dead and living: 3 these words indefinitely distribute the mediatorial empire
over man into its two great provinces. He died, and in death took possession of
the Dead; He revived, and ruleth over the Living. Who shall descend into the
deep?4 (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead): here the deep, or the
abyss, must refer to the great Underworld. Now that He ascended, what is it but
that He also descended [first] into the lower parts of the earth? 5 whence, in
the strong figure of Scripture, He led captivity captive. 6 Triumphing over all
the enemies of our salvation—sin, death, and Satan—in it, the cross, He declared
His triumph in the Descent. Quickened by the Spirit of His Divinity, by which
also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison: 7 the historical
sequence—He went, by the resurrection, Who is gone into heaven—indicates, and
will allow no other interpretation, that in the Interval the Redeemer asserted
His authority and lordship in the vast region where the congregation of the dead
8 is the great; aggregate of mankind, the great assembly to which also we may
apply the words, In the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.9

1 Romans 6:9; 2 Acts 13:37; 3 Romans 14:9; 4 Romans 10:1-21; Romans 7:1-25; 5
Ephesians 4:8-9; 6 Colossians 2:15; 7 1 Peter 3:18-19; 1 Peter 3:22; 8 Proverbs
21:16; 9 Psalms 22:22 THE RESURRECTION The Resurrection of our Lord, viewed in
its widest import, is His exaltation. It is the perfect opposite of His humbled
estate. As a fact in His history it is only a stage in the process of
glorification; but the general strain of the New Testament teaches us to regard
it as absolutely the counterpart and antithesis of His humiliation. If His death
is the limit and measure of the Obedience, His resurrection is the substance and
sum of His dignity and reward. The preaching of the Apostles everywhere gives
prominence to these two truths as the pillars of the Christian faith; and the
evidence of the supreme miracle of the resurrection of Jesus is, both as
internal and external, sufficient to establish the dignity of His Person and the
authority of His work. This point of view alone commands all the elements of the
doctrine of Christ’s resurrection IN ITS DOGMATIC RELATIONS The Resurrection was
the glorification of the Redeemer’s Person and the seal of His atoning work

I. His rising from death Divinely vindicated the Redeemer’s Person. As such, it
was the demonstration of His Divinity, as effected by His own power; and, as
effected by the Father, the declaration of His Incarnate dignity: both, in the
unity of the Holy Ghost, merged into the Godhead generally

1. It is remarkable that in all our Lord’s predictions of His resurrection He
makes Himself the Agent. His first allusion to it was among His earliest
predictions: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up; 1 and
His last was among His latest: I lay down My life, that I might take it again.
No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it
down, and 1 have power to take it again. 2 It may be objected that the words
follow: this commandment have I received of My Father. But the mediatorial law
of obedience included both death and resurrection; and, as certainly as the
commandment implied a personal voluntary surrender of life, the offering of
Himself in death, so certainly it implied the personal voluntary resumption of
that life. The mediatorial authority is distinct from the Divine power inherent
in the Son: this latter being the foundation of the former. He who was the Seed
of David after the flesh was declared to be the Son of God with power, 3 the Son
of God no longer in weakness and obscuration, according to the Spirit of
holiness. His Divine nature, by the resurrection from the dead

Hence the most general statement is that He rose again the third day: 4 the
words containing rather an active than a passive meaning 1 John 2:19; 2 John
10:17-18; 3 Romans 1:4; 4 1 Corinthians 15:4 2. Like every other event in the
history of the Mediator, the resurrection is ascribed to God the Father

(1.) He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father: 1 that Father of
glory whose glory had its utmost manifestation in the power wherewith it wrought
in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, 2 and, as St. Peter adds, gave Him
glory. 3 Hence the glory of God the Father is His power in its exercise; and its
result is the Son’s resurrection. He to Whom the Incarnate offered the sacrifice
of His humiliation bestowed upon Him the reward of His resurrection. When the
Redeemer prayed, Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee, 4 He had
in view both His death and His rising again from the dead. As the crucified and
risen Son He was glorified by the Father 1 Romans 6:4; 2 Ephesians 1:20; 3 1
Peter 1:21; 4 John 17:1

(2.) It was not only, however, the resurrection to glory and reward: it was also
the Father’s testimony to the perfection of His Divine-human Person as the Son.
St. Paul gives the final interpretation of the memorable words of the Psalm:
Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee. 1 The manhood of the Incarnate
Son was never perfected until the resurrection, which was therefore the
consummating period of the Incarnation. The glad tidings 2 announced at the
first birth are perfectly declared at the second birth of the Incarnate Son:
this day 3 is the One Day of the Lord’s incarnate history from the miraculous
conception to the rising from the dead, which was the moment of His perfection
both as an Incarnate Person and as the Christ 1 Acts 13:33; 2 Luke 2:1-52; 3
Acts 13:32 3. Generally, God absolutely, without distinction of Persons, is said
to have raised up the Savior

(1.) This is in harmony with the tenor of Scripture, which speaks everywhere of
the processes of the mediatorial history being under the arrangement and
ordering of God The resurrection of the Mediator is ascribed to God always when
the Messianic subordination is implied or made prominent: Him God raised up the
third day, 1 the same who anointed Jesus of Nazareth and was with Him. It may be
said generally that the processes of the Redeeming Work of the Three Persons are
ascribed to God as the term of Deity representing each 1 Acts 10:38; Acts 10:40

(2.) It is referred to God also when Christ’s resurrection is connected with
ours; the demonstration of Divine power being made emphatic: the exceeding
greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His
mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead. 1 So
in that remarkable passage: but if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from
the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken
your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. 2 This text, thus read,
seems to imply that the Holy Ghost was the Agent in the quickening of Christ,
and will be the Agent in ours. But another reading is to be preferred: diá toú
enoikoún, on account of the Spirit that dwelleth in us. The Holy Ghost is,
strictly speaking, the Agent in spiritual quickening alone 1 Ephesians 1:19; 2
Romans 8:11

(3.) But it must be remembered that here, as everywhere in relation to the
Mediatorial Trinity, all actions proceeding ad extra are referred
interchangeably to the several Persons of the Trinity. The Father and the Son
and the Holy Ghost are one in the sending and raising up and dominion of Him Who
is, not the Christ of the Father, but THE CHRIST OF GOD 1 or THE LORD’S CHRIST.2
1 Colossians 2:2; 2 Luke 2:26

II. The resurrection was the seal and glorification of His redeeming work. This
may be viewed in regard to the three offices hereafter to be mentioned
individually, and to the claims and character of the Messiah generally.
Reserving the latter for the next Section, let us mark how the Author and
Finisher of the Christian Faith was in the several offices in which He laid the
foundations of that Faith justified or approved by His resurrection

1. As the Prophet or the Apostle of revelation He appeals to all His works for
the authentication of His teaching generally, and to His resurrection in
particular as the crowning work by which He would vindicate His claim to be the
Supreme Oracle to mankind. His first emphatic and distinct prediction to the
people at large was that concerning the raising of the temple of His body. 1 He
again and again foreannounced it, calling attention to the third day; 2 and His
resurrection on that day was the seal and confirmation of His prophetic mission.
Not only so, however: it was also the entrance of the Prophet on a wider sphere
of teaching and influence for the whole world, and the preliminary seal of that
new function. It confirmed at once the words already spoken on earth, and the
words that should be spoken from heaven. 3 Thus, viewed in relation to the past,
it was the ratification of His claim as a prophetic Teacher; viewed in relation
to the future, it was the credential of His eternal teaching after its first
principles had been given below 1 John 2:21; 2 Matthew 17:23;

3 Hebrews 12:25

2. As the High Priest of the atoning sacrifice our Lord was justified in the
resurrection. It declared that His propitiatory offering was accepted as
salvation from death, the penalty of sin; and that the Spirit of a new life was
obtained for all: both these in one, and as summing up the benefits of the
Atonement

(1.) As the Divine-HUMAN Representative of mankind Christ was delivered for our
offences; 1 as the Divine-human Representative He was raised again for our
justification The strong evidence both of the vicarious character and of the
validity of our Lord’s sacrifice is given in His resurrection. His release from
death declared that He died not for His own sin, and that His atonement was
accepted for mankind: Who is he that condemneth ? 2 It is Christ that died, yea
rather, that was raised. The resurrection establishes the atoning character of
the death 1 Romans 4:25; 2 Romans 8:34

(2.) His resurrection is the pledge of life—perfect and consummate life in every
definition of it—to His people. On it depended the gift of the Spirit of life,
the fruit of the Ascension. The Lord rose again as the First begotten from the
dead, the First fruits of them that slept. 1 If we died with Him, we shall also
live with Him. 2 Because I live, ye shall live also.3 1 1 Corinthians 15:20; 2 2
Timothy 2:11; 3 John 14:19

3. As King our Lord was sealed, anointed, and crowned in the resurrection. In
virtue of His Divinity, on the one hand, and, on the other, in anticipation of
His atoning work, He was King even in His humiliation, and taught and acted as
such. Though He spoke of the kingdom of heaven, and of the kingdom of God, He
also spoke of His own kingdom: My kingdom is not of this world, 1 He said to His
judge; to His disciples: and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath
appointed unto Me; that ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom. 2 But it
was not until His resurrection that He was clothed with mediatorial authority,
according to the set time and order of the economy of grace. From the sepulcher
He went to the mountain in Galilee, where He clothed Himself with His final
authority, and said: All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.3 1 John
18:36; 2 Luke 22:29-30; 3 Matthew 28:18 EVIDENCES OF THE RESURRECTION The
Resurrection was the assurance and infallible proof of the Messiahship of Jesus.
It was the Divine demonstration of the truth of the Christian revelation, and
itself was demonstrated by sufficient evidences

I. Generally, His resurrection is referred to as the crowning evidence that
Jesus is the Christ, and therefore of the Divine authority of His religion

1. The one great argument of the New Testament is that Jesus of Nazareth,
rejected and crucified by the Jews, was their Messiah and the world’s Christ,
the Son of God and the Son of man. Before His death His Divine credentials of
word and work approved Him To them He made His appeal. But He also appealed by
anticipation to His own future resurrection. This was His first public pledge
laid down in the Temple; and it was repeated when He gave the sign of the
prophet Jonas: so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. 1 He had His own resurrection in view when He convicted the
Sadducees of not knowing the Scriptures. 2 Hence He further prepared for its
evidential force by making the raising of the dead the crowning miracle of His
many wonderful works, reserving the greatest for the last 1 Matthew 12:40; 2
Matthew 22:29

2. But for all ages and all times the one demonstration of the Christ and His
religion is His rising from the dead. This is the view taken of it by the
preachers of the Gospel in the Acts and the teachers of the Christian Faith in
the Epistles. They point to it in every discourse as their own great credential,
and as confirmed by the Holy Ghost accompanying their words. They preached Jesus
and the Resurrection. 1 St. Paul speaks for the whole company when he says that
all human hope depended upon the verity of this event. If Christ hath not been
raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain.2 1 Acts 17:18; 2 1
Corinthians 15:14

II. Hence the evidences of the Fact are sufficient. They are of two classes:
first, the witness of those to whom our Lord appeared; and, secondly, the
witness of the Spirit after His final departure: these, however, are to be
combined for ever. The external evidence is not alone; nor is the spiritual
evidence of the Christian Faith or demonstration of the Holy Ghost without a
basis of facts which He thus demonstrates to be true

1. No part of our Lord’s history is more minutely recorded than the history of
the Forty days, which must chiefly be regarded under this aspect, as a
continuous practical proof of the verity of His resurrection to His own chosen
witnesses

(1.) These witnesses were selected as such: Him God raised up the third day, and
showed Him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of
God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead. 1
The Lord never appeared to the Jews after their rejection of Him: the day of
their visitation was over. This also was foretold: I go My way, and ye shall
seek Me. 2 Neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. 3 The
witnesses were, in fact, all the members of the Lord’s discipleship: expanding
in number from the solitary Mary Magdalene to the Five Hundred. But they were
chosen in the sense that special demonstration of the reality and of the nature
of His risen body was given to the Apostolic Company 1 Acts 10:40-41; 2 John
8:21; 3 Luke 16:31

(2.) Though the witnesses were chosen, Christ was, according to St. Peter,
openly shown of God; and the four Evangelists record the reasons of His
prearranged appearance. Five times He showed Himself alive on the day of His
resurrection: to Mary Magdalene, 1 to another company of women, 2 to Peter, 3 to
two disciples on the way to Emmaus, 4 to the Eleven. 5 To these must be added
another Jerusalem appearance for the conviction of St Thomas. Two manifestations
took place after long silence in Galilee, to the Seven and to the Five Hundred.
Two again in Jerusalem: one to James, the Lord’s brother, and another at the
Ascension. 6 These Ten are all the appearances that are recorded: probably all
that took place.7

1 Mark 16:1; 2 John 20:1; 3 Matthew 28:1; 4 Luke 24:13; Luke 24:33-34; 5 John
20:19; John 20:24; 6 Matthew 28:16; 7 John 21:1

(3.) The Lord’s occasional visits were accompanied by many infallible proofs; 1
by many signs, tekmeeríois, which could not deceive those who witnessed them.
First, He distinguished the day of His resurrection, the third day, by a more
abundant exhibition of those signs. The third day was connected with the ancient
type of the wave-offering, as the three days and three nights with the prophet
Jonah: both meaning, according to Hebrew computation, one whole day and two
fragments. On the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it; 2 the first
fruits of harvest were waved before the Lord, and the lamb sacrificed, thus
typically uniting the paschal atoning sacrifice of Christ and its Easter
acceptance. On the fourteenth Nisan our Lord died, having eaten His Passover on
the preceding evening. The paschal Sabbath was the day of His rest in the grave;
on the sixteenth He rose; and to give evidence of the honor put on this third
day, which was to become the first, He appeared many times. Secondly, He took
more than one opportunity of showing the marks, tekmeería, 3 of His hands and
His feet, and of exhibiting the verity of His body: even eating and drinking
with His disciples. Into the mystery of His double relation—to the present world
in a body that might be nourished, and to the spiritual world in a body which
suddenly appeared within closed doors—we cannot penetrate. Suffice that the Lord
added this special miracle of an occasional resumption of His physical relations
in order to demonstrate the reality of His resurrection

He could undergo the Transfiguration at will, and by it closed every interview,
and all His appearances, until the ascension. Thirdly, the tokens of the reality
of His resurrection were the perfect identity of His human affections. He
tarried to convince the doubters by the Old Testament, and by exhibition of
Himself; to pardon the transgressors who had forsaken Him, especially Peter, who
had added denial to his abandonment, and had a private interview for his
personal pardon before the public interview for his official pardon; and to
teach the things concerning His kingdom. He thus showed Himself to be the same
Jesus 1 Acts 1:3; 2 Leviticus 23:11; 3 Luke 24:39

2. The evidence of our Lord’s resurrection contained in the New-Testament
records is unimpeachable. Its assailants have always employed one of three
methods of resisting it

(1.) They sometimes adopt the transcendent principle of skepticism: the absolute
rejection of this supreme miracle, simply because it is miracle. To this all
assaults on this fundamental fact of Christianity come at last. The cumulative
force of the evidences of every kind is such that it cannot be resisted by those
who believe in revelation and the possibility of miraculous intervention. Those
who reject the Lord’s resurrection on this ground therefore reject with it all
Divine revelation; they persistently refuse to consider the evidences of it: not
persuaded, incapable of being persuaded, though One rose from the dead.1

1 Luke 16:31

(2.) Certain theories are devised which may account for the universal acceptance
of the fact on the part of the disciples. These may be reduced to two: either
the first preachers of Christ’s resurrection were impostors; or they were
enthusiasts, who, having once listened to the visionary tale of a supposed
appearance of Christ, propagated the delusion, and recorded it in legendary
narratives. But a careful consideration of the character of the Apostles, of the
simplicity of their faith in the resurrection of their Lord, of the
selfsacrificing labors by which they sealed their testimony even unto death,
will teach every candid mind that neither of these can be the solution. And the
narratives themselves in their coherence and tranquil consistency irresistibly
plead their own cause

(3.) These narratives are sometimes subjected to a process of examination which
detects in them inconsistencies. It is true that there are certain differences
in the minute details of the day of the resurrection, even as there are
differences in the accounts of the Lord’s earlier history. But it must be
remembered that the witnesses give independent evidence, and that each records
something not mentioned by the others. Every Evangelist has his own design: St.
Matthew, for instance, keeps the final Mountain and Commission in view; St.
Luke, Emmaus and the Ascension; St. John, the more public appearances of the
Risen Lord, concerning which he says that he records as the third what was
really the eighth. St. Luke’s Gospel seems to make the Lord’s final departure
take place on the evening of the resurrection; but he himself, in the Acts,
mentions the forty days. The third Evangelist has two accounts of the Ascension,
entirely different in detail but the same in fact; just as he, a careful
historian, gives three narratives of Christ’s appearance to Saul, in which the
minute differences-—such as that the companions of the Convert in one account
see without hearing, and in another hear without seeing—only confirm the
accuracy of the narrative

3. The supreme Witness of the resurrection of Christ was the Holy Ghost. To His
evidence our Lord referred before He departed. The Spirit accompanied the
testimony of the Apostles; He has made the Christian Church the abiding
demonstration of the life of its Head; and He gives His assurance in the hearts
of all to whose penitent faith He reveals the ascended Savior

(1.) The Apostles preached the Lord’s resurrection as witnesses who were
sustained by the Spirit’s higher testimony: literally, a witness through, and
in, and with their preaching And we are His witnesses of these things; and so is
also the Holy Ghost, Whom God hath given to them that obey Him. 1 While St.
Peter preached the Risen Jesus to Cornelius the Holy Ghost fell on all them
which heard the Word. 2 This was the reason that with great power gave the
Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; 3 it was because they
declared it with the confidence of personal assurance, God also bearing them
witness, both by signs and wonders, and by divers powers, and gifts of the Holy
Ghost, according to His own will.4 1 Acts 5:32; 2 Acts 10:44; 3 Acts 4:33; 4
Hebrews 2:4

(2.) The history of the Christian Church, with its institutions, is one
continuous and everenlarging demonstration of the unseen life of its Ruler. The
Lord’s Day, which has been kept as the memorial of the resurrection from its
very morning, is itself testimony that there was never a time when the clear
faith in that vital Fact was not held. Similarly, the Eucharistic celebration
has from the beginning avowed reliance on a Death once suffered and in a Life
which has not been continued upon earth. From the day of Pentecost the Church
has been opposed by principalities and powers, human and superhuman; but never
has the resurrection of its Head and Defender been successfully assailed

(3.) The most universal and best evidence is the influence of the unseen
Redeemer by His Spirit in the hearts and lives of believers. The later New
Testament dwells on the working in us of the mighty power which He wrought in
Christ when He raised Him from the dead. 1 The spiritual life of those who
accept the Savior is to themselves a ground of assurance that needs nothing to
be added. They receive the records because they are bound up with the Scriptures
of truth; they believe the Event recorded because it took place in harmony with
ancient prediction, according to the Lord’s own word, and in consistency with
His own Divine power. They know that no argument was brought against the fact by
those who were most interested in denying it at the beginning; and that no
argument has been brought since that has any force. But their infallible
evidence is the life of their own souls 1 Ephesians 1:19-20 THE ASCENSION AND
SESSION The Ascension of our Lord is the historical term and end of His
Exaltation; and, as such, may be viewed in its preliminaries, recorded by all
the Evangelists; as an actual event recorded by St. Luke mainly; and in its
sequel including the entire Apostolical testimony to His Session and
Intercession

I. The narrative of the Forty Days describes, not only the sequel of the
resurrection, but also the preparation for the ascension. The seven weeks of
interval corresponded to the seven weeks numbered from the wave-offering, the
type of CHRIST THE FIRST-FRUITS. 1 But nothing in Old-Testament symbol or type
points to the fortieth day as that of the Saviour’s going up. That day was
chosen by our Lord: but not arbitrarily. In His love to His disciples and in His
wise provision for the future He gave to them the larger part of this time. It
may be supposed that His main purpose was to wean them from their dependence on
His personal and visible presence. Hence the gradually diminishing appearances.
Hence that one preliminary note of the ascension: Touch Me not, for I am not yet
ascended! 2 This explains the blended remembrances of the past and anticipations
of the future: of which the last chapter of St. John is an impressive example.
Of any preparation of His body for the day of His glorifying there is no hint.
It was simply the set hour; but the hour set by Himself: no change passed upon
Him during the interval The resurrection was the final removal from the
conditions of human life; and, so far as concerned Himself, there was no reason
to keep Him on earth. His tarrying so long in a midway condition was due to His
tender concern for His disciples. And the result was that when He finally
departed they were fully prepared for the new economy of His spiritual
manifestation; they surrendered Him resignedly to the heavens which must receive
Him; 3 and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.4 1 1 Corinthians 15:23; 2
John 20:17; 3 Acts 3:21; 4 Luke 24:52

II. The history of the Event is recorded only by St. Luke. His account in the
Gospel describes it rather as the end of the Lord’s life on earth, in the Acts
with reference rather to His mediatorial work in heaven and final return to
finish redemption 1. The Ascension was the end of the Saviour’s earthly course

(1.) Until that day Jesus went in and out among us; 1 and His life had been
spent amidst unglorified human conditions. The forty days were also days of His
flesh, 2 for all His manifestations were in many respects like those of former
times: the spiritual vanishings were anticipations of the ascension, and are not
alluded to save as marking the appearances themselves 1 Acts 1:21; 2 Hebrews 5:7

(2.) Hence the clear historical narrative which runs on with a continuous detail
of what Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day in which He was
received up. 1 The Lord led them out as far as to Bethany. 2 He went before them
as He was wont to do, but now for the last time. He led them out designedly that
they might be witnesses. Reported from them and was carried up into heaven; or,
as elsewhere, far above all heavens, 3 far above the gradational heavens to
which St. Paul himself, and other saints, had been rapt

It was not, as before, a disappearance into Hades—between which and the upper
world the Forty Days alternated—but a local withdrawal into what is called the
Presence of God, 4 concerning which we cannot and we need not form any
conception. During His life He spoke of His ascent as belonging to His
incarnation: the Son of Man was in heaven, and had ascended up to heaven, 5 in
virtue of the hypostatic union. But in this final going up the heaven must
receive 6 Him: words which must retain their full significance, though they are
quite consistent with His receiving the heavens 1 Acts 1:1-2; 2 Luke 24:50-51; 3
Ephesians 4:10; 4 Hebrews 9:24; 5 John 3:13; 6 Acts 3:21

(3.) The Apostles were witnesses of this event. The Resurrection neither they
nor any mortal witnessed; but the Forty Days were a continuous evidence to them
that their Lord had risen. The entire community of believers was not summoned to
Bethany: for, though it was necessary that the resurrection should be attested
by all, the ascension had not the same evidential character. In this respect it
was only the natural conclusion, as it were, of the resurrection itself; and is
never referred to in the Epistles save in its theological, experimental, and
practical bearings. The Apostles had been with their Master in His temptations,
and they were permitted to behold the honor and glory which He received in His
ascension. Only three of them witnessed the transfiguration-earnest, the same,
namely, who witnessed the agony of the garden; but all are admitted to the
second holy mount: only, however, the Apostolic company, for there is selection
still. Their evidence is sufficient to assure us of the reward conferred on the
human nature of our Lord, and of the fact of His entrance into the invisible
world

2. As the beginning of a new life the ascension was the passing into a new
sphere of mediatorial action, the taking possession of the Presence of God for
His people, in a departure from earth which preceded a return from heaven or His
appearing the second time.1 1 Hebrews 9:24; Hebrews 9:28

(1.) With the Lord’s ascension is always connected the priestly office of
intercession wherein as the High Priest He pleads His propitiation for the sins
of the whole world, 1 and as His people’s Surety pleads especially for them. We
have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; Who is passed into
the heavens, 2 even as His type entereth into the holy place every year. 3 And
the government of the Church is in His hands, as seated on the mediatorial
throne: to exercise the dominion He went up, even as He came down to obtain it
through death. Hence it is said to be a dignity with His right hand 4 conferred
on the Son by the Father, and to be the reward of His humiliation unto death. In
this sense heaven is the centre of the universe, from which the heavens, the
earth, and things under the earth are surveyed and governed by the Incarnate
Lord. But the further consideration of this subject belongs to the doctrine of
the Offices of Christ 1 1 John 2:1-2; 2 Hebrews 4:14; 3 Hebrews 9:25; 4 Acts
5:31

(2.) The account of the Acts connects the departure of our Lord with His return:
hence the prophetic Mount called Olivet,1 the new angelic announcement which in
every word respects the future and not the past, and the emphasis laid upon the
first Promise of the perfected Christ: 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.2 The Second Coming is predicted as soon as the first is past; this being
the link of continuity between the old covenant and the new: in both there is a
great expectation of the Savior. Meanwhile, the theological bearing of the
Ascension of our Lord is most affectingly taught in connection with the doctrine
of His people’s union with Him. In virtue of this, believers are blessed with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ; 3 and seek the things that
are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.4 And, according to
the last words of the New Testament, their one deep longing is to see Him again:
Even so, come, Lord Jesus! 5 1 Acts 1:12; Zechariah 14:4; 2 Acts 1:11; 3
Ephesians 1:3; 4 Colossians 3:1; 5 Revelation 22:20

III. The sequel of the Ascension is the Session at the right hand of God in
heaven; with its attestation on earth, the Pentecostal descent of the Holy
Spirit, the Promise of the New Covenant

1. The Session was the subject of our Saviour’s prophecy, equally with the
events that preceded it. His first reference to it was indirect: He saith unto
them, How then doth David in Spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my
Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool?1
Afterwards, in His own day of judgment, when He was adjured by the high priest
and confessed Himself the Son of God, He varied the phrase: Hereafter shall ye
see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power. 2 This emphatic twofold
allusion of Christ is echoed throughout the New Testament, and rules all that
follows 1 Matthew 22:43-44; 2 Matthew 26:64

(1.) The Apostle Peter speaks of Him as raised by the right hand of God 1 to sit
on the right hand of God. 2 And he constantly refers to the Session, sometimes
with and sometimes without the term, to express the mediatorial authority of
Christ as an administration of the power of God: to shed forth the influences of
that Holy Ghost Who represents upon earth the Lord’s administration in heaven.
But St. Paul is the elect expositor of this authority, and he sums up the entire
doctrine in his Ephesian Epistle He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His
own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power and
might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but
also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under His feet, and gave
Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the
fullness of Him that fillet all in all. 3 1 Acts 2:33; 2 1 Peter 3:22; 3
Ephesians 1:20-22

(2.) Hence the Ascension is described as the beginning of a supreme authority
which is to end when He hath put all enemies under His feet. 1 Until then our
Lord’s Session is passive also, as in the attitude of expectation: But He, when
He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of
God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. 2 But
Stephen, for his assurance in death, saw the Son of Man STANDING on the right
hand of God.3 1 1 Corinthians 15:25; 2 Hebrews 10:12-13; 3 Acts 7:56

(3.) But, lastly, this delegated and terminable authority is based upon an
eternal prerogative of Session: He who sat down on the right hand of the Majesty
on high was THE SON, Whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by Whom also He
made the worlds; before His incarnation being the effulgence of His glory, and
the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His
power. 1 Nor could He have sat on the right hand of God, in universal supremacy,
had He not in His eternal dignity been in the Bosom of the Father.2 1 Hebrews
1:2-3; 2 John 1:18

2. The Pentecostal gift of the Holy Ghost was at once the immediate proof of the
verity of the ascension, and demonstration of the authority to which it led. The
prediction of the Psalmist, Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the
rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them, 1 was interpreted
both by our Lord and by St. Paul of the supreme Gift of the Spirit. I will send
Him unto you 2 was the promise before the Saviour’s departure; it was confirmed
after His resurrection; and it was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost once for
all and for ever 1 Psalms 68:18; 2 John 16:7

(1.) For this there were Ten days of preparation. Whether or not the disciples
connected the promised Gift with the Fiftieth day, the end of the seven weeks,
we cannot tell: probably they did. The indefinite not many days hence 1 might
suggest to the presentiment of some among them what others were not prepared to
infer. Evidently their Master’s purpose was to make this interval a period of
discipline: without His personal presence in the flesh, and without His
spiritual manifestation by the Holy Ghost, they were reduced for a season to a
midway condition of which there is no parallel. But these days were days of
prayer; of personal and united preparation for the most glorious revelation
heaven had ever sent down to earth. The circle of the Apostolic company was made
complete by the choice of St. Matthias; and this by lot, as in an intermediate
dispensation between the Lord’s departure and the coming of the Spirit. Thus the
organic body prepared for the Spirit by the Lord Himself was made whole after
the great breach that had been made in it. And the individual believers were
prepared for the high Gift by meditation upon their own powerlessness and need,
and by fervent prayer for its bestowment. Hence the history of the Eve of
Pentecost is narrated in the Acts with careful precision as the record of the
final preparations for this consummate fullness of time, the descent of the Holy
Ghost

1 Acts 1:5

(2.) The Gift itself was the demonstration of the Session of Christ at the right
hand of God. Having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He
hath shed forth this, which ye, now see and hear. 1 St. Paul speaks of the
ascension gifts unto men with special reference to the dispensation of the
ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ, 2 which began with the day of
Pentecost. But the great prophecy in the Psalm, that the Lord God might dwell
among them, 3 had its plenary fulfillment when the Holy Ghost came down as the
Shekinah, the symbol of God manifest in the flesh, resting upon the Church and
abiding within it as the indwelling presence of the Holy Trinity. Thus the glory
within the veil, and the candlestick outside, symbols of the Son and the Spirit,
were blended when the veil was removed, into one and the same FULNESS OF GOD.4 1
Acts 2:33; 2 Ephesians 4:8; Ephesians 4:12; 3 Psalms 68:18; 4 Ephesians 3:19
SCRIPTURAL DEVELOPMENTOF THE TWO ESTATES The Two Estates of the Redeemer are
exhibited throughout the Scriptures with the same precision and uniformity as
that which we have marked in the doctrine of the Two Natures in the Incarnate
Lord. But we need not trace so carefully the process of Biblical teaching on
this subject, as it has been to a great extent anticipated in the development of
the doctrine of Christ’s Person

I. In the Old Testament the history of the future Minister of redemption is
foreshadowed as a career leading through deep humiliation to glory; the Messiah
being a mediatorial Person, whose attributes are Divine and human, but Who
always occupies a subordinate position in carrying out the Divine counsel. The
first distant intimation of this is the phrase Angel of Jehovah, where Jehovah
is the Agent of Jehovah. In due time the term Messiah, or The Anointed,
prophetically designated the same Angel as incarnate: the future Revealer of the
Divine will, Propitiation for human sin, and Ruler of a saved and ransomed
people. But this Messiah is described as consecrated for God by God, first to a
state of the deepest depression and then to a state of the highest majesty In
Isaiah’s prophecy, which gave our Lord His own term Minister, the coming of the
Incarnate is predicted as that of a Servant. All the Psalms and the Prophets,
however, agree in ascribing to the Redeemer a subordination to God which is made
mysteriously consistent with Divine titles and honors. In Him the Alpha and
Omega meet

II. Our Lord never defines the secret of His incarnate Person; never speaks of
His two natures as united in one; nor does He once propose the mystery of His
examination and its results to the acceptance of His disciples. He reveals it
distinctly but does not distinctly explain it, thus tacitly rebuking beforehand
the future presumption of speculative theology. We must consider only therefore
the kind of testimony which He gives as to the two Estates respectively 1. In
many ways He declares His subordination in His humbled state; but always speaks
of it as a voluntary submission

(1.) He terms Himself the Son of Man rather than the Son of God, though not
refusing the latter name. He speaks of Himself as come not to be ministered
unto, but to minister; 1 of His doctrine as what My Father hath taught Me, and
the things which I have heard of Him: 2 of His mediatorial work as a commission
or commandment received of My Father, 3 for the strength to accomplish which He
prayed, while for its gradual disclosure, or the hour of each crisis, He waited:
Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 4 He spoke of God as apart from
Himself: His God as well as ours. He said, My Father is greater than I, 5 when
speaking of His going to Him through the way of humble suffering. Not so much in
individual passages, as in the uniform tone of His self-disclosure, we mark the
Redeemer’s strict subordination to the Father as the God and Head of the
redeeming economy 1 Matthew 20:28; 2 John 8:26; John 8:28; 3 John 10:18; 4 Mark
13:32; 5 John 14:28

(2.) That the incarnate Jesus in His humbled estate voluntarily made Himself
subject, while retaining the eternal dignity of His Divinity, is obvious from
these assertions of His oneness with the Father to which reference has already
been made, from His demand of honor equal to that paid to the Father, and
especially from His anticipation of a return of the glory which He surrendered
in His incarnation. There are some passages in which the voluntary subordination
and the coequal dignity are combined in a manner that ought not to be
misunderstood. For as the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the
Son also to have life in Himself. 1 I came forth and am come from God; neither
came I of Myself, but He sent Me. 2 The profoundest word, however, is not in St.
John, but in St Matthew: All things are delivered unto Me of My Father; and no
one knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither doth any know the Father save
theSong of Solomon 3:1-11 1 John 5:26; 2 John 8:42; 3 Matthew 11:27

(3.) Hence we are constrained to interpret our Lord’s testimony to His
exinanition in a sense that shall make it consistent with His consciousness of
equality with the Father This is the great difficulty of the subject; but it is
a Scriptural difficulty, committed to humble faith; and this doctrine of a
relative and only mediatorial inferiority is much more consonant with the
Christian idea of God than the theories of a contracted or depotentiated
Divinity which are invented in its stead

2. The Saviour’s testimonies to His state of dignity are in word before His
ascension, in word and manifestation afterwards

(1.) It is important to consider in what way our Lord was wont to look forward
to His future dignity. Here we mark the same twofold strain that we find
throughout the subject On the one hand, He speaks of His exaltation as simply
the avowal to the universe of His true character and dignity. No man hath
ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man
which is in heaven: 1 the Savior, foreseeing His ascension, speaks of it as
adding nothing to His real dignity, because He is never out of heaven. Human
nature in contact with Him is already exalted. He who heard these words had just
before heard the Lord say: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise
it up. 2 But when the Lord at the close prayed for His coming glorification we
understand that Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, 3
anticipating His reward 1 John 3:13; 2 John 2:19; 3 Hebrews 12:2

(2.) After His ascension the Redeemer most expressly teaches us the continuance
of a mediatorial subjection in harmony with the essential Divinity of His
Divine-human Person. As to the fact of the abiding subordination, He speaks of
Himself as the Minister of redemption precisely in the same terms as while on
earth. There is literally no difference. He bids His servants speak of Him as
the Prince and the Savior Whom God exalted with His right hand, 1 as the Son or
the Servant sent to bless. 2 There is no more glorious manifestation of Christ
than that to Saul in his conversion, and there we hear our Lord saying that his
office should be to turn men from the power of Satan unto God . .by faith that
is in Me. 3 So in the Epistle to the Church of Philadelphia He speaks of the
temple of My God and the name of My God: 4 reminding us of the words before the
ascension, My Father and your Father, My God and your God. 5 But that this
continuing ministry is consistent with His supreme Divinity, we have the
Apocalyptic testimony When St. John was in Patmos, and in the Spirit, he heard
the voice of the Redeemer, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the
End: 6 than these words none more expressly declare in Scripture the necessary,
absolute being of God. That the Risen Savior spoke of Himself is evident from
what follows the first human manifestation: Fear not; I am the First and the
Last: I am He that liveth! 7 Deep meditation on these and all other such sayings
of our Lord must constrain us to understand His secret: the FELLOW of God made
the SERVANT of redemption 1 Acts 5:31; 2 Acts 3:26; 3 Acts 26:18; 4 Revelation
3:12; 5 John 20:17; 6 Revelation 22:13; 7 Revelation 1:17-18

III. The Two Estates occupy a prominent place in the Apostolical theology. It
will be expedient to refer only to a few salient points: the subordination
generally; its continuance until the last day; its continuance for ever

1. The subordination of our Lord is in one sense limited to the days of His
flesh, and ends with His exaltation at the ascension. One passage is entirely
dedicated to this subject: that in the Epistle to the Philippians which makes
the voluntary condescension of Christ the example of Christian humility. The
Eternal Son, retaining His equality with God, and still being in the form of
God, yet made Himself of no reputation, 1 or emptied Himself. It is too often
forgotten that the subjection of Christ is here altogether voluntary; that it is
matter of self-imputation rather than of an impossible reality. As in the form
of God, Christ was still the possessor of Divine attributes, but He did not use
or manifest them

He thought it not robbery to be equal with God: He did not, as to His human
nature, think fit to arrogate the display of His equality with God. But it was
in the form of a servant that He humbled Himself; while His examination was that
of the God-man, in respect, however, to His Divinity as making the manhood its
organ

1 Php 2:2-8

2. The exalted state is, further, not described as the resumption of our Lord’s
pretemporal glory apart from His incarnate subjection. Though the fullness of
the Godhead 1 is in Him, it is in Him bodily, 2 and as flowing from the pleasure
of the Father: the eternal generation was not an act of the Divine will, but in
the necessity of the Divine essence; but it pleased the Father that in Him
should all fullness dwell after the ascension. Hence in the Corinthian Epistles
we have some distinct exhibitions of the subordination. The Head of Christ is
God: 3 this is perhaps the most striking expression of the fact that even in
heaven the Incarnate is mediatorially subject. And Christ is God’s 4 declares
the same truth. But it is the current doctrine of the Epistles; and finds its
reason as well as its expression in the sequel of the passage above quoted:
therefore God also hath highly exalted Him! 5 1 Colossians 2:9; 2 Colossians
1:19; 3 1 Corinthians 11:3; 4 1 Corinthians 3:23; 5 Php 2:9

3. There is a sense, however, in which the subordination is represented as
abiding eternally. Only one passage expressly refers to this; but it is one
which is exceedingly explicit, and gives so much prominence to the subject that
we must not pass it by as belonging to the hidden and reserved mysteries of the
Christian faith. Then shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him that put
all things under Him: autós ho Huiós hupotageésetai. 1 Here, theologically at
least, we might take a middle signification: the Son shall subject Himself. It
is indeed as if, at the close of the redeeming economy, He reaffirms His
original assumption of our nature. He will not fold it or lay it aside as a
vesture. Remaining in the unity of the Father and the Holy Ghost—God shall be
All in all—He will end the whole history and mystery of redemption by ratifying
His incarnation for ever 1 1 Corinthians 15:28

4. Before leaving the Scriptural view of this subject we should observe that the
sacred writers give no formula to express the mediatorial relation of the Son
incarnate to the Father and to the Holy Trinity. All that is meant by
subordination is asserted, but the word is not used; nor is any synonym employed
until the subjection of the last day is referred to. This is a remarkable
circumstance and points to a striking theological paradox. It might seem that
the following was the order of the Lord’s historical process: The Logos in the
Trinity, the humiliation of the incarnate state, the elevation to supreme
dignity after the resurrection, the abdication at the close of all mediatorial
authority as such, and the voluntary continuance of the Son as incarnate in a
subordination to the Eternal Trinity that does not impair the dignity of the Son
as God in the unity of the Father and of the Holy Ghost. The union of man with
His Creator is thus made perfect: not by Pantheistic absorption into the
Godhead, but by union with God in the Son. The Lamb is in the midst of the
throne; 1 and He is the Head of the Church, the Savior of the Body, 2 for ever 1
Revelation 7:17; 2 Ephesians 5:23 ECCLESIASTICAL DEVELOPMENT The earlier
developments of historical Christology were limited to the relation of the two
natures in the one Person of the Christ Subsequent controversies had reference
rather to the nature of the subordinate estate into which the Redeemer
descended. At the Reformation the characteristics of the Divine-human
humiliation on the one hand, and on the other its reversal in the ascended
dignity, were profoundly studied and became the ground of many divisions. A few
general remarks will be enough to indicate the direction which theological study
here takes: first, in mediaeval theology; then in the theories of Lutheranism;
and, lastly, in some miscellaneous tendencies of modern thought

I. After the settlement of the Four Ecumenical Councils the Christological
discussions reappeared in controversies referring rather to the degree in which
the Divine Person partook of the humiliation of the human nature. Four
speculative tendencies may, without violence, be brought into relation with each
other

1. First the Monophysite and Monothelite errors made our Lord’s humbled estate a
real renunciation of both His natures, without seeming to do so. These were
simply the reflex of the Eutychian heresy, which has never vanished from
theology

(1.) The Monophysite dogma has been called Theopaschitism, because its tendency
was to assign one nature as well as one Person to Christ, Who therefore as a
composite Godman was crucified: the emphasis of course resting on the Divine
nature which absorbed the human, the passion was exaggerated into a suffering of
God Hence the name. This error was held in a great variety of forms; in its one
general principle it was the link of transition between pure Eutychianism, which
absorbed the man in the God, and the philosophical Eutychianism of modern
Lutheran theories. Monophysites are supposed to linger only among the Eastern
sects: in reality the divines of the Depotentiation school are their
representatives

(2.) The Monothelite heresy was the same with a difference: the former error
just mentioned had reference to the human nature of Christ generally; this
latter to His single will only. Now if there was in Christ only one will, there
could be only one nature; for the will cannot be divided. Hence the humanity was
abolished in this dogma, and the humiliation of the Son of God was His sinking
to such a point as to say NOT AS I WILL The true doctrine taught indeed ONE
THEANDRIC, OPERATION, but as the result of two wills, the human being of
necessity submissive to the Divine or necessarily one with it in act

2. The heresy sometimes called Adoptianism was taught by two Spanish divines in
the eighth century, and was condemned at the Synod of Frankfurt, A.D. 794. It
was really a revival of Nestorianism; as it kept apart the Divine and the human
son-ship of our Lord, making the human nature partaker of the Divine Sonship
only by an act of heavenly and gracious adoption. Thus the humbled estate of the
God-man was merely the expression of His alliance with a human person of
consummate and more than human excellence

Alcuin and other opponents of this view laid great stress on the fact that the
humiliation of Christ was His union with our nature, not with a human
individual: " In absumtione carnis a Deo, persona perit hominis, non natura." 3.
The term Nihilianism is suggested by a controversy once vigorous, but of little
importance save as the expression of an erroneous protest against a still
greater error. It took up the word that defeated the error just mentioned—that
is, the IMPERSONALITY of our Lord’s human nature—and defended the position that
the Second Person underwent no change whatever through the assumption of flesh.
The notion was condemned by the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, as tending to
reduce the Incarnation to a nullity. It was the very opposite of Theopaschitism
before, and of the Depotentiation theory that followed, the Reformation: these
errors both being based on the assumption that God in one of the Divine Persons
is capable of being reduced to such a point as to combine with a finite
personality as its power and energy. But error cannot cast out error; and this
theory perverted the true dogma of the impersonality of the human nature of our
Lord by excluding the reality of a human presentation of His Divine human
Person. It went far towards abolishing the Humbled Estate, and leaving only a
Docetic Christianity

4. Very much more interesting was the mediaeval discussion as to whether the
suffering of the God-man was essentially necessary, or whether His union with
human nature was attended with humiliation only on account of sin. While the
question is confined to these limits the answer is plain enough: we know of no
manhood as the object of the Redeemer’s condescension apart from sin, and of no
Mediator who was not made sin for us. But the question does not rest there

5. This beautiful speculation involves another topic of very great importance.
The question is not simply whether or not human sin rendered necessary the
Incarnation, but whether man was not really the created expression of God’s
eternal idea in His Son. The Infinite and the finite were one in Him. The
universal Spirit in God found its incarnate embodiment, realized itself, in
humanity as conceived in the historical Jesus. The Pantheistic Christology of
Duns Scotus in the early middle ages laid the foundation for modern German
transcendental philosophy, which, whether in Kant or Hegel, is intimately bound
up with the necessary evolving of the Trinity through Christ. But from these
speculations we must turn away II. At the Reformation, the Lutheran and the
Reformed dogmas concerning our Lord’s Two Estates widely disparted

1. The Lutheran was based upon the principle of a COMMUNIO NATURARUM, or
COMMUNICATIO IDIOMATUM: the latter implying that the attributes of the Divinity
were imparted to the manhood in the unity of the Person; the former implying
further that the one nature is interpenetrated by the other, that what one
nature is and does the other is and does. The " Natura humana est in Christo
capax Divinae." The Reformed doctrine denied this: "Finitum non est capax
Infiniti." It asserted that the humanity of Christ never was nor ever could be
possessed of Divine attributes. It may be well to consider more at large the
Lutheran dogmatics on this subject. It divides the Communicatio Idiomatum, or
interchange of attributes, into three branches. (1.) The GENUS IDIOMATICUM: this
signifies the use of predicates taken from either nature and applied to the
whole Person. (2.) The GENUS AUCHEMATICUM SEU MAJESTATIGUM: this signifies the
ascription of Divine attributes to the human nature, in the POSSESSION from the
conception, in the full USE from the ascension. (3.) The GENUS APOTELESMATICUM:
this signifies the ascription of mediatorial acts to the One Agent. It is
obvious that the second of these contains the peculiarity of Lutheran doctrine.
The Reformed theologians, and the great body of the Christian Church, have
always denied the communication of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence in
any sense to the human nature of our Lord

2. The application of the theory to the Two Estates may be traced in two
opposite directions: first, in regard to the deification of the human nature
generally in the ascension, and particularly the ubiquity of that nature in the
Eucharist; secondly, in regard to the more modern theories of retraction or
depotentiation of Divinity in the Incarnate Man

(1.) In the Lutheran theology the ascension of Christ is regarded as the
assumption of His human nature into the full dignity and use of all Divine
perfections. During His humiliation He possessed the attributes of omnipresence,
omniscience and omnipotence, but voluntarily declined to exhibit them. After the
exaltation there was in Him the fullness of the Godhead bodily. 1 His body
became not merely the organ of these attributes, but itself possessed them. He
entered not into the local heaven, but into the immensity of God. The heavens
did not receive Him, but He received the heavens: so are the words hón deí mén
déxasthai áchri 2 translated by the advocates of this view 1 Colossians 2:9; 2
Acts 3:21

(2.) Hence the soul and body of Christ have the ubiquity of the Godhead. Not,
however, that the actual flesh of the Redeemer can be literally extended to
infinity; but that the hypostatic union gives the Divine power and knowledge to
the Glorified Man, and therefore the omnipresence also. The application of this
doctrine to the Saviour’s offices will be hereafter seen. Suffice here to
observe that it is made to explain the anomaly in the prophetic office that the
Divine-human Revealer was ignorant of some things while on earth: in Him now are
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Glorified King now sways the
destinies of the universe as God-man: while on earth He had, no such authority
save in the unity of the Triune God. As Priest the Redeemer gives the virtue of
omnipresence now to the sacrifice He offered for sin, dispensing to the
communicants at the Eucharist His glorified body and blood at every altar. The
theology of Lutheranism generally attaches much importance to the physical
aspect of redemption

It seems to regard corporeal embodiment as " the end of all God’s ways:" to use
the favorite language of some of its modern exponents

(3.) In the beginning of the seventeenth century a controversy on this subject
sprang up in Lutheranism. One party maintained that the humiliation of Christ
was the hiding of Divine attributes which in His human estate He possessed: this
idea of krypsis, or concealment, gave them their name of Kryptists. Another
party affirmed that there was an actual kenosis, or emptying Himself, of the
Divine attributes which belonged to the human nature in virtue of the
hypostatical union: hence they were Kenotists. The former view invested Jesus as
man with omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence from the moment of the
Conception; but this possession was veiled during the earthly life, and avowed
only after the Ascension. The latter regarded Him as having the ktoosis or
possession of these attributes from His birth, but as utterly renouncing their
chresis or use until He was glorified. The former view, held by the Tubingen
theologians, made the ascension the first display of Christ’s Divine attributes
in humanity; the latter view, held by the Giessen theologians, made it the
first, resumption of them. The controversy was one of infinite subtlety, but
concerned only the Lutheran theologians: they alone asserted a communication of
Divine attributes to the manhood, and they alone were involved in the
embarrassments resulting. The general bearing of the question is well seen in
the following words of Gerhard: —"Not a part to a part, but the entire Logos was
united to the entire flesh, and the entire flesh was united to the entire Logos;
therefore, on account of the hypostatic union and intercommunion of the two
natures, the Logos is so present to the flesh and the flesh so present to the
Logos that neither is the Logos EXTRA CARNEM, nor is the flesh EXTRA LOGON; but
wherever the Logos is, there it has the flesh most present, as having been
assumed into the unity of the person." The controversy led to no definite
results: indeed, to us who look at the question from the outside, there is but
little difference between them

(4.) During the present century the condescension of the Son of God in the
Incarnation has been profoundly studied by German and French divines under the
influence of a certain Eutychianism that has never ceased to cling to Lutheran
Christology, but modified by the transcendental philosophy which sees in Christ
the developing body of the Spirit of the Godhead coming to perfect personality
in the Holy Ghost. The various opinions to which the names of individual men are
attached need not be discussed at length; that would be to exaggerate their
importance. It will be enough to mention the one element common to them all:
namely, that of a literal merging of the Divinity of the Son into the finite
Spirit of the Man Christ Jesus. The general idea takes many forms: sometimes
simply Pantheistic, the Eternal Spirit thinking itself as a Person in Christ;
sometimes purely Eutychian, God the Son contracted into humanity, and both
growing together to perfection; sometimes Apollinarian, the Potency of the Son
working dynamically in the psychical soul and flesh of Jesus. But all these
hypotheses have been shown by anticipation to be incapable of resisting the
simple argument of the essential Immutability of the Divine nature

III, Many modern theories have been revived from antiquity or invented afresh
which have striven to break the fall of the Divine into the human, the chief of
these being the interposition of a human pre-existent soul of Christ

1. The one fundamental principle in these sporadic speculations —they have never
been formulated in any Confessions—is that the pure humanity of our Lord was as
independent of the race of man as that of Adam was when he came from the Hand
and Breath of his Maker. Denying, with the Scripture, that Jesus owed anything
to a human father, they deny, without or in opposition to Scripture, that He
derived anything from a human mother. The Virgin was no more than the instrument
or channel through which a Divine humanity, existing before the foundation of
the world or from eternity, was introduced by the Holy Ghost into human history.
The passages relied upon for the maintenance of this notion are such as that in
which our Lord says, I came down from heaven,1 and the Second Man is [the Lord]
from heaven, 2 which, with some like them, are made to signify that the human
nature as well as the Divine was pre-existent in eternity 1 John 6:38; 2 1
Corinthians 15:47

2. Modern Mysticism has furnished in Behmen, Poiret, Barclay, AEtinger, Goschel,
Petersen, and others, the most attractive forms of this theory. In them the pure
ideal humanity of Jesus—which it is hard however to conceive as purely ideal—
was one with the Word from eternity, as it were in a pretemporal incarnation.
After the fashion of that humanity man was created: and the incarnate Jesus of
history literally came unto His own. 1 AEtinger, one of the most unexceptionable
of Mystics, says: " Because Wisdom, before the Incarnation, was the visible
Image of the invisible God, therefore the Son, in comparison with the Being of
all beings, is something relatively incorporeal, although He too is a pure
spirit. The heavenly humanity which He had as the Lord from heaven was invisibly
present even with the Israelites. They drank out of the rock." But in all these
speculations the Incarnation is antedated; or, rather, it is not the Son of God
Who becomes flesh but the Son of God already in the heavenly nature of mankind

1 John 1:11

3. Swedenborgianism, in its theological system, has on this subject as on every
other, a peculiar revelation. Swedenborg asserted the unity of God, and strove
to reconcile with that the Deity of Christ. His theory established a kind of
hypostatic union between the Father and the Son in the One Christ, the only God
in the universe. The Incarnation he viewed in an Apollinarian way: the eternal
God, eternally God-man, manifested Himself in the animal soul and psychical body
derived from the Virgin; but the material body was finally absorbed and
glorified. This is literally a composite of nearly all the heresies of
antiquity. But its peculiarity as to the person of Christ is that it gives Him,
like all other men, both a material body and a spiritual, the former
corresponding with the world of sense, the latter with the spiritual world which
He never left. The Christ of this system is the one eternal Jehovah, God and Man
in one

4. Others, of whom Isaac Watts may be regarded as the representative, have held
similar views as to the pre-existent humanity of Christ. Their starting point is
the same as the Lutheran, that the human spirit is capable of expansion to
infinity. Now the pre-existent soul of Christ was, in their view, created and
personally united with the Logos: here Orthodoxy and Arianism unite. This
already incarnate Logos became incarnate on earth by assuming the animal life of
a natural body: here Apollinarianism, as so often elsewhere, steps in.
Accordingly, all the humiliation of our Lord consisted in this transcendent
human spirit being bereft of its knowledge and passing through all stages of
exinanition until the ascension restored it to its perfection. But in this case
the Man Christ Jesus is not strictly one of us. There is an enormous addition
made to His Person; but there is no relief afforded to the difficulties of His
humiliation THE THREE OFFICES OF THE CHRIST

Jesus is, in virtue of His incarnation, the Anointed Mediator between God and
man. To the offices of His mediatorship His incarnate Person was specifically
anointed at His baptism, and thus He became the perfected Christ of God. His
work was the fulfillment and consummation of the ancient prophetical, priestly
and regal functions to which the typical servants of God under the old economy
were anointed. These offices He began to discharge on earth, and continues to
discharge in heaven. While considering them as distinct, it is important to
remember that they are one in the mediatorial work; and that the integrity of
evangelical truth depends upon the faithfulness with which we give to each its
due tribute in the unity of the two others The division of the mediatorial work
into Three Offices is based, as will be seen, on the Scriptures, both of the Old
and of the New Testament, but it is not formally stated in them. It was current
in later Judaism; is distinctly to be traced in the early Fathers, especially
Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Augustine; and in the Middle Ages was
elaborated by Thomas Aquinas. It was introduced into their theology both by
Luther and Calvin, and, though contended against by some writers who object to
the too systematic distinction of the several offices, it has become current in
modern theology. There are many reasons why it is inexpedient to make the Three
Offices the basis of an analysis of the mediatorial work. But their
consideration is most appropriate in the present review of the process of
historical redemption THE CHRIST OF PROPHECY The Redeemer of mankind, whose
advent in the fullness of time is the supreme verbal and typical prophecy of the
Old Testament, was marked out as THE LORD’S ANOINTED or THE CHRIST. This
appellation was not at first given to Him directly, but indirectly as He was
represented by those who in the Theocracy were anointed to their office. In some
passages however the future Savior is predicted by this name; and when He came
into the world He was the fulfillment of a general expectation of the Messiah as
hereafter to come in one or all of these three offices I. Anointing was from
early times a symbol of consecration to God: to the Divine possession and to the
Divine service

1. Generally, it signified human dedication and Divine acceptance. So, in the
first recorded instance of its use, Jacob took the stone that he had put for his
pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it, 1
because it was revealed to him, the Lord is in this place. More particularly it
was the symbol of light and peace and joy: of light for prophetical
illumination, of peace for priestly atonement, of joy for regal government as
the presence of God with His people 1 Genesis 28:18; Genesis 28:16

2. This anointing oil was the emblem of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of
consecration. As blood was the expiatory symbol, water that of purification, and
light of God’s accepting presence, so oil was the symbol of sanctification
generally as mystically combining all these. This symbol in its most perfect
form, the holy anointing oil, 1 was a peculiar confection, like everything
pertaining to the sanctuary after a Divine pattern, and never to be used save in
connection with Divine uses, for the priesthood and the sanctuary; it was not to
be privately prepared, nor to be poured upon man’s flesh or the stranger. It is
holy, and it shall be holy unto you. Thus the precious ointment, the ointment of
the apothecary, was the elect typical emblem of the Holy Ghost in His special
relation to the unction of Christ, and in His general relation to that of the
saints who share the sacred unction 1 Exodus 30:22-33

II. Anointing oil was used for the consecration of the priesthood and of the
prophets and rulers; especially of the high priest and the kings in the ancient
economy

1. The priests were anointed, as also the furniture of the sacrificial service:
all things were both sprinkled with blood and anointed with oil. And thou shalt
anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them. 1 And Moses took of the
anointing oil, and of the blood which was upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon
Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon his sons’ garments
with him; and sanctified Aaron. 2 The anointing oil was therefore as essential
and as pervasive as the blood, its correlative symbol: the expiatory atonement
and the consecration of the Holy Ghost being co-ordinate. After the first
institution the priest that is anointed 3 signified the High Priest: it is to be
supposed that the successors in the ordinary priesthood were not consecrated by
this symbol. The prophets were set apart in the same way. Moses, the head of the
prophetic order, who anointed the priests, did not himself undergo the rite. The
Spirit anointed him without the emblem. But Elijah was commanded to anoint
Elisha to be prophet in his room. 4 As to the kings, the testimony is more
clear. Elijah anointed Hazael to be king, which points back to an earlier
ordinance. 5 The judges were not thus instituted. Joshua received the imposition
of Moses’ hands as one on whom the Spirit of consecration had already fallen.6
But, when Saul was given to Israel, Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it
upon his head, and kissed him, and said, is it not because the Lord hath
anointed thee to be captain over His inheritance? 7 David, however, was the
specific regal type of the Messiah. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and
anointed him in the midst of his brethren; and the Spirit of the Lord came upon
David from that day forward. 8 Designation and endowment with gifts were the two
elements in the regal consecration: the former making the Lord’s Anointed a
sacred and inviolable person, and the latter insuring him every requisite grace
for the administration of his office 1 Exodus 30:30; 2 Leviticus 8:30;

3 Leviticus 4:3; 4 1 Kings 19:16; 5 1 Kings 19:15; 6 Numbers 27:18; Numbers
27:23; 7 1 Samuel 10:1; 8 1 Samuel 16:13

2. Thus the anointing oil, the symbol of the Holy Ghost, had various meanings in
the typical economy: meanings which were afterwards one in Christ. The prophetic
anointing signified rather the setting apart of an organ for occasional
influence: it pointed out one in whom the Spirit was already present. The
priestly anointing indicated not so much mere appointment as consecration to the
Divine service. The regal anointing superadded to the other meanings that of the
permanent divine indwelling: the king was God’s representative alone. The
prophet and the king represented God and not man: the former, occasionally; the
latter, permanently. The priest represented God to man, and man to God; his
consecration was abiding, and affected all things connected with him. As in the
case of the altar, whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy.1

1 Exodus 30:29

III. There are a few remarkable passages in which the future Redeemer is
foreannounced as the Anointed One, the preeminent mashiychekaa, and in relation
to these three offices distinctively

1. The Psalms open with the Great Name of the future, which was to be sanctified
for ever as common to Christ and His people: The rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord, and against His anointed. 1 Here is the regal office; and this
is echoed in a later Psalm: God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee, 2 where the
prophetic office is also referred to, and the priestly consecration is scarcely
hid 1 Psalms 2:2; 2 Psa. 14:2,7,8

2. The Anointed One speaks of Himself through Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord
[God] is upon Me; 1 because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings. 2
Here is by our Lord’s own interpretation the prophetic office: the only passage
of this class which He quotes. Others He left for the use of His Apostles 1
Isaiah 61:1; 2 Luke 4:18

3. Daniel closes the Messianic prophecy proper by giving the name Messiah to the
Future Redeemer, specifically as High Priest, but including His other offices.
Three times he mentions the word. After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah
be cut off, but not for Himself: seventy weeks are determined . . . to make
reconciliation for iniquity . . . and to anoint the Most Holy. 1 But He is
Messiah the Prince; and His coming was to seal up the prophecy. Here are all the
offices combined; this distinction and combination are the glory of Daniel’s
predictions 1 Daniel 9:24-26

IV. Hence in later Judaism a clear testimony was borne to the union of the three
functions in One Supreme Person; and the Savior when He came found among the
people a general expectation of the Messiah or Christ. He appealed to it as
everywhere latent

1. The Targums, or Chaldaic paraphrases of the Scripture substituted for the
Hebrew text in public reading after the Captivity, exhibit in very many passages
a clear view of the Messiah in His offices. They call Him God; the King; the
Prophet; the High Priest upon His throne; the promised Shiloh. They apply to Him
all the passages which Christians are wont to apply. They make His two advents
one, however, and regard the delay of the Messiah as caused by the sins of the
people; at least this is the explanation of some of later date, when the
critical periods indicated for the coming of Messiah were evidently overpast.
Some Jewish authorities, it is true, invented a double Messiah; one, the Son of
Joseph, in humiliation; the other, the Son of David, in glory. Others referred
the predictions of sorrow to the Hebrew race, not to the Messiah: the People
being the afflicted Servant of God. But before the time of Christ Jewish
expectation took very much the form which is sketched in our own exposition of
the Old Testament

2. The state of Messianic expectation in the time of our Lord may be gathered
from the Gospels with great precision. The Christ was to come of the seed of
David and out of the town of Bethlehem where David was. 1 The people were wont
to ask, Is not this the Son of David?2 He was to be heralded by Elijah: Why then
say the scribes that Elijah must first come? 3 He was to be the Anointed: He
inquired of them where Christ should be born,4 Who had been announced to Simeon
as the Lord’s Christ. 5 Andrew’s word to Simon was: We have found the Messiah,
(which is, being interpreted, Christ). 6 So the people were accustomed to say,
When Christ cometh, will He do more miracles than these which this man hath
done? 7 He was expected in His three offices. As King especially, for the state
of the Jewish people would endear that character: Where is He that is born King
of the Jews or the Christ? 8 with which corresponds the final charge: saying
that He Himself is Christ a King! 9 As Prophet also: of Him whom they would take
by force to make Him a King, 10 they testified, This is of a truth the prophet
that should come into the world. 11 There was no real difference between those
who said, Of a truth this is the Prophet! and those who said, This is the
Christ! Samaria shared the expectation of Christ as a prophet: I know that
Messiah cometh, (Which is called Christ}: when He is come, He will tell us all
things. 12 We have not the same direct evidence that the Messiah was expected to
be a priest. It is plain, however, that the representatives of Judaism who
welcomed the Child Jesus waited for a priestly Messiah Zacharias, Simeon, and
the Baptist all regarded Him as the incarnation of God Who visited and redeemed
His people, 13 not by the right hand of His power simply, but by the remission
of their sins, 14 through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God Which taketh away the
sin of the world. 15 But here the popular expectation faltered and failed. The
Christ was expected as the Son of God which should come into the world, 16 that
abideth for ever 17 upon earth: as the pledge of the Divine presence, and life,
and power among men; as the Head of a new kingdom of heaven and as the
vindicator and redeemer of God’s ancient people. But as the High Priest, Himself
the Offerer and the Offering, they did not recognize their Messiah. Hence no
part of our Lord’s sayings was more offensive than those in which He spoke of
His flesh given for the life of the world. 18 The common people were one with
the Pharisees and Scribes, and the disciples themselves differed little from
them, in the carnality of their hopes. Be it far from Thee, Lord! 19 said Simon
Peter, when under the teaching not of the Father but of flesh and blood; and in
these words the Lord perceived not only the timorous loyalty of one who loved
Him, but also the blinding agency of Satan, whose object was to merge the
priestly office of the Messiah in the two others: to induce the nation to regard
Him only as a supreme Teacher and a mighty King. Peter’s híleoós soi kúrie was
not from above but from below. Such theories of the Messiah holding the
prophetic and regal offices alone and without the priestly bond between them,
have been the watchwords of most of the errors of the Christian Church
concerning the work of Christ

1 John 7:42; 2 Matthew 12:23; 3 Matthew 17:10; 4 Matthew 2:4; 5 Luke 2:26; 6
John 1:41; 7 John 7:31; 8 Matthew 2:2; Matthew 2:4; 9 Luke 23:2; 10 John
6:14-15; 11 John 7:40-41; 12 John 4:25; 13 Luke 1:68; 14 Luke 1:77; 15 John
1:29; 16 John 11:27; 17 John 12:34; 18 John 6:51-52; 19 Matthew 16:22

3. It is well known that at the time of our Saviour’s advent the world at large
was familiar with the Jewish expectation, and even shared it. The Desire of the
People was the Desire of the Nations also. The coming of the Magi was a
testimony to this: the blessing of the Spirit resting upon the seed sown in the
Captivity. Outside the Scripture we read: " Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et
constans opinio esse in fatis ut eo tempore Judaea profecti rerum potirentur."
And again: " Pluribus persuasio inerat anti-quis sacerdotum literis contineri eo
ipso tempore fore ut valesceret oriens, profectique Judaea rerum potirentur." 4.
Finally, all this will explain the appeals of the early preachers of the Faith
Contending with the Jews the Apostles constantly made it their aim to prove that
Jesus was the Messiah: so St. Paul reasoned that this Jesus, Whom I preach unto
you, is Christ.1 Here was to the Jewish people, always and everywhere, the theme
of all argument and preaching. Preaching to the Gentiles, they skillfully
touched the same great Messianic desire, known to be latent in all hearts: there
are glimpses of this in the New Testament, but much more evident illustrations
in the Apologetics of the first two centuries. The history of Christian Missions
in all ages adds its tribute. The Gospel never fails of a response when it
speaks to the indestructible hope of a Deliverer, whose coming the world has
longed for ever since it began its career of wandering from God

1 Acts 17:3 THE CHRIST OF FULFILMENT As the Messiah or Christ of Fulfillment our
Lord accomplished in Himself all the types and symbols and prophecies of the Old
Testament. The holy oil of unction is in the New Testament the Holy Ghost, the
Spirit of Christ’s anointing in two senses: first, as consecrating His Person in
the Incarnation; and, secondly, as consecrating Him to His offices at the
Baptism THE PERSONAL UNCTION Our Lord in His Person is the Lord’s Anointed. As
such He is the Messiah of the Old Testament come in the flesh; and the Mediator
between God and men in both natures as united in one Person

I. At the Saviour’s birth He was declared to be a Savior, which is Christ the
Lord; Simeon saw the Lord’s Christ. 1 And He was so called, not in anticipation
only, but because in His incarnation or conception His human nature was
sanctified and consecrated, essentially separated from the sin of our race by
the Holy Ghost. The body of humanity thus prepared for Him He assumed before it
came to personal and independent subsistence, and insured its eternal
sinlessness. He was the Lord’s Christ, even as He was Jesus, from the instant of
His conception. And, as the term Mediator is bound up with the term Christ, He
was the Mediator in His incarnation, before the mediating act of atonement was
accomplished 1 Luke 2:11; Luke 2:26

II. Hence all the future functions of the Christ must be attributed to neither
of His natures distinctively, but to His one Person. Our Lord, as Mediator, is
not divided

1. He sustains no office which is not based upon His Divinity, and executed
through His human nature. As Prophet He is still the only-begotten God, Which is
in the bosom of the Father, 1 Whom as Man He hath declared to men. As Priest He
is the Son Who learned obedience by the things which He suffered; 2 it behoved
Him, as the Son, to be made like unto His brethren, 3 and, taken from among men,
to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 4 The Church of God, or the
Lord, was purchased with His own blood; 5 and the High Priest offered Himself
through the Eternal Spirit 6 of His Divinity. So also His Kingly authority,
exercised in human nature, requires as its foundation the Divine dignity of the
Son Who upholdeth all things by the word of His power. 7 The first verses of the
Epistle to the Hebrews contain the three offices of the one Incarnate Person in
their most complete and grandest exhibition 1 John 1:18; 2 Hebrews 5:8; 3
Hebrews 5:1; 4 Hebrews 2:17; 5 Acts 20:28; 6 Hebrews 9:14; 7 Hebrews 1:3

2. The Incarnate Person is the one Mediator: not the human nature as some
Romanists have affirmed; not the Divine nature as Osiander and some other
Protestants maintained; but the one Theanthropic Agent whose mediatorial
volition is one in the unity of the Divine and human wills. Hence the word
Mediator has a unique meaning as descriptive of the Christ: There is one
Mediator between God and men, rather, of God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 1
rather, Jesus Christ Man. This passage, solitary as marking the union of the two
natures in relation to the Christ as such, is supported by others testifying
that He became afterwards the Mediator of the New Covenant, in which Moses was
His type In the former—His incarnate mediation—He had and could have no type. As
the one Mediator His Person Incarnate is the Agent of all His doctrine, of all
His sacrificial acts, and of all His authority as King. He teaches as the Word
speaking in human language; He atones and intercedes as the High Priest taken
from among men, but first given to man as the Son; and He rules as the Eternal
Son to Whom in the flesh all power is mediatorially and economically committed

1 1 Timothy 2:5

3. It follows that our Lord, as in His own Person the fulfillment of the
promises concerning Christ, gathered all types into one before He entered upon
the distributive functions of His several offices. He is the unity of God and
man; and the unity of all the distinct elements of the predicted Mediatorial
Ministry. No one man ever united the three offices. Moses was prophet or
lawgiver, but, strictly speaking, neither priest nor king David was king and
prophet, but not priest. Melchizedek was priest and king, but not prophet.
Ezekiel was prophet and priest, but not king. And where the functions were
united in one person, they were still distinct: he who occasionally prophesied
might occasionally act as priest. Though each office was permanent in some
cases, as in Moses, Aaron, and David, never were two or three of these offices
permanent in one office bearer. But in the one Person of the Incarnate all these
offices are united, in their perfection, in their constant exercise, and each as
necessary to the other. He is always the Light of the world, always the Life of
redemption, always the Ruler of mankind OFFICIAL UNCTION AT BAPTISM Our Lord’s
second or official unction was received at His Baptism, which was His public
designation or sealing to the Messianic office, and the full equipment of His
human nature for its discharge. After His baptism He assumed at successive
intervals the three offices distinctively; and began to fulfill them. After His
ascent He continued them all in perfection; and will not lay them down until the
end. The beginnings of the Messianic work are recorded in the Gospels; its
consummation is exhibited in the Apostolic testimony

I. The Baptism of Christ to His office was the effusion upon Him of the Holy
Spirit: marking Him out as the Messiah, and at the same time replenishing Him,
as to His human nature, with all Messianic gifts. This outpouring from heaven
was preceded by a baptism of water, shared by our Lord with men generally as the
baptism of repentance, but which had a special twofold significance in regard to
Him

1. Jesus was baptized by His Forerunner, who was both the representative of the
old economy and the preacher of repentance for the new. (1.) In the former
relation the Baptist performed on the Person of the Christian High Priest the
washing which preceded His anointing with the Holy Ghost. The typical high
priests in particular were washed before they were anointed; and anointing
generally was preceded by baptism. (2.) In the latter relation the preacher of
repentance administered the baptismal pledge of penitent waiting for the
Messiah, to One who, though the Messiah Himself, was also the representative of
sinful man. Thus in the case of our Lord’s descent into the Jordan two ends were
accomplished: on the one hand, He was baptized as the Head and Surety of the
human race assuming in its symbol the transgression of mankind; and, on the
other, He was designated as the Messiah in whom were combined all the offices to
which His types were of old anointed. In the former sense His baptism
represented a sin assumed but not shared; He was already numbered with the
transgressors 1 at the Jordan, and came by water before He came by blood. 2 The
Baptism was a prelude of the Crucifixion. In the latter, it represented the
perfect purity which His preeminent ministry required; the water represented not
the cleansing from sin but the absence of the need of purification 1 Isaiah
53:12; 2 1 John 5:6

2. The Baptism of the Holy Ghost must be viewed as the designation of Christ to
His work as the Representative of the Holy Trinity, and the equipment of His
human nature with all the gifts necessary for His mission

(1.) When John was sent to his ministry he was told that the Messiah would be
indicated to him by a higher baptism than his own: Upon Whom thou shalt see the
Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptized with the
Holy Ghost The symbol was beheld by the Baptist, who came, baptizing with water,
that the Baptizer with the Spirit should be made manifest to Israel; and of the
token of the Spirit’s descent he says, / saw, and bare record that this is the
Son of God. 1 The Holy Trinity united in this designation. The voice from heaven
was that of the Father; it proclaimed that the Man Christ Jesus was at the same
time His beloved Son; 2 and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and lighting upon Him. 3 Thus was the Lord marked out to His forerunner, who
before knew Him not; and that forerunner in his turn marked Him out to the
world, which also in another sense as yet knew Him not 1 John 1:31; John
1:33-34; 2 Matthew 3:16-17; 3 John 1:31

(2.) According to the ancient prophecy, the Spirit was to descend upon the
Messiah in the sevenfold unity and distribution of His perfect gifts. It was
said of the Branch of the root of Jesse: and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest
upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and
might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. 1 Concerning this
gift which replenished the human nature of the Redeemer, or His Person as
represented by His humanity, the Baptist said: God giveth not the Spirit by
measure [unto Him]. 2 And it is this gift that He distributes to His people:
what He has for us without measure He distributes by measure to us. Long
afterward he who testified of these things gave the first and the last formal
expression of the privilege of believers to share their Master’s anointing: ye
have an unction from the Holy One, 3 where the chrísma is from the Holy One who
needed no anointing for His own soul but reserved it for ours: that we might be
Christians as He is the Christ. The disciples were CALLED—but not
MADE—Christians first in Antioch.4 1 Isaiah 11:2; 2 John 3:34; 3 1 John 2:20; 4
Acts 11:26

II. Our Lord formally assumed His three offices at certain set times, each of
which is solemnly recorded by an Evangelist

1. As the Messiah generally He always spoke and acted as having in Himself the
unity of these functions from the beginning. But during His humbled estate, and
until He had fulfilled His chief office, that of making atonement, He maintained
a certain reserve, and only by degrees declared the full mystery of His work. He
began by declaring Himself to be the Lawgiver and Teacher: that is, by assuming
His prophetic office. And this function He discharged alone until the eve of His
departure; when, in His self-consecrating prayer, He assumed the ministry of His
High-priesthood, and offered Himself a sacrifice for sin

Having accomplished that, He assembled His disciples around Him after the
resurrection and assumed His royal authority: the power given to Him in heaven
and upon earth

2. But this was also IN heaven FOR earth; the Savior ascended to discharge all
His offices above; and the Acts and the Epistles contain that full theological
development of their meaning which was not possible until the Holy Spirit had
come down at Pentecost. The later New Testament is no other than the expansion
of the Saviour’s own doctrine concerning His Messianic work. We must therefore
take each several office and consider our Lord’s own testimony and that of His
Apostles based upon it

3. The offices of Christ will be laid down at the last day. Though He will for
ever retain the hypostatic unity of His Person, the mediatorial economy will
cease. Not the regal office alone will terminate, but all His offices. He will
come without sin: 1 that is, without His priestly relation to sin. He will no
longer be the Revealer; for God shall be all in all. 2 But this will be viewed
hereafter with respect to the several functions 1 Hebrews 9:28; 2 1 Corinthians
15:28 THE PROPHETIC OFFICE

Christ as Prophet is, generally, the perfect Revealer of Divine Truth to
mankind: as such He comes with His supreme credentials, the Truth, and the Light
of men. More particularly He was, during His earthly ministry, the Lawgiver and
the Preacher of the Gospel: each distinctly, but both in one. This office,
filled by Himself, was fulfilled through His word by the Holy Ghost A
distinction must be noted here between the absolute or universal office of
Christ as Revealer, and His economical office as the Minister of His own
generation. It may serve a good purpose to consider the latter first as being
transitional to the former THE PERSONAL MINISTRY

St. Paul affirms that Christ was made a Minister of the Circumcision for the
truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the
Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. 1 These words have reference to the
office of Christ generally, but particularly as the Revealer of the Divine will
to the Jews and for the Gentiles: as to the former, in the re-enactment of the
Law; as to the latter, in the preaching of the Gospel Here, then, we may
consider the Ministry generally, and then its two branches

1 Romans 15:8-9

I. Our Lord’s personal prophetic ministry constitutes the substance of the
teaching of the Word in the Four Gospels

1. It was strictly a continuation of the ancient prophetic economy, according to
the argument of St. Stephen: This is that Moses, which said unto the, children
of Israel, A Prophet shall [the Lord your] God raise up unto you of your
brethren, like unto me; [Him shall ye hear]. 1 So far as concerned His relation
to the old dispensation Christ was the last of the prophets; as the people said,
that a great prophet is risen up among us. 2 Jesus accepted the woman’s word:
Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet; 3 as also the similar language of the
Emmaus disciples. He intimated, indeed, that all the prophets and the law
prophesied untilJohn 4:1-54 and that even John was more than a prophet. 5 How
much was He greater Himself! So also in the Epistle to the Hebrews a distinction
is made between the prophets by Whom God spake to the fathers and the Son by
Whom or in Whom He speaks to us. 6 But all this does not interfere with the fact
that our Lord was a Minister of the Divine will to His own nation. No prophet is
accepted in his own country:7 these words, spoken when He opened His ministry,
paralleled His own coming with that of Elijah to Israel 1 Acts 7:37; 2 Luke
7:16; 3 John 4:19; 4 Luke 24:19; 5 Matthew 11:9; 6 Hebrews 1:1; 7 Luke 4:24

2. Hence the Redeemer’s mission was confined to the ancient people: I am not
sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 1 The Light visited Galilee
and Samaria, but it did not go beyond Israel and its lost sheep: the Prophet of
the whole world took up His abode in Galilee of the Gentiles, 2 so that the
people which sat in darkness saw great light. 3 Anticipating the time when He
would draw all nations to Him, He nevertheless strictly limited Himself to the
Holy Land, and never had the dust of heathenism to shake from His feet. He was
never called a Jew, nor did He so term Himself, but He was a Messenger to the
Jews, a MINISTER OF THE CIRCUMCISION, and, in a sense, AS ONE OF THE PROPHETS 1
Matthew 15:24; 2 Matthew 4:15-16; 3 Romans 15:8

3. The Saviour’s personal ministry was that of an extraordinary Prophet raised
up to introduce a new dispensation of which He was Himself the herald. He
blended in His own Person the ancient Prophet and the more modern Rabbi: sent
sometimes suddenly under a Divine extraordinary afflatus, like a Zealot
responsible only to God; or lifting up occasional burdens, subsequently written
down, after the more ordinary though still extra-ordinary manner of the
prophets; and also gathering around Him a body of disciples whom He taught out
of the law, according to the usage of the Rabbinical schools

4. The style and methods of our Lord’s teaching were such as to mark Him out
from every other teacher. Its characteristics were unshared: as His form and
features, for ever lost to human knowledge, were His own and no other’s, so was
it with His ordinary communications. He possessed or rather condescended to
assume in its perfection the gift of persuasive speech: as it was predicted that
He should be fairer than the children of men, so also it was said of Him, Grace
is poured into Thy lips. 1 They confessed; it who were astonished at His
doctrine, for His word was with power, 2 as also those who were disarmed by its
grace: never man spake like ThisMan 1:3 His method of teaching by parable was
original and unrivalled: there is scarcely any trace of its use in the Old
Testament; and such allegories as are found in other Oriental teaching and in
the Talmud are in perfect contrast to our Lord’s. His illustrations from nature
and life are confessed to be the most beautiful in literature even by those who
are unwilling to admit that they sprang from One Who knew the mysterious symbols
of nature because He ordained them and Who was perfectly acquainted with the
human heart. His method of dealing with enemies, or captious censors, betrays
the presence of every element of dialectic or Socratic skill. And, like almost
all great teachers, He had the esoteric instruction for the more susceptible and
humble, to unfold the mysteries which were veiled from the prejudiced in
parabolic disguise. Moreover, He aptly appropriated the good of the Rabbinical
theology, and knew how to accommodate Himself to current delusions while
correcting them, as in the case of His appeal concerning the casting out of the
demons by the children of His enemies. Jesus also was the supreme Master of the
symbol and symbolical action; and to that Christianity owes much. But, on this
whole subject it is difficult to speak with fullness or precision, as our
Saviour’s personal instructions have come to us through the medium of His
servants. He has left us nothing under the direct impress of His own hand 1
Psalms 14:2; 2 Luke 4:32; 3 John 7:46

5. It is important to remember that throughout our Lord’s ministry He was at
once the Minister of the circumcision and the Revealer of all truth for the
world. The blending of these gives an indescribable and most wonderful grace to
His teaching. But this leads us to a higher view than that which has hitherto
been taken

II. Jesus Christ was the last Lawgiver, and the First Evangelist of His own glad
tidings; His whole ministry united the Law and the Gospel in their essential
elements

1. As the LAWGIVER, like unto Moses 1 but greater than he, our Lord assumed His
function on the Mount of Beatitudes. He rose up out of the Old Testament as the
Witness and Embodiment of its truth, and was in no sense its destroyer. He came
not to abolish but to fulfill ancient Scripture, and that in three senses:
first, to fulfill its meaning in Himself as it was all one prophecy of Him;
secondly, to discharge it of its functions as it was the law of a transient
ceremonial economy which He appeared to end; and, thirdly, by republishing its
moral teaching in harmony with the new dispensation as a dispensation of the
Spirit and of love 1 Deuteronomy 18:15

(1.) All previous lawgiving, whether engraven on the fleshly tables of the heart
of universal mankind, or on the Mosaic tables and in the Mosaic books, was
fulfilled in the revelation of Jesus, the Incarnate Expression of God’s will to
man. Christ is the end of the law: 1 and in this sense pre-eminently, that all
revelation, both of the wrath and of the mercy of God, was complete and
fulfilled in His Person. He came as the Representative of all written and
unwritten revelation: so entirely to take its place that in His presence there
was necessity for nothing more: whether He would or would not supersede all, it
remained for Him to show. On earth as well as in heaven there was no need of the
sun, the Lamb was the light thereof. He said, / am the Light of the world, 2 and
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 3 But He was pleased to continue still
the dispensation of word and ministry that He for a time suspended. The ancients
gave Him their books, and He resanctified them for His Church. When He retired
He continued His function by a more enlarged revelation through His Apostles 1
Romans 10:4; 2 John 8:12; 3 John 14:6

(2.) Our Savior, the final Lawgiver, abolished the old law, and all that it
contained, so far as it was the basis of a covenant between God and a peculiar
people. As a code of the Theocracy, the law was political, ceremonial, and
moral: three in one and inseparably in one. This law our Lord carne to abrogate:
it was done away in Him, because the new covenant was to be no longer with one
nation, and no longer based upon types, but to be confirmed in Christ with all
nations on the basis of the accomplished redemption. The entire economy commonly
called the Law, as one, and therefore as such including the moral law in its
statutory form, was abolished in Christ, Who established a new legislation,
known variously as the perfect law of liberty,1 the law of faith, 2 the law of
the Spirit of life.3 1 James 1:25; 2 Romans 3:27; 3 Romans 8:2 (3.) But the
moral law, written on the heart and on the two tables, Jesus reuttered

Extracting it from its place in the Legal Economy He gave it all its honors in
the Economy of Grace. Though He abolished it as a condition of salvation, He
confirmed it as a rule of life. To be more particular: He renewed it first as it
was a schoolmaster, to teach the sinner his sin, and bring him to his Savior;
and then as a rule and standard of holy living; but, for both purposes, the
whole law is exhibited in its internal character as a spiritual rule and in its
great principle as perfect love. As the Lawgiver our Lord expanded ethical
teaching into an infinite extent and breadth by a spiritual interpretation; and
condensed it all again into a perfect simplicity by reducing it to love. The
spiritual application multiplies the precept past any limits; the reduction of
all to charity makes it simple and comparatively easy again. But the Savior as
Lawgiver presides over another department of theology, that of Christian Ethics,
to come hereafter

2. The New Legislator opened His ministry on the Mount; but as the Prophet,
preaching His own Gospel, greater than Isaiah but like him, our Lord announced
His function formally in the Synagogue at Nazareth where He had been brought
up.1 1 Luke 4:16

(1.) The Gospel proper, as the glad tidings of redemption through atonement and
the forgiveness of sins, could not be fully preached before the Cross. Jesus,
during His life on earth, was rather a Lawgiver than an Evangelist. But when He
said in His own synagogue, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears, 1
He began to preach the great deliverance. The text He chose was the most
comprehensive that prophecy afforded for the description of the effects of
redemption as finally administered to its objects

Concerning this opening stage of His ministry St. Matthew records that Jesus
went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel
of the kingdom. 2 From that time the re-publication of the Law and the
anticipation of the Gospel alternated or were combined in the Saviour’s works
and words. He spoke of the perfect law that convinces of sin, and also of a free
forgiveness: always being a jealous assertor of the Divine claims even while
frankly and abundantly promising and even imparting remission. But it was not
till the sacrifice had been offered that our Lord preached Himself as the
perfect Lawgiver and the finished Savior. When He sent His Apostles forth He
bade that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among
all nations, 3 who were to be taught to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded.4 1 Luke 4:21; 2 Matthew 4:23; 3 Luke 24:47; 4 Matthew 28:20

(2.) The preaching of the future Gospel was always predictive; but Christ was
more expressly the Prophet of His own kingdom in His foreannouncements of its
history and destiny. As all prophecy from the beginning of the world had
respect, directly or indirectly, to the kingdom of the Messiah, so the Great
Prophet and consummator of the prophetic word constantly spoke of the future of
His Church. Towards the end of His ministry almost all His discourses were
directly prophetic; and His last utterances were almost entirely limited to
predictions

(3.) Both the preaching and the prophecy of the Gospel kingdom our Lord
continued after His departure by the ministry of His Apostles. As they wrought
greater works 1 than He, so they spoke greater words than His; but as in the
former they were only the instruments of His higher and more spiritual energy,
so they were only the speakers of His words, which could not be spoken until He
had accomplished His work on the cross. St. Luke speaks of the Divine-human
ministry as of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. 2 After His ascension
He continued all His offices: all through His own activity, but with a
difference. The High-priestly function He discharges alone: the Kingly by the
Holy Ghost; the Prophetic by the Spirit through the Apostles. In the nature of
things He could not perfectly preach His own Gospel; nor could He give explicit
prophecies of the last dispensation until the former dispensation was fully
ended. He Himself in His own Person only began: He perfected nothing. His words
were seed in the hearts of the Apostles, to bear fruit in due season. The Spirit
Whom He would send was the Spirit of truth, 3 and would guide them into all its
developments; but only as bringing their Master’s own words back to their
memory. Precisely what the Redeemer did for the old Law—recall it to the
people’s remembrance with enlarged interpretation—the Spirit did for the
Redeemer’s own ministry. This has reference to every part of His prophetic
office 1 John 14:12; 2 Acts 1:1; 3 John 16:13 THE UNIVERSAL MINISTRY

Jesus never formally assumed the prophetic office in its highest meaning, in
that meaning which was peculiar and unshared: which He could not indeed assume
because He was never without it. He spoke as One who not only brought the final
revelation with Him, but as being Himself that revelation; He distinguished
Himself from all other teachers by the assertion of absolute personal authority;
He accompanied His teaching with credentials of miraculous works wrought in His
own name; and, lastly, He came as the Prophet of mankind, making provision for
the continuance of His doctrine for ever

1. While He appeared as a second Moses Jesus distinguished Himself from human
teachers as being Himself the revelation of all truth. He never appropriated the
name Prophet, or Rabbi, or Seer, though He did not decline these titles when
given to Him. But again and again He asserted concerning Himself such
prerogatives as could belong to no human agent of Divine instruction. He said of
Himself, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 1 All things pertaining to man’s
life, present and future, to his salvation and spiritual interests in time and
eternity, our Lord connects with His own Person and manifestation Not only is He
the Giver and the Medium of the gift: He is the Gift itself. Receiving what is
His depends upon receiving Himself. He is all the truth, as it respects our
race, concrete and personified. All revelation is in His Person: He is the union
of all that is God and all that is man, and nothing beyond this has vital
concern for mankind. Here is the great distinction between Christ and every
other prophet. He is God and He is Man; and His Person is the compendium and
substance of all that may and must be known concerning both. In this highest
sense He is neither a prophet nor a seer: He declares Himself. Even God is
revealed only as connected with Him: as His Father. This glorious distinction
pervades our Lord’s words. When He promises the Spirit to guide His disciples,
it is Himself Whom the Spirit is to expound: we must connect I am THE TRUTH with
the Spirit of truth and He will guide you into all truth. 2 I AM THE TRUTH was
the loftiest word of Christ the Prophet 1 John 14:6; 2 John 14:6; John 14:17;
John 16:13 2. In His mediatorial person, however, our Lord condescended to be
literally a Prophet

He used His human nature as the organ of His revelation, and as Man speaking to
men was the consummate agent of Divine counsel for mankind. He was the perfect
naabiy, which means the Interpreter of God, or one who pours forth the Divine
words. Thus He said of Himself, My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me: 1
not meaning literally that it was not His, but that it was not His as
distinguished from God. As My Father hath taught Me, I speak these things: 2
words which must be connected with what follows, and He that sent Me is with Me.
He was also the perfect chazah, Seer, or, more poetically, chazeen. What He hath
seen and heard, that He testifieth: 3 this was declared by the Baptist
concerning Christ, of Whom he also said, He that cometh from heaven is above
all. Through the eyes of His human spirit the God-man saw the mysteries of His
own kingdom. As Prophet and Seer in His incarnate Person He was in some sense
limited. In the unity of His Father and the Holy Spirit He was a Revealer to
Himself in His own human faculties of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,
hidden 4 in Himself for a season from His own humanity, and gave His mortal
vision to behold what He communicated. In His prophetic knowledge and utterances
we see what the human mind is capable of knowing in union with the Divine. After
His resurrection, or rather after His ascension, there was no longer any
restraint, and the human faculties of the Divinehuman person were the organ of
the perfect revelation of all such knowledge as man can ever have on need 1 John
7:16; 2 John 7:28-29; 3 John 3:31-32; 4 Colossians 2:3

3. The Credentials of our Lord’s prophetic office were in harmony with His
twofold character, as sent first to His own generation and thus raised up for
the world

(1.) As a Minister of the Circumcision He gave such demonstration by miracle as
became an authoritative messenger from God: precisely so much and no more. The
leading wonders and signs of the ancient prophets were types of His miraculous
works, which as performed by Himself or His Apostles—for their works were
His—ended the reign of evidential signs

(2.) But, as the Supreme Revealer, He did not lay stress on His miracles,
because He was Himself the Miracle of miracles. All that preceded and followed
were only faint preludes and echoes of His one great Wonder, the manifestation
of God in the flesh, His resurrection from the dead, and His glorification of
human nature. If ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins, and, when
ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I Amos 1:1-15 Here was
the secret of the authority with which He spoke. His words and His actions had
in them a Divine and irresistible self-evidencing attestation. He never used the
language of an Old-Testament prophet, The Word of the Lord came unto me, 2 or
the Spirit of the Lord came 3 upon me, but, Verily, verily, I say unto you! 4 He
did not lay claim to inspiration, the influence under which the prophets poured
forth their words and the seers saw their visions: He was not God-inspired but
God Incarnate. Hence the constant tenor of His declaration to the effect that
every one that is of the truth heareth My voice, 5 and that if any man will do,
or wills to do, His will he shall know of the doctrine.6 HEAR HIM! 7 was spoken
concerning the Revealer when His Divine nature was made more intensely manifest
in the flesh at the Transfiguration 1 John 8:24; John 8:28; 2 2 Chronicles 15:1;
3 John 10:7; 4 John 18:37; 5 John 7:17; 6 Luke 9:35; 7 1 Timothy 3:16

4. Finally, the Ministry of Jesus as the Apostle of our profession was the final
revelation for the world. It is important to mark this, as it has a close
connection with the ultimate appeal on every theological subject and the rule of
faith in the Christian Church. In Him all past, present and future teaching was
one

(1.) Our Lord always assumes a tone of absolute finality. With Him the prophetic
office ceased: prophecy, like the law, found its end in Christ. There is no
other revelation, no other messenger from God after Him. Whatever other teachers
arose were simply men from His feet, bearing His words and expounding them more
fully under the influence of the Spirit. Nothing can be more express than His
assertions that every future word of instruction should be only His own word
continued and developed

(2.) Before He departed He made provision for the continuance of His own
function in the Christian Church. Without doubt He executes His prophetic office
from His throne in the heavens. His Apostolic company perpetuated such of His
words as were of permanent value for mankind. One of that company was brought
under teaching who ever declared that what of new or enlarged doctrine he had
for the world was given him by revelation of Christ, and it was he who said, Let
the word of Christ dwell in you richly. 1 Our Lord Himself repeated from heaven
His direct instructions: the Seven Churches received them for all By His last
inspired Apostle, however, He has said that all Christians have an unction from
the Holy One, and so know all things. 2 Thus by His Spirit, who is this Unction,
the Supreme Revealer continues to execute His prophetic office in the Church
generally, and in every individual Christian 1 Colossians 3:16; 2 1 John 2:20
THE PRIESTLY OFFICE The central and most important office of our Lord’s
mediatorship is His priesthood, of which the high priest, as the representative
of the Levitical system of expiations, was the type. As Prophet our Lord
predicted and asserted His sacrificial work; but He more formally assumed it on
the eve of His passion, and after His ascension revealed its full import by the
Apostles. According to their teaching the Saviour’s priestly office consists of
Offering and Presentation of Himself the sacrifice, answering to His death and
ascension; also of Intercession and Benediction, both based upon the sacrificial
Atonement, and connected with the administration of salvation

Much of our Lord’s prophetic ministry as the Prophet of His own dispensation was
occupied with the announcement, prediction and exposition of His priestly
atonement

1. When He began to preach He took up His forerunner’s word, which was twofold:
Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! 1 and, Behold the Lamb of God,
Which taketh away the sin of the world! 2 Very gradually, and by hints left for
future enlargement, He unfolded the doctrine both of His priesthood and of His
kingdom. Though He never called Himself a Priest—not even indirectly, as He
called Himself Prophet and King—He constantly used language which only this
office explains. He did not actually say that He was the High Priest, the
Sacrifice and the Offerer; nevertheless He applied to Himself and His mission
almost every sacrificial usage and every sacrificial idea. This will appear
evident from a cursory examination of the Gospel of St. John, in which we find
the sacerdotal office made prominent: the Synoptists keep rather in view the
regal 1 Matthew 3:2; 2 John 1:29

2. It is observable that our Lord before the Transfiguration did not dwell much
on His coming death. According to St. John He had spoken of Himself as the Bread
of God which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world; 1 this
however was based rather upon the manna in the wilderness 2 than upon the
sacrificial feasts, though the transition to the latter is found in the words:
the bread that I will give is My flesh, [which I will give] for the life of the
world. 3 On the Holy Mount our Lord was evidently prepared for the last stage of
His mediatorial history on earth. The subject of discourse was the decease which
He should accomplish at Jerusalem. 4 The decease referred to His exodus or
departure generally; but we may suppose that, as the victim was anciently
examined by the priest, in order to ascertain its integrity, so the glory of
heaven searched Jesus through and through: the result was, This is My beloved
Son, in Whom I am well pleased. 5 He was approved by the Father as the Spotless
Sacrifice for the world. From that time our Lord began to predict the fact, the
circumstances and the results of His death. Now He began to testify of His
Cross, to those who much wondered at His words Still, while His language and
teachings revolved around the altar, they were not directly sacrificial, even
when He spoke of the Son of Man come not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give His life a ransom for many.6 1 John 6:33; 2 John 6:49; 3 John 6:51;
4 Luke 9:31; 5 Matthew 17:5; 6 Matthew 20:28

3. It was on the eve of the Sacrifice of the Cross that our Lord solemnly
assumed His sacerdotal function: first, by the institution of the Supper, the
memorial sacrifice of Christianity; and, secondly, by what is sometimes called
the High-priestly prayer; the symbolical Feet washing having been interposed
with an affecting relation to both. The sacramental institute is pervaded by
sacrificial ideas: it exhibits the true paschal Lamb Whose blood is at the same
time shed for the remission of sins in virtue of a new covenant ratified by
blood of propitiation, and the benefit of Whose death is celebrated in a
continual peace-offering feast. The High-priestly prayer was the
self-consecration of Jesus to the final endurance of the sorrows of expiation.
All the Messianic offices are hallowed in that supreme Prayer. The prophetic: I
have given them Thy word; the regal: as Thou hast given Him power over all
flesh; the priestly: I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified. 1 But
it is pre-eminently the consecration prayer of the High Priest: the formal
assumption, in the presence of the cross, His altar, of His atoning work 1 John
17:14; John 17:2; John 17:19

4. After Pentecost the sacerdotal office of Christ, previously the least
prominent, takes the leading place. Its full exposition is mainly to be found in
the Epistle to the Hebrews; but every other document of the New Testament
contains explicit references to some of its relations. Taking that Epistle as
the text, and the rest as illustrative, we may view all under the two aspects of
Sacrifice followed by Presentation, and Intercession followed by Benediction.
But first the mediatorial character of the Redeemer as High Priest must be
viewed as the foundation of the whole, its leading elements being these: in the
presentation of the sacrifice the High Priest represented the people to God; in
the benediction He represented God to the people. He was in ancient times, and
is in Christ, taken from among men; 1 but then as now his function looked
towards both heaven and earth

1 Hebrews 5:1 THE HIGH PRIEST AND CHRIST The High Priest represented the
priesthood generally, and was the type of Christ as the universal Antitype of
all sacerdotal persons and ministries. We need only observe the points of
correspondence, as also the points of difference, between type and Antitype:
especially in regard to the high-priestly vocation, consecration, and functions

1. The vocation of the priesthood generally, and of the high priest in
particular, was connected with the Levitical typical service alone. Before the
time of Moses, the natural head of every family was also its religious head:
wherever Abram went he built there an altar unto the Lord; 1 and when the
paschal sacrifice was instituted, the father of the family discharged the
priest’s function. Moses absorbed for a season all offices into himself, that
they might be again distributed. He was not only the lawgiver but the priest
also: as it is written, and Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins;
and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 2 He assigned the priesthood to
his brother Aaron, as the head of an hereditary sacerdotal order: the rest of
the same tribe being set apart to subordinate ministries. Hence there were
Levites not priests; ordinary priests of the Levitical tribe; and the hereditary
high priest or head of the family of Aaron. This Chief Priest was therefore the
representative of all, called from out of the people to represent the people as
seeking approach to God by sacrificial gifts. In the New Testament we are told
that no man taketh the honor unto himself, but when he is called of God, as was
Aaron. So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a high priest; but He
that said unto Him, Thou art My Son, to-day have I begotten Thee. 3 The eternal
Son, begotten of the Holy Ghost in human nature, was fully constituted the
Messiah, and given to the world as such, in the Incarnation as finished in the
resurrection. Hence He was named of God a high priest after the order of
Melchisedec: 4 his high-priesthood was solely of Divine origin, it was that of a
king also and it was eternal 1 Genesis 13:1-18 L18; 2 Exodus 24:6; 3 Hebrews
5:4-5; 4 Hebrews 5:10

2. The ceremonial of consecration, as used by Moses, began with washing at the
door of the tabernacle; 1 followed by investiture with the high-priestly array;
and upon the sacred person thus washed and clothed the oil of anointing was
poured forth. 2 In connection with this a sin-offering was sacrificed for
removal of guilt, a burnt-offering to express entire consecration, and a
peace-offering to show God’s acceptance. But the oil was the sanctification: and
he poured of the anointing oil upon Aaron’s head, and anointed him, to sanctify
him. 3 The high priest was wayimshach: the priest who is higher than his
brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, 4 poured in abundance.
Our Lord was consecrated to His office by the Holy Ghost Whom He received
without measure: Him hath God the Father sealed. 5 All other particulars of the
typical consecration fell away, unless the baptism of Christ responded to the
washing of the High Priest. But the essential difference was in this, that
Christ, while He received as incarnate the Spirit of anointing, did also
consecrate Himself: for their sakes I SANCTIFY MYSELF.6 By the Divine glory of
His Sonship He dedicated His Person and His being to the propitiation of the
sins of men 1 Exodus 29:1-46; 2 Leviticus 8:1-36; 3 Leviticus 8:12; 4 Leviticus
21:10; 5 John 6:27; 6 John 17:19 3. The function of the High Priest requires
careful consideration in its typical reference to the Great Antitype

(1.) As to his person and his office a mediator generally, for all the people
and for every individual he was the one and only priest. He was the embodied
unity of the priesthood: he alone virtually represented the people to God and
God to the people. His garments indicated this: without his distinctive
vestments he was a common man. The breastplate, as also the shoulder-pieces
attached to the ephod, bore the names of the tribes upon it: he who wore this
sacred symbol represented all the tribes of the congregation, bearing them as it
were both on his heart and on his shoulders. Hence also upon his diadem was the
inscription HOLINESS TO THE LORD . . . And it shall be upon Aaron’s forehead,
that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of
Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts; and it shall be always upon his
forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord. 1 The antitypical High
Priest, the Redeemer of mankind, was the Representative of the whole world,
bearing the sins of His people upon His heart, and the government of them upon
His shoulders, presenting them before God as expiated and reconciled 1 Exodus
28:36-38

(2.) But the high priest represented God also to the congregation: the
breastplate with its inscription was called the Urim and Thummim, that is,
Lights and Perfections; being the same precious stones which bore the names of
the tribes regarded as pledges of light by inspiration from above on all
occasions of public appeal to God. In this prerogative of the high priest he was
the type of the prophetic as well as priestly office of Him who came as the
Apostle and High Priest of our confession. 1 The office of blessing the
congregation was common to the priesthood, but in its highest annual discharge
on the day of atonement, when the nation was accepted as a whole, it was the
high priest’s act alone, as will be hereafter seen. The Epistle to the
Hebrews—the Temple Epistle—shows at length that Jesus is the supreme High
Priest, the Antitype of Aaron, not only for men in things pertaining to God, but
also for God in things pertaining to men, the former and the latter being
included in one sentence: A merciful and faithful High Priest in things
pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.2 1 Hebrews
3:1; 2 Hebrews 2:17 THE GENERAL PRIESTLY FUNCTIONS The offering of the sacrifice
by the Christian High Priest exhibits the unity and consummation of all the
sacrificial elements in the ancient offering, as also of all the kinds and
seasons of sacrifice, including the whole economy of the Levitical institute THE
RITES OF SACRIFICE The Levitical sacrifice consisted of the presentation of a
victim, with imposition of hands; the slaughtering, and sprinkling of the blood;
the burning of the victim, and the sacrificial feast. These were not combined in
every sacrifice; but they all belonged to the expiatory ceremonial, viewed as
complete in itself and as hereafter to find its perfection in Christ, the
Compendium of all oblations I. The PRESENTATION of the victim and LAYING ON OF
HANDS were both the acts of the guilty offerer of the sacrifice

1. The place was the court of the sanctuary, whither the transgressor came
indicating his desire to find his offended God in His holy dwelling-place. The
victim was spotless, examined and approved as such: it was provided by the
offerer himself, according to the prescription of the law, as the substitute of
his own forfeited life. Its spotlessness was simply typical of the perfect
sinlessness of the Lamb without blemish and without spot. 1 That Holy Victim
offered Himself without spot to God, 2 being Himself the representative of the
sinner who offered; but He was also delivered up for us all 3 by the Father, Who
provided a sacrifice for the guilty race. The New Testament does not speak
either of the Church or of the individual as providing an oblation. It is the
prerogative of the Divine love to furnish sinful man with his sin-offering: as
on that early typical mount it was said, God will provide Himself a lamb for a
burnt-offering. 4 JEHOVAH-JIREH is the eternal law of the atonement between God
and man 1 1 Peter 1:19; 2 Hebrews 9:14; 3 Romans 8:32; 4 Genesis 22:8

2. The imposition of hands was not so much symbolical of the transfer of sin or
guilt as of submission to the Divine appointment and consequent dedication of
the animal to be the medium of atonement. It was essentially therefore the deed
of the delinquent, who not only touched but leaned on his victim: and he shall
put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for
him to make atonement for him. 1 It was his act of faith in the ordinance of
God; and has its fulfillment in the faith of the sinner who makes the death of
Christ his own

1 Leviticus 1:4 II. THE SLAUGHTERING AND SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD FOLLOWED: these
being universal and always united

1. The Slaughtering, or shechiyṭah had for its object the obtaining of the
blood, to be presented to God for expiation: it was perhaps also the expression
of a poena vicaria; though it was the offerer himself who slew the victim, and
not the priest, except in the case of offerings for the nation. The victim was
slain by the transgressor as the acknowledgment of his own desert of death. Our
Lord laid down His life of Himself, and gave up His spirit voluntarily as a
sacrifice; but by wicked hands He was crucified and slain. 1 The sinful world
consummated its sin by slaying the sacrifice for its sin; its greatest iniquity
was in that deed, but the Savior made ’His death His own act. He put away sin by
THE SACRIFICE OF HIM-SELF. 2 Though it is only the apostates who crucify to
themselves the Son of God afresh, 3 yet every penitent believer presents the
death of Christ as representing His own death; and the Church in the Holy Supper
commemorates it as suffered for all 1 Acts 2:23; 2 Hebrews 9:26; 3 Hebrews 6:6

2 The priest alone sprinkled the blood, or applied it to the purpose of
expiation, around the altar, first towards the curtain that concealed the
mercy-seat, and then, in the highest expression of the symbolical act, on the
Kapporeth or mercy-seat itself. For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I
have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it
is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. 1 Two terms-are here
observable, lakacot, to make atonement, is literally to cover: that is either
the soul of the offerer as guilty, so that he is seen as under the pure life
that on the altar screens him, or the condemning sentence of the
covenant-testimony deposited beneath the mercy-seat Again, the blood maketh an
atonement, kippur, by means of or in virtue of the soul in it.2 This is the true
rendering; and it signifies that the innocent life which had been taken before
the altar as the vicarious representative of the offerer is on the altar
accepted of God representatively. Thus the sprinkling was the second or more
effectual PRESENTATION without which the first was not perfect. The Redeemer’s
atonement was fully accomplished when His blood was shed; but it was not
declared to be accepted until He presented it in the heavens: By His own blood
He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption [for
us]. 3 And He through the Eternal Spirit OFFERED HIMSELF without spot to God.
The symbol of sprinkling is used with two applications; heavenward, for the
propitiation of Divine displeasure; earthward, for the expiation of guilt. The
sprinkling of the conscience signifies the application of the virtue of the
expiation to the believer whose guilt is cancelled or negatived for the sake of
Christ. Bat the term is sometimes varied in the evangelical use: occasionally it
is the washing away of sin, or the purging of the conscience 1 Leviticus 17:11;
2 Leviticus 17:11; 3 Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 9:24

III. THE SACRIFICAL IDEA WAS COMPLETED BY THE BURNING OF THE OFFERING AND THE
SACRIFICIAL MEAL OR FEAST, which are closely united in their symbolical
significance

1. The term used for burning is one that signifies to make to go up in vapor:
the essence of the sacrifice ascends to God with acceptance. Therefore it could
not directly symbolize the punishment of perdition: though as burning on the
altar it was a symbol of the punitive justice as well as the sanctifying power
of the Divine Spirit. The fire that consumed the offering, or parts of it, came
from God: on that great first day of Levitical sacrifice there came a fire out
from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt-offering and the
fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces. 1 It
was kept up continually by the morning and evening sacrifice: the fire shall
ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out. 2 This signified that the
entire service of sacrifice was to be well-pleasing for ever, from generation to
generation, for His sake Who hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an
offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. 3 Although the
symbol had its highest fulfillment in the perfect self-surrender of Jesus, it
had reference also to us and our oblation of ourselves The beneficiary of
Christ’s atonement must be sprinkled with His blood for the covering of his
person as guilty; and he must yield himself with Christ as a whole
burnt-offering made acceptable by the Holy Ghost: the one without the other can
never avail. No less than this is meant by, I am crucified with Christ.4 1
Leviticus 9:24; 2 Leviticus 6:13; 3 Ephesians 5:2; 4 Galatians 2:20

2. Every sacrifice surrendered its life in its blood; some sacrifices were
wholly destroyed; but in the peace-offering part was burnt and part reserved for
a feast. This was the highest result of the ceremonial as expressing the
communion between heaven and earth. In other sacrifices Jehovah received through
the priests part of His portion: and what was burnt was also the bread of their
God. 1 And the priest shall burn it upon the altar: it is the food of the
offering made by fire unto the Lord. 2 St. Paul tells us that we are all
partakers of that one bread. 3 The Lord’s Supper is spread on the Lord’s table:
an altar to God, a table to us. Jesus is our great Peace-offering, as well as
our Passover: and the highest expression of Christian faith in the evangelical
sacrifice is thus to partake of the bread of their God, and sup with Him 1
Leviticus 21:6; 2 Leviticus 3:11; 3 1 Corinthians 10:17 THE VARIOUS OFFERINGS
The various sacrifices themselves may be blended into unity. They were divided
anciently into burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, and bloodless gifts: to these
were added, in the Levitical economy, sin and trespass offerings. All oblations
of every kind were under the jurisdiction of the high priest, and were
consummated and summed up in the one sacrifice of Christ

I. The primitive sacrifices, which prefigured the Atonement long before the
Levitical service, and corresponded therefore to the Gospel before the Law, are
to be traced up to the earliest times, even to the very gate of Paradise

1. The origin of sacrifice is not matter of express revelation. But the almost
universal prevalence of oblations, bloody and unbloody, indicates its Divine
appointment. The primitive record in Genesis is as dim in its utterance on this
subject as it is upon sin generally and the atoning Redeemer. We read of
sacrifices offered by Cain and Abel: by the former unbloody gifts, by the latter
slain victims. The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain
and to his offering He had not respect. 1 The reason of the difference lay in
the disposition of the offerers. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent
sacrifice than Cain: 2 his offering was a gift, but it was also an expiatory
typical sacrifice, which Cain’s was not. And there can be little doubt that the
faith which rendered that primitive oblation acceptable was faith in the Great
Sacrifice of the future

Thus the first account of approach to the Supreme by sacrificial offerings
teaches, when interpreted by the New Testament, that it was not enough to draw
nigh with gifts betokening gratitude and self-surrender; but that every oblation
of thanksgiving must needs have in it a propitiatory element. This primitive
oblation therefore gave the law for all subsequent worship as culminating after
long and various developments in the Christian atonement 1 Genesis 4:4-5; 2
Hebrews 11:4

2. The BURNT-OFFERING, laolaah, was the earliest, most common, and most
comprehensive of the oblations dedicated to Heaven as Korban or Gift. Its
pre-eminence was its symbolical meaning, that combined in one the expiatory
shedding of blood and the perfect offering of the self: hence it underlay,
surrounded, and perfected all other oblations from the beginning of sacrificial
communion with God down to the Perfect Sacrifice. It was this which Noah
presented at the second beginning of propitiatory oblations. He offered
burnt-offerings on the altar. And the Lard smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord
said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground. 1 Jehovah accepted the
expiation of the Patriarch; and smelled afar off the sweet savor of the Perfect
Sacrifice for the guilty world. Abraham was commanded to take his only son Isaac
into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering: 2 the type of
the same far distant oblation of the Only-begotten. The covenant of Sinai was
ratified by burnt-offerings.3 They pervaded also the subsequent Levitical
economy, constituted the daily or continual sacrifice which typified the eternal
atonement, and always maintained their preeminence The double character assigned
to them is stated at the outset of Leviticus. And he shall put his hand upon the
head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement
for him 4 After the sprinkling of the blood fire was put upon the altar, the
wood laid in order, and it became an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor
unto the Lord. This twofold character further gives it special significance as
it respects the Supreme Antitype and His people. Christ also hath loved us, and
hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a
sweet smell. 5 Here the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ is the freewill
burnt-offering of His perfect love. And in that it is the example of the
offering of His people: as the sin-offering proper He does not admit us so
directly to share or continue or fill up His sacrifice 1 Genesis 8:20-21; 2
Genesis 22:2; Genesis 22:7; 3 Exodus 24:8; 4 Leviticus 1:4; Leviticus 1:9; 5
Ephesians 5:2

3. The PEACE-OFFERINGS—whether thank-offerings, vows, or freewill gifts—were
combinations of expiatory and dedicatory sacrifice: but they represented the
gifts of the offerer rather than himself the giver. Like the burnt-offering they
signified at once the consciousness of sin and the thankfulness for deliverance
from it. They were presented, so far as they were expiatory, for the
re-establishment of a state of grace; and, that being accomplished, as the
joyful expression also of acceptance with God. These all found their antitype in
the Paschal Lamb: He is our Peace, 1 Whose oblation we present in faith for the
forgiveness of sins, and receive sacramentally as the pledge of that
forgiveness. It may be added that the meat-offerings and drink-offerings which
were connected with the daily burnt sacrifice, as also with the other
peace-offerings, belong to the general idea of Divine acceptance and communion
with the worshippers. Our present purpose does not require a minute
investigation of them. Suffice that they in some sense mitigated the sternness
of the ancient institute; and that they all find their end and perfection in the
Christian Supper 1 Ephesians 2:14

II. Peculiar to the Levitical economy were the SIN-OFFERINGS, and their
modification, the TRESPASS-OFFERINGS. These were intimately connected with the
giving of the law, as containing the more express revelation of the nature of
sin, and as the basis of a preparatory covenant of typical sacrifice for its
expiation. We have here chiefly to do with these offerings, including their more
stern and their more joyful accompaniments, as the preeminent type or prophetic
symbolical foreshadowing of the Christian Atonement

1. It is impossible to formulate with precision the difference between the
sin-offering and the guilt-offering in the Levitical institute. Both were
expiatory sacrifices for SIN, as being offence against positive law and
ceremonial ordinances, committed in ignorance and inadvertence; that is, not
with a high hand and in deliberate rebellion. But the trespass-offering was
always presented for individual error: the sin-offering not always The former
respected violation of the rights of the covenant, the latter rather neglect of
its precepts. Hence the former had more to do with transgressions touching
property, the latter with transgressions of law. The trespass-offering connoted
the idea of SATISFACTION: and he shall bring his guilt-offering to the Lord, a
ram without blemish out of the flock, according to thy estimation, for a
guilt-offering, unto the priest; and the priest shall make atonement for him
before the Lord, and it shall be forgiven him. 1 The sin-offering connoted
rather the idea of EXPIATION through the sacrifice of a pure life. But in the
supreme and universal oblation of Christ the distinction is done away for ever.
He is at once the Satisfaction of every Divine claim, and the Propitiation for
every human offence 1 Leviticus 6:6-7

2. The sin-offering, of which the guilt-offering was only a species, brought
into distinct prominence the expiatory character of the sacrificial institute,
which, before the giving of the law, was to a certain extent veiled and hidden.
It was from the beginning itself called SIN, chataat, LXX. amartia, peri ths
amartias, for sin; even as the guilt-offering was itself called GUILT, ASM.
Hence our Lord is said to have been made sin for us, Who knew no sin, 1 and, at
His second coming, will appear without sin unto salvation. 2 The sacrifice was,
so to speak, the embodiment or incarnation of sin; and, where the offering made
atonement for all the people, the flesh was burned without the camp. 3 No sin
offering, whereof any of the blood is brought into the tabernacle of the
congregation to reconcile withal in the holy place, shall be eaten. 4 But in the
lower and more individual grades of the sin-offering there was a marked
difference. In the place where the burnt offering is killed shall the sin
offering be killed before the Lord: IT IS MOST HOLY. The priest that offereth it
for sin shall eat it: 5 though not the transgressor himself. It might seem that
when the flesh was eaten by the priests their official sanctity neutralized the
impurity of the victim. Our Great High Priest was MOST HOLY though bearing the
sins of the world; and, though He represented the sin-offering that must not be
eaten, He was nevertheless the Offering of which we all partake as priestly
offerers. And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 6 This gives the
idea both of expiation and of substitution. His soul was made an offering for
sin. Jesus was the reality of that which the sin-offerings only typified. But in
those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year: 7 a
remembrance made, not only every year, but on every occasion of their
presentation. They only taught the evil of sin and the need of atonement: there
could be nothing homogeneous between an animal victims and a human transgressor.
They accustomed the people to the thought of a SUBSTITUTE; but we, in the
Fulfillment, see that the Supreme SIN-OFFERING has expiated sin itself, and not
merely offence against the Levitical institute; that He is the atonement even
for those offences with a high hand of whose perpetrator it was said: that soul
shall he utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be upon him.8 In Him is all the
virtue, and none of the defect, of the ancient types

1 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 Hebrews 9:28; 3 Hebrews 13:11; 4 Leviticus 6:30; 5
Leviticus 6:25-26; 6 Isaiah 53:6; Isaiah 53:10; 7 Hebrews 10:3; 8 Numbers 15:31

3. The distinction between two kinds of sin-offering, one for the whole
congregation, the other for individual transgressions, must be constantly borne
in mind

(1.) The latter had less direct relation to the Christian Sacrifice: being
designed to make atonement for offences against the Theocratic code not
willfully committed but through ignorance or rashness or levity. This
qualification perpetually occurs as restricting the efficacy of these offerings
for sin. If any one of the common people sin through ignorance, bishgaagaah,
while he doeth somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning
things which ought not to be done, and be guilty; or if his sin, which he hath
sinned, come to his knowledge, then he shall bring his offering . . .. And the
priest shall make an atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven him. 1 Here it
is to be observed that the Hebrew word used signifies transgression or ERRING
through the predominance of the evil principle within, in contradistinction to
sinning presumptuously or with a high hand, 2 bªyaad raamaah. For the latter,
class there was no sin-offering. Hence the Psalmist’s prayer: Who can understand
his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults Keep back Thy servant also from
presumptuous sins. 3 For the former there was cleansing; from the latter the
petitioner sought only restraint. And in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said
that the high priest offered for the errors of the people, 4 for their
agnoeemátoon, and not for their willful violations of the covenant. Herein the
type fell immeasurably below the Antitype. The expiation of Christ avails for
every sin that is confessed over the Atonement: if any man sin, we have an
Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous: 5 and He is the
propitiation for our sins. Yet the severity of the restriction in the type is
also pressed into the service of Christian caution. Though the Great Sacrifice
avails for all sin, there is no atonement for the obstinate rejector of that
sacrifice. If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the
truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. 6 As there were sins unatoned
for in the Theocracy, so also there is a sin unto death 7 under the Gospel 1
Leviticus 4:27-31; 2 Numbers 15:30; 3 Psalms 19:12-13; 4 Hebrews 9:7; 5 1 John
2:1-2; 6 Hebrews 10:26; 7 1 John 5:16

(2.) The daily and annual sacrifices for the sin of the people covered the guilt
of all the congregation as such, and availed, on behalf of all who put their
trust in the Divine ordinance, for the expiation of every kind of offence not
already punished by excision The blood of these was sprinkled before the Lord
towards the Holiest, and upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense; 1 on the
great day of atonement upon the mercy-seat. 2 But of this more hereafter 1
Leviticus 4:6-17; 2 Leviticus 16:16

4. The sin-offerings of the Levitical economy had sometimes connected with them
certain peculiar Purifications of the individual and of the community, regarded
as having contracted defilement: leprosy; contact with dead bodies; suspected
crimes, such as adultery and murder; the blood guiltiness of the community when
the manslayer was not discovered. The diversified ceremonies superadded to the
sacrifice which generally accompanied them pertained to what the New Testament
terms the purifying of the flesh.1 They had mainly to do with the Theocratic
relations of the parties; but were all typical of the defilement of sin, and are
often referred to as illustrations of the purifying effect of the Atonement.
They have done much to mould the phraseology of the Christian covenant; but of
themselves belong rather to the archaeology of the ancient people

1 Hebrews 9:13

III. The Redeemer of mankind represented in Himself every expiatory offering of
every kind, and in His one oblation offered once all other oblations have found
their end and spiritual perfection. He is the One Sacrifice for sin presented by
Himself, the High Priest, for and on behalf of mankind represented by Him. He is
the VICTIMA SACERDOTII SUI ET SACERDOS SUAE VICTIMAE. As, in the Epistle to the
Romans, He is the end of the law for righteousness, 1 so, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, He is the end of the sacrifices for eternal redemption. 2 But here two
important cautionary suggestions must be made 1 Romans 10:4; 2 Hebrews 9:12

1. The entire system of ancient sacrifices was but the shadow of an eternal
substance. The Epistle which gives us the authentic valuation of the old economy
tells us that it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should
take away sins; 1 that the law could not make the comers thereunto perfect 2 in
freedom from the conscience of sins. They sanctified only to the purifying of
the flesh. 3 On the one hand, they availed only for the maintenance of a
national and individual relation to the Theocracy. On the other, they made no
provision for deliverance from guilt as violation of the moral law. The true
secret of the peace which was pronounced upon penitent and sincere offerings was
reserved: to be made known when the figure for the time then present 4 should be
superseded by the Reality. And, with regard to this, the sincere Hebrew and the
sincere Gentile were on a level: only that the former had the revelation that
constantly announced a future Redeemer, and might mingle with his merely carnal
ordinances a dim faith in the yet unrevealed Atonement 1 Hebrews 10:4; 2 Hebrews
10:1; 3 Hebrews 9:13; 4 Hebrews 9:9

2. But, this being true, the figurative and typical institute gave profound
suggestion of the nature of that future propitiation. It told of the exceeding
sinfulness of sin, which in its endless varieties was so rigorously watched by
the Holy One of Israel, and demanded such varieties of sacrifice. The meaning of
the sacrificial phraseology must not be lost when it is transferred to Christian
times, as many vainly affirm: that meaning is glorified in the spirit, but its
body and its letter is still of Christ. Patterns only, they were still patterns
of things in the heavens. 1 Many terms are given to oblivion in the Gospel; but
EXPIATION as the ground of REMISSION through the shedding of SACRIFICIAL BLOOD
are words to be had in everlasting remembrance. If the economy of typical
propitiations had no permanent significance, but introduced a system in which no
atonement was offered to justice, the New-Testament Epistles must have been
written in a totally different style

1 Hebrews 9:23 THE SACRIFICIAL SEASONS The various holy seasons and festivals of
the old covenant were also summed up and abolished in the one High-priestly
function of Christ. There were the Daily Service; the Sabbatic Days; the Three
Feasts, and the Great Fast. In the year there may be said to have been two main
cycles: the Passover, with the days of Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of Weeks
or Pentecost for the spring; the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles,
with its Azereth for the autumn. All these were under the supervision and
control of the high priest; and they were all done away by being glorified in
the mission and work of the Redeemer. The Passover and the Day of Atonement will
for our purpose adequately represent the entire series THE PASSOVER The Passover
was at once a sacrifice for sin and a peace-offering. Unless we admit this
combination we miss the design of the institute and lose its profound connection
with the Christian Sacrifice

1. The Angel of the Lord passed over or spared all the houses which were
sprinkled with the blood of the paschal lamb; but sprinkling generally, at least
sprinkling with blood, connoted the idea of expiation. The representative of the
household confessed that deliverance was of the grace of God alone; and the
people as a whole at the beginning of every ecclesiastical year renewed the
covenant with God by sacrifice. As a sin-offering it was also a peace-offering:
celebrating as a national expression of gratitude the redemption from Egypt as
well as the deliverance of Israel’s firstborn. Subordinate to this was its
acknowledgment of the goodness of Jehovah in the gifts of the earth. The slaying
of the victim and the partaking of it went together from year to year, and from
generation to generation: hence the Passover was a sin offering and a
peace-offering in one

2. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast. 1
These words, though standing alone in this form, must be understood according to
their plain import as throwing a flood of light on the ancient institute and on
its spiritual significance. In virtue of the blood of Jesus the spiritual Israel
are redeemed from worse than Egyptian bondage and blessed with a better
inheritance than Canaan. In the first reference to the Lord’s sacrifice the
Baptist termed Him the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world, 2
where it is certainly the paschal lamb that is referred to, but with the
expiatory and substitutionary idea of later prophecy added and made prominent.
The Lord’s own constant reference to the sacrificial and sacramental food of His
flesh would seem to imply the presence in His thoughts of the paschal feast,
which indeed was the main characteristic of the Passover. It was a communion,
and in this different from every other sacrifice: not a feast in which the
offerer partook with the priest, but one in which the families of Israel united.
At the close of His life the Redeemer instituted the Eucharist, as the
Evangelical Passover, in which His Church should for ever keep the feast: first,
as a commemorative Sacrifice, celebrating the expiatory death; secondly, as a
symbolical Sacrament, representing Christ, the Passover, as the nourishment of
His people; and, thirdly, as an emblem of the unity of His New Israel in Himself
1 1 Corinthians 5:7-8; 2 John 1:29

3. The Passover was prolonged for seven days to give the feast the covenant
character of perfection: the seven days were the FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD which
gave it its name On the first day after the proper Passover was the offering of
the wave-sheaf. Seven full weeks after that wave-offering came the FEAST OF
WEEKS, the celebration of the completed harvest: hereafter to be abolished and
glorified in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the day which was known as the
Pentecost. With this feast the fulfillment of the Old-Testament paschal festival
was complete. The characteristic of the whole solemnity was the festal
commemoration of deliverance from Egypt; a deliverance which typified the Great
Redemption. And its connection with the Eucharist, the abiding sacramental
commemoration in the Christian Church, makes the Passover in a certain sense the
preeminent typical institute of the Old Testament. The Lord’s Supper is, so to
speak, the antitype of the Paschal Feast as it included the whole cycle of seven
weeks: it therefore is the Christian Feast which celebrates all the events of
the Fifty Days THE DAY OF ATONEMENT The Day of Atonement, on the tenth of Tisri,
the seventh month, effected an annual reconciliation between God and the
collective people; and was the chief, inasmuch as it was the most comprehensive,
typical and symbolical Old-Testament prefiguration of the Christian mystery. As
such it combined most of the other elements of the sacrificial economy, and
added not a few of its own. It was the day of the high priest pre-eminently,
when his function culminated. On other days acting by delegates, on that day—THE
DAY, Bªyowm, of the Talmud—he administered his office almost alone: the
sublimest of all typical figures

1. The sacrifices he first offered for himself showed the distinction between
the type and the Antitype: as the representative of the people, and also one of
them, he needed atonement for himself and his priestly order and the very
sanctuary that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness. 1 The
holy places however were purified by the sprinkling of the blood of the victims
offered for priest and people, probably mingled, and not by any distinct
sacrifices ordained for that purpose: their unclean ness resulted from the sins
of those who entered them 1 Leviticus 16:16

2. The high priest’s typical relation to Christ was shown in his transaction
with the two goats respectively. 1 One, chosen by lot, he offered for a
sin-offering. Its blood availed for universal expiation: for all the
transgressions of all the people, as sprinkled upon the mercy-seat seven times;
for the altar and sanctuary without as sprinkled also upon them The counterpart
victim, the Scapegoat, was the symbolical BEARER AWAY of the iniquities which
the other goat BORE. Upon its head the high priest confessed all the iniquities
of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions according to all their
sins, and it was driven forth unto a land not inhabited:2 into a separated land,
’erets gªzeeraah, symbol of that utter separation from God which is the
punishment of sin. Though the two goats were distinct, they made up one
expiatory idea. The victim which was slain represented the sacrifice for sin and
the remission of penalty. The victim which was not slain, but driven into the
desert to die, symbolized the absolute removal and Divine oblivion of guilt:
la`ªzaa’zeel, TO AZAZEL, or for the Scapegoat, means literally to utter
forgetfulness or complete dismissal. The double symbol declared that all penalty
was remitted and all sin forgiven and forgotten: cancelled as though it were not
1 Leviticus 16:8-34; 2 Leviticus 16:21-22

3. But that which made this the Supreme Solemnity of the Levitical economy was
the fact that then only was the blood of expiation, of which Jehovah said, I
have GIVEN IT TO YOU upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls, 1
brought within the veil, into the very presence of God where the law within the
ark testified against the transgressors

Then were all the other forgivenesses of the year confirmed; then all defects in
forgiveness repaired, saving only as touching those high-handed acts of
rebellion which found no place of repentance. The assurance was that ye may be
clean from all your sins before the Lord. 2 Hence in the Great Fulfillment the
Christian High Priest hath entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the
presence of God for us. 3 But the typical high priest went out again from the
face of Jehovah. The process of expiation must be repeated annually. Jesus needs
not to offer Himself often: His one oblation covers the whole sphere of human
sin from the beginning to the end of its continuance on earth. And His abiding
within the Veil is our security 1 Leviticus 17:11; 2 Leviticus 16:30; 3 Hebrews
9:24-25 THE PASSOVER AND DAY OF ATONEMENT COMBINED The entire doctrine of the
Atonement is based upon the Christian fulfillment of the prophetic and typical
meaning of these two solemnities, the Paschal Feast and the Atoning Fast. A
combination of their elements is necessary. Neither is sufficient of itself But,
united, they furnish a most impressive and comprehensive view of the central
Christian mystery

1. As the Passover predominates in the Gospels, so the Day of Atonement takes
the lead in the later New Testament, especially in the Epistles to the Romans
1:1-32 and the Hebrews, neither of which alludes to the paschal solemnity. The
former points every allusion to the subject with a reference to the great Fast
day: it makes Christ Himself the propitiatory, or mercy-seat, or propitiation,
set forth in the mind of God and upon the scene of transgression, for the
remission of human sins in the past and the present and the future: while it
does not exclude the intercession of Christ, it dwells rather on the offering in
the outer court. Moreover, it connects the whole rather with the idea of
righteousness than with the idea of sanctification: combining in one the
evangelical court and the evangelical temple. In the Epistle to the Hebrews
2:1-18 the great day of expiation occupies a very large place. The sacrifice in
the outer court and the presentation within the veil fill up the central
chapters of the treatise 1 Romans 3:21-28; 2 Hebrews 9:1-28; Hebrews 10:1-39

2. As united they demonstrate typically what the Christian atonement
demonstrates really, the absolute necessity of satisfaction to Divine justice in
order that the Divine love may be glorified; that therefore the God who is
offended Himself provided the Supreme Sacrifice; that the virtue of the
atonement, apprehended by faith, secures the perfect abolition or canceling of
sin and its punishment; that the one Redeemer Who offered His life on the altar
of the cross ever liveth to present His intercession for His people on earth

3. They further teach in their unity that the benefit of the supreme expiation
belongs to the company of Christ’s people as such. That is the general lesson
taught by the types of the Levitical economy. If we would seek the universal
effect and influence of the redeeming Sacrifice we must go behind and beyond the
Mosaic institute, to the primary sacrificial oblations which were before the
Law. There we find Him in Whom should all the nations of the earth be blessed.1

1 Genesis 22:18

4. When combined they also proclaim that the redeemed estate of the people of
God, the children of redemption and of the sacrificial covenant, is one of
mingled fasting and feasting. If the Passover was the Great Feast, the Day of
Atonement was the Great Fast: but they are united in the Cross and its
commemoration. In other words, there is a foreshadowing of the truth that stamps
its solemn impress on the writings of the Apostle Paul: the Christian life is a
union with Christ in His suffering and in His joy, in His life and in His death,
in the process and in the result of His atonement. The joy, however,
predominates; for He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; 1 borne
them away into the land of forgetfulness. The Day of Atonement has no
sacramental commemoration as such: Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; let
us keep the Feast.2 1 Isaiah 53:4; 2 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 INTERCESSION AND
BENEDICTION

It was the preeminent function of the high priest to present the blood of
atonement, and thus silently to intercede for the whole congregation once in the
year; though the priestly service generally was one of perpetual mediation and
intercession. The Blessing of the people was also the special office of the
priests, to be discharged after and on the ground of the sacrificial offerings.
Our Lord’s Intercession is the presentation of Himself in heaven to the Father
after His self-oblation on earth; not without special prayer for its objects.
His Benediction is imparted by the Holy Ghost, and is bound up with the
administration of all the blessings of the new covenant. While Intercession is
more directly connected with the sacrificial office, Benediction is linked with
all the offices of the Christ. It is the final consummation of each

INTERCESSION

I. The intercession of the high priest was expressed typically by the incense
before the mercy seat in the Holiest on the day of atonement. David says
generally: Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense; 1 and in the New
Testament we read generally again of the golden bowls full of incense, which are
the prayers of saints. 2 But the incense offered by the high priest was strictly
connected with his typical mediatorial relation: 3 And Moses said unto Aaron,
Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and
go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them. 4 Moses
himself, without the incense, had interceded in words. This was an
extraordinary, and, as it were, irregular procedure; and is the solitary
instance of the incense representing the atonement. The prayer of Moses and the
censer of Aaron alike typified the intercession of Christ, Who intercedes both
by the presentation of His sacrifice and by the virtue of His prayer. At first
the high priest himself burnt sweet incense every morning as also at even . . .
a perpetual incense before the Lord on the altar for that purpose which was
before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony. 5 Hence we read in the
Epistle to the Hebrews of the Holiest of all, which had the golden censer, and
the ark of the covenant. 6 This discrepancy is to be explained by the fact of
the intimate, connection between the two. The daily incense was the symbol of
the intercession that daily allayed the Divine displeasure; but it was on the
day of atonement that this symbol had its highest meaning. That the cloud of the
incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not: 7
these last words belonged to the type only, but the general truth remains that
the incense of intercession covered the mercy seat simultaneously with the blood
of atonement, and blended with the thick cloud of the Divine glory. So the
mystical temple of the Prophet’s vocation was fitted with smoke: 8 the smoke of
the same intercessory incense which fills the temple where Jesus the High Priest
presents His eternal sacrifice

1 Psalms 141:2; 2 Revelation 5:8; 3 Numbers 16:46; 4 Exodus 32:11; Exodus 32:32;
5 Exodus 30:6-8; 6 Hebrews 9:3-4; 7 Leviticus 16:13; 8 Isaiah 6:4

II. This antitypical intercession of Christ is variously set forth in the New
Testament, especially in the Temple Epistle

1. It is the presentation of HIMSELF before the Father on our behalf. By His own
blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption: 1 ONCE FOR ALL. He is not represented as carrying His atoning blood
with Him: the exhibition of His Sacred Person is enough. A careful consideration
of the classical passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews will shed much light upon
this. The English Authorized Version mentions three appearances of Christ as
marking the historical process of the Atonement. The three terms in the original
are different and carefully chosen: the middle one expressing the fact that the
Son of God in our humanity manifests Himself before His Father and our Father
without a veil. At the end of the ages He appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself: 2 pefanérootai, was manifested as God in the flesh. This
is closely, indeed indistinguishably, connected with His entering into heaven
itself, now to appear before the face of God for us: emfanistheénai, to present
Himself boldly and abidingly without any protecting cloud of incense. This
silent intercessory appearance shall end when He will appear a second time
without sin unto salvation: oftheésetai, He will be seen of angels and men in
His majesty, without the humiliation of His sacrificial connection with sin. St.
John expresses the same truth : If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins.3 He
is Himself the Propitiation and the Advocate: Himself, which is more than His
blood or His life. The virtue of His sacrifice is the value of His Person. The
MERIT of Christ is the power of His intercession; and that merit is not simply
the fact of His voluntary selfsacrifice, but His self-sacrifice as that of the
Son of the Father’s infinite complacency. His merit is the worthiness of His
Incarnate Self. His Presence in heaven is His all-effectual plea. Three
important truths arise here to our notice. (1.) The intercessory presentation of
Himself in heaven is not, as the Socinians and those who follow them assert, the
beginning of His priestly function. Christ was once offered to bear the sins of
many:4 hápax prosenechtheís eis tó polloón anenengkeín hamartías, sacrificial
terms which had their full meaning already in the Cross. (2.) There is, however,
no continuation of the sacrifice in heaven; and there can be no continuation of
it upon earth. The Atonement is gone up FOR A MEMORIAL BEFORE GOD 5 for ever;
and the Romanist Sacrifice of the Mass has no sanction, but is utterly
condemned, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. As it is appointed unto men once to
die 6 for their sins, so Christ was in the deepest truth APPOINTED TO DIE ONCE
for expiation of sins, but only once. (3.) Lastly, the unity of the Atonement on
earth and the intercession based upon it in heaven must be most carefully
maintained. The NOW to appear marks the whole period from Calvary to the
Judgment as the Day of Grace, and of the PUTTING AWAY OF SIN, the athéteesin
teés hamartías. 7

1 Hebrews 9:12; 2 Hebrews 9:24-28; 3 1 John 2:1; 4 Hebrews 9:28; 5 Acts 10:4; 6
Hebrews 9:27; 7 Hebrews 9:24; Hebrews 9:26

2. The intercession of our Lord is also direct supplication on behalf of its
beneficiaries: the words which describe it prove this. He maketh intercession 1
for us: the term entungchánei generally used of oral supplication either for or
against its objects. And Jesus Christ the Righteous 2 is called our parákleeton
with the Father, our Advocatus or Intercessor, fulfilling His promise that He
would pray the Father 3 for His disciples, and thus continuing in heaven the
High-priestly prayer begun on earth. As to the speech of the glorified Son
Incarnate, the tongue not of men nor of angels, the unspeakable words which it
is not yet lawful either to hear or to utter, it is needless to inquire. Suffice
that the Saviour’s intercession has all the effect of what below is called
intercessory prayer As we must not refine away the truth of His being touched
with the feeling of our infirmities, 4 so we must not make the God-man above a
Silent Representative of our humanity 1 Romans 8:27; 2 1 John 2:1; 3 John 14:16;
4 Hebrews 4:15

III. The objects of His intercession are the world, the mystical Church of His
people, and every individual who appeals to Him

1. By His presence in heaven Christ is the Pleader for the world, that is for
the humanity, human kind, or human nature, which He represents. The high priest
entered into the inmost sanctuary of the temple on behalf of the covenant
people: the blood which he sprinkled was accompanied by incense, which he waved,
without a word, not to protect himself from the insufferable glory of God,
already dimmed by the thick darkness 1 of the cloud, but to prevent the Divine
justice from causing his death as the representative of the people. This incense
signified the intercession of Christ, whose presence in heaven keeps the sinful
earth in being; I bear up the pillars of it. 2 It availed from the beginning by
anticipation; on no ground can we understand how a guilty race should be
propagated under the moral government of God save that the intercession of the
Second Adam began when first it was said: the plague is begun. Hence Isaiah,
going beyond the Levitical economy, says that He made intercession for the
transgressors: 3 this in the widest meaning of the word 1 Psalms 75:3; 2 Numbers
16:46; 3 Isaiah 53:12

2. It is true, however, that the specific intercession of Christ is limited to
His prayer for His own people. Before He departed He poured out an intercessory
supplication which was the earnest and the type and the pledge of His future
pleading for His Church as united by faith with its Living Head

(1.) This intercession is only for His own: not because the Redeemer forgets the
world which He came to save, but because it is of a character distinct, and
appropriate only to His people’s relation to Him. It is not only request on
their behalf, but the sacred demand of Christ on behalf of Himself as
represented in His people. They are His other Self, YET NOT ANOTHER. Father, I
will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where 1Amos 1:1-15 It
is rather stipulation than intercession: théloo rather than eroto. Hence Jesus,
because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore He is
able to save them to the uttermost (or perfectly and evermore) that come unto
God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. 2 He hath
brought them to God, but also brought them to Himself; and only asks the portion
that falleth to Him. He demands rather than asks for them, as united with
Himself and part of Himself, all that is His: that the love wherewith Thou hast
loved Me may be in them, and I in them. 3 The Father’s love is arrogated for
them as of necessity, because the Beloved Son of the Father is in them both
collectively and individually 1 John 17:24; 2 Hebrews 7:24-25; 3 John 17:26

(2.) The Saviour’s intercession as High Priest makes acceptable both the persons
and the worship of His people. Grace is given freely in the Beloved. 1 They
offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. 2 His is the
much incense, that He should add it unto the prayers of all saints: 3 the angel
to whom it was given was only a ministering priest or Levite under this great
High Priest. And in order that all the service of those who are priests with
Christ may be well pleasing, the Holy Ghost represents the Supreme Intercessor
within their hearts. The Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered. 4 And He that searcheth the Hearts knoweth
what is the mind of the Spirit, for He maketh intercession for the saints
according to the will of God according to the will of the High Priest also.
There is no more impressive view of the heavenly pleading within the veil than
that which makes the voice of the Holy Ghost within our hearts its echo. This
concert of the Two Intercessors—the One within the shrine above, the other
within the shrine of our spirits, but both agreeing in one—is the infallible
guarantee of our communion with God and acceptable prayer 1 Ephesians 1:6; 2 1
Peter 2:5; 3 Revelation 8:3; 4 Romans 8:26-27

(3.) This intercessory pleading is the Scriptural expression for that perfect
sympathy of our Lord with His members on earth which His community of nature
gives Him, in virtue of which He is their Paraclete or Advocate or Helper,
succoring them in temptation, strengthening them for duty, and imparting to them
seasonable help. He knows the secrets of all hearts as God: but His humanity
gives Him a knowledge that He could not without it have, and the Scripture lays
much stress on the benefit of this. Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be
made like unto His brethren . . .. For in that He Himself hath suffered being
tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted. 1 His sympathy does not
spring from remembrance of sin or fall or danger of falling; but from His human
experience of the devices of Satan haunting the accesses of our nature. In His
atoning passion He Who knew no sin yet became acquainted with it as only God
incarnate could become; so also in His administration of His atoning grace He
knows, as only God incarnate can know, our need 1 Hebrews 2:17-18

3. But this leads to the individual bearing of our Saviour’s intercession. The
Head of every man is Christ: 1 the High Priest over the whole house has a
special relation to every worshipper. He is the Representative of the whole
Church, and of every several branch, in His intercession: it was the Church of
Laodicaea, neither hot nor cold, concerning which He said, I will spue thee out
of My mouth, 2 or drop its name from His heavenly Litany. But His heart is also
the faithful Friend of sinners, and faithful to every mortal transgressor as his
own High Priest. As surely as the Atonement availed for the entire family of
Adam, so certainly the pleading of Christ on the ground of the atonement may be
appealed to by every representative of that family 1 1 Corinthians 11:3; 2
Revelation 3:16

(1.) This is the strength of the penitent’s heart in approaching the God of
justice. The one Mediator between God and men 1 makes intercession for all that
come unto God by Him For through Him we both2—Jews and Gentiles, saved and
unsaved—have access by one Spirit unto the Father. 3 Every man living and
sinning on earth has, if he will only use it, an introduction, prosagoogeén, a
right of humble approach to God. He has not only the ground of confidence that
an accepted propitiation for his race gives, but also the assurance of a
Divine-HUMAN Representative who loves his own individual soul, and has left on
record this unrevoked and irrevocable word: him that cometh to Me I will in no
wise cast out. 4 If He will not cast him out, most surely the Father behind Him
will not 1 1 Timothy 2:5; 2 Hebrews 7:25; 3 Ephesians 2:18; 4 John 6:37

(2.) Especially is this true of the believer. On the basis of the Atonement he
is accepted in Christ; but he might be tempted to think, nor would it be an
unreasonable temptation, that, having sinned against the grace of that
Atonement, his hope must perish. But his Head above is a living, unchangeable,
ever available Pleader for him. If any man—any Christian man—sin, we have an
Advocate, 1 Who, in the court of heaven, vindicates the rights of His sacrifice
offered on earth. For every believer He is at once a Propitiation and a
Paraclete in the presence of the Father

1 1 John 2:1

BENEDICTION

1. The solemn Benediction which attested Divine acceptance was expressly
provided for in the Levitical service. It was an integral part of the high
priest’s duty, which, like almost all others, was committed in due time to the
priesthood generally. At the first consecration of Aaron and his sons, after the
offerings were presented for the host, Aaron lifted up his hand toward the
people, and blessed them.... and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the
people. 1 The evidence of that verbal blessing was that there came a fire out
from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt-offering and the
fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces. Of
the priests the sons of Levi 2 it was afterwards said, that them the Lord thy
God hath chosen to minister unto Him, and to bless IN THE NAME OF THE LORD. The
stress must be laid upon these last words: God alone is to be blessed in
Doxology, and God alone blesses in Benediction, whether in Old Testament or New.
The blessing was not only, however, in the name of the Lord; it was also the
name of the Triune God Jehovah impressed upon the people, making them His own.
Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the
children of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the
Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up
His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put MY NAME upon
the children of Israel; and I will bless them. 3 Here are united the blessings
of universal providential care, of mercy for sin, and of internal peace: for the
people generally and for every individual worshipper prepared to receive it. Two
things are to be observed in passing 1 Leviticus 9:22-24; 2 Deuteronomy 21:5; 3
Numbers 6:23-27

1. As we have seen that the symbols of sacrifice within the veil pointed
mysteriously but certainly to the Triune God, so also did the Benediction which
sealed to the worshippers the acceptance of those sacrifices. Three names, yet
to be revealed, are alone wanting to make the Levitical Blessing the distinct
benediction of the Holy Trinity. The benediction IN ACT, the effusion of the
Divine glory, found its great realization, though itself a reality, when God
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of [Jesus] Christ. 1 His is the Face of God turned on the penitent in
GRACE, whether in this world or the next. The benediction IN WORD found its
highest fulfillment in the testimony of the Divine Spirit, giving PEACE through
the assurance that we have grace freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.2 1 2
Corinthians 4:6; 2 Ephesians 1:6

2. The ancient Benediction was not only typical; it was more than a mere form of
words; it was a reality, pronouncing over the people, and every individual who
sincerely complied with the conditions of the old covenant, an acceptance the
true and eternal ground of which was as yet not made known. It has already been
seen that the Levitical economy, as such and in its specific prescriptions for
the atonement of individual and national offences, aimed only at the maintenance
of external legal relations to the Theocracy. But, underlying and surrounding
all these, was the great typical system of sacrifice that was accepted for the
sake of the Coming Atonement, the undisputed virtue of which secured the
effectual acceptance of God. There was a pretermission or páresin of all sins
for a season, until the fullness of time confirmed this into an aphesis, 1 or
full forgiveness

1 Romans 3:25

II. It is the prerogative of the One Mediator between God and man that He is not
only the Minister of blessing, but that He is also its Source. 1 He is God and
the High Priest in one

He is the Antitype of Melchisedec, who met Abraham, higher than he, and blessed
him and all the Levitical priesthood in him. The benediction of Jesus is the
benediction of God Incarnate, and it is no less than the administration of all
the benefits of the evangelical covenant: the promise of eternal inheritance.2 1
Hebrews 7:1-11; 2 Hebrews 9:15

1. The blessing of our High Priest is deliverance from sin. It is the blessing
of Abraham,1 that is, the righteousness of faith, 2 and the promise of the
Spirit through faith: that Spirit being the sanctifying power of the Gospel.
God, having raised up His Servant sent Him to bless you, in turning away every
one of you from his iniquities. 3 Comparing these passages, which are one in the
unity of the blessing of Abraham, we gather that the Christian High-priestly
benediction is our deliverance from all sin 1 Galatians 3:9-14; 2 Romans 4:13; 3
Acts 3:26

2. Hence it is the impartation of all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in
Christ. 1 The term BLESSING is one that cannot be defined: it is the gracious
mystery of the manifestation of the Supreme to His people in grace. It is a gift
without a definition; including all the individual benefits that may be put into
words, it surpasses each in particular and surrounds the whole. It is the
unbounded sum of all that has been procured for the redeemed children of men:
first, as the restored prerogative of the creature resting in the Creator, and,
secondly, as the superadded blessedness of a nearer than creaturely union with
God in Christ

1 Ephesians 1:3

3. This Benediction is imparted through the Holy Ghost. He is the Vicar of
Christ, and the Agent of His will, and the Medium of every benefit of His
passion. Therefore the more full consideration of this subject belongs to the
next department of our Theology

Meanwhile, it must be remembered that the Blessing of the Gospel is obtained by
Jesus the Priest, announced by Jesus the Prophet, imparted by Jesus the King,
through the Mediatorial Spirit of the new economy of grace THE JEWISH AND THE
CHRISTIAN TEMPLE

Before we pass to the Kingly Office of Christ we must linger for a while on the
scene of His High-priestly function, which is, whether on earth or in heaven,
the Temple, or Tabernacle: the place of special Divine revelation to man

I. In the Old Testament we see the progressive stages of the history of
sacrificial worship converging towards the Christian Temple

1. Before the Levitical economy the Altar stood alone under the heavens: the
mizbach, the first record of which is that Noah builded an altar unto the Lord,
a thusiasteérion, 1 so termed from the burnt offerings SLAIN before it. From
that time the patriarchs raised altars where God revealed Himself, as Abram
builded an altar unto the Lord, Who appeared unto him. 2 When the law was given
on Sinai Jehovah said to His people: Ye have seen that I have talked with you
from heaven. Ye shall not make with Me gods of silver, neither shall ye make
unto you gods of gold. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt
sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep and
thine oxen: in all places where I record My name I will come unto thee, and I
will Mess thee. 3 From that time there was to be no longer an altar in every
tent 1 Genesis 8:20; 2 Genesis 12:7; 3 Exodus 20:22; Exodus 20:24

2. The Mosaic Sanctuary was a Tabernacle, ’ohel mow`eed, the Tent of
congregation, where God met His people; also the mishkan haa`eedut, the
Tabernacle of Testimony, or of Covenant revelation. The innumerable details of
the economy of this domain of the high priest’s function belong to archaeology:
only the leading points need to be referred to here, and those only as
pertaining to the Mosaic Sanctuary. There was a threefold division. In the
Court, surrounding all, the Covenant People assembled; and this, in the later
Temple, made silent provision for the future ingathering of the Gentiles. Here
was the Altar of Burnt-offering. The sanctuary proper, the Holy Place, haqodesh
admitted the priests only; it had the Table of Shewbread, the twelve loaves of
which renewed every sabbath were a permanent meat offering in acknowledgment of
the Divine gifts; opposite to this the Golden Candlestick, with seven lamps, the
symbol of God in His Holy Spirit for ever enlightening the Temple; and between
them, over against the ark of the covenant, the Altar of Incense, representing
the daily intercession of the priesthood and the daily prayers of the
congregation. Into the Holiest of All, the Most Holy Place, haqaadaashiym qodesh
the high priest alone entered once in the year. There was the Ark, the most
comprehensive symbol in the ancient worship: the Ark of the covenant, 1 which
had in it the tables of the covenant, the conditions of God’s good will towards
His people, and at the same time the testimony of His people’s sinfulness; the
Ark of the throne of God, because His glory as a thick cloud rested on the
Kapporeth or Mercy-seat, which covered the record of transgression from the
Divine eyes. Over the Propitiatory were the Cherubim, so important in the
symbolical drapery of the curtains, of which it was said:

0 Shepherd of Israel, Thou that dwellest between the Cherubim, shine forth! 2
These represented all the Divine attributes in their universal manifestations:
barring the entrance to Paradise and watching the way of return. But they have
faded away in Christ 1 Hebrews 9:4-5; 2 Psalms 80:13. The Tabernacle, with all
its divisions, was one under the supremacy of the high priest

Every figure, symbol, and act within it—from the laver at the entrance to the
thick cloud of the Divine glory never seen but by faith—paid its tribute to the
great Fact: there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from
above, the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubims. 1 It may not always be
possible to trace the connection; nor is it necessary. We must be content with
observing the typical allusion of the whole to the Christian temple in which the
Supreme Sacrifice was once offered WITHOUT the veil, and then presented WITHIN
it

1 Exodus 25:22 II. The new temple is as conspicuous in the Evangelical
revelation as the old temple was in the Levitical economy

1. It is the glory of the Christian Offerer that He is the Antitype not only of
the typical high priest, and of all the offerings He presented, but of the place
itself in which He offered. Nor is there anything more impressive in the Great
Fulfillment than the truth that the Incarnate Son is as incarnate Himself the
Temple. His first prediction concerning His own Person declared this: destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up: He spake of the temple of His
body. 1 His human nature—our human nature—is the shrine in which the Word, Whose
Glory was as of the Only-begotten, became flesh and dwelt among us. 2 This
central truth throws its beams backwards to Paradise and forwards to the
Consummation: giving unity to all the Scriptural records of God’s dwelling among
men In Eden the Divine Presence, with the guardian Cherubim, had its ark. After
the Fall the Presence of the Lord 3 was retained upon earth until the Flood. It
then became the Glory of the Lord, kªbowd, over the Ark of the Covenant:
permanent, as distinguished from occasional Theophanies, and as the type of the
final indwelling of God in our nature. The later Jewish theology gave it the
name SHEKINAH, as the tabernacle was formerly called mishkan Yahweh, the
dwelling-place of Jehovah. But now in Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Son, God is
abidingly manifest in the flesh. 4 The ancient symbol was the object only of
faith: the Reality is object of faith also, but the Apostles could say, We
beheld His glory;5 and He Himself said, he that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father. 6 When He appeared it was already true that the tabernacle of God is
with men, 7 though another fulfillment was in the future. The true theology of
our Lord’s Person holds that He inhabited human nature as His temple: He enters
or is come into or in8 the flesh. Not that the Divinity is the High Priest and
the flesh the temple. There are indeed two passages that seem to warrant such a
view. Jesus is said to have consecrated for us a new and living way of access to
God through the veil, that is to say, His flesh: 9 in His human nature He
suffered; and the rending of that veil opened the way into the Holiest. But the
rending of His Holy Flesh did not rend asunder His one Personality: He through
the Eternal Spirit10 offered Himself in heaven when that sacred curtain was
repaired. But it must be remembered that He offered HIMSELF. We must beware of
the temptation to refine upon these distinctions; and not think it necessary to
harmonies all the various sayings of Scripture on the great mystery which rises
above all figures and analogies

1 John 2:19; 1 John 2:21; 2 John 1:14; 3 Genesis 4:16; 4 1 Timothy 3:16; 5 John
1:14; 6 John 14:9; 7 Revelation 21:3; 8 1 John 4:2; 9 Hebrews 10:20; 10 Hebrews
9:14

2. The Body of our Lord, in another view, is the mystical fellowship of His
saints. In that Jesus is High Priest, and all who are His partake of His
priesthood. (1.) First, the Church as such is the sphere of the High Priest’s
function. He is Himself its Shekinah, whose glory from the Holiest, blending
with the Sevenfold Light of the Spirit from the Holy Place, is the FULNESS OF
GOD 1 for which the Apostle prays. Whosoever is in Christ lives and moves in Him
as a Temple: ye are the Temple of the living God. 2 In Him all the building
fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. 3 Thus is
fulfilled the mystic prophecy of the precious ointment that ran down upon the
beard, even Aaron’s beard. 4 The unction of the High Priest descends upon all
His members, for He and they are one; while, in the sublime confusion of
figures, those who form the spiritual house, and holy priesthood, offer up
themselves as spiritual sacrifices. 5 (2.) And every individual Christian is
said to be a temple in which our High Priest dwells: the whole economy of
communion with heaven being translated into the believer’s heart, in which he is
exhorted to sanctify the Lord Christ. 6 This indwelling of the High Priest is
the highest and deepest characteristic of personal religion: it is that ABODE
WITH HIM 7 which the Savior reserved for His last promise to any individual on
earth, as well as His last promise to any individual from heaven: I will come in
to him.8

1 Ephesians 3:19; 2 2 Corinthians 6:16; 3 Ephesians 2:21; 4 Psalms 133:2; 5 1
Peter 2:5; 6 1 Peter 3:15; 7 John 14:23; 8 Revelation 3:20

3. But there is a yet wider view. Heaven and earth make the New Temple in which
our High Priest ministers. It is a sanctuary not made with hands. 1 Heaven is
the Holy of Holies, into which He has entered with the virtue of His sacrifice.
There are the cherubims of glory without the symbol, beholding not the
mercy-seat sprinkled with blood, but the Person of Jesus Who without blood and
without the incense presents Himself boldly for us that we also may come with
boldness. Following out the symbol to its issues, the expositor of the Christian
temple says that it was necessary that the heavenly things themselves 2 should
be purified with the letter sacrifices: not that heaven itself needs sprinkling,
save through the One Propitiation of its God. The Holy Place is done away in a
certain sense: there is but one Priest, and all believers are a royal priesthood
who offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. In
that outer court our Lord’s altar, the Cross, was once erected. It is gone, and
yet the Apostle says, We have an altar! 3 disguising, and yet scarcely
disguising, his allusion to the cross. In this outer court there is no
distinction of Jew and Gentile: Christ hath broken down the middle wall of
partition. 4 Nor is there any other distinction. The whole family of believers
as yet in probation occupies the GREAT HOUSE 5 in which there are many mansions.
6 But the strange paradox remains that, while Christian men in the militant
church are on the pavement of the outer court, they are at the same time in
heavenly places in Christ. 7 Hence they are exhorted with boldness to enter into
the Holiest 8 above almost in the same sentence that speaks of our not forsaking
the assembling of ourselves together 9 below. But these subjects belong rather
to the doctrine of the Church

1 Hebrews 9:11; 2 Hebrews 9:23; 3 Hebrews 8:10; 4 Ephesians 2:14; 5 2 Timothy
2:20; 6 John 14:2; 7 Ephesians 1:3; 8 Hebrews 10:19; 9 Hebrews 10:25

4. There is one other application of the High-priestly function of our Lord to
which it is important in this place to refer, however slightly. The entire
scheme of the Christian atonement belongs to this office of the Messiah. Not as
the Teacher, nor as the Ruler, does He save the world: save as teaching the
principles of His sacrificial work, and administering the blessings it has
purchased. It will hereafter be seen how much the doctrine of the Atonement is
bound up with the Divine government of a Lawgiver Who administers His law in a
new court, the Court Mediatorial. There He exacts and receives what theological
language terms satisfaction. But it must always be remembered that the Temple is
the true sphere of atoning sacrifice. The evangelical Hall of judgment is no
other than a Court of the Temple. And it is something more than a mystical fancy
which regards the Veil as separating between the outer sanctuary where the
oblation that satisfies justice is offered, and the Holiest where it is
presented for Divine acceptance Our Lord’s Atonement is the SACRIFICIAL
OBEDIENCE or the OBEDIENT SACRIFICE which hath put away sin: the Obedience was
rendered in the outer court where blood reigns unto death, the Sacrifice was
offered in the inner shrine where mercy reigns unto life. In Christ all these
things are one. And this unity is the main object of the Evangelical discussion
of the Epistle to the Hebrews. On all other matters, even of an economy that was
Divine, it is very brief and never solicitous to expatiate: of which we cannot
now speak severally.1

1 Hebrews 9:5 THE REGAL OFFICE The Kingly authority of Christ is grounded on His
sacrificial death: as its high reward; as the medium of carrying out its ends;
and in its highest exercise the bestowment of the blessings purchased by His
Atonement. This mediatorial dignity was arrogated by Himself on earth by
anticipation and in virtue of the Divinity of His Person. After the resurrection
He formally assumed it on the Mountain in Galilee; He then ascended to His
throne in heaven for its exercise; and thence sends forth His Apostles to
declare and enforce His royal prerogatives. The Kingdom of Christ is exhibited
in their writings as the kingdom of grace: administered in the world by His
Providence, in the Church, and in the hearts of believers. As such it will
terminate with the final judgment; but as the kingdom of glory, already begun,
and to be consummated at the great day, it will be everlasting

I. Understanding by the title King the Redeemer’s mediatorial government
generally, we may say that it occupies the foremost place in the Old-Testament
prediction, and was accordingly assumed by our Lord as His own from the
beginning. The earliest and most glorious prophecies which, went before on the
Deliverer proclaimed His supreme authority. Such were the Protevangelium;

1 the promise to Abraham;2 the blessing of Jacob;3 and the predictions to
David.4 The Psalms open with the kingly supremacy of the Christ, and make this
their ever recurring keynote.5 The Prophets set out with this theme: it begins
prophecy proper in Isaiah, and, as has been seen, runs through the whole series
of the Messianic prophets, who invariably connect the announcement of the
Saviour’s SUFFERINGS with THE GLORY THAT SHOULD FOLLOW. The teachers in Judaism,
after the Captivity, introduced a different view. They took the sufferings of
the Servant of Jehovah6,7 to themselves and their own nation, and a carnal view
of the reign of their Christ predominated: their favorite name for Him was KING
MESSIAH.8 The Jews of Egypt differed from those of Palestine in not localizing
the scene of the Messiah’s government in Jerusalem, and generally in
understanding His kingdom to be moral and spiritual

1 Genesis 3:15; 2 Genesis 22:17; 3 Genesis 49:10; 4 2 Samuel 7:16; 5 Psalms
2:1-12; Psalms 45:1-17; Psalms 72:1-20; Psalms 110:1-7; 6 Luke 24:26; 7 1 Peter
1:11; 8 Isaiah 52:1-15; Isaiah 53:1-12

II Our Lord opened His mission by proclaiming, not His own kingdom, but the
kingdom of heaven and of God. On the nature of that spiritual government He
discoursed largely; but it was not until the close of His ministry that He
represented Himself as the Supreme Ruler in it. His authority till then was that
of the Teacher only: as exercised upon the Mount of Beatitudes, and vindicated
for Him on the Mount of Transfiguration. His mediatorial kingdom as such was to
be specially based upon His atoning death as the Divine-human Representative of
Mankind. The relation between His regal government and His expiatory humiliation
was declared by Himself on the eve of His passion, and is much dwelt upon by His
Apostles. It is placed before us under two aspects

1. By undergoing a substitutionary death for mankind the Redeemer obtained both
a judicial and a moral right to the human race.

(1.) He redeemed it from the bondage of sin and the doom of death. But in His
own language and in His servants’ Satan represents that bondage as the god of
this world. 1 Approaching His cross our Lord said: Now is the judgment of this
world; now shall the Prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all men to Myself. 2 The alien power was cast out in
the court of judgment, and it was decided that the world belonged to Him Who
died and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 3
But this was only the vindication of an authority which had been virtually His
from the beginning; since He had been the King uncrowned, because the Lamb
slain, from the foundation of the world. 4

(2,) His moral right is that which the infinite benefit of His passion confers;
and it is this which draws men to His feet. It is the gracious and effectual
sway of the atoning sacrifice on all who accept its propitiation: ye are bought
with a price.5 1 2 Corinthians 4:4; 2 John 12:31-32; 3 Romans 14:8-9; 4
Revelation 13:8; 5 1 Corinthians 6:20

2. The self-renunciation of Jesus receives universal government as its reward.
He obtained as a gift the dominion over mankind: Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son
also may glorify Thee: as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He
should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.1 But He also
received the mediatorial government of the universe: Wherefore God also hath
highly exalted Him, and given Him the name which is above every name. 2 Whether
or not the virtue of His passion extended to other worlds, certainly its reward
and honor extends to them 1 John 17:1-2; 2 Php 2:9 III. After His resurrection
He formally assumed His regal sway

1. It was on the Mountain of Galilee, to which He summoned His Apostles and
disciples, and virtually the whole company of believers, that He for the first
time announced His absolute authority in human affairs. Above He had said, All
Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine, 1 with a wider and deeper meaning; but now
He declares, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth: 2 all power in
heaven AND earth, in heaven FOR earth Having already proclaimed His rule below
as Lord of the dead, 3 and having declared it in the midst of His brethren on
earth, He then ascended up to exercise it for ever 1 John 27:10; 2 Matthew
28:18; 3 Romans 14:9

2. Hence it is obvious that the regal office of Christ must not include His
government of the universe as the eternal Son. And further we are prepared for
the doctrine of St. Paul, that the jurisdiction obtained by the Mediator will,
after all its designs are subserved in the salvation of the saints and the
subjection of His enemies, be surrendered to the Father, and mediatorial
authority shall cease. It began after the Cross, and will therefore end when the
redeeming design is fulfilled

IV. The formal analysis of the Redeemer’s regal office, set forth in the Acts as
exercised on earth, in the Apocalypse as exercised in heaven, and in the
Epistles theologically described, can only be summarized here. Almost every
topic finds its more appropriate place hereafter in the Administration of
Redemption

1. The kingdom of Christ is the Christian Church or the kingdom of grace. As
such its treatment must be reserved for a later stage. Meanwhile, some points of
importance require brief notice

(1.) This kingdom is in its widest meaning the re-establishment of the Divine
authority over man. It is the kingdom of heaven, because its Ruler is ascended
into heaven, and there sits upon the throne of saving authority; because its
object is to restore the principles of heavenly obedience upon earth, according
to our first great prayer: Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is
done in heaven; 1 and because it will be consummated when earth becomes heaven
and heaven earth to mankind. It is the kingdom of God, because the Incarnate
Ruler is Himself Divine; and it is thus also distinguished from the kingdoms of
this world 2 which are ordained of God to be the types and reflections of His
supreme rule. Hence the Church, as the kingdom of Christ, is essentially a
spiritual authority over spiritual subjects. Whatever relation it may sustain to
the transitory governments of time, it is entirely independent of them. And,
whatever externality it may assume for a season, its profound and abiding
character is the internal and spiritual reconstruction of the THEOCRACY in which
God, now the God-man, rules over a saved mankind. (2.) It has indeed an outward
organization: laws and administration of law, rulers and submission to rulers,
terms of admission and penalties of excommunication. But all these are connected
rather with the Visible Church, or visible Churches, than with the Kingdom of
Christ, which is the glorious restoration of Divine authority over man: one,
spiritual, ever enlarging and tending to its consummation in heaven. The KINGDOM
has a meaning which the CHURCH has not 1 Matthew 6:10; 2 Revelation 11:15

2. This will be further apparent if we consider how habitually the kingdom of
our Lord is declared to be set up within the individual heart. It is the
interior life of religion, and coincides with the imparted blessings of personal
salvation under the New Covenant, and the ethical relations which result from
them. There is no view of personal religion more comprehensive than that which
makes it the absolute sway of One Ruler within the heart

3. It is the jurisdiction over the world for the sake of the Christian Church.
The New Testament abounds with testimonies, which find their highest expression
in St. Paul’s words concerning the mighty power that hath put all things under
His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the church, which is
His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. 1 The providential
government of human affairs is in the hands of Christ for the sake of the Body
of a new mankind which He is gathering and sanctifying to Himself. (1.) Hence
the kingly office of the LORD OF ALL 2 is exercised in the protection of His
people; He is the Captain of their salvation: 3 He hath on His vesture and on
His thigh a name written: KING or KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. 4 (2.) It is the
Headship of a conquering Gospel which must in some sense win the world,
subjugate and suppress Satanic powers, and rescue mankind as such. When our Lord
first announced His authority He added the words: Make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you;
and, lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world. 5 He Whose Name is
ABOVE EVERY NAME6 here pays fealty to the Holy Trinity whose Representative He
is. But the final accomplishment of the designs of heaven is bound up with
obedience to Himself. For that He waits on His throne. With this Lo we may
connect another in the Old Testament: Lo, My Servant, Whom I uphold! He shall
not fail nor be discouraged, till He have set judgment in the earth.7 1
Ephesians 1:22-23; 2 Acts 10:36; 3 Hebrews 2:10; 4 Revelation 19:16; 5 Matthew
28:19; 6 Php 2:9; 7 Isaiah 42:1

4. The last function of mediatorial sway will be the final judgment; when the
High Priest shall no longer intercede for the world nor the Prophet teach
mankind, but the Son of Man, Who is also the King, shall sit upon the throne of
His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations: 1 gathered for the
first and last time that He may separate them again to be united no more 1
Matthew 25:31-32

5. While the Mediatorial King will lay down His authority, the same King, as
Head of the Church, shall reign for ever. And of His kingdom—as the indwelling
of the supreme glory of the Godhead in mankind—there shall be no end. 1 But
these are subjects that belong to Eschatology

1 Luke 1:33


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  CHAPTER 19: 21. VOL 02 - NAMES OF THE REDEEMER
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Names of the Redeemer NAMES OF THE REDEEMER:

Pretemporal Dignity

Divine Names Of His One Person

Official Names

Combinations

Practical Use

Almost all the elements of Christian doctrine may be connected with the
appellations which the Scripture gives to our Lord, as they are supplemented in
some cases by theological nomenclature. What the names of God are in Theology
proper, the names of Christ are in Christology. They define all we know of His
pretemporal being, of His general Mediatorial relations, whether as the humbled
or as the exalted Christ, of His specific Messianic offices, and of His
relations to the Church in administered salvation They have passed in review
already, but may with considerable advantage be classified

I. The names of the supra-human, supra-creaturely pretemporal being who became
man are twofold: those which belong to Him absolutely as Divine, and those which
belong to Him as the Second Person in the Deity

1. He is GOD absolutely, or the GREAT GOD, GOD BLESSED FOR EVER.1 He is JEHOVAH
OR LORD; the LORD OF GLORY;2 the FIRST AND THE LAST; the BEGINNING AND THE END:3
words implying both the Shaddai and the Adonai of the Old Testament, both the
interior selfsufficiency and the external omnipotence of the Divine Being 1
Romans 9:5; 2 1 Corinthians 2:8; 3 Revelation 22:13

2. As the Second Person in the Godhead He is the Song of Solomon 2:1-17 he SON
or GOD, [God] ONLY BEGOTTEN, 1 WISDOM, the ANGEL OF JEHOVAH, the WORD OF LIFE,
the WORD OF GOD, the WORD, the [MAGE OF GOD, the EFFULGENCE OF HIS GLORY, the
FIRSTBORN3 before every creature; the BEGINNING or Author OF THE CREATION OF
GOD,4 of His own creation as God. With reference to most of these names it may
be said that, while they are based upon the original dignity of the Son, they
are given to Him in His incarnate relations; not one of them but has some
indirect reference to the Divine-human estate

1 John 1:18; 2 Hebrews 1:2; 3 Colossians 1:15; 4 Revelation 3:14 II. The names
that expressly formulate the union of the two natures in the One Person of
Christ are in the Scriptures few

1. Obviously IMMANUEL, 1 God with us, 2 takes the lead: a name once used
symbolically and typically in the Old Testament; in the New so applied as to
become personal; yet never adopted after its first proclamation. It is the first
in the Gospels, and will in reality be the last, surviving as the expression of
an eternal truth when most others have become historical. Some descriptions of
the one Incarnate Person found in the prophets have not been transmitted to the
New Testament. Such is the term THE BRANCH. This belongs to our Lord’s human
nature: And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch
shall grow out of his roots; 3 but also to His Divine: In that day shall the
Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall
be excellent and comely, 4 where the human is the fruit of the earth and the
Divine the Branch of the Lord THE SON is one of those Divine names of the
eternal Second Person which connect Him with the temporal Manifestation: so in
the baptismal formula, 5 where it is difficult to detach the word from its
connection with the Incarnate. With special reference to His Person as including
the Manhood the name SON OF GOD6 is also sometimes used 1 Isaiah 7:14; 2 Matthew
1:23; 3 Isaiah 11:1; 4 Isaiah 4:2; 5 Matthew 28:19; 6 John 9:35

2. One designation stands out with peculiar prominence, as derived from the
Redeemer’s relation to mankind: THE SON OF MAN. Once occurring in Daniel, it was
adopted habitually by our Lord; under peculiar circumstances it was used by St.
Stephen; and then is heard no more. It suggests that instance of the term MAN
where He is called MEDIATOR, the solitary example which permits us to employ the
word as describing the Person of our Lord: ánthroopos Christós Ieesoús,1 Christ
Jesus, not a man or the man, but MAN

1 1 Timothy 2:5

3. None of the phrases used in Scripture has been retained in the language of
theology to express the union of the two natures in the Person of Christ. The
source of the word GODMAN is lost in obscurity: Origen’s claim to it is
doubtful. In theological language such terms are used as THE INCARNATE, the
DIVINE-HUMAN PERSON, the THEANTHROPIC PERSON

III. The designations of the Son of God in His official aspect towards the
universe and to mankind are of course the most numerous and the most important.
They are based on a variety of principles, and require arrangement

1. First, those names of our Lord’s Divine and eternal nature which connect Him
with the creation generally must be distinguished; especially as they form a
transition to His redeeming relations. Going back to the pretemporal titles, we
find that the Eternal Word is the PRINCE or LIFE.1 As the Author of all life, He
is THE LIFE absolutely. Thence He is OUR LIFE; the PRINCE or Captain OF
SALVATION,2 the PRINCE or Author OF THE FAITH,3 Archeegón in these passages
meaning nothing less than that He is the eternal Source and Beginning of that
life which is to us salvation, and is obtained in faith: whence, combining them
all, He is a PRINCE AND A SAVIOUR.4 Though these titles bring the Lord within
the redeeming economy, they have their ground in an eternal relation of the Son
in the Trinity as the Originator of all creaturely existence 1 Acts 3:15; 2
Hebrews 2:10; 3 Hebrews 12:2; 4 Acts 5:31

2. There are some which belong to the times of prophetic preparation, and are
not continued in the New Testament: such are the ANGEL OF JEHOVAH, the MESSENGER
of the Covenant,1 and the SERVANT OF THE LORD.2 These three should be marked in
their unity and gradation: the last of them reappears in the New Testament when
Christ is called a MINISTER,3 and in the words of St. Peter, who speaks of God
having raised up in our nature for His Messianic work His SON Jesus,4 where Pais
is used as in some sense intermediate between Son and servant. Reference may be
made to the names, or the cluster of names, given to the coming Redeemer in
Isaiah: And His Name shall be called WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, THE MIGHTY GOD, THE
EVERLASTING FATHER, THE PRINCE OF PEACE.5 In earlier times He was foreannounced
as SHILOH,6 PEACE,7 which suggests the PRINCE OF PEACE, and He is our PEACE:
there is no word more intimately and sacredly bound up with the Lord and His
work. And earliest of all we find Him designated the SEED:8 of the Woman, of
Abraham, and of David

1 Malachi 3:1; 2 Isaiah 42:1-25; Isaiah 43:1-28; 3 Romans 15:8; 4 Acts 3:26; 5
Isaiah 9:6; 6 Genesis 49:10; 7 Ephesians 2:14; 8 Genesis 3:15

3. The names which denote the relation of the Incarnate Son to His work
generally occupy the central place in this classification

(1.) Some of them define His office in its widest range and in its universal
issues. The largest and broadest of these is JESUS,1 from the Hebrew Jehoshua or
Joshua, Help of the Lord, or Lord-Savior: the NAME OF JESUS2 has a supreme
meaning in the New Testament

He is the PRINCE OF SALVATION, THE SAVIOUR: of all men from the penalty of
original sin; and, of those who believe, from all evil: from its guilt and from
its indwelling, that is from sin and from sinfulness. He is the SALVATION of His
people: Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy Salvation cometh; beheld,
His reward is with Him, and His work before Him.3 He is the Hebrew MESSIAH, and
the universal CHRIST, as the Anointed Agent of the Divine will, and the source
of the anointing of His saints by the Spirit. In both Testaments He is the HOLY
ONE,4 as THE LORD’S ANOINTED. In the execution of all His offices combined He is
our REDEEMER5 from the penalty and power of sin, and from Satan its
representative, and the world its sphere; but this name is not generally given
to Him in Scripture, though constantly applied to His work. When our Lord,
approaching His passion, said, The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many6, He all but called
Himself THE MINISTER OF REDEMPTION, which is the New-Testament form of the
Old-Testament SERVANT of God In His whole manifestation He is the LIGHT of the
Gentiles,7 the GLORY of Israel,8 the DESIRE9 of all nations: according to the
beautiful but doubtful Vulgate translation, Desideratus cunctis gentibus

1 Php 2:10; 2 Hebrews 2:13; 3 Isaiah 62:11; 4 1 John 2:20; 5 Isaiah 59:20; 6
Matthew 20:28; 7 Isaiah 42:6; 8 Isaiah 17:3; 9 Haggai 2:7

(2.) Besides these appellatives, which have become, as it were, proper names, we
find almost every aspect of the benefit of His work providing a title for Him.
He is not called the Justifier: it is God that justifieth;1 but as both the
ground and the administrator of that justification He is THE LORD OUR
RIGHTEOUSNESS;2 and He is Jesus Christ THE RIGHTEOUS.3 In the temple where
holiness reigns He is Himself emphatically THE SANCTIFIER,4 and THE HOLY ONE,5
sharing these titles with the Father and the Spirit

Between our justification in the court, and our sanctification in the temple,
comes in our new life in the house of God; and Christ as the Only-begotten is
THE PRINCE OF LIFE;6 of that life which springs from union with Himself. As to
the covenant ratified in His blood,7 He is THE MEDIATOR as its ground in His
Person and work; the SURETY,8 as the living Pledge in heaven, both for God and
man, of the observance of its conditions and the bestowment of its blessings;
the TESTATOR,9 as appointing to His household those blessings by His will on
death. Looking at the ultimate accomplishment of all its designs Hs is THE
FINISHER10 of the Faith, and THE LIFE11 of believers: the life under its two
aspects gives Him two names: He is THE RESURRECTION12 from universal death, and
He is ETERNAL LIFE13 in its everlasting issues

1 Romans 8:33; 2 Jeremiah 23:6; 3 1 John 2:1; 4 Hebrews 2:11; 5 Acts 3:14; 6
Acts 3:15; 7 Hebrews 9:14; 8 Hebrews 7:22; 9 Hebrews 9:16; 10 Hebrews 12:2; 11
John 14:6; 12 John 11:25; 13 1 John 1:2

IV. The specific offices of the Redeemer yield Him a variety of titles, each of
which describes one aspect of His work, and is inappropriate as applied to the
Person of Christ generally. Of course those only are referred to which are
limited to each office, and for the most part such as are found in Scripture or
in the exact reproductions of Scriptural language. Some of them are too limited
for common application

1. The Lord as the Revealer of the Divine will is pre-eminently the PROPHET.
This was one of the earliest prophetical designations; but when once shown that
in Him the fulfillment had come, the term is no longer applied: it is left to
His servants the prophets, whether of the Old or of the New Testament. For the
same reason those titles have been disused which were given to our Lord with
special reference to His Israelitish mission: such as RABBI, MASTER, TEACHER,
MINISTER OF THE CIRCUMCISION. Once, and once only, is He the APOSTLE, that is,
the antitype of Moses, as He is the HIGH-PRIEST 1 and antitype of Aaron: the
only place in which our Lord is directly connected with these two persons as
united. It might have been expected that here He would have been termed the
Prophet; but the mission of Moses is referred to as the type of that more than a
prophet, Who said, As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. 2 It is with
reference to His prophetic office that He is THE WISDOM OF GOD, THE LIGHT OF THE
WORLD, THE TRUTH: from God, to enlighten men, and perfect human knowledge. There
is an emphasis on His being the TRUE LIGHT that enlighteneth every man, as also
on His being the Truth, both as its substance and its Teacher 1 Hebrews 3:1; 2
John 20:21

2. As the atoning Representative of mankind, that is, in His sacerdotal office,
Jesus has many titles, both descriptive and personal. He is the HIGH-PRIEST:
first, as the Antitype of Aaron, and, secondly, as the Head of a fellowship of
priests, the High-priest of our confession. 1 But as He is now the only Offerer
for sacrifice, the offerings of His people being presented by Him, He is the
PRIEST absolutely: the great Sacrificer and Intercessor for man. Thus the former
sanctions the universal priesthood of Christians, while the latter abrogates
every special ministerial priesthood. From His sacrificial work2 He derives many
appellatives which have become almost personal names. He is the living
PROPITIATORY 3 or Mercy-seat, or atoning Sacrifice. He is the Victim of His own
oblation, the unity of all victims, though only one gives Him a designation: THE
LAMB. The preeminence of this is that it continues to be the name of Jesus in
all His offices in heaven; describing the Incarnate in the Triune glory
receiving the homage of the universe in the midst of the throne, 4 as the King,
taking the Book as the Prophet, and still as it had been slain. Thus the
Baptist’s LAMB OF GOD, 5 which does not directly reappear in the New- Testament
phraseology, is given back from heaven to earth, and has never ceased to be
familiar in Christian devotion. When the Christian Prophet writes as an Apostle
he terms the Intercessor in heaven an ADVOCATE or PARACLETE 6 for His people:
the Word being as much an appellative of Jesus Christ as it is of the Holy
Ghost, the Comforter. St. John rises above all former precedent in calling that
PLEADER in heaven the living PROPITIATION 1 Hebrews 3:3; 2 Ephesians 5:2; 3
Romans 3:25; 4 Revelation 5:6; 5 John 1:29; 6 1 John 2:1-2

3. In His regal office our Savior is LORD of all, His highest name; KING OF
KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS: 1 all power is of God; all lower dignities are given to
the supreme Authority, and hence His many crowns. 2 KING absolutely Jesus is not
named, save indirectly in one of His own parables; but He is the KING’S SON.
PRINCE He is of peace and of life; but the term PRINCE OF LIFE does not refer to
authority so much as to priority and origination: He is the Archeegón tos
zoween. 3 St. Peter calls Him a PRINCE and a Savior And He is the CAPTAIN of
salvation. As Lord He is also the JUDGE; but as He Himself said, / came not to
judge the world, but to save the world, 4 so He does not assume this title.
Though the Father hath committed all judgment unto theSong of Solomon 5:1-16 yet
that Son scarcely bears the name: God is the Judge of all.6 1 1 Timothy 6:15; 2
Revelation 19:12; 3 Acts 5:31; 4 John 12:47; 5 John 5:22; 6 Hebrews 12:23

V. It is profitable to mark also the permutations and combinations of the titles
that are bestowed on the Redeemer, or by which He is invoked. The most obvious
is JESUS CHRIST: this does not mean only, as is sometimes said, the personal and
the official name: both are official names. The variation in the order is
arbitrary. Both Jesus and Christ are found as proper names, and without the
article. But when the term Lord is connected with them there is generally some
reason in the context. Especially is this the case when the full assemblage of
His august titles is given Him: mark the predominance of our LORD JESUS CHRIST
in the first Epistles referring to His coming; 1 when He is also called THE LORD
absolutely. Once we read of the fellowship of His SON JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.2
GOD OUR SAVIOUR3 and THE GREAT GOD AND OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST occur only in
the Pastoral Epistle to Titus. St. Jude calls Him THE ONLY WISE GOD OUR
SAVIOUR.4 St. Peter, THE SHEPHERD AND BISHOP5 of our souls; and he gives the
most enlarged formula: OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.7 But the Lord perhaps
most magnifies His own name: I am ALPHA AND OMEGA, THE FIRST AND THE LAST, THE
BEGINNING AND THE END;6 the same as the Divine name in Rev. chapter 1 And again:
These things saith HE THAT is HOLY, HE THAT is TRUE, HE THAT HATH THE KEY OF
DAVID.8 And again, These things saith THE AMEN, THE FAITHFUL and TRUE WITNESS,
the BEGINNING OF THE CREATION OF GOD.9 One of the Elders called Him THE LION OF
THE TRIBE OF JUDA, THE ROOT OF DAVID.10 Once more it is said of Him that He hath
on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF
LORDS.11 His last testimony to Himself is: I am the ROOT AND THE OFFSPRING OF
DAVID, and the BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR.12 The final words of the Bible invoke
the grace of OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. But a NEW NAME13 has yet to be revealed

1 1 Thessalonians 2:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:27-28; 2 1 Corinthians 1:9; 3 Titus
2:10; Titus 2:13; 4 Jude 1:25; 5 1 Peter 2:15; 6 Revelation 1:8; 22:13; 7 2
Peter 1:11; 8 Revelation 3:7; 9 Revelation 3:14; 10 Revelation 5:5; 11
Revelation 19:16; 12 Revelation 22:16; 13 Revelation 2:17

VI. There is another class of appellatives which refer to our Lord’s relations
to His people. These are metaphors, or symbols, or abstract terms expressing
qualities personified in Him: not precisely names, they are yet more than mere
adjectival descriptions, and are used in the Christian Church very much to the
advantage of its practical and devotional literature. They comprise also figures
derived from almost every region of the mental, and the moral, and the physical
worlds. As our Lord has many crowns, so has He many names: He is clothed with
more titles and epithets, attributes and properties, than any other object in
the universe. Omitting all those which are His because they are God’s, we find
in Scripture an endless abundance applied to the Redeemer distinctively The
largest number of these indicate His relations to His Church: though rather as
defining that relation than as giving Him appellatives. He is the ROCK or
FOUNDATION on which the Church is built: that is, the underlying primitive
foundation on which the foundation of Apostles and Prophets rests: what devotion
has termed THE ROCK OF AGES

Hence He is the CHIEF CORNER STONE.1 Leaving this metaphor, He is to His Church
the GOOD SHEPHERD, the Vine, its HEAD2,3 as it is a corporate body, and for its
sake the Head of the universe also. Again, He is THE WAY: in which alone all men
have access to God, to life, and to heaven. He is the FRIEND OF SINNERS;4 the
BRIDEGROOM5 of His Church; and, by implication, the BROTHER6 of His disciples.
Generally, it may be said that every blessing of which He is the source or
medium gives Him a name. He is the FOUNTAIN opened,8 the WATER and the BREAD of
life, and the PHYSICIAN of souls. He is the DOOR7 of access to God, and life and
heaven. He is to His people ALL AND IN ALL:9 Panta kai en pasin Christos. It is
deeply interesting to trace how variously these Scriptural figures have been
enshrined in the devotional ideas of antiquity, and sanctified by art to the
memorial of our Lord. For instance, the ancient Church has transmitted the
sacred name under the letters IHS, Jesus Hominum Salvator, Jesus the Savior of
men. The word ichthus, fish, was also in familiar use: being composed of the
capital letters of Iesous Christos, Theos uios, sother. Sometimes the letters
INRI stood for Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Judseorum. But all this takes us beyond or
below our Biblical theology

1 1 Peter 2:6; 2 Ephesians 1:22; 3 Colossians 2:19; 4 Luke 7:34; 5 Matthew 25:6;
6 John 20:17; 7 John 10:7; 8 Zechariah 13:1; 9 Colossians 3:11 VII. The
practical use of the study of these names is obvious

1. It is the Divine method of teaching us the doctrines of the economy of
redemption; he who understands the derivation, uses, and bearings of the rich
cluster of terms, in their Hebrew and Greek symbols especially, which are
arranged in this sketch, will have no mean knowledge of this branch of theology
and of theology in general. Such a study will also tend to give precision to the
language of the theologian, especially the preacher, who will observe with what
exquisite propriety every epithet is used by Evangelists and Apostles in
relation to the Person and work and relations of the Redeemer. There can be no
better theological exercise than the study of Evangelical doctrine as based upon
the titles of Jesus

2. No study more surely tends to exalt our Lord. We cannot range in thought over
the boundless names given by inspiration to our adorable Master without feeling
that there is no place worthy of Him below the highest, that He cannot be less
than God to our faith and reverence, and devotion and love. He is precious1
beyond human estimation: hee timeé, He is all that precious-ness means to those
who believe; no words can describe the greatness of His Person and the dignity
it confers on all that is His. Whatsoever toucheth Him is holy

1 1 Peter 2:7

3. The subject suggests also the importance of great caution in the use of the
terms that have been adopted by uninspired theology to supplement the Scripture.
Most of these have been alluded to above. It will be observed that while some of
them are very valuable, indeed indispensable, in dogmatic theology, none have
lodged in the common language of Christendom but those which the New Testament
gives

4. Lastly, the spirit of reverence must lead us to conform our thoughts and our
words concerning Him, whether in devotion or preaching or meditation, to the
example of the Scriptures. Those whom He called His friends,1 and would not call
His servants, those whom He, after the resurrection, termed My brethren,2 made
it their practice to abstain from reciprocating these names: Jesus is never
their Friend nor their Brother; nor is there one epithet of endearment applied
to Him in all their writings. The Father alone calls Him Beloved: Behold, Mine
Elect, in Whom My soul delighteth!3 in the Old-Testament prophecy, given back
again and again with increase in the New-Testament fulfillment: This is My
belovedSong of Solomon 4:1-16 With regard to the Father alone is Christ said to
be dear: His dearSong of Solomon 5:1-16 though even then it is only the Son of
His love. As to the Apostles, and all their followers, they are His
bondservants, doulos; He is their LORD JESUS CHRIST. We must be guided by their
example. It is our most blessed self-denial to suppress the overflowings of
human affection towards Him in Whom we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of
glory.6 In every thought of Him, and word concerning Him, the Divinity in the
Incarnate Person must ever be pre-eminent and govern all 1 John 15:15; 2 John
20:17; 3 Isaiah 53:1; 4 Matthew 7:5; 5 Colossians 1:13; 6 1 Peter 1:8


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  CHAPTER 20: 22. VOL 02 - THE FINISHED WORK
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The Finished Work THE FINISHED WORK: THE VICARIOUS OBLATION OF PERFECT OBEDIENCE
CHRIST’S ATONEMENT as to Himself an Obedience unto Death Obedience or Sacrifice
Obedience and Sacrifice

Virtue or Merit not for Himself but for us VICARIOUS EXPIATION AND PROPITIATION
as to Man Vicarious as to the World Representative as to His People in their
Mystical Union with Him Satisfaction and Expiation Atonement and Propitiation
Scriptural Phraseology Theological Modifications This comprehensive historical
view of the Saviour’s manifestation leads finally to what is its one result as
it respects the salvation of mankind. This is sometimes called Atonement,
sometimes Redemption: the former term derived from the efficient virtue, the
latter from the effect, of the Saviour’s intervention. The teaching of Scripture
on this subject may be summed as follows: The Finished Work, as accomplished by
the Mediator Himself, in His relation to mankind, is His Divine-human obedience
regarded as an expiatory sacrifice: the Atonement proper. Then it may be studied
in its results as to God, as to God and man, and as to man. First, it is the
supreme manifestation of the glory and consistency of the Divine attributes;
and, as to this, is termed the Righteousness of God

Secondly, as it respects God and man, it is the Reconciliation, a word which
involves two truths, or rather one truth under two aspects: the propitiation of
the Divine displeasure against the world is declared; and therefore the sin of
the world is no longer a bar to acceptance. Thirdly, in its influence on man, it
may be viewed as Redemption: universal as to the race, limited in its process
and consummation to those who believe These general propositions express the
revelations of Scripture mainly in its own terms Their modifications in
historical theology will be considered afterwards and in strict subordination.
The term FINISHED ATONEMENT must be understood to be used here with a threefold
design. First, it is intended to mark the compendious result or summary of the
work of Christ in all His offices, and in its final expression: almost every
element of the doctrine of the Atonement has been introduced in the previous
section, which traced the historical manifestation of the Redeeming Mediator;
but now the issue of all is set forth in its finished statement. Secondly, it
gives emphasis to the fact that the work of Christ is here viewed objectively,
as the atonement for mankind; it is the accomplished redemption as apart from
the application of it; it is the basis and foundation of all that follows in the
economy of the Holy Ghost. Thirdly, this meaning is to be kept distinct from
that which refers the finished work of Christ to the secured salvation of the
Elect, laying the stress on its being finished FOR THEM once for all and for
ever. It is perfect in the design of God and in the work of His Son; but its
application to individual sinners is perpetually beginning afresh THE VICARIOUS
OBLATION Our Saviour’s sacrifice on the cross finished a perfect obedience which
He offered in His Divine-human Person. This was His own obedience, and therefore
of infinite value or worthiness; but it was vicarious/ and its benefit belongs
absolutely to our race, and, on certain conditions, to every member of it. As
availing for man, by the appointment of God, it is no less than the
satisfaction, provided by Divine love, of the claims of Divine justice upon
transgression: which may be viewed, on the one hand, as an expiation of the
punishment due to the guilt of human sin; and, on the other, as a propitiation
of the Divine displeasure, which is thus shown to be consistent with infinite
goodwill to the sinners of mankind. But the expiation of guilt and the
propitiation of wrath are one and the same effect of the Atonement. Both suppose
the existence of sin and the wrath of God against it. But, in the mystery of the
Atonement, the provision of eternal mercy, as it were, anticipates the
transgression, and love always in every representation of it has the
pre-eminence. The passion is the exhibition rather than the cause of the Divine
love to man THE ATONEMENT

Viewed as His own, the expiatory work of Christ was a perfect spontaneous
Obedience and a perfect spontaneous Sacrifice to the Will of the Father imposed
upon Him. The two terms may be regarded in their difference and in their unity
as constituting the act and virtue of the Atonement. Its worthiness, or what is
sometimes called its merit, connects it with the human race, and depends on two
other truths; it was not due for Himself, but was an act of infinite charity for
man; and that act was Divine, both in its value and in its efficiency. The
offering of the Redeemer had infinite efficacy for the human race The atonement
was our Lord’s OBEDIENCE unto death; and it was the SACRIFICE of His life in
perfect obedience. There is one passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews which
perfectly unites these two representations: Lo, I come to do Thy will, 0 God!1
These words, twice uttered, present the Saviour’s whole work as one great act of
obedience. But they are preceded and followed by a reference to sacrifice.
First, to the sacrifices offered by the law, which are displaced: sacrifice and
offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me; then to His own
perfect oblation: by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of
the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The obedience to the will of God is the
sacrifice of the body prepared for our atoning Mediator 1 Hebrews 10:5-10 1.
Either of these words taken alone expresses the quality and character of the
atoning act.

(1.) It was a great OBEDIENCE, in the perfect submission of His will to the will
of the Father, which required the surrender of His life as the penalty of guilt:
all was summed up in that one word. He undertook the service of man’s redemption
as laid upon Him, and He accomplished it through all its requirements down to
the suffering of the penalty of Divine displeasure against sin: He became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.1 As by one man’s disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the Obedience of One shall many be made
righteous.2 Here the whole work of atonement is one obedience which
counterbalances the act of man’s disobedience.

(2.) But it was also a passive endurance of a lot imposed upon Him from the
moment of His assumption of our nature; and this is expressed by the word
SACRIFICE. It is true that our Representative offered the sacrifice freely of
His own will; but the whole series and detail of His humiliations, sorrows, and
derelictions came upon Him as it were from without: from the mysterious pressure
of sin without guilt, from the enmity of the world and of Satan, from the
visitation of the Father. His entire incarnate existence on earth was a meek
endurance: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things? Thus it is written!3
1 Php 2:8; 2 Romans 5:19; 3 Luke 24:26; Luke 24:46;

2. Their difference, however, must also be marked; though now only in relation
to our Lord Himself.

(1.) The Obedience regards the whole work of Christ as an active fulfillment of
righteousness, passing through all stages to its consummation in death. As the
appointed Representative of mankind He had an atoning work to do, which
included, and also infinitely exceeded, the ordinary duty of human nature. Yet
He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.1 We never read of any
obedience of the Godman which was not submission and endurance. He entered on
His career of duty by this gate. The moral law was to Him as law written afresh
and in one character, as the expansion of one only duty. It is not said that His
obedience was made perfect by suffering; but that He Himself was as a Sufferer
made perfect through sufferings.2 His supreme submission to that law was His
finished obedience; and that consummate selfsurrender tested and approved in
extreme temptation was the active side of His atonement: the negativing sin
itself in His own Person, representing mankind.

(2.) But the very same deeds and sorrows which undid or cancelled the sin of
humanity were a suffering endurance of the penalty of sin; and this was the
passive side of His atonement: the tribute of expiatory satisfaction to the
justice of the Lawgiver. The mystery and perfection of our Saviour’s Atoning Act
was this, that, as vicarious, it at one and the same moment made both the sin
and the penalty as though they were not. Viewed in one light He represents man
as canceling his sin by a new obedience; viewed in another He represents man as
discharging the debt as penalty 1 Hebrews 5:8; 2 Hebrews 2:10

3. It will perhaps throw some light both upon the unity and upon the difference
of these two terms if we refer them to the Mediatorial Court and the Mediatorial
Temple respectively Viewed as a tribute to Righteousness the Ministry of our
Lord is simply and solely a great Obedience, active AND passive, and nothing
more. Law demands both obedience and the penalty of disobedience: not both at
once from man and in human courts; but from the Representative of man and in the
court Divine both are required, and both in His life and death are offered.
Viewed as a tribute to the Holiness of the Divine nature the Ministry of our
Lord is a sacrifice which God accepts as offered for the human race

Transferred into the Holiest the satisfaction of Divine justice becomes a
satisfaction of Divine love. And here the same most wonderful combination of two
ideas comes in. As an expiatory sacrifice to the holiness of God the soul of the
sinner could not be at once offered in death and accepted as living; could not
be at once a sin offering doomed to destruction and a burnt offering well
pleasing to God. But in man’s Representative at the holy altar these most
gloriously meet. He presented a sacrifice which was the veritable endurance of
the consequence of transgression:

He died unto sin once.1 But that death was also the LIVING SACRIFICE2 of our
human nature, given back to God in its perfection again. As in the court of law
perfect obedience is rendered by discharge of a duty which was also the
suffering of the penalty of disobedience, so in the temple of holiness an
expiation of guilt by death is itself the display of propitiation towards the
living offender

These seem to be paradoxes; but they express the very secret and mystery of our
redemption. It cannot, however, be too deeply impressed that these two are only
aspects of one atonement. As an obedience unto death it becomes ours in
justification; as a sacrifice of self-surrender, it becomes ours in
sanctification 1 Romans 6:10; 2 Romans 12:1 ITS VIRTUE OR MERIT The term
ATONEMENT, by which the sacred writers express the idea of Reconciliation as the
effect of Christ’s work, is in modern theology used to express the virtue of the
redeeming passion as resting upon the merit of Him who suffered it. The value of
the perfect oblation is of great importance, as the link which connects it with
us. Neither of these words is used in Scripture, which, however, always assumes
and implies the inconceivable price at which are to be valued both the Person
and the work of the Redeemer Himself

1. Nothing that belongs to the incarnate history of Jesus can be regarded as
terminating in Himself, He was not man for His own sake: had He joined us for
His own glory His alliance with our race would not have been by incarnation and
birth into its dying lineage

He became man that He might give us what He needed not for Himself. Virtue there
would have been, but not merit, in the sorrows of one who expiated his own sin,
and in that sense was made perfect through suffering. Remembering that the
Redeemer’s duty was His passion, and that in His example as proposed to us this
is always prominent, if not alone, we shall see the force of St. Peter’s words:
Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust.1 Almost every
leading exhibition of the Atonement in Scripture makes the sinlessness of the
Redeemer prominent; and this implies that His passion was voluntary and for
others. Nowhere is the active righteousness regarded as obligatory on Christ: He
descended to a kind of obedience which was no necessity of His being. Hence both
as a Sacrifice and as an Obedience the Lord’s work was for us: meritorious, to
use our human term, as not required for Himself

1 1 Peter 3:18

2. The atoning work itself was a manifestation of perfect charity viewed as
offered by a Man. If we strive to rise to the conception that our Lord’s
obedience and sacrifice were presented by a member of our race untainted by sin,
and therefore reckoned to such a Person as something most precious in the sight
of Heaven, and then superadd to this that, being God, He can bestow on His
creatures this Gift of His own work, then we have the Scriptural teaching of an
offering presented by Man for himself: combining supreme love to God and supreme
charity to mankind in the highest perfection of both. Now we must so view it, as
our own oblation. Man was in Christ reconciling God to himself by the most
precious oblation. We are Christ’s and Christ is ours. The Redeemer was not His
own but our possession. He gave Himself TO us before He gave Himself FOR us.
When He obeyed unto a sacrificial death we undid our sin by a perfect obedience,
and at the same time gave our life and our all as a penalty for our sin. Our
redeeming Representative was our Sin-offering and Burnt-offering in one: in Him
we give our life to justice, and present our expiated life anew to God, and both
in one

3. But the virtue, value, and merit of the Atonement must be measured by the
value of His Person who is at once the Offering and the Offerer. It is an unreal
abstraction that we consider when we speak of the Great Oblation being presented
by man. But it becomes a most blessed concrete reality when we regard it as
offered by the God-man Who gave Himself.1 As God He gave His human life, but
more than that: He gave the value of His Divine Sonship with it. As Man He
freely presented Himself in obedience to the Father; but it was the Eternal
Spirit of His Divinity that gave Him the strength to make the offering, and
impressed on it its value when made. Here is the secret of our Saviour’s merit:
it is only the human word for the Divine complacency in the submission of His
Son. This is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.2 The meaning here is,
that on this Man, or Representative of man, God can look with more than the
original satisfaction with which He regarded Adam. He saw His beloved Son
incarnate; and, when He uttered His complacency, it was over the whole work and
passion of Christ, which was anticipated as finished; and, as finished, made
available for the human race 1 1 Timothy 2:6; 2 Matthew 17:5 THE VICARIOUS
EXPIATION AND PROPITIATION As the Atonement avails for the human race, and is
therefore ours, it must be viewed as a vicarious satisfaction of the claims of
Divine justice or expiation of the guilt of sin, and propitiation of the Divine
favor No adjective equivalent to the term Vicarious, as expressing the
Redeemer’s relation to mankind, is used in Scripture; nor is there any
equivalent for Substitution, the noun corresponding to the adjective. But the
idea of a strictly vicarious representation lies at the root of its teaching. An
absolute substitution of the Saviour’s obedience or sacrifice in the place of
the suffering and obedience of His people is not taught in the Word of God The
substitutionary idea is in their case qualified by that of representation on the
one hand, and the mystical fellowship of His saints on the other. If unqualified
at all, it is so with reference to the race at large or the world of mankind I.
The purely vicarious quality of our Saviour’s work refers only to the world or
the race

Christ in His Person is the Son of man; and, as the new Adam, the Head and
Summary of mankind, stands in the stead of all whom He represents. All that He
is and does and suffers He is and does and suffers for the entire human family.
Adam represented all, the multitude who were not in existence save in him; our
Lord represented the same, who were not in existence save in Him. Before men
were in being He assumed a universal relation to them, and that must have been
strictly vicarious. The preposition anti, instead of, is used by our Lord in a
saying which must rule all others: The Son of Man came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many;1 where the many
are the all. St. Paul employs uper: If one died for all, then were all dead,2
or, rather, all died. Both, united and strengthened, are used by him again at
the close of his teaching, in a sentence which condenses more of the substance
of the doctrine than any other: For there is one God, and one Mediator between
God and men, the Man Christ Jesus; who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be
testified in due time:3 anti lutron uper panton, both the word and the
construction being unique in Greek literature. The idea of substitution is
stamped deeply here; and in this its most forcible expression in the New
Testament the vicarious universality is stated in three ways: the Person is MAN,
for men; He is a ransom FOR ALL; and the context admits no limitation, as the
intercession was demanded for all men, and of God Who willeth all men to be
saved.4 1 Matthew 20:28; 2 2 Corinthians 5:14; 3 1 Timothy 2:5-6; 4 1 Timothy
2:4

II. Our Lord’s vicarious relation to His people, subjectively receiving the
Atonement, is modified by the two ideas of representation and the mystical
personal union with Him

1. The former is current in the New Testament, which invariably represents Jesus
as standing at the head of a fellowship of men for whose sake He has done and
suffered all, that through His atoning mediation they might have access and
hope. The doctrine is not that a penalty has been endured by Christ instead of
His people; that He has occupied their legal place and borne their legal
responsibility; and therefore that they are for ever discharged. It is rather
that a sacrificial offering has been presented by Him instead of the race; and
that He, making the virtue of His atonement the strength of His plea, represents
all that come unto God by Him.1 The propitiation offered for all men, and
accepted, becomes effectual only for the penitent who embraces it by trusting in
Him Whom God hath set forth to be a Propitiation in His blood through faith.2 So
also Christ appears in the presence of God for us,3 or on our behalf. His
sacrificial obedience is not vicarious in the sense of discharging all its
beneficiaries from obligation to do and suffer; for it was offered on behalf of
the whole world,4 and they may perish for whom Christ died.5 1 Hebrews 7:25; 2
Romans 3:25; 3 Hebrews 9:24; 4 1 John 2:2; 5 1 Corinthians 8:11

2. The union of the believer with his Lord gives another qualification to the
vicarious idea. Substitution pure and simple is inconsistent with the thought
that the virtue of the Atonement is in any way dependent on personal
participation with Christ by faith. But nothing is more certain than that His
sacrifice is valid only for those who are mystically united with their Head in
His death and resurrection. St. Paul says, not for himself only but for every
believer, I am crucified with Christ . . . Who loved me, and gave Himself for
me.1 And he habitually speaks of fellowship with the Savior in His death and
resurrection, as making the general Atonement the individual possession. Now
this union with Christ by faith does not mean, on the one hand, that the
believer must add anything to the Supreme Expiation: that is a perversion which
has been forced on the doctrine. But, on the other, it precludes the possibility
of such a vicarious substitution as makes the atoning, work of Christ absolutely
independent of, our relation to it. The propitiation in His blood is through
faith;2 and this faith, uniting the soul to Christ, qualifies without impairing
the truly vicarious character of His redeeming work 1 Galatians 2:20; 2 Romans
3:25 SCRIPTURAL PHRASEOLOGY

There are two Greek terms, or families of terms, on which hang the details of
the doctrine just laid down: hilasmos and katallage are their representatives.
The relations of these are clear and distinct in the original Scriptures; but
they are to some extent confused in our present English translation

1. The former assumes three leading forms in the New Testament. Christ is the
halismos, the virtue of the propitiation and the Propitiator: He is the
Propitiation for our sins;1 not the hilasmor, because the process of His
propitiating is lost in the effect. He is the living Expiation. He is also the
hilasmrion, the Kapporeth, or Mercy-seat, according to the use of the word in
the Septuagint: Whom God hath set forth to be a Propitiation,2 that is, as a
mercy-seat, between Himself and sinners. Or, if the word be an adjective, then
Thuma is understood, and He is a propitiatory sacrifice. As the High-priest He
is said halaskesthas tas hamartias, that is, to expiate sins; a correct English
translation gives this meaning: to make propitiation for the sins of the
people.3 1 John 2:2; 2 Romans 3:25; 3 Hebrews 2:17

2. The latter is the word which is translated in the English version both by
atonement and by reconciliation: the latter, however, is its strict meaning; or
atonement, if this word retains its original sense AT-ONE-MENT. The verb
katallassein signifies the virtue of the mediation of Christ as composing a
difference between God and man, and katallagh the result: the new relation in
which the world stands to God, He being no longer an antidikos, and the world
being no more an object of wrath. The context in the two passages where the verb
is used shows that God is the antagonist; of which more hereafter

3. Both these verbs have God for the Subject and not for the Object. The Supreme
Being reconciles the world to Himself; it is not said that He is reconciled:
this simply gives expression to the great truth that the whole provision for the
re-establishment of peace is from above. God is reconciled to man, but in Christ
who is Himself God: He therefore is the Reconciler while He is the Reconciled.1
So also the word expiate refers to an act of God: it is not said that He is
propitiated, but that He propitiates Himself or brings Himself near by providing
an expiation for the sin. Strictly speaking the atoning sacrifice declares a
propitiation already in the Divine heart 1 2 Corinthians 5:19

4. A comparison of the two passages already referred to will illustrate this. In
the one, We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom we have now
received the Atonement,1 thn katallagoon, this last word ought to be rendered
the Reconciliation. In the other, A merciful and faithful High Priest in things
pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people,2
hiláskesthai tás hamartías, ought to be rendered to make atonement for the sins.
If the terms Atonement and Reconciliation changed places, in these passages, the
meaning would be more clear. It may be observed, in connection with this, that
there is a similar want of uniformity, as to the phraseology, in the English
translation of the Old Testament. The expression lakapeer is the habitual
technical term for the ceremonial covering of sin, as in this leading passage:
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have GIVEN it to you upon the
altar to make an atonement FOR your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an
atonement IN the soul.2 Here three things already adverted to may be recalled.
The atonement is given or appointed of God: His own Divine and eternal ordinance
of canceling sin. Then, the life or soul in the blood, not the blood itself,
makes the atonement. Finally, the atoning life covers the soul for which it
avails. It is obvious that in this central passage sin is the object of the
whole transaction. The reconciled or propitiated Jehovah displays His method of
expiating transgression. But in some other passages the same verb is, as in the
New Testament, translated by Reconcile; as if ton Theon were to be understood
after hiláskesthai. One may be quoted which represents many: And when He hath
made an end of reconciling the holy place,3 where the idea is that of applying
the virtue of the atonement to the place which thus only can retain the
indwelling Presence. A careful comparison of the Hebrew verb and noun with their
equivalents in the Septuagint and the English Version will show that many
accessory notions have been connected with them, such as Ransom, Cleansing,
Satisfaction, Propitiation. But the fundamental thought remains that the
Atonement is a Covering provided by God for the sinful and guilty soul of man 1
Hebrews 2:17; 2 Leviticus 17:11; 3 Leviticus 16:20 THEOLOGICAL MODIFICATIONS

There are certain modifications of those two leading terms which, both by
inflection and addition, have been introduced into historical theology. These
may be best studied in some of their mutual aspects

1. The specific idea of SATISFACTION has been added to that of EXPIATION. The
former is in the court of law what the latter is in the temple. Reparation is
made to the honor of the Lawgiver and the claims of the law in the suffering of
Christ: and that is satisfaction. The atoning blood and life of the Victim
covers the guilty soul so that its sin is not visited for punishment: and that
is expiation. But the idea as referred to the Divine Being is really twofold: it
is the satisfaction of His unutterable love which provides the atonement; and it
is the satisfaction of His eternal holiness which must be a consuming fire to
evil. Referred to the law, it is purely the endurance of its sentence or
sanction, without which law is not law: this latter is the common theological
meaning, but the former ought not to be forgotten. The word is not found in our
Scriptures save once: Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction, koper, for the
life of a murderer.1 There was no Levitical atonement for him, he shall be
surely put to death. As commonly used to signify the unlimited reparation made
for the dishonor done to the majesty of holiness by sin, it has no direct,
though abundant indirect, sanction in the New Testament. But it evermore blends
with the idea of propitiation: God is propitious, or favorably brought near, to
the entire race of mankind: there is now but one anthroopoktónos, for whom
eternal right shall take no satisfaction.2 And the satisfaction offered in the
sacrifice of Christ is a satisfaction of the Divine love before it is to be
considered as a reparation to the Divine justice 1 Numbers 35:31-32; 2 John 8:44
2. Hence EXPIATION and PROPITIATION, one in Scripture, are theologically to be
separated

Expiation refers the sacrifice to the sinner and the sin; Propitiation to the
Supreme whose displeasure, not whose justice, —for justice cannot be
propitiated, — is declared to be allayed. Both terms have a high and glorified
meaning in Scripture as compared with secular phraseology and conceptions.
Expiation requires sacrifice: a victim there must be; for this word, whether in
heathenism or in revelation, belongs to temple ritual. Heathen expiations
regarded only the blood and the vicarious death, which the guilty conscience of
mankind has always vainly presented to appease the deities. Revealed expiation
regards the life as in the blood: having always in view that sacrificial death
which was offered by a Living Sacrifice. In one and the same symbol the death
was suffered, the blood being sprinkled in token of that, and also the spotless
life of the victim interposed between justice and the sinner, covering his
person and his guilt. Propitiation, from PROPE, near, indicates in the Bible
that the favor and good pleasure of God is attracted to the sinner by the
mediation of Jesus. HE IS THE PROPITIATION1 because in Him God is nearer to man
the sinner than even to man the unfallen. The fact, that holy wrath is turned
away through the Atoning satisfaction is a secret behind the Incarnation: in the
very essence of the Triune God. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that
He loved us, and sent His Son the Propitiation for our sins.2 The profound truth
remains, that the Divine wrath and the Divine love are revealed at once in
Christ, but love must have the pre-eminence in our phraseology 1 1 John 2:2; 2 1
John 4:10

3. The word ATONEMENT has undergone a certain change. In the New Testament it is
rather a legal term, signifying the restoring of a pacified relation,
katallagoo. But, as a theological and not a Biblical word, it returns from its
New-Testament signification to that of the Old Testament. It expresses the
Divine virtue of that mediatorial work which reconciles in God Himself love and
holiness, justice and mercy: in God Himself, before the Reconciliation was
exhibited in the world. Of the distinction between this Atonement eternally in
God and Reconciliation in the world of time we must speak again. Suffice that
the word in our current use testifies, not to the restoration of fellowship with
God, but to the virtue of the Great Sacrifice through which that restoration is
displayed or effected. We mean by THE ATONEMENT the whole economy of our Lord’s
saving intervention as consummated on the cross. It is the ilasmos and
ilaskesthas which answers to the koper and the kaper Just as we employ the term
Redemption to designate Christ’s work as saving man generally; and the term
Reconciliation to signify the ministry through which that salvation is
proclaimed; so we use the term Atonement to include the virtue of the redeeming
work as propitiating the Divine mercy to our race. In fact, it is the
theological formula for all that belongs to that work


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  CHAPTER 21: 23. VOL 02 - THE ATONEMENT IN ITS RESULTS
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The Atonement in its Results THE ATONEMENT IN ITS RESULTS: AS TO GOD; THE DIVINE
GLORY

Divine Name Divine Attributes Divine Righteousness Views of Atonement in
Scripture as Satisfaction in God

Love to Man Display of Righteousness AS TO GOD AND MAN; RECONCILIATION God
Reconciler and Reconciled Reconciliation of World or Human Nature Personal
Reconciliation AS TO MAN; REDEMPTION From what—Sin, Satan, and Death By what—the
Price To Whom and by Whom offered For whom—Universal Particular Application
HISTORY OF DOGMA

Ante-Nicene Gnostics and Satan’s place in the Doctrine

Pre-Anselmic Greek and Latin Teaching

Anselm

Cur Deus Homo Controversies of Schoolmen

Tridentine The Reformation Socinianism and Rationalism Grotian and Arminian

General Results

Having viewed the Atonement as presented by Christ, its virtue or merit
expiating sin and satisfying the claims of Divine justice and love, we must now
regard it in its effect as an accomplished act. The result of the One Offering
is represented in Scripture in its relation to God, to God and man, and to man.
As to God, it is the final saving manifestation of His glory; as to God and man,
it is the Reconciliation; as to man more particularly, it is Redemption. These,
however, are only different aspects of one and the same Atonement, which are
distinguished, though not systematically distinguished, in the New Testament AS
TO GOD: THE DIVINE GLORY IN REDEMPTION In the finished work of Christ, the Name,
Attributes and Government of God are most fully exhibited and glorified. The
Triune Name is made known; the Love and Righteousness of God have their highest
and best manifestation, as the expression of the Divine will; and the Moral
Government of the Supreme is supremely vindicated THE TRIUNE NAME The name of
the Triune God is especially made known and therefore glorified in the mediation
of the Incarnate Redeemer. The revelation of the Trinity is bound up with the
revelation of redemption; the development of one was the development of .the
other, and both were perfected together. The Son, addressing the Father a prayer
which regards the Atonement as accomplished, declares: I have manifested Thy
name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world.1 This can refer only to
the disclosure of that new name of Father which the incarnation and teaching of
the Son had made manifest. Not long before He had said: Father, glorify Thy
name;2 when the response was given: I have both glorified it, and will glorify
it again. His own name as the Son was now for the first time made known: Now is
the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.3 Only in the Son is the
Father revealed; and there is no Son revealed save in redemption. Hence the
Saviour’s prayer asks that the mutual glorification of the Father and the Son
may be complete: Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also
may glorify Thee.4 And this must be interpreted in the light of the preceding
discourse, which shows that the full disclosure of the name of the Son, here
prayed for, must await the manifestation of a Third Name, that of the Holy
Ghost. The Divine Spirit is the Revealer both of the Father and the Son; and on
the day of Pentecost the eternal mystery of the Trinity was fully made known:
God reserved His pro-foundest revelation of Himself for the Finished Atonement.
Our Lord pronounced The Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost5
only after His resurrection. The mystery of His perfect love unfolded the
mystery of His perfect essence. But this subject has been already discussed
under the Mediatorial Trinity 1 John 17:6; 2 John 12:28; 3 John 13:31 4 John
17:1; 5 Matthew 28:19 THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES The attributes of God are glorified
both singly and unitedly, and in a transcendent manner, by the mediation of the
Incarnate. This indeed is included in the meaning of the prayer that the Name of
God might be glorified in His Son; for that Name is not only the Triune Name,
but the assemblage of the Divine perfections. Throughout the Old Testament and
the New the Divine glories, especially those which we may in this connection
call the glories of the moral attributes, are condensed over the mercy-seat:
receiving from it their highest illustration. There is a gradational display of
the eternal majesty. The heavens declare the glory of God,1 while the whole
earth is full of His glory.2 Again, in Judah is God known:3 His Name is great in
Israel, but it is Israel’s Temple which His train filled. And the Temple itself
is filled only with the diffusive radiance: it was in the Holiest that He
appeared in the cloud upon the mercy-seat.4 The perfect revelation of the Triune
God in the Incarnate Son of the Godhead has presented the Divine Attributes in a
new aspect, and to mortal man they will never otherwise be known. God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.5 And
in the New Testament it is obvious that with scarcely an exception every
reference to the combined or individual perfections of God refers to their
exhibition in the work of Christ. At least, all other allusions lead up to this.
Not to repeat what has already been made prominent under the Divine Attributes,
it may suffice to mention the new and perfect revelation of the holiness and
love of God as disclosed in the Atonement 1 Psalms 19:1; 2 Isaiah 6:3; 3 Psalms
76:1; 4 Leviticus 16:2; 5 2 Corinthians 4:6

1. The latter here has the pre-eminence. Never is the love of God, absolutely,
connected with the works of creation, or with the general dispensations of
Providence. Over them loving kindness reigns, but Divine charity is reserved for
the Atonement. It gives a new name to the nature of God: GOD is LOVE. Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
Propitiation for our sins,1 where we may omit to be 1 1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:10

2. The Divine HOLINESS is exhibited as conspicuously as the Divine love, so far
as concerns the process of redemption: love is supreme in the origination, and
will be supreme at the end—for mercy rejoiceth against judgment,1 not over it,
though over against it— but in the actual atoning work the justice of holiness,
demanding the punishment and extermination of sin, is displayed in the most
awful manner of which the human mind can form any conception

1 James 2:13

3. It is important to remember that Holy Scripture never makes such a
distinction between the love and the holiness of God as theology thinks it
necessary to establish. The mercy that provides and the justice that requires
the Atonement are one in the recesses of the Divine nature. Their union or
identity is lost to us in the thick darkness of the light which we cannot
approach. The cross of Christ, or rather the whole mediation of the Redeemer,
equally and at once reveals both. Herein is love—to quote once more the final
revelation of Scripture on this subject—not that we loved God but that He loved
us, and sent His Son the Propitiation for our sins.1 In our infirmity we find it
needful to correct our estimate of one attribute by appealing to the other. The
Scripture scarcely condescends to that infirmity. It speaks of the Divine
agápee2 as ordering the whole economy of what is nevertheless an hilasmós or
propitiation, and of the Divine eudokia3 as ordering the whole economy of what
is nevertheless a hoú nún teén katallagoo. We shall hereafter see how these four
words meet in the sacrifice of the cross, where love reigns through the infinite
sacrifice of love 1 1 John 4:10; 2 1 John 4:10; 3 Colossians 1:19

4. But it is the glory and unity of all the attributes that the work of Christ
exhibits in their perfection. There is nothing that belongs to our conception of
the Divine nature which is not manifested in His Son, Who both in His active and
in His passive righteousness reveals all that is in the Father. Man, in fact,
knows God only as a God of redemption; nor will He ever by man be otherwise
known. Throughout the Scriptures of truth we have a gradual revelation of the
Divine Being which is not finished until it is finished in Christ: God also, as
well as man, is en autoó pepleerooménoi, COMPLETE IN HIM. It is not enough to
say that the Trinity Whom Christians adore is made known in Jesus, and that this
or the other attribute which theology ascribes to Him is illustrated in His
work. God Himself, with every idea we form of His nature, is given to us by the
revelation of Christ. The gracious and awful Being Who is presented in the
Christian Scriptures is not in all respects such a Deity as human reason would
devise or tolerate when presented. But to us there is but ONE GOD; and we must
receive Him, as He is made known to us through the mystery of the Atoning
Mediation of His Son. His Name is proclaimed only in the Cross; there we have
His Divine and only Benediction; and every Doxology in Revelation derives its
strength and fervor from the Atonement THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT The Government of
the Supreme Ruler of the universe is perfectly vindicated by the Atonement. This
effect of the work of Christ is much dwelt upon by St. Paul; and is perhaps the
most obvious and comprehensible view of it which can be taken. It gives its
coloring to a large portion of the New-Testament phraseology; especially,
however, to the recorded Discourses and the leading Epistle of that Apostle

1. There are three views of the Atonement in Scripture. It is sometimes regarded
as the result of a mystery that had been transacted in the Divine mind before
its manifestation in time. Sometimes, again, it is exhibited as a demonstration
of God’s love to mankind, and self-sacrifice in Christ for their sake: as it
were to move the hearts of men with hatred of sin and desire to requite so much
mercy. Strictly speaking, this is not given as an explanation of the Atonement:
the New Testament does not sanction the idea that our Lord’s self-sacrifice is
made an argument with sinners. It is never so used. Certainly, God commendeth
His love toward us;1 but here St. Paul is exhorting Christians, already saved,
to rely upon the abundant provision of grace for the future which is guaranteed
by the demonstration of love in the past. Everywhere the love of God, whether
the Father or the Son, in the Atonement is used as a most mighty argument of
self-devotion, severity of morals, tenderness to man, and universal, boundless
charity. It is never employed to melt the heart of a sinner: certainly that
object is nowhere given as an explanation of Christ’s work. And, lastly, it is
set forth as an expedient for upholding the dignity of the Ruler of the universe
and Administrator of law. These three views, or, to use modern language,
theories of the Atonement are combined in the Scriptures: neither is dwelt upon
apart from the rest. The perfect doctrine includes them all. Every error springs
from the exaggeration of one of these elements at the expense of the others

1 Romans 5:8

2. St. Paul, in the Epistle which treats most fully of the universal moral
government of God, thus makes the last of the three emphatic, while expressly or
by inference including the two others. He carries the doctrine into the court of
justice

(1.) The Evangelical method of saving and making men righteous is called the
Righteousness of God. It is said to declare His righteousness for the remission
of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God:1 that is, to make His
righteousness appear, by a retrospective interpretation of its ways, consistent
with its passing over or pretermission, dia ton paresin, of sins in past ages.
This vindicates the rectoral government of God, based upon one and the same
method of righteousness, FOR THE PAST of the preparatory economy, whether of
Gentiles or Jews. To declare, 1say, at this time His righteousness; that He
might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus: that is, it
enables Him to treat a sinner as a righteous man, and yet be Himself just in so
regarding him This vindicates the rectoral government of God, FOR THE PRESENT,
of the Christian fullness of time. Afterwards, with reference to this same
Gospel system, we read: Ye have I obeyed from the heart that form of teaching to
which you were delivered. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants
of righteousness.2 That is, the Atonement insures the honor of the law after
forgiveness. This vindicates the rectoral government of God, FOR THE FUTURE,
both as to the race and the individual. The leading characteristic of this
passage, therefore, is the vindication of God’s rectoral character: the
protection of law in the presence of the universe. Here is the truth of what is
sometimes, but needlessly, called the Grotian or Governmental theory 1 Romans
3:21-26; 2 Romans 6:17-18

(2.) The words justified freely through His grace,1grace displayed in the
Atonement as affectingly appealing to man, may be so interpreted as to lay the
foundation of what is occasionally termed the theory of Moral Influence. If they
are taken out of the context, and considered alone, they declare that the
redeeming plan is the free expression of the Divine grace; which, however, found
it expedient to exhibit in the sufferings of the Righteous Jesus the evil of sin
and the glory of self-sacrificing zeal for its destruction

Apart from the perversion of these words, which regards them as standing alone,
they do proclaim the supremacy of love and of grace in the whole economy of
redemption

Whatever our salvation cost the Redeemer, it is in all its history and its
issues the expression of free grace to us. The theory, not thus standing alone,
is true

1 Romans 3:24 (3.) The words are connected with others: they refuse to be
eliminated from the context The unique expression which follows and represents
the Redeemer as the Propitiatory or Mercy-seat—to be a propitiation in His blood
through faith1makes it most sure that there was a necessity for the Atonement in
the Divine Nature. The Blood was not shed only as the life of one who renounced
all for the good of others. It was not the life-blood of selfsacrifice only. It
was the blood of propitiation; and this word for ever turns to the innermost
recesses of the Divine nature. Man’s heart is to be moved only because the heart
of God was moved. This links St. Paul’s with St. John’s testimony in his First
Epistle. There the ascendancy is given to Love; but this only renders more
impressive the necessity of the atoning sacrifice. Herein is LOVE, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the PROPITIATION for our
sins.2 1 Romans 3:25; 2 1 John 4:10 AS TO GOD AND MAN: THE RECONCILIATION The
New-Testament term Reconciliation—or, as it sometimes occurs, Atonement— defines
the Finished Work as having effected and exhibited the restoration of fellowship
between God and man. The change of relation is mutual: God lays aside His
displeasure against mankind, being propitiated in the intervention of His Son;
and all men, through the ministry of the Reconciliation, are invited to enter
into a state of acceptance with God, laying aside their enmity. The former
belongs to the work of Christ as a decree of heaven fulfilled on earth; the
latter belongs to the same work as finished on earth and pleaded in heaven, in
the provision made for individual acceptance. The reconciliation, therefore, is
a process accomplished in two senses: first, the Supreme Judge is reconciled to
the race absolutely; secondly, provision is made for the reconciliation of all
men individually to Him GOD THE RECONCILER AND THE RECONCILED

God is the Reconciler in the Atonement inasmuch as He provides the sacrifice
which propitiates Himself: the very existence or possibility of the sacrifice
proves Him to be already propitiated. But this does not exclude His being the
Reconciled: indeed, so far as concerns the great change declared in or wrought
by the interposition of the Mediator, it is God alone who is reconciled. The
removal of the enmity in the sinner follows the great reconciliation, and is its
secondary effect. Here there are two opposite errors to be guarded against

1. Holy Scripture does not encourage the thought that the actual sacrificial
obedience of Christ reconciled God, previously hostile, to man; nor that the
atonement offered on the cross wrought as a cause the effect of modifying the
intention of the Divine mind towards the human race. The purpose of redemption
was an eternal purpose: change must be wrought in time. Our Lord was sent to
declare a reconciliation with sinning human nature preceding and presupposing
the sin that needed it; which was, indeed, no other than the reconciliation of
the mercy of love and the justice of holiness in the Divine nature itself
through the Incarnation rendered possible by the adorable mystery of the Three
Persons in the Godhead. This is always and consistently declared in the New
Testament, which makes the method of atonement simply and only a product of the
Divine counsel. His purpose, His righteousness, His love are severally regarded
as the originating principle But always the overture and act of reconciliation
is from Him. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.1 1 2
Corinthians 5:19 2. The other error is that of those who insist that the only
reconciliation is of man to God

It is a very superficial, and it might be added sentimental, feeling that leads
to this assertion: the opposite would, as we have seen, be nearer the truth, as
will be further evident from the following considerations concerning the ideas
presented to us in the Scriptures which speak on the subject, and the consistent
phraseology adopted for the expression of these ideas

(1.) He who offers the reconciliation yields His righteous claims, as it were,
before they are enforced; and, instead of enforcing them, beseeches men to be
reconciled to Him. But all Divine claims—to repeat a word which theology
reluctantly uses—have been in the presuppositions of the atoning work satisfied.
The word seems to look only to man, but its face is turned towards God also. Not
to betake ourselves to abstract principles, the Scripture must be our appeal.
The few sentences containing that aspect of the Saviour’s work which views it as
the Reconciliation speak in their context of a Divine wrath, and in such a way
as to give wrath its uttermost meaning. In the classical Corinthian passage we
read not imputing their trespasses unto them,1which has behind it, or rather
before it, that most solemn declaration, Who, though He knew not sin, was MADE
SIN for us.2These last words give the key to the whole doctrine: closing the
statement of it with deep emphasis 1 2 Corinthians 5:19; 2 2 Corinthians 5:21

(2.) A due regard to the habitual use of the term will lead to the same
conclusion. We may fairly collate the Lord’s word, first be reconciled to thy
brother,1 which is a strict parallel in meaning, though the word diallágeethi is
not precisely the same: it is the offended brother who is really propitiated. So
too in the case of the Philistines and David: wherewith should he reconcile
himself unto his master?2 it was the master and not David that was to be
appeased. The verb katallassein is never used of the Atonement in the Old
Testament; but there are a few texts in the Apocrypha which prepare for its
subsequent use. For instance: they besought the merciful Lord to be reconciled
with His servants

Though the New Testament does not speak of God as being reconciled, the meaning
is precisely the same as in this and similar passages. The eternal God, however,
it must be repeated, was reconciled before Christ came to display His saving
grace: He only brought the reconciliation, which we receive. There was in heaven
an Atonement before the Atonement 1 Matthew 5:24; 2 1 Samuel 29:4 THE
RECONCILIATION The Reconciliation is a change of relation between God and
mankind, or the human race, or the nature of man. It is true that inspired
phraseology does not use these abstract terms; but it says that

God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself:1 where een katallassoon,
combined with mee logizomenos, indicates that the Father in the Son was and is
always carrying out a purpose of grace: the eternal decree was accomplished in
Christ on the cross; it is always in course of accomplishment. It is the former
which een suggests, as compared with epoieesen afterwards, He made sin for us:
the wrath of God against our transgression was expended upon our Representative,
and diverted from us

He reconciled the world to Himself by removing from it, as a world, His eternal
displeasure. What is now going on through the ministry is the winning of
individual souls to the enjoyment of the Divine peace. For the full
interpretation of this classical passage it is necessary to consider more
distinctly the meaning of both terms: Reconciliation and World 1 2 Corinthians
5:19

1. The entire world of mankind God is said to have reconciled to Himself in
Christ, inasmuch as the atoning sacrifice was the actual realization of a
purpose which had been regarded as wrought out from the beginning of human
history. An economy or relation of peace had always prevailed in His government
of a sinful race. The term may be said to characterize the kind of
administration the Supreme Ruler has exercised over a guilty race. St. Paul
shows this when he says, We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by
Whom we have now received the Atonement,1 or the reconciliation, which here is
simply equivalent to the grace of redemption. The Reconciliation is a title of
the work of Christ, just as the words Grace and Gospel and Righteousness give it
their names. As the world has received a Savior or Deliverer, and the Gospel is
preached to the world, so the world has from the beginning had the benefit of
the amnesty. But a dispensation of forbearance BEFORE Christ is IN Christ a
dispensation of perfect Peace. Hence the Gospel is called the ministry of
reconciliation.2 God is administering, through the stewards of this mystery, a
system or economy of forgiveness and peace. The ambassadors of Christ announce a
general declaration of the Divine good will to the world. Their ministry is not
so much to induce sinners to lay aside their opposition to God as to persuade
them that God has laid aside His opposition to them, not imputing their
trespasses.3 They are representatives of Christ’s work as the expression of the
Father’s will. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell;
and, having made peace through the blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all
things unto Himself:4 these last two clauses may well be inverted; the
reconciliation is not the sequel of the making peace, but the making peace
itself. There is nothing said here of a reconciliation between the upper
intelligences and man, or between both united and God: it is evident that the
Atonement is a ground of amnesty in the Divine government universal, so far only
as the human race is concerned The Cross belongs to the world, and to all the
world. Its two arms stretch backward and forward, to the beginning and to the
end of time. So it is in a parallel place: For He is our Peace . . . that He
might reconcile both unto God in one body by the Cross, having slain the enmity
thereby:5 what enmity He slew is explained by the reconciliation UNTO GOD The
result is that the life of salvation reigns 1 Romans 5:11; 2 2 Corinthians 5:18;
3 2 Corinthians 5:19; 4 Colossians 1:19-20; 5 Ephesians 2:14-16

2. There is another sense in which the world of mankind is reconciled or
restored in Christ: the human family is really represented by that part of it
which lives spiritually in its New Head. Undoubtedly there will be, as there has
been and still is a portion of the descendants of Adam unrestored to God. While
the race in its unity is, notwithstanding sin, placed in a relation of peace
with the Supreme Ruler, so that the holy heavens can still canopy an unholy
earth, that peace, with regard to the world as such, is after all only the
provision and possibility of peace. And yet God may be said to have saved
mankind; or rather mankind is restored to fellowship with Him, and to that
communion which was so soon suspended in Paradise. The angels, or the
inhabitants of other regions of the Divine government, would say that man was
saved, that things in earth1 were reconciled and set right: indeed, they did
once say it, on earth Peace.2 The solution is, that those who refuse the great
Reconciliation are cast out as not belonging to the human race. That Body which
is the Church, of which Christ is the head, is the new and reconciled humanity.
Hence the blood of His Cross is the medium by which the good pleasure of the
Father restores His human prodigal; thus doth He devise means that His banished
be not expelled from Him:3 those who remain outcasts, after the Atonement is
exhausted, being not reckoned as among the living. We cannot be sure that the
lost spirits have rejected anything corresponding to our redemption. But as it
respects our deliverance, St. Paul tells us that the effect of the Cross is an
accomplished reconciliation, in which God is well pleased, and which is not
marred by the reprobation of the lost. Taking up again the passage already
quoted, it was by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say,
whether they be things in earth or things in heaven:4 here the all things are
only human things, or things in heaven as they are related to man on earth. So
in the Epistle to the Hebrews we read: It was therefore necessary that the
patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the
heavenly things themselves, with better sacrifices than these.5 This last
passage is really the interpretation of the mysterious Colossian sentence just
quoted 1 Colossians 1:20; 2 Luke 2:14; 3 2 Samuel 14:14; 4 Colossians 1:20; 5
Hebrews 9:23

3. What has been said will make it evident that the individual reconciliation to
God is no other than the personal assumption of the benefit of the general
reconciliation. The peace established between God and man by the work of Christ
is the basis for the personal acceptance of the believer into the favor of God
and all its blessed consequences. Our being reconciled never means our putting
away our enmity, but the revelation in us of God’s mercy. This is evident in the
Apostle’s words to the Romans: For if, when we were enemies,1 under the
displeasure of God, echthroi ontes, we were reconciled to God, kateellágeemen
toó Theoó, by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, having become
partakers of Divine grace, we shall be saved by His life. He is our Peace,2 St
Paul says, just as He is our Savior, our Lord, our Head. And those who have
received the Atonement, or who are justified by His blood—that is, who do not
reject the reconciliation which is announced to them in the Gospel—have peace
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.3 The preachers of the Gospel declare the
message of their embassy, and beseech men in Christ’s stead: Be ye reconciled to
God.4 But they mean only: Submit yourselves to the mercy of Heaven. St. Paul
gives another expression to the same truth: he adds, And came and preached
peace;5 after that description of the Atonement, already quoted, which speaks of
His having slain the enmity on the cross. When the Reconciliation is received in
penitent faith it becomes the state and life of righteousness; and a new order
of terms is introduced with which future Sections will make us more familiar 1
Romans 5:10; 2 Ephesians 2:14; 3 Romans 5:1; Romans 5:9; Romans 5:11; 4 2
Corinthians 5:18-20; 5 Ephesians 2:16-17 AS TO MAN: REDEMPTION The term which is
most often used, used in the widest variety of applications, and most
impressively connected with man as the beneficiary of the Atonement, is
Redemption This exhibits the work of Christ as the laying down of a ransom-price
for the legitimate and effectual deliverance of mankind from the bondage of the
law of sin. Like the reconciliation, redemption is objective and subjective:
objectively, the race is redeemed; and provision is made for the subjective
deliverance of individual man from the sentence of the law, the power of sin,
and all the consequences of transgression. Hence redemption is both universal
and partial or limited. But in every case it is man who is redeemed; while God
alone is glorified, and God and man are reconciled

Redemption once for all effected on the cross, and redemption now in process,
are described by the same terms. Those terms may be arranged in four classes:
first, those in which the lutron, or ransom-price, is included; secondly, those
which mean purchase generally, such as agorazein; thirdly, those which imply
only release, as from luein; and, lastly, those which indicate the notion of
forcible rescue, ruesthai. It will be obvious that, as we are now discussing the
Atonement in relation to the finished work of Christ alone, the first of these
classes belongs more strictly than the rest to our present subject Sometimes the
distinction is expressed as redemption by price and redemption by power This is
a beautiful and true distinction; though it is well to be on our guard against
too sharply distinguishing these two, whether in the Lord’s external work or in
the believer’s internal experience of it. We must now, however, limit ourselves
to the objective Atonement mainly. Although it will be impossible altogether to
exclude the personal application, that will come more appropriately under the
Administration of Redemption

It must be remembered that, whatever secondary meanings the term may have,
redemption is the deliverance of mankind from bondage. The treatment of the
subject will perhaps be more effectual by considering and answering five
questions. What is the bondage from which the race is redeemed? What is the
price paid down for that redemption? To Whom and by Whom is it offered? For whom
is it effectual? What are the general results of that redemption? But the answer
of these questions presupposes the previous discussion of the Atonement
generally, and must needs to some extent involve repetition THE BONDAGE OF SIN

Mankind, as the object of redemption, is ransomed from captivity to sin,
primarily; subordinately and indirectly, from captivity to Satan and to death
the penalty of sin

1. Sin holds man in bondage both as a condemnation and as a power. (1.) The
condemnation is the curse of the law.1 As the strength of sin is the law,2 so
the strength of the law is sin. It binds every moral creature to perfect
obedience; and, that being found wanting, it shuts the transgressor up to the
sentence of doom from which, so far as the legal ordinance goes, there is no
release. (2.) Sin is an internal power in human nature: enslaving the will, and
affections, and mind. (3.) The atoning intervention of Christ has put away sin3
as an absolute power in human life. He hath obtained eternal redemption for us:
an objective, everlasting, all-sufficient redemption from the curse of the law,
and from the necessary surrender of the will to the power of evil 1 Galatians
3:13; 2 1 Corinthians 15:56; 3 Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 9:12

2. Satan and death are subordinate but real representatives of that power of
evil: subordinate; for they are only ministers of sin, which might retain its
empire if they did not exist. (1.) Satan is the executioner of the Divine
sentence, and the prince of all evil: in the former relation he represents the
condemnation of the law; in the latter the interior bondage to iniquity. (2.)
Death also, as a sentence of severance from God, holds man in bondage only as
another form of the curse of the law. As temporal death, it is, like him who has
the power of death, a ruler under sin. (3.) From these, the subordinates and
representatives of the great captivity, redemption has made provision to set man
free. The Epistle to the Hebrews connects this truth with the Atonement in a
remarkable manner

All is said in a paragraph which is rounded by these words: That He by the grace
of God should taste death for everyMan 1:1 and to make propitiation for the sins
of the people

Here are the beginning and end of the mystery of redemption of Christ, the
expiatory death. Intermediately we read, That through death He might destroy him
that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage: Satan is brought to
naught, and death ceases to be a terror, when sin is atoned for and abolished as
an external and as an internal empire 1 Hebrews 2:9-17 THE RANSOM-PRICE The
lutron, or ransom-price paid down, is the Blood, or the Life, or the Self of
Christ; and it is important to ask how this is connected with man’s deliverance

1. The term in classical Greek, and in the Septuagint, is in the plural, meaning
the money paid down for ransom of a captive; but this for an obvious reason is
in the singular when applied to the Great Redeemer. (1.) The Lord’s words give
the only instance of its use as a noun: The Son of Man came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many,1 teen psucheen
auto lutron anti polloon. It could not be interpreted by those who heard it
otherwise than as the lutra peri psuchees of the Septuagint: Ye shall take no
satisfaction for the life.2 But Christ’s LIFE was one satisfaction for all
offenders, and for every kind of offence summed up in one, (2.) St Paul speaks
of the BLOOD of our Redeemer as the ransom-price, turning the noun into a verb:
the Church of the Lord, which He hath purchased with His own blood.3 These words
the Apostle varied in writing to the same Ephesian elders: in whom we have
redemption through His blood. So St. Peter: ye were not redeemed with
corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by
tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ.4 And St.
John: Thou wast slain, and didst purchase to God.5 (3.) The last testimony of
St. Paul adds a third term, Who gave Himself a ransom for all: HIMSELF, His
Divine-human Person, identifying the offering with the Divine-human Person
Himself, as St. John does when he says He is the Propitiation.6 The ever-blessed
Substitute lays down His life, which is in His blood, but the life of the
God-man, both as dead and as ever living, in the stead of all men, and
especially for His own people 1 Matthew 20:28; 2 Num. 35:31. 3 Acts 20:28; 4
Ephesians 1:7; 5 1 Peter 1:18-19; 6 1 John 2:2

2. The precise connection between the ransom-price and man’s salvation is
variously exhibited in Scripture. There can be no doubt that the words are
figurative, and cannot altogether express the nature of that great deliverance
which they refer to. The redemptional terms, like the ceremonial system, serve
unto the example and shadow of heavenly things:1 faintly reflecting the eternal
reality. They define the salvation of man generally, but in a variety of ways:
as ransom of a captive, payment of a debt, dissolution of a power, rescue from
an enemy, disenthralment from systems of error and vain conversation, and in
other ways. But it would be wrong to say that the language is only figurative.
It expresses a most important double truth, each side of which rests upon the
infinite value of the price paid down: first, the negative rescue from wrath;
secondly, the positive recovery into the hands of God in Christ. These must be
considered in their order and connection

1 Hebrews 8:5

(1.) The ransom-price is satisfaction of the claims of Divine justice, and
redemption is release provided for the race. Our Deliverer took the place of the
captive: being made sin for us1 and a curse for us.2 Hence the ideas of ransom
and atonement melt into one; as in the Old Testament the lutron is exilasma.3
Note in the New Testament two passages in which St. Paul remarkably blends the
two ideas, Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; Whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation.4 Here the price is carried into the temple, and is
laid on the altar; and with these words may be compared, In Whom we have
redemption [through His blood], even the forgiveness of sins,5 where a third
idea is added: the redemption price, offered in sacrificial blood, secures the
pardon of offences

St. Peter’s conjunction is similar, Ye were not redeemed with corruptible
things, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot,6 with the addition of the sacrificial victim. Finally
the Epistle to the Hebrews may be compared: by His own blood He entered in once
into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption;7 in which words yet
another truth is added, that the price is carried into the heavens to be
reckoned there for ever

1 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 Galatians 3:13; 3 Psalms 49:8; 4 Romans 3:24-25; 5
Colossians 1:14; 6 1 Peter 1:18-19; 7 Hebrews 9:12

(2.) The Redeemer in the Christian doctrine recovers for Himself what He
rescues. This is the transcendent peculiarity of the idea. Christ does not
ransom us in such a sense as to release and let us go simply: He ransoms us back
into His own rights over us as God; and this explains the connection between the
sacrificial and the regal office. The Redeemer, approaching His altar, prays:
Glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee:1 as Thou hast given Him
power over all flesh: the power of a Deliverer over the purchase of His own
ransom-price. For, the Savior of mankind died and lived in order that He might
be Lord both of the dead and living.2 Hence, more particularly, the mediatorial
rescue is the restoration to man of the Holy Spirit, His forfeited inheritance
as created for communion with God. Our Savior is the God-Redeemer of the Old
Testament. He buys back our inheritance, positively, as well as releases us from
bondage, negatively. The two are in St. Paul’s sentence; Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed
is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on
the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the
Spirit through faith.3 But this revolves into the old and familiar dual blessing
of the Christian covenant. Redemption provides for the release from
condemnation; and it secures the bestowment of a renewing Spirit 1 John 17:1-2;
2 Rom. 19:9; 3 Galatians 3:13-14

(3.) The word therefore as expressing the effect of the Atonement is not limited
strictly to release from captivity and restoration to lost privileges. The
general idea of the lutron sometimes recedes, and a class of terms is used which
signify rescue, or deliverance, or payment of a debt, or canceling of a bond. It
should be remembered, however, that these have reference rather to the
administration of redemption than to redemption itself. As to our Saviour’s own
finished work, once for all accomplished, it is always the laying down a price
for the ransom of the world. St. Paul, in one remarkable passage, declares that
our Lord cancelled our human debt and suspended the legal document which
attested it to His cross: a view which stands alone here in Scripture. The
Apostle is speaking primarily of the annihilation by Christ of the documents of
the covenant that sundered the Jew and the Gentile; but the words have a larger
meaning and give a most impressive illustration of our redemption generally:
Blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was
contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.1 This
passage is of a certain class of unique illustrations of the central fact: they
should be sparingly used in theological exposition, however useful in practical
application 1 Colossians 2:14 REDEMPTION A DIVINE TRANSACTION This has
anticipated the third question, or virtually answered it: to Whom and by Whom
was the ransomed offered? 1. The redemption of mankind is altogether a Divine
transaction, in its origin, in its method, and in its results. (1.) In its
origin: the mystery of our rescue was hid in the Deity before it was disclosed
to man; the Love of the Triune God is its source, the Justice of the Triune God
is its necessity, and the Wisdom of the Triune God is its law. (2.) In its
method: the work of our accomplished deliverance as a race is altogether wrought
of God: but of Him in the mediatorial revelation of the Trinity. What behind the
veil which hides the Triune is one, to us appears three-one. The Father is God
Who sends His Son; the Son is God Who takes our nature that in it He may redeem
us; the Holy Ghost is God, Who orders the process of our salvation from the
alpha to the omega. (3.) In its results: the acceptance of the ransom-price of
mankind is the accomplishment of a Divine Purpose, which needed nothing out of
God for its attainment, and by nothing out of God could be frustrated. It was a
Divine act, and the Divine Will needs no help or concurrence, as no other power
could thwart or arrest its execution till its consent was previously given.
Hence the Trinity is the Author of a necessary salvation, an ETERNAL REDEMPTION.

1 The price was laid up in the eternal treasury for future use in time

1 Hebrews 9:12 2. The light of this truth detects many errors that may be here
briefly anticipated.

(1.) There is no discord in the Divine nature, no conflict of interests between
the Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Eternal Son does not propitiate an anger in
the Father which He does not Himself share; nor does the Eternal Father
represent a holy justice in the Divine nature which is to be satisfied by an
atoning love only found in the Son; nor does the Eternal Spirit witness a
covenant that solves a discord in which He has no part. The Second and the Third
Persons of the Holy Trinity have a several personality which in their adorable
mystery renders the Atonement possible. But beyond that our reverence permits us
to say nothing.

(2.) The Enemy of man has no necessary part in the transaction. From the
beginning of post-apostolical theology onward to Bernard a strange notion of
Satan’s rights disturbed men’s minds, which vanished when the Atonement was
studied, as it were, first in the hidden recesses of the Divine nature.

(3.) Nestorianism, with every modern phase of it that makes the redemption of
man’s nature in Christ an experiment, is banished from our doctrine. The
redemption obtained in time was an eternal redemption: it was a predestined
salvation of the human race: for ever, 0 Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.1

(4.) Every theory that opposes or perverts the freeness of God’s grace is
without support. There are two in particular, which include every variety of its
many forms: no human merit can have place in a scheme which was settled on man’s
behalf in eternal mercy, and there can be no help for man apart from a redeeming
economy. Grace and deliverance have the same eternal foundations

1 Psalms 119:89 UNIVERSALITY OF REDEMPTION The Price was paid down for all men
for the entire race, or for the entire nature of man in all its representatives
from the first transgressor to the last. Redemption as such is UNIVERSAL; or it
is general, as distinguished from the Special Redemption of the individual

1. This blessed truth is a priori the anticipation of reason, and answers to the
expectation which might be entertained, and has been entertained, by the mind of
man supposed to be made aware of the fact of a Divine intervention. Of course
this is only a preliminary argument; and if it should be proved that the Word of
God contradicts the universal instinct, it must be given up. But the Word of God
does not contradict this profound sentiment of humanity

(1.) It is the true instinct of man that he belongs to a race which is one in
its origin and destination: one whether in ruin or in recovery; both in its fall
and in its redemption

(2.) The God of mankind must by the very terms be supposed to be a God of
philanthropy and to love the race as such which He created. He gave us our
existence, whether as a family or as individuals, unasked: will He cut us off
without hope after we have fallen, or reserve His salvation for a few? Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right?1 In answer to this increated instinct, His
Revealer tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His Only-begottenSong
of Solomon 2:1-17 and that He is the living God, Who is the Savior of all men,3
His saving grace to all men hath appeared, after having been comparatively
unrevealed until its due time, and that it is the kindness and love of God our
Savior towardsMan 1:4 or His PHILANTHROPY. This last word refuses limitation 1
Genesis 18:25; 2 John 3:16; 3 1 Timothy 4:10; 4 Titus 3:4

(3.) The object of the redeeming intervention of such a Being as the God-man
cannot be limited without again doing violence to our instinctive expectation.
We should take it for granted that so glorious a Person would not be sent on a
partial and limited errand; that, supposing Him to visit this earth, He would
embrace its whole compass in His mission; and the testimonies concerning Christ
confirm this. He is the Mediator of God and men, the Jesus-Man 1:1 He is the
Lost Adam and the Second Man;2 and the only time He spoke of His soul as a
ransom He called Himself the Son ofMan 1:3 Where it is said that, to deliver
them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage, He
took on Him the seed of Abraham,4 this is opposed to the angels in the same
verse, to whom He did not stretch out His helping hand, and in a preceding verse
it is explained by flesh and blood: He is the seed of David, which is the seed
of Abraham, which is the seed of the woman. He Who made OF one blood all the
nations of men5 hath also BY one blood redeemed all nations of men 1 1 Timothy
2:5; 2 1 Corinthians 15:45-47; 3 Matthew 20:28; 4 Hebrews 2:15-16; 5 Acts 17:26
2. The positive assertions of Scripture are few, but very forcible

(1.) Directly, it is said that Christ Jesus gave Himself a ransom far all.1 And
the force of this testimony is if possible strengthened by the context,
containing the exhortation to pray for all men, which is good and acceptable in
the sight of God our Savior, Who willeth all men to be saved, because He is the
one God who deals with men through one Mediator We read that this Mediator
descended below the angels that He by the grace of God should taste death for
everyMan 1:2uper pantos: this last word does not mean for every creature, but
certainly for every man. The Forerunner bids us all Behold the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sin of the world:3 his new word airei, taketh away, is half
expiatory, half redemptional, but altogether universal. (2.) Indirectly, many
passages require this as inference. Even denying the Lord that bought them, and
bring upon themselves swift destruction:4 parallel with St. Paul’s Destroy not
him with thy meat for whom Christ died,5 but still more evidently bringing in
the substitutionary price. Other illustrations are so numerous that they cannot
be quoted in full, and need no specimens: such as all the declarations of God’s
love to the world, all the general proclamations of repentance and the Gospel as
glad tidings, the foreannouncement of the resurrection of all men as the result
of redemption, and those texts which make man chargeable with his own doom. But
the most impressive of these indirect assertions are such as invest the Redeemer
with attributes and relations to the world which know no restriction: He is the
Light of the world, the Life universally, and the Lord of all. It is however the
glory of this argument that it needs not the support of individual texts 1 1
Timothy 2:6; 2 Hebrews 2:9; 3 John 1:29; 4 2 Peter 2:1; 5 Rom. 19:15 SPECIAL
REDEMPTION While Universal Redemption is a great reality, it is such only as the
basis of a particular application 1. The race is redeemed. It was virtually
redeemed before it sinned and before it existed

Hence the instincts of all mankind and the traditions of history, pointing the
unknown hope of nations.1 The mediatorial government of the world from the
beginning has been a fruit and a proof of one great deliverance. No race
unredeemed, and without hope of redemption, could in the universe of a holy God
continue to propagate its generations The Holy Ghost was given at the outset as,
in a peculiar sense, the Earnest of redemption, and Christ was from the very
gate of Paradise the Lord of all, the Judge of the whole earth, the Savior of
the world, the LIGHT OF MEN.2 1 Haggai 2:7; 2 John 1:4

2. But this universal salvation is bound up with one that is particular. (1.)
The Scripture speaks only of one grand redemption; but it distinguishes,
speaking of Him who is the Savior of all men, specially of those that believe.1
Here the special is other than the general redemption though springing from it;
what makes it special is not the decree of sovereignty, but the faith of those
who embrace it. The distinction, however, condemns those Latitudinarians who
regard the whole race as, by the very fact of Christ’s incarnation, individually
redeemed, justified and saved. (2.) But it makes the two redemptions one in the
sense that the individual benefit is only the application of a general benefit
which belongs to all who do not reject it. The New Testament never really
distinguishes between the redemption which is provided for all by price and that
which is applied by power to all who embrace its provisions 1 1 Timothy 4:10

3. Hence, as there is no deliverance which is not individual, and no salvation
which is not deliverance, the whole history of personal religion is exhibited in
terms of Redemption: it is the release of the will, which is the universal
benefit, the repentance which is bestowed by the Spirit of bondage, the release
from the law of death in justification and regeneration, the redeeming from all
iniquity in entire sanctification, the final expected redemption of the groaning
creation, and the deliverance of the saints from the present evil world. Of each
of these we shall treat in its place HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT The history of
ecclesiastical doctrine on the Atonement is exceedingly complicated and
difficult if all the various shades of opinion and controversy are taken into
account; it is very simple if the fundamentals only are regarded

I. The Ante-Nicene age was neither scientific nor controversial on this subject.
It was happily unconscious of those speculations which in later ages have done
so much to darken the counsel of our redemption; although the germs of coming
error are here and there discernible. Generally speaking, the early Patristic
doctrine was an undistorted reflection of the teaching of the New Testament

1. The Apostolical Fathers, and the other writers of the second century, fairly
reproduced the doctrine of St. Paul and St. John, the two pillars of the later
Scriptural theology, who uniting in the necessity of propitiation in God
Himself, then disparted: St. Paul exhibiting rather the judicial and rectoral
view, St. John the love and moral influence of the Atonement. It will be found
that both these aspects are with almost equal fidelity dwelt on; though the
leading characteristic of that early teaching seems rather to have joined on to
St. John’s final presentation of Christ as in His incarnate Person the Living
Atonement This is what might be expected, as the Apostolical Fathers were mostly
under the influence of the last Evangelist. The sacrifice of Christ was kept
constantly in view; and all the more as the early worship of the Church was
based upon the Eucharistic commemoration of that Sacrifice. Even the
exaggerations of the Holy Supper tended, until those exaggerations deepened into
positive error, to keep the central character of the Saviour’s death before the
minds of Christians. It was after the days of these first writers that the
perversions of the Feast diverted attention from the death to the Incarnation of
our Lord. Clemens Romanus, the Father of uninspired Christian literature,
strikes the true note on every point which later controversy has brought into
prominence. A few phrases are sufficient to establish this: " Let us look
steadfastly to the blood of Christ, and see how precious it is in God’s sight
(timion to Theo); which, being shed for our salvation, has brought the grace of
repentance to all the world." " That by the blood of our Lord there should be
redemption to all that believe and hope in God." "You see, beloved, what the
pattern of love, patience, humility is which has been given us." "For the love
that He bore towards us, our Lord Jesus Christ gave His own blood for us by the
will of God: His flesh for our flesh, His soul for our souls." These sentences
give their high sanction, not only to the general doctrine of the Atonement laid
down in the preceding pages, but also to some of the peculiarities which
distinguish it. According to this earliest Father the atoning work of our Lord
was a passion ordained by the Divine Will, endured by the Saviour’s love, of
infinite value as a satisfaction to Divine justice and mercy, available for all,
the source of all the preliminary grace of repentance which is given to mankind
at large, the substitutionary sacrifice for our souls, but yet of such a-kind
that it avails for our bodies also, but made personal only by faith, and,
finally, the supreme pattern of selfsacrificing devotion. It is needless to
quote any further from the sub-Apostolic writers The Epistle to Diognetus is the
work of an unknown author, probably of the second century, and may be referred
to as giving the modern doctrine of the Atonement in its purest form. In it
occur such sentences as these: "He Himself gave His own Son a Ransom for us, the
Holy for transgressors, the Innocent for the guilty, the Righteous for the
unrighteous, the Incorruptible for the corruptible, the Immortal for the mortal:
for what could cover our sins but His righteousness? 0 sweet exchange—that the
wickedness of many should be hid in One Righteous, and that the Righteousness of
One should justify many." Here we have the Divinity of the Person of the
Redeemer and His essential sinlessness lying at the very foundation of His work.
The substitutionary character of His sufferings is all but expressed; and the
redemption wrought for us, for all transgressors, is as prominent as the
redemption wrought in us

2. The assaults of the Gnostics gave a peculiar direction to the teaching of the
second and third centuries. They, differing much in detail, agreed that
redemption was deliverance from matter through the work of the Savior; but that
His sufferings were only symbolical, in the semblance of flesh teaching the
necessity of death to the flesh. Irenaeus and Tertullian proclaimed the reality
of the sufferings of the God-man, and their expiatory and substitutionary
character, with a clearness and emphasis never since surpassed. The former has
left this memorable sentence: " Quando incarnatus est et homo factus, longam
hominum expositionem in se ipso recapitulavit in compendio nobis salutem
praestans, ut quod perdideramus in Adamo, i.e., secundum imaginem et
similitudinem esse Dei, hoc in Christo reciperemus." The same faithful
reproduction of St. Paul’s doctrine of the Two Adams is found in words which may
be translated thus: " As we sinned in the first Adam, because we did not keep
the commandments of God, so we have been reconciled or atoned for in the second
Adam, because in Him we were obedient unto death, for to no other were we
debtors than to Him Whose commandments we transgressed from the beginning."
Tertullian is equally explicit. But it is in the writings of Justin Martyr that
we have the fullest exhibition of the effects of the Atonement, though not
without indistinctness on some points which may be ascribed to the peculiar
difficulties of his apologetic work. He blends closely the two ideas of
Sacrifice and Ransom. The endurance of the curse for us Justin rescues from the
objection of the Jew, and in such a way as to show that the Son, blessed for
ever and always blessed, suffered "FOR THE HUMAN RACE THE CURSES OF ALL." He is
careful to show, what has been since too often forgotten, that " the sacrifice
was for all sinners who are willing to repent, and fast Isaiah’s fast." His
doctrine of a vicarious atonement for the world is nonetheless strong because it
requires personal faith, being " salvation for those that believe in Him." In
Justin, as in all the Fathers before Augustine, we find the doctrine of a
universal redemption made particular on the condition of individual repentance
and faith

3. The early Fathers generally taught the necessity of a vindication of God’s
essential justice. Love was in God, as God was in Christ, passively bearing the
punishment of the sinner as well as actively providing the atonement. But the
assertion of God’s righteousness before the universe was disturbed by some
peculiar errors, the tendency to exaggerate the place of Satan being one of
them, which more or less overshadowed the doctrine for a thousand years. Thess
were partly a result of Gnosticism; but much more the effect of Origen’s
teaching. This Alexandrian Father, like Clement of the same school, elaborated
the sacrificial scheme at all points, and taught explicitly the substitutionary
character of the Passion. But his speculation almost neutralised his orthodoxy.
Asserting the sole validity of the Redeemer’s oblation, he assigned to the death
of the martyrs a relatively expiatory virtue. Christ’s sacrifice he declares to
have been offered upon earth for man, in heaven for every spirit of the
universe. Its redemption was a deliverance from Satan; but this in an
unscriptural way. The human soul of Jesus was given to the Enemy as a ransom for
the souls of men in his power; but he was unable to retain it and the world was
free; the right he had over sinful men was lost when their sinless
Representative was in his hands. Satan, as Gregory said afterwards, "hamo ejus
incarnationis captus est," outwitted by the Divinity in the Redeemer on Which he
had not calculated. Irenseus expressed the same thought: " The Logos, omnipotent
and not wanting in essential justice, proceeded with strict justice even against
the apostasy or kingdom of evil itself, redeeming from it that which was His own
originally, not by using violence as did the devil in the beginning, but by
persuasion, as it became God, so that neither justice should be infringed upon
nor the creation of God perish." But a candid estimate of such a passage as
this, which represents much of the teaching of that age, must admit that it
contains only an inexact statement of the reconciliation of the essential claims
of Divine justice, and the spiritual method of love by which men are to be
redeemed. But here comes in another unhappy element. Origen taught that apostasy
in a pretemporal state was expiated in the present, and finally through Christ
abolished. It was impossible to hold such a view as this, without two
concomitant errors: ascetic expiations would almost necessarily creep in when
the flesh was made in any sense the sphere of bondage: and the justice of God,
or His holy displeasure against evil, would soon be merged in the idea of a
sovereign goodness predetermining the salvation of all. Hence redemption from
the bondage of Satan was followed by the redemption of Satan himself. The
universality of human redemption had never been doubted: but Origen made it
include the whole universe of evil, reading an incorrect text: choris Theou,
without or outside of God He tasted death for all.1 His Universalism was
strenuously opposed by Jerome and others, and as held by Origen’s followers was
condemned formally at a Synod in Constantinople in A.D. 544

1 Hebrews 2:9

4. Apart from these errors, and germs of error, there can be no doubt that the
ante-Nicene Church was profoundly and vitally familiar with the truth which we
hold to be the sound one. They did not attempt to formulate it scientifically.
Heresy on this subject could scarcely be said to exist; for the Gnostic errors
were outside of the Christian Community, and were met by the simple statements
of the Creed concerning the historical manifestation of the real Jesus. The
earliest Fathers simply reproduced the spirit and language of the Apostles. And,
when they seemed to err, their error was rather exegetical than theological.
They did not propose to distinguish between a sacrifice offered to God, and a
ransom laid down to Satan: but they failed to see clearly that the teaching of
their inspired Masters made that sacrifice and that ransom one, and both as
offered and paid by God to Himself in Christ

II. From the Nicene Age down to Anselm, circ. A.D. 1100, the doctrine of
redemption was closely bound up with that of the Person of Christ. But it had
some independent developments to which brief reference may be made

1. Oriental Christendom was prepared for the study of the Atonement by its
prolonged discussions of Trinitarian questions. Athanasius treats explicitly of
the atonement for sin and satisfaction of eternal justice; gives supremacy to
the priestly office; and, above all, bases the death of Christ on a necessity in
the nature and attributes of God, though not perhaps so absolutely in the Divine
nature as in the Divine veracity and dignity. Though he was the great expositor
of the Incarnation as a disclosure of God in human nature, he placed first among
the reasons for Christ’s assumption of flesh the necessity of expiating human
guilt. The following words give his teaching on almost every aspect of the
question. " God cannot be untruthful, even for our benefit. Repentance does not
satisfy the, demands of truth and justice. If the question pertained solely to
the corruptions of sin, and not to the guilt and ill-desert of it, repentance
might be sufficient. But since God is most truthful and just, who can save, in
this emergency, but the Logos Who is above all created beings? He who created
men from nothing could suffer for all, and be their substitute. Hence the Logos
appeared. He Who was incorporeal, imperishable, omnipresent, manifested Himself.
He saw both our misery and the threatening of the law; He saw how unbecoming
(atopon) it would be for sin to escape the law, except through a fulfillment and
satisfaction of it." Satan is omitted; satisfaction to the law is prominent;
and, if an eternal necessity in God is not precisely laid down, the doctrine
scarcely falls short of it. Gregory of Nazianzum (390) denies the ransom to
Satan (theu tees ubreos); but dwells rather too strenuously on the exigency of
the Divine government as the reason of the ransom paid to God. He gave the first
note of the later Grotian theory: " Is it not plain that the Father received the
ransom, not because He Himself required or needed it, but for the sake of the
Divine government of the universe (di oikonomian), and because man must be
sanctified through the incarnation of the Son of God." Cyril of Jerusalem (386)
first made emphatic the THEANTHROPIC VALUE of the atoning death, and its
universal vicarious-ness: this was a precious result of the Nestorian
controversy. Cyril of Alexandria (444) still more clearly expounded this idea: "
Only a God-man could suffer once for all and One for all:" again with reference
to the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies. John of Damascus (759), the last
of the Greek Fathers, expressed the general doctrine of his own time and some
ages afterwards: " He who assumed death for us, died and offered Himself a
sacrifice to the Father: for we had committed wrong against Him, and it was
necessary that He should receive a ransom from us, and we thus be delivered from
condemnation. God forbid that the blood of the Lord should be offered to Satan
the tyrant." Here we find three watchwords of expiring orthodox Greek theology:
The necessity of an atonement for wrong in the Divine righteousness the
substitutionary character of the price, our ransom; and the connection of ransom
both with sacrifice and with pardon

2. Western Christendom before the time of Anselm made no advance beyond the
early Fathers, either in precision or in avoidance of error. It might have been
supposed that one, Augustine, would have occupied his keen intellect with some
of the questions which the New Testament had left undetermined and pre-ceding
controversies had not settled. But he really added not a single idea. He
inherited the old notion of a ransom paid to Satan’s rights, corresponding with
the sacrifice offered to God’s justice. " God the Son, being clothed with
humanity, subjugated even the devil to man, extorting nothing from him by
violence, but overcoming him by the law of justice; for it would have been
injustice if the devil had not had the right to rule over the being whom he had
taken captive." He disturbed the doctrine by making justification, or the
imputation of righteousness to the believer, depend upon the infusion of grace,
an error by which the whole work of redemption through an objective atonement
for perfect expiation is clouded. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that
he failed to reconcile the internal sanctification or righteousness wrought by
the Spirit with the external sanctification or righteousness reckoned to him in
whom the former is wrought. He erred from the Pauline phraseology perhaps more
than from the Pauline doctrine. Moreover, he never expressed himself even with
the same confidence as some of the Greeks as to the necessity of atonement to
the justice of God: in other words, where they faltered he faltered still more.
" They are foolish," he says, " who declare that the wisdom of God could not
liberate men otherwise than by God assuming humanity, being born of a woman, and
suffering at the hands of sinners." He separated omnipotence from justice, and
taught, like Origen, that God’s power was absolute in the provision for
salvation. As the Arians thought that the Son was begotten, Bouleesei, by the
will of the Father, so Augustine, with many before and after him, thought that
the Atonement was not an eternal necessity but of the sole will of God

Finally, Augustine narrowed the range of the virtue of the Atonement: the first
of the Fathers who did this. Gregory the Great (604), called the first Pontiff,
is remarkably Pauline in this part of his teaching, and far beyond his
predecessor Augustine. The following sentences give an idea of his theology. "
Guilt can be extinguished only by a penal offering to justice." Christ " assumed
our nature without our corruption. He made Himself a sacrifice for us: a victim
able to die because of His humanity, and in Divine righteousness able to
cleanse." During the next four hundred years there was no such special
development of the doctrine as would warrant notice here

III. Anselm, in the latter part of the eleventh century, gave an entirely new
direction to ecclesiastical thought on this great question: a direction which
has been permanent

1. In his book CUR DEUS HOMO the idea of an atonement proper was exhibited as it
had never before been seen; and the term Satisfaction to Divine justice became
the leading formula. Anselm utterly rejected the claims of Satan to reparation;
he fixed attention on the thought that sin is debt to God, a failure to give Him
His due, and that, as " Suprema justitia non est aliud quam ipse Deus,"
satisfaction to the Divine justice was indispensable. As none but God could
vindicate His own honor the God-man must atone; and His sacrifice as presenting
FOR MAN " something greater than all that is not God" has infinite atoning
value. The term SATISFACTION had been imported by Tertullian from jurisprudence
into theology, but with reference especially to human acts of penitence; Hilary
and Ambrose had referred it to the passion of Christ; but Anselm revived it from
long slumber as a watchword for all future time. He does not distinguish between
the active and the passive righteousness of the God-man in rendering this
satisfaction; but he certainly lays the stress on the latter: dare animam seu
tradere se ipsum morti ad honorem Dei, hoc ex debito Deus non exigit ab Illo.
This sacrificial offering, of infinitely greater value than even the ethical
demerit of sin, is the MERIT of Christ which overflows to everyone who believes.
" Can anything be more just than for God to remit all debt, when in this way He
receives a satisfaction greater than all the debt, provided only it be offered
with the right sentiment?" Thus human Guilt or Debt demanded a Divine-human
payment, and faith appropriates this as justification to the soul. There are
flaws in the Anselmic doctrine: such as the subordinate episode that the number
of redeemed men would compensate the chasm introduced by the fall of angels. But
nothing can dim the value of Anselm’s service to Christian theology, as having
established the immanent necessity in the Divine nature of an atonement for the
infinite evil and offence of sin

2. Mediaeval controversy on this great question was very important as shaping in
opposite directions the issues of Trent and the Reformation. The doctrine of
Anselm was for four hundred years the common text: some opposed his Biblical
theory, others refined upon and exaggerated his views, and a few struck out a
path of mediation. This threefold distribution of Scholastic polemics will
furnish a clue to the student who pursues this subject in ecclesiastical history

(1.) Abaelard (1141) was the chief opponent of Anselm; and may be said to be the
founder of a theory of the Atonement which shuts out the deepest mystery of the
Cross

He referred the Christian redemption only to the love of God as its source; and
taught that there could be nothing in the Divine essence which absolutely
required satisfaction for sin. Redemption like Creation was a Fiat: equally
sure, equally free, and equally independent of anything in the creature. The
influence of the work of Christ, as accomplished on the cross, and carried on in
His intercession, is moral only: subduing the heart, awakening repentance, and
leading the soul to the boundless mercy of God whose benevolence is the only
attribute concerned in the pardon of sin. Peter Lombard (1164) varied from this
view only little; and introduced, for future service, in his Liber Sententiarum,
the perilous doctrine that Christ’s penal sufferings deliver from the temporal
consequences of evil. Duns Scotus denied the possibility of an infinite demerit
in human transgression, and therefore the necessity of an infinite value in
Christ’s human suffering. The relation of the Atonement to sin was purely
arbitrary, springing from the mere pleasure of God: " Every creaturely oblation
is worth what God accepts it for, and nothing beyond." This is the theory of
Acceptilatio, of which more hereafter

(2.) The Scholastic refinements on Anselm’s doctrine Were endless. Bonaventura
and Thomas Aquinas, who represent the later Schoolmen in their utmost subtlety,
and more than any others shaped Romanist theology, distinguish between the
absolute and relative necessity of atonement: holding the latter only, though
admitting that of all possible modes this of satisfaction was most congruous
with the Divine perfections. In their anxiety to save the freedom and
omnipotence of God they introduced a distinction or discord into the Divine
essence from which Anselm’s theory is free. Aquinas laid great stress upon the
Mystical Union between the Savior and His people; and here two errors crept in.
Room was made for the limitation of redemption to the believer configured to his
Lord: the guilt of the sinner being transferred to Christ even as Christ’s merit
is transferred to the sinner. This is in strange contradiction to the
universality elsewhere assigned to the virtue of the Atonement. And, secondly,
in the case of sin after baptism the believer must be " configured " to his Lord
by personal penance. That penance is imperfect; but it is an expiation joined to
the Redeemer’s. Aquinas also introduced the distinction between the satisfaction
and the merit of out Substitute. His theory that the satisfaction was offered to
penal justice, and the merit of obedience wins eternal life for the Saint, was
an anticipation of the subsequent distinction needlessly introduced between the
Active and the Passive Righteousness of Christ. His new dogma of the
superabundance of the Saviour’s merits—Christi passio non solum sufficiens, sed
etiam SUPER-ABUNDANS SATISFACTIO—which, while seeming to honor the Atonement,
was certainly based upon a lowered estimate of sin, laid the foundation for the
superstructure of a treasury of merits at the disposal of the Church. The
Thomists, as his followers were called, had a long controversy with the
Scotists, followers of Duns Scotus, on this point and on many others that became
afterwards prominent in the controversies of the Deformation

(3.) The Scholastics who mediated between Anselm’s and the opposite doctrine
were Bernard, Bonaventura, Alexander of Hales, and many of the later Mystics.
They paved the way for the Reform of the Sixteenth Century: partly, by admitting
a real laxity as to the ABSOLUTE necessity of atonement, which cannot be
exchanged for a RELATIVE necessity without great peril; and, partly, by keeping
alive in a narrower circle the Anselmic theory, which was to put forth its
renewed energy in the great awakening. This was the case especially with some of
the Mystics and Precursors of the Reformation, such as Wessel, who says: " Ipse
Deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi satisfecit." These deep
words deserve to be remembered for their own value, as well as because they were
written on the threshold of the temple of reformed theology; as also those by
which they are followed: "In Christ we behold not only a Reconciled but a
Reconciling Deity; an incarnate God Who, in the sinner’s place and for the
sinner’s salvation, furnishes what His own attributes of holiness and justice
require."

IV. The Tridentine Soteriology, carefully studied, will be, found to depart
widely from the Anselmic doctrine which it professes to hold: though this does
not appear on the surface, and is not evident in the definitions. The following
two opposite tendencies may be noted; referring, however, to the objective
Atonement with which alone we have to do 1. The satisfaction rendered to Divine
justice by the Passion of Christ is fully recognized

"Christus, qui, cum essemus inimici, propter nimiani caritatem, qua dilexit nos,
nobis sua sanctissima passione ligno crucis justificationem meruit et pro nobis
Deo Patri satisfecit." But it is added " abunde cumulateque satisfecit;" and
hence the merit of Christ is in a sense over-estimated. The Thomist dogma of
Meritum Christ! Super-abundans laid as we have seen the foundation of that
treasury which, enlarged by the superfluous merit of the saints, and. committed
to the Church, mystically one with and the same as Christ, constituted the
source of Indulgences. Origen applied the infinite superfluity to the rest of
the universe; this doctrine limited it to the remission of the temporal
consequences of sin

2. On the other hand, the atoning merit is under-estimated: for the virtue of
Christ’s death is declared to avail only for the sins of the world, and those
committed before baptism The virtue of the Atonement, as applied for mortal sins
committed afterwards, must be connected, so far as the temporal or not eternal
punishment is concerned, with man’s own expiation

3. But it is rather in its subjective character, or in its individual aspect, as
Justification, that the error of Roman Catholic theology appears. Reserving for
the Righteousness of Faith some further remarks on this subject, we may be
satisfied to refer to the Tridentine Canons which deny that the atoning
satisfaction of Christ is the sole meritorious ground of a sinner’s
justification. Whatever value is attributed to the passion of the Redeemer as
expiating the sin of mankind, righteousness is imputed to the personal sinner
only as he is made righteous by the infusion of faith: it is, so to speak,
imputed to the faith and not to the man who believes. Undoubtedly, it is
affirmed that the grace which more and more justifies the soul comes through the
Atonement. But the direct application of the Saviour’s finished work in the
purging of the conscience is effectually precluded

V. The Reformation revived generally the theory of Anselm, as that was the
vindication of an eternal and absolute, and not merely a relative and
economical, necessity for satisfaction in the Divine nature. The same variations
in the statement of this which marked the Patristic and Scholastic theology are
observable among the Reformers Luther, and the great divines that followed him,
were more rigid than Calvin and his followers, who speak of the possibility of
redemption even apart from the work of Christ

1. The points which the Lutheran theory and the Reformed Confession agreed in
rescuing from the perversion of ages were the sufficiency of the Redeemer’s
Satisfaction for all sins, original and actual; the pre-eminence in the atoning
work of the death of Christ, His incarnation and His resurrection flanking this
on either side. The active side of the Saviour’s obedience was added to the
passive, a SATISPASSIO being divided off from the SATIS-FACTIO; or they regarded
the whole virtue of the Atonement as Satisfaction and Merit, the former
repairing the dishonor of the law and the latter providing righteousness for
man. It may be said that both branches of the New Theology laid much stress on a
division of the virtue of Christ’s work into its reparation of the honor of the
law by Obedience and its endurance of its penalty in the Passion

2. The Reformed or Calvinistic doctrine limited the scope and design of the
Atonement to the elect; the Lutheran divines, after some hesitation, adopted the
theory of a universal efficacy in the Redeemer’s mediation. The Calvinists made
less account of the three offices of the Redeemer: inasmuch as His work was
rather the instrumental accomplishment of an eternal decree. Against the views
of Piscator, who insisted that Christ’s obedience to law was needed for Himself
as man, and must be excluded from His vicarious atoning work, the Reformed
Formula Consensus (1675) asserted: " Christ rendered satisfaction to God the
Father, by the obedience of His death, in the place of the elect, in such sense
that the entire obedience which He rendered to the law through the whole course
of His life, whether actively or passively, ought to be reckoned into the
account of His vicarious righteousness and obedience." This, like many other
statements in the formularies and divines, is ambiguous: it only does not
positively lay down the erroneous principle that the two parts of our Saviour’s
one obedience are distributed severally to the believer for release from
condemnation and investiture with holiness. But the question here involved
belongs rather to the doctrine of Justification

VI. The Socinian doctrine, if such it may be called, must be noticed here:
partly because it represented in the seventeenth century the Rationalist assault
on the principles of the Atonement which has been modified but not essentially
changed in later times, and partly because it helped to shape the Anninian which
followed it, and other systems of thought in other respects orthodox. Early
Socinianism held a much higher estimate both of the Person and of the Work of
Christ than that of the Modern Unitarians. But, as there could be in it no
doctrine, strictly speaking, of the Incarnate Person, so it has no doctrine of
Atonement. Its contribution to the history of the subject is simply the array of
arguments against the Anselmic principles, and its method of explaining away
Scripture, 1. The supreme principle in Socinianism as in Predestinarianism is an
Absolute Sovereignty in God, disposing of all creatures according to His own
will. In Calvinism the arbitrary will governs the destinies of men; in
Socinianism it governs the attributes of God. It refuses to admit of any
immutable qualities whether of justice or mercy in the Divine nature, these
being only expressions of His occasional will, called out as it were by the
conduct of man. An eternal justice demanding punishment is inconsistent with an
eternal mercy prompting to forgive. Satisfaction for sin is incompatible with
love

Against this objection it is enough to say that it opposes the first principles
of Scriptural teaching concerning God, Who is represented as reconciling in
Himself these opposite attributes by an atonement which is at once and equally
an expression of both, and regulating His will. Thus our doctrine is safe from
Socinian censure only when it first shuts itself up in God, and grasps the
reconciliation of justice and mercy in the Divine nature

2. Descending to the theory of Substitution, Socinianism denies its possibility
in any form. Sin and punishment are both strictly and for ever personal. There
is a form of the doctrine against which this plea has much force. But it does
not touch our presentation of it. (1.) Strictly speaking, Christ is not a
Substitute for any man. He is the Representative and Vicar of humanity, and the
Other Self of the race, being the Second Adam; whilst He is the Other Self also
of every believer who claims His sacrifice as his own, and says in the language
of appropriating devotion, ALL THINE ARE MINE. But his sin is dealt with as his
own and put away from him. He is CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST.1 (2.) The objection that
the Savior has not suffered the precise equivalent for man’s sin is valid only
against those who plead that there was such a commercial equivalent. He could
not suffer eternal torments. The union of the Son of God with mankind gave His
intention of atonement in suffering an infinite value: it was accepted as such
because it was in His heart. In an infinitely higher sense than His servant Paul
He said, I could wish! Eeuchómeen gár anáthema eínai autós egoó.2 (3.) In urging
that the Redeemer’s active obedience could not be vicarious as superadded to His
passive obedience Socinianism is opposing a false dogma of the Atonement. (4.)
Once more, the objection that imputation to faith is inconsistent with a plenary
satisfaction is important. Socinus pleaded against the teaching which maintains
that this universal benefit is given to none but those who believe. But that is
not the true doctrine. Christ’s benefit is imparted before personal faith; and,
in case of believers, their faith is the not rejecting what was before provided
for them as their own. The vehement protest against the combination of imputed
active righteousness and the inexorable demand of the law has its full force
against those whom it concerns; but not against those who believe that the
appropriation of a full forgiveness sets the believer free to fulfill in love
all the claims of righteousness 1 Galatians 2:20; 2 Romans 9:3

3. The more positive principles of Socinianism maintain that the sacrificial
language used concerning the Redeemer only figuratively describes His authority
in heaven to declare forgiveness; and that the Scriptures without figure
announce pardon as waiting for all who, sympathizing with the Redeemer’s death,
repent and abandon their sins

(1.) According to the teaching of early Socinianism—as distinguished from that
of modern Unitarianism—the Saviour’s priestly office was only figurative on
earth, and began in heaven where He uses His exalted authority to plead for
mankind. " The sacerdotal office consists in this, that as He can in royal
authority help us in all our necessities, so in His priestly character; and the
character of His help is called by a figure His sacrifice." But it may be said
that forgiveness is never represented as bestowed save through a real sacrifice:
God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself; and for Christ’s sake
forgives the sins which only the Spirit obtained by the Atonement enables us to
confess and forsake

(2.) The Supreme in His majesty is said to forgive on the ground of repentance
and obedience. The sufferings of Christ were the vehicle of a moral influence to
induce that repentance and animate and exemplify that obedience. There is no
relaxation of the holy law, which is thus honored as the bond of obligation to
the moral universe. We also hold the exemplary character of the sufferings of
Christ; but as illustrating the necessity of a satisfaction to pure justice, and
not merely the love and mercy of the Lawgiver. In modern times this argument has
been reproduced in a thousand ways: these all marking the offence of the Cross
which has not ceased. There are two everlasting safeguards of the truth: the
constitution of the human mind which bears witness to the wrath as well as the
love of God; and the express revelation of Scripture concerning the
reconciliation

4. In recent times Socinian principles have been introduced into the
Latitudinarian theology of many who do not reject the doctrine of the Trinity.
And it is here that they are most dangerous. In the works of some divines, the
love of God alone is introduced into the atoning sacrifice, which on Christ’s
part is a sublime and supreme act of repentance for man, His AMEN to the
sentence of the law, and to man himself an affecting representative sorrow which
he must make his own by adding to it the element of personal consciousness of
guilt. The latter idea links it with the Romish doctrine of human additional
expiation; and, as to the former, a representative sorrow that does not taste
the wrath of God against sin falls immeasurably below the Scriptural
illustrations of the atoning passion in which our Lord was made a curse for us.
The theory utterly fails in the link between the Divine-human sorrow and the
human appropriation of it; and it entirely forgets that Christ was made the
embodiment and representative of sin as well as the incarnation of suffering.
Other modifications of the Unitarian theory of the Atonement in combination with
Trinitarian doctrine of God are endless; but none presents any such definitely
marked system as needs arrest attention

VII. The doctrine of atonement which is sometimes characterised as Grotian and
sometimes as Arminian is based on one common fundamental principle. Arminius and
his follower Grotius held the same theory up to a certain point; after which
they differ

1. Both aimed to mediate between the rigorous Anselmic view of a satisfaction
which is the substitution of a strict equivalent for the penalty due to sin and
the Socinian rejection of all vicarious intervention. The atoning reparation
which they agree to uphold is one that satisfied not the rigor and exactitude of
Divine justice only or especially but also and chiefly the just and
compassionate will of God: laying the emphasis rather on the love than on the
justice of God as honored in the Atonement. They refuse to regard the Saviour’s
redemption as the payment of a debt to a creditor; it is to them a substitute
for a judicial penalty, which substitute being the oblation of Christ,
infinitely precious, is counted sufficient by the Father. This has somewhat of
the character of the Scotist ACCEPTILATIO (accepti latio), which was in Roman
law an acquittance from obligation by word of mouth, without real payment;
differing from it by assuming a real compensation, but not of an exact and
commercial character. And here the Arminian principle comes in with a just
protest. Grotius, who in his very important work on the Satisfaction of Christ
reintroduced the term, was obliged to vindicate it. He insisted that his theory
of a satisfaction offered by Christ, and reputed sufficient by God, was more
than the Acceptilatio of Roman jurisprudence. In fact what God accounted
sufficient was of infinite value; but still not the precise equivalent of the
penalty due to sin. There was a relaxation of the claims of the law in one
sense, though not in another. The most rigorous Anselmic theory must admit the
principle, so far as the acceptance of a substitute goes; why not then carry the
principle a little farther and make the interfering act extend to the VALUE of
the thing substituted as well as to the PRINCIPLE of substitution: especially as
the value here is infinite? 2. But Grotius, its later representative, did not
agree with the Arminian theology when he limited the satisfaction to the dignity
of the law, the honor of the Lawgiver, the protection of the interests of the
universe, and the exhibition of a deterrent example. Grotius founded what has
been called the Rectoral or Governmental theory of the Atonement, which dwells
too exclusively on its necessity for the vindication of God’s righteousness as
the Ruler of all. Not to speak of the invincible repugnance felt by every
reverent mind to the thought that our Lord was thus made a spectacle to the
universe, this theory errs by making a subordinate purpose supreme. Limborch, as
the representative of Arminianism, answers his own question, An Christus morte
sua circa Deum aliquid effecerit? by replying that the sufferings of Christ were
those of a SACRIFICE Divinely appointed to take the place of a penalty, and
reconciled God to man as if they had been the sinner’s own punishment. Christ
therefore by His death did effect something in God; though strictly speaking He
only carried out in act what had been already effected in purpose

More than this the Scripture does not require. Arminianism holds that the
Sacrifice was offered for the whole world: it must therefore for that reason
also renounce the commutative theory of exact and mutual compensation; since
some may perish for whom Christ died, and He would be defrauded of His reward in
them VIII. A few brief observations may be made in conclusion

1. Most of the errors that have passed in review have sprung from failure to
connect the three leading Biblical ideas: the atonement in God, as a necessity
in the Divine attributes; the reconciliation on earth, as vindicating to the
universe the Rectoral justice of God; and the exhibition of the redemption to
man, as moving upon his conscience and will and heart. Here unite what are
sometimes called the SUBSTITUTIONARY, the GOVERNMENTAL and the MORAL INFLUENCE
theories. The union of these is the Scriptural doctrine, as it is set forth in
Scripture; and especially in the Epistles of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John:
the last giving in many particulars the finishing touches in the union of the
Person and the Work of Christ. Neither of these theories is valid, standing
alone. Each is necessary as the complement of the others. The doctrine would
commend itself more than it does to the minds of all devout persons if justice
was done to every aspect. The champion of either of these theories who thinks it
necessary absolutely to deny the truth of the others proves that his own is
wrong

2. Another prevalent source of confusion is the tendency to undervalue the
personality and comparative independence of man’s relation to God. No doctrine
of revealed religion stamps such dignity on the human spirit as that which makes
it the object of this stupendous intervention. But there is a certain Pantheism
which infects much of the theology of the modern Christian Church, tinging the
theories and vocabulary even when the ground principles of Pantheism are
rejected or perhaps not understood. The more closely the speculations of this
philosophical Christianity are studied the more manifest will it be that they
reduce the Person and Work of Christ to the rank of mere symbols of
transcendental mysteries of evolution, which seem to do honor to the union of
God and man but at the expense of everything that may be called Mediation. The
individuality of the soul is lost, and man is merged in humanity. But it is not
in England that we have to encounter this substitute for the doctrine of the
Atonement

3. Akin to this, though distinct from it, is the tendency, not especially
modern, to underestimate the evil of sin. Theories of the Atonement fluctuate
with theories of the evil that makes it necessary. If sin is regarded as a
necessary phenomenon of human development, the Atonement must needs only be an
accidental aid in that development. If it is viewed as only a disease or only as
misery, then the atonement will be regarded as only an expedient, though one of
the highest and most effectual, for the remedy of human weakness. But if sin is
regarded, in the light of Scripture, as an active rebellion of the human will
which affects the Divine nature and attributes and government as well as human
interests, then the Atonement becomes an eternal necessity in God as well as an
eternal necessity for man. Every theory that robs the work of Christ of its
expiatory character will be found, on close examination, to make sin
comparatively A LIGHT THING as touching the Supreme Ruler, however melancholy in
its workings and consequences to its victim. Now there is nothing more plain
than that the Bible, from the history of the loss of Paradise to the prediction
of Paradise re-entered, consistently and uniformly teaches that wrong in the
creature touches the inmost essence of the Triune God; and that it evolves in
the depths of the Divine nature eternal pity for the evil and eternal
displeasure towards the sin. No single topic in Biblical theology is so little
varied in its development as this

4. There is prevalent among professedly orthodox theologians a tendency to
ascribe to the Eternal God a certain all-commanding attribute of LOVE which is
so described as to undermine the foundations of the doctrine of the Atonement.
It is possible so to exaggerate the Divine compassion as to make it inconsistent
with the most obvious facts of experience. The mind may be so possessed by a
morbid sentiment of the necessary supremacy of the tenderness of God as to be
incapable of steadily contemplating His holy wrath against sin. To such a
feeling the whole of Scripture must appear to be written in a language of the
most violent and incongruous symbols. It is the purest homage to love, the bond
of perfectness in God as well as man, to correct that one-sided view. If it is
the royal attribute—which, however, the Scripture does not say—it reigns IN God
but not OVER Him. Of the Divine Being it is also said: Justice and judgment are
the habitation of Thy throne.1

1 Psalms 89:14

5. It is important to remember in all discussions on the Atonement that the
language of theology must be controlled and explained by the language of
Scripture. Through forgetting this many prejudices arise which would otherwise
perhaps be obviated. The leading New-Testament terms are so simple that they may
be comprised in one sentence

Christ as MEDIATOR exhibits in His own Person the RECONCILIATION between God and
mankind, which however required to be wrought out by a SACRIFICE of OBEDIENCE in
life and death, such as has PROPITIATED God in respect to sin, and accomplished
a REDEMPTION for all men, to be appropriated by the faith of individuals.
Theology has varied these terms and added a few. They indicate that the oblation
of Christ was an ATONEMENT or atoning SATISFACTION of the Divine justice and the
claims of law, as well as of the Divine love or saving will, EXPIATING the sin
or canceling its punishment, and PROPITIATING the Divine displeasure, in one and
the same act. As the Scriptures are a revelation of God to man, so this
doctrine, which lies at the base of that revelation, pervading it from beginning
to end, must be guarded with the most watchful diligence

Only at the Cross, where the Father accepts for us the sacrifice of His Son. our
Representative, is the true God revealed to mankind


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  CHAPTER 22: 24. VOL 02 - THE ADMINISTRATION OF REDEMPTION
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The Administration of Redemption THE ADMINISTRATION OF REDEMPTION.

TERMS DEFINED THIS sentence better than any other defines that comprehensive
department of theological science which is occupied with the subjective aspect
of what is sometimes called SOTERIOLOGY. If we use the phrase APPLICATION OF
REDEMPTION we are in danger of the Predestinarian error which assumes that the
finished work of Christ is applied to the individual according to the fixed
purpose of an election of grace. The phrase APPROPRIATION OF SALVATION tends to
the other and Pelagian extreme, too obviously making the atoning provision of
Christ matter of individual free acceptance or rejection The term PERSONAL
SALVATION avoids these extremes; but it scarcely does honor enough to the office
of the Holy Ghost. The ADMINISTRATION OF REDEMPTION satisfies every necessary
condition. This is the widest field of theology: gathering up the results of all
that precede and more or less anticipating the one only branch that remains A
complete view of this entire department of Christian Theology may be thus taken
in order. First, we must define the special relations of God the Spirit to the
administration of the Saviour’s work. Then we have to consider the character,
terms and conditions of the universal Call of the Gospel: the agency of the Holy
Ghost in the outer court of the temple of redemption. Thirdly, it will be
necessary to dwell on the preliminary conditions of grace, or those subjects
that belong to Conversion, Repentance and Faith: which form the transition,
fourthly, to the state of covenanted salvation itself, with all its many
privileges diversified in their unity. Fifthly, it will then be of great
importance to examine the general conditions on which the perpetuity of these
blessings depends. This will fairly introduce the Morals of the Gospel, in the
establishment of a holy character, as formed by Christianity, which ought not to
be severed from the Spirit’s administration. And, lastly, the Church must be
included, whether as the fellowship resulting from the bestowment of grace, or
as the institute in and through which that grace is bestowed The distinction
between Objective and Subjective Soteriology, or Redemption as once for all
accomplished by Christ and Redemption as administered by the Holy Spirit, has
been again and again referred to. But its importance is so great that it may
once more be impressed with advantage at this point. A careful consideration of
the bearings of this distinction would itself be a defense, and a sufficient
defense, against many of the most serious errors that have troubled and still
trouble the faith of Christianity. We shall find illustrations of this in
abundance. It is sufficient now to assert and vindicate the distinction itself,
as it reigns throughout the New Testament. The offices of the Second and of the
Third Persons of the Holy Trinity in the work of man’s salvation are not more
carefully separated than the one redemption wrought out by the Former is
separated from the personal application of it, which is the province of the
Latter. The term Soteriology fairly embraces both; but it has not been
naturalized in English theological works, and it is not without a certain
ambiguity


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  CHAPTER 23: 25. VOL 02 - THE HOLY SPIRIT
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The Holy Spirit THE HOLY SPIRIT: IN PREPARATION OF REDEMPTION

Before Christ in Christ in the Gospels

AFTER PENTECOST Economy of Spirit Agent of Christ Two Classes of Office in the
Church Divine in His Subordination Scriptural Formulas As the Incarnate Son is
the Redeemer of Mankind in virtue of His perfect work of Reconciliation, so the
Holy Ghost in His Divine personality is the Administrator of that redemption.
His revelation as such has kept pace with the revelation of the redeeming Son.
In the Old-Testament age He was the promise of the Father, even as the Christ
was: and, as the promised Christ already was the world’s unrevealed Savior, so
the Spirit was the unrevealed Dispenser of His salvation. The Redeemer made the
promise of the Father His own promise; and, on His ascension, obtained and sent,
as the fruit of His mediatorial obedience, the Holy Ghost in His most abundant
influence as the Third Person of the Godhead and the Personal Agent in the final
accomplishment of the purpose of the Mediatorial Trinity THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE
PREPARATIONS OF REDEMPTION The distinct personality of the Holy Ghost is not
made prominent in Scripture until the act of atonement is on the eve of
completion. But the light of the later Scriptures thrown back upon the earlier
reveals Him as a Divine Person present and active throughout the preparatory
economy. With the coming of Christ His agency becomes more distinct; and it is
from that time forward intimately connected with our Lord’s redeeming Person and
work. The full disclosure, however, of the Person and Offices of the Spirit, and
of His relation to the finished redemption of the world, was not given until the
set time for the Pentecostal revelation of the Third Person was fully come; that
is, until the Redeemer had ended His work upon earth and ascended to heaven THE
SPIRIT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT The Holy Ghost in His special relation to the
Christian economy was not sent down until Pentecost. But, as the Person in the
Holy Trinity by Whom the Father’s Revelation of Himself through the Son, whether
in Creation or Providence or Redemption, is accomplished in act, He has been
present and operative from the beginning: the Administrator of the work of the
Three-One God in every dispensation

1. The Spirit, like the Son, but without concealment of His name, is throughout
the Old Testament disclosed as the Agent of the Godhead in the production of all
life, especially of the living spirit of man. In anticipation, as it were, of
Pentecost, He was at the beginning THE LORD AND GIVER OF LIFE; and Job’s word
may be used in the widest extent concerning man as such: the Spirit of God hath
made me.1 The Son from the beginning has been the Life of men; but it was not
till the Incarnation that He gave that life more abundantly, and was fully
revealed as THE LIFE.2 This distinction also holds good between the unrevealed
and the revealed relation of the Personal Medium of the gift of life. The same
Spirit Who moved upon the face of the waters3 was breathed into the face of man
and made him a living soul.4 And, as the Son was from the beginning the Light of
men,5 so the Spirit is represented as moving upon and striving with man from the
beginning.6 The unrevealed Second Person gave special and mysterious
manifestations of Himself as the Angel of Jehovah, the Word of the Lord, and so
the unrevealed Third Person is often referred to as the Divine Agent in
spiritual gifts and influences. Thus of Bezaleel it is said: I have filled him
with the Spirit of God.7 And of Moses,8 Joshua 9:1-27 and the Judges 10:1-18 and
the first kings, it is recorded that the Spirit endowed them for their office.
Thus, carrying back the personality of the Holy Ghost from the New Testament to
the Old, we are taught that without Him the Eternal did not act on the world
throughout the ancient economy

1 Job 33:4; 2 John 1:4; 3 Genesis 1:2; 4 Genesis 2:7; 5 John 1:4; 6 Genesis 6:3;
7 Exodus 31:3; 8 Numbers 11:17; 9 Numbers 27:18; 10 Judges 3:10

2. But specifically in the administration of the prophetic preparations of the
Gospel is this truth seen.1 The doctrine of the Saviour’s Person and Work has
made it plain that the revelation of the Son was mediated by the Spirit of
Christ which was in the prophets; that the entire Old Testament as the record of
the Gospel before the Advent was given by His inspiration; and that He, no less
than the Son Himself, was the Promise of the Father.2 1 1 Samuel 16:13-14; 2
Acts 1:4 THE SPIRIT IN THE GOSPELS The Holy Spirit in the history of the Lord’s
manifestation and life upon earth occupies a midway position between the Old
Testament and the Pentecost. As the Administrator of Redemption He appears as
the actual Agent in the raising up and the mission of the Incarnate Savior;
while He is at the same time the Object of our Lord’s prophecy as His future
Agent in carrying out His work. Every reference to the Holy Ghost in the Gospels
falls under one or other of these heads

1. With regard to the former, it is enough to recapitulate what has already been
established: first, that the human nature of the Son was the special Divine
production of the Holy Ghost; and, secondly, that whatever in the Incarnate
Person and Work of Jesus belongs to Him as the representative of mankind is
under the Spirit’s direction; while all that belongs to Him as the
representative of Deity is the act of His own Eternal Spirit as the Son. The
Third Person presides especially over the humble and subordinate relation of the
Mediatorial Second Person in the economy of redemption

2. With regard to the latter, the records of the Evangelists furnish a series of
testimonies of the Savior Himself concerning the future dispensation of the
Spirit which culminate in the farewell discourses and the resurrection promise

(1.) How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that
ask Him!1 begins the series with a free and unlimited declaration which should
throw its grace over all that follows throughout this department of theology. It
is to the administration of redemption what the Protevangelium is to redemption
itself: it is the dawn of the Pentecostal day

1 Luke 11:13

(2.) This spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive:
for the [Holy] Spirit was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet
glorified.1 In this saying, the link between the former and the final promises,
St. John, as his manner is on special occasions, expounds his Master’s word,
writing long after Pentecost: it teaches us that the Person and gifts of the
Spirit were reserved until the Saviour’s glorification and the full
manifestation of both dependent upon it. Jesus must be glorified of the Father
before the Spirit glorified Him

1 John 7:39

(3.) Passing over the specific promises of the Spirit to the Apostles, as
contained in the Synoptists, we have our Lord’s most full foreannouncement of
the coming and function of His Divine Representative. The farewell discourse is
in truth a revelation of the Trinity; our Lord, setting out with a declaration
of His own identity with the Father in the Divine nature, proceeds to declare
that the Spirit should come as a Person, to abide for ever1 with His people, as
the Revealer of all His truth and the indwelling Guide of all believers. Before
He fulfilled His course on earth, like the Baptist He announced the coming of
another: but did not add, like His own forerunner, He must increase, but I must
decrease.2 The Holy Spirit, though Himself God, should, in the present economy,
only glorify the Son, by revealing His Person and expanding His doctrine and
administering His kingdom. We are the witnesses of Him; and so is also the Holy
Ghost.3 1 John 14:16; 2 John 3:30; 3 Acts 5:32 THE HOLY SPIRIT AFTER PENTECOST
With Pentecost begins the dispensation of the Spirit. His office has supreme
reference to the administration of Christ and His redemption. And this is under
three aspects. He is the Revealer of the Son generally, and of the Godhead as
revealed in Him. He is the Saviour’s Agent in dispensing individual salvation:
being a witness for Him TO the soul; His Divine power IN the soul; but both in
one. He is the Lord’s representative in His body the Church: gathering it from
the world, ruling within it, and dispensing the gifts of its Head. But, while
subordinate in the mediatorial economy, the Holy Ghost is a Divine Person, the
Agent, in the unity of the Father and the Son, of His own Divine acts This
assemblage of topics must be exhibited only in epitome. To a great extent they
have been anticipated in the discussion of the Trinity and the Person and
Offices of Christ

They arise also in separate discussion throughout the whole course of this part
of our subject: the work and influences of the Spirit meet us everywhere, being
so ubiquitous that it is almost impossible to reduce all to summary. But the
honor due to the everblessed Spirit of the Father and the Son, and the just
demands of dogmatic system, alike require that some general analysis of the
agency of the Holy Ghost be placed here in the forefront. A third reason also
may be assigned, arising out of the indistinctness which has prevailed on this
subject in much of the theology of earlier and later times. As to the earlier
development of the doctrine enough has been already said when treating of the
Trinity. As to later ages, it cannot be said that there has been any
development: there has been no such controversy, and no such decisions have been
formulated, as we have to do with in the Person of Christ. The offices of the
Holy Ghost have been obscured by exaggerations of sacramental efficacy; and His
personal relations to the believer have been undervalued in many systems. But
what requires to be noted on these points will occur under the several heads of
His general administrations. No separate historical review will be needed
ECONOMY OF THE SPIRIT

1. The New Testament does not sanction the thought that with Pentecost began a
dispensation of the Spirit in the sense of a new economy or oikonomia, distinct
from that of the Father and the Son. The nearest approach to such a doctrine is
found in St. Paul’s Corinthian exhibition of the contrast between the old and
new forms of the one covenant in Christ. The former was a ministration,1 or
diakonia, of the letter, and of condemnation, and of death: a glorious
manifestation of the Divine law which shut up the covenant people to the need
and the expectation of an atoning Savior. The latter is a ministration of the
Spirit, and of life, and of righteousness: a much more glorious manifestation of
the Redeeming Lord, and of His Spirit, and of liberty in Him. Now this
ministration, of which the Apostles were the ministers, is in the sequel called
the Ministry of Reconciliation.2 Thus the dispensation of the finished Atonement
and the dispensation of the Spirit are one 1 2 Corinthians 3:6-11; 2 2
Corinthians 5:18

2. But there is a sense in which Pentecost introduced a new economy: that of the
Holy Ghost, as the final revelation of the Holy Trinity. The One God, known in
the Old Testament as Jehovah, a Name common to the Three Persons, was then made
known in the Third Person: ho de Kurios to Pneuma estin, the Lord the Son
reveals the Father as the Lord the Spirit.1 Hence the glory of the day of
Pentecost, excelling in glory every former manifestation of the Supreme. The
Shekinah, the ancient symbol of the future incarnation of the Son tabernacling
in flesh, becomes the fire of the Holy Ghost, disparted into tongues, and,
without a veil, resting on the entire Church.2 The perfect God is perfectly
revealed; but revealed in the Trinity of Redemption, the Economical Trinity The
Church is the habitation of God through the Spirit.3 From that day forward the
Holy Ghost is essential to every exhibition of God as revealed among men. While
it still remains true that the Son hath declared4 the Father, it is also true
that the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,5 of both the
Father and the Son, and is the foremost and first Agent in the communion between
God and His people. As neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he
to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him,6 so no man can say the words Jesus is
Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.7

1 2 Corinthians 3:17; 2 Acts 2:3; 3 Ephesians 2:22; 4 John 1:18; 5 1 Corinthians
2:10; 6 Matthew 11:27; 7 1 Corinthians 12:3 REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SAVIOUR

We do not find in the New Testament any term which directly sanctions the
phrases current in theology concerning the Holy Spirit’s office as the
Redeemer’s Representative The Lord does not speak of Him as His Successor, or
Deputy, or Agent, or Administrator

But, though these words are not used, what they signify is plainly to be
gathered from the tenor of the final discourses in St. John. These enlarge upon
the vicarious relation of the Spirit generally; and that particularly in regard
to both the Person and the Work of Christ

I. The Saviour’s departure was expedient in order to His coming. He was Another
Comforter;1 and to be sent in the Redeemer’s Name: The Comforter, which is the
Holy Ghost, Whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things,
and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.2 He
is therefore the Representative of Christ Himself, in His prophetic office as
the Teacher and the Truth; hence He is the Spirit of the Truth.3 He is the
Interpreter of the mystery of the Person of Jesus: He shall glorify Me;4 and no
man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost.5 Moreover, the promise
of the Comforter is the promise of our Lord’s ever-present Self; I will not
leave you comfortless; I will come to you.6 The Spirit’s teaching was to be
still no other than the teaching of Jesus: recalled to remembrance, expounded
and enlarged. As the Son spoke what He heard of the Father, so the Holy Ghost
should speak what He hears of the Son: He shall not speak of Himself: but
whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak: ... He shall receive of Mine and
shall show it unto you.7 The doctrine of the mediatorial Trinity, one in essence
and distinct in office, affords the explanation: All things that the Father hath
are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto
you.8 The Spirit of Christ in the Prophets is the Spirit of Christ in the
Apostles. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
Churches9 follows the injunction to write which the Evangelist received from
Jesus: a singular instance of the identity in difference and difference in
identity between the Lord and the Holy Ghost. He is also the Spirit of Christ in
all true Christians: ye have an unction from the Holy One and ye know all
things.10 He is the only Vicar of Christ

1 John 14:16; 2 John 14:26; 3 John 14:17 : 4 John 16:14; 5 1 Corinthians 12:3; 6
John 14:18; 7 John 16:13-14; 8 John 16:15; 9 Revelation 2:17; 10 1 John 2:20

II. The Person and the Work of Jesus are one. The Spirit is the Representative
of the Redeemer generally, and in His several offices; in His relation to the
world, and in His special relation to His people, Through Him alone He acts as
the Savior

1. When our Lord cried It is finished,1 He declared that His work of atonement
was accomplished. But it was accomplished only as a provision for the salvation
of men. The application of the benefit remained for the administration of the
Spirit from heaven; Whose sole and supreme office it is to carry into effect
every design of the redemptive undertaking. As the Spirit of the Christ2 had
from the foundation of the world administered the evangelical preparations, so
now He acts on behalf of the fully revealed Christ. Through Him our Lord
continues His prophetic office: the Holy Ghost is the Inspirer of the new
Scriptures and the Supreme Teacher in the new economy. Through Him the priestly
office is in another sense perpetuated: the ministry of reconciliation is a
ministration of the Spirit.3 And through Him the Lord administers His regal
authority 1 John 19:30; 2 1 Peter 1:11 3 2 Corinthians 3:8

2. The Spirit represents Christ to the world. While the Incarnate Lord was not
yet glorified He was limited to one sphere: and, though the world was in His
heart, His feet ran not so fast as His desire. But now the Spirit presents Jesus
and exhibits His claims to all men. And when He is come He will reprove the
world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.1 The sin of which He
convicts the world has its formal character in the rejection of Christ; the
righteousness of which He convinces the world is the finished righteousness of
the absent Lord as the only ground and the only source of human acceptance
before the law; and the judgment with which He threatens it is the separation
between all that belong to the Prince of this world and those who belong to
Jesus its true Lord. Thus the whole work of the Convincer is the ascended
Redeemer still pleading His own cause

1 John 16:8-11

3. He is the representative of Christ to His people. To them He is the
Paraclete: ho Parakleetos, the Advocate,1 Helper, and all-sufficient Comforter
in the name of Jesus, our other Parakleetos in heaven. Through His agency our
Lord is with us alway, even unto the end of the world.2 As He said He that hath
seen Me hath seen the Father,3 so we may add that all who receive His Spirit
receive Him: I and My Spirit ARE ONE.4 The day will come that He will cease to
be the Representative of an absent Lord. Till then, the presence of the
invisible Spirit is the real presence of the Redeemer in His Church. What His
various functions are as Christ AMONG us and Christ WITHIN us will be more fully
unfolded as we proceed 1 1 John 2:1; 2 Matthew 28:20; 3 John 14:9; 4 John 10:30
THE AGENT IN PERSONAL SALVATION As the Intermediary between the Savior and the
individual soul the Spirit has two classes of office: one more external and one
more internal. And these functions He discharges in respect to two orders of
men: those not yet in Christ and those who are by faith united to Him

1. His external function is that of bearing witness, or applying the truth to
the mind: to the unconverted for the conviction of sin, the awakening of desire
for Jesus and His salvation, and the revelation to penitence of the promises of
grace; to the believer for the assurance of acceptance, the unfolding of the
knowledge of Christ, the application of the several promises of grace, and all
that belongs to His personal instruction and guidance through the Word. These
administrations will reappear in detail

2. His internal function is the exercise of Divine power on the heart, or within
the soul: to the unconverted in infusing the grace of penitence and the power of
faith, issuing in an effectual inward conversion; to the believer in renewing
the soul by communicating a new spiritual life, and carrying on the entire work
of sanctification to its utmost issues, as we shall hereafter see

3. This distinction rules the phraseology of the New Testament: a large class of
passages refer to the Holy Spirit’s communications TO the spirit, and an equally
large class to His operations WITHIN it. In the former He is rather the
administrator of the words of the New Covenant spoken to man, in the latter the
administrator of the grace of that covenant within his soul. But it is obvious
that the two are really one, especially in the case of the believer. As to those
who are without, the Spirit’s appeals may fail to enter the heart so as to be
permanent. But when true faith effects the union with Christ the Comforter is an
indwelling Spirit: the Paraclete, or external Advocate, becomes an intercessory
Presence within. The Scriptural references to the distinction and the unity may
be reserved for the future detail of the Spirit’s administration IN THE CHURCH
The Spirit’s administration is closely connected with the institution of the
Christian Church. This also must have its appropriate place in the sequel.
Meanwhile it is necessary and sufficient to indicate its bearing on the offices
of the Holy Ghost generally

1. The order of this connection must be noted. It is not first the Church, and
then the Spirit; but, conversely, the Spirit forms the Church as the sphere and
organ of His working: a distinction which, as will be seen, is of great
importance. There is a sense in which the Redeemer prepared the body for the
Spirit’s inhabitation; even as the Spirit prepared His body for the inhabitation
of the Son of God. The Day of Pentecost found the disciples waiting for the
Third Manifestation of the Trinity. From that time the Church is the body of
Christ which His Representative animates. But in its increase that Body is
gathered out of the world by the Holy Ghost, whose general office is Vocation,
which calls men into the congregation of the Called, the ekklesia or Church. UBI
SPIRITUS IBI ECCLESIA

2. In that body He is supreme, as the Representative of the Holy Trinity and of
Christ its Head. From the time when the interval of interregnum ended, and the
little company, who had waited ten days without the Lord and without His
Successor, were filled with the Holy Ghost, He has been in the Christian
fellowship what Christ was in the midst of His disciples. He gave to its keeping
the New Scriptures written under His inspiration. He calls, and consecrates, and
orders its various ministry. He regulates and animates all worship. He dispenses
His various gifts to all classes according to His own will. He is not the Head
of the Church, but the Representative of its Head

3. That body is the instrument of His agency in general. It is true that He is
not limited to this one organ. Wherever His word is He is, and that word is
never without His influence

And, even beyond the written word, and beyond the visible community, He is a
Divine Presence everywhere. But it is in the congregation of Christ, in the
Church of God, that He has set up the means of grace efficacious in His hands
for the conversion of sinners, for the sealing and sanctifying of the saints,
and for the spread of the kingdom of heaven upon earth. As the Spirit Who
applies the work of Christ His field is the world, but His agents are His called
and chosen and faithful people. This view of His indwelling and agency runs
through the New Testament from Pentecost, the day of the Holy Ghost, down to the
last reference in Scripture, when the Spirit and the Bride say, Come,1 uniting
as one voice in invoking the Savior. And it is this which warrants our including
the Christian Church under the department of the Administration of Redemption 1
Revelation 22:17 THE SPIRIT A DIVINE AGENT

What has been again and again directly or indirectly asserted must be made
emphatic in conclusion: that the Holy Ghost, in the unity of the Father and the
Son, is a personal, Divine agent in all His offices. In the economical Trinity
subordinate, and administering the covenant of redemption which originated in
God as the Father and was ratified by God as the Son, He is nevertheless Himself
the Fullness of God. As Christ is that fullness BODILY,1 so the Holy Ghost is
that fullness SPIRITUALLY. This must be remembered in the interpretation of many
passages in which there are seemingly opposite statements 1 Colossians 2:9

I. There is a class of texts which assign to the Third Person a peculiar
relation to each of the other Persons of the Trinity: these must always be
connected with passages which contain predicates of His Divine Person as
Subject, so to speak, independent of those other Persons. Under the doctrine of
the Godhead the Personality and Deity of the Holy Ghost has been discussed: it
is introduced here only in reference to His Mediatorial relation to the
Christian economy. Though we believe, with the ancient Church, that there was,
or rather is, an eternal procession from the Eternal Father, the Head of the
Holy Trinity, and from the Eternal Son, the Only-begotten God, we have most to
do, in the present section, with the Temporal Mission corresponding on earth to
the Eternal Procession in heaven

1. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the First Person, proceeding from the Father1
and given through the mediation of Jesus; the Spirit of HisSong of Solomon
2:1-17 sent forth to those who through Him are sons; the Spirit of God
generally; and the Spirit of the Christ.3 Now it may be said by the opponent
that such passages simply mean the mode of the Divine operation thus described,
and sometimes even personified: just as, in human relations, we might speak of
the spirit of any eminent teacher. The most violent instance of such
personification is said to be the reference to the Spirit of the Truth4 as a
personal agent 1 John 15:26; 2 Galatians 4:6; 3 1 Peter 1:11; 4 John 16:13

2. But with these must be connected other passages in which He is named the
Spirit or the Holy Spirit, absolutely, and in such a way as to distinguish Him
both from the Father and from the Son; and some of them in such connections as
to imply His essential and not merely relative or subordinate Deity. Where the
Savior predicts His own departure He speaks of its necessity in order to the
coming of Another Comforter;1 and a careful study of the context of the final
discourses will show that He could not mean a personified influence. The same
may be said of the sin against the Holy Ghost, which proves both His personality
and His essential Deity; and, though those first hypocrites in the Acts might
not commit that sin, they agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord, to
lie to the Holy Ghost,2 and lied not unto men, but unto God. That passages so
seldom occur in which the Third Person is mentioned as God is to be explained on
the same principle which explains the infrequent assertion of the supreme
Divinity of the Son: the Holy Ghost may be reverently said to share the
exinanition and subordination of the Second Person of the Mediatorial Trinity.
But, in the intercommunion, interaction, or perichoreesis of the Trinity, He is
interchangeably God, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of
the Son, or the Holy Spirit absolutely 1 John 14:16; 2 Acts 5:3-9

II. There is a large class of texts which refer to the Holy Ghost as a gift and
an influence sent down through the mediation of Christ and as its most
comprehensive result

1. The great majority of the testimonies of Scripture are of this order. The
Old-Testament predictions, whether of symbol or of promise, speak of the future
gift as the searching effect of fire, as water poured out, as a rushing wind,
and, in special relation to the Christ, as an oil of unction. These four symbols
were merged into the great Personal Gift of the Pentecost; but they govern the
language of the entire New-Testament, from the baptizing with the Holy Ghost and
with fire1 of the Baptist’s promise down to the renewing of the Holy Ghost which
He shed on us abundantly.2 The symbols and their meaning must be more fully
considered hereafter in relation to the blessings they symbolize: it may suffice
now to indicate the fact that the Spirit is constantly spoken of as a gift
poured out upon the world and into the hearts of believers 1 Matthew 3:11; 2
Titus 3:5-6

2. But two things must be remembered here: over and above the general principle,
so often referred to, of a mediatorial subordination of Two Persons in the Holy
Trinity

(1.) The phraseology used in the New Testament seems to distinguish between the
Person and the Gift. The distinction is not constant, but it is nearly so,
between tó Pneúma, the Spirit the Holy One, and to agion, Holy Spirit: a
distinction which cannot be pressed into dogmatic service, because it is matter
of contention among grammatical exegetes, but is nevertheless so marked in the
New Testament as to be very suggestive. The former is used by our Lord in His
great foreannouncement, as an august appellative standing alone and with the now
first-uttered appendage of personality, ekeinos: The Comforter, which is THE
SPIRIT THE HOLY . . . He shall teach.1 Afterwards He breathed on them, and saith
unto them, Receive ye the HOLY GHOST2, pneuma agion. The same distinction is
literally found at those two minor Pentecosts when first the Gentiles and then
the relicts of John the Baptist’s ministry received the Great Gift. In the
narrative of the former The Spirit the Holy fell on them as on us at the
beginning,3 according to the promise Ye shall be baptized with Holy Spirit. In
that of the latter, St. Paul asked if on believing they had received Holy
Spirit: and, on the laying on of his hands, The Spirit the Holy came on them.4
Nor is the Pentecost proper without its evidence. In the days of preparation for
it St. Peter speaks of The Spirit the Holy5 Who spake by the mouth of David; on
the day itself they were all filled with Holy Spirit, and began to speak with
other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.6 Here the personal Spirit as
the Giver has the Article and as the gift is without it. The last verse quoted
introduces the usage of dropping the to agion, the Holy. Without this adjective
the Spirit standing alone constantly occurs, where personal acts are in
question. So in the Apocalypse, what the Spirit saith unto the churches.7 Here
it is to Pneuma, but, immediately afterwards, I was in the. Spirit, en pneumati,
without the article. Where the personal Spirit in the Trinity is symbolically
referred to, as the one sevenfold or perfect Spirit, the phrase is, with the
article, ta epat pneumata ton Theou, the Seven Spirits of God: the symbolical
Fire of the Day of Pentecost returns as seven lamps of fire burning before the
throne. Pondering this distinction as running through the New Testament we
shall—without attributing to it undue importance—find it a preservative against
falling into the error of reducing the Holy Ghost to a personified gift. And,
the more we ponder it, the more clearly shall we see that there is a strict and
impressive and instructive analogy between the variations clustering around the
term Son and those which cluster around the term Spirit. As the One is given and
sent, so also is the Other the same law interprets both

1 John 14:26; 2 John 20:22; 3 Acts 11:15-16; 4 Acts 19:2-6; 5 Acts 1:16; 6 Acts
2:4; 7 Revelation 3:22; Revelation 4:2-5

(2.) The gifts of the Spirit are not always said to be poured out by the Father
on the Son, and through Him on the Church: sometimes they are the dispensations
of the Holy Ghost Himself. As the Son is both Priest and Sacrifice, so the
Spirit is both Gift and Giver. One classical passage is sufficient to illustrate
this. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit . . .. The
manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal . . . But all
these worketh that One and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally
as He will.1 The Holy Ghost is here a Person whose will it is to manifest
Himself: He has a manifestation even as the Son has. And in the dispensation of
the gifts which He imparts He is at once the Administrator of the Trinity, of
the Same God Which worketh all in all, and the personal Agent of His own will 1
1 Corinthians 12:4-11


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  CHAPTER 24: 26. VOL 02 - THE GOSPEL VOCATION
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The Gospel Vocation THE GOSPEL VOCATION:

VOCATION AND UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION Mystery of Gradual Development HISTORICAL
PROCESS

Universal Call

Indirect Gospel Vocation Direct Old-Testament Election and Calling New-Testament
Calling and Election THE NATURE OF THE GOSPEL CALL

Proclamation

Offer Command

Spirit

Word

Church

Vocatio Seria Election and Effectual Calling Resistible, Contingency and
Reprobation HISTORY OF CONTROVERSY In the New Testament

Early Church Augustinian Doctrine

Mediaeval Calvinism and Reformed Confessions Modifications of Calvinism
Lutheranism and its Modifications Arminianism and its Modifications The Divine
purpose of saving the world, accomplished in Christ, is made known to all men by
a proclamation which, as containing the free offer of grace, and the command to
accept it on certain conditions, is a Vocation or Call. However profound is the
mystery involved in such a thought, that call must needs, in some sense, be as
universal as the benefit of atonement, which embraces mankind. But it has had,
in the mystery of the Divine will, an historical development. Before the
fullness of time it proceeded by a principle of election on which vocation
followed; but, under the last dispensation, the call is as wide as the preaching
of the Gospel, and election follows vocation. In this meaning of the term, with
which alone we now have to do, the Spirit’s calling is efficacious, inasmuch as
through the Word He renders all men who hear that Word conscious of their
responsibility, and capable of obedience; but it is not irresistible. In the
case of those who accept the Divine offer, the term is often used to express
their Christian state and privileges generally: it gives them one of their
designations as The Called The three words kalein to call, kleesis vocation, and
kleetos called, refer respectively to the Caller, the act of calling, and the
result. The present section has mainly to do with the act and not with the
result: the latter belonging rather to the Spirit’s work in the preliminaries of
salvation. It is obvious, also, that our subject must take no account of some
limited applications of the word: for instance, those in which it refers to the
Divine power calling those things which be not as though they were;1 those in
which it is used as meaning simply designation, as I have even called thee by
thy name;2 and, lastly, those in which it signifies a vocation to special
office, such as that of St. Paul called to be an Apostle3 of the apostleship.
Though the distinction cannot be rigorously observed, we must limit the term as
much as possible to the declaration of God concerning His purpose of salvation;
and, while we do so, remember that we are dealing with a subject which is at
present involved in impenetrable mystery 1 Romans 4:17; 2 Isaiah 45:4; 3 Romans
1:1 VOCATION AND UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION The Divine call is based upon the Divine
counsel for the salvation of mankind. This involves two important postulates. It
requires, first, that we believe in the universality of the call, whatever
difficulties this faith may encounter; and, secondly, it prepares us to expect
that the call will, like the purpose of redemption, be gradually made manifest
to all men

1. Scripture establishes, as we have seen, the fact that the eternal purpose of
redemption embraced the entire body of mankind. God so loved the world,1 that He
willeth all men to be saved.2 But there is only a step, and that a necessary
one, to the universal declaration of His will in His Son. The Creator loved the
world before He declared His love in Christ; He declared His will to save all,
and that will is connected with the fundamental truth that as there is one God,
so also there is one Mediator between God and man, that Mediator being Jesus
Christ, Man, the Representative of mankind. What St. Paul, in his last word on
this subject, calls the Philanthropy, or the kindness and love of God our Savior
towardMan 1:3 as such, appeared in the Gospel, no less than a catholic love to
the entire race: the word philanthropia is the plainest and strongest argument
for the universality of the salvation provided. Now, whatever difficulties may
arise to baffle our finite faculties, we are bound to believe that the whole
world, directly or indirectly, sooner or later, must receive the glad tidings of
the Gospel 1 John 3:16; 2 1 Timothy 2:4; 3 Titus 3:4

2. As it has pleased God to make the revelation of His purpose gradual, so we
might expect that the proclamation of His mercy in accordance with that purpose
would be gradual. In fact the two are one; and they are united in many passages.
Its slow and partial and progressive announcement is bound up with the gradual
development of the design of salvation itself. Here two things may be noted. The
law of the Divine economy, according to which the education of fallen mankind
has been conducted by a development of truth, and the orderly unfolding of one
great mediatorial system, admits of no exception to it, and no appeal from it.
But the gradual and slow progress of the call has reference only to the external
proclamation. Known only to God are His internal communications with the spirits
of men HISTORICAL PROCESS The Divine Call, keeping pace with the unfolding of
the redeeming purpose, is with reference to all mankind, and apart from
revelation, general and indirect: in the universal influence of the Spirit upon
the fallen spirits of men, and in His providential guidance of the nations. The
direct Call through the Word has been twofold: first, during the ages of
preparation, it was spoken to the people of the old covenant and of the
election; secondly, in Christ Jesus, it is the Gospel Call proper addressed to
all mankind, leading to the election of those who believe THE INDIRECT CALL The
Universal Call, Vocatio Catholica, is that by which the Holy Spirit has moved
upon the chaos of the nations through a secret influence to which the term call
is only improperly applied. Whatever name, however, is applied to it there can
be no doubt that the world has been under the secret and mysterious attraction
of grace from the beginning, over and above the interior Light which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.1 1 John 1:9

1. The influence of the Holy Ghost, the gift of redemption to the fallen race,
must not be limited. We have intimations in the early Scriptures that the Spirit
strove WITH MAN;1 throughout the Old Testament the rebellious vexed His Holy
Spirit;2 and, though this was the special sin of the ancient people, we must
assume that it was the secret of the commencing ungodliness of the world at
large. In the New Testament we are told that the Gentiles universally had the
law of God written in their hearts:3 and certainly there has been no universal
sense of truth but as the fruit of the influence of Him who is the Spirit of the
truth.4 He in every age HATH SHOWED5 it unto them 1 Genesis 6:3; 2 Isaiah 63:10;
3 Romans 2:15; 4 John 16:13; John 5:1-47Romans 1:19; 2. The early revelation
which was given to the world before the first dispersion of its inhabitants was
a sound that went into all the earth:1 issuing from the household of Adam and
afterwards from that of Noah. And, however perverted became the traditions of
primeval truth, they were in a certain sense a constant appeal to the world to
remember its Creator in the days of its youth. In like manner, and this may be
referred to by way of analogy, the most corrupt presentation of the Gospel in
the darkest ages of Christendom carried with it the word of life

1 Romans 10:18

3. Moreover St. Paul tells us, in one of the few early discourses to the
Gentiles that are recorded, of God’s providential call to all nations.
Nevertheless He left not Himself without witness.1 How this catholic preacher of
a Catholic Christianity elsewhere dilated upon this theme we know not. But these
words have a large meaning; and, if we collate the preacher in the Acts with the
teacher to the Romans, we shall gather that the Apostle of the Gentiles
magnified his office in this sense also

1 Acts 14:17 THE DIRECT CALL The history of the Gospel vocation, as direct
through the Word, is in Scripture divided into two branches. In the Old
Testament it was limited to one race, first elected and then called; in the New
Testament it is universally to all men, first called arid then elected: a
distinction of great importance

I. The Vocation of Abraham is the central point of Old-Covenant Election. But
this looks back upon a previous historical development of the principle, and
looks forward to its consummation and change in the Gospel

1. In the two sons of our first parents the separation of God’s people had its
first type; and in the salvation of one family the Flood was the second. Between
the sons of Noah God put a difference not altogether dependent upon their
several personal acts; and the special vocation followed a special election.
For, though the dealings of God with the two classes respectively had reference
to their moral character, especially as it respects the leading personages, such
as Shem and Noah, yet we cannot but discern a direct and sovereign election of
the peoples and nations who should carry on His central design

2. The call of Abraham was the choice of a covenant people. With him this
special national or race election specifically began. The words of Jehovah to
the children of Israel, the whole family which I brought up from the land of
Egypt, saying, you only have I known of all the families of the earth,1 is the
strongest expression of the fact. This election, as in the New Testament, is
adoption: Israel is My son, even My firstborn.2 Hence the people thus
distinguished were the peculiar people.3 The thought has a striking illustration
in the words of the prophet concerning the typical chosen nation: When Israel
was a child then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt;4 where the
election is followed by vocation and adoption 1 Amos 3:1-2; 2 Exodus 4:22; 3
Deuteronomy 14:2; 4 Hosea 11:1

3. Throughout the development of the Old-Testament Election there runs the
mystery of a Divine purpose of unfathomable wisdom; in the contemplation of
which, however, two things must be remembered: first, that this choice was never
altogether without respect to the moral character of its objects, and, secondly,
that it always was connected with a prophecy of a universal call in the Gospel.
Though the Supreme God used occasionally the instrumentality of the ungodly He
carried on the great purposes of His grace by men who responded to His internal
call, and were morally fit agents of His will. Abel, Noah, Abraham, are
instances of this; nor is Jacob an exception. It is true that the gifts and
calling of God are without repentance;1 and that, having chosen a lineage out of
which His Son should arise, He did not vary from His purpose in consequence of
much unfaithfulness on the part of the elect people. But it is true also that
the leading personages on whom the absolute election fell were among the
foremost saints of history

Moreover, in His government of the people of His special election God was a
jealous God; and often chastised them by the very heathen whom He passed by in
their favor

Above all, He failed not always to let them know that they were only the
temporary Election of His counsel, and that His Name should one day be great
among the Gentiles.2 But, after every qualification, the profound mystery
remains untaken away, nor is it altogether removed in the more catholic
dispensation of the Gospel 1 Romans 11:29; 2 Malachi 1:11

II. The direct call of the Gospel after the coming of Christ, or rather after
the Day of Pentecost, is distinguished from that of the Old Testament by not
being national, and by preceding the election. But this leads us onward to the
nature of the vocation itself THE NATURE OF THE GOSPEL CALL The Gospel Call is
the universal offer of salvation and command to submit to its Author; proclaimed
by the Spirit through the Word committed to the keeping and ministry of the
Christian Church; containing the glad tidings of the earnest purpose of God
towards every individual of mankind; effectual through the Spirit’s grace to all
who yield; but declared not to be irresistible, and in fact resisted, even
finally resisted, by unbelief THE OFFER OF SALVATION The Call is the
PROCLAMATION of the redemption accomplished by Christ; the OFFER of its
blessings on certain conditions; and the COMMAND to submit to the authority of
Christ the Mediator of these blessings. These three are one in the embassage of
the New Covenant; and the Gospel is not fully preached unless equal prominence
is given to all The model of this preaching is found in the Acts of the
Apostles, where St. Peter and St Paul are the leading examples. The Proclamation
and the Offer and the Command must be united in every true delivery of the
Gospel Call, as they are invariably united in the original examples. The first
sound of that Vocation ends with such a note as this: and we are His witnesses
of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, Whom God hath given to them that
obey Him.1 Here are the three elements to which we have given prominence: the
testimony given; the terms prescribed; and the submission demanded. St. Paul’s
first recorded sermon contains them all with equal precision: Be it known unto
you, . . . all that believe; . . . beware therefore!2 Were there no theory to be
served it must be admitted that the call of the Gospel is a witness to everyone
of a blessing offered on terms open to all, and enforced by a command to submit
to the Mediatorial Authority of Him Who is raised up to dispense it. The NAME is
preached as a Testimony of salvation, as the Object of faith, and the Authority
to which universal submission is due 1 Acts 5:32; 2 Acts 13:38-40 IN THE CHURCH
THROUGH THE WORD The second proposition contains three points: the Spirit is the
Agent of the Call: it is connected with the Word; and that Word is ordinarily
committed to the ministry of the Christian Church. The doctrine of the Gospel
Vocation demands a careful adjustment of the relations of these three

I. Generally, He Who calleth is God, though not specifically as the Father. We
preached unto you the Gospel of God—a phrase which seldom occurs—Who hath called
you unto His kingdom and glory.1 Christ also, though only as upon earth,
declares: I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.2 The
Holy Spirit is now permanently the manifestation of the God of the Gospel
Vocation: The Spirit and the Bride say, Come,3 where the invitation to sinners
follows the invocation of the Lord Himself to return. He is the Preacher in the
name of Christ to the world: He shall testify of Me.4 But this in the unity of
the Three-One Author of redemption: All things that the Father hath are Mine:
therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you.5 1 1
Thessalonians 2:9-12; 2 Matthew 9:13; 3 Revelation 22:17; 4 John 15:26; 5 John
16:15

II. The call of the Gospel is ordinarily through the Word, But the Word is both
the letter and the substance of the letter: these are united in the instrument
which the Holy Ghost employs

1. St. Paul says that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,1
where he evidently means the doctrine preached: the summary of truths as the
truth is in Jesus.2 That the Gospel proclamation is intended seems obvious from
the connection of that word with what precedes: How shall they hear without a
preacher?3 But there is a substantial truth of which the Word written or spoken
is only the vehicle. Hence the Apostle adds: Yes verily, their sound went into
all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.4 And the original
passage of the prophet proves that there is a voice of God’s Will which is not
in written language: I was made manifest unto them that asked not after Me.5 In
this sense there may be a Word without the Word.6 1 Romans 10:17; 2 Ephesians
4:21; 3 Romans 10:14; 4 Romans 10:18; 5 Isaiah 65:1; 6 1 Peter 3:1

2. Now the call through the Gospel is not limited either to the oral or to the
written announcement. It is a silent effectual voice accompanying the truth,
wherever the truth is The Holy Ghost is the Life of the doctrine which is the
letter; and most certainly the letter is never without the accompanying Spirit.
The letter is not only written; there may be a spoken letter also. Wherever the
truth is declared in the name of Jesus it is the instrument of His energy. But
the Spirit is not dependent either on the written or on the spoken letter as
such. It is the truth which He uses as His instrument. He is the Spirit of
truth.1

1 John 16:13

III. The relation of the Church to the Spirit’s efficiency through the Word is
everywhere made prominent in the New Testament. The Savior gave His commission
unto the Apostles whom He had chosen.1 Their authority He declared to be from
Himself and the reflection or continuation of His own: As My Father hath sent
Me, even so send I you.2 The extent of their commission is all nations; and the
matter of the vocation is the preaching the Gospel to every creature.3 These
Apostles to whom the Lord gave commandment themselves in turn gave commandment
through the Holy Ghost4 to their successors as responsible for preaching that
Gospel to the end of time. But the call is committed really to the Church in a
wider sense than this: all who receive the glad tidings must freely give as they
have freely received. We read in the Acts that the Dispersed went about
preaching the Word.5 And the very last saying of Scripture on the subject is The
Spirit and the Bride say, Come,6 where the mystical fellowship is represented as
uniting with the Spirit in beseeching the Savior to come to His people, and in
beseeching all who thirst to come to Him. This general truth may be further
unfolded as pointing to the mystery of the Divine law of vocation; impressing
deeply the responsibility of the Church; and carrying in it the prophecy of the
eventual proclamation of the Gospel to all men 1 Acts 1:2; 2 John 20:21; 3
Matthew 28:19; 4 Acts 1:2; 5 Acts 8:4; 6 Revelation 22:17

1. In every age the work of the Spirit in extending the Kingdom of God has been
bound up with human agency. Individuals in the old economy were prominent in
every dispensation of it, teaching His will and uttering His prophetic words and
carrying on His work generally. The history of ancient revelation is bound up
with a series of eminent men; and not only individuals but the covenant nation
itself was elected and called to preach in some sense to the outside world His
present and coming Kingdom. The Christian dispensation has introduced no new
law: it has only widened the application of the law that operated from the
beginning. As Man was taken up into the Godhead to be the procurer of
redemption, so that Man who is God uses His brethren for the diffusion of His
grace

2. There is no fact more sure, while there is no mystery more profound, than the
connection between the fidelity of the Church and the spread of Christ’s
kingdom. The Call is heard where the Church sends it; but where the messengers
are not sent from among men, there are no angels having an eternal Gospel to
proclaim.1 How shall they hear without a preacher?2 was a question which might
leave all to the secret arrangements of arbitrary grace. But it is followed by
another, which leaves the responsibility with the living Church: How shall they
preach except they be sent?3 Not indeed that the Holy Spirit is, or has ever
been, absolutely bound to human instrumentality. The dew of His grace tarrieth
not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men;4 but the gradual and slow spread
of Gospel preaching most plainly shows that the energy of the Church has much to
do with the term of the final consummation. Our Lord must reign till He hath put
all enemies under His feet;5 but He does not wait for any set time apart from
the accomplishment of His Church’s mission. Though we dare not limit the
operation of grace to the sphere of missionary preaching, we know of no
Christianity which the successors of the Apostles do not establish. Hence it is
well to fall back upon a double call, — not so dishonorable to the Divine
perfections as the external and internal, the former resting on an official will
of Heaven, so to speak, and the latter on the private feeling of our heavenly
Father, —one that is open and known and another that is hidden and unknown.
There is a secret call in which generally speaking man is not co-operant: which,
like the sun, extends its influence to the evil and the good 1 Revelation 14:6;
2 Romans 10:14; 3 Romans 10:15; 4 Micah 5:7; 5 1 Corinthians 15:25

3. Nothing is more certain in prophecy than that the Vocation of the Gospel in
its stricter meaning shall be universal. Both the Old Testament and the New
concur to present a perspective in which this Gospel of the kingdom shall be
preached in all the world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall
the end come.1 1 Matthew 24:14 THE DIVINE INTENTION IN THE CALL

We may pass with more confidence to the third proposition. The Gospel Call
contains the earnest purpose of God to save every man who hears it

1. Here if anywhere the a priori style of argument is valid. However the
contrary assertion may be disguised it involves dishonor to the truth and
faithfulness of God

Many mysteries crowd around the subject, beneath which our reason must bow down;
but the superfluous mystery that makes the Righteous Judge utter the gracious
offers of His mercy with a secret reserve is one from which every feeling of our
reverence and charity recoils. The teaching that finds it necessary to
distinguish between an official call for all men and an efficacious call for the
elect is self-condemned

2. We need not defend the honor of God: we have only to interpret His sayings.
Our Lord’s words ought to be enough: Compel them to come in!1 illustrated as
they are by His sorrow over Jerusalem: How often would I! and ye would not!2 And
our Lord’s will is the will of God, Who will have all men to be saved.3 Who in
the Old Testament said, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that
the wicked turn from his way and live.4 In the New Testament the Gospel is the
appearance of the kindness and love of God our Savior towardMan 1:5 or His
philanthropy 1 Luke 14:23; 2 Matthew 23:37; 3 1 Timothy 2:4; 4 Ezekiel 33:11; 5
Titus 3:4

3. Such a genuine call implies that the offer of salvation is always accompanied
by sufficient grace for its acceptance. This has already been seen in relation
to the Word, and will again be considered in the next topic of Preliminary
Grace. Meanwhile, there is no need of argument; nor is any specific text
necessary. Every Divine commandment is virtually a commandment with promise:
with promise not only of blessing to follow obedience but of grace to precede
it. The Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that
believeth.1 By the special appointment and will of God the Word has grace
connected with it, sufficient for every purpose for which it is sent. So it was
anciently said: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that
which I please.2 1 Romans 1:16; 2 Isaiah 55:11 CALLING AND ELECTION

Those who accept the Divine call through the Word are in the language of
Scripture the Elect. And both terms, Calling and Election, or the Called and the
Elect, are sometimes used to designate the Christian Estate as such

1. Of a Vocatio Interna, as distinguished from the Vocatio Externa, there is no
trace in Scripture: INTERNAL CALLING and EFFECTUAL CALLING are phrases never
used. The distinction implies such a difference as would have been clearly
stated if it existed; and all that is meant by the internal call finds its
expression, as we shall see, in other offices of the Holy Spirit of
enlightenment, conviction, and conversion. Each of these terms carries the
meaning of an external summons made effectual by interior grace; but never in
the sense that sufficient interior grace is denied to any. It may be said that
the true internal vocation is election in the strict sense. Many be called, but
few chosen.1 This states a fact over which the Savior mourns. I have chosen you
out of the world.2 This states a fact over which the Savior rejoices. The term,
however, is used in some passages with the same wide application as the term
call: for instance, God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound
the wise,3 and have not I chosen you twelve?4 While therefore our Saviour’s
first word establishes the distinction, and we are warranted in saying that
election is the result of accepting the call, we must remember that the New
Testament often uses the terms interchangeably. Election always presupposes the
call; but the call does not always issue in election 1 Matthew 20:16; 2 John
15:19; 3 1 Corinthians 1:27; 4 John 6:70

2. The acceptance of the Call, and the Election that follows it, are both
metonymically used to designate the state of Christians, presumed according to
their profession to stand in the grace of God. They are The Called of Jesus
Christ . . . beloved of God, called to be saints,1 or called saints. Christians
are Saints by designation as well as by internal character; and they are called
by designation, as having accepted the external appeal. So also they are the
Elect as separated from the world both outwardly and inwardly. St. Peter writes
his Catholic Epistle to The Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father,2 whom he terms a chosen generation. St. Paul speaks of the faith of
God’s elect;3 and St. John of thy elect sister.4 The phrase The Election5 is
used for the company of God’s chosen among the Jews; but not now generally of
all Christians. God’s Elect,6 or The Elect of God,7 are those who belong to the
household of faith. The predominant allusion in the Word is to the collective
character of the Church which has taken the place of the privileged nation; and
that governs the use of the term everywhere, precisely like the denomination the
Sanctified or the Saints. Christians are the Election of Grace8 in opposition to
the ancient people gathered out of the world; they are the sanctified as
separated, instead of them, to God. The word Church or Ecclesia literally means
the same as The Called and the Elect: it expresses the result of that which
Election means as in the purpose of God

1 Romans 1:6-7; 2 1 Peter 1:1; 1 Peter 2:9; 3 Titus 1:1; 4 2 John 1:13; 5 Romans
11:7; 6 Romans 8:33; 7 Colossians 3:12; 8 Romans 11:5

CONTINGENCY The Gospel Call may be resisted and finally resisted; even the
Election connected with it may after obedience be forfeited; and, with regard to
both classes of the disobedient, the term reprobation is used, though never as
the result of a fixed decree

1. Many are called, but few chosen.1 This word, if genuine in the text, should
be an end of all controversy, as explained by our Lord Himself: Ye will not come
to Me.2 There is nothing more constantly and consistently declared in the older
and later Scriptures than the power of man to oppose and oppose successfully the
influence of grace. Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost!3 Surely it is
dishonorable to the name of God to suppose that He would charge on sinners a
resistance which was to them a necessity, and complain of outrage on His Spirit
Whose influences were only partially put forth 1 Matthew 20:16; 2 John 5:40; 3
Acts 7:51

2. There are some passages of Scripture which indicate that the blessings of
Election itself may be forfeited: this sacred word is not shielded, nor is its
special grace inviolable

Judas was one of the elect: have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a
devil?1 When our Lord speaks of the very elect being deceived, if it were
possible.2 He does not intimate that delusion leading to apostasy was impossible
in their case. Though the words might seem to bear that meaning, we must
otherwise interpret them. For, at the commencement of the discourse He had said:
Take heed that no man deceive you! and at the close, He that shall endure unto
the end, the same shall be saved.3 St. Peter, whose Epistles dwell much on the
privileges of the Election, does not number among those privileges the security
against falling: on the contrary he bids his readers give diligence to make your
calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall, or,
rather, stumble.4 1 John 6:70; 2 Matthew 24:24; 3 Matthew 24:4; Matthew 24:13; 4
2 Peter 1:10

3. Lastly, the Word of God speaks of the possible Reprobation of both these
classes, — the Called and the Chosen—but of the reprobation of no other. The
vocation of the Word is a mysterious test of their state before God and the
truth; and they have failed to sustain that test. They are adokimoi (1.) The
called who resist are reprobates. God gave them over to a reprobate mind who did
not like to retain God in their knowledge.1 They who resist the truth are the
reprobate concerning the faith.2 (2.) St. Paul speaks of the possibility of the
saints being reprobates: Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is
in you, except ye be reprobate?3 When we read of the final signature of the
called and chosen and faithful4 we are taught that the end is not yet when the
called are also chosen. The third word in the great sentence remains: fidelity
must seal the eternal grace of election. (3.) There is no reprobation as fixed
in the decree of God throughout the Scriptures of mercy and truth. The idea is
inconsistent with every-thing but a probation and a willful failure in probation
1 Romans 1:28; 2 2 Timothy 3:8; 3 2 Corinthians 8:5; 4 Revelation 17:14 HISTORY
OF CONTROVERSY A few observations may be made on the Polemics of this question:
limited to that branch of it which concerns Vocation and Election. It is with
the perversion of the Predestination idea that we have mainly to do

I. Within the

New Testament itself there is a remarkable anticipation of the modern
controversy. The preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles was resented by the
Jewish Christians, by those of a certain party especially, as an invasion of the
privileges, or advantages, of the covenant people as the Elect of God. There was
no saying which they more disapproved than St. Paul’s Lo, we turn to the
Gentiles.1 In his Epistle to the Romans the Apostle of the Gentiles argues
against these advocates of an unconditional election, these earliest perverters
of the true doctrine of the decretive will of God. It must be always remembered
that this was the object for which he wrote the Three Chapters which the
Predestinarians have taken refuge in: they were written in fact as a proleptical
refutation of such views. The special exegesis on which a vindication of this
assertion depends is not necessary here. Suffice that St. Paul admits, as we
have already seen, that the ancient election was of a particular line through
which the revelation of the preparatory Gospel was to be transmitted, and in
which the Author of that Gospel was to appear. Undoubtedly, it is hard for human
reason to distinguish between the national and the individual election, and
between the active and the permissive will of God in the hardening of evil men;
but the distinction must be made. Such passages as Therefore hath He mercy on
whom He will have mercy,2 on the one hand, and the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction, on the other, are not to be understood of absolute predetermination
of individuals to be saved or to be lost. The similitude of the Potter and the
clay as more fully seen in Jeremiah ends with a direct refutation of the notion:
there the decrees of God are said to be changed by the characters of men. 0
house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. At what
instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck
up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have
pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do
unto them.3 The whole argument of St. Paul is to show that the election of
Israel as a nation had not come to naught: it was not of works, but of Him that
calleth.4 The Three Chapters carefully studied yield conclusions in favor of a
national election but not of an individual: especially when they are connected
with the intermediate chapter in which we have the Apostle’s glorious protest
against the perversion of his teaching: the same Lord over all is rich unto all
that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be
saved . . .. But to Israel He saith, All day long have I stretched forth My
hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.5 1 Acts 13:46; 2 Romans 9:18;
Romans 9:22; 3 Jeremiah 18:6-8; 4 Romans 9:11; 5 Romans 10:12-13; Romans 10:21

II. The entire Christian community down to the time of Augustine knew in its
doctrine no other election and predestination than what was conditional or, what
is the same thing, of none which do not refer to the ideal Body of Christ as
such. The tendency of the Easterns especially was to lay too much rather than
too little emphasis on the foreknowledge of human repentance and faith.
Chrysostom says: " Not of love alone, but of our virtue also

If it sprang from love alone all would have been saved. If from our virtue alone
that would be little and all would be lost. It was from neither alone, but from
both: for the Calling was not of necessity or of force." This sentence
represents the sentiment of the Greek Church from Origen to Athanasius, and even
John of Damascus, the last of the Oriental Fathers proper. There was a decided
leaning to an exaggeration of the freedom of the human will: at least their
doctrine was not sufficiently protected by any reference to the ever-active
influence of the Holy Ghost upon our fallen nature. But, whatever their
theoretical notions were of the universality of the Gospel vocation, their
Missionary zeal declined after the ninth century, and they have contributed
little to the evangelization of the world

III. Augustine first laid down the principle that " Predestination is the
preparation of grace; grace the bestowment itself." 1. The foundation of his
whole system is his doctrine of Original Sin, which regards all mankind as
utterly bereft of capacity for good: a "mass of perdition," a "condemned lump."
Therefore salvation is absolutely of grace, and without human co-operation. To
this great principle there can be no objection. Nature cannot cast out nature;
and the human fall was a fall into utter impotence. But Augustine forgot that
the first benefit of redemption was co-extensive with the ruin of man. Perhaps,
indeed, he held this; but in a sense of his own. That benefit was in his
teaching a wasted and useless influence save to the elect. He taught that the
Divine eternal decree determined the exact number of those to whom efficacious
grace, which includes an irresistible grace for the beginning and the grace of
perseverance for the close, shall be given. For these alone the Redeemer may be
said to have died: " Everyone that has been redeemed by the blood of Christ is a
man; though not everyone that is a man has been redeemed by the blood of
Christ." " The Savior redeemed the sinners who were to be justified," and " No
one perishes for whom the Savior died." 2. Some of the difficulties connected
with the Gospel Call in this doctrine were summarily disposed of by Augustine,
but only through renouncing that principle of an inextinguishable life of
regeneration which his followers now hold so firmly. All who hear and receive
the Gospel and are baptized receive regenerating grace, and are placed in a
state of salvation: this explains the universal offer of the Gospel and the
equally universal administration of the sacrament. But to the Elect only is the
gift of perseverance imparted, and the objects of the Donum Perseverantiae are
known to God alone: this protects the doctrine of the eternal decree. " Those
who fall are not to be reckoned in the number of the elect, even as to the time
when they lived piously. There are sons of God, not yet such to us but such to
God; and there are again some who are called by us sons of God on account of
grace temporarily received, but not so by Him." Other difficulties Augustine
does not attempt to solve. He has no more to say concerning the hidden decree
than that " God divided the light from the darkness; and so ordered the Fall
that He might first show what the free will of man could do, and then what His
grace could do." Nor has he any solution of the difficulty that the electing
grace of God should be connected with sacraments and bound to a system of
external ordinances. A thousand years afterwards Calvin arose to confront more
boldly these and all other difficulties: not cramped by the Sacramentarian
theory which hampered his great predecessor

IV. During that long interval Predestinarianism, or Augustinianism, passed
through many vicissitudes. The Semipelagians asserted an election of believers
as foreknown, thus giving a formula which has been ever since found useful; and
the Synod of Orange (A.D. 529) condemned the dogma of predestination to evil or
reprobation. In the ninth century Gottschalk carried the doctrine of Augustine
to its extremist limits, limits which it was not again to reach until the modern
representative of the Predestinarian Father arose. His teaching was rejected at
Mainz (A.D. 848), but acknowledged at Valence (A.D. 855): "Fatemur
praedestinationem electorum ad vitam, et praedestinationem impiorum ad mortem,"
a confession, however, in which, rightly understood, all may unite. On the side
of Gottschalk was Ratramnus, against him Hinckmar. It may be said that
throughout the mediaeval discussions of this and kindred subjects the tendency
was in a direction opposite to that of predestinarianism. And, moreover, that
the ever-growing theory of a kingdom of Christ, under one vicar, predestined to
embrace the world, was itself unfavorable to any limitation of the Gospel
vocation. The mediaeval Church at the worst was in spirit and practice
missionary. Universal missions and a partial Call can never rationally co-exist
V. At the Reformation the doctrine of Election and the Limited Call seemed
likely to be in the ascendant everywhere

1. Zwingli and Calvin united in reviving the Augustinian doctrine of an
individual vocation determined by a predestinating decree; but Calvin has given
a permanent name to the system, because in fact he gave it a distinguishing
character. He laid his foundation deeper than that of his forerunner. Augustine
made the Eternal Decree his central point; Calvin carried it up to the Absolute
Being, or Absolute Sovereignty, of God, from which that decree flowed. These are
some of his words: Praedestinationem vocamus aeternum Dei decretum, quo apud se
constitutum habuit quid de UNOQUOQUE homine fieri vellet Dico Deum non modo
primi hominis casum et in eo posterorum ruinam praevidisse, sed arbitrio quoque
suo dispensasse. " Man falls by the providence of God so ordaining, but he falls
through his own wickedness." All is of the absolute, unquestionable, despotic
sovereignty of God. If human, reason suggests a demur, "Respondendum est: quia
voluit!" The decree was Supralapsarian, that is, it included the Fall, which
Augustine never asserts formally. It follows from this in the system of Calvin
that the external call of the Gospel is an unmeaning ceremonial save as to the
elect. The word and the means of grace are to all others "Signa inania:" the
manifestations of a "Voluntas signi," which, signifying nothing but " Common
Grace," must be distinguished from the hidden " Voluntas beneplaciti" on which
the salvation of every man depends. Here is the secret of Predestinarianism,
whatever other name it may bear: the secret that links it with Fatalism, with
philosophic Determinism, with Pantheism, with the modern notion of Abstract Law
or the Absolute Fiat of a Being who is not so much a Person as a Will. Other
relations of this creed to theological doctrine, subordinate relations
introduced in due course, all find their vanishing point in this Unconditioned
and Unconditional Sovereignty, which is the foundation and top-stone of the
whole superstructure

2. The Reformed Confessions assert this doctrine, though with some variations:
variations, however, which introduce qualifying clauses having no real meaning,
and may be left to the symbolical Volumes. Some are of a more extreme type,
approaching, though not positively expressing, the Supralapsarian theory, that
the Fall was included in the decree of God; others are more evidently
Infralapsarian, dating the decree as it were this side of the Fall. The Synod of
Dort, 1618, in opposition to the Remonstrants, digested the Calvinistic doctrine
in a large number of canons, which seem to be based on the latter scheme. It
thus speaks concerning the Vocation of the Gospel: " Though all men sinned in
Adam and were made guilty of malediction and eternal death, God would have done
injury to no one if He had willed to leave the entire human race in sin and the
curse, and to condemn it on account of that sin . . .. But that men may be led
to faith God mercifully sends the heralds of His most joyful tidings to whom He
will and when He will, by whose ministry men are called to repentance and faith
in Christ . . .. That some are gifted with faith in time, and others not,
springs from His eternal decree, . . .according to which He graciously softens
the hearts of the elect, however hard, and bends them to belief, but in His just
judgment leaves the non-elect to the consequences of their own wickedness and
obduracy." These Articles, nearly a hundred in number, are generally received by
the Predestinarian Churches as a full statement of the Christian Faith. The
English version of the same creed is found in the Westminster Confession, drawn
up for the purpose of reforming the English Church between 1643 and 1648: it is
a reflection of the Dort Canons, and accepted by the Presbyterians of the
British Islands and America

Many of the Reformed Confessions, like that of the English Church, mitigate the
dogma of predestination, and use such language as may be without much violence
reconciled with Scripture, especially in their reference to the universality and
sincerity of the Call Others of them are more predestinarian than they appear to
be: ambiguity of phrase disguising their meaning

3. Modifications of the Calvinistic creed are as various as the lands which it
has penetrated. Calvin himself protested unconsciously against all among his
followers who should soften his system of doctrine: " Many so preach election as
to deny that any man is reprobated; but very ignorantly and childishly, since
election itself would not stand unless opposed to reprobation." Thus the modern
Father of Predestination condemned beforehand the devices of his more generous
or less unrelenting successors: rather their device, for all the sophistries of
palliation may be regarded as one. In France, towards the middle of the
seventeenth century, Amyraldus taught that salvation was provided for all men;
that God elected some to whom was given the necessary grace of repentance and
faith; and that all others are simply left without a special determining
influence which none have a right to claim. This useless subterfuge was resorted
to in England by Richard Baxter; and has in more recent times been advocated in
Scotland. It is the unacknowledged creed of great numbers who are bound to the
general teaching of predestinariamsm, but feel constrained to preach the Gospel
freely to all: some because the New Testament exhibits that kind of preaching,
and they dare not contradict its example; some because they think that the
reprobate are predoomed to reject the Gospel as well as to perish without
atonement; and some because their ardent charity melts the fetters of their
creed VI. The Lutheran doctrine passed through stages of fluctuation

1. Both Luther and Melanchthon were at first predestinarian in their views of
the Gospel Call. They taught Determinism or Fatalism almost in the same words as
Calvin used; but both gradually modified and finally retracted these views,
induced mainly by the impossibility of reconciling them with the serious purpose
of God in universally proffering salvation, and with the evangelical scheme of
the means of grace. It may be said generally that the followers of Luther are
not of the school of Augustine

2. Hence the Lutheran Formularies are not predestinarian. The Formula Concordise
was the first public document that dealt at large with the subject. The
following is a translation of sentences which treat, of Election and Vocation: "
Predestination or the eternal Divine election pertains only to the good and
accepted sons of God, and it is the cause of their salvation. It procures their
renewal and disposes of all things which belong to it . . .. This predestination
is not to be scrutinized in the secret of the Divine counsel, but is to be
sought in the Word of God, which reveals it. The Word of God leads us to Christ
. . .. But Christ calls all sinners to Himself, and promises them rest, and
seriously wills that all men should come to Him and yield themselves to be aided
and saved. The true doctrine of predestination is to be learned from the nature
of the Gospel of Christ

There it is plainly taught that God has concluded all under unbelief that He
might have mercy on all, and that He wills none to perish, but rather that all
should be converted and believe the Gospel . . .. When it is said that many are
called but few are chosen,1 it is not to be understood that God is unwilling
that all should be saved; but it indicates the cause of the perdition of the
ungodly, which is this, that they either fail altogether to hear the Word of
God, rebelliously despising it by closing their ears and hardening their hearts,
and in this way hindering the ordinary method of the Holy Spirit, so that He
cannot effect His work on them, or that they esteem lightly the word they hear
and cast it away from them. Their perishing must be ascribed, not to God and His
election, but to their own malignity." Thus the official doctrine of the
Lutheran Church omits the reprobation of the wicked, and makes the
predestination of the believer dependent on the foresight of faith and
perseverance. The Call of the Gospel it regards as universal, serious, and
efficacious: offering sufficient grace to all who hear the Word, whether they
accept it or not. As in the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist all who partake
receive the glorified body of the Lord, some to salvation and others to
condemnation, so all who hear the Gospel receive its saving word, some to the
saving of their souls, and some to their aggravated doom

1 Matthew 22:14

3. The later development of Lutheran teaching has been faithful to these
statements, but has expanded them so as to touch some of the pressing
difficulties which crowd around the question

(1.) The earlier dogmatic writers laid emphasis on the "voluntas antecedens,"
which is the Divine decree of salvation in Christ expressing His "voluntas
universalis, gratuita et seria." This counsel when viewed in the light of
foreknowledge is translated into a " voluntas consequens seu specialis “: not as
if there were two wills in God; but the one supreme will is determined
distributively in regard to the two classes of believers and unbelievers

Hence the universal will may be regarded as rather that of mercy, the special
will as rather that of justice. Later Lutheran theologians have preferred to
dwell more on the election of a new humanity in Christ into the fellowship of
which only those enter who believe:’ the whole emphasis of election rests on the
second race of which the Second Adam is the Head. The special predestination of
individuals is only the historical realization of the eternal purpose of love in
Christ

(2.) Again, the first Lutheran doctors explained the absolute universality of
the Call by a reference to the three great historical crises when the
evangelical appeal went forth without limitation to the nations of the earth:
first, when the universal Promise concerning the Seed of the woman, the
Serpent-Bruiser, passed out into all the world and down to all posterity;
secondly, when the preaching of Noah after the Flood again sent its sound into
all the earth to be molded into universal traditions; and, thirdly, when the
worldwide preaching of the Apostles literally went out without restriction: "
quo non venit apostolee eo epistolee." This solution has a fair show of
theoretic completeness, and of striking generalization; but it leaves unsolved
the mystery that the posterity of those who rejected this triple testimony are
yet without the Gospel, as well as the still profounder mystery that the
publication of the world’s glad tidings should have been left contingent in any
degree whatever on the fidelity of the missionary church. Some more modern
speculative theologians have had recourse to other expedients; among which is
the notion of a Gospel preached in the intermediate state to those who have
either rejected it in this life or insufficiently heard it: a notion which,
based on St. Peter’s testimony to the Saviour’s Missionary Descent into Hades,
is capable of almost unlimited expansion and application within the interval
down to the Day of Judgment. But this subject belongs rather to Eschatology

VII. The Remonstrants of Holland, or Arminians, endeavored to introduce into the
Reformed Church the Scriptural doctrine. But in vain: the Synod of Dort (1618,
1619) rejected their Remonstrance against a limiting of Divine grace, just as
the Council of Trent in the previous century rejected the remonstrance of
Protestantism against another and an opposite kind of dishonor done to the grace
of God. From that time the doctrine of a Universal Atonement, or of a Savior
provided for the race and for sin universally, with the concomitant doctrine of
a free and unreserved offer of grace to all who hear the Word, has been
connected with the name of Arminianism. But this is an injustice to these
doctrines themselves, which have a higher parentage. The Calvinism of modern
times was the Augustinianism of the fifth century: it has no higher origin. It
was Augustine who first dared so to interpret Scripture as to attach a limited
design to the death of Christ: the Fathers who preceded him were generally
faithful to the catholic Gospel; or, if they erred, it was like Origen, in
making the mission of Christ too comprehensive in its benefits

Conversely, Augustinianism may in modern times be called Calvinism; for it has
never prevailed outside of the Churches of the Reformed or Calvinistic type: its
sporadic existence in the JANSENISM of Rome is hardly an exception. The term
Calvinism is however disavowed by some earnest communities which hold its type
of doctrine; because they find or think they find in Scripture the principles on
which Predestinarianism rests. They boldly assume that the teaching of the Word
of God is on this subject, as on some others, expressed in opposite and
seemingly contradictory terms, which it is not within the range of man’s
faculties to reconcile. The antinomy, or paradox, of a determinate decree of
election combined with the most universal appeals to human free will, they
regard as the final word of the Bible; and, admitting that the earliest
Christians were unconscious of it, they claim for Augustine the distinction of
having given it the prominence in his teaching which the Scripture assigns to
it. This is therefore matter of pure exegesis, and the question remains—though
it is no question to us—whether or not God has imposed this heavy burden on the
human intellect and on Christian faith. Meanwhile what is unreasonably called
Arminianism is the faith of the Eastern and Western Churches representing
Ancient Christianity though in its corruption, of Lutheranism, representing the
Reformation, of the Church of England throughout the British Empire, and of
Methodism in all its branches throughout the world


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  CHAPTER 25: 27. VOL 02 - THE PRELIMINARIES OF SALVATION
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The Preliminaries of Salvation PRELIMINARIES OF SALVATION: THE SPIRIT OF GRACE
Grace Prevenient Scriptural Doctrine

Importance

FREE WILL RELATION OF GRACE TO FREEDOM OF WILL CONVERSION, REPENTANCE, FAITH,
CONVERSION The Term Connection with Preliminary Grace Relation to Repentance and
Faith REPENTANCE AND FAITH

Repentance Divinely wrought Conviction

Human in Contrition Submission to the Law and Confession

Reparation Legal and Evangelical FAITH, DIVINE AND HUMAN

Belief

Saving Faith Trust Passive and Active by the Holy Spirit Assurance Relations of
Repentance and Faith The work of the Holy Spirit must now be viewed as preparing
the soul for admission into the consummate blessings of the covenant of grace: a
work which He accomplishes, not absolutely as He imparts those blessings
themselves, but as quickening, aiding and directing the energies of the free
will of man to seek them. The preparation, when viewed in relation to His
agency, is Preliminary Grace; in respect to man, it tends to secure compliance
with the conditions of the covenant. In all sound doctrine on this subject there
must be a certain combination of the Divine element and the human. The result is
seen in Conversion, Repentance, and Faith, in their unity, distinctness, and
mutual relations, all which belong to the sphere of the Spirit’s prevenient
influence The Holy Ghost is here the Author of preliminary grace: that is, of
the kind of preparatory influence which is imparted outside of the temple of
Christ’s mystical body, or rather in the outer court of that temple. When He
bestows the full blessings of personal salvation, as they are the result of a
union with Christ, He is simply and solely the Administrator and Giver: the
object of this grace in the nature of things can only receive

Forgiveness, adoption, sanctification are necessarily Divine acts: nothing can
be more absolute than the prerogative of God in conferring these blessings. This
does not imply that the influences which prepare the soul for these acts of
perfect grace are not from a Divine source alone. It must be remembered that it
is the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ1 flowing from, and revealing the Love of
God that is dispensed even to the outer world in the Communion of the Holy
Ghost. But it must also be remembered that this prevenient influence is
literally bound up with the human use of it being without meaning apart from
that use; and, moreover, that of itself it is not saving, though it is unto
salvation. The present department of theology is beset with peculiar
difficulties, and has been the arena of some of the keenest controversies.
Hence, it will be important to establish our points by the evidence of
Scripture; and, only after this is done, turn aside to the polemics of the
question 1 2 Corinthians 13:14 THE SPIRIT OF GRACE The Spirit of Grace is the
Author of every movement of man’s soul towards salvation; but His influence
requires and indeed implies a certain co-operation of man as its object

Here then we have three topics to be considered: grace prevenient, human
co-operating agency, and the relation between grace and free will GRACE
PREVENIENT The Grace of God which bringeth salvation is the fountain of Divine
loving kindness to mankind, undeserving and impotent; exhibited once for all in
the redeeming mission of Christ; and exercised in the administration of the Holy
Ghost, THE SPIRIT OF GRACE, throughout the whole range of His saving work. It is
the sole, efficient cause of all spiritual good in man: of the beginning,
continuance, and consummation of religion in the human soul. The manifestation
of Divine influence which precedes the full regenerate life receives no special
name in Scripture; but it is so described as to warrant the designation usually
given it of Prevenient Grace

I. GRACE, charis, is the love of the Triune God as it is displayed towards
sinful man, helpless in his sin. It is therefore free grace corresponding to
universal love; mercy towards the guilty and help for the impotent soul. It is
sovereign as being under no compulsion, even that of the Atonement, which it
provided, and was not created by it. It is universal, being spoken of rather as
an attribute than as an act of God; but it is particular also, suiting its
manifestation to each. It is independent of merit in the object, of necessity,
for otherwise grace would be no more grace; but it is not arbitrary, nor is it
independent of conditions. As this grace is that of the Father and the Son in
the redemption of mankind, it has already been considered. It is now viewed as
the grace of the Spirit in the administration of redemption. The Holy Ghost is
once in Scripture termed in a most affecting connection THE SPIRIT OF GRACE.1
The propriety of the term Prevenient Grace, and the doctrine which it signifies,
rests upon the general truth that salvation is altogether of the Divine
loving-kindness. This is declared in two ways: man is impotent in his guilt and
weakness; God’s manifold gift in redemption is free

1 Hebrews 10:29

1. The powerlessness of man is everywhere assumed in Scripture, though not
stated often in positive terms. Like many other universal truths—such as the
Being of God, the immortality of the soul—it is the presupposition of the whole
Bible. Still, it has sound and most impressive Scriptural confirmations: though
some of those which may be appealed to must, in exegetical fidelity, be
cautiously received. Certain of these passages refer rather to the hardening
effect of continued sin: such as you hath He quickened, who were dead in
trespasses and sins.1 Some describe the impotence of man to carry on of himself
God’s work; such as Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord
of Hosts,2 and Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to count aught as from
ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.3 Not a few refer to the entire
dependence of the believer on Christ for all his spiritual good; such as Without
Me ye can do nothing.4 But there are others which lay stress upon the fact that
the world was lost in sin and weakness when Christ interposed: When we were yet
without strength (asthenoon, helpless), in due time Christ died for the ungodly
(aseboon, godless). While we were yet sinners (hamartooloón, transgressors),
Christ died for us. When we were enemies (echthroí, under wrath), we were
reconciled to God.5 Now all these words, while they depict the estate of fallen
man at the time when the Redeemer appeared, must be made general in their
application. They give, as a quaternion, the best negative definition of grace
that the Scripture furnishes. As sinners are under the law and guilty, grace
finds a method of mercy; as they are under the Divine displeasure, it provides
for the reconciliation of God; as they are cut off from fellowship with their
Maker, it gives them the Spirit of worship and holiness; as they are absolutely
unable to help themselves, it provides them all the help of Heaven. . Man is
unequal to his own salvation, however it is viewed: whether in its beginning, or
in its process, or in its end 1 Ephesians 2:1; 2 Zechariah 4:6; 3 2 Corinthians
3:5; 4 John 15:5; 5 Romans 5:6; Romans 5:8; Romans 5:10

2. Hence it is declared that the salvation of man is altogether of grace. By
grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of
God:1 altogether of grace and not of works. There is no need to ask to
which—whether salvation or faith— the GIFT refers: it refers to both, which in
this connection are inseparable. It is not so much in single passages as in the
constant tenor of Scripture that we gather the spontaneous freedom of the grace
that provided salvation. In fact, the origin of human redemption is always
traced to the love of God which, resting upon undeserving man, became grace And
the use of the term in the New Testament illustrates this. The word, as
sanctified to Christian uses, and apart from its occasional classical
application as graciousness, —in which sense it lights upon our Lord’s lips:
they wondered at the gracious words, tees charitos, which proceeded out of His
mouth,2—has three meanings in the New Testament. It is Grace from God to man,
and as such is the sum of benediction:3 charis umin; it is Grace working within
the soul:4 My grace, hee charis mou, is sufficient for thee; and, finally, it is
Grace going back to God in thanks:5 Charis too Theoo, thanks be to God 1
Ephesians 2:8; 2 Luke 4:22; 3 2 Corinthians 1:2; 4 2 Corinthians 12:9; 5 2
Corinthians 9:15

II. This grace as the influence of the Spirit on the minds of men generally and
of individual men before their personal acceptance is described in various ways.
These may be classed as, first, referring to the Divine operation, when it is a
striving and drawing; secondly, in relation to the means used, when it is a
demonstration of the truth; thirdly, as influencing man, when it is the working
in him to will, by piercing or opening his heart

These three are distinct, but one; and, when compared, yield a doctrine which is
simple in its mystery though mysterious in its simplicity

1. The drawing and striving of the Spirit are throughout the Scriptures
abundantly referred to: the former operating on the human soul regarded as
obedient; the latter wrestling with that soul regarded as repugnant; both
tending to salvation, and in every case rendering that salvation possible. The
Old-Testament declaration, My Spirit shall not always strive withMan 1:1 may be
capable of another interpretation, but it is followed by constant reference to a
resisting of the Spirit as the secret of human impenitence. In the New Testament
we hear, from the lips of the Great Attraction Himself: No man can come to Me
except the Father Which hath sent Me draw him,2 and we may add, This spake He of
the Spirit.3 Both the striving and the drawing express the strongest influence
short of compulsion. The zeal of human agency, described in Scripture, catches
the same tone and strictly corresponds, being its representative. That I might
by all means save some4 and Compel them to come in5 are mutually correlative:
neither the command, nor the obedience to it, is consistent with an absence of
Divine influence, or with anything but a Divine purpose to save 1 Genesis 6:3; 2
John 6:44; 3 John 7:39; 4 1 Corinthians 9:22; 5 Luke 14:23

2. The Word of Truth is never without the influence of the Spirit. On the Day of
Pentecost the first Christian sermon was preached with His accompanying power:
they spoke, first indeed only to God but afterwards to man, as the Spirit gave
them utterance.1 Nothing less than this is meant by the reference to the Word of
God which effectually worketh2 in those that believe, and to the Gospel which
came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost.3 An
effectual Divine energy is described as belonging to the Word preached, apart
from its final result: My preaching was . . . in demonstration of the Spirit and
of power.4 This apodeixei is opposed to the influence of rhetorical skill, and
establishes the general fact that the Spirit’s power has the energy and effect
of a Divine persuasion, whether yielded to or not 1 Acts 2:4; 2 1 Thessalonians
2:13; 3 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 4 1 Corinthians 2:4

3. The effect produced is occasionally made prominent. Under that first sermon
they were pricked in their heart,1 which in another form is stated of Lydia,
whose heart the Lord opened.2 The piercing and the opening are not in these
texts so different as is sometimes thought: both the Jews and Lydia attended
unto the things which were spoken as the result. It is God which, of His good
pleasure, worketh in you to will and to do:3 here we have the last word of
Scripture on this subject 1 Acts 2:37; 2 Acts 16:14; 3 Php 2:13 PERSONAL HUMAN
AGENCY:FREE WILL The prevenient grace of the Spirit is exercised on the natural
man: that is, on man as the Fall has left him. As the object of that grace man
is a personality free and responsible, by the evidence of consciousness and
conscience. As fallen he is throughout all his faculties enslaved to sin; but
knows that sin is foreign to his original nature, and that the slavery is not
hopeless nor of necessity. His will is still the originating power or principle
of selfdetermination, under the influence of motives originated in the
understanding and feeling, but capable of controlling those motives. And his
whole nature, as fallen, whether regarded as intellect, sensibility or will, is
under some measure of the influence of the Holy Spirit, the firstfruits of the
gift of redemption

These several propositions are in themselves clear and simple and true. They are
in harmony with all sound psychology; with common sense; and with the tenor and
tendency of all Scripture. Their difficulty is felt only in relation to the
theological speculations which have been connected with the influence of the
Holy Spirit, and the metaphysical speculations with which the doctrine of
election has surrounded them

1. Prevenient grace is exercised on the personality of man, free and
accountable: not upon any particular element of his nature, but upon himself.
That personality is the Suppositum Intelligens, the responsible author of all
that he does: not his will, nor his feeling, nor his intellect; but the hidden
man, the autos ego, the central substantial person who is behind and beneath all
his affections and attributes. That influence of the Spirit, directly or through
the Word, is exercised upon the agent whom St. Paul describes as the active I or
the passive Me of every religious feeling that precedes regeneration

2. The person or personality of the natural or unregenerate man is free,
inasmuch as no power from without controls his will. It is the very nature of
will to originate volition: otherwise, if constrained, will is no more will; the
possessor of it is not accountable; and volition is only a misnomer for the
obedience, only in appearance spontaneous, to a natural or physical law.
Consciousness and conscience alike attest that the sinner—for of the sinner we
are now speaking—is free and responsible: his consciousness in its first
elements is that of a free agent; and his conscience, or MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS,
asserts his responsibility, not only for actions but for words and thoughts and
the whole posture of the mind

3. Again, that person is bound and enslaved to sin. Naturally the bias to evil
and the aversion from the moral law are so universal that, even apart from
New-Testament teaching, common consent allows that human nature is bound to what
is wrong: so bound that none can escape without a direct Divine intervention;
and bound so universally in actual experience as to warrant the induction that
none will ever be born without it. In the case of actual transgressors, the
effect of habit invariably both proves the original innate bondage and deepens
its strength

4. But the slavery is not absolute. It is conscious slavery, and not submitted
to without reluctance. It is not so much a fetter on the will itself, as the
ascendancy of a sinful bias over the motives that actuate the conduct by
governing the will: the feelings and desires of the affection, and the thoughts
of the mind. The will is not bound; but the understanding which guides it is
darkened, and the affection which prompts its exercise is corrupted by sense.
Now here comes in the doctrine of Prevenient Grace. It is not needed to restore
to the faculty of will its power of originating action: that has never been lost
But it is needed to suggest to the intellect the truth on which religion rests,
and to sway the affections of hope and fear by enlisting the heart on the side
of that truth THE RELATION OF GRACE TO THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL The Grace of God
and the human will are co-operant, but not on equal terms. Grace has the
pre-eminence, and that for many reasons. First, the universal influence of the
Spirit is the true secret of man’s capacity for religion; secondly, His
influence, connected with the Word, is universal, inevitable, and irresistible,
as claiming the consideration of the natural man; and, lastly, He gives the
power, whether used or not, to decide against sin and submit to God. These facts
assure to grace its supremacy in all that belongs to salvation But the
co-operation of the will is real: because in this last stage it rests with the
free agent himself whether the influence of the Spirit be repelled or yielded
to. This is the uniform and unfailing testimony of Scripture; the consideration
of which will prepare the way for a brief review of ecclesiastical opinions and
dogmas on the subject

I. The general truth of a co-operation between the Spirit and the will of man is
a postulate of the entire Scripture. Like some other fundamental truths, it is
not demonstrated but taken for granted; and that very fact is sufficient
evidence of our proposition. This cooperation may be viewed negatively or
positively

1. Negatively, there is no reference in the only authority to an arbitrary
Divine power reigning over the things that accompany salvation. He who works in
us to will is never represented as working so absolutely upon us that nothing is
left to personal responsibility. Turn Thou me! is followed by the I shall be
turned!1 And both parts of the sentence must have their force. There is no
saying in the Word of God which, fairly expounded, represents the Divine Spirit
as overruling the energy of the human object of His grace 1 Jeremiah 31:18

2. Positively, and in the most express manner, the Scripture represents Divine
prevenient grace as operating through and with man’s free concurrence.
Figuratively this is expressed by the good ground1 which receives the seed:
everywhere it is assumed that the first application of truth is probationary,
detecting a character in the hearer which in some sense decides all But it must
always be remembered that this hearer of the Word has a preliminary grace in the
roots of his nature which he yields to or resists in the very act of resisting
or yielding to the appeal of Heaven. We find it, literally, in all those
passages which declare that believers themselves voluntarily receive the Word of
God or of Christ or of grace. So, in the Thessalonians Having received the word2
(dexamenoi answering to parelabete). This last expression is used concerning the
reception of Christ: As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord.3 Another and
cardinal text is: We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that
ye receive not the grace of God in vain.4 Here there is a co-operation of the
Apostles with God; but it is equally certain that there is a co-operation of
believers with both 1 Matthew 13:23; 2 1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2:13; 3 Colossians
2:6; 4 2 Corinthians 6:1 II. That the Spirit has the pre-eminence is equally the
doctrine of all the Scripture, as indeed it is of common sense

1. The fact that man is, since the Fall, still a free agent is not more
essentially a necessity of his moral nature than it is the effect of grace.
Redemption is universal, and goes back to the root of the nature. Its
universality has this for its result that all who are born into the world are
born into a state of probation: otherwise the human spirit would have fallen
back under the law of physical necessity, or into that of diabolic bondage to
evil

Unredeemed spirits are responsible; but their responsibility is no longer
probationary: they are responsible for a state of guilt that has become
determined by their own first act become habitual. The difference put between
them and us is the mystery of redeeming mercy. The children of men are in
bondage to sin; this is the character which is stamped upon them by inheritance.
But the bondage is not hopeless nor is it to any mortal necessary; they have a
natural capacity of freedom to act as well as to choose, to perform as well as
will; and this their very nature is itself grace

2. Grace has the pre-eminence inasmuch as its influence when the Word is
preached, whether directly or indirectly, is inevitable and irresistible.
Prevenient grace moves upon the will through the affections of fear and hope;
and these affections are necessarily moved by the truths which the understanding
perceives. But the understanding is under the necessary influence of the Word,
while, apart from the understanding, in some sense, the passions are under the
control of the Spirit. However obstinately and effectually the truth may be
resisted as a ruling power, as truth it cannot be resisted

3. Moreover, in the secret recesses of man’s nature the grace is given disposing
and enabling him to yield. Though the will must at last act from its own
resources and deliberate impulse, it is influenced through the feeling and the
understanding in such a manner as to give it strength. It is utterly hopeless to
penetrate this mystery: it is the secret between God’s Spirit and man’s agency.
There is a Divine operation which works the desire and acts in such a manner as
not to interfere with the natural freedom of the will. The man determines
himself, through Divine grace, to salvation: never so free as when swayed by
grace CONVERSION, REPENTANCE, FAITH

Conversion is the process by which the soul turns, or is turned, from sin to
God, in order to its acceptance through faith in Christ. This is its strict
meaning, as distinguished from that broader sense in which it is applied to the
entire history of the soul’s restoration. As the turning away from sin it is
closely allied to Repentance, though not synonymous with it; as the turning to
God it includes or is merged in Faith

CONVERSION

I. The term Conversion stands here for a few equivalents in Hebrew and Greek
which express the same religious idea; that of the change by which the soul is
turned from sin to God. The fact that it is thus common to the two Testaments
gives it a great importance. It is the general description of the restoration of
the sinner that runs through the Bible; and therefore has been very often
regarded as including much more than the mere crisis of moral and religious
change. Sometimes it is thought to represent the whole course, through all its
stages, of the return of the soul to God: this is the case especially in the
works of mystical writers, and of some who are not mystical. By those, for
instance, who recognize no saving influence before regeneration, out of which
repentance and faith flow, conversion is of necessity made to include all the
moral blessings of the state of grace: in fact, it must have a very
indeterminate meaning in every system of Calvinism The theology that may be
called Sacramentarian generally regards conversion as the process of recovery
from a state in which the regenerating grace conferred in baptism has been
neglected and might seem to be lost. Sometimes, by a very loose employment of
the term, it is made synonymous with the experience of forgiveness and the
assurance of the reconciliation. But we must remember that it simply means the
turning point of the religious life: its turning from a course of sin to the
commencement of seeking God

Hence the crisis that it marks is not in the religious life of a ’believer, but
in the life of the soul, redeemed indeed, but not yet a new creature in Christ

II. Conversion belongs, therefore, only to the outer court of the Christian
temple. Two considerations will further illustrate this

1. In conversion the Divine and the human agency combine: It may be said that
they cooperate, if the word be rightly understood. This is not the case in the
inner court of the state of salvation by grace. The blessings proper to the
Christian covenant are imparted: the believer simply receives his justification,
his adoption and regeneration, his sanctification. But his conversion is the
preparation for these absolute gifts of redemption: the new life of
righteousness, sonship, and holiness is the one supreme conclusive benefit of
the Christian covenant grace, and man must be made fit to receive it. The
process of this preparation is his conversion to God. When that process is
accomplished the conversion is ended: Ye were as sheep going astray; but are now
RETURNED unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.1 Now throughout this
preliminary stage of the religious life the grace of the Spirit and the effort
of man unite. (1.) The appeal to God to convert the soul runs through the Bible:
such Old-Testament prayers as Turn Thou me, and I shall be turned; for Thou art
the Lord my God,2 and Turn Thou us unto Thee, 0 Lord, and we shall be turned;
renew our days as of old,3 express the spirit of the New Testament also, though
not found in its letter. (2.) But the appeal from God to man to turn himself is
yet more abundant: Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways, for why will ye die, 0
house of Israel?4 where the whole strain is without meaning if converting grace
is irresistible. Here the New Testament affords abundant support: Ye will not
come unto Me, that ye might have life.5 Hence, when treating of Repentance and
Faith, the two elements of conversion, we have continually to exhibit, as will
be seen, a Divine commandment with promise. The grace is from the Lord; the use
of it is with man himself 1 1 Peter 2:25; 2 Jeremiah 31:18; 3 Lamentations 5:21;
4 Ezekiel 33:11; 5 John 5:40

2. The New Testament expressly limits the term Conversion to the beginning or
introduction of the Christian life. There is no instance of its use in reference
to the changes in the believer’s state as such. But here a distinction must be
made. It is true that the word is constantly employed to mark the recovery of
those who were backsliders from the preparatory grace of the old covenant. In
fact, this is its habitual signification throughout the Old Testament: the
appeals to return to Jehovah are addressed to those who had departed from a God
already known and forsaken. The same holds good of our Lord’s use of the word
when He quotes Isaiah: lest they should be converted, and I should heal them;1
as also of the prophecy of His forerunner’s agency: many of the children of
Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.2 Simon Peter’s conversion, after
which he should strengthen his brethren, was a return from backsliding. But
after the day of Pentecost the word begins to be used more broadly, of the
turning from darkness to light3 generally. St. James gives the solitary instance
of its employment to note a Christian’s recovery from the error of his way;4 but
that error was no less than a full departure from the truth of the Gospel
Generally, conversion is supposed to be accomplished when the Christian faith is
received. From that time the penitent is a convert: his conversion is an
accomplished fact 1 Matthew 13:15; 2 Luke 1:16; 3 Acts 36:18; 4 James 5:20 III.
It remains to consider the relation of Conversion to Repentance and Faith, as
distinct from and yet including each

1. Sometimes the term seems to embrace both in the unity of preparation for the
common evangelical benefit. The blessing of Jesus is the turning away everyone
of you from his iniquities; or from darkness to light;1 or from idols to serve
the living and true God2 Here the negative and the positive are united in the
description of the conversion whether of Jews or of Gentiles 1 Acts 3:26; 2 Acts
26:18

2. Sometimes it is more particularly the negative repentance: the aversion of
the soul from sin through a conviction of its true character; a sorrowing hatred
of it as estrangement from God, and abandonment of it in the sincere purpose of
the convinced spirit. Repent ye therefore and be converted:1 here the
forgiveness is supposed afterwards to follow, and conversion is limited to the
effect of repentance. But repentance is also exhibited as the effect of
conversion: Surely after that I was turned, I repented.2 Again the conversion is
itself repentance: he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way
shall save a soul from death.3 These are all instances of a certain freedom of
Scripture in the use of these terms which should warn us against over-careful
dogmatic distinctions 1 Acts 3:19; 2 Jeremiah 31:19; 3 James 5:20

3. More frequently conversion is made equivalent to faith. A great number
believed and turned unto the Lord:1 where faith has the same relation to the
turning which repentance has in the previous passages. Sometimes faith is
omitted where it is nevertheless meant: And all that dwelt at Lydda and Saron
saw him, and turned to the Lord.2 It is even made the distinguishing element in
conversion: but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.3 1
Acts 11:21; 2 Acts 9:35; 3 1 Peter 2:25

4. Thus it is observable that conversion is more closely than repentance and
faith connected with the means or circumstances that bring about the crisis.
These circumstances may be very various, and the concomitants may also vary. The
same result was produced by the terrors through which the jailer was converted,1
and the gentle influence which turned the heart of Lydia. And, in the ordinary
application of the Gospel, these are typical instances: there may be sudden or
instantaneous conversion, and there may be gentle and gradual conversion

1 Acts 16:1-40

5. Hence, finally, as both repentance and faith enter into the Christian life,
continue in it, and in it are made perfect, there is a sense in which
Conversion, of which repentance and faith are the two elements, also runs on
into the state of grace. This brings us back to the point from which we set out:
that there is a wider meaning of the term which must not be forgotten while the
stricter is adhered to. So far as the old man remains in the regenerate there
must be a perpetual turning away from the sins of the past and advancement
towards holiness: whether that holiness be separation from sin in a perpetual
conversion, or union with God in a never-ceasing faith. In other words, there is
an ethical conversion that goes on until the soul is entirely dead to sin and
one with God. But in the Order of Grace Conversion is the process of the soul’s
first coming to Christ, and it would be well on the whole to restrict its use to
that meaning REPENTANCE AND FAITH As the conditions of that salvation which is
the personal possession of the common heritage, Repentance towards God and Faith
towards our Lord Jesus Christ are always united in the New Testament. They
cannot be separated, as repentance implies preexisting faith, and faith implies
pre-existing repentance. But they differ in this, that faith is the instrument
as well as a condition of individual acceptance; and, as such, springs out of
and follows repentance. Both are produced by the preliminary grace of the Holy
Spirit, but not perfected without the concurrence of the will of man. Though
both are only introductory to the state of grace, properly so called, faith in
its saving exercise is the transition point where the state of conviction passes
into life in Christ

REPENTANCE

Repentance is a Divinely-wrought conviction of sin, the result of the Holy
Spirit’s application of the condemning law to the conscience or heart. It
approves itself in contrition, which distinguishes it from the mere knowledge of
sin; in submission to the judicial sentence, which is the essence of true
confession; and in sincere effort to amend, which desires to make reparation to
the dishonored law. Hence it must needs come from God and go back to Him: the
Holy Spirit, using the law, being the Agent in producing this preliminary Divine
change

Repentance, or conviction of sin with its effects, is here regarded prominently
as the result of the spiritual revelation of the Divine law to the conscience of
the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that the same repentance may be
regarded without this direct and express reference to law: it is the sense of
ingratitude which the prodigal feels when returning to his Father; and, of utter
defilement which the unholy soul feels in the presence of the Divine purity.
Even then, however, the fundamental thought is the broken commandment I.
Repentance is the effect of a Divinely-wrought application of the holy law

1. It is generally said to be the gift of God. In the words of the early Church,
receiving the first tidings of the vocation of the heathen, then hath God also
to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life,1 we must understand not only,
first, that the opportunity of repentance was proclaimed, and, secondly, the
promises to repentance set forth, but, thirdly, the actual power of repenting
also afforded. Similarly in that first full statement of the Gospel: Him hath
God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give
repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.2 But it needs no express
testimony to prove that every right feeling concerning self and concerning God’s
law must come from on high: every good gift and every perfect gift is from
above,3 and this includes all spiritual influences. The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit;4 they are the sacrifices OF GOD: of these also it may be said, I
have given it to you upon the altar, though NOT to make atonement for your
souls.5 1 Acts 11:18; 2 Acts 5:31; 3 James 1:17; 4 Psalms 51:17; 5 Leviticus
17:11

2. More particularly it is the office of the Spirit of conviction, Whom the
Savior promised to send to reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and
of judgment.1 This conviction of the Spirit, in its threefold character, is the
essence of evangelical repentance as preached under the Gospel: repentance
following the application of the law—for there is no other repentance
preliminary to grace—but in its peculiar relation to Christ. And the Spirit
Himself is indirectly called in this office, the Spirit of bondage.2 1 John
16:8; 2 Romans 8:15

II. The human evidences of repentance are both its fruits and its tests. They
are so described in Scripture as to show that the Divine operation is wrought
through the human faculties, and finds human expression as if it were the act of
man himself. They constitute his threefold recognition of the majesty of the law
to the existence and claims of which he is now awakened

1. CONTRITION or sorrow for sin is expressed in many ways: especially in the Old
Testament, the descriptions of which have no parallel out of themselves, none
even in the New Testament. (1.) It is a broken and a contrite heart;1 the heart
being the inmost personality and not the sensibilities only, nor the judgment
only, nor only the will. The word has its Hebrew meaning; corresponding with the
broken spirit which precedes: this last being the perfect watchword of that true
repentance to which, as running through the life, the promise is given: Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.2 The hidden man
mourns before God: his mind meditating on the sinfulness of his sin, his feeling
oppressed with grief, and his will absolutely turned against it. Hence (2.) it
is godly sorrow,3 hee kata lupee, and not the sorrow of the world, which dreads
the consequences of transgression rather than hates the transgression itself. It
is mourning that proves its genuineness by refusing to be comforted save by
Divine mercy: it is not so much godly—this is regenerate repentance—as towards
God. (3.) It is a keen sense of sin universal, and not of particular sins. The
conviction of its sinfulness is a new and peculiar experience: a new moral
consciousness which makes perfect the conscience of sin. By the law, applied by
the Spirit, is the knowledge of sin.4 But our Lord tells us that the world is to
be convinced of sin because they believe not on Me:5 Christ the Savior is
Himself the best and only revelation of the evil from which He saves 1 Psalms
51:17; 2 Matthew 5:3; 3 2 Corinthians 7:10; 4 Romans 3:20; 5 John 16:9

2. Submission to the condemning law is of the essence of true repentance and
takes the form of CONFESSION. This may be regarded in two lights: it is the
utterance of utter hopelessness, and of a profound sense of the justice of God
in the visitation of iniquity But the latter takes precedence.

(1.) The law pronounces condemnation, the terrors of which are now first felt;
and the sinner, even though in the presence of Christ, Who preaches repentance,
and all the more because he is in the presence of Christ, accepts the utmost
rigor of judgment as just. He sees his guilt, and sees his inexpressible
pollution, in the light of the Divine countenance, and abhors himself, while he
fears his Judge.

(2.) The law convicts of impotence: and so the penitent cries, When the
commandment came, sin revived, and I died.1 True repentance absolutely withers
all hope in self as to present or future ability.

(3.) These are united in CONFESSION, which is especially in this preliminary
stage only to Heaven. True repentance comes from God and returns back to Him Who
gave it. There is a confession one to another2 commended by the Apostle James,
which belongs rather to the Christian life and is consistent with confession of
universal sin to God alone 1 Romans 7:9; 2 James 5:16

3. The repentance which is a condition of salvation approves its genuineness by
endeavors to amend the life: negatively by turning from sin; positively by
aiming at obedience. This effort is imposed on every penitent by the command of
Scripture: Cease to do evil, learn to do well.1 Bring forth therefore fruit
worthy of repentance2 is the New- Testament formula. The Baptist, the
representative preacher of repentance, gives the solitary instance of these
fruits of a tree neither corrupt nor as yet sound. They are not the acts of a
regenerate life; for the promise of the Holy Ghost is held out as a future gift

They are not fruits of a corrupt tree; for the Spirit gives the prevenient grace
that enables the penitent to present them to God. They are tokens of sincerity,
and are essential as such; for the Scripture invariably demands obedience to
God’s law, and reparation of every injury to man; not indeed as securing
forgiveness, but as its peremptory condition

Both are expressed by the two New-Testament terms, metamellomai or metanoein:
the latter a change of mind, the former a change of purpose. In this turning
from sin and turning towards holiness, the act is rather dwelt upon than the
feeling. The feeling may vary, as it regards both the sense of sin and the sense
of condemnation; it may have endless varieties of expression, but the act is
always the same 1 Isaiah 1:16-17; 2 Matthew 3:8

III. Repentance, thus described, is still in the outer court. It belongs to the
midway state between nature and grace; but has, nevertheless, a special relation
to the dispensation of law. This may be finally illustrated by a summary view of
the New-Testament method of enforcing its necessity and its requirements

1. John the Baptist is the pre-eminent preacher of repentance. The forerunner of
Christ, he is also the forerunner of His Gospel. His doctrine contains every
principle necessary to its perfection; and his ministry, not less than that of
the Apostles, was in power, and in the Holy Ghost.1 He preached repentance as
universally necessary and available. Repent ye!2 was his one word to all alike.
He enforced it as incumbent on every man at the present moment: on the one hand,
because the axe is laid unto the root; and, on the other, because the kingdom of
heaven was at hand. He required it to be thorough, profound, and perfect:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain
and hill shall be brought low. He proclaimed it as accompanied by its meet
fruits of reformation, restitution, and pledges of amendment: Bring forth
therefore fruit worthy of repentance. And, finally, he preached it as
preparatory to the salvation of Christ and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. All
flesh shall see the salvation of God. But the one supreme theme of his
enforcement is the necessity of repentance as the preparation for Christ 1 1
Thessalonians 1:5; 2 Luke 3:3-16

2. Further illustrations of this are found in the Gospels. The kingdom of heaven
suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force:1 words which, whatever
other meaning they bear, have evident reference to John’s baptism, and the
desperate discipline of preparatory repentance. The blind man at Bethsaida, whom
the Savior exhibited in a state of intermediate and halting cure— no longer
wholly blind, but more miserable than when he was; not yet fully enlightened,
but on the way to it—illustrates the prevenient grace of repentance. This
solitary instance of our Lord’s suspended power has a meaning for all ages.
There is a first touch, the effect of which is:

I see men, as trees, walking.2 There is a second, when he was restored and saw
every man dearly. Teaching other lessons as to the progression of grace, and its
critical stages, this unique miracle teaches also that repentance is the
transition to the mercy of the Gospel. The Baptist’s relicts an; found in the
Acts: Apollos required only to be taught the way of God more perfectly;3 and the
Ephesian Twelve were prepared for the full Christian baptism which they had long
waited for. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance,
saying unto the people that they should believe on Him that should come after
him, that is, on Christ Jesus.4 1 Matthew 11:12; 2 Mark 13:24-25; 3 Acts
18:24-27; 4 Acts 19:1-7

3. Hence, finally, while the evangelical element is not wanting in this
repentance—it has a presentiment of the Gospel—it is yet under the law. All that
has been said may be summed up thus. The Holy Spirit of conviction applies the
law to the conscience, and thus works His reproof. The effect is sorrow before
God as the Lawgiver rather than as the Father, or before the Father as the
Fountain of moral authority; acceptance of the righteous sentence pronounced
upon transgression; and sincere though imperfect, necessary though not
meritorious, endeavors to make reparation to the dishonored majesty of right.
Beyond this the repentance which is the condition of salvation does not go. But
it does not fall short of this: it is in all its processes the soul’s tribute to
the law from the condemnation of which the Gospel, received in faith, can alone
save the transgressor

FAITH

Faith as the instrument of appropriating salvation is a Divinely-wrought belief
in the record concerning Christ and trust in His Person as a personal Savior:
these two being one. It must be distinguished, on the one hand, from the general
exercise of belief following evidence which is one of the primary elements of
human nature, and from the grace of faith which is one of the fruits of the
regenerating Spirit. As Divinely wrought, it is attended by assurance; as human,
it works by love. And thus, while belonging to the state of prevenient grace, it
passes insensibly into the regenerate life

Faith, viewed here more comprehensively as the condition and instrument of
personal salvation, is a state or an act of the human spirit as under the
influence of the Divine Spirit. The Divine and the human elements meet, but they
cannot be so clearly defined and separated as in the case of repentance. We must
view them as united in relation to the principle of belief, generally, on which
saving faith rests; to the passive and active trust that enter into that faith;
and to the assurance of acceptance and salvation which follow it in the
regenerate life

I. BELIEF, or the principle of faith generally, belongs to human nature: it is
the faculty of accepting the unseen as existing, by which we admit as knowledge
what is received only on evidence or authority internal or external. Now this
common faculty of faith, which involves trust in what we believe, is Divinely
directed to the Gospel in order to personal salvation

1. Man lives and moves and has his being, as a spiritual creature, in an element
of belief or trust in the unseen; in that sense also we walk by faith, not by
sight.1 Belief is a primary condition of all knowledge and of all reasoning on
knowledge. It may be said that without it there can be no full assent given to
any proposition that deals with other than matter of sense. Hence the propriety
of Anselm’s CREDE UT INTELLIGAS, in opposition to Abelard’s INTELLIGE UT CREDAS;
the two watchwords of Christian Faith and Rationalism respectively. Now all
faith that leads to action has in it an element of trust. The being of God, the
guilt and punishment of sin, the mission of Christ for redemption, the Christian
revelation as a whole, may be assented to by intellectual belief without
exerting any influence on the life. But this kind of belief is not, as alone,
commended in Scripture

Faith is there always connected with the practical trust which makes these
truths more or less operative. The object of this faith, not yet a personal
Savior, may be generally apprehended: the compass of the Christian Faith is
often accepted without the experience of salvation. To whatever extent the
truths of religion are known and embraced, faith in them is the healthy and
legitimate exercise of the human mind, receiving the evidence, internal and
external, which authenticates revelation. But that faith cannot be without the
element of trust, latent it may be and unconscious, suppressed by sin and
hindered from the attainment of its end 1 2 Corinthians 5:7

2. This belief or trust of which we speak is exerted under a Divine influence. A
merely intellectual assent, such as rests upon tradition and education, is not
enough for salvation: The devils also believe, and tremble.1 Seldom does this
belief withstand the assault of skeptical attack. Never does the trust inherent
in it become influential. No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy
Ghost.2 A firm belief in the Christian revelation, and trust in Him Whom it
reveals as God and man, is the very precious gift of the Spirit, Who acts upon
the elements of belief and trust in human nature, and directs them to their
appropriate Object. Belief is often made perfect in the exercise of personal
trust; and personal trust often leads to the strengthening of mere belief.
Sometimes the clear revelation of the truth in Jesus to the mind leads to an
entire reliance on His work; and sometimes the personal trust with its
confidence of faith brings in the full assurance of understanding as to the
outward revelation: speculative or historical faith thus, through Divine grace,
deepens into that spiritual faith, which in its last exercise is the gift of God
to the soul by Himself prepared for its exercise 1 James 2:19; 2 1 Corinthians
12:3

II. The Faith that is the condition and instrument of salvation may be regarded
as fiducial belief in the Redeemer, Whose Person and Work are one as a
revelation of God, and of all saving truth. This trust is both negative and
positive, or passive and active: it renounces every other object, and relies
only on One. It is the act of the whole man, but under the immediate influence
of the Holy Ghost

1. The formal notion of all Faith, and that which makes it the appropriate
condition of salvation, is personal trust in a Person. Its efficient cause is
the operation of the Spirit on the human faculties; its instrumental cause is
the revelation of the truth concerning the Savior; and its formal cause, which
makes it what it is, is trust in the Person of that Savior

(1.) This important truth is taught by the very term that is everywhere used in
the New Testament: pisteuein is equivalent to pistin echeinbe’ªmuwnaatow; the
equivalent of the Hebrew be’ªmuwnaatow, which in almost every instance of its
use includes the idea of reliance on the Jehovah of the Ancient Covenant

(2.) It is also seen in the fact that this principle is almost always connected,
directly or indirectly, with a Person, and that even when the acceptance of
Christian truth by the understanding is made prominent. First, the ground of
faith is the authority of God Who is believed: Abraám epísteusen toó Theoó,
Abraham believed God,1 and accordingly trusted in Him. Throughout his history,
as that of the Father of the faithful and their exemplar, we find nothing
required or imposed on his belief as truth which did not demand the unlimited
trust of his heart in God: indeed, in some cases it might be hard to accept as
credible to the understanding what nevertheless was acted upon in desperate
confidence. In the New Testament the Savior speaks of a credence in His words;
on His own authority: Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for he
wrote of Me But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?2
Here Jesus is arguing with unbelievers, and the matter is one of belief on
authority. But, most commonly, He uses the word concerning trust in Himself;
though, in this case, the word is varied and a large variety of synonymous
expressions is used, such as coming to Him and seeing Him and surrendering self
to Him. Hence, secondly, a Person is the substantial Object of all saving faith,
to Whom it turns, on Whom it relies, and in Whom it finds rest: according to the
three currently used prepositions, eis, epi, en, of each of which it may suffice
to give one example. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life:3 eis
ton Huion, which is opposed to the unbeliever’s simple disbelief of the word of
Christ, he that believeth not the Son, apeithoon too Huioo. This passage
represents many which make Christ the Object to Whom faith as it were stretches
forward. Whosoever believeth on Him, ep auto, shall not be ashamed:4 a
preposition used also with the accusative, but believeth on Him that justifieth
the ungodly,5 epi ton dikaiounta. Here the Person is the foundation on which
faith rests. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,6 en
Christoo Ieesou. Here, as in many other passages, the Person of Christ is the
Object, on Which faith indeed rests, but also in Whom as its element it lives
and moves. But in this case the penitent is already saved 1 Galatians 3:6; 2
John 5:46-47; 3 John 3:36; 4 Romans 10:11; 5 Romans 4:5; 6 Galatians 3:26

(3.) This Object of trust is in Christianity directly or indirectly the Founder
of our religion in His own Person: its Archeegon, or AUTHOR of the faith1
Himself. Hence the usual expression, by faith of Jesus Christ2, which indicates
that He gives its specific character to the principle generally. This
distinguishes Christianity as the full revelation of an object of trust which
was partially hidden before. Faith in God, or Jehovah, the God of the covenant,
was the condition and instrument of Old-Testament salvation; but Jehovah is the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That God is now MANIFEST in the flesh,

3 and He says, Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.4 Of those who believe not,
He says, Ye neither know Me nor My Father: if ye had known Me, ye should have
known My Father also.5 And the final testimony of St. John is: Whosoever denieth
the Son, the same hath not the Father.6 Rejection of Christ was rejection of the
ancient God. Faith in God apart from His Son is now a species of unbelief. Our
Lord as the object of confidence is more specifically Himself or His Person.
This is its supreme definition: believe also in Me! It is only indirectly His
blood; the propitiation is in His blood, en toó autoú haímati, through faith,7
but it is He who is set forth. It is confidence in His cross, or rather in
Christ crucified; that is, in His death and resurrection; as to the latter of
which, however, the trust is rather referred to the Father: If we believe on Him
that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.8 Hence it is the LIVING CHRIST in
the unity of His Person and His Work.9 The God Who delivered up Christ and
raised Him is Christ Himself. The tone of the entire New Testament is to the
effect that He that seeth and believeth in the Son seeth and believeth the
Father. But the specific relation of the Redeemer’s Person to justifying faith
must be considered hereafter

1 Hebrews 12:2; 2 Romans 3:22; 3 1 Timothy 3:16; 4 John 14:1; 5 John 8:19; 6 1
John 2:23; 7 Romans 3:25; 8 1 Corinthians 1:23; 9 Romans 4:24

2. Faith is both passive and active, in opposition, that is, to a state of undue
action and to a state of indolent waiting: only by so viewing it, and combining
the two, can we understand the general strain of the New Testament as to its
operation in the penitent and contrite spirit

(1.) As passive or receptive it is that trust or repose of the heart on the
promises given in Christ, which in the New Testament is opposed to works of
every kind, and throughout the Bible to any trust but in God. Assent to a moral
truth, especially such as is here supposed to be wrought in the heart by the
Holy Ghost, engages in its exercise the understanding and heart and the will.
Faith in its negative aspect is that of the understanding affecting the heart
chiefly: the soul rests on the Savior, abstains from every act, and only waits
upon His promise. Only in that posture is it ready for the salvation ready to be
revealed. As limited to one branch of it, that is, justification, this element
of faith is of great importance: To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him
that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.1

1 Romans 4:5 (2.) Active faith is the assent of the understanding actuating the
will more particularly

Faith goes forth as well as waits; gives as well as receives. The act is to be
understood in two ways: it is the energy which gives up the soul to the Lord,
and that which receives Him in return; though these are not to be separated. As
many as received Him and those that believe on His name1 are synonymous. He that
followeth Me2 is a definition of the believer; whose faith is a coming to
Christ, and a receiving of Him, parelabete.3 His Gospel is preached eis
hupakoeen pisteoos for the obedience of faith.4 Many other expressions are used
which represent a saving relation to Christ as the active energy of the soul:
such as its flying for refuge to the only Hope, seeking Him and laying aside
every impediment, committing the soul to Him, and other similar phrases. This is
the kind of faith which is exhibited throughout the Gospels 1 John 1:12; 2 John
8:12; 3 Colossians 2:6; 4 Romans 16:26

(3.) It must be remembered, however, that these two are always one. The passive
waiting and the active seeking unite. The Lord is good unto them that WAIT FOR
Him, to the soul that SEEKETH HIM.1 And both are undoubtedly the act of God’s
Spirit in the soul; as is shown in the passage of St. Paul which speaks of our
being buried and risen with Christ through the faith in the operation of God,
diá teés písteoos teés energeías toú Theoú.2 1 Lamentations 3:25; 2 Colossians
2:12 3. Faith is the act of the whole man under the influence- of the Holy
Spirit

(1.) It is not an assent of the understanding merely, nor a feeling merely of
the sensibility, nor an act of the will, but belongs to the centre of human
personality, to the heart: with the heart man believeth unto righteousness,1
Kardía gár pisteúetai. The language of the Creed is, I BELIEVE: the man himself
is the believer; there is no act in which he more absolutely gathers up his
whole being to act, while he goes out of himself, and appropriates Another. As
passive and receptive, faith makes the whole soul empty for the reception of
Jesus; as active and energetic, it puts forth all its powers to embrace Him and
His salvation. Hence this principle, after conversion, still continues to
characterize the regenerate soul. The Christian is a pistos; he stands in this
character, teé gár pístei hesteékate,2 and his faith, working by love, becomes
the spring of his new life. The act by which he entered salvation becomes the
law of his being as saved 1 Romans 10:10; 2 2 Corinthians 1:24

(2.) Such and so great being the prerogative of faith, it is obvious that no
power less than Divine can inspire it. It is essentially a moral act; for
unbelief is reckoned to be specific guilt: the Spirit’s reproof of sin is
because they believe not on Me.1 The only or the supreme sin is now rejection of
Christ; and the act or state of not believing is itself condemnation: he that
believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of
the only begotten Son of God.2 But if the faith that saves has this moral
character it must be wrought in the soul by God the Holy Ghost: there is nothing
right in man towards God that comes not from His influence; and the primary
feeling after a Savior, as well as the trust into which this is elevated, is of
Him. Hence our faith is said to be of the operation of God.3 How it is that the
emphasis is laid upon our salvation being independent of works connects our
subject with the doctrine of Justification. The faith that lays hold of Christ
is the highest moral act of a state of penitence: nothing more, but nothing
less. It is the last and best of the fruits meet for repentance 1 John 16:9; 2
John 3:18; 3 Colossians 2:12

(3.) Hence it is plain that the faith which is saving passes insensibly while we
are studying it into the state of regeneration to which it leads. As it is
itself a sanctification of that original principle of belief which belongs to
our nature, so itself is sanctified into the energy of the regenerate life. It
becomes the law of that life, faith which worketh by love;1 it is the seventh
fruit of the Spirit;2 and as such is the assurance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.3 As conscience is the consciousness of the soul as
touching ethics, so faith is the consciousness of the regenerate spirit as
touching all its unseen and future objects 1 Galatians 5:6; 2 Galatians 5:22; 3
Hebrews 11:1

III. Assurance belongs to this trust only in an indirect manner, as its reflex
action and its gracious result, and its abiding privilege in the regenerate
life. As faith is the highest negative work of repentance and passes into the
energy of regeneration, so confidence in its Object, relying upon it as
objective, passes into the faith of subjective assurance. But the assurance is
the fruit, and not the essence, of faith. As such it will be hereafter treated
Meanwhile, a few points may be noted

1. Though a distinction must be made between naked faith and assurance, it is
obvious that perfect trust must in some sense be assured of the reality of its
object. Saving faith in God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him;1 also that Christ is and that He is the Savior of
all men, specially of those that believe.2 That He is my actual Savior, and that
my belief is saving, cannot be the object of faith direct; it is the reflex
benefit and gift of the Holy Ghost. It is the full assurance of faith,3 the
pleeroforía písteoos, in which worshippers are exhorted to draw near. As faith
itself is the assurance of things hoped for,4 its plerophory is to be expected
in diligent devotion: diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end.5 The
internal assurance of faith is a privilege that all may claim and expect:
seasons of darkness and depression and uncertainty are only the trial of that
faith of assurance; they test it, and therefore imply its presence; or, if
absent, its absence is thus declared to be the result of its own failure 1
Hebrews 11:6; 2 1 Timothy 4:10; 3 Hebrews 10:22; 4 Hebrews 11:1; 5 Hebrews 6:11

2. Among the objects of St. Paul’s prayer for us is the full assurance of
understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, even Christ. The
confidence of saving faith is, strictly speaking, limited to the Person of the
Savior, Who is revealed to the understanding, the affection, the will—that is to
the penitent man—by the Holy Ghost, Who at the same time opens the spiritual eye
to behold Him. But the faith which is the energy of the new life is also the
spiritual eye which beholds all truth, and is assured of it As it respects the
Holy Ghost this is the unction from the Holy One,1 by which we know all things;
as it respects the believer this is the certain belief which makes faith
knowledge

1 1 John 2:20 THE RELATIONS OF REPENTANCE AND FAITH

Repentance and Faith have certain relations which must be remembered by those
who would understand both. Each precedes, while each consummates, the other; and
they are united, whether in the preliminaries of salvation or in the mature
Christian life

1. There is a faith which precedes repentance: belief in God’s existence and
revelation generally, and of the threatenings of His Word in particular, must
precede supplication for His mercy. But this is the belief that lies at the root
of all religion; and may be altogether independent of trust in the Gospel, or
any apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ: unless indeed we import here the
distinction between implicit and explicit faith

There must be a belief in God, that He is before there can be a belief that He
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him;1 there is a faith in the Gospel
as a general economy of grace before the personal appropriating reliance on its
provisions. Hence all the appeals which in Scripture enforce contrition are
based upon a pre-existing knowledge of the Lawgiver and of sin and of the
penalty of transgression. And every appeal to every class of sinner must needs
assume the existence of faith in the righteous judgment of God against his
offence

1 Hebrews 11:6

2. But repentance precedes the faith which brings salvation. Repent ye and
believe the Gospel1 is the formula that never will be displaced. Though the
Spirit’s conviction is based on the belief that Christ is, and that He is a Lord
and a Savior, into Whose hands every man’s destiny is committed, yet the trust
which places the mercy of the Savior before the authority of the Lord must be
preceded by deep sorrow in His presence. Saving trust cannot spring up save in
the contrite heart: sorrow on account of the evil of sin, anxiety to be
delivered, despair of delivering oneself, and a deep feeling of Christ’s atoning
sorrows, must coexist in the soul which is encouraged to rely on the Redeemer’s
work. The same may be said of all genuine saving faith. It cannot exist where
there is not humility of heart; sorrow for sin is the soil out of which it grows

1 Mark 1:15

3. Repentance and faith mutually aid if they do not actually spring out of each
other. The soul when touched with true penitential grief is as it were naturally
disposed to rely on the great Deliverer. There is but a step between entire
self-renunciation and the acceptance of the Savior, Who fills the void of self:
in fact, where the penitence is perfect, purged of all traces of its two
opposite errors, despair and carelessness, trust may be said to lie at the very
door. All repentance becomes in its last Evangelical analysis sorrow for the
rejection of Jesus, Who in this very sorrow is accepted. But that grief arises
from the Spirit’s application of Christ’s dying love, which is in such a state
of heart really believed though it may not yet be appropriated with assurance.
This faith may be, and is in some theological treatises, called ILLUMINATION;
and its combination with repentance is perceived or felt in such a passage as
this: Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give
thee light,1 where it is hard to say when the one office of the Spirit passes
into the other 1 Ephesians 5:14

4. Lastly, repentance and faith enter hand in hand into the new life of
covenanted salvation. Legal penitence is transformed into Evangelical; and the
trust that comes to Christ is the faith that abides in Him and works by love.
This repentance in regenerate souls is the fellowship of our Lord’s sorrow for
sin. It is the interior mortification which is the crucifixion of the flesh.
Strictly speaking, it is the only perfect repentance, which feels the sinfulness
of sin as it never could be felt before, and more effectually than ever
renounces it. Then it becomes the very mind of Christ in the believer concerning
the evil of sin. This faith which unites the soul to Jesus keeps the soul in
Him, and is therefore the permanent condition and instrument of all grace:
deriving from their Supreme and Sole Source all the treasures of His life and
power and salvation


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  CHAPTER 26: 28. VOL 02 - HISTORICAL
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Historical

HISTORICAL

Ante-Nicene Pelagianism and Augustinianism in relation to Freewill and
Prevenient

Grace Mediation in Semi-Pelagianism

Synergism Arminianism Methodism The theological topics which are connected with
Preliminary Grace have had a very rich development in the history of opinion and
controversy. Some things on this subject have been anticipated in former
sections; but a few points of deep interest present themselves here

I. The relation of man’s freedom of will to the Spirit’s grace has been matter
of controversy only from the time of Augustine. The ante-Nicene Church treated
the question mainly with reference to the Gnostic heresies, which anticipated
the theory of Determinism. The Greek and Latin Fathers alike earnestly opposed
the Manichsean notion of the necessity laid on the soul through its connection
with matter. But they differed in that the Greeks exaggerated the primary
function of the will in originating good; whilst the Latins thought less of the
will and more of the Divine influence upon it, and paved the way for the later
doctrine of Prevenient Grace. Common to the whole Church for centuries was the
principle: eleuthron kai autexousin epoioosen ho Theos ton anthropon: God hath
made man free and master of himself. Common also was the correlative sentiment
expressed by Origen: " Moral good is combined of the first choice of the soul
and of the Divine power inbreathed." Common also, though more emphatically among
the Latins, that of Ambrose: " Whether we think of the beginnings, or of the
progress, or of the final perseverance of the faithful, there is no kind of
virtue which may be regarded as without the gift of Divine grace, or without the
consent of our own will." On the whole, the tendency was what afterwards was
called Semi-Pelagian: grace having been regarded as influencing rather the
knowledge than the volition

II. A certain doctrine of Prevenient Grace, interpreted broadly, has been taught
in almost all systems. But the lax interpretation of this given by the Greek
Fathers led to Pelagianism; and the emphatic assertion of a preponderating
Divine influence in it was developed into Augustinianism

1. Pelagianism in the beginning of the fifth century understood by prevenient
grace the innate and undestroyed capacity of the soul for good and secret bias
towards it; the written law as stimulating both; and, added to this, the
teaching and example and illumination of Christ. " Omne bonum et malum, quo vel
laudabiles vel vituperabiles sumus, non nobiscum oritur, sed agitur a nobis.
Capaces enim utriusque rei, non pleni nascimur, et ut sine virtute ita etiam
sine vitio procreamur, atque ante actionem propriae voluntatis id solum in
homine est quod Deus condidit. Sed Deus gratiae suae auxilium subministrat, ut
quod per liberum arbitrium jubentur homines facere, facilius possent implere per
gratiam, quam nos non in lege tantummodo, sed et in Dei adjutorio, confitemur.
Adjuvat enim nos Deus per doctrinam et revelationem suam." These words of
Pelagius himself must be studied as containing the pith of his whole doctrine,
as it has been laid down above. It was his faith that "Est in animis nostris
naturalis quaedam sanctitas;" and this natural sanctity is only aided by
instruction. Hence whatever preliminary grace is in the system of Pelagius is
simply external instruction appealing to a nature wrong only through accident
and bad example

2. Augustine’s doctrine of Preliminary Grace is the perfect opposite of this. In
his doctrine freedom of will remains, but freedom only to evil. Grace acts
directly and supremely on the Will. These are his careful expressions: " Gratia
praevenit; voluntas comitans non ducens, pedissiqua non praevia. Operari et
co-operari est a Deo. Gratia est gratis data, operans indeclina-biliter et
insuperabiliter." Pelagius was right in protesting that these last words present
" Fatum nomine gratiae :" Fate disguised as grace. The insurmountable objection
to this dictum is that it reduces the whole of the operation of Divine
influence, through the Word and in Providence, upon the general world to a mere
superfluity, which was afterwards called COMMON GRACE. This is in Augustinian
and Calvinistic systems opposed to what is called GRACE EFFICACIOUS: being
universal and not particular; being necessarily, or at least actually,
inoperative for salvation in the purpose of God. This wasted influence is
opposed also to IMMEDIATE GRACE: being given through the truth and not directly
influencing the will: touching the soul only through its natural affinity with
its former possession, a natural affinity, however, which the theory supposes to
have been lost. Hence both terms are misused. Grace is no more grace, if it does
not include the saving intention of the Giver; and by being called common this
grace is dishonored, suggesting at least the language used to St. Peter: that
call not thou common.1 In such systems the outer court of the world is filled
with a MASSA PERDITIONIS, in Augustine’s phrase; the will of the Spirit kindles
life here and there when He will; and the first spark of true grace has in it
all the potentiality and effectual earnest of eternal glory. There is strictly
speaking no doctrine of Preliminary Grace: Enlightenment, Conversion,
Repentance, Faith, are all the fruits of regeneration; and regeneration is
absolutely the power of an endless life,2 though Augustine himself did not
sanction the notion of his later followers concerning its indefectibility 1 Acts
10:15; 2 Hebrews 7:16

III. The mediation between Pelagianism and Augustinianism contained the
principles of the truth on this subject. It may be divided into three main
tendencies: Semi-Pelagianism, Lutheran Synergism, and Arminiamsm. These three
advanced progressively towards a clearer view of the Scriptural doctrine

1. Semi-Pelagianism in the Latin Church, as represented by Cassian in Massilia,
asserted that the power of doing what the will approved was not extinguished but
rendered feeble

Prevenient Grace was found in the very contest between flesh and spirit: this
being a stimulant to the pursuit of salvation. Moreover, Divine assistance was
declared to be necessary to the progress and consummation of all good in man;
though the beginning of that good is found in fallen human nature. In the Middle
Ages most of the Schoolmen held a modification of this teaching. It was then
that the distinction between two kinds of merit was introduced which has given a
permanent character to the Romanist doctrine of prevenient grace. The process
was thus exhibited by Thomas Aquinas: God is the Prime Mover simply. The free
will cannot be converted to God, unless God Himself convert it

It is for man to prepare his mind, because he does this according to his free
will; yet even this he cannot do without the help of God drawing to Himself. All
things are of God originally; but whether the universal influence is used
depends upon the creature. If he disposes himself rightly, it is congruous that
man doing his best should be rewarded according to Divine goodness; this is the
Meritum de congruo. The Meritum de condigno is the real merit of acts proceeding
from habitual grace. The false doctrine of merit infects the Romanist theology
throughout: in the department of prevenient grace it mars what would otherwise
be true. Among the Canons of Trent are sentences which assert that free will is
by no means extinct, though enfeebled in its powers: " Si quis dixerit liberum
hominis arbitrium a Deo motum et excitatum nihil co-operari assentiendo Deo
excitanti atque vocanti, quo ad obtinendam justifications gratiam se disponat ac
praeparet, mereque passive se habere; anathema sit." The grades and degrees of
personal conduct by which the awakened sinner prepares himself for justification
are all additions to the Scriptural doctrine of prevenient grace. But the
fundamental principle of the whole is sound, though the tendency is towards
error. The merit of congruity takes the place of the virtue of the Atonement to
which all good left in man is to be ascribed: it is not merit that God rewards
but the universal and free influence of the Spirit used by the sinner on his way
to salvation

2. SYNERGISM was the necessary consequence in Lutheran theology of the doctrine
of universal redemption. Melanchthon wrote in 1535: " Conjungi has causas,
verbum, Spiritum Sanctum, et voluntatem non sane otiosam sed repugnantem
infirmitatae suae Deus antevertit nos, vocat, movet, adjuvat, sed nos viderimus
ne repugnemus

Chrysostomus inquit: ho dee elkon ton Boulomenon elkei. Erasmus: liberum
arbitrium est facultas applicandi se ad gratiam." The watchword of Synergism was
that the human will is a causa concurrens: the theological expression of
Chrysostom’s " He that draweth draweth the willing mind." Man is a free agent,
analogous to God the Supreme Free Agent, and his modus agendi, by which he is
distinguished from natural things, remains also in his conversion. The opponents
of Synergism, Flacius and others, represented the soul as absolutely corrupted
in nature by the presence of sin, which is the image of Satan in him. Hence with
them prevenient grace was the removal of some almost organic evil The later
Evangelical divines in many ways described and made emphatic the "generale
desiderium salutis." But the Lutheran teaching generally on this subject may be
said to be vitiated by two errors: first, it ascribes that good in man to which
converting grace appeals to nature, not wholly debased by the Fall, without
laying stress on the redeeming gift of our Savior to the world; and, secondly,
it makes the preliminaries of grace depend too much on the sacramental gift
imparted in baptism

3. The Arminian mediation between the two extremes, generally, of Pelagianism
and Augustinianism, has been referred to in some previous sections

(1) On the present topic, that of Prevenient Grace, its modern Methodist
representative maintains a doctrine which is consistent throughout. It holds
that there is a state of nature, as distinguished from the state of grace and
the state of glory, that state of nature however being itself a state of grace,
preliminary grace, which is diffused throughout the world, and visits all the
children of men: not merely the remains of good untouched by the Fall, but those
remains as the effect and gift of redemption. The special grace of enlightenment
and conversion, repentance and faith, it holds to be prevenient only, as resting
short of regeneration; but as flowing into the regenerate life. It therefore
asserts, in a certain sense, the principle of a CONTINUITY OF GRACE in the case
of those who are saved. But in its doctrine all grace is not the same grace in
its issues, though all is the same in its Divine purpose. It distinguishes
measures and degrees of the Spirit’s influence, from the most universal and
common benefit of the Atonement in life and its advantages up to the
consummation of the energy of the Holy Ghost which fits for the vision of God.
It rejects the figment of a COMMON GRACE1 not charis sooteerios; and refuses to
believe that any influence of the Divine Spirit procured by the Atonement is
imparted without reference to final salvation. The doctrine of a Continuity of
Grace, flowing in some cases uninterruptedly from the grace of Christian birth,
sealed in baptism, up to the fullness of sanctification, is alone consistent
with Scripture

1 Titus 2:11

(2.) Some other questions bearing on Repentance and Faith will be considered
when Justification by Faith and the Roman Sacrament of Penance are before us. We
have limited the above sketch to their connection with Prevenient Grace, which
is a fundamental element in Methodist theology


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  CHAPTER 27: 29. VOL 02 - THE STATE OF SALVATION
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The State of Salvation THE STATE OF SALVATION: THE UNITY OF EVANGELICAL
PRIVILEGES As seen in General Terms In the Spirit’s Application of the One
Atonement In Union with Christ In the Perfection of each Blessing as Meeting the
whole Estate of Man Terminology of Internal and External Blessings Diversity in
Unity Righteousness, Sonship. Sanctification By the state of salvation is here
meant the circle of evangelical privileges which constitute the estate of
believers in Christ and are imparted by the Holy Spirit. It is the grace, in
which they stand, as distinguished on the one hand from the preliminaries of
vocation, and, on the other, from the ethical duties of religion: being the
issue of the former and the foundation of the latter. These privileges are
variously described as pertaining to personal Righteousness, to Christian
Sonship, and to the Sanctification of the Spirit: each of these being both
external and imputed, and internal and real. But, while thus distinguished, they
must be regarded also as one great covenant blessing of personal salvation: one
as the common gift of grace, imparted by the Spirit’s administration, in Christ
Jesus, under various aspects. We must first study them in their general unity
and then individually as distinct THE UNITY OF GOSPEL PRIVILEGES

Personal salvation is one great gift: this may be shown by the terms used to
describe it; by the simultaneous impartation of its various blessings through
the Spirit to faith; by the relation of all to union with Christ; by the
completeness with which each meets the relative and real position of the
believer; and by the harmony of the several privileges in the reception of the
one Atonement. It is important to keep this unity in mind, to obviate the error
of unduly refining upon the distinctness and the order of the several component
gifts of saving grace

GENERAL TERMS

There are some general terms which are used to describe the blessings imparted
under the Christian covenant as they are one in their diversity. These terms are
taken from their relation to God the Giver; and from the result in those who
receive them

1. All are summed up as the Grace of God;1 as the Grace of God that bringeth
salvation;2 as the Gift by grace;3 especially as this Grace wherein we stand.4 A
careful examination of these passages will show that one word GRACE includes the
whole compass of the blessings of the covenant in Christ: the first as the
source, the second as the universal benefit, the third in its most perfect
realization. Upon this is based the distinction sometimes made between the three
estates of nature and grace and glory: the middle term expressing all that lies
between the access by faith into an accepted state and the entrance into life
eternal. Hence the circle of privileges is sometimes termed Acceptance with God:
perhaps as founded upon the words accepted in the Beloved,5 or, with which we
were graced in the Beloved. There is nothing superinduced on nature and
preparatory to glory which is not found in grace. But it has been already seen
that the state of nature is not without the influence of a certain measure of
grace 1 2 Corinthians 8:1; 2 Titus 2:11; 3 Romans 5:15-16; 4 Romans 5:2; 5
Ephesians 1:6

2. The unity of these blessings is expressed by some terms taken from the human
side, or the result of their bestowment. Thus we read of the Common Salvation,1
where, as in very many other passages, such as by grace ye are saved,2 all the
Gospel promise and gift is meant. Sometimes the whole Divine method of economy
of grace is connected with the common gift: the Gospel of your salvation,3 the
Word of this salvation.4 The privileges of the New Covenant are thus summed up
as one; to be afterwards variously resolved into their component elements of
sanctification, remission of sins and renewal unto life. Again it may be said
that sometimes each of these several great blessings received by man stands for
the compass of his privilege: Sanctification in the High-priestly prayer and the
Epistle to the Hebrews, has this wide significance; just as Righteousness and
the restored Sonship have in St. Paul’s and St. John’s writings. The compendious
word Life5 sums up in passages too many to quote the entire gift of God through
the mediation of Christ: it combines all that is negative and all that is
positive in one term, perhaps the largest used in the New Testament. The same
may be said of the Kingdom of God6 within us; as also of the Earnest7 of the
Spirit imparted to believers. And, as will be more fully seen hereafter, the
Atonement8 received is the epitome of all the blessings that flow from the Word
of Reconciliation9 into the soul. Finally, all is the Promise in Christ by the
Gospel10 of which we are partakers. It is impossible to study these various
central words in their manifold connections without feeling that each is
intended to describe the estate of grace as one

1 Jude 1:3; 2 Ephesians 2:5; 3 Ephesians 1:13; 4 Hebrews 7:14-15; 5 Acts 5:20; 6
Romans 14:17; 7 Ephesians 1:14; 8 Romans 5:11; 9 2 Corinthians 5:19; 10
Ephesians 3:6 THE SPIRIT’S APPLICATION OF THE ATONEMENT This Unity is further
seen in the fact that the Holy Ghost administers every blessing as the special
application of the Atonement

1. As to Himself in His relation to the Finished Work of Christ He is the Keeper
of the mysteries of the cross; as our Lord said He shall take of Mine.1 The
accomplished redemption is His treasury, out of the inexhaustible fullness of
which we all receive at His hands. He is at once the Administrator of its
external blessings, the Agent in imparting its internal, and the Witness of
both. It is not meant that He dispenses all the provisions of the Covenant at
once. But the Communion of the Holy Ghost2 is the common enjoyment of the grace
of Christ imparted as the result of the Father’s love in redemption. To receive
the Atonement is to receive its various blessings, at least in their beginnings,
at once. Justification is the reversal of a sentence at the bar; Adoption is at
the same moment the reversal of a sentence that excluded from the inheritance of
the Divine family; but neither can be received apart from the renewal of the
soul into the new life of God and its Sanctification to His service. And all
these acts are simultaneous benefits of one and the same Grace in Christ. They
are all the personal application of the one sacrificial obedience to the faith
inwrought by the Spirit Himself. He reveals and attests the forgiveness of sins,
He reveals and inwardly persuades of the adoption of sons, and He seals the
believer for God: all these at one and the same moment. And all these acts of
witness He continues ever as the abiding personal seal of interest in the great
redemption 1 John 16:15; 2 2 Corinthians 13:14

2. It is quite consistent with this that there is an order of thought which
demands a distinction among these blessings. They belong to different relations:
they are not homogeneous. Justification is perfectly distinct from adoption: the
former is pronounced by the Judge, the latter by the Father. Regeneration
belongs to another category: the new and filial life, though a free gift
accompanying justification, is most intimately connected with adoption, which is
the adoption of sons.1 It is congruous both with reason and with Scripture to
say that the regenerate children are as such adopted; and that the adopted must
needs be regenerate. It is hardly reconcilable with either that the witnessing
Spirit of adoption is, by that witness, the Agent of regeneration. Though the
testifying Spirit is the inworking Spirit, the two operations are distinct. The
love enkindled in the soul when the Divine love is shed abroad is the firstborn
fruit of the Spirit2 of life, not the instrument of effecting it. Life is deeper
even than love. And, finally, sanctification belongs to an entirely distinct
order of thought from regeneration. Regeneration is not sanctification begun, in
any other sense than justification is; nor is sanctification regeneration
continued in any other sense than it is continued righteousness. In fact it
involves an altogether independent idea: that of the consecration of the soul,
justified and regenerate, to God But of this more hereafter 1 Galatians 4:5; 2
Galatians 5:22 UNION WITH CHRIST The Gift of the Spirit leads to Union with
Christ; and in this mystical union all the high benefits derived from the Source
of blessing are one. To be IN CHRIST and to have CHRIST IN us are throughout the
New Testament convertible terms; but this reciprocal indwelling is mediated by
the Spirit common to the Head and His members: we are ONE SPIRIT with Him if we
have become members of His mystical body. He that is joined unto the Lord is one
Spirit.1 1 1 Corinthians 6:17

1. Now all the prerogatives of the estate of grace are ours in virtue of our
union with the Lord; each of them in particular is distinctly referred to the
same source. Generally, we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places (or things) in Christ.1 As treasured up in Him above, and our inheritance
there, they melt into one indistinguishable blessing. But as the Spirit
dispenses them to those who are united to Jesus on earth they are diverse,
though still one in their diversity. Our fellowship with Him or in Him is our
righteousness, whether as imputed justification or inherent conformity with the
law. In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins;2 we
are made the righteousness of God in Him.3Our Christian sonship is based upon
the same union, whether it is adoption or regeneration: we are one with the
Firstborn among many brethren.4If any man be in Christ, it is a new creation;5
and this new creation is a filial creation. He is our life; and we are quickened
together with Christ6 by God, Who hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into
your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.7 Our consecration to God and interior
holiness have the same ground and guarantee. Believers are sanctified in Christ
Jesus.8

1 Ephesians 1:3; 2 Ephesians 1:7; 3 2 Corinthians 5:21; 4 Romans 8:29; 5 2
Corinthians 5:17; 6 Ephesians 2:5; 7 Galatians 4:6; 8 1 Corinthians 1:2

2. Thus union with Christ, incorporation by His Spirit into His mystical body,
makes all the blessings of the Christian covenant one in Him. And this precious
doctrine, the first declaration of which our Lord Himself uttered, pervades the
New Testament. St. John gives the record of the Saviour’s great saying, reserved
for the last hours of His teaching, Abide in Me, and I in you;1 which was
glorified in His prayer: that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me,
and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us2 . . . I IN THEM, and Thou in Me.
And he has one echo at least of these very words: Hereby know we that we dwell
in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit.3 But St. Paul, who
was not present when the Savior spoke to His disciples this word, has more than
any other writer made it the signature of personal religion, especially of his
own personal religion. To this note the Epistle to the Philippians is set; in it
this union takes an unlimited variety of forms. But it is in the Epistle to the
Galatians that it has its boldest utterance. There, and there alone, it has the
character of a mystical, or, as is sometimes said, ethical or moral union with
the Saviour’s death. Thrice the Apostle speaks of crucifixion with Christ. First
of his fellowship, and that of every believer, with the virtue of His death to
the law: I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God, I am
crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in the faith in the Son of
God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.4 Here is Union with Christ’s death
and with His life as if both were his own through the mystical identification of
faith: being dead with His Lord to the sentence of justice, he lived the life of
justification. But that new life is itself the whole fullness of privilege in
Christ. Secondly, he reverts to the same idea, peculiar to this Epistle, for the
sake of showing that the regenerate life is fellowship with the virtue of His
death to sin: They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions
and lusts.5 Here the union is the continuous mortification and death of the old
man or the corrupt nature, signified by flesh, still remaining in the believer.
Thirdly, he returns back to himself, and exults in his sense of fellowship with
the virtue of His death to the world and all in it that keeps the soul from God:
By Whom the world is crucified unto Me, and I unto the world.6 It were easy to
show that here justification, regeneration, and sanctification, each a perfected
ideal realized, are signified; that each defines for itself the whole Gospel
privilege; and that all are not indistinctly based on the union of the soul by
faith with the dying and the risen Savior. This for the present life; in the
life to come the glory to which they lead, and for which they prepare, is in
like manner the blessedness of union with the Lord: to be found in Him7 is the
Apostle’s utmost aspiration

1 John 15:4; 2 John 17:21; John 17:23; 3 1 John 4:13; 4 Galatians 2:19-20; 5
Galatians 5:24; 6 Galatians 6:14; 7 Php 3:9

3. This doctrine has been perverted in two ways. First, by those who resolve it
simply into union with the Church and the fellowship of Christ by a genuine
Christian profession: a style of interpretation which reduces the IN always to
BY, in defiance of sound grammatical exegesis. Secondly, by those who interpret
this mystical union with Christ as only the sovereign bestowment in time of a
prerogative eternally decreed for the elect; as if salvation had been absolutely
and unconditionally provided in Christ for those given to Him before the world
was by the Father. But, rightly understood, there is no aspect of the common
salvation more wholesome in its influence than that which makes it the
fellowship of His death and life enjoyed by those who are regarded as suffering
and crucified and risen and ascended with the Redeemer EACH COVENANT BLESSING
PERFECT

I. There are two ways in which we may consider the unity of the great salvation
of the Gospel: we may regard it as a series of bestowments of which one perfects
the remainder: or we may regard each as full and complete under one special
aspect. According to the former view there is first a discharge from guilt in
justification, this word ending its function there, or being supplemented by
adoption. The new birth is simultaneous, with its fruits and privileges. But all
flows into the state of perfectness through a progressive sanctification which
is entire at length and consummate. According to the latter view the unity of
the blessings of the Christian covenant may be illustrated by the completeness
with which each meets the twofold category of our estate as sinners: that of a
position before God, and that of an internal character. The grace of redemption
must needs meet both requirements. Each of the main privileges of Christianity
perfectly responds to the sinner’s need whether as relative or internal. His
righteousness is, on the one hand, a justification in which God does not impute
sin; and it is, on the other, an infused grace through which the righteousness
of the law is fulfilled in him. His sonship is similarly the adoption which
places him in the relation of a child, and the new birth which makes him such.
His sanctification is the external sprinkling which takes away the hindrance to
his acceptance on the altar, and also the internal purification which cleanses
him from all sin

Now each of these blessings makes provision for the consummation of the soul’s
religion under its own particular aspect: there is perfection in the presence of
the law, there is perfection in the regenerate life, and there is perfection in
holiness to the Lord. These points will be hereafter dwelt on

II. Meanwhile, it may be useful to consider some of the theological terms that
denote the distinction above referred to, and the proprieties of their several
application

1. We find it necessary to speak of ABSOLUTE and RELATIVE blessings: being more
exactly counterpart terms than Relative and Real, though these two are often
used, and the latter perhaps avoids a certain unconditionalness which clings to
absolute. The believer’s privileges are all of them inherent gifts while all of
them are relative: they do now and will for ever affect his relation in the
sight of God, while they are now and will hereafter more fully be the absolute
possession of those who receive them: they are FREELY given, but they are freely
GIVEN to us of God.1 The same truth is expressed by three other pairs of
counterparts, which explain their own meaning: EXTERNAL and INTERNAL,
DECLARATORY AND IMPARTED, IMPUTED AND INWROUGHT 1 1 Corinthians 2:12

2. It is obvious that FORENSIC and MORAL, as correlatives, have not so wide an
application. The former belongs to the judicial court or forum, where only the
absolution from guilt is received: it has not to do with sanctification, nor
with adoption, unless this term is supposed to be derived from the usage of
Roman law. There is a forensic justification alone; and that only in the present
life; for, while the righteousness of the perfected saint will be through
eternity a matter of imputation—his past sin being an everlasting fact—the court
in which it is pronounced is not within the gate of heaven. It may be added that
the term Imputed is conventionally limited to justification, and the term
Declaratory to adoption: we speak with more propriety of an imputed
righteousness than of an imputed sonship, which is the gracious declaration of
the Father. And, further, though theological language generally limits the term
sanctification to the internal process, it may be said also to be imputed or
declared or external. But forensic of course it cannot be

3. Some other correlates may be noted, not so obvious in their meaning. The
blessings of the covenant are IDEAL as they are exhibited in all their
perfection in the charter; REALISED or ACTUAL as they are the general experience
of Christians: this finds its illustration in St. John’s unsinning regeneration:
whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin;1 and St. Paul’s testimony that God
hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places In Christ.2 They
are UNCONDITIONAL and CONTINGENT at once: the former to the Church of the elect
as foreknown in Christ, according as He hath chosen us in Him before the
foundation of the world;3 the latter to its militant members in probation bidden
to make their calling and election sure.4 1 1 John 3:9; 2 Ephesians 1:3; 3
Ephesians 1:4; 4 2 Peter 1:10

4. It will be hereafter seen that all these several correlative terms have their
uses; that the peculiarities of Romanist and Calvinistic and other errors have
much to do with their perversion; and that therefore a precise valuation of
their meaning is important, both to the theologian and to the preacher.
Meanwhile, the fitness with which each blessing surrounds the whole estate and
conditions of the believer’s life shows that the covenant salvation is but one
in its diversity DIVERSITY IN UNITY

We have no better illustration of the unity which reigns in the diversity than
is to be found in the diversity itself. There are no saving benefits conferred
in the Christian covenant which are not connected with one or other of the three
terms: Righteousness, Sonship, Sanctification. Synonyms are found of each in
considerable numbers; but these are the governing formulary words, which rule
respectively over wide spheres of Evangelical phraseology. While each embraces
the entire estate of personal religion, and provides to present every man
faultless in Christ in its own domain, they are as distinct in themselves as the
terms imply; belonging respectively to the Judicial Court, the Household, and
the Temple of Christianity I. RIGHTEOUSNESS presides over the Gospel as
administered in the Mediatorial Court

There God is the Righteous Judge: Christ is the Mediator of a covenant of
forgiveness, having offered an atonement in which the idea of satisfaction to
Divine justice as the guardian of law is prominent, and in virtue of which He,
as the Righteous One, is an Advocate. In that court the ungodly and the sinner
appear in their special character as condemned by the law. Repentance there is
simply conviction of sin and confession

There the sentence of forgiveness, or remission of penalty, and justification,
or acceptance as righteous for Christ’s sake, is pronounced. And the witness of
the Spirit is the declaration to the conscience of pardon: giving the absolved
sinner to feel that there is no condemnation. That court also demands the
guarantee on behalf of everyone who is absolved that in him shall be fulfilled
the righteousness of the law. All that the New Testament says concerning
righteousness, throughout the whole of the stem family of terms belonging to it,
is consistent with the great idea that the Gospel is administered in a court of
supreme, rigid, exacting and perfect justice. Righteousness is written on its
doorposts, behind its Judge, and everywhere. The two ideas of imputation and
impartation are inextricably interwoven; and make the everlasting distinction
between this tribunal and every human figure of it. All is judicial from
beginning to end. None of the terms we have been using can be transferred,
strictly speaking, to either of the other departments. To sum up: the God who
presides is only a Judge: He does not pardon as a Ruler and justify as a Judge;
there is no sovereign act apart from the judicial. Both in this world, and at
the threshold of eternity, the Gospel is a judicial economy

II. SONSHIP is the centre of the Christian privileges which belong to the filial
relation of believers to the Father in Christ. Here the whole terminology
changes. The people of God are a family, in a House where the Redeemer is the
Elder Brother, the Firstborn among many brethren, the Mediator of a covenant of
reconciliation rather than satisfaction. The sinner is admitted as a prodigal:
his regeneration is the new life given by the Spirit of Christ, and his adoption
is his reinstatement in all the privileges of the household of God The Holy
Ghost is the Spirit of adoption: His testimony being internal, not so much
spoken to us as spoken in us, witnessing together with our regenerate spirits
and enabling us to call God Father. There no law reigns save the law of internal
love; and the perfection of the Christian character is that more abundant life
from which sin in act and in root has vanished. Its blessing is the filial
blessing; its holiness is the imitation of the Firstborn; its food is the life
of Christ pledged in the sacramental feast. It is the central and the supreme
department of Christian privilege, to which alone it is said that we were
predestined: to be conformed to the image of HisSong of Solomon 1:1-17 and unto
adoption as sons.2 1 Romans 8:29; 2 Ephesians 1:5

III. SANCTIFICATION is the blessing imparted to believers as they are admitted
into the presence and service of the God of holiness in His temple. The sinner
here seeks entrance as defiled and inwardly corrupt. In the Christian temple the
Savior is the High Priest, and owns no other name. He is the Mediator of a
covenant ratified now, not by satisfaction nor by reconciling love, but by an
expiatory sacrifice. The sprinkling of His blood removes the bar to acceptance
on the altar, and the witnessing Spirit impresses the silent seal of
consecration, which is His own personal indwelling in the unity of the Father
and the Son. This blessing is the deliverance of the soul from all that is
contrary to the pure service of God in His shrine. Perfection is here entire
sanctification. The love which in the Court is the fulfillment of law, and in
the House conformity with the Living law and image of the Beloved Son, is here
the spring and energy of entire consecration

IV. It needs no proof that all these blessings are really one under different
aspects. The sinner absolved in the Court is by the same act received in the
Family and consecrated in the Temple. The Judge, the Father, and the God are
One. The Advocate, the Son, the High Priest are One. The penitent who stands at
the bar, who is met as a prodigal at the door, who approaches the altar of
consecration with only defilement in the soul which he comes to give back to
God, is one and the same penitent. The Spirit Who witnesses TO the conscience,
WITH the spirit, and as a seal ON or IN the heart, is One Spirit. The perfection
of each is the same perfection; and the door of each opens into the eternal
Presence of God


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  CHAPTER 28: 30. VOL 02 - CHRISTIAN RIGHTEOUSNESS
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Christian Righteousness CHRISTIAN RIGHTEOUSNESS: THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD Christ
our Righteousness In the Gospel as a Perfect Revelation RIGHTEOUSNESS OF MAN
Justification by Faith Justifying Faith

Without Works

Faith and Works

HISTORICAL

Patristic Age Mediaeval Tendencies Tridentine Doctrine Protestant Doctrine
Arminian or Remonstrant Doctrine

Modern Errors This word is the centre of a number of terms which refer to the
Spirit’s administration of the atoning work as affecting the believer’s relation
to immutable right. It may be viewed objectively; and in this sense is used to
describe God’s method of restoring man to a state of conformity with His law:
the righteousness of God, as the originating and regulative and essential
principle of that method; exhibited in the work of Christ, the meritorious
ground of the sinner’s acceptance, or in Christ our Righteousness, and, as such,
proclaimed in the Gospel, to which it gives a name. Viewed subjectively, it is
the righteousness of the believer under two aspects: first, it is Justification
by faith, or the declaratory imputation of righteousness without works; and then
it is Justification by faith as working through love and fulfilling the law;
these however constituting one and the same Righteousness of Faith as the free
gift of grace in Christ THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD The Gospel is a revelation of
God’s righteous method of constituting sinners righteous through the atonement
of Christ by faith: hence it is termed the Righteousness of God Viewed in
relation to the propitiatory sacrifice, it is a manifestation of God’s essential
righteousness in the remission of sins; viewed in relation to the Evangelical
institute, it is the Divine method of justifying the ungodly. Generally, it
defines the full application of the Gospel in the mediatorial court of law, with
all its effects as renewing the human spirit into perfect conformity with the
Holy Lawgiver and obedience to His Law IN CHRIST OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS The
mediatorial propitiation of Christ is a display of the essential righteousness
of God; or, in other words, this method of providing for human justification is
proved to be in harmony with the Divine perfections. The Evangelical plan of
conferring righteousness rests upon the plenary satisfaction of the Divine
justice in the death of man’s Representative; it is the just honor put upon the
merit of the Redeemer and the virtue of His work; and, uniting these, it is the
promulgation of a righteous economy of gracious government exercised over
mankind for His sake and by Him. The doctrine of the Atonement has exhibited
this threefold truth under a more general aspect; it needs now only a brief
re-statement with special reference to the judicial acceptance of the believer

1. The only instance in which our justification is immediately connected with
the death of Christ is the classical passage in the Romans where St. Paul
expressly declares the harmony between righteousness as a Divine attribute and
righteousness as proclaimed freely for man in the Gospel. So close is the
connection that it is hard to determine to which thought the Apostle gave
prominence; to the declaration of God’s method of making sinners righteous, or
to the vindication of His own character as just. The emphasis of the whole is
laid upon the words, to declare His righteousness.1 This phrase has two
variations: first, eis éndeixin teés dikaiosúnees autoú, with respect to the
Divine forbearance in past ages, which required explanation; secondly, prós teén
éndeixin teés dikaiosúnees autoú, with respect to the present time, after the
Atonement had been offered. But both rest upon the supreme fact underlying the
entire history of God’s dealings with a world of transgressors: JESUS, Whom God
hath set forth. proetheto, in His own eternal mind and on the scene of history,
a propitiation in His blood through faith With this must be connected St. Paul’s
word: Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our
justification.2 The faith through which alone the objective atoning oblation of
Jesus is subjectively appropriated requires the resurrection of its Object: not
only as proving that we have a living and faithful Savior, but as demonstrating
that His sacrifice, not for Himself but for us, was righteously honored in His
being raised to confer its benefit. The substitutionary expiation of Christ as
the representative Man at once exhibits the justice of God in His dealing with
human sin and His righteousness in imparting forgiveness to the sinner: that He
might be Just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. This unique
expression—the supreme Evangelical paradox—must be carefully noted. It is not
Just and yet the Justifier, though that meaning is not far off; but it signifies
that through the manifested sacrifice of Christ God is declared to be Himself
just, having required that propitiation, and the Justifier, through the virtue
of that propitiation 1 Romans 3:21-26; 2 Romans 4:25

2. The perfect obedience of Christ constitutes what in theology is called MERIT,
and this is regarded under various aspects in the New Testament. It is rewarded
in that Christ is highly exalted;1 on the ground of it the Father has perfect
complacency in His Son and all who are His; and in consequence of it God is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins.2 This is the truth with which we here
have to do. God is faithful to the Atonement which has been faithfully offered
to Him. He is righteous TO Christ as well as IN Christ. All forms of Christian
theology agree with Scripture in assigning to the Redeemer’s work an unlimited
desert or merit. And it is this which is expressed by the universal language of
dogmatic and practical theology when it pleads FOR CHRIST’S SAKE. The original
of the only instance of this expression, forgiving one another, even as God for
Christ’s sake hath forgiven you,3 is en Christoo, in Christ. The additional idea
of forgiveness for the sake of Christ is more suitable to St. John: if any man
sin we have an Advocate with the Father.4 1 Php 2:8-9; 2 1 John 1:9; 3 Ephesians
4:32; 4 1 John 2:1 IN THE GOSPEL But the term dikaiosunoo when specifically
connected with faith refers to its exhibition in the Gospel as offering and
imparting the grace of a declaratory and imputed righteousness, and at the same
time the power of a righteousness internal and inherent

1. The phrase is fully developed in St. Paul’s writings. But the Lord Himself
gave the word when He said above: seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His
righteousness.1 Here both the kingdom and the righteousness are terms left to be
afterwards explained throughout the New Testament. The Apostle lays down the
text of his Epistle when he says to the Romans: I am not ashamed of the Gospel
[of Christ] . . . For therein is a righteousness of God revealed, by faith to
faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith:2 a righteousness of faith
offered to faith, or, rather, which has its individual origination in faith, and
in faith has also its consummation: whether as declaratory or as inwrought it is
altogether of faith. And again: but now a righteousness of God, without the law,
is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the
righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ.3 The essential rectoral
justice is manifested in the new method of Divine administration: to declare at
this time His righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier of him
which believeth [in Jesus.] It is opposed to man’s method: for they being
ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.4 So
the righteousness of the law is opposed to that which is of God by faith.5 All
this signifies a new relation of righteousness, which is ek Theou as it is ek
pisteoos eis pistoon. It is the righteousness which God provides, on the one
hand, and which, on the other, avails before God: both in one. As such it must
not be limited to the establishment of a righteous relation through the
imputation of righteousness: it includes God’s method of making men righteous
also. It is the Gospel grace generally, with all its effects, specifically
viewed as bringing men to the state of dikaiosunoo, or conformity with law. But
throughout, from beginning to end, it is absolutely of grace, without any merit
on the part of man 1 Matthew 6:33; 2 Romans 1:16-17; 3 Romans 3:21-22; Romans
3:26; 4 Romans 10:3; 5 Php 3:1-21 L9

2. Though this Method of righteousness is as it were new, it is also the same
which was from the beginning. Abel obtained witness that he was righteous1 only
by faith. Noah also became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. But
Abraham was the great exemplar. His faith was counted unto him for
righteousness; it was faith in a promise, not given through the law, but through
the righteousness of faith;2 and therefore a righteousness which was not
reckoned because of the virtue of the faith in itself, or as the substitute of
works. The faith rested on the early promise of acceptance by faith through a
Savior as yet unrevealed. The LAW intervening did not affect the unity of this
one great revelation of the only righteousness. It is the righteousness of God
without the law,3 in one sense; but in another, witnessed by the law and the
prophets. It was and is WITHOUT THE LAW, inasmuch as it is for ever independent
of perfect obedience. But it was witnessed BY THE LAW which was a perpetual
remembrancer of the impossibility of that obedience, which silently promised the
Redeemer by the very fact that shortcomings were not visited, which made faith
in the Covenant God and love to Him supreme, and indeed summed up all
disobedience as unbelief.4 It shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all
these commandments:

5 but none ever attained to that righteousness; OUR righteousness and MINE OWN
righteousness were ever inapplicable words, save on the ground of the deeper
foundation of the unrevealed righteousness of faith in Christ.6 The Psalms and
Prophets proclaim this Divine method more fully. God’s righteousness pervades
both, and sometimes in terms which anticipate the New Testament. My
righteousness is near! My salvation is gone forth,7 and My righteousness shall
not be abolished. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.8 THE JUST
SHALL LIVE BY HIS FAITH. As the full revelation of Christ and of His kingdom
waited for the New Testament, so also the full revelation of the mediatorial
method of constituting men righteous: though it tarry, wait for it.9

1 Hebrews 11:4; Hebrews 11:7; 2 Romans 4:3; Romans 4:13; 3 Romans 3:21; 4
Hebrews 3:19; 5 Deuteronomy 6:25; 6 Php 3:9; 7 Isaiah 51:5-6; 8 Psalms 85:10; 9
Habakkuk 2:3-4

3. But now is this Gospel revealed. And the term Righteousness is one of its
many denominations as embracing its whole design, As it is the Word, logos, or
preaching of the Cross;1 of the truth;2 of reconciliation;3 of the Gospel;4 so
it is also the word of righteousness:5 logos dikaiosune. It is the entire system
of doctrine concerning the Divine method of conferring upon man righteousness.
The whole revelation is the word of Christ,6 and of the grace of God.7 In it our
Lord is the King of righteousness as He is the King of peace;8 and His kingdom
is righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.9 It reveals the Lord our
righteousness; as the meritorious procuring cause, the perfect example, and the
Author by His Spirit of all in man that God requires and accepts as finished
conformity to His law. Hence it is in all its processes the Gospel of the
ministration of righteousness.10 We do injustice to this all-comprehending name
of the new economy if we do not regard it as embracing the whole sum of its
effects in human salvation. Viewed in our relation to the will and law of
God—and that view embraces, in a sense, all our relations for time and
eternity—we are altogether saved by the Gospel revelation of righteousness. The
solemn question asked in the Old Testament is answered in the New: How should
man be just with God?11

1 1 Corinthians 1:18; 2 Colossians 1:5; 3 2 Corinthians 5:19; 4 Acts 15:7; 5
Hebrews 5:13; 6 Colossians 3:16; 7 Acts 20:32; 8 Hebrews 7:2; 9 Romans 14:17; 10
2 Corinthians 3:9; 11 Job 9:2 RIGHTEOUSNESS APPLIED TO BELIEVING MAN The Divine
method of conferring righteousness is, when viewed in relation to man who
receives it, a manifestation of pure mercy, —continuing and applying the mercy
of Christ’s atonement, —which reckons to the believer through all the stages of
his religious life, in time and in eternity, a righteousness he can never attain
to or claim as his own

Whether it is regarded as accounting righteous or as making righteous—for both
are certainly included—it is and must be ever a free gift to the faith that
embraces the propitiation JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH

Justification is the Divine judicial act which applies to the sinner, believing
in Christ, the benefit of the Atonement, delivering him from the condemnation of
his sin, introducing him into a state of favor, and treating him as a righteous
person. But this justifying faith is an operative principle which through the
Holy Spirit’s energy attains to an interior and perfect conformity with the law,
or internal righteousness. The imputative character of justification, however,
rules the New-Testament use of the word. Inherent righteousness is connected
ordinarily with the perfection of the regenerate and sanctified life. In the
more limited sense, justification is either the act of God or the state of man

I. The act of justifying is that of God the Judge. Generally it is dikaioosis,
the word which pronounces the sinner absolved from the condemning sentence of
the law; and it refers always and only to the sins that are past. Whether
regarded as the first act of mercy, or as the permanent will of God’s grace
towards the believer in Christ, or as the final sentence in the judgment, it is
the Divine declaration which discharges the sinner as such from the condemnation
of his sin. It is God that justifieth:1 God in Christ; for all judgment is
committed unto theSong of Solomon 2:1-17 who both now and ever pronounces as
Mediator the absolving word, declaring it in this life to the conscience by His
Spirit. It is the voice of God the Judge in the mediatorial court, where the
Redeemer is the Advocate, pleading His own propitiatory sacrifice and the
promise of the Gospel declared to the penitence and faith of the sinner whose
cause He pleads. The simplest form in which the doctrine is stated is this: Who
shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who
is he that condemneth?3 Here the Apostle has in view the past, the present, and
the future of the believer; the death, resurrection, and intercession of Christ;
and the one justifying sentence against which there can be no appeal in time or
in eternity. God is Theos ho dikaioon, in one continuous ever-present act 1
Romans 8:33; 2 John 5:22; 3 Romans 8:33-34

II. As the state into which man is introduced it is variously described
according to his various relations to God and to the Mediator and to the law. As
an individual sinner he is forgiven: his justification is PARDON or THE
REMISSION OF SINS; that is, the punishment is remitted. As a person ungodly, he
is regarded as righteous, RIGHTEOUSNESS is IMPUTED to him; or his TRANSGRESSION
is NOT IMPUTED to him. His sin is pardoned, his person is justified. As a
believer in Jesus, His FAITH is COUNTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS. All these phrases
describe, under its negative and its positive aspect, one and the selfsame
blessing of the New Covenant, as constituting the state of grace into which the
believer has entered, and in which as a believer he abides. This is attested by
passages running through the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles; passages which
only confirm the promises of the Old Testament. Our Lord’s forerunner was
foreannounced to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of
their sins.1 The Saviour’s word was, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee;2 but He
spoke of the publican as praying God be merciful to me a, sinner! and as going
down to his house justified:3 his prayer was hilastheeti, and his blessing that
he was dedikaioomenos: these words being here introduced for the first time;
and, both severally and in their mutual connection, being reserved for abundant
future service in the New Testament, especially in the writings of St. Paul. He
left the commission that remission of sins should be preached in His name.4 St.
Peter preached that remission of sins5 on the Day of Pentecost, and afterwards
varied the expression, that your sins may be blotted out: counterparts in
meaning. But St. Paul takes up the Saviour’s own words and unites them: through
this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that
believe are justified from all things.6 And in his great Epistle he adds all the
other terms, and unites the whole in one charter of privileges: But to him that
worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is
counted for righteousness; even as David also describeth the blessedness of the
man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they
whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered: blessed is the man to
whom the Lord will not impute sin.7 In this classical passage all the phrases
are united without exception; and they are represented both as the act of God
and the state of man, the one and various blessing of habitual experience. To
sum up: the state of dikaio-sunoo is that of conformity to law, which, however,
is always regarded as such only through the gracious imputation of God who
declares the believer to be justified negatively from the condemnation of his
sin, and positively reckons to him the character, bestowing also the privileges,
of righteousness. The former or negative blessing is pardon distinctively, the
latter or positive blessing is justification proper 1 Luke 1:77; 2 Luke 5:20; 3
Luke 18:13-14; 4 Luke 24:47; 5 Acts 2:38; Acts 3:19; 6 Acts 13:38-39; 7 Romans
4:4-8

III. Whether the act or the state is signified the phraseology of justification
is throughout Scripture faithful to the idea of imputation. The verb justify is
not used of making righteous save as the notion of declaring or reckoning is
bound up with it

1. The Hebrew word tsaadaqaah is almost always translated by the Septuagint in
the sense of making or pronouncing righteous through a judicial sentence; and
that in the negative sense of vindication and in the positive of declaring just.
She hath been more righteous than I:1 Tamar was proved just, dedikaiootai. He is
near that justifieth me,2 ho dikaioosas mee. One striking passage deserves
careful observation: I will not justify the ungodly,3 where, if the Septuagint
had not followed another reading, we should have had the very words of St. Paul
that omit the NOT, tón dikaioúnta tón asebeé;4 also Which justify the wicked for
reward,5 oi dikaiounteoo ton asebh. The general strain is only confirmed by two
passage which seem to be exceptions, including with the external the internal
righteousness: By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many.6 And
they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.7 To these
may be added mataioo edikaioosa, I have cleansed my heart in vain,8 where
undoubtedly our term is once used as the translation of the Hebrew taher, I made
pure

1 Genesis 38:26; 2 Isaiah 1:8; 3 Exodus 23:7; 4 Romans 4:5; 5 Isaiah 5:23; 6
Isaiah 53:11; 7 Daniel 12:3; 8 Psalms 73:13

2. In the New Testament there is no exception. A few specimens will be
sufficient, especially as they are taken from the Gospels as well as the
Epistles. By thy words thou shalt be justified, dikaiootheésee, and "by thy
words thou shalt be condemned, 1 katadikastheésee. Ye are they which justify
yourselves before men, 2 katadikazo. Wisdom is justified of all her children,3
edikaioóthee, where there is both a negative and positive sense: wisdom is both
cleared from imputation and highly approved, the former predominating. And the
publicans justified God,4 edikaissoon. Compare also katakrima and dikaíoosin
zooeés, judgment and justification of life.5 It is God that justifieth, Theós ho
dikaioón; who is he that condemneth?6 Tís ho katakrinoón; Yet am I not hereby
justified,7 dedikaíoomai: this does not prove me righteous. The passages in St.
James, to be considered hereafter, are consistent with this. They speak of a
declaratory justification, and not of the making righteous: of a justification
pronounced on the evidence of works

Even those who suppose that St. James teaches a righteousness of works must
admit that his use of dikaioun is quite consistent with a declaratory meaning.
He is writing only of the evidences of righteousness, precisely in harmony with
the Sermon on the Mount, and expressly uses the Pauline language of imputation:
elogisthoo eis. He employs the word exclusively in its judicial sense. What he
is pleading against is a mistaken apprehension of faith, not a mistaken
apprehension of justification. The Divine judgment pronounced on Abraham’s
faith8 when Isaac was promised in Genesis 15:1-21, was confirmed in the later
evidence of Isaac’s surrender in Genesis 22:1-24. In the former he was
justified, in the latter his justification or righteousness was acknowledged.
The seeming exception in the Apocalypse is removed by the right reading,
dikaiosúneen poieesátoo, let him work righteousness, and thus let him be
righteous still,9 but not ho díkaios dikaiothooti éti. On the evidence of such
an unvarying usage we may conclude that this word never occurs in the Scripture
in relation to man’s acceptance saving in the sense of a declaratory sentence
which pronounces the man righteous whom God for Christ’s sake reckons to be such

Whatever righteousness is spoken of as imparted and infused requires itself to
have righteousness imputed to it. If the reading dikaiothooti éti were correct,
it would only make the New Testament close with, a great testimony to the truth,
That he that is righteous in his internal conformity to law must be JUSTIFIED
STILL during the interval until the Lord cometh

1 Matthew 12:37; 2 Luke 16:15; 3 Luke 7:35; 4 Luke 7:29; 5 Romans 5:18; 6 Romans
8:33-34; 7 1 Corinthians 4:4; 8 James 2:23; 9 Revelation 22:11 JUSTIFYING FAITH
The faith which is the condition and instrument of justification is the trust of
the soul in Christ as the only propitiation for human sin. It is a personal act
of the penitent sinner under the influence of the Holy Spirit, Who reveals the
Atonement to the mind, infuses desire into the heart, and thus persuades the
will to embrace the Savior. This faith, as receptive, renounces self in every
form, obtains forgiveness and is reckoned for righteousness: these being one
blessing under two aspects. As an active principle it appropriates the promise
or the virtue of Christ’s atonement; and, working by love, belongs not to the
entrance into justification, but to the justified state. Its genuineness is
approved by Evangelical works of righteousness, without which therefore the
state of justification cannot be retained. Hence there is a justification by
faith without the merit of works, and a justification by faith on the evidence
of works; but in both cases the justification is declaratory and altogether of
grace FAITH WITHOUT WORKS

I. Faith, without works, is both the instrument and the condition of
justification: as the condition, it renounces every other dependence than the
Atonement; as the instrument, it embraces Christ, or appropriates the promise in
Him, or rests upon His atoning work

1. The righteousness which is of God by faith is as a condition opposed to man’s
own righteousness, which is of the law

(1.) Faith acknowledges that the legal, proper, primitive sense of the term
justify, as the pronouncing him to be righteous who is righteous, is for ever
out of the question. First, as to the law: it has been broken and its
condemnation is acknowledged; it demands an obedience that never has been
rendered since the Fall. Then as to man himself, faith renounces all trust in
human ability. It utterly abjures the thought of a righteousness springing from
self. It acknowledges past sin; and present impotence; and the impossibility of
any future obedience canceling the past Knowing that a man is not justified by
the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in
Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the
works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.1 It
disclaims all human creaturely righteousness as such: the nullity of this is
taught by conviction, felt in repentance, and confessed by faith 1 Galatians
2:16

(2.) Hence the specific Evangelical phrase that faith is counted for
righteousness. This implies the absence of personal righteousness, and the
reckoning of a principle, not righteousness, in its stead by a kind of
substitution. In its stead: not as rendering good works needless, but displacing
them for ever as the ground of acceptance. Therefore faith does not justify as
containing the germ of all good works: as fides formata charitate, Or faith
informed and vivified by love. Not justifying through any merit in itself, it
justifies as the condition on which is suspended the merciful application of the
merits of Christ: kata chrin. Faith is not righteousness, as justifying: it is
counted for righteousness.1 It is put to the account2 of man in the mediatorial
court as righteousness; not as a good work, but reckoned instead of the good
works which it renounces. Lest the faith as itself a work should be regarded as
righteousness the Apostle varies the expression. He also says, again and again
inversely, that righteousness—not, however, Christ’s—is imputed to the believer:
not to faith itself, as if God regarded the goodness wrapped up in it. The man,
unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works . . . it was imputed to him
for righteousness . . . for us also, to whom it shall be imputed.3 It is the
man, in the naked simplicity of his self-renouncing, work-renouncing trust in
God—in naked faith, simple faith, faith alone, words which are not in Scripture
but which sums up its meaning—on whom the sentence of justification is
pronounced. When our Lord, in answer to the question, What shall we do that we
might work the works of God? said, This is the work of God, that ye believe on
Him whom He hath sent,4 He did not use either of the terms, work and faith,
precisely in their later sense, but prepared the way for it. He did not mean
that faith in Himself was the all-comprehending virtue required by God, but that
they must believe in Him before they could speak of any works at all as
acceptable 1 Romans 4:4; 2 Philemon 1:18; 3 Romans 4:6; Romans 4:22; Romans
4:24; 4 John 6:28-29

(3.) Imputation or reckoning—logizomai, ellogin—has two meanings: the ascribing
to one his own and the reckoning to him what is not his own. The latter sense
predominates in the three great theological imputations: that of the sin of Adam
to the race, that of the sin of the race to Christ, and that of the benefit of
Christ’s righteousness to the believer. As through the imputation of one man’s
disobedience many were made sinners,1 that disobedience being reckoned not in
the act but in the consequence; and as the Lamb of God bore the sin of the
world,2 not its sins, being made sin for us by imputation as a sin offering Who
knew no sin3 Himself, so the ungodly who in penitence believes has the virtue or
efficacy of Christ’s obedience reckoned to him without having that obedience
itself imputed: he is made the righteousness of God in Him, which is different
from having the righteousness of Christ set to his account 1 Romans 5:19; 2 John
1:29; 3 2 Corinthians 5:21

(4.) This faith as a negative condition is of the operation of the Holy Ghost He
enables the soul to renounce every other trust. He convinces the mind of guilt
and impotence; awakens in the heart the feeling of emptiness and longing desire;
and so moves the will to reject every other confidence than Christ. But, though
the influence of the Spirit produces it, it is so far only negative: a
preparation for good rather than itself good

2. Faith is the active Instrument as well as the passive Condition of
justification. As such it apprehends Christ; justifies because of the virtue of
its object as it unites the soul with Him -is blessed with the privilege of an
attendant assurance; and all once more under the influence of the Holy Spirit

(1.) Faith is the instrumental cause of justification. The originating cause is
the love of God; the meritorious, Christ’s atoning obedience, active and passive
in one, the former rendering the latter possible; the efficient cause, the Holy
Ghost, working faith through word and sacrament as the secondary instruments of
justification or its means. There is scarcely any room here for another
so-called formal cause, which is, really, notwithstanding every argument of
sophistry, the faith which makes the soul one with Christ; and that is the cause
instrumental blended with the cause meritorious. To ask for the formal
cause—formal being logically that which immediately constitutes a thing what it
is— is simply to ask for a definition of the act and state of justification It
is and must be the imputative estimate of God

(2.) The object of justifying faith is God in Christ. In this as in all I and My
Father are one. Yet the specific object of justifying faith is not God
absolutely, nor Christ and His revelation generally, but Christ as the
mediatorial representative of sinners, and God as accepting the Atonement for
man. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.1 We have
believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ.2 In
two ways St. Paul to the Romans describes God as the object. But believeth on
Him that justifieth the ungodly:3 this implies what had preceded, the Justifier
of him which believeth [in Jesus]4 and through faith, in His blood,5 or the
DEATH of Christ. And, in relation to His RESURRECTION: If we believe on Him that
raised up Jesus our Lord. But the God of our whole redemption in Christ is the
object of faith: the God Who so loved the world that He gave His
only-begottenSong of Solomon 6:1-13 Who delivered Him up for us all,7 and Who
raised up Christ from the dead.8 He is the One God of the One Christ

1 Acts 16:31; 2 Galatians 2:16; 3 Romans 4:5; 4 Romans 3:25-26; 5 Romans 4:24; 6
John 3:16; 7 Romans 8:32; 8 Romans 8:11

(3.) It is never said that we are justified dia pistin, on account of faith, but
dia pisteoos or ek pisteoos. Faith, as the act of the soul by which it unites
itself with the Lord, makes the virtue of His merit its own. It apprehends
Christ and His atonement: ascribing all to Him, it receives all from Him, This
is its transcendent privilege, surpassing all recorded in the eleventh of
Hebrews, or rather underlying all. It is the appropriating knowledge of Christ:
that I may win Christ is that I may know Him.1

1 Php 3:8-10

(4.) Faith is not assurance: but assurance is its reflex act. The same Spirit
who inspires the faith—which is alone, and without assurance, the instrument of
salvation—ordinarily and always, sooner or later, enables the believer to say:
He loved me and gave Himself for me.1 The objective and the subjective
confessions of personal experience have become one; but St. Paul here speaks out
of the treasure of in internal assurance which followed his first act of faith.
So he writes to the Ephesians: In Whom also, after that ye believed— or, on your
believing—ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.2 1 Galatians 2:20; 2
Ephesians 1:13

(5.) Faith, whether receptive or active, is an exercise of the human heart under
the influence of the Holy Spirit: not merely under that general agency by which
all preliminary grace is wrought, but through His actual revelation of Christ to
the soul, the eyes of which are at the same moment opened: the unveiling of the
Savior to the penitent seeker, and the unveiling of the sight to look to the
Lamb of God,1 in one and the same critical moment is the mystical but true and
sufficing definition of saving trust. It must be remembered, further, that the
active energy and the passive renunciation of saving faith are brought to the
perfection of their unity at that moment. St. Paul puts this strikingly when he
speaks of the Jews as not submitting themselves unto the righteousness of God.2
Submitting marks the negative, themselves the positive side: ouch hupetágeesan 1
John 1:36; 2 Romans 10:3

FAITH AND WORKS

Faith, with works, justifies instrumentally the person believing: inasmuch as
its works give evidence of its genuineness as a permanent living principle. It
retains the soul in a state of justification, and is the power of a Divine life
by which the righteous-ness of the law is fulfilled

1. The works of faith declare the life and reality of the faith that justifies.
Those works did not declare its genuineness at first, when forgiveness was
received: God imputeth righteousness ’without works . . . through the
righteousness of faith.1 But afterwards, and to retain that justification, its
works must absolutely be produced. I will shew thee my faith by my works.2 In
the whole sequel after receiving Christ, by works a man is justified and not by
faith only; that is, rearranging the words without violating their sense, a man
is justified not by faith only—which in this connection is no faith at all—but
by faith living in its works. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith
without works is dead also.3 Here is the origin of the phrase Living or Lively
faith; it is remarkable, however, that the invigorating principle is not from
the faith to the works but from the works to the faith The faith is the body,
the works the spirit: a seeming anomaly which plainly shows St James to be
contrasting two kinds of faith only 1 Romans 4:6; Romans 4:13; 2 James 2:18;
James 2:21; James 2:24; 3 James 2:26

2. The expression Living Faith, just used, suggests the vital relation of ’this
subject to union with Christ. When St. Paul says that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him,1 the word genoómetha means more than the
non-imputation of sin which has been spoken of before. That we might become: our
forensic justification being included of necessity, our moral conformity to the
Divine righteousness cannot be excluded. These closing words are a resumption,
but in a more emphatic and enlarged form, of the preceding paragraph, which
ended with if any man be in Christ he is a new creature.2 The righteousness of
God in Him is the full realization of the new method of conforming us to His
attribute of righteousness. It is impossible to establish the distinction
between IN CHRIST for external righteousness, and CHRIST IN us for righteousness
internal. These are only different aspects of one and the same union with
Christ. Still, the distinction may be used for illustration. Grace is given in
the Beloved, in Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of
sins,3 in order that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith:4 that His grace
may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.5 The vital union of faith secures
both objects: our being reckoned as righteous because found in Him, and our
being made righteous because He is in us as the Spirit of life6 and strength
unto all obedience: that the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us. He
that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit;7 and this Holy Spirit, common to Him
and to us, gradually realizes the ideal righteousness of God within by a sure
necessity. Gradually, for we wait for the hope of righteousness by faith;8 but
while this work is in process its perfection is always anticipated by the
imputation of grace, and righteousness is reckoned to cover its sin of defect.
While the imputation of God reckons its final perfection to the righteousness
which is begun, we ourselves also are exhorted to reckon ourselves dead indeed
unto sin:9 this imputation in ourselves answering to imputation in God. In what
sense dead to sin has been already explained, for he that is dead is justified
from sin.10 During the process the song is In the Lord have I righteousness and
strength.11 But when it is accomplished the perfection is from Him and not our
own. He is for ever and ever THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.12 Abraham believed in
the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness.13 Afterwards by faith
Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac,14 and therefore was not Abraham
our father justified by works?15 Faith and Works may be used interchangeably as
to abiding state:16 they are together and one. St. Paul and St. James agree that
the state of Justification is that of a faith which worketh by love.17 St. John
mediates, he that doeth righteousness is righteous:18 this would be tautology
did he not mean that the righteous man—he who in the well-known terminology of
St. Paul, which St. John does not use, is the justified man—is one who worketh
righteousness, even as He is righteous Who is the Author and Pattern and
Finisher of human righteousness

1 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 2 Corinthians 5:17; 3 Ephesians 1:6-7; 4 Ephesians 3:17;
5 Colossians 1:28; 6 Romans 8:2; Romans 8:4; 7 1 Corinthians 6:17; 8 Galatians
5:5; 9 Romans 6:11; 10 Romans 6:7; 11 Isaiah 45:24; 12 Jeremiah 23:6; 13 Genesis
15:6; 14 Hebrews 11:17; 15 James 2:21; 16 Genesis 22:15-19; 17 Galatians 5:6; 18
1 John 3:7

3. The justification of faith itself in and through its works forms the
Scriptural transition to internal and finished righteousness, which however is
generally viewed as entire sanctification: improperly, however, if
sanctification is regarded as finishing what righteousness leaves incomplete. To
him who insists upon bringing in the doctrine of sanctification to supplement as
an inward work what in justification is only outward St James replies: Seest
thou how faith wrought with his works,1 and by works was faith made perfect?2
Here is the finished result of faith which worketh by love; that one and
indivisible work of faith,3 in the assertion of which at the outset of his
teaching St. Paul by anticipation declared his agreement with St. James. Both
these Instructors in Christ4 show that justifying faith in a consummate religion
eteleioothoo, is MADE PERFECT in its effects; and both with reference to the
law, as against Antinomian renunciation of it. St Paul uses another term which
again shows his full agreement with St. James, pleerootheé: the juxtaposition of
these two terms is perhaps their best reconciliation. That the requirement of
the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the
Spirit:5 here righteousness fulfilled is not the claim of justice satisfied in
punishment but its requirements satisfied in love. If, in any sense whatever,
RIGHTEOUSNESS is FULFILLED IN us, that must be by our being MADE RIGHTEOUS while
reckoned such. But always, whether at the outset when works are excluded, or in
the Christian life when they are required, whether in earth or in heaven,
justification will still and ever be the IMPUTATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS TO FAITH.
The works which follow and give evidence will only declare that the faith in
Christ was genuine and living faith. This alone can secure eternal life to those
who, though as holy as their Lord Himself and as blessed as His joy can make
them, will be apart from Him and in the record of the past sinners still Of whom
I am chief!6 was St. Paul’s word when ready to be offered;7 and he and all true
believers will then look as they are now looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ unto eternal life.8 The profound consideration of this truth in all its
bearings, it may be said in conclusion, will furnish the secret of the defense
of the Evangelical doctrine of justification against all the perversions which
will hereafter be reviewed 1 James 2:22; 2 Galatians 5:6; 3 1 Thessalonians 1:3;
4 1 Corinthians 4:15;

5 Romans 8:4; 6 1 Timothy 1:15; 7 2 Timothy 4:6; 8 Jude 1:21

HISTORICAL The doctrine of the Divine Righteousness for man and in man, as the
Apostle Paul first systematically taught it, was not clearly and soundly
unfolded in the dogma of the Church until the Reformation. But the Scriptural
doctrine was never absent. Though the distinction between the righteousness
imputed to the believer and the righteousness wrought out in him was too much
lost sight of, the great Evangelical provision for setting man right with the
law through the Atonement has never been without its witnesses THE PATRISTIC AGE
The early Fathers never make the distinction which more modern discussions have
rendered necessary

1. Clemens Romanus, the first of them, fairly represents the general strain in
such language as this: " They all [the Fathers of the Old Covenant] received
honor and glory not for their own sake, nor through their own works, nor through
their own righteous acts, but through the will of God. So also we, who are
called in Jesus Christ by His will, are not justified through ourselves (ou di
eautoon dikaioumetha), nor through our own wisdom or knowledge or devotion, nor
through the works which we have wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith;
by which the Almighty hath justified all from the beginning." And again: " Let
us rightly prize the blood of Christ and see how precious His blood is to God,
as that which, poured out for our salvation, hath obtained the grace of
repentance for all (metanoias charin)." But in the same first document we read:
" Love binds us to God; in love hath the Lord accepted us; in love have all the
elect been perfected; without love nothing is wellpleasing to Heaven." "Happy
are we, if we obey the Lord’s commandments in the purpose of love, that through
love our sins might be forgiven to US (eis too aphethoonai umin di agapoos tas
amaptias homon):" dia toos pisteos is followed by di agapoos, a striking
variation from the exact words of the Apostle: not by faith which worketh by
love but by love. It is obvious that these expressions are equally consistent
with a justification by faith and a justification by works: supposing the
distinction between reckoning and constituting righteous not to be dwelt on.
This earliest Father evidently makes no difference between faith as the
principle and love as its expression. He further says: " How do we attain the
blessings of salvation? When our mind is firmly directed to God in faith, when
we labor after that which is wellpleasing to Him, putting away from us all
unrighteousness." The same combination of faith and love is found in Ignatius:
"If ye in perfect measure have faith and love towards Jesus Christ, which are
the beginning and end of life: the beginning (archoo) is faith, the end (telos)
is love; these, united in one, are of God." Irenseus says: " If ye avow this in
penitence for your sins, in acknowledgment of Jesus, as the Christ and in
observance of His commandments, ye shall have forgiveness of sins." And again
and again he blends faith and obedience in our justification. So also does
Clemens Alexandrinus. Origen’s doctrine tends the same way; though on this, as
on many other points, it is hard to reconcile him with himself, as will appear
from the following passages. " I find not in Scripture that faith is reckoned to
him who believes for righteousness, but only that full faith which includes the
departure from sin ... The root of righteousness is not of works, but from the
root of righteousness the fruit of works grows . . . This faith the Apostle
speaks of as a gift of the Spirit, and therefore of free mercy." But how anxious
he was to make justifying faith dependent on the works which make it perfect
appears from many parts of his writings: " For it is not possible that
righteousness can be imputed to him who has in himself any unrighteousness, even
though he may believe in Him who raised Jesus from the dead." It is obvious that
the ante-Nicene Fathers based their doctrine of the righteousness of faith upon
what we now call a reconciliation of St. Paul and St. James. They knew nothing
of a direct imputation of the Saviour’s merits; they knew nothing of a
righteousness imputed to the good works which faith produces; but they held fast
a justification of the believer through that faith alone, which approves itself
in holy life

2. It is remarkable that the East was, on the whole, more faithful than the West
to Pauline phraseology. Origen, Theodoret, and Chrysostom, among the Orientals,
explain dikaioun as dikaion apothainein, with much emphasis on its being the
forgiveness of sins. But Augustine makes justification equivalent to JUSTUM
FACERE. It is vain to seek in his writings a clear expression of St. Paul’s
doctrine. There is invariably a reference more or less direct to the works
wrought in the believer: " Justificamur in Christi sanguine, dum per remissionem
peccatorum eruimur a diaboli potestate." "Gratia Dei Justificamur, h. e justi
efficimur." " Justificat impium Deus non solum dimittendo quae mala fecit, sed
etiam donando caritatem, ut declinet a malo et faciat bonum per Spiritum
Sanctum.’’ Here it is plain that the terminology of St. Paul is tampered with.
No passage in his writings identifies righteousness with the indwelling gift of
charity. There is however a remarkable homage paid to the Apostle’s doctrine in
a memorable sentence of Augustine: " Sequuritur opera JUSTIFI-CATUM, non
praecedunt JUSTIFICANDUM." 3. It may be said that all this was no more than the
establishment of the strict union and due proportion between the external and
the internal righteousness that belong to salvation. But there was in such
language the germ of great errors, which may be traced in various directions.
Though the works of a living faith were demanded, the maintenance of the
Catholic objective creed of the one church was in the second century and
afterwards made suspiciously prominent. With this may be paralleled the
Alexandrian distinction between the psiloo pistis and the gnosis, springing out
of it, which made it living. Good works were very early, even by the earliest
Fathers, incautiously represented as co-ordinate with faith in the matter of
justification. Satisfaction —including penance, good works, almsdeeds and
intercession of martyrs—was inculcated as necessary in order to the forgiveness
of sins committed after the baptismal forgiveness had been lost

Augustine himself uses such language as this: " Non sufficit mores in melius
mutare et a factis malis recedere, nisi etiam de his, quae facta sunt, SATISFIAT
Deo per poenitentiae dolorem, per humilitatis gemitum, per contriti cordis
sacrificium, CO-OPERAN-TIBUS eleemosynis." This REMISSIO SECUNDA introduced a
fatal change into the Scriptural doctrine. Lastly, the ascetic distinction
between simple acceptance in doing the COMMANDMENTS and the higher worthiness of
following the COUNSELS of the Gospel, perverted the true doctrine for ages. The
first note of this permanent error is found in Origen: " Donec quis hoc facit
tantum quod debet, i.e., quae praecepta sunt, inutilis servus est. Si autem
addas aliquid praeceptis, tunc dicetur ad te, Euge, serve bone et fidelis!"’ But
the fundamental error was the misapprehension of the idea of justification;
making it not the declarator of a man’s righteousness—to which all must come at
last however perfect the internal righteousness—but the making him righteous

4. But, after every deduction for the signs of coming error, it is indisputable
that the best of the Fathers, whether of East or of West, furnish a consensus of
faithful testimony to the Scriptural doctrine of the sinner’s acceptance with
God on the sole ground of the Redeemer’s finished work. It may be granted that
they do not use modern language: such terms as Imputed Righteousness and
Forensic Justification are unknown to them. Also that they apply the term Merit
in a sense from which we now decline: meaning, not so much legal or moral
desert, as the gracious estimate attached by God to His own good in man. Also
that the term Justification itself was used in its largest meaning, as the
constituting and making men righteous through the efficacy of the Atonement
applied to the whole nature and life of the sinner. The Fathers regarded faith
as the principle which not only apprehends Christ’s merit for forgiveness but
unites the soul with Him for constant interior renewal. And Augustine, who is
generally appealed to, and not without justice, as sanctioning a moral
justification and even a justification conditioned by works of satisfaction, is
faithful to the supremacy of Christ’s merits relied on by the penitent believer.
This is his catena of grace: "Faith is the first link of the gracious chain
which leads to salvation. By the law comes the knowledge of sin, by faith the
attainment of grace against sin, by grace the healing of the soul from the stain
of sin, by the healing of the soul full freedom of the will, by the freed will
love to righteousness, and by love to righteousness the fulfilling of the law."
But it is in the deep expressions of his experience, when he is not
controversial, that we discover the essential soundness of his doctrine. " Our
righteousness is true, on account of the truly good which is before it, but in
this life it is so slight and impoverished that it rather consists only in the
forgiveness of sins; potius peccatorum remissione, quam perfectione virtutum.
The prayer which every member of the pilgrim church utters, Forgive us our
trespasses, bears witness to this. This prayer is not efficacious for those
whose faith without works is dead; but for those whose faith worketh by love." "
My sole hope rests on the death of My Savior. His death is my merit, my refuge,
my salvation, my life, my resurrection: my merit is the mercy of the Lord-He who
doubts of the pardon of sins denies that God is merciful" This is the spirit of
the testimony of all the Fathers. The more carefully their language is
considered, the more evident will it appear that they regarded righteousness as
springing entirely from faith in the Savior; and excluded good works from any
meritorious share in its attainment. The attacks made upon their teaching in
modern times may generally be traced to some peculiar error in the assailants
themselves. They do not find their own view of justification in the early
writers; and do not scruple to assert that the full exhibition of grace was lost
for a long number of ages. The exhibition of truth that has been set forth above
has nothing to fear from an examination of the best Christian writers of
antiquity: due allowance being made for difference of phraseology and the
influence of current errors upon their modes of statement MEDIAEVAL TENDENCIES
The Mediaeval doctors took two directions, the majority tending towards the
later theology of Rome or preparing its elements. The Church steadily relapsed
into a position of slavery to ceremony and works. Christendom became a great
legal economy, strictly and in an unevangelical sense a NEW LAW; the Church
itself became the Mediator instead of Christ; and justification as taught by St.
Paul bade fair to vanish from her teaching. But, on the other hand, the darkest
period furnished bright and clear testimony that the true Gospel was only
obscured I. The doctrine of the subjective application of the Atonement, like
that of the Atonement objective, was perverted

1. The dogma of Merit, as already seen, had its pernicious effect, both in
regard to the preparations for justifying grace, and the grace of justification
itself. The MERITUM DE CONGRUO, resulting from right behavior towards prevenient
grace, almost demanded from God’s equity the indwelling grace of justification
by virtue of which MERITUM DE CONDIGNO, desert of salvation in strict right, is
acquired. This could not fail to mar the freeness and pure grace of the Divine
act. However congruous it may be with the Divine fidelity to justify the
penitent who brings the fit preparation for that blessing, merit can have no
place; for the preliminary fitness is itself of pure grace. And the only merit
concerned with justification itself is that of Christ

2. Justifying Faith was made—as it has continued in the dogma of Rome—an actus
intellectus, receiving its meritorious virtue through love. The Schoolmen
distinguished two kinds of faith: FIDES INFORMIS, which simply believes the
articles of the creed, touching God and Divine things, by an explicit faith
where these articles are known, and by an implicit faith where they are not
clearly apprehended; and FIDES FORMATA CHARITATE, which then, as shown in love,
is VIRTUE, This righteousness is imputed to the faith itself, as having in it
the germ of all excellence, not to the believer as such

3. Hence justification was dispossessed of all that was forensic, and became
"actio Dei physica:" righteousness infused, making a man just instead of unjust.
Therefore it could never be regarded as a settled and fixed act of God, and
never as matter of certain assurance to its possessor. Justification in this
system, confirmed at Trent, is the process of a transmutation from a state of
sin to a state of righteousness, in virtue of which the justified can accomplish
works entitling to eternal life: opera meritoria proportionata vitae aeternae.
It is remarkable that Thomas Aquinas, the highest authority among the Schoolmen
before Trent, lays great stress upon the instantaneousness of this act,
confounding justification not so much with sanctification as with the infusion
of the regenerate life. The following are some of his sentences: " In
justification requiritur actus fidei quantum ad hoc, quod homo credat Deum esse
justificatorem per mysterium Christi." "Homo per virtutes justificatur; per
fidem justificatur." "Charitas facit effectum infinitum, dum conjungit animam
Deo justificando impiam." " Tota justificatio impii originaliter consistit in
gratiae infusione. Per eam enim et liberum arbitrium meretur et culpa
remittitur: gratiae autem infusio fit in instanti." This last sentence will be
seen to be in strange contrast with the later doctrine of Rome, which asserts
that believers through good works MAGIS JUSTIFICANTUR. But all the Schoolmen had
lost the Scriptural distinction between the sinner’s renewal unto holiness and
the sentence of justification which declares his acceptance

4. The tendency of Mediaeval doctrine was towards the same errors by which the
early Fathers were ensnared. What we saw in the germ has become more developed.
The present and eternal acceptance of the sinner for the sake of Christ alone,
never rejected absolutely, was denied by implication: the absolute supremacy of
the Saviour’s merit was reserved for the original fault of the race; for sin
committed after its first imputed benefit, human expiation was demanded.
Secondly, the peculiarity of the Apostolical term justification, as referring to
a sinner’s relation to law, was all but entirely abolished

Justification was said to make the sinner a saint and meet for heaven; and thus
the word did duty for the renewal and entire sanctification of the soul. It was
forgotten that, because the LAW will for ever have its charge against him—as
apart from Christ, —he must for ever be JUSTIFIED BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH.
Thirdly, the fatal dogma of Supererogation, based upon the figment of a possible
superfluous merit acquired by observance of the Counsels of Perfection, laid the
broad and deep foundation of the practice of Indulgence. This profoundly
affected the doctrine of Justification, whether viewed as Pardon or as
Righteousness. Fourthly, and this was the climax of mediaeval error, the one
eternal and finished sacrifice of Christ was taken from the direct
administration of the Holy Ghost, and changed into a sacrifice offered by the
Church through her priests, with special application according to the intention
of the human administrator. The combination of all these influences gradually
introduced another gospel, preached no longer to a faith that brings neither
money nor price

II. But there was also throughout the Mediaeval period a sound practical
confession, silently protesting against the theories of the schools j and
showing that the whole head was not sick, the whole heart was not faint. The
sickness of the Church’s teaching was not unto death: the light of the
Deformation was already arising in the midst of the darkness

1. A long and affecting series of testimonies might be gathered from the
Schoolmen of all shades, in proof that the hearts of the penitent saints always
turned for justification solely to the merits of Christ. Thus Anselm who did so
much to establish the foundations of the Atonement as a doctrine, could hardly
fail to be sound as to its application. Among many evidences of this may be
quoted his counsel to a dying sinner: "Huic morti te totnm committe, hac morte
te totum contege eique te totum involve. Et, si Dominus te voluerit judicare,
dic: Domine, mortem Domini nostri Jesu Christi objicio inter me et judicium
tuum; aliter tecum non contendo. Si dixerit, quod merueris damnationem, dic:
mortem domini nostri Jesu Christi objicio inter me et mala merita mea, ipsiusque
dignissimae passionis meritum affero pro merito, quod habere debuissem et heu
non habeo. Dicat iterum: mortem Domini nostri Jesu Christi pono inter me et iram
tuam. Deinde dicat ter: In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum. Et conventus sui
adstantes respondeant: In manus tuas, Domine, commendamus spiritum ejus. Et
securus morietur nec videbit mortem in aeternum." In his Meditations also we
hear Anselm thus speaking to his soul: " When I look at the offences which I
have committed, if Thou shouldst judge me as I have deserved, I am certainly
lost; but when I look at Thy death, which Thou didst suffer for the world’s
redemption, I cannot despair of Thy compassion." And the comparative absence of
confidence noticeable here is elsewhere relieved: " O how should we hope in a
perfect healing; and in this hope joyfully labor for our purification!" Thus
Bernard also abounds with sayings which breathe the purest aspirations after a
righteousness assured to faith working by love, without any human merit. It was
he who said: " sufficit ad meritum scire quod non suffieiant merita." In one of
his sermons there are sentences of which Luther made great use: " It is
necessary first of all to believe that thou canst not have the remission of sins
save through the indulgence of God; then that thou canst have no good works
unless He give thee this; and, lastly, that eternal life cannot be merited by
any good deeds, unless these be themselves freely given. The merits of men are
not such that for their sake eternal life is by right due to them, or that God
would be unrighteous in withholding it. For, not to say that all merits are
God’s gifts, man being God’s debtor and not God man’s debtor, what are all
merits in comparison with such glory?" In his Discourses on the Canticles also
Bernard utters some sentences that are perfectly free from the error of the
times: " Truly blessed is only the man to whom God imputeth not sin. For there
is none without sin. Yet who can condemn the elect of God? Enough is it to me
for the possession of righteousness that I have Him against Whom alone I have
sinned as a reconciled God. All that He has decreed not to reckon to me is as if
it had never been. Not to sin is God’s righteousness, man’s righteousness is the
forgiveness of God." " I am not poor in merit so long as He is not poor in
mercy. If His compassion is rich I am rich in merit, and shall eternally praise
the Lord of eternal mercy. Is it my righteousness that I think of? No, Lord,
only of Thine; for even IT is MINE. Thou art made of God righteousness to me
have I aught to fear that the one is not enough? It is broad enough for us
both." Preaching on the text "Savor of the Good Ointments," he delivers these
testimonies, which are fragments of a sermon profoundly interesting in itself as
a contribution to the doctrine of justification: " The Church could not run
after Him if He, with the Father from the beginning, had not been made unto her
Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption; wisdom through teaching;
righteousness, through absolution from guilt; sanctification, through the
communion with sinners into which He has entered; redemption, through the
passion He endured for sinners. This is the savor of Him Whom the Father hath
anointed with oil of gladness above His fellows . . .. By righteousness through
faith He hath loosed thy bonds of sin, justifying the sinner in free grace
(gratis justificans); further, He lived holy among sinners, and so opened up and
showed the only way of life for them; and, finally, to make the measure of His
love full, He gave His life to death, and shed out of His side the price of
satisfaction, the blood of atonement." The following sentences must be pondered
as he wrote them: " Non est quod gratia intret, ubi jam meritum occupavit. Deest
gratiae quicquid meritis deputas. Nolo meritum, quod gratiam excludat. Horreo
quicquid de meo est, ut sim meus, nisi quod illud magis forsitan meum est, quod
me meum facit. Gratia reddit me mihi justificatum gratis et sic liberatum a
servitute peccati." It is not a sound doctrine that takes exception to these
last words: Christian righteousness is an internal as well as an external
deliverance. And these are but specimens of many that might be adduced to show
that in the age which prepared for the Council of Trent the sole ground and
meritorious cause of justification before God was acknowledged by many to be the
righteousness of Christ, and the good works of man whether before or after
justification to be of no value in themselves

2. During the latter part of the Middle Ages Mysticism gave its distinct
coloring to this as well as to all the doctrines which connect the sinner with
his Savior. It is not easy to define precisely who in this relation may be
termed the Mystics. In a certain sense such were all the noblest spirits of the
Schoolmen, from Anselm and Bernard down to Gerson and the immediate precursors
of the Reformation. The passages quoted above, however, separate these authors
as to the present question from the Mystics proper, though they generally
belonged to the same class. The characteristic principle of Mysticism was the
absorbing desire after union with God. This was, and ever is, its ruling idea.
Applied to the doctrine of righteousness through Christ it had these two
effects, or this one effect under two aspects: first, it gave supreme ascendancy
to the love of the faith that embraces Christ; and, secondly, it made Christ’s
internal union with the soul the secret of its righteousness. It did not
entirely neglect, but it made entirely subordinate, the virtue of the Atonement
as reckoned to the soul for present and eternal acceptance. This phase of
doctrine must be considered elsewhere more generally: now we have to do with its
mediation between the legalized and enslaved mediaeval Church and the freed
teaching of the Reformation. It is enough to say that in the long series of the
purest and most saintly mystical writers the love which seemed to displace faith
as the condition of acceptance was in reality no other than faith itself in its
self-renouncing and Christembracing character; and, secondly, that the internal
Christ Whose indwelling was regarded as the formal cause or principle of
justification was such as utterly extinguishing self. Their language was
incorrect, and their idea of righteousness confused; but their theology was in
its deep foundation opposed to the legal spirit of the system to which they
belonged

3. As we approach the Reformation witnesses abound with their testimony that
both scholastic definitions and mystical meditations were steadily tending in
one direction

Among many we may bring forward Staupitz: " No man can be relieved of his sin
but through faith in Christ alone. Apart from Him there is no confession, no
repentance, no work of man: we must believe in Christ, or die in our sins.
Therefore it is far more needful to exercise ourselves in faith than in a book
of penitential discipline. Faith in Christ never faileth it obtains mercy from
God, and renews the whole man. Come and buy without money; ye have nothing to
pay for it; but shall be justified only through grace and the redemption which
is in Christ, Whom God hath set forth as our only Savior, only through faith in
His blood-shedding, for the manifestation of His righteousness. By faith we are
saved without the works of the law." But in another chapter the mystical element
comes in: " Faith in Christ lets no man abide in himself; it fails not till it
unites us wholly with God. And this is the true faith, which is Christ dwelling
within us." These passages combined indicate the junction between the two
tendencies to which reference has been made. They express the hidden thoughts
that were working in multitudes of minds, however confused in their utterance
THE TRIDENTINE DOCTRINE

There can be no doubt that the Sixteen Decrees and Thirty-three Canons of the
Council of Trent, which denounced in its sixth session, 1547, the errors of
Protestantism, contain the authoritative decisions of the Church of Rome on the
subject of Justification. But these must be examined in the light both of a
previous history and of a subsequent development

I. The Council of Trent was assembled as the protest of Rome against
Protestantism: the question of Justification was only one, though one of the
chief, which it aimed to settle

During the interval between the Diet of Augsburg, with its Confession, and the
Diet of Ratisbon, a little more than ten years, many attempts were made by the
old Church to compromise. The Interim Article, holding fast the essential
Mediaeval idea that justification is the making righteous, endeavored to graft
an imputation upon that: " Sinners are justified by a living and effectual
faith—per fidem vivam et efficacem— which is a motion of the Holy Spirit,
whereby, repenting of their lives past, they are raised to God, and made real
partakers of the mercy which Jesus Christ hath promised." It admitted that
sinners "cannot be reconciled to God, or redeemed from the bondage of sin, but
by Jesus Christ, our only Mediator;" that "faith justifies not, but as it leads
us to mercy and righteousness, which is imputed to us through Jesus Christ and
His merits, and not by any perfection of righteousness which is inherent in us,
as communicated to us by Jesus Christ;" and that "we are not just, or accepted
by God, on account of our own works or righteousness, but we are reputed just on
account of the merits of Jesus Christ." Whatever ambiguity may remain in the
sentence concerning the faith working by love that justifies, and that we are
made real partakers of mercy, there can be no doubt that the substantial truth
was once more within the reach of the Church of Rome and was rejected

II. The specific doctrine of Trent may be viewed as to the preparations, the
bestowment and the results of justification. On each of which a few remarks may
be made from our own position in passing, and without direct reference to the
controversy of the times

1. The Preparation for the estate of justification is a very important element
in the doctrine. It is regarded as the result of prevenient grace, with which
man may co-operate and which he may reject: Ita ut tangente Deo cor hominis per
Spiritus Sancti illuminationem, neque homo ipse nihil omnino agat,
in-spirationem illam recipiens, quippe qui illam et abjicere potest, neque tamen
sine gratia Dei movere se ad justitiam coram illo libera sua voluntate possit.
This is sound; but the successive steps of preparation, passing through belief
of the truth into acceptance of baptism, are supposed to constitute a certain
merit of congruity which notes the beginning of error. This, however, was
obviated, in word at least: GRATIS justificari dicimur, quia nihil eorum, quae
justificationem praecedunt, sive fides sive opera. ipsam justificationis gratiam
promeretur. Si enim gratia est, jam non ex operibus. Bellarmine quotes the
language of the Council: Synod. Trid. septem actus enumerat, quibus impii ad
justitiam disponuntur, videl. fidei, timoris, spei, dilectionis, poenitentiae,
propositi suscipiendi sacramenti et propositi novae vitae atque observationis
mandatorum Dei; and adds, per fidem nos placere Deo et impetrare atque aliquo
modo merere justificationem. But the distinction between merit E CONGRUO and
merit E CONDIGNO is perilous. It has been shown what is the relation of faith to
this justification as one of its preliminaries and the most important of them.
It is the assent to the doctrine of God as taught in the Catholic Church: quod a
Deo traditum esse sanc-tissimae matris ecclesiae autoritas comprobavit. In its
form, it is assent; in its matter it is EXPLICIT assent to the main doctrines,
and the IMPLICIT assent of goodwill to whatever the Church commends to faith.
Generally, this faith is humanae salutis initium, fuudamentum et radix omnis
justificationis. At a later stage comes the fides formata, or faith filled with
the germs of all good; and this faith, instinct with holiness, is justifying
because God beholds the hidden man who is under the process of renewal

2. On the accomplishment of the preparations justification follows: quse non est
sola peccatorum remissio, sed et sanctificatio et renovatio interioris hominis
per voluntariam susceptionem gratiae et donorum unde homo ex injusto fit justus,
ex inimico ami-cus,ut sit haeres secundum spem vitae etenae. Non modo reputamur,
sed vere justi nominamur et sumus, justitiam in nobis recipientes justitia Dei,
qua nos justos facit, qua videlicet ab eo donati reno-vamur spiritu mentis
nostrae et non secundum propriam cujusque dispositionem et co-operationem.
Quanquam nemo possit esse justus, nisi cui merita passionis Jesu Christi
communicantur, id tamen in hac impii justificatione fit, quum ejusdem sanctae
passionis merito per Spiritum Sanctum caritas Dei diffunditur in cordibus eorum
qui justificantur, atque ipsis inhaeret, unde in ipsa justificatione cum
remissione peccatorum haec omnia simul infusa accipit homo per Jesum Christum,
cui inseritur, fidem, spem et caritatem. Hence the Tridentine idea of
justification is that of making righteous; while it is of grace through Christ
there is in it no imputation of righteousness; though a non imputation of sin is
admitted, justification and regeneration and renewal are confounded and made
one. Some sentences seem to contain a condemnation of the doctrine of the
acceptance of the sinner through grace: Si quis dixerit homines justificari vel
sola imputatione justitiae Christi, vel sola peccatorum remissione, ex-clusa
gratia et charitate, aut etiam gratiam qua justificamur esse tantum favorem Dei,
anathema sit. This expressly opposes the Scriptural doctrine of justification as
forgiveness and the imputation of righteousness to faith: but if the term
justification is enlarged, so as to include the whole process of the renewal of
the soul, the words are correct. They are wrong inasmuch as they deny that there
is a distinction between the acceptance for Christ’s sake and the acceptance of
the inward work of holiness wrought by His Spirit. The Scriptures teach, what
common sense con-firms, that the present, constant, and final acceptance of a
sinner must be a sentence of righteousness pronounced for Christ’s sake
independent of the merit of works

3. It is in the results of justification that the confusion of Roman theology is
most apparent. The New Testament undoubtedly teaches that there must be in the
believer a process of gradual righteousness; yet carefully distinguishes that
from the one sentence of justification which is ever and continuously
pronouncing the believer righteous. But the Council made no such distinction. In
its doctrine justification admits, in all its meaning, of increase. Sic ergo
justificati et amici Dei ac domestici facti euntes de virtute in virtutem,
renovantur de die in diem, hoc est, mortificando membra carnis suae et exhibendo
ea arma justitiae in sanctificationem . . . per observationem mandatorum Dei et
ecclesiae in ipsa justitia per Christi gratiam accepta, co-operante fide bonis
operibus, crescunt atque magis justificantur. Again, human satisfaction is
superadded as a requirement for the continual impartation of forgiveness in the
sacrament of penance: Si quis negaverit, ad integram et perfectam peccatorum
remis-sionem requiri tres actus in poenitente, quasi materiam sacramenti
poenitentiae, videlicet contritionem, confessionem et satisfactionem, quae tres
poenitentiae partes dicuntur; aut dixerit, duas tantum esse poenitentiae partes,
terrores scilicet incussos conscientiae agnito peccato, et fidem conceptam ex
evangelio vel absolutione, qua credit quis sibi per Christum remissa peccata:
anathema sit This canon omits faith, and places the satisfaction of human works
in its stead: the same term being applied to the good deeds of penitent
obedience that is applied to the One Meritorious Oblation of Christ which indeed
is admitted to lie at the basis of all. Moreover, in the anxiety to defend faith
from being made a merely blind confidence in the Atonement, on the one hand, and
a personal assurance of salvation on the other, it is reduced as the instrument
of salvation to mere assent; but that assent itself is among the preparations of
prevenient grace. The faith quickened and informed with charity is no other than
the life of regeneration, and, in making this the faith that justifies, the
renewal of the soul is really made the reason of acceptance for the sake of
Christ. Not faith in the Redeemer, but the work of that faith, becomes the
formal cause of justification. The danger of Antinomianism is obviated only by a
fatal opposite extreme: the denial in theory that the SOLE ground of
justification is the virtue of Christ, and the practical traffic in good works
flowing from that denial. The truth of an advancement in holiness is maintained,
with its consequent, the increase of the Divine complacency: but this
justifications incrementum is, however true as an increase of righteousness,
utterly unscriptural as disjoined from a settled and permanent justification of
pardon. Rome, once more, rightly taught the necessity of good works in order to
the continuance and perfection of a state of salvation; but condemnation was
pronounced upon the doctrine that these good works are only the fructus et signa
justificationis; and moreover these good works were made meritorious, enhancing
the justification and the rewards of the justified in virtue of a merit that
vainly sheltered itself under the sanction of the Scriptural reward of grace

III. The subsequent development of the doctrine of Rome on this doctrine is
deeply interesting; but chiefly in relation to some of the other topics that
will come under discussion. From Bellarmine, the first controversial defender of
the Council, down to Moehler its latest, the history of variation may be
profitably studied

1. Bellarmine himself introduced several important modifications; and his bolder
statements tend to bring into relief a certain moderate tone that was adopted in
the Council. As to faith he says: " In three things Catholics differ from
heretics. First, in the Object of justifying faith, which heretics restrict to
the promise of special mercy, while we would extend it as widely as the whole
Word of God. Secondly, in the faculty of mind which is its seat. They place it
in the will, defining it to be trust and confounding it with hope, as fiducial
trust is only confirmed hope. Catholics teach that it is in the intellect

Finally, in the act of the understanding involved. They define faith by
knowledge, we by assent. For we assent to God, even when He proposes things to
be believed which we do not understand." To this faith of so general a nature he
ascribes a sort of merit: " That it is the cause and has the power of
justifying, and in some sense merits it." He distinguished more precisely than
the Council between the first and the second justification: " We say that St.
Paul speaks of the first justification, in which the unrighteous are made
righteous; while St. James speaks of the second, in which the just is made more
just. Thus the former rightly says that man is justified without works, and the
latter that he is justified by works." He denies what has been abundantly
proved, that both writers speak only of a declaratory justification. Bellarmine
rejected altogether the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, which the Council
rejected only as being the sole ground of acceptance

"Our adversaries have never found a passage in which it is stated that Christ’s
righteousness is imputed to us for righteousness, or that we are righteous
through the imputation of His righteousness." The Arminians said the same thing
in almost the same words; but both forgot that, as to the essential matter
involved, there is scarcely a shade of difference between the imputation of
Christ’s righteousness and the imputation of its virtue in pardon. Finally, this
controversialist laid the foundation of a more thorough exposition of the Works
of Supererogation and the Counsels of Perfection, which the Council left as they
were commonly understood and perverted. These points we dwell on elsewhere.
Meanwhile, it is instructive to find that the great champion of the merit of
works, who said that " good works are necessary to salvation, not only in regard
to their presence, but also in regard to their efficacy"—a profound and
far-reaching error—was, like many other devotees of Roman doctrine, more
faithful to the Atonement as a penitent Christian than he was as a polemical
writer. He did not end his description of justification without a strong
recommendation to simple trust in the pure mercy of God: Propter incertitudinem
propriae justitiae, et periculum inanis gloriae, tutissimum est fiduciam totam
in sola misericordia Dei et benignitate reponere. Hoc solum dicimus, tutius esse
meritorum jam partorum qudammodo oblivisci, et in solam misericordiam Dei
respicere; tum quia nemo absque revelatione certo scire potest se habere vera
merita, aut in eis in finem usque perseveraturum: tum quia nihil est facilius,
in hoc loco tentationis, quam superbiam ex consideratione bonorum operum gigm

2. Within the Roman Church there have been many controversies upon what are
called the Doctrines of Grace. The most important was its contest with
Jansenism, or Augustinian Predestinarianism, or what we call Calvinism. As
Calvinism had its Arminian Five Points to oppose, so Jesuit Romanism had its
Five Points of Jansenism to oppose. The Papal Constitutions or Bulls issued to
suppress these doctrines merely confirmed, and in a negative way, the Decrees
and Canons of Trent, which are the only authoritative formulas. The exposition,
however, of these formulas has been various, and belongs to a more minute
History of Doctrine. The student who would thoroughly understand the position of
modern Romanism must study the controversy which Moehler’s Symbolism excited in
the earlier part of this century. In the long and exhaustive discussion of
Moehler every point is touched. To many of his arguments against the exaggerated
doctrine of Imputation we must concede their force. But the fundamental question
of the relation of faith to justification, though stated with much subtlety, is
not relieved of its anti-Scriptural character as above exhibited. A few
sentences will show this. " To the abstract idea of God, as a Being infinitely
just, corresponds the sentiment of fear. If, on the other hand, God be conceived
of as the allloving, merciful, and forgiving Father, this is most assuredly
possible only by a kindred sentiment in our souls, corresponding to the Divine
love, that is to say, by a love germinating within us. It is awakening love only
that can embrace the loving, pardoning, compassionate God, and surrender itself
up entirely to Him, as also the Redeemer saith: He that loveth Me shall be loved
of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him. Thus it
would not be faith (confidence) that would be first in the order of time, and
love in the next place, but faith would be an effect of love, which, after she
had engendered faith as confidence, supported by this her own self-begotten
helpmate, would come forward more vigorously and efficaciously. This, at least,
Holy Writ teaches very clearly: compare Romans 5:5 with 8: 15, 16. The second
mode whereby what we have said may be made evident is as follows. Confidence in
the Redeemer (for this, we repeat, the Reformers denominate faith) necessarily
presupposes a secret, hidden desire, —a longing after Him. For our whole being,
having received the impulse from God, forces and urges us to apply to ourselves
what is offered through the mediation of Christ; and our deepest necessities,
whereof we have attained the consciousness through His Spirit, are satisfied
only in Him. But what is now this longing, this desire, other than love?
Assuredly, this aspiring of our whole being towards Christ, this effort to
repose in Him, to be united with Him, to find in Him only our salvation, is
naught else than love. It follows, then, that love, even according to this view
of things, constitutes the foundation and external condition of confidence,
—nay, its very essence; for, in every external consequence, the essence is still
manifested." In answer to all this, it may be noted that there is something in
faith which corresponds to the terror of the law as well as to the attraction of
the Gospel: the former must come before the latter, for love casteth out fear.
Faith, as the self-renouncing, self-despairing trust in Christ, does not love
Him yet with the love of which He speaks in the misapplied words of His promise,
I will manifest Myself to him To quote Moehler himself: " God is represented as
loving men before they love Him, that is to say, as loving them without their
love; whereas the Catholic Church teaches that he only who loves God is beloved
of God. Hereby the free unmerited grace of God in Christ seems totally rejected,
as if only through our love the love of God deserved to be acquired. What is to
be said in reply to this? We must connect with the passage John 4:10 others
which appear to contradict it: wherein it is expressly said that God loves only
those that love Him." But there is surely a difference between the love bestowed
on those in whom Divine love is already shed abroad and the love which sheds
forgiveness in response to a faith which desires Christ but cannot yet love Him.
One most suggestive extract shall close this allusion to modern Roman doctrine.
It must be carefully studied by those who would understand the difference
between St. Paul’s doctrine and that of Romanists and very many who in this
respect Romanize. "The Redeemer undoubtedly announces Himself to us from without
(JUSTITIA NOSTRA EXTRA NOS) as He for the sake of Whose merits the forgiveness
of sins is offered with the view of restoring us to communion with God. But when
we have once clearly apprehended and reconquered this righteousness, which is
without, then first awakes within us the feeling kindred to Divinity; we feel
ourselves attracted towards Him (this is the first germ of love); we find, even
in our sins, no further obstacle; we pass them by, and move consoled onward
towards God in Christ (this is confidence in the Latter); and, by the
progressive development of such feelings, we at last disengage ourselves from
the world, and live entirely in God (JUSTITIA INTRA NOS, INHAERENS, INFUSA)."
Change some of the terms, and we have here the Lutheran and our own doctrine.
The " apprehension " of an external righteousness is the faith which believes in
the " forgiveness of sins offered to us;" it " passes by " the " obstacle" of
former guilt. When Luther used such language he was condemned

Here is the same doctrine, but with the vital omission of a conscious
appropriation of the vicarious sacrifice which propitiated the Divine
displeasure and propitiated the Divine love. The Atonement is robbed of one of
its eternal elements: it is made only the removal of a barrier to the flow of
love; in forgetfulness that it is also set forth as a propitiation in the blood
of Christ to declare the Divine righteousness. The clear conception of this
truth will defend the doctrine of Justification against an error which is, of
all its errors, the least peculiar to Romanism

3. It may be added that the connection between the sacrament of Baptism and
Justification was clearly laid down at Trent; but that also has received sundry
important modifications. It was established that the only instrumental cause was
the sacrament; but the very virtue of the rite as an objective assurance,
corresponding with faith as assurance subjective, was taken away by the denial
of the certitude of Justification: " As no pious man ought to doubt of the mercy
of God, the merit of Christ, the virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, so every
one, looking at himself and his own infirmity and indisposedness, may fear
concerning his own grace, since no one may know with the certitude of faith,
which error may not be mixed with, that he has received the grace of God." The
error common to Rome and many other communions is to confound the certitude of
faith in a present justification with the assurance of an eternal salvation. The
Lutherans often betray here the influence of their early Predestinarianism; the
Romanists betray simply the fundamental error that reduces faith to mere
intellectual assent made living by love. The Calvinists are more consistent; for
they disconnect justification from the external sacrament, and make the specific
assurance of it the high privilege of the Electi electorum. The following words
of Hooker are remarkable, as showing how a high sacramentarian maintained the
common privilege of the assurance of faith. They may well close our slight
references to the Roman Catholic view of the subject generally

"Doubtless, says the Apostle (Php 3:8), I have counted all things loss, and I do
judge them to be dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him, not having
mine own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the
righteousness which is of God through faith. Whether they [the Romish divines]
speak of the first or second justification, they make the essence of it a Divine
quality inherent, —they make it righteousness which is in us. If it be in us,
then it is ours, as our souls are ours, though we have them from God, and can
hold them no longer than pleaseth Him. But the righteousness wherein we must be
found, if we will be justified, is not our own; therefore we cannot be justified
by any inherent quality. Christ hath merited righteousness for as many as are
found in Him. In Him God findeth us, if we be faithful; for by faith, we are
incorporated into Him. Then, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and
unrighteous, yet even the man which in himself is impious, full of iniquity,
full of sin, him, being found in Christ through faith, and having his sin in
hatred through repentance, him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away
his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereunto, by
pardoning it; and accepteth him in Jesus Christ, as perfectly righteous, as if
he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law Shall I say more perfectly
righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law? I must take heed what I
say; but the Apostle saith, God made Him which knew no sin to be sin for us,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him! Such we are in the sight
of God the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself. Let it be counted folly,
or phrensy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our wisdom, and our comfort; we care
for no knowledge in the world but this, —that man hath sinned, and God hath
suffered; that God hath made Himself the sin of men, and that men are made the
Righteousness of God."

PROTESTANT DOCTRINE The teaching of the Reformation on this subject underwent
many changes and passed through many phases. It is not possible, nor is it
necessary, to trace the process here. It will be enough to give the result, as
shown: first, in the common protest against ancient error; secondly, in the
difference gradually established between the Lutherans and the Reformed; this
leading finally to the Remonstrant or Arminian mediation between them

1. The first Reformers regarded justification by faith as the central question
in their gigantic assault upon corrupt Christendom: induced proximately by the
abuse of Indulgences, and ultimately by the fervent study of St. Paul’s doctrine
of Righteousness

They made this the starting point of all controversy, and relied upon its
settlement for the removal of every abuse. Si in unum conferantur omnia
scandala, tamen unus articulus de remis-sione peccatorum, quod propter Christum
gratis consequamur remissionem peccatorum per fidem, tantum affert boni ut omnia
incommoda obruat. Hence in the Smalkald Articles all the individual errors of
Romanism are measured and estimated in their relation to this; and its
restoration is regarded as the pledge of universal amendment The great points
which were gradually cleared in Luther’s mind, and formulated by Melanchthon,
were these: that the righteousness of Christ is the sole ground of our
acceptance, and not any past, present, or future works of our own, emphasis
being laid on the future; that justification is the forgiveness of sins, which
must precede love to God, being therefore forensic and not physical, an act of
God for man and not an act of God in man; that faith does not itself justify,
having no virtue of its own, but that it is the instrument of appropriating the
merit of Christ. The following clauses from the Formula Concordise (1581)
express the common doctrine of the Reformers; and at the same time condemn
certain errors that had crept in among themselves: such as that of Osiander, who
taught that Christ in His Divine nature is our Righteousness, He dwelling in us
and His indwelling Divine righteousness being imputed to us as our own; and that
of Stancarus, who regarded Christ as mediator only in His human nature, the
righteousness of which is imputed to us; and that of others who began to dwell
too much on the distinct imputation of Christ’s active obedience. "

(1.) Our righteousness is the whole Christ according to both natures in His sole
obedience, which He as God and man offered to the Father even to the most
absolute death; and by it merited for us the remission of sins and eternal life

(2.) This is before God our righteousness that He remits our sins of mere grace,
without any respect to past, present, or future works. He imputes to us the
righteousness of the obedience of Christ; on account of that righteousness we
are received by God into favor and reputed just.

(3.) Faith alone is that medium and instrument by which we apprehend Christ.

(4.) The word Justification in this Article signifies the same as being absolved
from sins.

(5.) Although antecedent contrition and subsequent new obedience do not belong
to the article of Justification before God, justifying faith must not be
imagined to be capable of consisting with any evil purpose, such as that of
continuing in sin and acting in opposition to conscience’

2. By degrees the difference between the Lutheran divines and the Reformed began
to appear and take definite form

(1.) The Predestinarianism of Calvin and his followers affected at many points
their doctrine of Justification as only the expression in time of an eternal
decree. The distinction between Righteousness and Regeneration was maintained;
but both were made to spring together from the one act of the Holy Spirit in the
bestowment of the gift of faith. Hence Justification became an eternal and
unchangeable act, the investiture of the regenerate, in virtue of their union
with Christ, with His righteousness active and passive: passive, for the removal
of the sentence of death; active, for their reinstatement in the privileges of
righteousness. Justification was at once an external act (actus forensis) and
the imputation of Another’s righteousness (imputatio justitiae Christi).
Calvin’s own teaching may be summed up in two sentences: Sicut non potest
discerpi Christus in partes, itainseparabiles esse haec duo, quae simul et
conjunctim in Ipso percipimus, justitiam et sanctifica-tionem. But before this
we read: Justificationem in peccatorum remissione ac justitiae Christi
imputatione positam esse dicimus

(2.) The Lutheran divines at first tended the same way. Hollaz, for instance,
betrays a certain indistinctness which long affected the dogmatic divines who
took up Luther’s work: Justification distinquitur in primam et continuatam. Illa
est actus gratiae, quo Deus, judex justissimus et misericordissimus, homini
peccatori, culpae et poenae reo sed converso et renato, ex mera misericordia
propter satisfactionem et meritum Christi, vera fide apprehensum, peccata
remittit et justitiam Christi imputat, ut, in filium Dei adoptatus, haeres sit
vitae aeternae. Here there is the same priority of regeneration, and the sinner
is supposed to have the new life in Christ before the mercy of the Atonement is
applied in the forgiveness of sins. By degrees the two correlative sides of the
one justification were adopted instead: negative, in the non-imputation of
guilt, corresponding with the passive obedience of Christ as having paid the
penalty; positive, in the imputation of righteousness, corresponding with His
active obedience as belonging to the believer in the mutual transfer of
relations between the Lord and man. But these were distinguished " non secundum
rem sed secundum rationem:" not as distinct in fact, but distinct only in the
order of thought. Others made justification the remission of sins on the ground
of a previous imputation of Christ’s righteousness, which preserves one
consistency at the expense of another. But, rejecting the doctrine of election,
and holding a higher theory of sacramental efficacy, Lutheranism gradually
departed further from Calvinism. It admitted that justification might be lost,
and found again, and finally lost; that it is a state, as well as an act; and a
state out of which a man may fall. It gave a more important function to good
works. Denying, against the Romanists, that there can be any opera
supererogationis, or merits acquired by obeying the counsels of perfection, it
also denied, against the Calvinists, or rather the Antinomians, that good works
have absolutely nothing to do and are not regarded in the sinner’s present and
final acceptance. There is a way of holding the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness, active and passive, which makes it very hard to give a good
account of the relation of good works to salvation. There was originally and
there has always been much fluctuation and much embarrassment on this subject.
Antinomianism was an outgrowth of Lutheranism, and the Form. Council condemned
Agricola’s doctrine by establishing a triple use of the law; paedagogicus, for
conversion; politicus, for society; didacticus, for the believer. And it laid
down that good works are necessary, not in. the sense of being enforced, but as
testimonies of the presence of the Spirit ARMINIAN OR REMONSTRANT DOCTRINE

Arminianism was in its doctrine of the Atonement a mediation between Socinianism
and the Anselmic teaching as revived at the Reformation; and in that of
righteousness a mediation between the later Lutherans and the Reformed. Its firm
maintenance of universal redemption affected its theory of justification at all
points. Generally faithful to the truth, it held some peculiarities which lead
to error. But it must be remembered that Arminianism gradually declined from its
first integrity; and that it does not now represent any fixed standard of
confession

I. The Remonstrants held that Christ’s obedience is the sole ground of
justification, the only meritorious cause; that faith is the sole instrumental
cause; that good works can never have any kind of merit: all this in common with
the other Reformers

1. Arminius himself gives this definition: " Justification is a just and
gracious act of God by which, from the throne of His grace and mercy, He
absolves from his sins man, who is a sinner but who is a believer, on account of
Christ, and His obedience and righteousness, and considers him righteous to the
salvation of the justified person, and to the glory of Divine righteousness and
grace." "The meritorious cause of justification is Christ through His obedience
and righteousness . . .. He is the material cause of our justification, so far
as God bestows Christ on us for righteousness, and imputes His righteousness and
obedience to us. In regard to this twofold cause, the meritorious and the
material, we are said to be constituted righteous through the obedience of
Christ." But both Arminius and his followers declined to admit any distinction
between the active and the passive obedience. In fact, they gradually denied
altogether the direct imputation of Christ’s righteousness. While denying that
works, whether legal or evangelical, merit salvation, they asserted that the
faith which justifies is regarded by God as a fides obsequiosa or assensus
fidu-cialis, a faith which includes obedience. The Remonstrant Confession says:
In ipsum Christum ad salutem a Deo nobis ex pura gratia datum toti recumbimus.
Itaque ad fidem veram et salvificam non sufficit sola notitia, neque assensus,
sed requiritur omnino firmus et solidus voluntatisque deliberatae imperio
roboratus, denique fiducialis et obsequiosus assensus. qui et fiducia dicitur.
No exception can be taken to this statement, which seems to unite the best of
the Lutheran and Calvinistic points. But the following words of Limboreh reveal
the secret of weak-ness in the later Arminian doctrine: Sed fides est conditio
in nobis et a nobis requisita, ut justificationem consequamur. Est itaque talis
actus, qui licet in se spectatus perfectus nequaquam sit, sed in multis
deficiens, tamen a Deo gratiosa et liberrima voluntate pro pleno et perfecto
acceptatur et propter quem Deus homini gratiose remissionem peccatorum et vitas
aeternae praemium conferre vult. All this is only partially true. God requires
faith, but it is also His gift. He does, for Christ’s sake, pardon the
imperfection of the good work wrought by faith, which is faith itself; but he
does not repute it as perfect so far as concerns our justification. This is the
imputation of righteousness to the believer himself: not to the work of faith.
The faith of the ungodly is reckoned for righteousness even before it can
produce its first act

2. It would not be difficult to show that there is a strong resemblance here to
the Romanist error: the faith is informed and clothed with the works of love
which, though imperfect, are accepted and rewarded under the provisions of a new
and reduced law of righteousness. That God does accept the righteousness which
He works in us as perfect for Christ’s sake is undoubtedly true, but it is not
on account of this inwrought righteousness that He accepts the sanctified
believer. The faith that looks at the finished work of Christ cannot rely on the
finished work itself accomplished within. " An act of faith ON ACCOUNT OF WHICH,
PROPTER QUEM, God graciously confers the remission of sins and the reward of
eternal life" cannot be true; it is at least very inexact and dangerous
language. Other extracts may be translated to make this still plainer: " It is
to be remembered that, when we say we are justified by faith, we do not exclude
works which faith requires and as a fruitful mother produces, but include them."
" Justification is the gracious estimation or rather acceptance of our imperfect
righteousness (which, if God were rigid, could not stand in His judgment) on
account of Jesus Christ." All that is here said, and much more to the same
effect might be added, is true of the interior righteousness which God makes and
accepts, as perfect; but it has nothing to do with that supreme justification,
or imputation of righteousness to the believer trusting in Christ, which
precedes, which accompanies and enfolds and surrounds, and which will finally
seal and accept that interior righteousness

II. The Arminian type of theology has been sometimes termed NEONOMIANISM,
because of its supposed introduction of a new law, the law of grace, according
to which the legal righteousness for ever impossible to man is substituted by an
Evangelical Righteousness accepted of God, though imperfect, for Christ’s sake.
There is a method of stating this that renders it harmless. But no student of
Antinomianism can fail to see how perilous is the notion that Christ has lowered
the demands of the law. We are taught by St. Paul that THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE
LAW IS TO BE FULFILLED IN US. The English Arminians who are charged with this
corruption of the doctrine of justification are unjustly charged. If they assert
that God accepts the imperfect obedience which believers can render in lieu of
the perfect obedience required of Adam, they do not intend thereby to assert
that that obedience is the ground of their acceptance in any sense: certainly
not as apart from the finished active and passive righteousness of Christ to
which they look for the one justification unto life. But all such charges carry
us into another doctrine: that of the Entire Sanctification or Christian
Perfection which is maintained by some of them, especially the Methodists.
Neonomianism, as rightly understood, is only Antinomianism in disguise

III. This leads to some brief consideration of the specific views of METHODISM,
as generally classed with Arminians, in their relation to this subject. Its
doctrine of justification is dependent on its doctrine of the Atonement, which
it regards as an oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world

1. Generally, the Methodist teaching is that of the Anglican Article on
Justification: " We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by faith; and not for our own works or
deserving," as that is followed by the Article on Good Works: " Albeit that Good
Works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put
away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment; yet are they pleasing
and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and
lively Faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as
a tree discerned by the fruit." 2. Although Methodism lays most stress, after
the example of the Apostles, on the forgiveness of sins, or the remission of
their penalty, or their non-imputation, it does not, however, forget that
Justification is strictly speaking more than mere forgiveness. One of its
earliest statements was: " To be justified is to be pardoned and received into
God’s favor; into such a state that, if we continue therein, we shall be finally
saved." Its Catechism thus defines: " Justification is an act of God’s free
grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His
sight, only for the sake of Christ." And Mr. Wesley also lays the stress on
Pardon: " the plain, scriptural notion of justification is pardon, the
forgiveness of sins. It is that act of God the Father whereby, for the sake of
the propitiation made by the blood of His Son, He showeth forth His
righteousness (or mercy) by the remission of sins that are past." But later
writings of Mr. Wesley show that he was afterwards disposed to lay more stress
on the positive side of justification. And some of its latest and best
definitions do full justice to both. Dr. Bunting is a remarkable evidence of
this: " To justify a sinner is to account and consider him relatively righteous,
and to deal with him as such, notwithstanding his past actual unrighteousness;
by clearing, absolving, discharging, and releasing him from various penal evils,
and especially from the wrath of God, and the liability to eternal death, which,
by that past unrighteousness, he had deserved, and by accepting him as just, and
admitting him to the state, the privileges and the rewards of righteousness."
Dr. Hannah is still more explicit, if we mark the word EMBRACE: " Justification
is that act of God, viewed as our righteous and yet merciful Judge, by which,
for the sake of the satisfaction and merits of Christ, embraced and applied to
the heart by faith, He discharges the criminal at the bar, and treats him as a
just person, in full accordance with the untarnished holiness of His own nature,
and the inviolable rectitude of His administrations." He further says that, for
the reason assigned in the last words, Justification may be considered as a
stronger term than pardon or forgiveness. The merits of Christ are embraced, and
the satisfaction of Christ applied, in this sound definition: explicitly
connecting the merit of Christ with the faith of the penitent

3. Between this, however, and the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness,
especially His active righteousness, to the believer as his own, there is a
great interval. Methodism has always maintained a firm protest against the
distinct imputation of the active obedience of the Substitute of man; but has
been reluctant to give up altogether the thought of an imputation of Christ’s
righteousness generally. The following words of Mr. Wesley, confirmed by hymns
which the Methodists delight to sing, will carry back this instinctive
vacillation to an early period: " As the active and passive righteousness of
Christ were never in fact separated from each other, so we never need separate
them at all. It is with regard to these conjointly that Jesus is called ’ the
Lord our Righteousness/ But when is this righteousness imputed? When they
believe; in that very hour the righteousness of Christ is theirs; it is imputed
to everyone that believes, as soon as he believes. But in what sense is this
righteousness imputed to believers? In this; all believers are forgiven and
accepted, not for the sake of anything in them, or of anything that ever was,
that is, or ever can be done by them, but wholly for the sake of what Christ
hath done and suffered for them. But perhaps some will affirm that faith is
imputed to us for righteousness. St. Paul affirms this, therefore I affirm it
too. Faith is imputed for righteousness to every believer, namely, faith in the
righteousness of Christ; but this is exactly the same thing which has been said
before; for by that expression I mean neither more nor less than that we are
justified by faith, not by works; or that every believer is forgiven and
accepted merely for the sake of what Christ has done and suffered." 4. This is
only the echo of the words of Goodwin: " If we take the phrase of imputing
Christ’s righteousness improperly, namely, for the bestowing, as it were, the
righteousness of Christ, including His obedience as well passive as active in
the return of it, that is, in the privileges, blessings, and benefits purchased
by it, so a believer may be said to be justified by the righteousness of Christ
imputed. But then the meaning can be no more than this: God justifies a believer
for the sake of Christ’s righteousness, and not for any righteousness of his
own. Such an imputation of the righteousness of Christ as this is no way denied
or questioned." Here Mr. Watson remarks: " With Calvin the notion seems to be,
that the righteousness of Christ, that is, His entire obedience to the will of
His Father, both in doing and suffering, is, upon our believing, imputed, or
accounted to us, or accepted for us, ’as though it were our own.’ From which we
may conclude that he admitted some kind of transfer of the righteousness of
Christ to our account; and that believers are considered so to be in Christ, as
that He should answer for them in law, and plead His righteousness in default of
theirs. All this, we grant, is capable of being interpreted in a good and
scriptural sense; but it is also capable of a contrary one." It is the
antinomian abuse that has made the doctrine suspicious. But we must be on our
guard against surrendering precious truths, merely because they have been
perverted. So long as we hear the Apostle’s trust as to the past, I am crucified
with Christ,1 and his present experience and hope for the future of being FOUND
IN CHRIST, NOT HAVING MINE OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS,2 we must be cautious how we recoil
from the imputation of the Righteousness of Christ. To this it must in some
sense come at last; for, even when our own conformity to the law is raised to
the highest perfection Heaven can demand, we must in respect to the demand of
righteousness upon our whole history and character be FOUND IN CHRIST, or be
lost. But the language of Scripture should be adhered to in every statement on
such a subject. The inspired writers use almost every possible variation of
phrase, save that the righteousness of Christ is reckoned to believers, or, in
the words of the Westminster Confession, " imputing the righteousness and
satisfaction of Christ unto them." However nearly the assimilation, or union, or
identification with Christ, may be approached, there is a shade of interval
which forbids the use of such language as is so freely used by many. This
question, however, and others closely connected with it, will recur in the next
sections of Administered Redemption 1 Galatians 2:20; 2 Php 3:9

MODERN ERRORS

"There is scarcely an error concerning the sinner’s acceptance with God that has
not its modern representative; nor is there a modern error the germs of which
have not already been noted as traceable in antiquity

I. The older Socinianism, rejecting the Divinity and vicarious atonement of the
Redeemer, regarded the Deity as a Being acting above and independently of law,
and as remitting the penalties of sin on condition of faith, which is viewed as
obedience. Socinus made free use of the terminology of the New Testament in his
definitions, one of which well deserves study. " Faith therefore in Christ by
which we are justified, although it embraces and signifies the obedience which
in hope of eternal life we pay, and therefore shows itself in work, yet is
opposed to works inasmuch as it does not in itself contain a perpetual and most
absolute observance of Divine precepts, nor justifies by its own virtue, but on
account of the clemency of God, who regards those that perform this work of
faith, as Christ Himself calls it, as righteous, and in His own incomparable
benignity condescends to impute to those before unjust the righteousness which
He requires." Modern Unitarianism, which may be called Rationalism, holds the
same general idea of the Divine toleration of man’s infirmity, and of the energy
of an earnest faith in the possibility of amendment. We may see the issue in the
following words of Wegscheider, a high authority: " Not by any individual good
acts done, nor by any merit whatever, but only by true faith, that is, by a mind
ordered after the pattern of Christ and His precepts; and thus turned to God,
piously referring all its thoughts and deeds to Him and His most holy will, are
men approved to God. And trusting to the Divine benevolence, which Christ in His
suffering of death has wonderfully confirmed, they are filled with the hope of
future blessedness to be accorded to them according to their own moral dignity."
Or as another high authority, Staeudlin, says: All true amendment and every
right act must spring from faith, when we understand by it the conviction that
anything is right, the assurance of certain great moral and religious
principles." Some of the noblest testimonies ever given to the virtue and energy
and potentiality of strong faith in the good are to be found among Deists who
reject that revelation of God in Christ which is to man the eternal warrant and
energy of belief. But the faith to which Scripture ascribes such wonders is
faith in God, with all His attributes of justice and mercy, as they have their
highest manifestation in the work of Jesus

II. Within almost all the more orthodox communities of Christendom there is
observable a strong partiality towards a view of justification that regards it
as the expression of the Divine complacency resting on the soul in which the
Incarnate Son is formed. It may indeed be said that almost every error on the
subject is more or less a variation upon this

1. It is in reality the error of a certain type of teaching in Romanism and the
Greek Church: so far that is, as concerns the simple doctrine of Justification
itself, apart from its relations with the Sacrament of Penance. The FIDES
FORMATA brings Jesus into the soul, and the growing holiness which His presence
insures is the progressive justification of the believer. There are treatises in
which devout Romanists have discussed the doctrine —sometimes under the very
title "De Gratia Sanctificante"— in a manner almost unexceptionable, if the
subject were Regeneration and Renewal, or the Inward Life of Holiness

2. It is virtually the view of all those diversified Latitudinaviaris, —within
and without the Anglican Establishment, on both sides of the Atlantic, and over
the Continent of Europe, save among the consistent Calvinistic or Reformed
Communions, —who reject the doctrine of God reconciled to man through a
propitiation. The presence of Christ in humanity is the reconciliation of the
race to God according to this modern Gospel; and the ministry of reconciliation
is only the announcement of a fact which all men are already interested in, or
of a privilege that all men already possess. This particular error will find its
more appropriate place when we look at the history of the doctrine of
regeneration. Meanwhile, it is enough to mention that such a revolt against the
doctrine of CHRIST FOR us, as combined with CHRIST IN US, is spreading rapidly
and must be earnestly repelled. Schleiermacher’s influence has given it much
currency in Germany, where many otherwise orthodox theologians accept his notion
that "believers are taken up into a life-fellowship with Christ, Who has
introduced a new relation of man to God," omitting all reference to the new
relation of God to man. But there is discernible a strong reaction in favor of
the old doctrine of the Reformation, as was shown by the general condemnation
with which Hengstenberg’s theory of a progressive justification based upon the
indwelling of love was encountered. Martensen, in his popular Dogmatics, seems
to regard Justifying faith as an ethical principle: "In His merciful view God
sees in the seedcorn the future fruit of salvation, in the pure will the
realized idea of freedom."

3. Mysticism of every type, including those which are most Evangelical in
devotion to Christ and the fruits of holiness, has been governed by this error,
though in its most attractive form. The Apology of Barclay exhibits its
influence on the theology of the Society of Friends; but it is wrong to class
the Quakers among those who utterly reject the benefit of an external atonement.
This will appear from the following quotation, which shows the good and the evil
of their views: " Although we place remission of sins in the Righteousness and
Obedience of Christ, performed by Him in the flesh, as to what pertains to the
remote procuring cause, and that we hold ourselves formally justified by Jesus
Christ formed and brought forth in us, yet can we not, as some Protestants have
unwarily done, exclude works from justification. For, though properly we be not
justified for them, yet we are justified in them; and they are necessary, even
as causa sine qua non . . .. Though they be not meritorious, and draw no debt
upon God, yet He cannot but accept and reward them. For it is contrary to His
nature to deny His own; since they may be perfect in their kind, as proceeding
from a pure, holy birth and root." The infection of the thought that the
INDWELLING CHRIST is the formal cause of our justification pervades a large
portion of the ascetic and devotional theology of all ages of the Christian
Church. It cannot be doubted that the mystical union with the Savior does in
much of this literature virtually include dependence on His work as an external
atonement. Of that the reader must often feel quite assured. And it is only
Christian charity to think that the Lord is in some cases not strict to mark the
offence of narrowing unduly the Imputation and benefit of His Righteousness as
an objective provision for deliverance from guilt. There are very many who in
words reject the double formula of CHRIST FOR US AND CHRIST IN US, but
nevertheless embrace it in fact with all their hearts. But, whether accepted or
rejected, it is the final truth on the whole subject of CHRISTIAN RIGHTEOUSNESS


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  CHAPTER 29: 31. VOL 03 - CHRISTIAN SONSHIP
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Christian Sonship CHRISTIAN SONSHIP

REGENERATION:

Agent;

Nature and Definitions;

Means.

ADOPTION: The Term; The Act of God; Privilege Conferred on Man PRIVILEGES OF
CHRISTIAN SONSHIP

Access to God;

Liberty;

Special Guidance of the Spirit;

Election;

Inheritance.

HISTORICAL:

Judaism;

Early Fathers;

Sacramental Theories;

Theories of Co-operation or Divine and Human Elements;

Baptismal Regeneration and Adoption; Its Order in Economy of Grace;

Relation of Christian Regeneration to the Elements of Human Nature;

Various Estimates of Regeneration THE Christian privilege of Sonship is that of
filial life restored to man in and through Christ. This blessing, connecting the
Mediatorial Trinity, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in a special
manner with the new relations of the believer, may be distinguished as the
internal Regeneration and the external Adoption. But, however distinct, these
two are to be united when we consider the peculiar Prerogatives of the children
of God viewed as His children: they are the rights of adoption conferred on such
as are made capable of them by their renewal, or, in another view, the rights of
regeneration which in adoption are acknowledged and bestowed

1. No terms are more strictly correlative than Regeneration and Adoption. They
describe the same blessing under two aspects: the former referring to the filial
character, the latter to the filial privilege. But they are not thus closely
connected as cause and effect: they are co-ordinate, and the link between them
is the common Sonship. The assurance of filial adoption does not produce the
regenerate life; nor does the infusion of the perfect life of regeneration of
itself invest the children of God with all the prerogatives of heirship

Moreover, they are as distinct from the other leading blessings in the economy
of grace as they are themselves united. The justified state does not involve of
necessity the special privileges of adoption; nor does regeneration as such
imply the specific relation to God which sanctification signifies The two terms
we now consider embrace in their unity an entirely distinct department of the
Spirit’s administration of the New Covenant: they lead us into the household of
faith and the family of God. Touching at many points those other departments,
they are nevertheless perfect and complete in themselves

2. The privilege of Christian sonship connects the Holy Trinity in a peculiar
manner with the administration of grace. If such a distinction may be allowed,
it has a more direct connection than the other privileges of the covenant with
the Son Incarnate. This specific blessing is in relation to righteousness and
sanctification what the Son is in relation to the Father and the Holy Ghost.
Among the last sayings of the Savior were these: I ascend unto My Father and
your Father,1 to that Father of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is
named.2 He who is the Logos to the creation generally is the Son towards the
filial creation. But this special relation to the Son extends to both aspects of
sonship as adoption and regeneration. We are adopted into the relation which the
Son occupies eternally: hence the term which expresses this prerogative is
uiothesia, where the uios is preserved as the solitary word that is ever used to
signify the Son’s relation to the Father

We are regenerated by the life of Christ imparted through the Spirit: hence it
is paliggenesia, and we are tekna, both terms as it were reproducing in time the
eternal generation. Our regeneration answers to the eternally Begotten, our
adoption to the eternally Beloved 1 John 20:17; 2 Ephesians 3:15

3. There are some passages in the New Testament which unite the two; and these
may be introduced as the general preface to what follows. But as many as
received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God:1 exousían tékna
Theoú genésthai, authority or privilege to be made into children, because they
believe on the name of the Son. This is precisely the same as what is afterwards
called adoption. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God: here we have a most complete definition of
regeneration. The two ideas run through the eighth chapter of the Romans; though
both there, and in the Galatian epistle, it is the adoption that is more
conspicuous. In St. Peter we have both. Which according to His abundant mercy
hath begotten us again:2 this is regeneration; to an inheritance incorruptible
denotes the adoption to which inheritance belongs as a privilege. But best of
all in St. John: Behold .. that we SHOULD BE CALLED and WE ARE the sons of God.3
In this however, as in all, our Lord Himself gave the word: If the Son,
therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed;4 that is, by the
possession of a place among the children, and the children’s freedom. If God
were your Father, ye would love Me: here, as the context shows, regeneration or
the possession of new life is meant 1 John 1:12; 2 1 Peter 1:3-4; 3 1 John
3:1-2; 4 John 8:36; John 8:42

REGENERATION

Regeneration is the final and decisive work wrought in the spirit and moral
nature of man when the perfect principle of spiritual life in Christ Jesus is
imparted by the Holy Ghost

Many and various descriptions of this fundamental change are given in Scripture:
showing its relations to the several Persons of the Trinity, to the penitent
faith of the recipient, to the means employed in effecting it. The best method
of acquiring a clear view of the teaching of the word of God on this subject is
simply to arrange and classify these descriptions

I. The Divine Agent in the new life is the Holy Trinity, Whose agency is that of
generation and creation: each of these terms being respectively the centre of a
circle of phrases

1. The Persons of the Sacred Trinity are Severally Agents. It is said of the
Father: Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth.1 You hath He
quickened.2 So God, generally, or God and the Father; Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . Who hath begotten us again!3 The Son
quickeneth whom He will.4 I am come that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly,5 perisson: the higher, deeper, fuller life which
is the result of Christian regeneration, in contradistinction to the preliminary
life that precedes the new birth, as well as to the imperfect privilege of the
older economy. It is, however, the adoption of sonship which is more expressly
ascribed to the Son: to them gave He power to become the sons of God6 by
privilege who were born of God. But the Holy Ghost is the specific Agent: as the
Administrator of redemption He is a quickening Spirit.7 That which is born of
the flesh is flesh, and that which is horn of the Spirit is spirit.8 There is no
more exact translation of New-Testament thought into ecclesiastical phrase than
that which gave the Holy Ghost the title: to Kurion to soopoion, the Giver of
life 1 James 1:18; 2 Ephesians 2:1; 3 1 Peter 1:3; 4 John 5:21; 5 John 10:10; 6
John 1:12; 7 1 Corinthians 15:45; 8 John 3:6 2. The Divine operation presents
three general classes of terms

(1.) Some refer to generation. The simplest is that of begetting: every one that
loveth Him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of Him,1 tón
genneésanta. The idea is modified in St. Peter’s begotten us again,2
anagenneésas. In one passage the mother’s function is used in the original,
though disguised in the translation: of His own will begat He us:3 apekúeesen,
as before in ver. 15 the same peculiar verb is employed, bringeth forth death.4
These are united in the general word quickening: the Son quickeneth whom He
will, zooopoieí. This is modified again: quickened us together with Christ.5 St.
John’s is a remarkable variation on the thought: whosoever is begotten of God
doeth no sin, because His seed remaineth in him.6 All these descriptions are
very impressive as adopting and applying to Christians the sacred language first
used of the ONLY BEGOTTEN [GOD], which is in the bosom of the Father.7(2.) Again
many other terms refer to creation

St. James unites this idea with the former: begat He us . . . that we should be
a kind of first-fruits of His creatures.8It is both creation, new creation, and
the secondary creation of renewal, If any man be in Christ he is a new
creature:9 ktísis, creation or creature. He is created in Christ Jesus unto good
works. It is however a secondary creation, or reduction of the soul to order out
of its chaos: by the renewing of the Holy Ghost,10 anakainoóseoos. Here we must
remember the analogy of the genesis of all things at the beginning: there was an
absolute creation of matter, or calling that which was not into being; and there
was the subsequent fashioning of that matter into forms which constitute the
habitable Cosmos. The latter is the creator on which the Scripture most dwells:
whether it regards the physical or it regards the spiritual order. Just as the
sleeper is dead and the dead is only asleep, —awake thou that sleepest, and
arise from the dead,11 —so the creation is only a renewal, while the renewal is
no less than a creation. (3.) These sometimes are united. And have put on the
new man, ton neon, which is renewed,12 tón anakainoúmenon. And be renewed in the
spirit of your mind,13 ananeoústhai and that ye put on the new man, tón kainón
ánthroopon, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. It is
well to note, without pressing too far, the distinction between the two forms,
neos and kainos, and their combinations. The former refers to time: the new man
is entirely different from his FORMER self. The latter refers to quality: the
new man is different from his former SELF, and the idea of a great change is
more marked. In these passages the creating act of God is regarded as a process
issuing in the new character; as a process in which He uses the co-operation of
man. But in another passage the creating idea is used rather of a definite act:
for we are His workmanship,14 poíeema, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
We are saved apart from our own merit, through a new Divine energy that prepares
us for works which then are good: good because they spring from a renewed
nature, are performed under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and for ever
renounce all claim to goodness independent of His grace

1 1 John 5:1; 2 1 Peter 1:3; 3 James 1:15; James 1:18; 4 John 5:21; 5 Ephesians
2:5; 6 1 John 3:9; 7 John 1:18; 8 James 1:18; 9 2 Corinthians 5:17; 10 Titus
3:5; 11 Ephesians 5:14; 12 Colossians 3:10; 13 Ephesians 4:23-24; 14 Ephesians
2:10

II. As wrought in man, regeneration is described in many ways: there is a
greater variety of indirect and figurative definitions of this blessing than of
any other in the covenant of grace

1. The terms indicating the spiritual birth take the lead. Christians are born
of God,1 ek toú Theoú; they are children of God; they are born again,2 ánoothen,
which is the same as from above: indeed the expression has rather a local than a
temporal meaning, and is strictly from above, or from heaven, that is, born of
God, according to St. John’s interpretation in the epistle. As describing
regeneration it must have the preeminence, being our Lord’s own first and only
formal word on the subject. When He adds: the wind bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither
it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit,3 we are taught that the
preliminary grace of the Holy Ghost has its mysterious issue in the new birth of
him who has been born (ho gegenneeméno, in the perfect, the completion of a
process). It is, as we have defined it, the full filial life. The word
distinguishes the new product from that which is born of the flesh;4 it is a
paliggenesia, and indicates the bestowment of a new life according to the
original idea of man in the Divine mind 1 1 John 3:9-10; 2 John 3:3; 3 John 3:8;
4 John 3:3; John 3:6-7

2. It is a resurrection from a state of death; from death, and not merely a
rising up generally from sin: as those that are alive from the dead.1 (1.) It is
therefore the same man who was dead in trespasses and sins;2 and the idea seems
to be that the new man is raised up within the old: to be nourished and grow
while the latter dies. This follows the analogy of our Lord’s words: except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.3 The old nature is
mortified with Christ and the new rises from it. But the analogy in other
respects fails. The true life of the spirit is life in death, and death unto
life; but it is not the dissolution of the old nature that feeds the new germ.
(2.) Hence the stricter view of this interior new birth is that of a
resurrection in the fellowship of the risen Savior, and connects it with the
fellowship of His atoning death unto the condemnation of sin. In other words the
new life is the counterpart of the death to the law. Therefore we are buried
with Him by baptism into death that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead
by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For
if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also
in the likeness of His resurrection.4 He that is united to the Redeemer by
faith, of which baptism is the sign, is justified from sin; but this cannot be
without a spiritual resurrection with Him, of which the rising out of the water
is the symbol, as descending into it is the symbol of the former. In this
passage regeneration is regarded rather as a process following the instantaneous
death: that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not
serve sin.5 Hence the expression, Reckon ye also yourselves [to be] dead indeed
unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The same
instantaneous life with Christ, followed by the same death in life of spiritual
mortification, is taught in the Colossian epistle. And you, being dead in your
sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him,
having forgiven you all trespasses . . .. Mortify therefore your members which
are upon the earth.6 (3.) Spiritual Circumcision in union with Christ is another
aspect of the same truth. The uncircumcision of your flesh7 is spiritual death
as contrasted with dead in your sins as the condemnation of the law. And in this
fulfillment of the symbol, in the taking away the foreskins of your heart, that
inward circumcision which is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the
letter,8 we have the New-Testament antitype of a large series of Old-Testament
types of the future regeneration

1 Romans 6:13; 2 Ephesians 2:1; 3 John 12:24; 4 Romans 6:4-5; Romans 6:7; 5
Romans 6:6; Romans 6:11; 6 Colossians 2:13; Colossians 3:5; 7 Jeremiah 4:4; 8
Romans 2:29

3. It is the introduction into a new world. This follows from the former: the
children of this resurrection are quickened or raised into newness of life.1
They have new tastes, appetites, dispositions, senses adapted to a new state of
things. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed
away; behold, all things are become new.2 Of this change our Lord spoke when He
said: except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God.3 Christians, having ascended with Christ, sit in the heavenly
places;4 they are required therefore to set their affection on things above.5
This aspect of the new birth conjoins it with Illumination. It is Let there be
light!6 in the soul. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
hath shined in our hearts:7 which connects the New-Testament spiritual genesis,
or palingenesis, with the natural one of the Old Testament 1 Romans 6:4; 2 2
Corinthians 5:17; 3 John 3:5; 4 Ephesians 1:20; 5 Colossians 3:2; 6 Genesis 1:3;
7 2 Corinthians 4:6

4. It is sharing, in a deeper sense than any yet referred to, the life of
Christ. Our Lord at the outset of His teaching spoke of that which is born of
the Spirit:1 at the close He represented regeneration as being union with
Himself: I am the Vine, ye are the branches.2 Because I live ye shall live
also.3 And, between these, He spoke of Himself, received by faith, as the life
of the soul. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood ye
have no life in you.4 This is sometimes said to be Christ in you,5 and Christ
formed in6 the nature. It is more than a federal fellowship in His death and
life, such as results from faith in the common Redeemer and exhibits
regeneration in some sense as a corporate blessing. It is the mystical
communication of a certain Divine-human virtue of the Saviour’s being which
cannot be defined in words. Thus we become partakers of the Divine nature.7 To
this referred one of those profound sayings which our Savior uttered, without
interpretation, to be pondered by His people for ever: I am come that they might
have life, and that they might have it MORE,8 perissón, that, like as Christ was
raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk
in newness of life.9

1 John 3:6; 2 John 15:5; 3 John 14:19; 4 John 6:53; 5 Colossians 1:27; 6
Galatians 4:19; 7 2 Peter 1:4; 8 Romans 6:4; 9 Hebrews 10:16

5. It is a new law established in the heart; according to the terms of the
evangelical covenant: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds
will I write them.1 The law set up within is a definition of the new birth which
connects it with justification that the righteousness of the law might be
fulfilled in us.2 Love is the fulfilling of the law.3 This also connects it with
the Holy Spirit not only with His agency, but with His indwelling: the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.4 1 Hebrews 10:16; 2 Romans 8:4; 3 Romans
8:10; 4 Romans 8:2

6. Lastly, regeneration is the renewal of man into the Divine image. This
specific view is certainly not peculiar to St. Paul but he gives it special
prominence: the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him
that created him.1 A careful study of these words yields much important truth.
(1.) The standard of the renewal is the original image in which man was created.
At the moment of the impartation of the new life that image was restored, as is
more directly affirmed in the parallel passage, which after God is created,2
ánthroopon tón katá Theón ktisthénta: the new man was once for all created anew;
and the subsequent knowledge, and holiness of truth, are the end for which it
was created. (2.) When St. Paul adds, where there is neither Greek nor Jew . . .
but Christ is all and in all, he tells us that the new creation is specially
related to Christ as the Archetype of this new image; which indeed was true of
the original image that sin defaced, but is now more fully revealed. (3.) While
the mysterious regenerating act was the restoration of that likeness, it is
implied that the renewal, for this is the term, is a process ever going on
towards completion. The pristine image was by one offence marred; but by many
successive stages is it entirely restored. We all with open face beholding (or
receiving) as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.3 Thus the new image is
gradually retrieved; the Holy Ghost is filling up and deepening the outline
continually; and the regenerate life, like righteousness and sanctification, has
its issue in perfection As the one regeneration leads to a continuous renewal,
so the one image re-engraven leads to a continuous transformation: be ye
transformed by the renewing of your mind.4 (4.) Once more, and this is of great
moment, the object of this change, or the subject of this renewal, is the whole
spiritual nature of man. Not his body; for its regeneration will be its
resurrection: the body is (and remains) dead because of sin,5 and must undergo
its penalty. Doomed as it is to dissolution it must be presented in ceaseless
oblation as the instrument of the spirit which is life because of righteousness,
laid on the altar of service for the present and of hope for the future. But the
spirit as the seat of reason, or the immortal principle in man, and the soul, as
the same spirit linked with the phenomenal world by the body, are, in all their
complex faculties which are a unity in diversity, brought under the regenerating
power of the Holy Ghost. We read that the natural man, Psuchikós dé ánthroopos,
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:6 that is, the man whose spirit is
subdued to the animal soul, soulish, having not the Spirit.7 But this does not
signify that the soul itself, apart from the spirit, is the only defaulter: the
spirit also is in the transgression; and the regenerate man becomes ho dé
Pneumatikós, he that is spiritual,8 only through his spirit being inhabited by
the Spirit Divine. Neither is the soul without the spirit, nor the spirit
without the soul, the seat of sin or the subject of regeneration. It is man who
is renewed. (5.) Lastly, regeneration is therefore not the removal of anything
infused by sin into the essence of the spirit or soul. It is not said that we
receive a new nature: though no language is more common than this, it must be
very carefully restricted and guarded. Partakers of the Divine nature9 we are;
but as received into our own nature renewed. The heart is the man, the self; and
the promise is, a new heart also will I give you.10

1 Colossians 3:10-11; 2 Ephesians 4:24; 3 2 Corinthians 3:18; 4 Romans 12:2; 5
Romans 8:10; 6 1 Corinthians 2:14; 7 Jude 1:19; 8 1 Corinthians 2:15; 9 2 Peter
1:4; 10 Ezekiel 36:26

7. We cannot review these various aspects of the new life without being
impressed with the feeling that it is in some sense the central blessing of the
Christian covenant

Justification is unto life, and this life is devoted to God in sanctification.
But the life, as the life is in Jesus, is the unity of all. I am the Way, the
Truth, and THE LIFE.1 The last book of the New Testament tells us that all its
teaching concentres in the Word of Life,2 perí toú Lógou teés Zooeés: The
testimony revolves again in its final accents: this is the true God and eternal
life, words which closely follow St. John’s last and most striking summary of
the entire doctrine of the new birth. Whosoever is born of God,3 ho
gegenneeménos ek toú Theoú, is he that is be-gotten of God, ho genneetheís ek
toú Theoú; he sinneth not but keepeth himself: the whole world around him lieth
in the Wicked One; but he, or rather we, are in Him that is true, even IN HIS
SON JESUS CHRIST

Thus the Bible closes with all the elements of the doc-trine of Regeneration. It
is the Divine begetting of the filial life of Christ in us: thus it is once for
all. It is the progressive life which regarded in its perfected ideal cannot
sin: thus it is the renewal into a finished birth. And it is that very eternal
life which, begun on earth, will be consummated in heaven 1 John 14:6; 2 1 John
1:1; 3 1 John 5:18-20

III. Regeneration is described with reference to the means employed in the
economy of grace. The Divine act is always represented in connection with
instrumentality. God begets by the word of truth; our Lord gives His life, and
not only sustains it, in the eating and drinking of Himself; the Holy Spirit
instrumentally regenerates through the ordinance or sacrament of baptism. These
points we need only now indicate briefly: they will be more fully discussed when
we reach the Means of Grace and the Sacraments 1. The Word of God is the
instrument and power of regeneration

(1.) Not as the absolute authoritative voice which calls into new life, but as
the truth which is applied to the understanding and to the feelings, and through
them to the will. It is the word of conviction or reproof in the preliminary
process: the reproof in the understanding which enforces on the sinner the
Lord’s word Ye must be born again,1 which excites in the heart a profound sense
of need and desire for the true life of the soul, and thus prepares the spirit,
unregenerate as yet, but animated by the preliminary life of repentance, for the
full power of regeneration. This influence of the truth is sometimes regarded as
a fruit of the new birth: it is really a preparation for it

1 John 3:7

(2.) It is the instrument, further, as it is the vehicle of the presentation of
the Savior Himself, the Truth, the supreme Object of trust. Embraced by the
faith which is at once the last act of the unregenerate and the first act of the
regenerate soul, He becomes the Life as well as the Truth. Of the word which
offers and conveys the quickening Lord it is said by St. Peter that it is the
incorruptible seed;1 though St. John means more by a seed of God that remaineth
in2 the human spirit. In St. James it is the engrafted word:3 where we have a
remarkable variation on the ordinary language of Scripture. Not we are engrafted
into the Vine; but the Vine is engrafted into us: rather the Divine word with
its doctrine is inserted into the nature for regeneration 1 1 Peter 1:23; 2 1
John 3:9; 3 James 1:21

(3.) But, more generally still, it is the Word of God which is the instrument of
every Divine operation in the human heart: man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.1 The word is His
sovereign and gracious will. As it is not the bread which sustains the life, but
the Divine virtue of the bread, so it is not the preaching or the sacrament but
the Divine virtue in both which imparts the life Every energy of God from heaven
at last goes back to His word

1 Matthew 4:4

2. Baptism, also, as the sacrament of the new birth, or rather of the soul’s
entrance into Christ, gives regeneration both a special name and a special
character. The baptism with the Holy Ghost1 is one of its definitions. The rite
is the washing of regeneration,2 loutron, the bath. It is the symbol of the
putting away of sin, and in this is like its precursor, circumcision. This
latter symbolized by the cutting off a portion of the natural body the
destruction of the body of sin.3 Baptism, a gentler rite, symbolizes the
entrance into Christ, in His death and life: not the washing away of sin only,
which refers to its relation to justification or forgiveness. It is the pledge
of the gift of regeneration, abiding in the church: the symbolical laver which
for ever assures of the invisible flowing of the Fountain opened for sin and for
uncleanness.4 So long as the evangelical loutron is in the Christian sanctuary,
so long is there regeneration for all its members. It also seals it to the
believer, whether as a gift already imparted, as given in conjunction with the
rite, or to be fully given hereafter. Its close connection with the blessing of
which it is the sacramental symbol is exhibited throughout the New Testament:
from our Lord’s words, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God,5 which must not be emptied of their
meaning, through the teaching and practice of the Acts of the Apostles, down to
St. Paul’s last words to Titus already quoted. The water in the doctrine of
Christ becomes the laver in the Apostle’s teaching 1 Matthew 3:11; 2 Titus 3:5;
3 Romans 6:6; 4 Zechariah 13:1; 5 John 3:1

ADOPTION

Adoption is the term occasionally used to signify the Divine declaratory act by
which those who are accepted in Christ are reinstated in the privileges of
forfeited sonship for the sake of the Incarnate Son. It is used also of the
state to which these privileges belong

I. The term is used only by St. Paul, It was perhaps taken into the Christian
vocabulary from the Roman law. Cum in alienam familiam inque liberorum locum
extranei sumuntur, aut per praetorem fit, aut per populum. Quod per praetorem
fit ADOPTIO dicitur; quod per populum ARROGATIO. If the new son was received
from under the authority of his natural parent the act was Adoption; if one who
was his own master was adopted it was Arrogation. The Greek term, uiothesia, is
explained by Hesychius: ou phusei alla Thesei. St. Paul uses it with three
applications. First, of the Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption,1 that
is, the special election among the nations. Secondly, of the children of God by
faith in Christ Jesus:2 that we might receive the adoption of sons3 unto which
we were predestinated.4 Finally, of the full manifestation of the children of
God in their perfect investiture with all their privileges: waiting for the
adoption.5 This corresponds with the final regeneration when the Son of Man
shall sit in the throne of His glory:6 a remarkable instance of the true
relation between the terms regeneration and adoption. Both are used of the final
restitution of all things, and both regard that restitution as being chiefly the
restoration of man to his original and lost estate 1 Romans 9:4; 2 Galatians
3:26; 3 Galatians 4:5; 4 Ephesians 1:5; 5 Romans 8:23; 6 Matthew 19:28

II. As to the thing signified it may be regarded first as the act of God, and
then as conferred on man: the Divine declaration and its human result

1. Adoption is connected with the Triune God. (1.) It is the Father who adopts
into His own household: of Whom the whole family—all paternity or race
relation—in heaven and earth is named.1 (2.) But it has special reference to the
Son: it is in union with Him, the Son, that we become sons; we are adopted into
the house by Christ, the Son over His own house,2 who imparts to us as His
brethren a share in His own prerogative: if the Son therefore shall make you
free, ye shall be free indeed.3 (3.) It is declared and attested by the Holy
Ghost: the Spirit of adoption.4 It is administered to faith, as the common faith
which saves but as having in this case its specific object: the promise, that
is, of the higher covenant, I will be a Father unto you.5 Not that the penitent
sinner in coming to God regards every special blessing he needs as the object of
trust. His faith is but one, and directed to one object; nor does he at the
first make any distinction; afterwards, however, when he comes to understand his
privileges, he learns to direct his confidence towards God under several
aspects. And this, that He is a Father, is one that can never be forgotten. The
seal of this faith is the testimony of the Spirit who beareth witness with our
spirit—not to our spirit, but with it and through it—that we are the children of
God.6 1 Ephesians 3:15; 2 Hebrews 3:6; 3 John 8:36; 4 Romans 8:15; 5 2
Corinthians 6:18; 6 Romans 8:16

2. As received by man, adoption defines the peculiarity of the filial relation
as a sonship restored in respect to its privileges

(1.) It is not the sonship of creation which is signified. The angels are the
sons of God;1 as also those who bear authority among men: I have said, ye are
gods; and all of you are children of the Most High.2 The human race in its
origin received this designation: Adam, which was the Son of God.3 Hence the
prodigal son is still a son. Even after the moral image departed the natural
image remained; the original prerogative can never be entirely taken away. For
this my son was dead and is alive again:4 language put into the lips of an
earthly father, but most assuredly only as the human echo of a Divine feeling 1
Job 1:6; 2 Psalms 82:6; 3 Luke 3:38; 4 Luke 15:24

(2.) Nor is it the sonship of likeness: in the Hebrew idiom we read of the
children of light and children of this world,1 and of the wicked our Lord said
with that meaning only: ye are of your father, the devil.2 In the sense of
conformity with His will, and followers of His example, Christ exhorts us to
walk worthy of our filial relation: that ye may be the children of your Father
which is in heaven.3 And we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of
HisSong of Solomon 4:1-16 The relation of sons, however, precedes the conformity
1 Luke 16:8; 2 John 8:44; 3 Matthew 5:45; 4 Romans 8:29

(3.) But it is the restoration of prodigals to the household of God, and maybe
regarded in two lights: first, being a simple reinstatement in the original
position of children of the creating Father; and, secondly, it is altogether a
new endowment, being an investiture with the special prerogatives of brethren of
Jesus, the Firstborn among many brethren.1 This distinction, however, is not
often to be observed. The new relation of sonship by adoption has indeed
revealed more fully the primary and inextinguishable Fatherhood of God, but that
is scarcely remembered by reason of the new glory of His Fatherhood in Christ

1 Romans 8:15 THE PRIVILEGES OF CHRISTIAN SONSHIP The privileges of entrance
into the family of God by adoption—which as privileges are connected rather with
adoption than regeneration—are distinctly exhibited in the New Testament. They
are filial access in the confidence of devotion : freedom from all kinds of
bondage; the advantages of the election; the assurance of a constant guidance
and direction of the Holy Spirit; and the enjoyment, first in earnest, and then
finally, of the Christian inheritance. These all of course have relation to the
other blessings of the new Covenant so far as these blessings are one in their
diversity; but they are specially connected with the Christian Sonship

I. Access to God in filial confidence is the first prerogative. Ye have received
the Spirit of adoption in Whom we cry, Abba, Father.1 This is the secret of all
Christian devotion and worship. The temple which our High Priest has consecrated
is always the house of God : the house with a meaning unknown to the ancient
economy, one in which the worshippers worship as children. After quoting the
declaration, I will be their God,2 St Paul adds another passage from another
place, and will be a Father unto you.3 This addition is a very striking instance
of the change which Christianity has introduced in the relations of His people
to God. Of Solomon it had been said: 1 will be his Father, and he shall be
MySong of Solomon 4:1-16 and again, I have chosen him to be My son, and I will
be his Father.5 The Apostle extends this special privilege to all believers in
Christ; an extension of which a distant hint had been given: bring My sons from
far and My daughters from the ends of the earth,6 where St. Paul found the
sanction of the inclusion of the daughters. Our Father!7 is the new invocation.
This impresses its character on worship, public and private; and on all the
communion of the soul with heaven. Christian fellowship with God is filial in
and through His Son. It is assured confidence in Him as a Father

1 Romans 8:15; 2 Exodus 29:45; 3 2 Corinthians 6:16; 2 Corinthians 6:18; 4 2
Samuel 7:14; 5 1 Chronicles 28:6; 6 Isaiah 43:6; 7 Matthew 6:9

II. Whatsoever belongs to Liberty or Freedom, in the New-Testament sense of the
word, is linked with sonship. The Savior said, the truth shall make you free;1
and then declared that the sons in the house, made free by the Son, are free
indeed, eleutheroósee óntoos eleúthero: with an emphasis on the ontoos which
meant more than the contrast with Jewish delusive freedom, the deep word being
left, like many others, to be interpreted by the Spirit and to be understood by
the meditation of faith. We are redeemed from under the law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons.2 Between son-ship and bondage there is no
affinity. The law has become a law of liberty.3 It is written in the heart, and
obedience must spring from filial love. The Christian privilege is thus
contrasted with that of the Jews, who were under the law and knew not the great
redemption: though the ancient people were one collective Son, they were as such
under tutors and governors4 in an estate of discipline which differeth nothing
from a servant, that is, until the time appointed of the Father. In itself it is
emancipation from every yoke: we are not under the law but under grace.5 Grace
is the new law, working by faith through love an obedience which is acceptable
to God. Here justification and adoption join: the former is a perpetual sentence
of release from the condemning law, the latter guarantees the strength of a new
and better obedience. But, as compared with the great future, there is still a
bondage to corruption, so far as the body is concerned and its infirmities.
Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body:6 the resurrection
will bring in perfected freedom 1 John 8:32; John 8:36; 2 Galatians 4:5; 3 James
1:25; 4 Galatians 4:1-2; 5 Romans 6:14; 6 Romans 8:23

III. The privileges of the Election of God belong to the filial relation which
is sealed by admission into the ark of the Christian family. Israel was the
chosen people, to whom pertaineth the adoption,1 in St. Paul’s eyes even yet
untaken away; their election and their adoption were one and the same
prerogative. In Christianity the election is still synonymous with adoption, but
it is personal and not national: rather it is both; for the elect are the
foreknown brethren of Christ and family of God glorified in eternity, even as
they are one by one gathered out of the world into the Divine household through
their obedience to the evangelical call. The Father has predestinated us unto
the adoption of children,2 which is, being interpreted elsewhere, to be
conformed to the image of HisSong of Solomon 3:1-11 God’s children as such are
elected out of the world; they are, like their Elder Brother, and for His sake,
chosen of God and precious,4 and are unspeakably dear to their heavenly Father,
Who orders everything for their welfare: all things work together for good to
them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.5 Their
highest prerogative as separated from the mass is that they are accepted in the
Beloved6 or found in Him,7 and regarded with the same complacency which rests
upon their Head: Mine Elect in whom My soul delighteth.8 Jesus is our Election
as well as our Righteousness and our Sanctification: The Father hath chosen us
in Him,9 and our election is no more and nothing less than our union with the
Redeemer

1 Romans 9:4; 2 Ephesians 1:5; 3 Romans 8:29; 4 1 Peter 2:4; 5 Romans 8:28; 6
Ephesians 1:6; 7 Php 3:9; 8 Isaiah 42:1; 9 Ephesians 1:4

IV. Another special prerogative of the adoption is the personal and
never-failing direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit. For as many as are led
by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God:1 this may be regarded as
meaning, conversely, they that are the sons of God are led by the Spirit. He who
testifies within them that they are children is given to them as a never-absent
Guide: their religion is a life, a walk, a conversation in the Spirit.2 They
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.3 What the following of Christ is
in the gospels, the following of the Holy Ghost is in the epistles. He is at all
points, under all circumstances, and in the whole economy of life down to its
minutest detail, the Monitor of the children of God. And this He is to them as
they are children. Everywhere in the New Testament this special direction is
promised to Christians as the adopted sons of the Father. The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;4 but ye have an unction from the
Holy One, and ye know all things.5 St. John makes the promise to the Apostles
extend to all the little children: submitting to His teaching, with perfect
renunciation of carnal wisdom, they are led into all truth,6 at least as the
truth is in Jesus.7 It is of the adopted children that St. Paul says: the Spirit
also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we
ought; but the Spirit Itself maketh intercession for us . . . according to the
will of God.8 He is in us as the Spirit of regeneration; our regenerate nature
itself cries unto God; but it is the Spirit of our adoption Who beareth witness
with our spirit9 of regeneration, in this sense also the Spirit of your Father
which speaketh in you.10 It is impossible to exaggerate the blessedness of this
interior and exterior guidance of the Holy Ghost given to the children of God.
He is literally to them all and more than all the present Savior was to His
disciples

He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit,11 Who, common to Jesus and His
brethren, is the everpresent Finger of God directing and Power of God defending
the followers of Christ

1 Romans 8:14; 2 Galatians 5:25; 3 Romans 8:4; 4 1 Corinthians 2:14; 5 1 John
2:20; 1 John 2:18; 1 John 2:28; 6 John 16:13; 7 Ephesians 4:21; 8 Romans
8:26-27; 9 Romans 8:16; 10 Matthew 10:20; 11 1 Corinthians 6:17

V. The inheritance to which Christians are called is the last privilege of their
adoption. Of God’s ancient children-people it was said: I loved him, and called
My son out of Egypt;1 that is, from the land of bondage. Moreover: saying, unto
thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.2 And they were
in all respects types: in their redemption from Egypt, in their journey to
Canaan, and in their possession of the promised land 1 Hosea 11:1; 2 Psalms
105:11

1. The Christian inheritance belongs to the children of God in a twofold sense.
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.1 (1.)
Sin condemned and disinherited man: justification removes the condemnation, and
adoption restores the inheritance. That inheritance is the abundance of the
privileges of the covenant: it is the whole fullness of the promises; but
especially it is God Himself. The enjoyment of the Supreme Source of blessedness
is the supreme good of the soul. (2.) Hence, that most sacred and eternal
inheritance which the Son hath in the Father is in some as yet unknown sense
shared by us. Our heirship in God is no other than our joint heirship of God
with Christ. The only allusion to the eternal decree of man’s salvation is that
we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of HisSong of Solomon 2:1-17
This conformation, which is also transformation, is our eternal blessedness: it
allows nothing beyond, for it is the perfection of man in the perfection of God.
Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we
know that, when itshall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is.3 The utmost and highest hope of Christianity is derived from its privilege
of sonship. As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness.4 Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God.5 It is not however the justification of
the former passage, nor the sanctification of the latter, but the adopted
sonship which cries: 1 shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness!6 1
Romans 8:17; 2 Romans 8:29; 3 1 John 3:2; 4 Psalms 17:15; 5 Matthew 5:8; 6
Psalms 17:15

2. They enter into an heritage of which they have now only an earnest. The
inheritance of Christians is in its deepest meaning reserved in heaven.1 Under
whatever aspect it is viewed the Christian heritage is enjoyed only in its
firstfruits. This is declared by St Paul: ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit
of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption, of the
purchased possession.2 When Christ shall claim us as His possession we shall
claim Him as ours, in Whom also we have become an inheritance. 3 It is after
speaking of the Christian inheritance that the epistle to the Hebrews says: for
we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence
steadfast unto the end.4 1 1 Peter 1:4; 2 Ephesians 1:13-14; 3 Ephesians 1:11; 4
Hebrews 3:14

3. That participation awaits the believer: we are waiting for the adoption,1
which will change our body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto
His glorious body;2 and will enable us in our integrity of body and spirit to
appear with Him in glory.3 The death of the Testator4 has put us in possession
of a portion of the goods that fall to us under His covenant-testament. But we
must die ourselves to enter upon the vast remainder. Then will He at the last
great distribution say to every one of His brethren: all that I have is thine!5
It is He who closes the New Testament with the promise of the filial
inheritance: he that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God
and he shall be MySong of Solomon 6:1-13 Thus does the new covenant echo at its
close the final promise of the old: and they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of
hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels; and I will spare them as a man
spareth his own son that serveth him.7 1 Romans 8:23; 2 Php 3:21; 3 Colossians
3:4; 4 Hebrews 9:16; 5 Luke 15:31; 6 Revelation 21:7; 7 Malachi 3:17

HISTORICAL The variations in opinion on this general subject may be class under
these heads: the various theories of the relation of the new birth to the
sacrament of baptism; differences as to the measure of human co-operation
admitted; its place in the Ordo Salutis, or plan of salvation; its effect upon
the various constituent elements of human nature; and its value as a Divine gift
in respect to the other blessings of the Christian covenant

I. A certain theory of Baptismal Regeneration appears in the first ages of the
Church, which seems in some measure to have merged the internal regeneration
into the external adoption

1. The first question will be considered again more fully when we reach the
doctrine of the Sacraments; a brief statement, rather historical than polemic,
is however necessary here also (1.) This was probably one out of many results of
Jewish influence on Christian thought

During the interval between the Old and New Testaments the converts to Judaism
were said to be born again: "a convert is like a newborn child." As to his new
position he was called a Proselyte: either of the Gate, as admitted to civil
privileges and a place in the Court of the Gentiles; or of Righteousness, as
circumcised and baptized and bound to the whole law. The term therefore answered
to the Christian Adoption. So Maimonides: " The Gentile that is made a
proselyte, and the servant that is made free, behold, he is like a child new
born. And, as to all those relations he had whilst either Gentile or servant,
they now cease." But there was in Judaism no other regeneration than that of
this external adoption

(2.) Early Patristic literature similarly fell into a vague style of connecting
the two. It represented the new birth as a translation into the Christian
estate, an initiation by baptism into the Christian mysteries. The internal
renewing process was faithfully taught; but was not connected always with the
scriptural term: in fact, regeneration was equivalent to adoption simply. The
new life was spoken of as renewal or renovation; and thus adoption, instead of
being a concomitant of the new birth, was its precursor. The Regeneration was
understood in the same broader meaning which our Savior gave it when He spoke of
the final restitution of all things; only that in their view this regeneration
was simply the establishment of the new order of Christianity

(3.) In this sense baptismal regeneration has been understood by very many
advocates of infant baptism in every period. They use the term with a larger
meaning than it generally bears: as the external estate out of which the new
birth grows. Baptismal regeneration accordingly is, in the case of children,
baptismal adoption, as baptism undeniably seals to the children of Christian
parents their place in the family of God; it is also a seal or pledge of a
regenerating grace awaiting all Christian children duly baptized, the pledge
being the preliminary grace that rests upon them and prompts to personal
dedication in due time when that pledge can be by themselves redeemed

2. In a stricter sense the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is held by the
larger part of Christendom: that, namely, which holds the sacraments to be the
preeminent and proper Means of Grace. The Roman Catholic, Oriental, Lutheran,
and Anglican communions, though in varying language, hold that regeneration is
generally connected with baptism as its instrument. The Lutheran Augsburg
Confession says: De baptismo docent, quod sit necessarius ad salutem. And what
this necessity means is taught by Luther’s Catechism: Baptismus operatur
remissionem peccatorum, liberat a morte. The English Article xxvii gives its
sentiment thus: " But it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby,
as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the
church: the promises of forgiveness of sins, and of our adoption to be the sons
of God, are visibly signed and sealed." Here it is obvious that a certain
distinction is made between regeneration, of which baptism is the sign, and
adoption, of which it is the instrument The Westminster Confession declares the
same; with both a needful and a needless qualification. " Although it be a great
sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so
inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated or saved
without it, or that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated. The
efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is
administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the
grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited and conferred by the
Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto,
according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time." In these
weighty words the regeneration of infants in baptism is clearly asserted to be
possible, and, in the case of the elect, certain. But the addition of the words
" not tied to that moment," and " in His own appointed time," may seem to allow
that the full regeneration is reserved for the period when the infant shall be
capable of receiving the gift

3. By many the regeneration of the soul is regarded as sacra-mentally pledged
and promised in virtue of the general grace bestowed upon mankind in redemption.
Baptism is therefore a sign of the blessing into which preliminary grace is to
mature; and the seal of its bestowment if that preliminary grace is used aright.
It should be remembered that in this scheme regeneration stands connected with
all the blessings of the Christian covenant, as in the sentences quoted from the
formularies above. Baptism is not more intimately allied with the new birth than
with remission of sins and sanctification to God

There is, according to the Nicene Confession, " one baptism for the remission of
sins," that is, one baptism unto pardon, regeneration, sanctification, and all
the benefits of our Lord’s passion. Children baptized are externally pardoned,
adopted, and made holy: the internal reality corresponding with these is sealed
to them by the preliminary grace that belongs to the family of redeemed man, and
especially to the children of the household of faith. Baptism in this doctrine,
which carefully stated is irrefragable, is the sign and seal and instrument to
adult believers of their pardon and renewal and sanctification. To the children
of believers it is the sign and seal and instrument of imparting these blessings
so far as they are capable of them: original guilt is removed, the bias to evil
is counteracted by initial grace, and adoption into the household of faith is
absolutely conferred. If what may be loosely called the germ of grace is
regeneration in the infant, then it becomes new birth in the adult

4. The strict systematic dogma of the two mysteries which makes baptism the
sacrament of birth, and the eucharist the sacrament of nourishment, may have
some measure of truth in it so far as the word means the sacramental emblem. But
it must not be forgotten that our Lord speaks of the sacramental eating and
drinking of Himself as connected with regeneration. If the words of St. John’s
Gospel are referred to the Lord’s Supper then we have a eucharistic regeneration
as well as a baptismal: Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His
blood, ye have no life in you: it is not, ye have no abiding life.1

1 John 6:53 II. The measure of human co-operation has been much contested

1. Extreme Calvinism holds that the life of regeneration is given by an act of
as absolute sovereign power as that which gave physical existence: therefore, as
there are undeniably some stirrings of spiritual life in penitents, and the
beginnings of tendency to life even before true repentance, these are all
regarded as evidences of renewal, and regeneration is placed before all other
blessings of the Spirit. Man in this theory is purely passive. This doctrine
effaces preliminary grace, so far as that grace tends to spiritual activity:
such grace is preliminary no longer, but the very regeneration itself. It
forgets that wherever the human will is a factor, there can be no pure
passivity; and that the actual state of the soul in which it is passive under
the regenerating power of the Spirit is itself produced by a self-surrendering
faith of the penitent desire

2. Pelagianism, at the opposite extreme, reduced the great change to an act of
the human will: as it is always in man’s power to choose, and act accordingly,
he really may regenerate himself by fixing his purpose fully on the Good.
Semi-Pelagianism admitted that the first conversion requires Divine power, but
claimed that the human will in its freedom is that power itself; and as to the
regeneration of the soul it has always regarded that as the Divine blessing on
human determination. But this dogma in every form lowers grace to external
teaching and inducements: nature itself is in a sense grace, and the operation
of the Holy Ghost effects nothing that the human will does not under His
influence itself accomplish. The error in every Semi-Pelagian theory is that of
forgetting that the Holy Spirit always ends, even as He always begins, the work
of goodness in man without human concurrence. He begins before co-operation
joins Him; and cooperation must cease at the crisis where He finishes the work

3 Synergism in the Lutheran church differed little from the latter; but its
esteem of the sacramental blessing of baptism gave Divine grace its full honor
in relation to baptized children. Arminianism in its doctrine of universal
prevenient grace carries back the Synergism, or co-operation between God and
man, to the nature behind and before baptism. In certain American schemes, which
represent regeneration as the right ultimate choice of the soul, there are some
errors to be noted. (1.) This choice is a conviction and desire before
regeneration, and may be called conversion; or, in its higher form of entire
consecration of the will, it is a fruit of renewal. It cannot be regeneration
itself. (2.) The state of the soul before God is more than merely its present
will and act or exercise: it has a disposition or character underlying this with
which the new birth has most to do. (3.) Therefore, in common with almost all
errors on this subject, these Semi-Pelagian rather than Arminian theories imply
a failure to distinguish between the preliminary grace of life and the life of
regeneration

III. Regeneration is sometimes erroneously placed first in the order of the
bestowment of Gospel privileges. The release of the sinner from condemnation
must take precedence, his new life then begins in its fullness, and that life is
consecrated to God in sanctification But in many confessions regeneration takes
the lead, and this doctrine is maintained in various forms by parties
fundamentally differing as to the nature of the blessing itself

1. All advocates of sacramental regeneration ex opere operato hold this opinion,
at least in the case of infants baptized. Generally, a distinction is
established between the regeneration which confers at the outset a germ of
spiritual life and the renewal which goes on, with varying and sometimes very
irregular processes, to the end. Conversion, on that scheme, is placed after
regeneration, which is reduced in its significance to the infusion of a
principle of grace neutralizing, or rather contending with, the vice of nature;
and, when fall from grace makes it needful, counteracting original sin as a
principle of concupiscence

2. The Latitudinarians who believe in the regeneration of mankind in Christ, and
allow no subsequent regeneration as necessary, of course entertain the same
notion. By some it is so far modified as to admit a difference, so to speak,
between the regeneration that imparts to all the first germ of life, and the new
birth or the full consummation of that life. The error of this system, in its
best forms, is simply its effacing the distinction between the universal grace
which is unto life and life itself. Its sufficient refutation is that one
saying: If any man be in Christ he is a new creature.1 1 2 Corinthians 5:17

3. This order is quite essential to Calvinism, which allows of no life in the
soul of man other than regenerate life, and makes regeneration the precursor of
conviction, repentance, faith, and conversion. The first spark of sovereign
grace decides all: that once kindled introduces the rest, and can never be
extinguished

4. Calvinism and Sacramentarianism and Latitudinarianism strangely agree,
therefore, in denying the possibility of the repetition of regeneration. It is
certainly true that the New Testament speaks of one washing of the man who
needeth not save to wash his feet;1 also that it declares the impossibility of
renewal unto repentance,2 in the case of certain apostates, though not of
renewal generally; also that it describes the extinction of the Spirit’s life as
very difficult. The renewal of regenerate life, however, is never absolutely
denied. The theory of the Gospel as laid down by our Lord Himself indicates one
regeneration and constant renewal unto its perfection as a full birth of God.
But the infinite grace of the new covenant is not bound to that one theory: the
high ideal is not to be rigorously pressed 1 John 8:10; 2 Hebrews 6:6

IV. It is important to notice the many views which are held by philosophic
theologians as to the relation of the new birth to the constitution of human
nature. This is literally an illimitable subject in itself, though limited in
regard to the present question. The true principles of the question are simple

1. Regeneration is the restored life of the whole nature of man: it is a new
heart, the heart being the soul or self, including though distinct from the
mind, the affections and the will

These three are one in human nature, and in regeneration, which, in its full
meaning, is a new creation or a renewal of the inmost personality

2. It is not a change in the substance of the soul, nor in its individual acts;
but in the bias towards evil which is the character. That bias, however, is not
destroyed though it is arrested and made subordinate. In perfect regeneration,
which is equivalent in another region of thought to entire sanctification, that
bias is utterly suppressed and destroyed

3. Hence there is in regeneration no distinction between the spirit and the
soul, between the pneuma and the psuch. The regenerate is spiritual, inasmuch as
the Holy Ghost reigns in his spirit: not because by the impartation of the Holy
Ghost he has acquired that element, or even attained to the supremacy of the
spirit in his nature. Both these are true in the popular and figurative speech
of Scripture, which sometimes speaks as if the spirit in man is latent until
possessed by the Divine Spirit, and as if the unregenerate spirit is no better
than an animal soul. But the development of this view into a theory of human
nature as unrenewed and renewed leads to great confusion

V. Lastly, divergences in regard to the value of regeneration as a principle of
new life have been more or less anticipated

1. The lowest degree is that assigned by those who regard it as the merely being
born into a condition or constitution of things. Against this virtual
annihilation of the specific gift of the new birth enough has already been said;
too much, however, cannot be urged in opposition to a notion which limits the
high estate of regeneration to a blessing unconsciously received. All men are
born into the new constitution of grace; multitudes of Christian children are
baptized into it. But regeneration is more than this universal blessing of
redemption 2. Next comes the opinion of those who make it the mere infusion of a
germ, so slight that (1) it can scarcely be distinguished from the universal
preliminary life that is the gift of redemption, and

(2) it is utterly inconsistent with the high views of the ascendency of the
regenerate life which Scripture teaches. The lowest doctrine sanctioned by the
Word of God includes freedom from the law of sin and death

3. Some descriptions of this blessing pitch it in so high a strain as to be
utterly inconsistent with the common facts of experience. St. John and St. Paul
must be reconciled in the true doctrine of regeneration, even as St. Paul and
St. James in the true doctrine of justification. St. Paul speaks of a conflict
between the flesh and the Spirit, which are contrary the one to the other1 in
the ordinary regenerate estate; St. John declares that the ideal and perfect new
birth, or being born of God,2 is inconsistent with sin, it cannot sin. The one
Apostle refers to regeneration in its earlier stages; the other to its
perfection. But neither of them denies that a child of God may relapse into sin
and need forgiveness. And St. John’s sublime doctrine in this text must be
harmonized with that of St. Paul, as well as with his own words:

If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.3 1 Galatians 5:17; 2 1 John
3:9; 3 1 John 2:1


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  CHAPTER 30: 32. VOL 03 - CHRISTIAN SANCTIFICATION
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Christian Sanctification CHRISTIAN SANCTIFICATION IN PRINCIPLE AND PROCESS:

Purification, Consecration, Holiness PROGRESSIVE AND PERFECT Progressive in
Every Aspect.

ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION Purification from Indwelling Sin:

Entire Consecration or Perfect Love;

Christian Perfection.

HISTORICAL Theories of Christian Perfection; The Early Church;

Fanatical and Ascetic;

Pelagian;

Mystical;

Romanist;

Calvinist;

Arminian;

Methodist A very extensive class of terms—perhaps the most extensive—exhibits
the Christian estate as one of consecration to God. This entire range of
phraseology has been transferred from the ancient temple service to the use of
the new temple or church. It embraces all aspects of the Christian privilege as
one of dedication to God, whether the dedication be external or internal,
effected by the Spirit or presented by the believer. But Sanctification is here
viewed as a blessing bestowed freely under the covenant of grace; and we must
therefore to some extent, though not altogether, omit its ethical relations. As
a privilege of the covenant, its principle is twofold: purification from sin,
consecration to God; holiness being the state resulting from these. As a gift of
grace, it is declared to be perfect in the design of the Spirit; and full
provision is made for the Entire Sanctification of the believer in the present
life, even as full provision is made for his finished Righteousness and perfect
Sonship The terms which belong to this branch of Christian theology are
abundant: they constitute the largest class of homogeneous phrases in the New
Testament; including almost every word pertaining to the Levitical economy. In
their range they embrace the entire vocabulary of the Altar, its sacrifices,
oblation, and priesthood, Divine and human; sanctification, dedication,
presentation, hallowing, consecration; sprinkling, washing, and putting away
sin; purity, sanctity, love and holiness, and the opposites of these, with all
their shades; sealing, anointing, and therefore the very word Christian itself.
The original terms form a wide and sacred assemblage for the department of
Biblical theology; and the careful discrimination of their meanings, in the
light of the Old Testament and of classical Greek, is the best method of
studying this whole subject. They may be distributed, however, into two groups:
first, those which signify the process of sanctification, as it is negative and
positive, that is, as purification from sin and consecration to God; and,
secondly, those which define the state of holiness, as it is imperfect and
perfect, or partial and entire, sanctification. In considering these, it must be
observed that we have not yet to do with ethical sanctification, but with the
imparted blessing of the covenant of grace: man’s efforts and attainments being
subordinate. Of course the corresponding duties cannot be altogether omitted;
but the distinction is important, and it must be remembered throughout our
discussion of this privilege of the new covenant SANCTIFICATIONIN PRINCIPLE AND
PROCESS

Sanctification, negatively considered, is purification from sin; considered
positively, it is the consecration of love to God: both being the direct and
sole work of the Holy Ghost, and their unity holiness

I. Purification or cleansing from sin has in the whole Bible, but especially in
the New Testament, two meanings: that of a removal of the bar which prevents the
Divine acceptance of the offerer at His altar, and of the defilement which
renders his offering unfit to be presented. The two meanings are in fact
scarcely ever throughout the entire Scriptures disjoined 1. Christians are
sanctified from guilt. This may seem a strange collocation of phrases But guilt,
or the consciousness of sin as our own, is not a forensic word only: it has that
meaning in court, and household, and temple. It is before the Divine altar the
conscience of sins1 which would keep the offerer from approaching. How much more
shall the blood of Christ, Who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself
without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works?2 Here the term
kathariseín is equivalent in the temple to St Paul’s dikaioun in the forum of
the gospel: to be purified is to have our hearts sprinkled from an evil
conscience,3 from the conscience or guilty consciousness of evil 1 Hebrews 10:2;
2 Hebrews 9:14; 3 Hebrews 10:22

2. They are sanctified also by the purification from their sin viewed as
defilement. But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified:1
here the middle term seems to unite the two others in itself. The Old-Testament
illustration of this was the purifying of the flesh,2 which was the outward
symbol of deliverance not from guilt but from impurity. In fact the word washing
is one of the widest terms of the class: it includes all processes for the
putting away of sin whether in its guilt or in its defilement, even to the
uttermost; and in this large sense the penitent Psalmist cried out for it: wash
me throughly from mine iniquity,3 where iniquity stands for the defilement of
which it was the cause But guilt and defilement may be here viewed as one: since
the stain or MACULA of sin is its offensiveness in the sight of God, blotted out
or removed when the shiner is accepted 1 1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Hebrews 9:13; 3
Psalms 51:2

3. These two are sometimes combined and shown to correspond, in the temple
service of Christianity, to the blessings of justification and regeneration in
the court mediatorial and the household of faith. Mark the following striking
passage: for by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified:1 made provision for their perfect pardon and holiness. Whereof the
Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that He had said before, This is
the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will
put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their
sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is,
there is no more offering for sin. In these sentences we have justification,
regeneration, and sanctification united: remission of sins, the new law in the
heart, and both introduced to illustrate the Spirit’s perfect sanctification. So
in regard to the first Gentiles: purifying their hearts by faith,2 which must
include the whole work of the Gospel on them and in them. Though the distinction
should not be pressed, it may be said that the purification from guilt is
effected by sprinkling as the more external and as it were imputative
application of what in washing is more internal, the two however being really
the same. We read in St. Peter: elect . . . through sanctification of the
Spirit,3 which is divided into two branches: unto obedience and sprinkling of
the blood of Jesus Christ. From the defilement and internal corruption of sin
Christians are cleansed or washed: that He might sanctify and cleanse it with
the washing of water by the word.4 The washing, however, sometimes must include
both, as in the doxology unto Him that loved us and washed us from, our sins in
His own blood:5 here the reading loúsanti is in some texts significantly changed
into lúsanti Whichever reading is right, the corrector has not introduced a
theological error; for the washing is equivalent to release from guilt, the
loosing and the cleansing being the same

Both ideas are found in some of the synonyms employed, such as the putting away
or taking away6 of sin. Sanctification has the double meaning in another
passage: Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood;7 and
also in such as speak of Christians as sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
saints.8

1 Hebrews 10:14-18; 2 Acts 15:9; 3 1 Peter 1:2; 4 Ephesians 5:26; 5 Revelation
1:5; 6 Hebrews 5:4; Hebrews 5:11; 7 Hebrews 13:12; 8 1 Corinthians 1:2

II. The positive element of sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s consecration to
God of what is dedicated to God by man. In the New Testament this is the love of
God which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto
us:1 the Divine love as the principle of consecration awakening our love as the
principle of our personal dedication

1 Romans 5:5

1. There is a lower, wider, and, as it were, improper sense of the term
throughout the Scriptures. (1.) What is already holy is sanctified by the
acknowledgment of its holiness Hallowed be Thy name!1 Sanctify Christ as Lord in
your hearts.2 Let him be holy still,3 signifying that the holiness of the saint
is to mark his character until ratified and accepted in heaven. The idea here is
that of absolute separation from all unholiness; and the term is always
hagiazein: the recognition of an existing sanctity. (2.) What is common, and in
that sense unsanctified, but without connoting so far as that is possible any
moral character in the object, is made holy: the opposite of koinon hgeisthai.
The temple that sanctifieth the gold.4 It is sanctified by the word of God and
prayer.5 (3.) The term in these last instances refers to things; but everywhere
else in the New Testament it is, used of persons, and this personal consecration
may be said to absorb into itself all other meanings. It will be useful,
however, to remember the distinction when we come to consider more fully the
imputative character of sanctification 1 Matthew 6:9; 2 1 Peter 3:15; 3
Revelation 22:11; 4 Matthew 23:17; 5 1 Timothy 4:5

2. Consecration proper of persons is to be viewed as twofold: it is to God’s
possession and to God’s service

(1.) The leading, or at least the most important, idea is that of possession.
All men belong to God by creation; but the bestowment of the virtue of
redemption makes them His in a special sense; and if they are His then all that
they have becomes His: consecration in detail follows from and is a part of the
general consecration. The believer is supposed to DEDICATE himself, and the
Spirit SANCTIFIES him to God. CONSECRATION is a term in English synonymous with
both, common therefore to the believer and the Spirit, as in many passages. That
He might sanctify and cleanse it . . . that He might present it to Himself a
glorious church,1 where consecration and presentation are united as the Divine
act. Here we have the sanctification following on the purification, hína auteén
hagiásee katharísas, and the word dedicate or present, used of Christ Himself,
even as St. Paul limits it to the believer: that ye present your bodies,2 or
yield yourselves unto God.3 Both ideas are in the words and purify unto Himself
a peculiar people:4 teaching also as a significant addition that the
consecration is to Christ as Divine; for none but God receives the consecrated
object. The possession, however, is the same as union and fellowship The souls
that are dedicated and consecrated to God are not merely His; they have also the
most intimate union with Him. Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with
His Son Jesus Christ:5 a fellowship of sanctification dependent on our being
cleansed from sin. It is the glory of the believer’s relation to God in the new
covenant that it is more than being simply His property. It is a transcendent
and mystical communion: sanctify them through Thy truth; and I in them and Thou
in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.6 1 Ephesians 5:26-27; 2 Romans
12:1; 3 Romans 6:13; 4 Titus 2:14; 5 1 John 1:3; 1 John 1:7

(2.) Then follows consecration to the service of God. The Divine temple and the
Divine service are correlative terms. The whole life of the Christian is spent
in a sanctuary. The people are the house of God: ye are the temple of the living
God;1 their life is their worship: to offer up spiritual sacrifices;2 and He is
Himself the temple in which we live, and move, and have our being:3 for he that
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.4 Hence the spirit of consecration is that of
entire devotion to the Divine service. Christians are vessels unto honor,
sanctified and meet for the Master’s use.5 1 2 Corinthians 6:16; 2 1 Peter 2:5;
3 Acts 17:28; 4 1 John 4:16; 5 2 Timothy 2:21

3. The Holy Ghost is the seal and the power of this consecration; and these as
it were in one, yet with a distinction: He is the SEAL1 of God’s possession, and
the POWER of dedication to God’s service. After that ye believed2—or on
believing, ye were sealed, pisteúsantes, with that Holy Spirit of promise, which
is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession: here God’s possession is sealed till He finally redeems it; and the
seal that sets apart His people is the beginning of their own experience of
religion, which is the possession of God as their inheritance. The mere contact
with the altar sanctified the gold, but the spirit of man is sanctified by no
less than the indwelling Spirit. The consciousness of the presence of the Holy
Ghost within is the testimony to the Christian that he is sanctified to God: as
to his pardon and adoption the Spirit as it were speaketh expressly; but his
sanctification is silently declared by His very presence and indwelling. So much
for the former, the Seal; as to the latter, the Power, the Holy Ghost is the
energy of the soul’s consecration to the will and service of God The faith which
worketh by love3 is the faith which is the fruit of the Spirit.4 It is the
strength of all obedience, and resignation, and devotion. The Spirit whose
indwelling assures of acceptance is the power of a final consecration of every
faculty to God: entire sanctification—to anticipate—is this, whatever else. It
is the full, unhindered, unlimited, almighty energy of the power of His presence
in the soul 1 Ephesians 1:13-14; 2 Ephesians 1:13-14; 3 Galatians 5:6; 4
Galatians 5:22

III. The unity of these is HOLINESS. Those who are purged, or sprinkled from
sin, which is separation from God, and who are consecrated to Him, are holy or
saints, hagios

Christ is their hagiasmos: the ground or principle or source of their
sanctification as in process, in every sense negativing their sin. The state in
which they live is that of Hagioosúne, or holiness

1. It is a relative sanctity: not of course forensic, but corresponding
nevertheless to the imputation of righteousness. As there is a holy day, a holy
church, a holy city; and as whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy,1 be
accounted holy, so Christians are an holy nation.2 The holy city3 was most
impure when so called, in remembrance of its past, and as yet not altogether
forfeited, sanctity; and the congregation of Corinth were addressed
notwithstanding their partial unholiness as sanctified in Christ Jesus.4 1
Exodus 29:37; 2 1 Peter 2:9; 3 Matthew 27:53; 4 1 Corinthians 1:2

2. But this last quotation indicates that it is also an internal holiness: not
only called saints but called to be saints: the addition in the translation
precisely expresses the double truth, that all who are called saints are called
to become such. These same Corinthians termed holy are exhorted to attain moral
sanctity: let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear of God,1 pneúmatos epiteloúntes hagioosúneen. As
the soul is one and indivisible, its leading principle of consecration to God
gives it its character, though that is not yet perfect. The daily, habitual
washing cleanseth us from all sin,2 katharízei, as a fountain continually
sending its streams over the soul 1 2 Corinthians 7:1; 2 1 John 1:7

3. The external and internal holiness are always combined in the purpose of God.
No sanctity possible to man, even at the foot of the throne, is perfect without
imputation. The past sin is regarded as for ever sprinkled away: it remains as a
fact of history, but a cancelled fact; as defilement that once was, but is now
effaced. But no imputation of sanctity as belonging to the church will avail
without the reality. In the attainment of Christian perfection the external and
the internal are one

4. Many other terms are used to denote the estate of holiness under each of the
two aspects of purification and consecration. It is described rather with
reference to the Divine act in hagiasmós, SANCTIFICATION. Christ is made unto us
sanctification;1 The will of God, even your sanctification;2 Chosen unto
sanctification of the Spirit:3 thus referring to each person of the Trinity.
Purification results in PURITY: besides the more limited agneia the term
agnoths, pureness,4 is used. He that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself,
even as He is pure.5 Katharismos includes deliverance both from guilt and from
pollution: objectively, when He had by Himself purged our sins;6 subjectively,
hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.7 Though the distinction is
not absolute, positive consecration to God is generally expressed by the word
sanctification itself Our Lord first spoke of His own as sanctified through the
truth:8 this, following I sanctify Myself, must refer to a positive consecration
to God. There is no other term which in the Greek Testament expresses the
positive side of dedication to God. But the consecrated state is variously
viewed. He maketh intercession for the saints:9 the word saints here refers to
the high ideal character of those who love God, and of whom the whole process of
salvation is affirmed. Sanctified in Christ Jesus:10 Christ is the scene, and
sphere, and region, the temple, and shrine, and holiest, in which believers are
consecrated and set apart. By the which will we are sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all:11 here the term is
heegiasménoi, ideally and completely sanctified in virtue of the one perfect
offering. For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified: here the word is hagiazoménous, in course or process of
sanctification, and ideally perfected or rendered independent of any other
sacrifice. In the purpose of redemption they are the Lord’s for ever

1 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 1 Thessalonians 4:3; 3 1 Peter 1:2; 4 2 Corinthians 6:6;
5 1 John 3:3; 6 Hebrews 1:3; 7 2 Peter 1:9; 8 John 17:19; 9 Romans 8:27-28; 10 1
Corinthians 1:2; 11 Hebrews 10:10; Hebrews 10:14

5. It is worthy of remark that consecration to God as a state is predicated of
man’s nature in all its constituent elements. And the very God of peace sanctify
you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless.1 " Hence it is said, Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost;2 and
the exhortation is to present your bodies,3 that the Spirit may consecrate and
sanctify them to God. This is the characteristic distinction of sanctification:
it is of the whole man viewed in all the constituents of his nature. It cannot
be said of justification, as the body of the justified person is dead because of
sin,4 and not yet released from the executioner; nor, as yet, of adoption, which
includes the whole man only at the last day, as the sons of God will be
altogether such only when they become the children of the resurrection.5 1 1
Thessalonians 5:23; 2 1 Corinthians 6:19; 3 Romans 12:1; 4 Romans 8:10; 5 Luke
20:10 SANCTIFICATION PROGRESSIVE AND PERFECT

While there is a sense in which sanctification is a permanent and unchangeable
principle, it is also a process which reaches its consummation, according to the
provisions of the New Covenant and the testimony of the Spirit, in the present
life

1. It is obvious that wherever the term is used to signify that in the temple
which justification means in the lawcourt of Christianity it admits of no
change. The worshippers, once purged, should have had no more conscience of
sins.1 The term purged is afterwards varied into sanctified, kekatharisménous
becomes heegiasménoi: by the which will we are sanctified through the offering
of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.2 Like justification this
sanctification is a definitive act; and the sanctified, like the justified, live
without the consciousness of sin as an obstacle to entrance into the holiest
having their hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.3 1 Hebrews 10:2; 2
Hebrews 10:10; 3 Hebrews 10:22

2. The positive consecration also knows no change as a principle. Whatever is on
the altar that sanctifieth the gift1 is, in virtue of being on it, the Lord’s:
nothing can be at one and the same time both sanctified and not sanctified. The
Holy Spirit—Who is the Lord and Giver of holiness as well as of life, these two
being the same—is once bestowed, and once for all, on believers who were sealed
as His until the redemption of the purchased possession.2 All who are born of
God in the New economy enter into the privileges of the firstborn under the Old.
The adopted children of the house are sanctified in the temple: sanctify unto Me
all the firstborn.3 The consecrating principle of love is the first grace of the
new birth. It is in all its degrees the permanent instrument of the Spirit’s
sanctification of the regenerate soul 1 Matthew 22:19; 2 Ephesians 1:13-14; 3
Exodus 13:2

3. Holiness as a state is also in the usage of Scripture unchangeable. The New
Testament speaks of that state as ideal, and as virtually perfected in all who
belong to Christ. In this sense also, He that sanctifieth and they who are
sanctified are all of one.1 They are seen by anticipation, which to God is not
anticipation, as sanctified in Christ Jesus.2 In the backward perspective of St.
Paul, they are already conformed to the image of HisSong of Solomon 3:1-11 which
is once more sanctification in terms borrowed from Christian sonship 1 Hebrews
2:11; 2 1 Corinthians 1:2; 3 Romans 8:29 PROGRESSIVE SANCTIFICATION In His
administration of sanctifying grace the Holy Spirit proceeds by degrees. Terms
of progress are applied to each department of that work in the saint; or, in
other words, the goal of entire sanctification is represented as the end of a
process in which the Spirit requires the cooperation of the believer. This
co-operation, however, is only the condition on which is suspended what is the
work of Divine grace alone

I. The negative side of sanctification as the removal of sin is described as a
process; but chiefly in terms of the regenerate life

1. The most familiar is that which represents the sinning nature as under the
doom of death. Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be
done away, that henceforth we should not serve sin:1 crucifixion is a gradual
mortal process, disqualifying the body from serving any master, and as such
certainly tending to death. So in the parallel to the Galatians: they that are
Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts.2 And elsewhere
they are said to put off the old man and put on the newMan 1:3 Moreover, in the
last passage the Apostle bids us mortify therefore your members by killing, or
weakening down to extinction, every individual tendency or disposition to evil
Not only is the old man to be destroyed by the doom of crucifixion, but every
specific member of his sin is to be surrendered to atrophy: Make not provision
for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.4 Crucifixion is of the whole body:
mortification is of each member. Now, while all these passages refer to the
earnest self-discipline of the believer, entering into the design of redemption,
they represent only the submission of faith which brings into the soul the
virtue of the lifegiving and deathgiving Spirit. If we live in the Spirit, let
us also walk in the Spirit:5 walk in the way of sorrow, the via dolorosa, that
leads to death, the death of sin. If ye THROUGH THE SPIRIT do mortify the deeds
of the body ye shall live.6 It is the Holy Ghost who does what we do through Him
1 Romans 6:6; 2 Galatians 5:24; 3 Colossians 3:5; Colossians 3:9-10; 4 Romans
13:14; 5 Galatians 5:25; 6 Romans 8:13

2. From this we may deduce two principles. First, the general bias, or character
of the soul, becomes positively more and more alienated from sin and set upon
good; and, proportionally, the susceptibility to temptation or the affinity with
sin becomes negatively less and less evident in its consciousness. There is in
the healthy progress of the Christian a constant confirmation of the will in its
ultimate choice, and a constant increase of its power to do what it wills: the
vanishing point of perfection in the will is to be entirely merged in the will
of God. There is also a perpetual weakening of the susceptibility to temptation:
what was at first a hard contest gradually advances to the sublime triumph of
the Savior, Get thee hence, Satan!1 Every active and every passive grace
steadily advances: and sin fades out of the nature. Every habit of evil is
unwound from the life; until at length the Christian can say, like his Master,
The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.2 This gradual and sure
depression of the sinful principle down to its zero or limit of nonentity is
progressive sanctification. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness:3 by a beautiful confusion of figures the
obliquity remaining in the soul is a defilement which is in process of being
entirely cleansed away. This refers to particular sins: more generally, the
blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.4 1Matthew 4:10; 2 John
14:30; 3 1 John 1:9; 4 1 John 1:7 II. The positive side—that of consecration by
the Spirit of love—is also a process, a gradual process 1. The Spirit Himself is
given by measure1 to us, though not to the Incarnate Son for us Of this great
gift it holds good: unto every one which hath shall be given.2 The exhortation
is to be filled with the Spirit.3 Of the first Pentecostal Christians it is said
that they were filled with the Holy Ghost;4 but we afterwards find variations of
gift and fluctuations in faithful use of the gift down to the lowest point of
declension: sensual, having not the Spirit.5 1 John 3:34; 2 Luke 19:26; 3
Ephesians 5:18; 4 Acts 2:4; 5 Jude 1:19

2. Hence the shedding abroad of the love of God by the Holy Ghost admits of
increase. It is enough to cite the Apostle’s prayer: that your love may abound
yet more and more.1 This, in harmony with the uniform tenor of Scripture, refers
to the growth of love towards God and man. It is more important to show that the
love of God towards us, or, as St John calls it, love with us,—where the love of
God to us and our love to. Him because He first loved us,2 are the same—is a
progressive and ever-strengthening principle. St. John in his first Epistle
proves this. Once he uses an expression which indicates that the love of God
attains a perfect operation in us. En toútoo teteleíootai hee agápee meth
heemoón: herein is our love—or love with us—made perfect.3 St. Paul says, the
love of Christ constraineth us:4 meaning that love in us which constraineth
Christ Himself: How am I straitened till it be accomplished!5 The term
sunéchomai points to a gradually deepening pressure, and, as in the Lord Himself
so in His servants, the power of love drives every impediment before it. In His
servants, but not as in the Lord Himself, it gradually, surely, and effectually
gathers itself within closer and closer bonds until its force becomes
irresistible. And of that same love the Ephesian prayer asks: that ye being
rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is
the breadth and length and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ
which passeth knowledge.6 1 Php 1:9; 2 1 John 4:17; 1 John 4:19; 3 1 John 4:17;
4 2 Corinthians 5:14; 5 Luke 12:50; 6 Ephesians 3:18-19

III. Holiness as an estate is also described as progressive: first, as a goal to
be attained; to be attained, secondly, through human effort; but, lastly, only
as the bestowment of the Holy Ghost, the Supreme Agent of all good

1. Once we have the expression perfecting holiness,1 epiteloúntes, where the
word indicates an end to which effort is ever converging, whether that end be
fully attained or not: in any case it is a progress. Again, St. Paul prays, The
very God of peace sanctify you wholly,2 where the gradual perfecting of body,
soul and spirit is obviously referred to Again, a still higher prayer, Sanctify
them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth!3 truth, however, which the Lord
always speaks of as gradually imparted, He will guide you into all truth;4 and
of which He says, If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed;
and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.5 But the
clearest evidence is in the tenor of the language used on the subject, of which
this is a specimen: For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are
all of one.6 The brethren, whom the High Priest gradually succors and saves, are
hoi hagiazómenoi, those who are in process of sanctification: parallel with toús
soozoménous, such as were in process of salvation.7 It is important to remember
the form of the present participles in these passages: in the latter it is not
sesosmenous, such as were effectually saved, nor sothmsomenous, such as should
be saved; in the former it is not hagiasmenoi, such as were once for all
sanctified 1 2 Corinthians 7:1; 2 1 Thessalonians 5:23; 3 John 17:17; 4 John
16:13; 5 John 8:31-32; 6 Hebrews 2:11; 7 Acts 2:47

2. The sanctification administered, effected, imparted as the free gift of the
Holy Ghost is also conditional on the effort of man. Here the blessing of the
Christian covenant enters into the ethical region. It is exceedingly difficult
to keep the two apart. Reserving for Christian Ethics the consideration of much
that belongs to the subject, we note that the process of sanctification keeps
pace with the fulfillment of certain conditions. A few illustrations, referring
to each department, will be enough

(1.) We are exhorted as Christians to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of
the flesh and spirit:1 this is remarkable as being one of the few passages in
which the Levitical cleansing of the Holy Ghost is actually made a human work,
katharísoomen. Such passages, the force of which can be felt only in the
original Greek, ought to be carefully studied, as shedding a rich light upon the
whole doctrine of human co-operation with Divine grace. The same things are true
in Him and in us. St. James says:

Katharísate, cleanse your hands, and hagnísate, purify your hearts.2 And St.
Paul uses the strong expression mortify therefore your members:3 Nekroósate, a
word which seems to appropriate the special office of the Holy Ghost, who alone
in this sense can say, I kill and I make alive.4 Christians are said to put off
the old man and to put on the new man No one understands all these passages
aright who does not see that they all hang upon one principle, that the Spirit’s
work in us is made our own. Having these promises5 governs them all. But, on the
other hand, such passages would not be found were it not the intention of the
Spirit to impress on us a high estimate of our own responsibility 1 2
Corinthians 7:1; 2 James 4:8; 3 Colossians 3:5; Colossians 3:9-10; 4 Deuteronomy
32:39; 5 2 Corinthians 7:1

(2.) Nothing is more constantly declared than that the effusion of the Spirit of
consecration keeps pace with the co-operation of the believer. Whether he
regards love as that of God to us, or as the response in us to Him, St. John
inculcates the need of our compliance with conditions. But whoso keepeth His
word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in
Him.1 Not by the sovereign and arbitrary despotism of grace, but as the blessing
resting on earnest and universal obedience, which itself is of God, is love made
perfect. Again: If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is
perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He
hath given us of His Spirit.2 The Spirit of our union with God is a Spirit of
consecration perfectly sanctifying those who abound in self-sacrificing devotion
to others. Once more: God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in
the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world.3 Though the
perfect copying of the Lord’s example is not exactly a condition, it is a close
concomitant, of the perfect effusion of the consecrating Spirit. In all three
cases the indwelling of God by the Spirit is the efficient cause, while
OBEDIENCE, CHARITY to man, and the IMITATION OF CHRIST are the three-one
condition. Love is the channel for imparting and the instrument for producing
love: FROM LOVE TO LOVE answering here to St. Paul’s from faith to faith.4 We
have, however, to do simply with the evidence afforded, that the consecration of
love is a conditional process The spirit of devotion to God becomes stronger in
proportion as these conditions are kept in dependence on the Spirit who imparts
that love 1 1 John 2:5; 2 1 John 4:12-13; 3 1 John 4:16-17; 4 Romans 1:17

(3.) As to the state of holiness it is a goal to the attainment of which
Christian men are habitually required to bend their effort. It is the object of
their own aspiration. This is generally and. universally true: it is the secret
and strength of the command, perfecting holiness.1 Here we may combine the idea
of holiness with those of righteousness and sonship: the three are one in the
perfection which they require the Christian to keep in view. As to
righteousness: that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us,2 in
whom love is the fulfilling of the law.3 The word fulfilled here must have its
full force; it refers to the gradual accomplishment of a design. But it must be
carefully noted that the Divine power in this accomplishment has the
pre-eminence. Indeed the word pleerooma belongs strictly only to God, for it is
He who fulfils the demands of righteousness; while the addition in us who walk
not after the flesh but after the Spirit sufficiently vindicates our use of the
text: the Divine grace in our lives gradually and surely works out the
requirements of the new evangelical law interpreted by grace. And this new law
defies the criticism of man: it is the righteousness of God,4 who is the only
Lawgiver. As to sonship: The Father did predestinate to be conformed to the
image of HisSong of Solomon 5:1-16 children who are changed into the same image
from glory to glory.6 The decree that every child of God shall be like that Holy
Child,7 the Eternal Son made flesh, is revealed in the inmost soul; and the
Spirit of adoption within us seeks the form of the Pattern in His word, and for
ever contemplates it with a transforming love. As to holiness: Be ye holy; for I
am holy.8 To all these the Savior refers in the benedictions of the Sermon on
the Mount

Blessed arethey which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall
be filled:9 this is the blessing of the evangelical law. It is the benediction
pronounced, as we believe, by anticipation, on the diligent pursuit of the new
righteousness of faith, the deep meaning of which was not yet revealed. Hence
the force of the future, they shall be filled

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God:10 this is the blessing of
entire consecration, which is, negatively, that of the pure or the sanctified
from sin, and, positively, that of the pure in heart, or those whose heart and
inmost personality are inflamed with the love of all holiness. Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God:11 this is the
blessing promised to the future Christian household, one in perfect brotherly
love and in the diffusion of its peace. But these and all other blessings are
promised to those who by patient continuance in well-doing seek them. Christian
perfection is the exceeding great reward of perseverance in the renunciation of
all things for God; in the exercise of love to God, as shown in passive
submission and active devotion, and in the strenuous obedience of all His
commandments. The heirs of the Christian inheritance are led and not rapt into
the land of uprightness:12 there is no suspension in their case of the general
law which governs all the Divine dealings with man. As there is a preliminary
grace which leads to the perfect life of regeneration, so there is a preliminary
regenerate grace which leads to the perfection of consecration to God. For
whosoever hath to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance:13 a word
of our Lord which has a wide application throughout the entire range of
Christian theology

1 2 Corinthians 7:1; 2 Romans 8:4; 3 Romans 8:10; 4 Romans 3:21; 5 Romans 8:29;
6 2 Corinthians 3:18; 7 Acts 4:27; 8 1 Peter 1:16; 9 Matthew 5:6; 10 Matthew
5:8; 11 Matthew 5:9; 12 Psalms 143:10; 13 Matthew 13:12

3. Is then the process of sanctification ended by an attainment which rewards
human endeavor simply? Assuredly not: the Holy Spirit finishes the work in His
own time, and in His own way, as His own act, and in the absolute supremacy if
not in the absolute sovereignty of His own gracious power

(1.) Every act and every habit of holiness is of the Spirit. Though those who
are Christ’s are said themselves to have crucified the flesh with its passions
and lusts,1 this is a union with the mystery of the cross in the fellowship of
Him Who died, unto sin once,2 which only the Spirit can effect: hence it
immediately follows, If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
Whatever is done by man in the mortification of his sin is really done by the
Holy Ghost in him. Self-crucifixion is abhorrent to human nature, and to human
nature impossible. Approaches to it may be found in human ethics; but its inmost
secret is never reached save as the mystical teaching of the Cross. When our
Savior commanded His follower to hate yea his own life also,3 He first
illustrated His precept by His own self-sacrifice, and then left His Spirit to
teach the stern lesson to His people. He alone can teach it. No man ever yet
hated his own flesh:4 applying this to his sinful flesh,5 we may say that what
no man ever did by nature the grace of God can make him do. So also the highest
term for the consecration of the purified is reserved for the Spirit: while all
but the highest are given to the believer. If a man therefore purge himself from
these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified:6 ekkatharee heauton, his own
work; heegiasmenon, the Divine work in him. While the Christian keeps his evil
nature impaled on the interior cross, it is the sword of the Spirit from on high
that takes its life away; and when he is entirely swayed by Divine love, this is
the law of the Spirit of life7 within him 1 Galatians 5:24-25; 2 Romans 6:10; 3
Luke 14:26; 4 Ephesians 5:29; 5 Romans 8:3; 6 2 Timothy 2:21; 7 Romans 8:2

(2.) There is a consummation of the Christian experience which may be said to
introduce perfection, when the Spirit cries, IT is FINISHED, in the believer.
The moment when sin expires, known only to God, is the Divine victory over sin
in the soul: this is the office of the Spirit alone. The moment when love
becomes supreme in its ascendancy, a moment known only to God, is the Spirit’s
triumph in the soul’s consecration: this also is entirely His work. And whenever
that maturity of Christian experience and life is reached which the Apostle
prays for so often, it is solely through the operation of the same Spirit. It is
being filled into all the fullness of God,1 and that through being strengthened
with might by His Spirit in the inner man 1 Ephesians 3:16-19

(3.) While, therefore, the tenor of the New Testament represents entire
sanctification as the result of a process, it is also ascribed to the result of
the constant effusion of the Holy Ghost, crowned in one last and consummating
act of His power. Of this resurrection also we may ask, as the Apostle asked
concerning another, Why should it be thought a thing incredible?1 And with the
same emphasis: ti; what? a thing incredible that GOD should raise the dead!
should raise a dead soul to perfect life! 1 Acts 26:8

(4.) But, lastly, it must be remembered that this final and decisive act of the
Spirit is the seal set upon a previous and continuous work. The processes may be
hastened and condensed into a short space; they must be passed through as
processes. Yea, we establish the law1 was the Apostle’s vindication of the
doctrine of faith counted far righteousness:

2 and the same vindication is necessary for the process of sanctification. The
justified have their fruit unto holiness.3 Uniting the life of justification
with that of sanctification our Lord said: I am come that they might have life,4
and that they might have it MORE: the same gift expanding unto perfection for
ever. There is no new dispensation of the Spirit in any such sense as there was
a new covenant superseding the old: the Spirit of entire sanctification is only
the Spirit of the beginning of grace exerting an ampler power

Never do we read of a HIGHER LIFE that is other than the intensification of the
lower; never of a SECOND BLESSING that is more than the unrestrained outpouring
of the same Spirit who gave the first. Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye
believed?5 means, Did you receive the Holy Ghost on believing? elabete
pisteusantes and cannot refer to a reception of the higher gift superinduced on
a lower gift which was without the Spirit of entire consecration. The only
instance in which Christians are said to be without the Spirit6 is that one in
which St. Jude describes the fallen state of men who, to use St. Paul’s words,
having begun in the Spirit were now made perfect in the flesh:7 had reached the
most lamentable issue of being sensual again. Moreover, this was said to a
portion, though an ignorant portion, of the same Ephesian congregation to whom
St. Paul wrote: After that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of
promise,8 pisteusantes esfragisteete, believing ye were sealed. There is no
restraint of time with the Holy Ghost The preparations for an entire
consecration to God may be long continued or they may be hastened. Whenever the
seal of perfection is set on the work, whether in death or in life, it must be a
critical and instantaneous act; possibly known to God alone, or, if revealed in
the trembling consciousness of the believer, a secret that he knows not how to
utter. But this leads us from the Sanctuary to the Most Holy Place 1 Romans
3:31; 2 Romans 4:5; 3 Romans 6:22; 4 John 10:10; 5 Acts 19:2; 6 Jude 1:19; 7
Galatians 3:3; 8 Ephesians 1:13 ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION

Provision is made in the Christian covenant for the completeness of the
Saviour’s work as the perfect application of His atonement to the believer. This
may be viewed as the complete destruction of sin, as the entireness of
consecration to God, and as the state of consummate holiness to which the
character of the saint may be formed in the present life. These privileges may
be regarded respectively as Entire Sanctification, Perfect Love, and Evangelical
Perfection: these being one as the finished application of the Saviour’s
Finished Work, so far as its consummation belongs to time and to grace

It is not meant that these three are distinct branches of Christian privilege.
Each implies the other; and neither can be treated without involving the rest.
Nor are the terms exact as indicating each its particular department: for
instance, sanctification is as much positive consecration to God as negative
purifying from sin. But the distinction is convenient as giving opportunity for
a methodical, and, if the term may be admitted, scientific view of all sides of
a deeply important question. Controversy will be excluded as out of harmony with
this most sacred subject: what polemical reference may be necessary will be
reserved for the Historical Review PURIFICATION FROM SIN OR ENTIRE
SANCTIFICATION The virtue of the atonement, administered by the Holy Spirit, is
set forth in Scripture as effecting the entire destruction of sin. This is
everywhere declared to be the design of redemption: and it is promised to the
believer as his necessary preparation for the future life. The entire removal of
sin from the nature is nowhere connected with any other means than the word of
God received in faith and proved in experience

I. The work of Christ has for its end the removal of sin from the nature of man:
from the nature of the believer in this present life. No end is kept more
constantly before us

1. Generally viewed, this is an uncontested truth. For this purpose the Son of
God was manifested) that He might destroy the works of the devil:1 words which
refer to evil in Christian individuals, and not only to the whole empire of sin
and Satan, as the scene of active rebellion, in the history of our race. The
words are introduced between two others which give them a deep and unlimited
meaning. He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin.2 Sinless
Himself He makes His people sinless. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit
sin3 in outward act; he cannot sin because he is born of God, in inward
principle. And this is said of the final and distinguishing mark of those who
are thus approved, in the highest ideal sense made real, as the children of God:
in this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil. The
manifestation is here the full and finished revelation of their internal birth
of God. He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself:4 atheteesai, to
abolish, a term which goes beyond the sacrificial terminology of the Epistle,
like that of the Baptist: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of
the world.5 Our Lord gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works:6
here is every term of sanctification applied to the design of Christ’s death as
it regards those who, being capable of good works, must of course be regarded as
still living upon earth. Hence St. John testifies that the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son cleanseth from all sin:7 both in the Levitical and in the moral sense,
FROM ALL SIN, from all that is called sin, whether it be its guilt before God or
its power in man. And St. Paul declares it to be the design of our crucifixion
with Christ, that is of our union by faith with Christ’s death to sin, that the
body of sin might be destroyed:8 that sin actuating our mortal bodies, and
making it its servant, might be deprived of us as its slaves, the body of our
service being abolished. He that is dead is freed9 or justified from sin; so the
earthly instrument of service is destroyed that we henceforth should not serve
sin. It is not merely that the slavery of sin is ended; but the body that serves
is to be altogether abolished

There cannot be service if there is nothing wherewith to serve. Therefore,
finally, these Apostles unite in exhorting Christians to regard themselves as
altogether delivered from the law of sin. St. John says: these things write I
unto you, that ye sin not.10 St. Paul, yet more comprehensively, reckon ye also
yourselves [to be] dead indeed unto sin:11 a moral imputation in ourselves
answering to God’s forensic imputation. St. John evidently refers to God’s
purpose that the cleansing efficacy should deliver from sin; and his
qualification if any man sin12 only puts the case as one not contemplated as of
necessity but provided for us in mercy. St. Paul bids us make a generous use of
the doctrine of imputation; and rejoice in the consciousness that we may be, and
shall be, saved from all connection with evil. These several passages in their
combination establish generally the whole doctrine of a purification provided
for all sin

1 1 John 3:8; 2 1 John 3:5; 3 1 John 3:9; 4 Hebrews 9:26; 5 John 1:29; 6 Titus
2:14; 7 1 John 1:7; 8 Romans 6:6; 9 Romans 6:7; 10 1 John 2:1; 11 Romans 6:11;
12 1 John 2:1

2. More particularly, we have to do with Original Sin. This has two meanings
here: it is the individual portion of the common heritage, and it is the common
sin that infects the race of man during the whole evolution of its history in
time

(1.) As to the latter, it is not to be doubted that original sin, or sin as
generic and belonging to the race in its federal constitution on earth, is not
abolished till the time of which it is said, Behold, I make all things new:1 as
something of the penalty remains untaken away, so also something of the peculiar
concupiscence or liability to temptation or affinity with evil that besets man
in this world remains. The saint delivered from personal sin is still connected
with sin by his own past: the one forgiveness is regarded as perpetually renewed
until the final act of mercy. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves:2 we are numbered with the transgressors in one sense still, though
not reckoned with them in another. There is no man who must not join in the
prayer: Forgive us our trespasses.3 Hence it is not usual to speak of original
sin, absolutely, as done away in Christ. The race has its sin that doth so
easily beset,4 its euperistaton hamartian; and we must cease to belong to the
lineage of Adam before our unsinning state becomes sinlessness 1 Revelation
21:5; 2 1 John 1:8; 3 Matthew 6:12; 4 Hebrews 12:1

(2.) But original sin, as in the unrenewed, sin that dwelleth in1 the Me of the
soul, as the principle in man that has actual affinity with transgression, or
the source and law of sin which is in my members,2 or the animating soul of the
body of this death,3 and, in believers, the flesh with its passions and lusts,4
is abolished by the SPIRIT OF HOLINESS indwelling in the Christian, when His
purifying grace has its perfect work 1 Romans 7:17; Romans 7:20; 2 Romans 7:23;
3 Romans 7:24; 4 Galatians 5:24

3. And certainly the scene of our Saviour’s atoning sacrifice is always set
forth as the scene of His redeeming power. There is only one redemption which is
reserved for His second coming: the redemption of our body.1 But there is no
other. The argument is complete in itself, and scarcely needs further
corroboration. The counteraction of sin must needs be entire and complete in man
and upon earth: the other world is the sphere of fruition and judgment. There is
no hint given in the Scriptural history of redemption that the finished triumph
of the Deliverer from sin is never to be known in this world. But this leads us
onward

1 Romans 8:23

II. Full deliverance from sin is both required and promised as the preparation
for final admission to the presence of God

1. We are exhorted to holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:1 with
this declaration may be connected the command, remembering its solemn relation
to the day of Him who judgeth according to every man’s work, quoting from the
Old Testament, Be ye holy; for 1 am holy.2 But both warning and command had been
anticipated by the promise: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God,3 a Benediction not reserved, any more than the others which surround it,
for the world to come 1 Hebrews 12:14; 2 1 Peter 1:16-17; 3 Matthew 5:8

2. Prayer—especially that of our Lord and His servant Paul— is used as the
vehicle of teaching this. Sanctify them through Thy truth ! . . . that they all
may be one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one
in Us.1 The unity in one mystical body, and that one mystical body united to God
in Christ as the Persons of the Trinity are internally united, is simply and
only the perfection of Christian sanctification: in this world, for men are
thence to believe that Thou hast sent Me. Higher than this language cannot go,
but St. Paul’s Prayers do not fall below it. He has in every Epistle save one a
petition for the entire sanctification of those to whom he writes, and sometimes
with an express reference to the presentation of this sanctity to Christ at His
coming. The first of them says: to the end He may stablish your hearts
unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ with all His saints.2 And this follows a prayer for their abundance
of brotherly love and universal charity. The prayers found in the Epistles to
the Ephesians and to the Colossians disdain or leave far beneath them any
interpretation lower than that of the attainment of perfect sanctity.
Purification from all sin, entire consecration to God, and a state of holiness
leaving no room for imperfection, are all found in the central and supreme
prayer of St Paul: and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that
ye might be filled into all the fullness of God.3 Its doxology makes this sure:
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think It also shows why the doctrine is so much misapprehended: neither the
ASKING nor the THINKING of the Church—especially the latter—has kept up to the
high standard of Gospel privilege 1 John 17:17; John 17:21; 2 1 Thessalonians
3:12-13; 3 Ephesians 3:14-21

3. Scripture presents a sinless state as actually attained in this life. Perfect
love casteth out fear:1 mark hee teleia agapee, which is certainly love in the
human soul; the casting out of fear, which is the casting out of sin, the only
cause of fear; and the whole context

There is nothing plainer in the Bible than this its last testimony concerning
the privilege of Christian experience. I am crucified with Christ; yet I live;
though no longer I, but Christ liveth in me:2 here St. Paul with the profoundest
humility declares at least the possible suppression of the self of sin. Though
in the contest of a later chapter the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh, it is only that ye might not do the things that ye
would.3 The victory is complete in the final echo of the same words: by Whom the
world is crucified unto Me. and I unto the world.4 The triple crucifixion, to
the law, to sin itself, and to the world, is unto death, perfect and absolute
death 1 1 John 4:18; 2 Galatians 2:20; 3 Galatians 5:17; 4 Galatians 6:14

III. No instrumentality in the impartation of this grace is ever referred to but
the Gospel and its agencies consciously received

1. The discipline of affliction is among the instrumentalities of grace, which
transforms all the sorrows of the believer in Christ into the fellowship of His
sufferings, the being made conformable unto His death.1 But this is conscious
discipline. Physical dying is not so: that death is not the putting off of the
old man or the body of sin. The notion that we are not finally separated from
the evil adhering to our nature until we are separated from the flesh is a
subtle relic of Gnosticism. The only BODY OF SIN2 in Scripture is, first, the
physical body as the instrument of the sinning soul, and, secondly, the
figurative old man regarded as living simultaneously with the new, though only
as a doomed and superfluous offender. But it is the privilege of the believer to
cease from both before physical or natural dissolution. There is no virus, no
substance of evil, no added element infused by it, that requires the
disintegration of death for its removal. Sin is in one sense only a negation: it
is the disorder of the soul which the restoration of the will to its unity with
the Divine will perfectly repairs. Nor is there any Scriptural trace of a
Purgatorial purification after death. Even those who believe in such an
intermediate discipline, as necessary for the consummation of the work only
begun on earth, do not profess to think that it is absolutely necessary in all
cases 1 Php 3:10; 2 Romans 6:6

2. The only outer court of preparation is the present life. The Scripture speaks
of no waterpots after the manner of the purifying of the Jews1 set at the
threshold of the eternal temple, of no final baptism at the gate of heaven. We
read everywhere, especially in the Apocalypse, of the final gratification of all
unsatisfied hope: save that of deliverance from sin, which is never included. We
hear beforehand the rejoicings of Paradise: they do not exult over this evil as
at length destroyed. Among the prophecies concerning the final blessedness we
find that there shall be no more curse2—the penalty of sin—but not that there
shall be no more sin. Christ will come at His final appearing without sin, unto
salvation: without provision for its removal, for He hath already put away sin,
by the sacrifice of Himself,3 at His first appearing. As to His visible Church
His second coming will put away its indwelling evil by casting out whatsoever
offends. It will not be so as to His individual saints: in each of them the
indwelling sin must at that day be searched for and not found 1 John 2:6; 2
Revelation 22:3; 3 Hebrews 9:26-28 ENTIRE CONSECRATION OR PERFECT LOVE The
Spirit is imparted in His fullness for the entire consecration of the soul to
the Triune God: the love of God, having its perfect work in us, is the
instrument of our deliverance from indwelling sin; and the return of our love
made perfect also is the strength of our obedience unto entire holiness. This is
abundantly attested as the possible and attained experience of Christians

I. The commandment of the entire Scriptures, from beginning to end, is that of
perfect consecration to God; and the spring and energy of that consecration is
love

1. The love of God is the same in the Old Testament and in the New. It is not a
sentiment of the mind alone, nor an affection of the sensibility alone, nor an
energy of the will alone; but it is the devotion of the man, in the integrity of
all these, to God as the one Object and Rest and Centre and Life of the soul.
What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to
walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all
thy heart and with all thy soul?1 Here perfect love stands between perfect fear
and perfect service as the bond and complement of both. Our Lord has not even
changed the words, which He quotes; He has not said of this: a new commandment I
give unto you.2 It is the old commandment which ye had from the beginning,3 the
universal law of all intelligent creatures: to make God their only Object, the
Supreme End of their existence; the neighbor and all other things being objects
of love only in Him, hid with Christ in God.4 This commandment is the measure of
Evangelical privilege, which the believer has only to accept, and wonder at, and
believe, and attain 1 Deuteronomy 10:12; 2 John 13:34; 3 1 John 2:7; 4
Colossians 3:3

2. Its perfection is simply its soleness and supremacy. It is not in the measure
of its intensity, which never ceases to increase throughout eternity until it
reaches the maximum, if such there be, of creaturely strength; but, in the
quality of its unique and sovereign ascendancy, it has the crisis of perfection
set before it as attainable. In the interpretation of heaven that love is
perfect which carries with it the whole man and all that he has and is. Its
perfection is negative, when no other object, that is no creature, receives it
apart from God or in comparison of Him; and it is positive when the utmost
strength of the faculties, in the measure and according to the degree of their
possibility on earth, is set on Him. Thus interpreted no law of the Bible is
more absolute than this of the perfect love of God. Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and
with all thy mind.1 Omitting the last, with all thy mind,2 this was the ancient
law, concerning which the promise was: The Lord thy God will circumcise thine
heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God.3 The quaternion of
attributes— or the heart as the one personality, to which the understanding and
affections and will belong—as our Lord has completed it, leaves no room for
imperfection. However far this may go beyond our theories and our hopes and our
attainments, it is and must be the standard of privilege. We are now concerned
only with the privileges of the covenant of redemption as administered by the
Holy Ghost 1 Luke 10:27; 2 Deuteronomy 6:5; 3 Deuteronomy 30:6

II. The Spirit of God, as the Spirit of perfect consecration, is poured out upon
the Christian Church. And He discharges His sanctifying office as an indwelling
Spirit: able perfectly to fill the soul with love, and to awaken a perfect love
in return

1. The last document of the New Testament gives clear expression to the former.
We love [Him] because He first loved us.1 The Divine love to man in redemption
is revealed TO the soul for its conversion; and it is shed abroad IN the
regenerate spirit as the mightiest argument of its gratitude.

We have known and believed the love that God hath in us:2 this revelation
received by faith was the secret of our return to God. But St. John again and
again speaks of this love as perfected in us:3 that is, as accomplishing its
perfect triumph over the sin and selfishness of our nature, and its separation
from God, which is the secret of all sin and self. In him verily is the love of
God perfected:4 this ensures its being individual, and contains the very utmost
for which we plead. The love of God, as His mightiest instrument for the
sanctification of the spirit of man, is declared to have in him its perfect
work. The Verily rebukes our unbelief and encourages our hope 1 1 John 4:19; 2 1
John 4:16; 3 1 John 4:12; 4 1 John 2:5

2. He also speaks most expressly of the return of love to God in us as
perfected. This expression occurs but once in the Scripture in so absolutely
incontestable a form Whereas in the previous instances the Apostle meant that
the love of God is perfected in us, in the following words he can have no other
meaning than that our own love is to be, and is—for these are the same, in our
argument—itself perfected, teteleioomenee. It is of course the same thing
whether God’s love is perfected or ours made perfect in return; but the
combination gives much force to the statement of privilege: Perfect love casteth
out fear. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.1 As St. John is the only
writer who says that God is love,2 so he is the only one who speaks of a
Christian’s perfect love.3 This solitary text, however, gives its meaning to a
multitude. It is the last testimony that glorifies all that has gone before 1 1
John 4:18; 2 1 John 4:19; 3 1 John 4:18

3. The Holy Ghost uses the love of God as His instrument in effecting an entire
consecration. This is that unction from the Holy One1 which makes us all
partakers of the Saviour’s consecration, Who received the Spirit not by measure2
for us. As the Supreme Christ was perfectly consecrated in the love of God and
man, so it is the privilege of every Christian, who is by his name an image of
Christ, to be perfectly consecrated. And there is no limitation of the Spirit’s
office in the reproduction of the Christly character in us. This was the lesson
of that great and notable day of the Lord, the Pentecost. On the morning of that
day the Spirit’s elect symbol was fire. First He appeared as the Shekinah glory,
without a veil, diffused over the whole Church, and then resting upon each. The
light which touched every forehead for acceptance entered as fire each heart,
and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost:3 filled literally for the time
being; and, if we suppose that indwelling permanent, we have our doctrine
substantiated. That in this there may be continuance we are taught by St. Paul:
be filled with the Spirit.4 Lastly, as a tongue, the symbol signified the
sanctification of the outward life of devotion to God and service to man. Hence
there is no limit to the Spirit’s consecrating grace. I sanctify Myself that
they also might be sanctified.5 This is the Saviour’s example where it is
perfectly imitable: the methods of our sanctification, and its process in the
destruction of alien affections, find no pattern in Him; but the result shines
clearly in His example. Receiving as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are
changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the
Lord.6 We receive unto perfection the glory which we reflect 1 1 John 2:20; 2
John 3:34; 3 Acts 2:4-5; 4 Ephesians 5:18; 5 John 27:19; 6 2 Corinthians 3:18

III. All this may be said to be the high ideal of Christianity, which has never
been realized. But the tenor of the New Testament forbids this method of
interpretation in every form. An unbroken, perfect, uninterrupted concentration
of all the faculties on God is possible in itself, and it is possible on earth

1. The honor of the Spirit’s office requires this. His dispensation is for man
in this world; when Christ returns it ceases; and if His perfect work is
accomplished it is in the present life. We hear of no operation of His grace
save in this world. And the things concerning Him also HAVE AN END.1 He
administers to perfection a perfect atonement. On this argument may rest with
all its weight the doctrine of the entire destruction of sin from human nature
and the full operation of Divine love in the heart. This also is our warrant for
introducing the subject in this place. The entire sanctification of believers is
deeply connected with Ethics; but it is still more inseparably bound up with the
Spirit’s Administration: like righteousness and sonship, a gift of grace

1 Luke 22:37

2. The prayers of St. Paul invariably supplicate for Christians in the present
state the most abundant outpouring of the love that consecrates. In this they
only echo the Lord’s own prayer for His people. But they are peculiar, and stand
alone in Scripture, as a series of intercessory supplications which set no
limits to the Christian privilege. They have been considered in this light
already. It is sufficient now to point to the Ephesian Prayer, for instance,
containing every element of our doctrine. The Spirit’s strength poured into the
innerMan 1:1 must needs give victory over all sin and be the energy of an entire
consecration, and infuse the power of a perfect holiness. The petition that
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, and that the soul, rooted and grounded
in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and
length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge, can have no lower aim. And to be fitted into all the fullness of God
is perfect holiness. The only question is whether the Apostle prays as for an
attainable blessing: a question that ought not to be asked 1 Ephesians 3:16-21

3. The nature of man confirms this, and illustrates its possibility. The
constitution of the human mind is made for unity, and unity is perfection. But
that unity is love: that is, the supreme aim or pursuit of the will is the love
which is the bond of perfectness.1 When the faculties of the soul are withdrawn
from every other distracting object, and shut up in their concentrated force to
one, there remains nothing beyond. For that the Psalmist prayed: Unite my heart
to fear Thy name!2 where unity in fear is unity in love; for its Object is the
Only Being: Thou art God alone! The ONLY God feared and loved ALONE!

1 Colossians 3:14; 2 Psalms 86:10-11

4. The example of our Lord is so presented as to assure us of the possibility of
a perfect love to God and man. In the exercise of that twofold love—one in Him
as in no other— He accomplished our redemption. And of this He said: I have
given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you.1 The only time our
love is spoken of as literally perfect, it is connected with this Supreme
Pattern: because as He is, so are we in this world.2 1 John 13:15; 2 1 John 4:17

5. The aspiration of the renewed soul is confirmatory evidence. The argument
from aspiration generally is one of the strongest that can be used to move a
reasonable mind; it is valid in many departments of theology. In this case it is
especially strong. As newborn babes, they long for the spiritual milk;1 and so
they desire to love God supremely. No spirit touched with the love of God is
content with any hope lower than a perfect love; nor can we believe that the
Spirit kindles this fervor in vain. He will satisfy its desire; and that not in
the future world but in this. Many of those who most unlovingly oppose this
teaching have in their hearts the secret rebuke of their opposition

1 1 Peter 2:2

6. The honor put upon faith is such as to warrant the utmost expectation and
sanction the highest doctrine. Thrice did our Lord speak of its unlimited power
as a principle living and being enveloped from within like the life of the
mustard-seed. As to the uprooting of sin He told His wondering disciples, who
prayed for increase of faith, that they might not only overcome
un-charitableness, but have its principle extirpated: Ye would say unto this
sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea;
it had obeyed you!1 As to the performance of supernatural duty, represented by
the casting out devils, He said on another occasion: Ye shall say unto this
mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall
be impossible unto you.2 Both are united in the last instance, and something is
added: Verily I nay unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only
do this which is done to the fig tree, but even if ye shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done And
all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.3 1
Luke 17:6; 2 Matthew 17:20; 3 Matthew 21:21-22

7. The recorded experience and character of the saints should have its weight:
their experience; not their testimony, which in the nature of things is not to
be expected, as there is no mystery more deeply hid in God, no consciousness
more unconscious of self, than that of perfect holiness and love. As to
Scriptural examples the express references are few. Not biography, nor
delineation of character—save that of One—is to be sought there; men are
described only in their relation to the kingdom of God, and their holiness
appears only in their lives of devotion. But in every dispensation some names
are found to whom the Searcher of hearts bears testimony that they wholly
pleased Him. In the judgment of the Christian Church many in almost every
community and in every age have been saints made perfect in holiness, and
self-renunciation, and charity, whose record is with God. But we are not careful
to establish this argument. It is the privilege of the covenant, and not the
avowal of it, with which we are here concerned CHRISTIAN OR EVANGELICAL
PERFECTION The maturity of the Christian privilege is set before believers as
the goal of all Evangelical aspiration. This perfection, as Evangelical and the
effect of Divine grace, is estimated according to a gracious interpretation of
the law fulfilled in love; moreover, it is limited, and in all respects
accommodated to a probationary condition; while it is universal, as extending,
under these conditions, to the entire relations of Christian man I. That
Perfection is the goal of a possible estate is undeniable

1. It is too common, however, to represent the Spirit as setting before
Christians an ideal unattainable in the present life. On this much has been
already said, and more will be said hereafter. Suffice to reiterate that no
desire of holiness can be vain

2. It is a more reasonable argument to point to passages in which the word has a
less intense meaning, though, even when these are given up, there is a large and
sufficient residuum of clear testimonies. Doubtless some are incorrectly applied
in the discussion: referring rather to the perfection with which Christianity
begins than to that with which it ends. Let us, therefore, as many as be
perfect, be thus minded.1 We speak wisdom among them that are perfect.2 These,
and some others, refer to the perfect beginning or initiation of the soul into
Christian mystery, in contrast with the preliminary knowledge of babes: leaving
the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection.3 They do
not touch our point: that perfection is a promised goal. Similarly Be perfect!4
kataritzesthe, may refer to ecclesiastical integrity. And of this ambiguous
nature are some other applications of the term in the English translation
especially: for instance, He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified,5
which refers rather to the objective perfection of the atoning provision, and is
language that anticipates the eternal future 1 Php 3:15; 2 1 Corinthians 2:6; 3
Hebrews 6:1; 4 2 Corinthians 13:11; 5 Hebrews 10:14 3. Injunctions to seek
perfection and corresponding promises are few but very distinct Were there no
other the Redeemer’s would be enough: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father which is in heaven is perfect.1 This, like many other words of our Lord,
has a present limited signification which must be fearlessly expanded into the
largest generality

1 Matthew 5:48

II. This perfection is Evangelical: that is, it is distinguished from every kind
of perfection that is not of pure grace; and it bears, like everything
pertaining to the estate of humanity, the impress of the condescension and
lovingkindness of God. It is, however much the thought may be disapproved of
men, a perfection accommodated to our fallen condition: not lowered but
accommodated; a distinction this which is not without a difference. There is a
consummation here as well as hereafter

1. It is not absolute perfection; nor the perfection of Adam’s estate, who had
not fallen; nor the perfection of sinlessness, which can never be predicated of
those who will bear in them the consequences of sin until the end. Those who are
unsinning in the gracious estimate of God, neither think themselves, nor desire
to be thought, sinless in the utmost meaning of the word

2. It is the perfection of that estate to which men are called by the Gospel of
glad tidings: glad tidings, not only as to the remission of past sins, but also
as to the acceptance of future service. Applying this to the threefold division
of that estate, we may note: (1.) The righteousness of God, which He accepts, is
regarded as a fulfillment of the law, as that is fulfilled in love: love is the
fulfilling of the law;1 (2.) we are children of God and conformed to the image
of HisSong of Solomon 2:1-17 though many infirmities are in us which could not
be in Him; (3.) we are described, in the prayer of the Apostle, as sanctified
wholly throughout spirit, and soul, and body, and preserved blameless;3 though
the spirit is still beclouded with ignorance and weakness, the soul is under the
influence of sensible things, and the body is on the way to dissolution. Such a
threefold perfection may be traced elsewhere 1 Romans 13:10; 2 Romans 8:29; 3 1
Thessalonians 5:23

3. This being understood, the doctrine is not disparaged by the use of the
expression itself. The word PERFECTIONISM is sometimes applied satirically to
those who hold the doctrine we here maintain: they who bear it bear in it the
reproach of Christ. The term Perfection, being alone, should not be adopted
without qualification; but with its guardian adjectives CHRISTIAN or EVANGELICAL
it is unimpeachable. It is the vanishing point of every doctrine, exhortation,
promise, and prophecy in the New Testament III. Christian perfection is relative
and probationary, and therefore in a certain perhaps undefinable sense limited

1. This may be viewed with reference to the final consummation. In the hope of
that last teteleseai all Christians unite: when HOLINESS TO THE LORD1 shall be
the eternal law of the glorified man in his integrity. In this life, the body is
dead became of sin:2 it not only perisheth itself, but, in the language of the
Apocryphal Wisdom, the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly
tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things. Christian
perfection is the estate of a spirit every whit whole, but still in a body the
infirmity of which is the main part of its probation. Each has its own order
With regard to physical resurrection St. Paul says: That was not first which is
spiritual, but that which is natural.3 This order is inverted as to the
resurrection of the soul: first that which is spiritual. But when the perfection
of the soul is reached, the body has still to submit to the dust: the spiritual
eye sees the King in His beauty4... in the land that is very far off; the
natural eye goes down to see corruption.5 And the body on its way to dissolution
impairs in ten thousand ways the absoluteness of the deliverance of the spirit
Perfection under this and every aspect is relative 1 Zechariah 14:20; 2 Romans
8:10; 3 1 Corinthians 15:46; 4 Isaiah 33:17; 5 Psalms 16:10

2. Christian perfection at the best is that of a probationary estate. There is
no reason therefore why it may not be lost again, and utterly lost, even after
the fruition of the result of long years of heavenly blessing on earthly
diligence. The principle of sin extinct in the soul may be kindled into life as
it was kindled in Eve. There is no reason why it should not; but there is every
reason why it need not and ought not. Such a second fall would be a fall indeed.
It is not probable that it was ever witnessed. It is only our theory that
demands the admission of its possibility

3. It is that of the individual person whose relation to the race remains.
Though personally in Christ, and altogether in Christ, during probation he is
still under the generic doom of original sin, with a concupiscence which is not
sin but the fuel of it always ready to be kindled, and generally under that law
of probation which is peculiar to our race. Hence he is also a sinner among
sinful men to the end of his continuance in the flesh: the inheritor of a sinful
nature which, cleansed in himself, he transmits to his own children uncleansed.
He does not altogether lose his connection with the line of sinful humanity. We
never read of an entire severance from the first Adam as the prerogative of
those who are found in the Second. The entirely sanctified believer may be, as
touching his relation to Christ and in Christ, without spot and blameless; at
the same time that in relation to Adam and in him he is only a sinful man among
sinful men

4. Once more, it is a probationary perfection inasmuch as it is always under the
ethical law. Christianity is the perfect law of liberty:1 its perfection is that
it is the liberty of law, the freest possible obligation and the most bounden
and necessary freedom, It is a state to be guarded by watchfulness, which is
subjected to an infinite variety of tests, and must be maintained by the
habitual and, by Divine grace, perfect exercise of all the virtues active and
passive. On the one hand it is a state of rest: filled with the Spirit2 the
Christian can say, I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me.3 On
the other it is a state in which the soul is safe only in the highest exercise
of the severest virtue. To its safety its sedulity is required. In this respect
it is very different from the perfection of heaven or even of paradise 1 James
1:25; 2 Ephesians 5:18; 3 Php 4:13

5. Hence this perfection needs constantly the mediatorial work of Christ: it
demands His constant influence to preserve as a state what is imparted as a
gift. The mediatory intercession is never so urgently needed as for those who
have so priceless a treasure in earthen vessels: the higher the grace and the
more finished the sanctity, the more alien it is from the surrounding world, the
more hateful to the tempter, and the more grace does it require for its guard.
Our Lord’s rehearsal of His abiding intercession tells us this: I pray not that
Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them
from the evil.1

1 John 17:15

6. With all these conditions and limitations the word perfection—teleiotees,
integrity— extends to all the blessings of the covenant of grace as they are
provided for man in probation. In other words these several blessings are
perfect in their imperfection: imperfect, when viewed in relation to the eternal
requirement of the Supreme Lawgiver; perfect, when viewed in relation to the
present economy of grace. (1.) In the judicial court of the Gospel the believer
is or may be perfect in his relation to the law. By one offering He hath
perfected for ever them that are sanctified:1 absolution from guilt is as
complete as it could be in heaven: FOR EVER.2 And so is the requirement of the
law fulfilled3 that believers may have boldness in the day of judgment,4
boldness that will never be experienced at the awful bar unless it is carried
thither. (2.) As children of God their state lacks nothing: though waiting for
the adoption as to its final declaration and prerogative, now are we the sons of
God: and they are conformed to the image of HisSong of Solomon 5:1-16 being
blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke,6 in the theory, and why
not in the practice, of religion? (3.) And in the temple of God, of which it is
said that holiness becometh Thine house, 0 Lord,

7 the perfection of Christianity requires and reaches such a purity and
simplicity as can endure the scrutiny of the Searcher of hearts. Thou hast tried
me, and shalt find nothing.8 This is the sixth benediction, Blessed are the pure
in heart, for they shall see God.9 The vision of God belongs to the consummate
sanctity of the temple, whether on earth or in heaven; and the Savior makes no
such distinction as we in our unbelief are too much disposed to make

1 Hebrews 10:14; 2 Romans 8:4; 3 1 John 4:17; 4 1 John 3:1; 5 Romans 8:29; 6 Php
2:15; 7 Psalms 93:5; 8 Psalms 17:3; 9 Matthew 5:8

HISTORICAL

Though the specific doctrine thus laid down is very generally condemned among
the Churches, some kind of Christian Perfection has been held in every age: held
not only by the orthodox, but also by many heretical sectaries. The diverse
principles which have contributed to mould opinion may be very profitably
studied as shedding light upon the Scriptural doctrine. Indeed their respective
views on this subject may be regarded as among the most searching tests which
can be applied to the various systems. Every great theological tendency of the
Christian world has had its own peculiar exhibition of it. As there is no
consecutive history of the doctrine—it has no place in Histories of Doctrine
generally—it may be well to adopt a method not chronological in this brief
review: considering the theories of Christian Perfection which may be
distinguished as the Fanatical, the Ascetic, and the Pelagian, the Mystical, the
Romanist, the Imputationist, the Arminian, and finally the Methodist: this last
returning to that which we shall place first in order as the continuation in the
Church of the Scriptural doctrine. These, however, will be given merely in
outline, and with the proviso that Christian Ethics is the more appropriate
place for some of them, especially of the earlier members of the series

I. The Christian Perfection taught in the Scriptures has descended as a sacred
uninterrupted tradition through all Christian ages. Testimonies might be
gathered from the writers of every period—a true CATENA AUREA—proving that the
Spirit of finished holiness has never left Himself without witness. The
essentials of the doctrine have been preserved, though with many minor
differences, from the beginning, clearly discernible through all the ascetic,
fanatical, ultra-mystical, semi-Pelagian veils which have obscured them

1. The Apostolical Fathers, the common heritage of Christianity, continued the
strain of the New Testament, and taught their successors not to shrink from the
application of the term. So Clemens Romanus: " Those who have been perfected in
love, through the grace of God, attain to the place of the godly in the
fellowship of those who in all ages have served the glory of God in
perfectness." Similarly, Polycarp, speaking of faith, hope, and charity, says:
"If any man be in these, he has fulfilled the law of righteousness, for he that
has love is far from every sin." Such words as these contain the germ of what
may be called the doctrine of Christian Perfection: it is the perfection of love
through grace accomplishing the righteousness of faith. The Epistles of Ignatius
again and again speak of a perfect faith, of a perfect mind and intention, and
of the perfect work of holiness: teleioi ontes, teleia kai phroneite• Thelousi
gar uooin eu prattein, kai ho Theos etoimos estin eis to paraschein. With these
we may connect Irenaeus, who says that "God is mighty to make that perfect which
the willing spirit desires," and "the Apostle calls them perfect who present
body, soul, and spirit without blame before God: who not only have the Holy
Spirit abiding in them, but also preserve faultless their souls and bodies,
keeping their fidelity to God, and fulfilling their duties to their neighbor."
2. But it soon became evident that the high tone of New-Testament teaching was
more or less lowered in Christian literature. For this three reasons may be
assigned: first, the recoil from the assumptions of the Gnostics, and other
fanatics; secondly, the introduction of an undue asceticism; and, thirdly, the
spread of Pelagian error. The effect of these three causes respectively will be
given in their order of development

II. From the Ascetic must be distinguished the fanatical theories of Perfection
which have been among the saddest developments of Christian error. The adage,
Corruptio optimi pessima, has here one of its most deplorable illustrations

1. Gnosticism led the way, and found its best opponent in Clemens Alexandrinus.
He lays down a high doctrine of Christian Perfection, but recoils from the pride
of these Fanatics: "I cannot but sometimes wonder that some men dare to call
themselves perfect and Gnostics, thinking of themselves more highly than the
Apostle did." He refers here the pride of knowledge. But elsewhere he says: "A
man may be perfected, whether as godly, or as patient, or in chastity, or in
labors, or as a martyr, or in knowledge. But to be perfected in all these
together I know not if this may be said of any who is yet man, save only of Him
who put on humanity for us. Who therefore is the perfect man? He who professes
abstinence from all evils." This negative abstinence from sin he, however,
strengthens into positive fulfillment of righteousness: "It is a thing
impossible that man should be perfect as God is perfect; but it is the Father’s
will that we, living according to the Gospel in blameless or unfailing
obedience, should become perfect." This wavering language, holding fast the
doctrine of Scriptural Perfection and yet shrinking from the full statement of
it, may in Clement, Irenaeus, and others, be fairly ascribed to a certain
failure of their faith in their own principles. The Gnostics claimed to be the
spiritual and perfect, as being redeemed from the bondage of matter and the
flesh. The answer to them should have been that believers are, or may be,
sanctified in the flesh as well as from the flesh. But this grand principle was
surrendered, and Christian men were content to write as if sin was a necessary
concomitant of the body

2. Montanism in the second century was a system based on the delusion that the
Holy Ghost, as the Paraclete, was not given to the Apostles but was reserved for
a third dispensation. Montanus claimed, to be the prophet or apostle of this new
revelation, which raised the Church to a higher perfection, and made its true
members the Spiritales or Pneumatici, whereas before they were only Psychici, or
the Carnal. This enthusiast aimed rather at a stricter external discipline than
at the establishment of any systematic doctrine of personal sanctification, and
therefore his fanaticism only in an indirect way concerns our present subject.
But its fundamental principle, that the Spirit may be expected to descend for a
fuller and deeper baptism than on the Day of Pentecost, has from time to time
reappeared in theories of the perfectibility of Christian faith and Christian
experience

3. Montanism was the first development of a principle which has reappeared at
various times under other influences. Many of the fanatical sects of the
Patristic and Middle Ages boasted of a plenary outpouring of the Spirit
vouchsafed to themselves alone. Adopting the language of Scripture which speaks
of the teleioi, or the Perfect, some of the Catharists of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries termed themselves the PERFECTI in contradistinction from
the general body of Credentes or believers. They were wont to speak of their
company as the Boni Homines or Consolati. But it has always been found that
those who have perverted the term Perfect into a designation of themselves have
been Antinomian in their spirit and practice. The Fraticelli, the Brethren of
the Free Spirit, in the Middle Ages, the Catharist Perfecti, the Fanatics who
were known during the Commonwealth as Perfectionists and more recently in
America, have all been under the delusion of a principle which elevated them
above the moral law. The fanatical abuse of the term has tended to bring the
phrase Christian Perfection into discredit. The assumption of a claim to this
perfection, and especially the use of the name, the healthy sentiment of
Christianity condemns. But this should not be used in argument against the
doctrine itself of a possible deliverance from sin. And the honest opponents of
the doctrine ought to be cautious of branding those who hold it, but not
claiming the title, with the name of Perfectionists

4. There has been a tendency among some teachers of religion in modern times so
to speak of Christian perfection as to seem to make it the entrance into a new
order of life, one namely of higher consecration under the influence of the Holy
Ghost. That this higher life is the secret of entire consecration there can be
no doubt. But there is no warrant in Scripture for making it a new dispensation
of the Spirit, or a Pentecostal visitation super-added to the state of
conversion. Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? means Did ye
receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?1 In other words entire consecration is
the stronger energy of a Spirit already in the regenerate, not a Spirit to be
sent down from on high. This kingdom of God is already within, if we would let
it come in its perfection. Neither SINCE in this passage, nor the AFTER in after
that ye believed,2 has anything corresponding in the original Greek. The
teaching tends to diminish the value of regeneration, which is itself a life hid
with Christ in God;3 and it undoubtedly has some affinity with the ancient
principle of Montanism; just as, on the other hand, the assertors of a necessary
inherence of sin until death betray a lurking and most subtle affinity with
Gnosticism. But the spirit of the teachers to whom reference is made is far from
being fanatical; they have the highest and the purest aims, and need only to
guard their doctrine more carefully 1 Acts 19:2; 2 Ephesians 1:13; 3 Colossians
3:3

5. A certain fanaticism of devout ignorance has in every age led enthusiasts to
mistake transient effusions of heavenly influence for a finished work of
holiness. This error, venial in one sense but very hurtful in another, is the
result of a too prevalent separation between the sanctification of Christian
privilege as a free gift and the ethical means appointed for its attainment.
Sometimes it springs from forgetting that the present posture of the soul is a
very different thing from its abiding character. Opponents of the Scriptural
doctrine make much use of a fact which must be admitted, that religious
enthusiasm often outruns discretion. But the fact, however lamentable, has no
force as argument

III. Asceticism is a development of the religious tendency in man that has been
almost universal and has the highest sanction

1. Its definition is given by St. Paul in words which at once recommend it and
guard it and promise its genuine fruit: Exercise thyself rather unto godliness.1
(1.) Timothy is exhorted to make his religion matter of personal thought, care,
discipline: gumnaze de seauton. Therefore the soul must not be surrendered to
Divine influence with a passive quietude. Neither at the outset, nor during the
continuance, nor in the highest reaches, of the religious life is the careful
study of the arts of perfection needless. (2.) Asceticism is guarded and
protected from every error: pros EUSEBEIAN, unto godliness. Bodily exercise
profiteth little: there are advantages in the rules of religious life; but they
must be such as tend to godliness, which includes and indeed is the total
suppression of pride, vainglory, personal sense of meritoriousness, exultation
in external religion, and morbid selfanatomy (3.) Godliness is the reward of
this discipline, even as it must be its end

Therefore Christian perfection, which is the perfect operation of the Holy
Spirit in the heart and life, requires on its human side a certain askoosis, or
personal strenuous exercise. St. Paul said of himself, I exercise myself to have
always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men.2 The word is
different, autos askoo, but the thought is the same as in the injunction to
Timothy. In both a pure asceticism is commended 1 1 Timothy 4:7; 2 Acts 24:16

2. "What may be called ascetical theories of Perfection are to be traced in
every age. As they have expressed the most intense strivings of the Christian
devotion they must be treated with respect. But in their general tendency they
have declined from the spirit of the New Testament, and that in two ways: (1.)
They have laid too much stress on the human effort, thereby dishonoring the
supremacy of the Holy Ghost, Who carries on His work without the instrumentality
too often adopted by asceticism, and is after all the sole Agent in the spirit’s
sanctification

Doubtless, many of those who abstracted themselves from the world for the
attainment of perfect holiness depended on the grace of the Gospel for
acceptance, but many more sought by the merit of their works to win that grace.
And, generally, the direct influence of the Spirit in the extinction of sin
through the shedding abroad of the love of God was not the prime element in
their ascetic discipline

(2.) They have too carefully distinguished between common and elect Christians
by adopting the Saviour’s so-called COUNSELS OF PERFECTION as the guide to a
higher life interdicted to those who do not receive these counsels. CHASTITY,
POVERTY, and OBEDIENCE are the three-one estate of perfection, as exemplified by
our Lord Himself, to which, it has been assumed, He called the more elect among
His followers. But our Lord did not summon some men to a perfection denied to
others, though He did summon some men to duties not required in all cases of
others. To all His disciples the injunction came to aspire to another three-one
perfection: if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross daily, and follow Me.1 These three are imposed on every Christian without
exception

1 Luke 9:23

3. The noblest testimonies to the grandeur of the Christian vocation are found
in the writings of the early anchorets; but the influence of an undue stress
upon human effort qualifies the value of the best even of those who do most
honor to the Spirit’s work. The thought for ever lingers in their pages that
something must remain for human vigilance to watch and keep down, without which
humility would not be perfect

(1.) Macarius, of Egypt, is a typical example. One extract will show his precise
relation to the question: " Such souls as burn with ardent and inextinguishable
love to the Lord are worthy of eternal life. Hence they are thought meet to be
free from such motions of the mind, and to attain perfect enlightenment, and the
hidden Communion of the Holy Ghost, and the mysterious fellowship of the
fullness of grace." " It is the Spirit who gives him this, teaching him true
prayer, true meekness, which he had long sought and labored for; and then he
grows, and becomes perfect in God, and worthy to be an heir of the kingdom."
Here the note of worthiness is a subtle fall, if not from the language yet from
the spirit of Scripture. Again: " Every one of us must attain blessedness
through the gift of the Holy Spirit. But he may in faith and love and the
struggle of the determination of his free will reach a perfect degree of virtue,
that so he may both by grace and by righteousness win eternal life. Thus not
alone by the Divine grace and power, without the diligence of his own labor
being added, is he counted worthy of perfect growth. Nor again only through his
own diligence, as if not laying hold of the Divine hand from above, does he
reach perfect freedom and purity." And what is that purity? " Answer: the
perfect cleansing from sin, and freedom from base passions, And the attainment
of the highest reach of virtue,’ that is, the sanctification of the heart, which
takes place through the indwelling of the Divine and perfect Spirit of God in
perfect joy" And even this is not the highest pitch of Macarius; but he descends
again: " Never have I seen a Christian man perfect and entirely free. For though
one may be resting in grace, and may attain to mysteries and revelations, and to
much and deep sweetness of grace: nevertheless, he has sin within him. They
think through the abounding grace and light they have that they are free and
perfect: deceived by inexperience, even while they receive much grace. I have
yet seen no man entirely free. I myself may have reached that point sometimes,
but have learned still that no man is perfect." " In the case of a man that is
sick, it may be that some members are sound; for instance, the sight or other
organs. So is it in spiritual things. For it is probable that some may have all
the three members of the spirit sound, but not on that account is he perfect."
It is obvious that the central idea is here wanting, that the Spirit’s operation
is within the various elements of our nature, mighty in the personality itself,
and that His supreme prerogative is to kill that body of sin the members of
which we are to mortify. The Ascetic theory has always rested in the contest
between the human spirit and the flesh: too often forgetting that the Divine
Spirit is not merely the umpire and witness but the Almighty Agent also in the
destruction of sin

(2.) Many high testimonies were borne to the Saviour’s power in the inner man by
Nilus, a Greek disciple or representative of Asceticism in the fifth century. "
Our Lord Christ can not only scatter and make powerless the temptations which
come upon us through Satan from without, but He can also restrain and still the
motions and impulses which lie deep in our corrupted nature." His teaching is,
that if we give heed to purity of heart, and watch its bias, by grace "all its
lusts and abominations shall be extirpated from the soul by its very roots; and
joy, confidence, knowledge of ourselves and of sin be brought in, with true
humility and great love to God and man." But Nilus knows nothing of a perfect
destruction of sin in the heart: " When thou art assailed by evil lust, fall
down before God and cry, O Son of God, help me! But do not over mightily trouble
thyself, for we fight only with affections, but cannot entirely root them out."
Marcus Eremita speaks for the whole class when he says: " There may have been
unspeakable heavenly glories enjoyed

It might seem that a perfect stage had been reached, and that the man was pure
and free from sin itself. But afterwards that special grace was withdrawn, and
the veil over the deadly evil removed, though the man still remained in a lower
degree of perfection." As also Maximus: " Devotion indeed sets the will free
from lusts, yet so that its nature, as will, does not fail. Think not that thou
hast an entire deliverance from concupiscence, because the object is not now
present: that would only be if thou shouldst remain immoveable on the
remembrance or at the presence of the object. But even so thou must not be too
secure, because devotion may for a long season kill the desires which yet
afterwards rise again if strong devotion is suspended." This is in harmony with
the uniform tendency of Ascetic writers of every age to regard concupiscence as
a secret enemy in the soul left there for the discipline, humiliation, and
caution of the spiritual athlete. Two sentences of the same saint may be
collated: " No man may make the weakness of the flesh the patron of his sins
because union with God the Word has abolished the curse, and made it inexcusable
if we still, with evil concupiscence, cling to sinful objects. For the Divinity
of the Word, always present by grace with the believer, makes weak the law of
sin in the flesh." With this compare: "The end of godliness is the union of
human weakness with Divine strength through the true wisdom. Now he who through
the weakness of nature limits himself does not reach the goal of virtue, but
lets his hands fall short of the strength that is afforded to our weakness. He
has only his own sloth to blame that he is not better than he is." There is but
a step between such views as these and the Scriptural truth that the Divine
strength not only aids but is perfected in our weakness. That step, however, was
never taken by the Ascetic theory

(3.) Cassian, in his Conferences on the Holy Life, gives perhaps the best
examples of the dignity and the defect of the Ascetic aspiration. These must be
consulted by the student himself

IV. The most radical error of ancient times in relation to grace, in its
perfection as well as in its processes, was Pelagianism. What the heresy of
Arius was to Christ’s Person, that of Pelagius was to His work 1. No tenet was
more logically necessary to the system than that of a possible perfectibility of
human nature: the strongest argument was that no reason existed to the contrary.
It taught that man’s free will might be educated, and had been educated in many
instances, up to such a pitch of conformity with the moral law as would satisfy
the merciful Governor of mankind. But the highest law was low in a theory which
made forgiveness possible without expiation; and regarded sin merely as the
temporary and accidental condition of the mind, resulting from bad example,
which a strong exercise of will could at any time correct The importance of the
Pelagian controversy in its bearing on this subject will justify a fuller
statement of the views of the heresiarch and of his opponent Augustine

(1.) The following gives the pith of the doctrine of Pelagius as to human
perfectibility: " Ante omnia interrogandus est qui negat hominem sine peccato
esse posse, quid sit quodcunque peccatum, quod vitari potest, an quod vitari
nori potest. Si quod vitari non potest, peccatum non est; si quod vitari potest,
potest homo sine peccato esse quod vitari potest . . .. Iterum quaerendum est
peccatum voluntatis an necessitatis est. Si necessitatis est, peccatum non est;
si voluntatis est, vitari potest . . .. Iterum quaerendum est, utrumne debeat
homo sine peccato esse. Procul dubio debet. Si debet, potest; si non potest,
ergo nec debet; et si nec debet homo esse sine peccato, debet ergo cum peccato
esse; et jam peccatum non erit, si illud debere constiterit. Aut si hoc etiam
dici absurdum est, confiteri necesse est debere hominem sine peccato esse, et
constat eum non aliud debere quam potest . . .. Iterum quaerendum est quomodo
non potest homo sine peccato esse, voluntate an natura. Si natura, peccatum non
est; si voluntate, perfacile potest voluntas voluntate mutari." Here the
possibility of Christian perfection is based on the broad ground of the
essential power of the human will. Hence Pelagius boldly asserted that through
the use of their natural faculties, and the natural means of grace, men might
attain unto a state of perfect conformity with the law of God, Who prescribes
nothing impossible. But his denial of original sin, and of the sanctifying power
of the Holy Ghost applying the provision of the Atonement, robbed his theory of
entire sanctification of any essentially Christian character (2.) The views of
Augustine on this subject deserve careful consideration. It will appear from the
following extracts that he was not an opponent of the doctrine of entire
sanctification, and that his statements on this subject were much more faithful
to Scripture than those of his followers in the maintenance of what are called
by them the Doctrines of Grace. He admits, in fact, that through a supernatural
operation of grace the will might be so influenced as to concur with the will of
God in all things. He asserts that a supreme delight in God might overcome every
opposite tendency: this being the doctrine of Perfect Love which we have
maintained. That he afterwards denies the fact, or seems to deny the fact, that
God has given this grace to any, does not weaken his admission; since he
arbitrarily attributes the restraint to the secret wisdom of the Divine
procedure, a principle to which we shall return. " Et ideo ejus perfectionem
etiam in hac vita esse possibilem, negare non possumus, quia omnia possibilia
sunt Deo, sive quae facit sola sua voluntate, sive quae co-operantibus creaturae
suae voluntatibus a se fieri posse con-stituit. Ac per hoc quicquid eorum non
facit, sine exemplo est quidem in ejus operibus factis; sed apud Deum et in ejus
virtute habet causam qua fieri possit, et in ejus sapientia quare non factum
sit." Here are the two factors in entire sanctification, plainly stated, " the
power of God in accomplishing whatsoever He has determined to do with the
co-operation of His creatures’ faculties." If there is any bar to the finished
holiness of the believer, it must be found in the "wisdom of God." In the next
passage we receive in Augustine’s striking antithetical phrases, a luminous
statement of our doctrine. It is the " revelation of all that belongs to
righteousness," and " the victory of the soul’s delight over every impediment."
But here the wisdom of God’s appointment, which might forbid perfect holiness,
becomes His "judgment." "Ecce quemadmodum sine exemplo est in homini-bus
perfecta justitia, et tamen impossibilis non est. Fieret enim si tanta voluntas
adhiberetur quanta sufficit tantae rei. Esset autem tanta, si et nihil eorum
quae pertinent ad justitiam nos lateret, et ea sic delectarent animum, ut
quicquid aliud voluptatis dolorisve impedit, delectatio ilia superaret: quod ut
non sit, non ad impossibilitatem, sed ad judicium Dei pertinet." In the
quotation now to be added an element is introduced which was wanting before, the
extinction of the law of sin in the members: " Sed inveniant isti, si possunt,
aliquem sub onere corruptionis hujus viventem, cui jam non habeat Deus quod
ignoscat . . .. Sane quemquam talem, si testimonia ilia divina competenter
accipiant, prorsus invenire non possunt; nullo modo tamen dicendum, Deo deesse
possibilitatem, qua voluntas sic adjuvetur humana, ut non solum justitia ista
quae ex fide est, omni ex parte modo perficiatur in homine, verum etiam ilia
secundum quam postea in aeternum in ipsa ejus contemplatione vivendum est
Quandoquidem, si nunc veiit in quoquam etiam hoc corruptibili induere
incorrup-tionem, atque hic inter homines morituros eum jubere vivere minime
moriturum, ut tota penitus vetustate consumpta nulla lex in membris ejus
repugnet legi mentis, Deumque ubique praesentem ita cognoscat, sicut sancti
postea cognituri sunt; quis demum audeat affirmare, non posse ? Sed quare non
faciat quaerunt homines, nee qui quaerunt se attendunt esse homines." The
substance of this is, that no one should dare to say that God cannot destroy the
original sin in the members, and make Himself so present to the soul that, "TOTA
PENITUS VETUSTATE CONSUMPTA," the old nature being entirely abolished, a life
should be lived below as life will be lived in the eternal contemplation of Him
above. But then the Saint once more draws back from the legitimate conclusions
of his sagacious faith, and he adds, that those who ask why it is not so do not
remember that they are men. The arguments relied on by Augustine to confirm to
himself the conviction which he reluctantly held, are those which have been
urged by many from his time to our own. First, he repudiates the thought that
perfect holiness is in man’s power, and asserts "MUNUS esse Divinum," and
therefore "OPUS esse Divinum:" in this all confessions agree. The doctrine we
have laid down from Scripture makes entire sanctification a WORK of the Holy
Ghost, whose FUNCTION is this in the administration of grace. Secondly, he
refers to the consentient testimony of all saints, who in their humility confess
that they are sinners. But he overthrows his argument by a certain hesitation
about the Virgin Mary; and forgets, as all his followers forget, that the wholly
sanctified still bear in their mind before God their sinful character by nature
and practice, and confess their forgiven sins to the end. Thirdly, he insists
much upon the undoubted truth that humility is part of the very perfection we
speak of. "Ex hoc factum est, virtutem quae nunc est in homine justo, perfectum
hactenus nominari, ut ad ejus perfectionem pertineat etiam ipsius imperfectionis
et in veritate cognitio, et in humilitate confessio. Tune enim est secundum hanc
infirmitatem pro suo modulo perfecta ista parva justitia, quando etiam quid sibi
desit intelligit, Ideoque Apostolus et imperfectum et perfectum se dicit." These
last words which make St. Paul confess his imperfection have nothing to do with
the matter, for he spoke only of his aspiration towards his perfect consummation
in soul and body, when he should in the resurrection win and apprehend Christ in
all His fullness. As to the argument that a sense of imperfection is part of
entire perfection none can deny that, against Pelagianism, it holds good for
ever; but, standing alone, the assertion is not true: the saints in heaven will
have no sense of imperfection. True it is however that human perfection is based
upon humility, and clothed with it as a garment; and that the entirely
sanctified ascribe all to the grace of God and nothing to themselves, never
professing that they are perfect, though daring to glory in the perfecting of
Divine grace in themselves.

But, lastly, the strength and the weakness of St. Augustine’s argument is this,
that the will of God permits and appoints the continuance of sin for the
discipline of the soul. "Idcirco etiam sanctos et fideles suos in aliquibus
vitiis tardius sanat, ut in eos minus, quam implendae ex omni parte justitiae
sufficit, delectet bonum." This tremendous plea sounds Very much like continuing
in sin that grace might abound; against which the Christian sentiment protests
with its GOD FORBID! He whose will is our sanctification cannot " cure our sin
slowly so that the delight in good should be less than sufficient for all
righteousness." The argument rests upon St. Augustine’s general theory of sin,
which he regards, as we have seen elsewhere, as a defect that in the Divine
scheme works a greater good. Its force in relation to our present subject is
arrested and almost neutralized by words which follow: " nec in eo ipso vult nos
damnabiles esse sed humiles." Carried out to its strict conclusion, this
admission establishes one of the cardinal points of our doctrine, that the
infirmities of the saints, into which their will enters not, are not counted for
condemnation, though they ensure and deepen true humility. On the whole it will
be evident that the Father of the predestinarian system of Grace approved with
his mind the highest doctrine of Christian perfection as a privilege of the
Christian covenant, but that he was fettered by a false interpretation of
certain sayings of Scripture, and by an excessive dread of Pelagianism which
gave the law to that interpretation

(3.) Some modern tendencies, originating in America, may be alluded to, which
belong partly to the Pelagian and partly to the semi-Pelagian school. They are
represented by the Oberlin doctrine of entire sanctification: " a full and
perfect discharge of our entire duty, of all existing obligations to God, and
all other beings. It is perfect obedience to the moral law." Hence on this
theory the moral law is relaxed, though the expression is demurred to, in sheer
justice. We cannot love God as we should have loved Him had not sin entered the
world and diminished our power. But God expects from every man only the best he
can do with his impaired faculties. It is obvious that on this theory Christian
perfection is too much a subjective matter, and varies with every individual.
Moreover, the view of original sin on which it is based is one that does not
permit the thought of such an innate bias to evil as must be negatively
eradicated. Its active and positive principle of perfection is that of perfect
disinterested benevolence, or the ultimate choice of the welfare of all being.
This, perfect at any moment, makes the man perfect. But the character profoundly
impressed on the soul is not taken enough into account. And, to sum up, the
essential Pelagianism of the Oberlin teaching on original sin, as exhibited in
Finney’s System of Theology, counteracts the good in its semi-Pelagian
enforcement of the necessity of Divine grace

2. Semi-Pelagianism, the main error of which was its ascribing to human nature,
notwithstanding the Fall, the power of seeking God and thus claiming Divine help
by a kind of meritum de congruo, did not teach a subsequent Christian perfection
attainable without special grace. Its first representatives were men who set up
a very high standard of Christian perfection as attainable through the help of
the Spirit. They were confused as to the relation of Divine grace to the freedom
of the will in man before conversion, laying the stress rather on the power of
human co-operation than upon the universal prevenient grace of the Holy Ghost,
restored in virtue of redemption. That error was partially, though only
partially, corrected in the Synergism of one section of Lutheran theology; it
was entirely removed in later Arminian and Methodist teaching. Mediaeval
discussions, and the Romanist standards shaped by them, retained the confusion
as it respects the first accesses of grace. That was ascribed to the remainder
of good left in the Fall which ought to have been ascribed to the influence of
the Holy Ghost given back to the race. If we suppose this error corrected—an
error rather of phraseology than of fact—then semi- Pelagianism differs little
from the truth taught by all who hold a universal redemption And its teaching as
to Christian Perfection flows into the general stream of the Mystical and Roman
Catholic doctrine to which we now pass

V. The central idea of Mysticism in all its varieties has been the entire
consecration of the spirit of man to God, in absolute detachment from the
creature and perfect union with the Creator

1. In its purest form, Mysticism proper has in every age moulded an interior
circle of earnest souls, seeking the innermost mysteries of the kingdom of grace
by the most strenuous ethical discipline. Its methods have been from time
immemorial described as, first, the way of PURIFICATION; secondly, the way of
ILLUMINATION; thirdly, the way of UNION. These may be considered as answering
respectively to the Evangelical doctrines of Purification from sin, the
Consecration of the Spirit, and the estate of Holiness in abstraction from self
and earthly things in fellowship with God. A careful study of St John’s First
Epistle will find in it laid the sure and deep foundations of this better
Mysticism. It gives the three principles in their order. The blood of Jesus
Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin:1 this is the mystical Purgation. Ye
have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things,2 that is, for the
practical regulation of the life: this is the mystical Illumination. He that
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him:3 this is the perfect Union. A
true Mysticism may be traced in almost every community; and, wherever found, has
taught directly or indirectly the perfection to which the Spirit of God raises
the spirit of man, blending in its pursuit contemplation and action:
contemplation, which is faith waiting passively for the highest energy of the
Holy Ghost; and action, which works out His holy will. How high its doctrine,
scarcely falling below the highest, might be proved by examples taken from the
leading Mystics of every type and of every community 1 1 John 1:7; 2 1 John
2:20; 3 1 John 4:16

2. Mediating between this highest type and its subsequent perversions is the
doctrine of the Quakers, who are among the best representatives of modern
Mysticism. It is thus stated by Barclay: "For though we judge so of the best
works performed by man, endeavoring a conformity with the outward law by his own
strength, and in his own will, yet we believe that such works as naturally
proceed from this spiritual birth and formation of Christ in us are pure and
holy, even as the root from whence they come; and therefore God accepts them,
justifies us in them, and rewards us for them in His own free grace . . ..
Wherefore their judgment is false and against the truth who says that the
holiest works of the saints are defiled and sinful in the sight of God. For
these good works are not the works of the law excluded by the Apostle from
justification." In the following extract the new birth is regarded as a
developing process, and is not sufficiently distinguished from the
sanctification of the life that is imparted in it. This may, however, be
conformed to St. John’s doctrine of a birth of God, with which all sin is
incompatible For the rest, the true teaching of Scripture is clearly stated. "
In whom this pure and holy birth is fully brought forth, the body of death and
sin comes to be crucified and removed; and their hearts united and subjected to
the truth; so as not to obey any suggestions or temptations of the Evil One, and
to be free from actual sinning and transgressing of the law of God, and in that
respect perfect. Yet doth this perfection still admit of a growth; and there
remaineth always in some part a possibility of sinning, where the mind doth not
most diligently and watchfully attend unto the Lord." "Although this gift and
inward grace of God be sufficient to work out salvation, yet in those in whom it
is resisted it both may and doth become their condemnation. Moreover, they in
whose hearts it hath wrought in part to purify and sanctify them in order to
their further perfection, may by disobedience fall from it, turn to wantonness
(Jude 1:4); make shipwreck of faith (1 Timothy 1:19); and, after having tasted
of the heavenly gift, and been made partakers of the Holy Ghost, again fall away
(Hebrews 6:4-6). Yet such an increase and stability in the truth may in this
life be attained, from which there can be no total apostasy." The Apologist can
adduce no passage for this last statement, which however is a venial one.
Although he nowhere expressly teaches that the evil of our nature may be
absolutely eradicated, yet his general principle leads that way; for instance,
in another place we read: " The first is the redemption performed and
accomplished by Christ for us in His crucified body without us; the other is the
redemption wrought by Christ in us, which no less properly is called and
accounted a redemption than the former. The first, then, is that whereby a man,
as he stands in the Fall, is put into a capacity of salvation, and hath conveyed
unto him a measure of that power, virtue, spirit, life and grace that was in
Christ Jesus, which, as the free gift of God, is able to counterbalance,
overcome, and root out the evil seed wherewith we are naturally, as in the Fall,
leavened." This is a noble testimony, which, in its last sentence, goes beyond
the general strain of Mysticism, and anticipates the doctrine we have maintained

3. False or impure Mysticism, which came from the East through Neo-Platonism and
ran into the Middle Ages, stimulated the trembling spirit to seek an
uncreaturely identification with the Uncreated, after the manner of the Buddhist
Nirvana; or an absorption of the finite into the Infinite Essence whose Name
cannot be uttered, of Whom no attribute can be predicated, Who is beyond human
thought, and of Whom our highest conception is that He is at once ALL and
NOTHING. Hence the semi-Pantheism of one branch, the German; the Quietism of
another, the French and Italian; the Antinomian Illuminism of a third, the
Spanish. The end of perfection is such oneness with God as excludes or
suppresses the consciousness of individuality and of a phenomenal universe on
the way to Him; and, when that goal is reached, destroys all distinction between
Him and His creature for ever. The means are abstraction and contemplation, to
the exclusion of most of the processes of the Christian life

VI. The Roman Catholic doctrine, or rather varieties of doctrine, concerning
Christian Perfection, combines the results of most of the theories already
referred to, and adds some elements common to it and Arminiamsm. Here we refer
to the standards of Romanism; but it must be remembered that this most
comprehensive of all theological systems includes a Jansenist teaching, which
modifies the doctrine in the spirit of St

Augustine and of modern Calvinism. It may be said that in Roman Catholicism
there may be found statements of the subject conformed to every one of the
theories of our present sketch. But we have to do with the sanctioned dogma
alone; first, in its bases of truth, and secondly, in its erroneous
superstructure

1. The Council of Trent determined with reference to the perfection of possible
obedience, that, negatively, there is no bar to an entire conformity with the
law; and, positively, that a complete satisfaction of its requirements is
necessary to salvation. " Nemo temeraria ilia voce uti debet, Dei praecepta
homini justificato ad observandum esse impossibilia. Licet enim in hac mortali
vita quantumvis sancti et justi in Iaevia saltem et quotidiana, quae etiam
venialia dicuntur, peccata quandoque cedant, non propterea desinant esse justi."
But the necessity of even venial sin is by implication denied: "Si quis in
quolibet bono opere justum saltem venialiter peccare dixerit . . . anathema
esto." This high doctrine of the satisfaction of the Divine law requires as its
foundation that its demands are relaxed to meet the fallen estate of man: it is
the law PRO HUJUS VITAE STATU that believers may and must fulfill. Hence venial
sins, sins of mere infirmity or unpremeditated sin into which the will does not
enter, are no deduction from the estate of perfection in the righteous estimate
of God. But on this subject the Council did not speak at length. Bellarmine
expands its doctrine thus: " The defect of charity, for instance, our not
performing good works with as much fervor as we shall exhibit in heaven, is
indeed a defect, but not a fault, and is not sin. Whence our charity, although
imperfect in comparison of the charity of the blessed, yet may absolutely be
called perfect." "If the precepts of God were impossible, they would oblige no
man, and therefore would not be precepts." So also Mohler, a more modern
expositor of Roman Catholic doctrine, says: " Either it is possible for man,
strengthened and exalted by Divine aid, to observe the moral law, in its spirit,
its true inward essence, or it is impossible to do so. If the former, then such
observance cannot be too strongly urged; and everyone may find a proof of its
possibility in the fact that, on every transgression, he accuses himself as a
sinner: for every accusation of such a kind involves the supposition that its
fulfillment is possible, and even, with assistance from above, not difficult.
But, if the latter, then the cause must be sought only in God: either He has not
framed human nature for the attainment of that moral standard which He proposes,
or He does not impart those higher powers which are necessary to the pure and
not merely outward compliance with His laws. ... If it be urged that reference
is had exclusively to man’s fallen nature, we reply that God in Christ Jesus has
raised us from the Fall; and it was justly observed by the Council of Trent
that, in virtue of the power of Christ’s Spirit, no precept was impracticable to
man. For to the heritage of corruption a heritage of spiritual power in Christ
has been opposed, and the latter can in every way be victorious over the former.
Or, do we believe that the moral law was framed merely for the nature of Adam,
for his brief abode in Paradise, and not for the thousands of years that
humanity has to endure?" 2. But there is much error connected with the sound
truth and vitiating it. The error is twofold: it undervalues the Scriptural
teaching as to the extinction of sin, and it exaggerates the operation of
sanctifying love

(1.) There is no provision for the suppression of the principle of sin in the
regenerate; without which every doctrine of sanctification must be imperfect.
The remains of original sin, or Concupiscence, baptismal grace does not remove;
but, all condemnation being removed from the justified, God does not regard the
fomes or fuel of sin to be sin itself

Here there are two things to be noted. First, the theory which so strongly
protests against the forensic imputation of righteousness nevertheless resorts,
though without avowing it, to a reckoning of the Divine estimate which beholds
no evil in what is undoubtedly " of the nature of sin." Holding that in the
regenerate this remainder of the carnal mind is not accounted for guilt, we
insist that it is sin, and pardoned only through habitual faith and in prospect
of its entire removal. Secondly, the inconsistency of the doctrine appears in
this, that such concupiscence is a root of evil which, though not sin in itself,
yet requires to be utterly removed by discipline. If removed in the present
life, then the Romanist doctrine is imperfect in not making provision for this.
If removed in another state, the error of purgatorial grace is introduced. Once
more let Mohler be heard, who makes the best of his cause in the context: "
Hence, the question recurs: how shall man be finally delivered from sin, and how
shall holiness in him be restored to perfect life? Or, in case we leave this
earthly world, still bearing about us some stains of sin, how shall we be
purified from them? Shall it be by the mechanical deliverance from the body,
whereof the Protestant Formularies speak so much? But it is not easy to discover
how, when the body is laid aside, sin is therefore purged out from the sinful
spirit. It is only one who rejects the principle of moral freedom in sin, or who
has been seduced by Gnostic or Manichsean errors, that could look with favor on
a doctrine of this kind. Or are we to imagine it to be some potent word of the
Deity, or some violent mechanical process, whereby purification ensues? Some
sudden, magical change the Protestant doctrine unconsciously presupposes; and
this phenomenon is not strange, since it teaches that by original sin the mind
had been deprived of a certain portion, and that in regeneration man is
completely passive. But the Catholic, who cannot regard man other than as a
free, independent agent, must also recognize this free agency in his final
purification, and repudiate such a mechanical process as inconsistent with the
whole moral government of the world. It God were to employ an economy of this
nature then Christ came in vain. Therefore is our Church forced to maintain such
a doctrine of justification in Christ, and of a moral conduct in this life
regulated by it, that the Redeemer will at the day of judgment have fulfilled
the claims of the law outwardly for us, but on that very account inwardly in us
The consolation, therefore, is to be found in the power of the Redeemer which
effaces as well as forgives sin: yet in a twofold way. With some it consummates
purification in this life: with others it perfects it only in the life to come.
The latter are they who by faith, love, and a sincere penitence, have knit the
bond of communion with the Lord, but only in a partial degree, and at the moment
of their quitting life were not entirely pervaded by His Spirit: to them will be
communicated the saving power, that at the day of judgment they also may be
found pure in Christ. Thus the doctrine of a place of purifying is closely
connected with the Catholic theory of justification." This is followed by a
vigorous exposure of the inconsistencies of the Lutheran Formularies, in much of
which we must concur but far greater is the inconsistency of " the mechanical
process " that separates sin from the nature after its departure from the body.
Surely the original sin, which is the fleshly mind, cannot be the object of
sanctifying grace in the pure spirit. It may be replied that it is not the
principle of sin, but the stain of it, that purgatorial discipline removes

Then we fall back on the charge, that the Romanist doctrine, strong as against
those who insist that death is the destruction of sin, is weak in making no
provision for the suppression and extinction of concupiscence

(2.) The love which is the strength of entire consecration in all who believe is
made by the Romanist teaching a power that may more than fulfill the law. With
what subtlety this erroneous principle glides into the theology of Rome may be
seen in the following words of Mohler: " Some men of late have defended the old
orthodox Lutheran doctrine by assuring us that the moral law proposes to men an
ideal standard, which, like everything ideal, necessarily continues unattained.
If such really be the case with the moral law, then He who comes not up to its
requirements can as little incur responsibility as an epic poet for not equaling
the Iliad." So far well; but here follows the unevangelical notion that love may
achieve Works of Supererogation, by keeping the Counsels of Perfection
recommended though not imposed by our Lord; and thus adding to the general
meritoriousness of all good works the special Merits of an obedience above law.
" More rational, at least, is the theory that the higher a believer stands in
the scale of morality, the more exalted are the claims of the moral law upon
him: so that they increase, as it were, to infinity with the internal growth of
man, and leave him ever behind them. Now, when we contemplate the lives of the
saints the opposite phenomenon strikes our attention. The consciousness of being
in the possession of an all-sufficing, infinite power, discloses more and more
the tenderer and nobler relations of man to God, and to his fellowcreatures; so
that the sanctified in Christ, filled with His Spirit, ever feels himself
superior to the law. It is the nature of heavenborn love, which stands so
infinitely far above the claims of the mere law, never to be content with its
own doings, and ever to be more ingenious in its own devices; so that Christians
of this stamp not unfrequently seem to others of a lower grade of perfection to
be enthusiasts, or men of distempered mind. Only in this way that remarkable
doctrine can be satisfactorily explained, —which, like every other that has for
ages existed and seriously engaged the human mind, is sure to rest on some sure
foundation, —the doctrine, namely, that there can be works which are more than
sufficient (OPERA SUPERERO-GATIONIS), the tendency and delicacy of which eluded
the perception of the Reformers." If this doctrine meant only that love in the
regenerate soul aspires to a perfection which cannot be measured by the standard
of any positive precepts, it would be unimpeachable: so stated, it would be only
another form of the Lutheran and Calvinistic assertion that the external law is
abrogated in Christ, being exchanged for the internal law, by which believers
may render obedience in a higher and nobler spirit. All that is noble in the
theory of supererogatory works is maintained by all sound Protestants; but they
make it consistent with the Evangelical covenant by declaring that no such works
can be above the requirements of the law interpreted by love, that even these
are accepted as wrought by the believer because their imperfection is constantly
forgiven for the sake of the Atonement, and that their absolute merit is utterly
excluded by our Lord when He bids such as are supposed to have performed them
call themselves unprofitable servants who have done only that which it was their
duty to do The attempt to separate between law and love is a hopeless one: love
is said to be the fulfilling of the law, and in maintaining that everlasting
principle against their opponents the Romanist divines had Scripture on their
side; but in establishing it as a higher standard than the moral law which it
only interprets, and in linking it with special and arbitrary counsels which are
made into statutory laws binding on a particular class, and, above all, in
assigning specific merit, the merit of satisfaction, to the acts of this Estate
of Perfection, they are contradicted both by the spirit and the letter of the
entire New Testament. But this subject carries us onward to Christian Ethics

VI. The theory of Imputation may serve to designate the doctrine of Christian
Perfection as taught in the Standards of the Reformation, both Lutheran and
Reformed, and especially in modern Calvinism. It assumes that the Christian’s
entire sanctification as well as complete justification is provided for the
believer, and applied to him, as a free gift of the covenant of grace. The three
following texts may be regarded as summing up, in their unity and their order,
the essentials of this doctrine. Ye are complete in Him.1 By one offering He
hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.2 Who of God is made unto us
wisdom, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.3 These passages
are not absolutely misunderstood, but they are very partially applied. Our Lord
is not in the same sense our sanctification, with the meaning of moral
perfection, as that in which He is OUT righteousness. It has been seen that He
is our sanctification without any cooperation of ours, so far as sanctification
is the cleansing from guilt. But sin itself cannot be done away by imputation of
righteousness or non-imputation of guilt. Hence the Calvinist teaching denies
that it is done away; at least, in what is strictly speaking the state of
probation: in the present age it is never abolished as a principle and power
within, but vanishes by being reckoned to the believer as non-existent, by being
hidden under the unsullied robe of the Redeemer’s holiness. The people of Christ
are that Israel of whom it is said, He hath seen no iniquity in Jacob. It
insists that the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh to the end, so that ye CANNOT do the things that ye would.4 But these
words, soundly interpreted, say no more than that ye MIGHT NOT do the things
that ye would. The flesh itself is crucified once for all, with the affections
and lusts, not by imputation but by the act of those that are Christ’s, who
while they wait to see the end of the body of sin, expecting till the sword from
on high smite it with the last stroke, also mortify, or put to death, their
members which are upon the earth.5 This method of stating the doctrine tends to
three issues in three different classes 1 Colossians 2:10; 2 Hebrews 10:14; 3 1
Corinthians 1:30; 4 Galatians 5:17; Galatians 5:24; 5 Colossians 3:5

1. In some it leads to Antinomianism. The pursuit of an independent perfection,
such as shall crown the individual’s own character, is regarded as a
superfluity, not indeed of naughtiness but of goodness. It is thought to be the
glory of Christ to defy or negative, in the name of His own, both the
condemnation and the demands of the law. For this, however, neither
Augustinianism, nor Calvinism is responsible: it is sui generis, a heresy apart,
Antinomianism proper; and, as such, is condemned of itself, autokatakritos, the
object of reprobation to all true theology, and, in fact, the common enemy

2. But even in orthodox systems which make Christ too absolutely the Substitute
of the believer, the thought of a perfection already belonging to His people,
and ready to be revealed, must needs in some measure tend to check the ardor of
desire for a personal and inwrought holiness, affording subtle encouragement to
the thought that any remainders of sin serve only to feed humility and glorify
the grace of God. The warnings of Scripture, and the confessions of the saints
themselves, give evidence that this witness is true and that this danger is real

3. It is in its noblest representatives a most mighty stimulant to the pursuit
of personal perfection. Union with the Lord is the soul of their doctrine, and
of their ethics, and of their hopes; and, where the aspiration towards
fellowship with Christ has its full unhindered influence on the soul, it excites
an unbounded horror of sin and thirst for holiness. It is the more Christian
form of that union with God which was the goal of perfection to the more ancient
Mystics

VII. The early Arminians wrote much on Christian Perfection: but laid down no
very determinate principles on this subject. Their statements, however, contain
the germ of the doctrine which Methodism has developed. They were led by their
theological convictions to the truth that such holiness as God reputes perfect
may be attained in the present life

They dwelt upon a first perfection of the beginning of Christianity; a second
perfection of the unimpeded progress of regenerate religion; and a third
perfection of an established maturity of grace: a triple distinction which is in
harmony with the teachings of the Gospels and Epistles. They did not however
speak very positively about the means, the assurance and the limitations of the
last stage. Episcopius says: "The commandments of God may be kept with what He
regards as a perfect fulfillment, in the supreme love which the Gospel requires
according to the covenant of grace, and in the utmost exertion of human strength
assisted by Divine help. This consummation includes two things, (1) A perfection
proportioned to the powers of each individual;

(2) A pursuit of always higher perfection." Limborch describes it as " perfect,
in being correspondent to the provisions and terms of the Divine covenant.

It is not sinless or an absolutely perfect obedience, but such as consists in a
sincere love of piety, absolutely excluding every habit of sin. It has three
degrees, that of the truly perfect being the entire suppression of every habit
of sin." The Remonstrant divines exhibited their doctrine rather in its
opposition to Romanist works of supererogation, on the one hand, and
Antinoimanism on the other. They did not pursue it into its deep relation to
sin, and to love, and to Evangelical perfection. But the following extract from
Arminius himself will show their true position in relation to this subject. "
Besides those doctrines which I have treated, there is now much discussion
respecting the Perfection of Believers in this life; and it is reported that I
hold opinions allied to those of the Pelagians, viz., that it is possible for
the regenerate perfectly to keep God’s precepts. To this I reply that, though
these might have been my sentiments, yet I ought not on this account to be
considered a Pelagian, either partly or entirely, provided I had only added that
they could do this by the grace of Christ, and by no means without it

But, while I never asserted that a believer could perfectly keep the precepts of
Christ in this life, I never denied it, but always left it as a matter to be
decided. For I have contented myself with those sentiments which St. Augustine
has expressed on this point He marks four questions which claim our attention.

(1) Was there ever a man without sin, one who from the beginning of life never
committed sin 1 and he decides that such a person never yet lived, nor will
hereafter come into existence, with the exception of Jesus Christ.

(2) Has there ever been, is there now, or can there possibly be, an individual
who does not sin, that is, who has attained to such a state of perfection in
this life as not to commit sin, but perfectly to fulfill the law of God? and he
does not think that any man has ever reached this.

(3) Is it possible for a man to exist without sin in this life? and he thinks
that this is possible by means of the grace of God and free will.

(4) If it be possible for a man to be without sin, why has such an individual
never been found I and he answers, that man does not do what is possible to him
by the grace of Christ to perform: either because that which is good escapes his
observation, or because in it he places no part of his delight. Besides this,
the same Christian Father says, ’Let Pelagius confess that it is possible for a
man to be without sin in no other way than by the grace of Christ, and we will
be at peace with each other.’ The opinion of Pelagius, however, was to Augustine
only this, that man could fulfill the law of God by his own proper strength and
ability; but with still greater facility by means of the grace of Christ. I have
shown abundantly the great distance at which I stand from such a sentiment." But
the vital question of the abolition of original sin was never, either by
Arminius or his successors, decided upon The following exposition of the general
doctrine of Sanctification will put this in a clear light. It is abridged from
the Private Disputations of Arminius, which contain the principles of his
uncompleted system of theology: "

(1) The word Sanctification denotes an act by which anything is separated from
common, and is consecrated to Divine, use

(2) Common use is either according to nature itself, by which man lives a
natural life; or according to the assumption of sin, by which he obeys it in its
lusts. Divine use is when a man lives unto godliness, in conformity to the
holiness and righteousness in which he was created. Therefore this
Sanctification, with respect to the terminum a quo, is either from the natural
use or from the use of sin; with respect to the terminum ad quern, it is the
supernatural and Divine use.

(3) When we treat of man as a sinner, Sanctification is a gracious act of God by
which he purifies man who is a sinner, and yet a believer, from ignorance, from
indwelling sin with its lusts and desires, and imbues him with the spirit of
knowledge, righteousness, and holiness; that, being separated from the life of
the world, and being made conformable to God, he may live the Divine life. It
consists in the mortification or death of the old man, and the quickening of the
new man. The Author of Sanctification is God the Holy Father Himself, in His
Son, who is the Holy of holies, through the Spirit of holiness. The External
Instrument is the Word of God; the Internal is faith in the Word preached,

(4) The Object of Sanctification is man, a sinner and yet a believer; a sinner,
because his sin has made him unfit to serve the living God; a believer, because
he is united to Christ, died to sin and is raised in a new life.

(5) The Subject is properly the soul of man: the mind, first, and then the
affections of the will, which is delivered from the dominion of indwelling sin,
and filled with the spirit of holiness. The body is not changed; but, as it is a
part of the man who is consecrated to God, and removed by the sanctified soul
from the purposes of sin, it is employed in the Divine service.

(6) The process lies in purification from sin, and conformity with God in the
body of Christ through the Holy Ghost.

(7) As, under the Old Dispensation, the priests, approaching the worship of God,
were sprinkled with blood, so the blood of Christ sprinkles us, His priests, to
serve the living God. In this respect, the sprinkling of the Redeemer’s blood,
which principally serves for the expiation of sin, and is the cause of
justification, belongs to sanctification also. For, in justification the
sprinkling washes away the guilt of sins that have been committed; but in
sanctification it serves to sanctify those who have received remission, that
they may be enabled to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Christ.

(8) This sanctification is not completed in a single moment; but sin, from whose
dominion we have been delivered through the cross and death of Christ, is
weakened more and more by daily detriments or losses, and the inner man daily
renewed more and more, while we carry about with us in our bodies the death of
Christ, and the outward man is perishing.

(9) COROLLARY. We permit this question to be made the subject of discussion:
Does the death of the body bring the perfection and completion of
sanctification; and how is this effect produced?" With this unsatisfactory
conclusion does the Remonstrant theology leave the question. It was the hard
necessity of its first representatives to maintain the truths committed to them
in the face of persecution and obloquy almost unparalleled. Arminius himself
transmitted only the lineaments of a system of theology; he was early taken
away; but his protest against ultra-Calvinism was taken up by the Pietists of
Germany, and in a still purer form by the English Platonists, who in the
exposition and enforcement of Christian Perfection paved the way for the
Methodism of another century

VIII. The Methodist modification of this Arminian doctrine, and of all other
congenial exhibitions of it, may be gathered from the writings of John Wesley,
dogmatic and defensive, from the Methodist Hymn-book, which sings a higher
strain on this subject than any other psalmody in Christendom, ancient or
modern; and in the commentaries and monographs which treat the question, whether
in England or in America. A clear view can be gained only by dividing between
the essentials of the doctrine believed by the entire community, and certain
non-essential aspects of it which appear different to different eyes

1. The doctrine of Christian Perfection which the Wesleys taught was very early
embraced, and in its main elements was consistently maintained throughout their
career

It was presented to them at first in its mystical and ascetic form, as an object
of ethical aspiration; it never afterwards lost this character; the grandeur and
depth of Thomas a Kempis, and the best Mysticism of antiquity, are reflected in
the hymns of Charles Wesley, and in all the writings of John Wesley, even the
most controversial, on this subject. To this preparatory discipline the
Methodist doctrine owes much: the foundations of its future highest teaching
were laid before the first elements of it were clearly understood From the very
beginning it had this burden committed to it; the clear views of its Founders as
to the acceptance of the believer, and his assurance of acceptance, were
connected from the very outset with clear views as to his privilege of being
filled with the love of God and delivered from indwelling sin, and attaining, as
the result, a state of Evangelical perfection. This doctrine was not the slow
result of reflection and study of the Scriptures. It was indeed confirmed by
these; but it was most assuredly a truth bound up with the Methodist commission
from the very first. It was simply the doctrine of former ages with one element,
formerly indistinct, cleared up; that, namely, which made the entire
sanctification of the believer a provision of the new covenant directly
administered by the Holy Spirit to faith: to faith working by love and preparing
for it, to faith making this blessing its express object, and to faith as
retaining it through constant union with the risen Savior. A few extracts from
the last testimonies of John Wesley will establish all these points, and at the
same time give a fair epitome of the Methodist doctrine in its relation to the
work of the Spirit and the co-operation of man. They are taken from "A Plain
Account of Christian Perfection, as believed and taught by the Reverend Mr. John
Wesley, from the year 1725 to the year 1777," found in the eleventh volume of
his works: a tract which deserves most careful study, not only as a defense of
the doctrine, but as containing one of the noblest collections of Spiritual
Exercises in the English language. The selections are chosen with reference to
the three points mentioned above, but they fairly exhibit the spirit of the
whole

(1.) Christian Perfection was taught by early Methodism as the seal of the Holy
Ghost set upon the earnest striving of the regenerate will: "This great gift of
God, the salvation of our souls, is no other than the image of God fresh stamped
on our hearts. It is a ’renewal of believers in the spirit of their minds, after
the likeness of Him that created them.’" From this it appears that entire
sanctification was regarded as in reality the perfection of the regenerate
state, a view confirmed as follows: "The more care should we take to keep the
simple Scriptural account continually in our eye. Pure love reigning alone in
the heart and life—this is the whole of Scriptural perfection.

Q. When may a person judge himself to have attained this?

A. When, after having been fully convinced of inbred sin, by a far deeper and
clearer conviction than that he experienced before justification, and after
having experienced a gradual mortification of it, he experiences a total death
to sin, and an entire renewal in the love and image of God, so as to rejoice
evermore, to pray without ceasing, and in everything to give thanks. Not that ’
to feel all love and no sin’ is a sufficient proof. Several have experienced
this for a time, before their souls were fully renewed. None therefore ought to
believe that the work is done, till there is added the testimony of the Spirit
witnessing his entire sanctification as clearly as his justification Q. But
whence is it that some imagine they are thus sanctified, when in reality they
are not?

A. It is Hence; they do not judge by all the preceding marks, but either by part
of them or by others that are ambiguous. But I know no instance of a person
attending to them all, and yet deceived in this matter. I believe, there can be
none in the world. If a man be deeply and fully convinced, after justification,
of inbred sin; if he then experience a gradual mortification of sin, and
afterwards an entire renewal in the image of God; if to this change, immensely
greater than that wrought when he was justified, he added a clear, direct
witness of the renewal; I judge it as impossible this man should be deceived
herein, as that God should lie. And if one whom I know to be a man of veracity
testify these things to me, I ought not, without some sufficient reason, to
reject his testimony " Q. Is this death to sin, and renewal in love, gradual or
instantaneous? "

A. A man may be dying for some time; yet he does not, properly speaking, die,
till the instant the soul is separated from the body; and in that instant he
lives the life of eternity In like manner, he may be dying to sin for some time;
yet he is not dead to sin, till sin is separated from his soul; and in that
instant he lives the full life of love. And as the change undergone, when the
body dies, is of a different kind, and infinitely greater than any we had known
before, yea, such as till then it is impossible to conceive; so the change
wrought, when the soul dies to sin, is of a different kind, and infinitely
greater than any before, and than any can conceive till he experiences it. Yet
he still grows in grace, in the knowledge of Christ, in the love and image of
God; and will do so, not only till death, but to all eternity.

Q. How are we to wait for this change?

A. Not in careless indifference, or indolent inactivity; but in vigorous,
universal obedience, in a zealous keeping of all the commandments, in
watchfulness and painfulness, in denying ourselves, and taking up our cross
daily; as well as in earnest prayer and fasting, and a close attendance on all
the ordinances of God. And if any man dream of attaining it any other way, (yea,
or of keeping it when it is attained, when he has received it even in the
largest measure) he deceiveth his own soul. It is true, we receive it by simple
faith: but God does not, will not, give that faith, unless we seek it with all
diligence, in the way which He hath ordained."

(2.) This extract has anticipated the second point: that the destruction of
"inbred sin/’ which is to the individual what " original sin " is to the race of
which he is a member, is to be made the object of faith; and therefore to be
followed by assurance; and evidenced in confession. Faith, its assurance and its
profession, generally go together in John Wesley’s writings; but the two latter
are kept in their distinct and subordinate place With regard to the first, a
simple extract will be enough. It refers to the decisions of an early Conference
as to certain points of discussion: "

Q. How much is allowed by our brethren who differ from us as to entire
sanctification?

A. They grant (1) That everyone must be entirely sanctified in the article of
death.

(2) That till then a believer daily grows in grace, comes nearer and nearer to
perfection (3) That we ought to be continually pressing after it, and to exhort
all others so to do.

Q What do we allow them?

A. We grant,

(1) That many of those who have died in the faith, yea, the greater part of
those we have known, were not perfected in love, till a little before their
death.

(2) That the term sanctified is continually applied by St. Paul to all who were
justified.

(3) That by this term alone, he rarely, if ever, means, ’ saved from all sin.’

(4) That, consequently, it is not proper to use it in that sense, without adding
the word wholly, entirely, or the like.

(5) That the inspired writers almost continually speak of, or to those who were
justified, but Very rarely of, or to those who were wholly sanctified.

(6) That, consequently, it behooves us to speak almost continually of the state
of justification: but more rarely, ’at least in full and explicit terms,
concerning entire sanctification.’ Q. What then is the point where we divide? A.
It is this: Should we expect to be saved from all sin before the article of
death?

Q. Is there any clear Scriptural promise of this, —that God will save us from
all sin?

A. There is: ’He shall redeem Israel from all his sins.’" Then follow a number
of passages from both Testaments, containing promises and commandments which
declare the believer’s privilege, and indirectly make the destruction of inbred
sin the object of personal faith. Indirectly: for it is never asserted that a
specific promise to this effect is given. At a later time these distinct words
occur: "

(1) That Christian perfection is that love of God and our neighbor which implies
deliverance from all sin;

(2) that this is received merely by faith;

(3) that it is given instantaneously, in one moment;

(4) that we are to expect it, not at death, but every moment; that now is the
accepted, time, now is the day of salvation." But again: " As to the manner. I
believe this perfection is always wrought in the soul by a simple act of faith;
consequently in an instant. But I believe a gradual work, both preceding and
following that instant. As to the time I believe this instant generally is the
instant of death, the moment before the soul leaves the body. But I believe it
may be ten, twenty, or forty years before. I believe it is usually many years
after justification; but that it may be within five years or five months after
it, I know no conclusive argument to the contrary

If it must be many years after justification, I would be glad to know how many.
Pretium quotus arroget annus?" " But in some this change was not instantaneous.
They did not perceive the instant when it was wrought. It is often difficult to
perceive the instant when a man dies; yet there is an instant in which life
ceases. And if ever sin ceases, there must be a last moment of its existence,
and a first moment of our deliverance from it." As to the assurance following
this faith Mr. Wesley’s doctrine was once more a general deduction from the
principle that in things pertaining to the Christian salvation perfect faith is
attended by its interior evidence. The following observations are very
suggestive on this subject generally. "

Q. But does not sanctification shine by its own light?

A. And does not the new birth too? Sometimes it does; and so does
sanctification; at others it does not. In the hour of temptation Satan clouds
the work of God, and injects various doubts and reasonings, especially in those
who have either very weak or very strong understandings. At such times there is
absolute need of that witness . . ..

Q. But what Scripture makes mention of any such thing, or gives any reason to
expect it?

A. That Scripture, ’ We have received, not the spirit that is of the world, but
the Spirit which is of God; that we may know the things that are freely given us
of God.’ (1 Corinthians 11:12.) Now surely sanctification is one of ’the things
which are freely given us of God.’ . . . Consider likewise 1 John 5:19 : ’We
know that we are of God.’ How? ’By the Spirit that He hath given us.’ Nay, ’
hereby we know that He abideth in us.’ And what ground have we, either from
Scripture or reason, to exclude the witness, any more than the fruit, of the
Spirit from being here intended? Not that I affirm that all young men, or even
fathers, have this testimony every moment. There may be intermissions of the
direct testimony that they are thus born of God; but those intermissions are
fewer and shorter as they grow up in Christ; and some have the testimony both of
their justification and sanctification without any intermission at all; which I
presume more might have, did they walk humbly and closely with God." As to the
profession of this experience the general language of Mr. Wesley was guarded: on
the one hand, he was anxious to do justice to the New-Testament principle that
confession is made unto salvation by all who believe; while, on the other, he
was an enemy to enthusiasm, and was deeply impressed with a sense of the
self-renunciation and essential humility that belong to the state of perfection.
"

Q. How shall we avoid setting perfection too high or too low?

A. By keeping to the Bible, and setting it just as high as the Scripture does.
It is nothing higher and nothing lower than this, the pure love of God and man;
the loving God with all our heart and soul, and our neighbor as ourselves. It is
love governing the heart and life, running through all our tempers, words, and
actions.

Q Supposing one had attained to this, would you advise him to speak of it?

A. At first perhaps he would scarce be able to refrain, the fire would be so hot
within him: his desire to declare the lovingkindness of the Lord carrying him
away like a torrent. But afterwards he might; and then it would be advisable not
to speak of it to them that know not God (it is most likely it would only
provoke them to contradict and blaspheme), nor to others, without some
particular reason, without some good in view. And then he should have especial
care to avoid all appearance of boasting; to speak with the deepest humility and
reverence, giving all the glory to God.... Men do not light a candle to put it
under a bushel; much less does the all-wise God. He does not raise such a
monument of His power and love to hide it from mankind." 2. But the spirit of
Mr. Wesley’s teaching on this subject may best be discerned in the wise cautions
which he threw around the profession of their experience. A few of these may be
quoted, not only as showing his moderation on this point, but also as containing
a noble defense of the doctrine itself, and its strict connection with faith
working by love The constant necessity of the virtue of the Atonement is
strongly insisted on: " The best of men need Christ as their Priest, their
Atonement, their Advocate with the Father: not only as the continuance of their
every blessing depends on His death and intercession, but on account of their
coming short of the law of love. For every man living does so." " Bat even these
souls dwell in a shattered body, and are so pressed down thereby, that they
cannot exert themselves as they would, by thinking, speaking, and acting
precisely right For want of better bodily organs, they must at times think,
speak, or act wrong; not indeed through a defect of love, but through a defect
of knowledge. And while this is the case, notwithstanding that defect, and its
consequences, they fulfill the law of love. Yet as, even in this case, there is
not a full conformity to the perfect law, so the most perfect do, on this very
account, need the blood of atonement, and may properly for themselves, as well
as for their brethren, say, ’ Forgive us our trespasses/" Consequently, the
highest state of earthly perfection is a gift that may be withdrawn: " it is
admissible, capable of being lost; of which we have numerous instances. But we
were not thoroughly convinced of this, till five or six years ago." There is no
tolerance of the Antinomian spirit in this doctrine. " We are ’ dead to the law
by the body of Christ/ given for us (Romans 7:4): to the Adamic as well as
Mosaic law. But it does not follow that we are without any law; for God has
established another law in its place, even the law of faith. And we are all
under this law to God and to Christ." Love is the fulfilling of every law. " The
whole law under which we now are is fulfilled by love. Faith working or animated
by love is all that God requires of man. He has substituted (not sincerity, but)
love, in the room of angelic perfection." There is no limit to the stern
cautions everywhere administered to professors of entire sanctification. "
Beware of that daughter of pride, enthusiasm. 0 keep at the utmost distance from
it! Give no place to a heated imagination. Do not hastily ascribe things to God.
Do not easily suppose dreams, voices, impressions, visions, or revelations to be
from God. They may be from Him. They may be from nature. They may be from the
devil. Therefore ’ believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be
of God.’ Try all things by the written Word, and let all bow down before it. You
are in danger of enthusiasm every hour, if you depart ever so little from
Scripture; yea, or from the plain, literal meaning of any text, taken in
connection with the context. And so you are if you despise or lightly esteem
reason, knowledge, or human learning; every one of which is an excellent gift of
God, and may serve the noblest purposes." " One general inlet to enthusiasm is,
expecting the end without the means; the expecting knowledge, for instance,
without searching the Scriptures, and consulting the children of God; the
expecting spiritual strength without constant prayer, and steady watchfulness;
the expecting any blessing without hearing the Word of God at every
opportunity." But everywhere, in common with the strain of the deepest theology
of all ages, love is made the safeguard as it is the strength of perfection.
"Another ground of these and a thousand mistakes is the not considering deeply
that love is the highest gift of God: humble, gentle, patient love. The heaven
of heavens is love. There is nothing higher in religion; there is, in effect,
nothing else; if you look for anything but more love, you are looking wide of
the mark, you are getting out of the royal way. And when you are asking others,
* Have you received this or that blessing?’ if you mean anything but mere love,
you mean wrong

Settle it then in your heart, that from the moment God has saved you from all
sin, you are to aim at nothing more, but more of that love described in the
thirteenth of the Corinthians. You can go no higher than this, till you are
carried into Abraham’s bosom." " Fire is the symbol of love; and the love of God
is the principle and end of all our good works. But truth surpasses figure; and
the fire of Divine love has this advantage over material fire, that it can
reascend to its source, and raise thither with it all the good works which it
produces. And by this means it prevents their being corrupted by pride, vanity,
or any evil mixture. But this cannot be done otherwise than by making these good
works in a spiritual manner die in God, by a deep gratitude, which plunges the
soul in Him as in an abyss, with all that it is,’ and all the grace and works
for which it is indebted to Him: a gratitude whereby the soul seems to empty
itself of them, that they may return to their source, as rivers seem willing to
empty themselves, when they pour themselves with all their waters into the sea.
When we have received any favor from God we ought to retire, if not into our
closets, into our hearts, and say: ’I come, Lord, to restore to Thee what Thou
hast given; and I freely relinquish it, to enter again into my own nothingness.
For what is the most perfect creature in heaven or earth in Thy presence, but a
void capable of being filled with Thee and by Thee; as the air which is void and
dark is capable of being filled with the light of the sun, who withdraws it
every day to restore it the next, there being nothing in the air that either
appropriates this light or resists it? 0 give me the same facility of receiving
and restoring Thy grace and good works! I say THINE; for I acknowledge the root
from which they spring is in Thee, and not in me." 3. Reviewing the whole, we
may conclude that, while the substance of the Methodist doctrine of Entire
Sanctification is the same which has been aimed at in all the purest types of
practical theology, it has some points of difference, or specific
characteristics of great importance

(1.) It connects the fulfillment of the Evangelical law with the effusion of
Divine love in the heart more strictly and consistently than any other system of
teaching. The Mystical and Ascetic teachers of perfection have generally made
love, and that the love of God, their keynote. But they seldom gave a good
account of the relation of that love to the obedience which is essential to
perfection. Some of them erred by making the absolute moral law the standard;
and then the highest result was a striving towards a perfection which death only
could introduce. Others lost all thought of law in the contemplation of the
holiness of Christ, and their perfection was the gradual transformation of the
character into His image. Others rightly viewed love as the fulfilling of the
law; and supposed that its value in the sight of God was such as to obtain a
meritorious acceptance beyond that of mere obedience to any law: forgetting,
meanwhile, that the preciousness of love as a grace springs from its faith in
the Merit and Strength of the Redeemer. Others separated between the
righteousness of the law which is unattainable, and must be reckoned to the
believer, and the perfection of love which he may attain in his own person: thus
dividing what the Scripture joins But the Methodist doctrine boldly declares
that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in believers, that is the
righteousness of the new law of faith; and that as faith is reckoned for
righteousness, so faith working by love is reckoned for perfection

(2.) The Methodist doctrine is the only one that has consistently and boldly
maintained the possibility of the destruction of the carnal mind, or the inbred
sin of our fallen nature

It is true that certain of the Mystics held, as we have seen, something almost
equivalent to this doctrine; and that the Pietists of the school of Spener
included the annihilation of the old Adam among the privileges of God’s
children. But the utmost contemplated by them was the gradual suppression of the
evil nature through the ascendancy of love. Now it is undeniable that a very
large portion of the Methodist teaching takes that ground. On the same principle
that the shedding abroad of love is made the spring of regeneration, its perfect
effusion is made the strength of entire sanctification. In many passages of
Sermons and Hymns the Wesleys expressly taught this. But they failed not to look
deeper into the heart than the region of its affections. They knew that life is
more even than love; and that, as the regeneration of the Spirit is the gift of
a new life capable of loving God, so the perfection of that love towards God is
possible only where the original death of the soul is altogether changed into
life. Hence the fervor with which the Hymns appeal to the Holy Ghost for the
destruction of inbred sin, and the almost equal earnestness with which the
Sermons urge on believers the prayer for faith in the omnipotent power of God,
not only to shed abroad His perfect love, but to finish the death of the body of
sin. The combination of the two elements, the negative annihilation of the
principle of sin and the positive effusion of perfect love, is, it may be said,
peculiar to Methodist theology as such

(3.) The original teaching of Methodism was peculiar also in its remarkable
blending of the Divine and human elements in the process of entire
sanctification. It invariably did justice both to the supreme Divine efficiency
and to the co-operation of man. The charge brought against it, sometimes
malevolently, sometimes thoughtlessly, that it stimulates believers to expect
this supreme and most sacred blessing at any time, irrespective of their
preparatory discipline, is contradicted by the whole tenor of the authoritative
standards of this doctrine. Wesley’s Sermon on " The Scripture Way of Salvation
" contains an elaborate discussion of this point; and it must be taken as a
whole by those who would understand the subject. The sum of all is in the
following sentences: " Experience shows that, together with this conviction of
sin remaining in our hearts, and cleaving to all our works and actions, as well
as the guilt which on account thereof we should incur were we not continually
sprinkled with the atoning blood, one thing more is implied in this repentance,
namely, a conviction of our helplessness.”..." But what good works are those the
practice of which you affirm to be necessary to sanctification? First, all works
of piety: such as public prayer, family prayer, and praying in our closet;
receiving the Supper of the Lord; searching the Scriptures, by hearing, reading,
meditating; and using such a measure of fasting or abstinence as our bodily
health allows

Secondly, all works of mercy . . .. This is the repentance, and these the
’fruits meet for repentance/ which are necessary to full sanctification. This is
the way whereon God hath appointed His children to wait for complete salvation."
" Yet they are not necessary either in the same sense with faith, or in the same
degree. This repentance and these fruits are only remotely necessary, necessary
in order to the continuance of his faith, as well as the increase of it, whereas
faith is immediately and directly necessary to sanctification." " To this
confidence, that God is both able and willing to sanctify us now, there needs to
be added one thing more, —a Divine evidence and conviction that He doeth it. In
that hour it is done; God says to the inmost soul, ’According to thy faith be it
unto thee!’ then the soul is pure from every spot of sin; it is clean ’ from all
unrighteousness.’ The believer then experiences the deep meaning of these solemn
words: ’If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one
with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’"
The intense, absorbing, patient, human preparations of the heart in man are from
the same Spirit who at length gives the Divine evidence of the unspeakable power
of God to save from all sin. Here it is to be observed that Mr. Wesley passes
from the perfect shedding abroad of love in the heart to the application of the
supreme efficacy of the Atonement to take away the evil of the nature: it is "
the moment wherein sin ceases to be." It is more, therefore, than the spirit of
entire consecration to which many of those who have received his teaching limit
it; it is more even than the abundant effusion of love which may fill the
heart’s sensibilities without purifying its hidden depths: a distinction which
his own words refer to: " How clearly does this express the being perfected in
love! How strongly imply the being saved from all sin!"

(4.) Finally, the doctrine which runs through the works and the whole career of
the Wesleys is marked by its reasonableness and moderation as well as its
sublimity. The far greater part of the definitions of it are taken up with
defining what it is not. It is not absolute perfection, nor the perfection of
angels, nor even that of unfallen Adam: it is a perfection which has come up
from much tribulation, and bears the scars of infirmity to the end. It is not
immunity from temptation, and the possibility of falling, and the remainders of
ignorance and shortcoming in the presence of the perfect law the rigor of which
is not applied to it in Christ. It is a perfection which is no other than a
perfect selfannihilating life in Christ: a perfect union with His passion and
His resurrection, and the perfect enjoyment of the value of His name of Jesus,
as it is salvation from sin. It is the perfection of being nothing in self, and
all in Him. It is a perfection for which the elect with one consent have longed,
from the Apostles downwards: neither more nor less than the unuttered groaning
desire of the children of God in every age; the common deep aspiration, with
only one note more emphatic than has been always heard, though even that has not
been always wanting, the destruction of the inbred sin of our nature. He who
searcheth the-heart hath always known the mind of the Spirit, even when its
deepest desire has not been clearly uttered. And He will yet, we dare to
believe, remove the last fetter from the aspirations of His saints, and give
them one heart and one voice in seeking the destruction of the body of sin as
well as the mortification of its members


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  CHAPTER 31: 33. VOL 03 - TENURE OF COVENANT BLESSINGS
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Tenure of Covenant Blessings TENURE OF COVENANT BLESSINGS

PROBATION Scriptural Doctrine;

Historical Review;

Test of Religious Systems

ASSURANCE

Objective:

Resurrection of Christ;

Means of Grace. Subjective: The Spirit;

Plerophoria of Faith and Hope and Understanding;

Parrhesia;

Witness of the Spirit HISTORICAL REVIEW

Sacramental:

Mystical:

Calvinism:

Methodism

PERSEVERANCE Grace and its Ground;

Manifestation:

Conditionality

CONTROVERSIAL Covenant of Redemption;

Argument from Scripture THE TENURE OF COVENANT BLESSINGS The Holy Spirit, the
Administrator of Redemption, confers its blessings absolutely as the free gift
of God in Christ, but not unconditionally and irreversibly. There is no fixed
decree which has guaranteed all the concurrences of Providence, all the
operations of grace, and all the gifts that assure an abundant entrance into
heaven. The Christian covenant places man in a new and gracious PROBATION, gives
ample ground of personal ASSURANCE, which as the assurance both of faith and of
hope encourages to PERSEVERANCE. The present subject, therefore, requires a
consideration of those three terms in their mutual relations

There is a doctrine of Final Perseverance, which as such is only a conventional
term used to signify one aspect of the covenant of grace: the irreversible
bestowment of its blessings on those for whom Christ died, and for whom it is
supposed He cannot have died in vain

According to the view of truth already given, perseverance is an ethical duty,
and not a specific gift of the covenant. So far as provision is made for it in
that covenant, it belongs to the doctrine of Assurance, which in some form
occupies a large and important place in the New Testament. Omitting the term
Final, which is the symbol of a peculiar dogma, Perseverance may be made an
independent section, for the sake of its own importance, as also to give
opportunity of controverting error on the subject, or of setting the truth
underlying that error in its right point of view. Thus we have three watchwords
which are so correlated that they cannot well be disjoined. Perseverance is only
the constant preservation of the Assurance of faith which is the conditional
assurance given to a soul in Probation. The believer in Christ begins a new life
in a new probation; goes on his way with an habitual assurance; and thus is
animated to persevere to the end. This is the New- Testament economy of the
Christian life, to which it is everywhere faithful

PROBATION

Probation is the moral trial of a free spirit, continuing for a season under
conditions appointed by God, and issuing in the confirmation of an abiding and
unchangeable state The Christian scheme, as administered by the Holy Ghost, has
not abolished probation, but has invested it with a new and peculiar character
of grace, which, however, leaves it probation still

I. Probation has not ceased in the economy of Redemption. The Scripture which
says, Ye are not under [the] law but under grace,1 does not mean that we are
exempted from test and predestinated to life. It is true that when Adam fell his
first estate of trial ended for himself and the race in him; and, according to
the analogy of the doom of evil spirits, his destiny and the destiny of manhood
was then settled. But the Divine condition of human probation included the
prospect of a new and different test applied to the posterity of Adam
individually under very different conditions. Man’s independent probation ceased
for ever; and began again through a Mediator. Probation did not cease, but its
conditions changed. Redemption has not interfered with the law of probationary
decision which so far as we know governs the destiny of every created
intelligence. Generally, every covenant of God with man implies probation; and
in a certain sense all probation involves the idea of covenant. Though diatheke
is not precisely sontheke—it is rather Disposition or Arrangement than Covenant
proper—it is commandment with promise and condition And these are the essentials
of probation. Strictly speaking, covenant only began with the Fall: being the
arrangement for salvation through a Mediator. The peculiar kind of covenant of
which Scripture speaks is always propounded, ratified, and administered through
the mediatorial sacrifice

1 Romans 6:14 II. Probation runs through the new covenant as individual

1. Generally, the entire economy of this dispensation of grace, in all the
stages of its development on earth, is filled with the ideas and terms of test.
The short history of Paradise is entirely governed by this principle. The
Covenant of Grace— before the Law, under the Law, in the Gospel, these three
being one—is not less subject to this rule. On God’s part we have a long series
of expressions, used to exhibit His relations to men, which are inconsistent
with anything but a purpose to discipline and test character, to refuse the evil
and choose the good: for instance, all such words as covenanting, testing, or
temptation, striving, trial, discipline, forbearance, hardening or melting the
heart, judgment, present and future, rewarding and punishing, reprobation, day
of grace; which imply the Divine appointment or institute of probation, and are
utterly incomprehensible on any other theory or principle of the destiny of
mankind. Similarly, on man’s part, we have a long series of counterpart
expressions: submission, rebellion, choosing good or evil, tempting God,
yielding to or vexing or grieving or quenching His Spirit, conscience, and
self-judgment; all these being inexplicable on any other principle than that of
a certain control over his own destiny

2. This may, particularly, be viewed with reference to the three main elements
of individual probation: its beginning, and its processes, and its end

(1.) The doctrine of Vocation has shown that the beginning of the Gospel in any
heart is a test of the moral nature, as the Fall has left it, and of the
preliminary and universal influences of the Spirit. Everyone that is of the
truth heareth My voice:1 this must refer to the very commencement of a
probation: the first word of God to the soul is a test, the very first thought
of Christ is a revelation of the hidden fibers of the being. Compel them to come
in!2 means simply the vehement appeal that through the mind and heart persuades
the will; and the final mystery of acceptance or rejection, notwithstanding all
the power of Divine grace, is to be found in a moral attitude of that will. The
Cross attracts: I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me:3
helkusoo. No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him:4
helkusee. The former is the general and the latter is the individual attraction;
but both alike detect the character and confirm it. The result is always
referred to as the sustaining or failing under a test The preaching of the
Gospel is a savor of life unto life, and of death unto death.5 God’s co-workers
beseech us to receive not the grace of God in vain.6 The Cross is a new testing
tree of knowledge of good and evil: man, under the new probation, however, is
commanded not to abstain but to take. The probation is now outside of Paradise,
but in many of its characteristics it is precisely the same as within. It is
bound up with all the issues of Christ’s coming. And Jesus said, For judgment I
am come into this world:7 this answers at the close to those words of the
beginning, This Child is set for the fall and rising again of many... that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.8 Either through direct preaching or
through indirect, in this world or beyond it, certainly before the Judgment Day,
the name of Jesus will be, it must be, the touchstone of every man’s will and
the arbiter of his doom

1 John 18:37; 2 Luke 14:23; 3 John 12:32; 4 John 6:44; 5 2 Corinthians 2:16; 6 2
Corinthians 6:1; 7 John 9:39; 8 Luke 2:34-35

(2.) The processes of the Christian life are all probationary. The Scriptures
never address Christians as saved prospectively, only as saved retrospectively :
as soozomenous, such as should be saved,1 or who are in process of salvation.
The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal:2 this
does not refer only to special endowments; including these, it becomes a
universal principle. The whole design of grace is disciplinary. The grace of God
that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us;3 paideuousa, it
puts us under training and discipline. It is to enable us to make our calling
and election sure;4 that in its strength we may be able to withstand in the evil
day, and, having done all, to stand.5 On the one hand the injunction is prove
your own selves:6 this is one of the few texts in which the very term probation
is used; and it signifies that we have to test, and try, and find out the
secrets of our own hearts, watching ourselves under the eye of God as God
watched Adam in Paradise. Another is, that ye may prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect, will of God.7 Reprobation is never mentioned save in
regard to the Christian’s failure under test: know ye not your own selves, how
that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates,8 adokimoi. The word is
unknown in the Bible save as the result of man’s own act: the only reprobation
is the being tried and found wanting. There is no worse self-deception than to
regard personal religion as the working out of an absolute and final decree, and
to it we may apply St Paul’s words: Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.9 The probation is not only
decisive as to the degree of our salvation, but decisive of our salvation
itself. The test is not simply to ascertain how many cities we may rule over;
but whether we shall be trusted at all or rejected

1 Acts 2:47; 2 1 Corinthians 12:7; 3 Titus 2:11-12; 4 2 Peter 1:10; 5 Ephesians
6:13; 6 2 Corinthians 13:5; 7 Romans 12:2; 8 2 Corinthians 13:5; 9 Galatians 6:7

(3.) At the end of all it is not said that the Judge will separate them one from
another only, but that it will be as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
goats:1 the context shows that these words describe their several characters as
the result of the probation of a life. And this declaration winds up a series of
parables all of which make the eternal issues depend on watchfulness and
fidelity: Well done, thou good and faithful servant.2 The final judgment is the
revelation of the result of a probationary course. There is a book of life which
is the record of the called and chosen3 AND FAITHFUL: this last is now at length
added to complete the former. The Lord had again and again referred to the many
called and few chosen; and He also indirectly spoke of the still fewer who would
endure to the end. But now He combines them all. This is the book of life of the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.4 But the names were not indelibly
written in it from the foundation of the world: had the individual names been
written there, in any other sense than as foreseen to be there, it would not
have been declared that the preservation of it is the reward of fidelity: to him
that overcometh, the promise is, I will not blot out his name out of the look of
life.5 1 Matthew 25:32; 2 Matthew 25:21; 3 Revelation 17:14; 4 Revelation 13:8;
5 Revelation 3:5

III. Christian Probation has a specific character of grace. It ought not to be
taught as a hard and rigorous doctrine, calmly leaving man to the decision of
his own destiny. It is possible that, in recoiling from the former extreme which
denies probation altogether, we fall into another which leaves too much in man’s
destiny to his own caprice. The ceasing of the first probation has introduced
another presided over by grace; extending over mankind, in all their states and
varieties

1. As it regards the world all men are and ever have been under a probationary
constitution of mercy. The kindness and love of God our Savior toward MAN
appeared finally in the Gospel; but the same PHILANTHROPY has governed the world
from the beginning. The new trial of the race as such is a profound mystery, but
a mystery of mercy. Grace, like the Gospel which is its proclamation, was in the
world before Christ came; and the nations of men will be dealt with by the
righteousness of Him of Whom it was said in the beginning of history, Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right?1 The probation of the world at large may be
regarded under two aspects. (1.) Nationally, bodies and communities of men are
dealt with by the Supreme Governor; they will be judged with strict regard to
every advantage which they have enjoyed, and every disadvantage under which they
have labored. The laws by which God governs families, communities, nations, and
more or less the race at large, are laws which issue from the Mediatorial Court,
are administered by the Redeemer of all men. But with this we have not now to
do: it has been and will be discussed in other departments. (2.) The probation
of all men individually is one of grace. We can hardly tell how to reconcile
this with some of the sayings of Scripture; but the duty of theology is to
reconcile those sayings with this truth. The probationary discipline of vast
multitudes of the human race in the present life, the hidden processes of their
trial, and the apportionment of their doom hereafter, are among the reserved
mysteries of faith. Not an individual of all the countless hosts of the
descendants of Adam will be dealt with save on the basis of a trial that was
appointed for himself as if he were the only individual in probation

1 Genesis 18:25

2. As it regards those who receive revealed truth Evangelical mercy yet more
obviously directs probation. All things are ordered to enlist the free will on
the side of God. The condemnation of original sin is removed; and its bias to
evil is controlled by strong influences of grace. The power of the Holy Spirit
is greater than that of evil can be. The force of Divine truth, applied by His
Divine energy, and confirmed by the demonstration of Providence, is an element
the strength of which must be estimated very highly in the consideration of the
trial ordained for those who hear the Gospel. And as to those who hear it amidst
the utmost disadvantages for its reception, we must fall back upon the
mysterious internal influence which is present to every man behind and in
concurrence with the earliest movements of evil 3. In the case of the regenerate
probation is peculiarly rich in the provisions of grace.

(1.) Every Christian is the object of personal care and most tender solicitude
to the Holy Ghost. A comparison is sometimes made between the probation of
Paradise and that of the believer in a fallen world: such a comparison can
hardly be instituted to any good purpose. Whatever disabilities sin has entailed
on us are more than made up by an indwelling Spirit, the Spirit of a new and
higher life. Where sin abounded grace did much more abound.1

(2.) And all events are so ordered that the difficulties of religious experience
tend to invigorate the spirit. As blessings temperately enjoyed increase love,
so afflictions endured with resignation strengthen the inner man. Through the
secret control of the Holy Ghost, not an event in life but contributes to test
the character; and under His rule every test sustained leaves that character the
stronger. Hence we are bidden to count it all joy when ye fall into divers
temptations.2 The highest graces of religion, those which the passion of Jesus
has invested with a supreme dignity, are the issue of stern probation
encountered with patience 1 Romans 5:20; 2 James 1:2

4. But, after all, the Christian covenant leaves men to a probation that is
exceedingly solemn. Everyone is taught by the Scripture to regard himself as
deciding his lot for eternity. There is very much against him, very much for
him; two worlds, of good and evil, enter into his being and contend for his
soul. Under other conditions, and with differences that almost forbid the
analogy, we all are undergoing the ordeal of the Garden again. The ordinary
speech of mankind is true to this most affecting and impressive principle, that
the present world is the scene of our trial for the eternal future. We are still
in the garden of test; but the object of the discipline of life is to win back
the Paradise lost through the grace of Him whose justice cast us out. Youth is a
season of probation. In another sense every critical period of life is such:
especially the evil day of affliction. But time, every man’s portion of it, is
his probationary term. Whatever a man soweth that shall he also reap!1 is the
warning exhortation. That ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and,
having done all, to stand:2 this is the encouragement. The result closes the
Bible: he that is unjust, let him be unjust still I and he that is holy, let him
be holy still!3 Though these words do not directly refer to the eternal state 1
Galatians 6:7; 2 Ephesians 6:13; 3 Revelation 22:11

HISTORICAL This doctrine of probation and test is itself the test of
ecclesiastical systems. The history of dogma on this subject, in its wider
bearing on the Divine Decrees, has already been briefly given. It is needful now
only to make a few more specific allusions to some more prominent relations

I. All systems of Fatalistic Predestinarianism are condemned by the true
doctrine of human probation: whether the ancient Fatalism which renounced the
idea of one supreme personal God, bringing its Pantheon under the sway of
Destiny as the final authority; or the modern Pantheistic Fatalism which makes
all things the necessary manifestation— material or spiritual—of one substance,
God or nature. If the Deity is for ever evolving Himself in humanity, there can
be no probation. The good and evil— good OR evil is interdicted language — are
alike God: choice, decision, probation are excluded. The tranquil confidence of
many Pantheists in ancient and modern times is pure resignation to the
inevitable. The triumph of Christianity is that it gives a still more perfect
resignation to one who at the same time knows that every passing hour is
pregnant with his eternal interest

II. The dogma of Absolute Sovereignty in God and His government, and the decree
of election flowing from it, are to a great extent inconsistent with just ideas
of the probation of collective mankind, or of individual man. This may be looked
at from several points of view

1. The dogma of an eternal and fixed predestination to salvation and perdition
cannot be made to combine with moral trial Probation may indeed be reduced to
mean the mere exhibition of the fact and the means of declaring the decree; it
may also be made serviceable as tending to decide the varieties of Christian
character and the degrees of final reward. But the Christian idea of a moral
test is lost; for all its processes are supposed to be already predetermined

2. The more modern Federal Theology which has been grafted on Calvinism shows
this still more strikingly. According to this scheme the history of Redemption
is distributed under three covenants: first, the Covenant of Redemption between
the Father and the Son; secondly, the Covenant of Works made with Adam,
including his posterity; and, thirdly, the Covenant of Grace, this being
subdivided again into the covenant before the Law, under the Law, and under the
Gospel

(1.) With regard to the first, it almost seems to place Christ Himself under a
special and peculiar probation: if not in words yet in reality. On behalf of a
certain portion of the race the Son of God is supposed to have undertaken the
obligation of passive and active obedience: on the condition of His fidelity,
this portion of the race is assigned to Him

They are secure, at the expense of an infinite cost to their Surety. His is the
stern probation, and not theirs. Though this theology would admit that He could
not fail nor be discouraged, and cannot be charged with making Christ’s
undertaking doubtful; yet this is a noble inconsistency on its part. In fact,
with respect neither to the Surety nor to the assured, is the strict idea of
probation retained. But of such a covenant with the Holy Trinity for the
partition of mankind the Scripture says nothing

(2.) As to the second there is no such covenant of works in the record. If it is
regarded as coming after that first eternal covenant it thereby loses its
character as a covenant: the race of Adam is dealt with as necessarily fallen,
and sin is made dangerously to rival the Atonement itself, predestined before
the foundation of the world. If, on the Sublapsarian theory, the Covenant of
Redemption is supposed to be based upon the Fall as a fact, then that covenant
still absorbs and destroys the probation of men. The race of Adam failed in one
test, and then was under trial no more. The covenant of works remains indeed as
a continual remembrance of the Fall; but its only use is to detect and condemn
sin and drive men to the better Covenant of Grace ordered in all things and sure

(3.) As to this third, it cannot retain the essential elements of a covenant,
supposing personal probation with its contingent issues to be excluded. It may
be asserted that the compact of probation ceased when it really began in Christ.
To say that God took the elect out of their own hands, and saved them through a
Substitute who left nothing to their own will and effort and fidelity, or to
contingency, is to contradict the tenor of Scripture, however much it may seem
to honor the Divine sovereignty

3. The dogma of the express and distinct imputation of Christ’s active
righteousness secures the final presentation of the believer before God without
spot and blameless; hence there is no deciding test as to his ultimate state.
The growth of a new character under the Redeemer’s perfect robe has nothing
strictly probationary in it: the Christian will not appear in the garment woven
of his own righteousness save for the regulation of his reward, and even that is
inconsistent with the essential principle that Christ virtually takes the place
of the saint and the saint appears as Christ in the entire administration of
substitutionary grace

4. The exaggeration of the Divine sovereignty gives this dogma the character of
Fatality which we have not hesitated to ascribe to it: it is no other than a
Christianised Pantheistic Fatalism. Not unknown Fate or Destiny or moira, but
the God and Father of all absolutely disposes, of the souls of men. Probation
is, like all things else pertaining to their Christian estate, only imputed to
them. Trial, test, and judgment and doom, are mere fiatus vocis, the veils and
economical disguises of a dispensation of fixed and necessitated grace III.
There are theories of Universalism which deal with this subject, and must be
tested by our principle

1. That of a certain final Universal Destruction of Evil teaches that there is
room enough in the universe, and time enough in the bosom of eternity, and
resources enough in Divine omnipotence, for the gradual and sure annihilation or
elimination of all defect, infirmity, and sin from the sum of things. This
unlimited dogma maintains the idea of test in its own way: all who fail to
sustain the test in this life, and in the succeeding aeons, will be finally
destroyed. This is Probation without one of the alternatives of confirmation,
which are necessary to its definition, the fixed continuance in evil; and with a
new element added, the determination of sovereign Omnipotence. It holds the
Calvinistic Sovereignty with a peculiar modification of its own. Whereas
Predestinarian Election has for its dark side the foreordained reprobation of
the evil as doomed to a fixed estate of eternal ruin, this notion avails itself
of an eternal decree for the riddance of the universe from evil. It will plead
that the idea of test includes only the detection of evil and no more; but this
is neither the philosophical nor the Scriptural meaning of the word

2. The theory of Universal Restoration does the same, but for a different issue.
It has the dogma of fixed Predestination, without the Election of Calvinism. It
makes the tremendous history of human sin only an interlude that will be
forgotten, or only drawn out of the recesses of oblivion as a precedent in the
government of other worlds

According to such an idea of probation the Creator indeed experiments with the
principle of test and fails; finally withdrawing His creatures from this law
with its responsibility, and constraining them to sanctity. Hence this scheme
pleads like the former that test aims at the detection of evil alone, but only
to bring out the unfathomable resources of Divine grace. In some exhibitions of
this principle, the test indeed runs on after this life on principles
independent of the redemption of Christ. But in them also, as in all these forms
of Universalism, the strict notion of test leading to fixed confirmation is lost

IV. The Hierarchical and Sacramentarian theories of the administration of grace,
with their dogma of Merit, in their extreme forms seriously affect this doctrine

1. The principle of a necessary conveyance of grace through Sacraments in the
hand of a human mediator tends to undermine the sanctity of human probation: if
not in theory certainly in practice. It may be said that the failure of that
grace in the case of persons interposing the bar of mortal sin leaves the issues
to the applicant: this may indeed save the system from its worst theoretical
consequences, but practically it impairs the sense of personal probation, making
the Church with its sevenfold hedge of Sacramental ordinances the same kind of
refuge from the strain of personal responsibility which Antinomianism makes the
merit of Christ. Here, as often, two opposite schools meet

2. The specific dogma that the Counsels of Perfection test the character of
believers, and stimulate them to a higher attainment, is an unscriptural one, so
far as it introduces a new element in probation. It will be urged that our Lord
Himself applied these as tests during His personal administration of His
kingdom. But it must be remembered that He used these tests under special
circumstances; that, strictly speaking, He never applied but one of the
Counsels, that of the renunciation of property; and that, in the application of
this, He only laid down a principle of universal importance with a specific
reference to the need of a particular case. He never used tests of probation
which should distinguish one class of His disciples from another in all ages

3. Hence the doctrine and practice of Romanism as the chief representative of
the Sacramentarian system, and that of Merit resulting from obedience to
Counsels, in two ways interfere with the reality of probation: first, by taking
away to some extent the probationary responsibility of the believer, and,
secondly, by applying a superfluous and limited test. Probation is in
Christianity the same for all, and for all alike. It is not meant that these
systems absolutely undermine the foundations of human trial. They retain the
broad features of it, with its eternal issues; but they deeply prejudice its
true Evangelical character

V. The general principles of the doctrine here laid down will be found in the
Analogy of Bishop Butler, whose chapters on the State of Trial, the Moral
Government of God, and the State of Probation, should be carefully studied. A
few extracts of a defensive character may appropriately close these remarks

"The general doctrine of Religion, that our present life is a state of probation
for a future one, comprehends under it several particular things, distinct from
each other. But the first and most common meaning of it seems to be that our
future interest is now depending, and depending upon ourselves; that we have
scope and opportunity here for that good and bad behavior which God will reward
and punish hereafter; together with temptations to one, as well as inducements
of reason to the other. And this is, in a great measure, the same with saying
that we are under the moral government of God, and to give an account of our
actions to Him. For, the notion of a future account and general righteous
judgment implies some sort of temptations to what is wrong: otherwise there
would be no moral possibility of doing wrong, nor ground for judgment or
discrimination. But there is this difference, that the word probation is more
distinctly and particularly expressive of allurements to wrong, or difficulties
in adhering uniformly to what is right, and of the dangers of miscarrying by
such temptations, than the words moral government

"But the thing here insisted upon is, that the state of trial, which Religion
teaches us we are in, is rendered credible, by its being throughout uniform and
of a piece with the general conduct of Providence towards us, in all other
respects within the compass of our knowledge. Indeed if mankind, considered in
their capacity as inhabitants of the world only, found themselves, from their
birth to their death, in a settled state of security and happiness, without any
solicitude or thought of their own: or if they were in no danger of being
brought into inconveniences and distress, by carelessness, or the folly of
passion, through bad example, the treachery of others, or the deceitful
appearances of things: were this our natural condition, then it might seem
strange, and be some presumption against the truth of Religion, that it
represents our future and more general interest, as not secure of course, but as
depending upon our behavior, and requiring recollection and self-government to
obtain it. For it might be alleged, ’What you say is our condition in one
respect, is not in any wise of a sort with what we find, by experience, our
condition is in another. Our whole present interest is secured to our hands,
without any solicitude of ours; and why should not our future interest, if we
have any such, be so too?’ But since, on the contrary, thought and
consideration, the voluntary denying ourselves many things which we desire, and
a course of behavior far from being always agreeable to us, are absolutely
necessary to our acting even a common decent, and a common prudent part, so as
to pass with any satisfaction through the present world, and be received upon
any tolerable good terms in it: since this is the case, all presumption against
self-denial and attention being necessary to secure our highest interest, is
removed. Had we not experience it might, perhaps speciously, be urged, that it
is improbable anything of hazard and danger should be put upon us by an Infinite
Being when everything which is hazard and danger in our manner of conception,
and will end in error, confusion, and misery, is now already certain in His
foreknowledge." ASSURANCE The full confidence of salvation, which the Divine
Spirit works in the believer, is best studied under two aspects. First, there is
objective and external ground of assurance provided in the work of redemption
and the means of grace. Secondly, there is the individual assurance of faith and
of hope and of understanding based upon or flowing from the former through the
operation of the Holy Ghost. Having considered these, we must then review the
several points in which Christian Confessions vary on these important questions
As to the internal assurance, much has already been said in relation to the
Spirit’s evidence of the several blessings in the Christian covenant; and as to
the external something will be added under the doctrine of the Sacraments. But a
general view of the ground and nature of assurance is necessary here, as
belonging to the theology of Probation OBJECTIVE ASSURANCE The external and
everlasting ground of certainty to the Christian Church that the covenant of
grace is sure is the resurrection of its Surety, which is declared historically
and confirmed by the Holy Ghost. This confirmation, however, is connected with
certain appointed means of grace, which are standing pledges of the Divine
fidelity

I. The resurrection of our Lord is set forth throughout the New Testament as the
abiding ground of Christian confidence: especially by St. Paul, who knew the
Redeemer only as risen. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, he writes: If
Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.1
Preaching in Antioch his first recorded sermon, he marks very emphatically the
pledge given in Christ’s resurrection. The Father receives the Son: Thou art My
Son, this day have I begotten Thee!2 begotten perfectly in human nature as the
finished Mediator, Priest, and Prophet, and King. Turning to us He says: I will
give you the sure mercies of David, as the pledge of the accomplishment of all
the promise which was made unto the fathers. To those who doubt the resurrection
of Christ there is not only no assurance as to the truth of Christianity, but
there is no assurance of any revelation from God; and from this there is but a
step to universal skepticism. This has been exhibited under the Mediatorial
Work. It is needful only to sum up:

1 1 Corinthians 15:14; 2 Acts 13:32-34

1. In the resurrection of Christ, the body of believers are certified that sin
is abolished as a condemnation and a power, By one offering He hath perfected
for ever them that are sanctified:1 perfected their ground of assurance, whence
their boldness to enter into the holiest. St. Paul says, on behalf of the whole
company of saints: I am crucified with Christ!2 His certitude is the certitude
of all who are united with the Redeemer, that His life, following on His death
of expiation, declares the eternal abolition of the penalty and strength of the
law 1 Hebrews 10:14; Hebrews 10:19; 2 Galatians 2:20

2. His resurrection is the pledge of the presence of a living omnipotent Savior
in heaven: He is Lord of all,1 said St. Peter in his grand parenthesis: that
Jesus, namely, "Whom God raised up the third day and showed Him openly. As the
Living Lord who died He Himself gives assurance in His last and most glorious
manifestation on earth: Fear not; I am the First and the Last; I am He that
liveth and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore, [Amen]; and have the
keys of death and of Hades.2 The interpolated AMEN is common to Christ and the
Church: the mutual seal of a full assurance. This is the living pledge or
Sacrament in heaven. Him the heavens must receive until the times of restoration
of all things:3 the rendering given by Lutheran theology, Who must receive the
heavens—that is, for us—is sound theology but unsound interpretation. Christ is,
however, in heaven, and the true Tree of life which is in [the midst of] the
paradise of God.4 Of this assurance the Church might say: IT IS ENOUGH; let this
be instead of all other pledges and Sacraments 1 Acts 10:36; Acts 10:40; 2
Revelation 1:17-18; 3 Acts 3:21; 4 Revelation 2:7

II. But in the purpose of God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of
promise the immutability of His counsel,1 it is not enough. What the presence of
Christ in heaven is as an undying pledge the means of grace are on earth

1 Hebrews 6:17

1. Generally, all means of grace are also seals of grace: the Word or Bible,
Prayer, the House of God, the Assembly, the Christian Sabbath, are all standing
ordinances which guarantee the certitude, of salvation. The entire institute of
external Christianity is an attestation of Divine fidelity to the covenant of
grace; an abiding memorial of the risen Lord

2. Specifically, the Sacraments are silent pledges and seals as well as
instruments of grace: such is Baptism at the threshold and such is the Eucharist
within; both are seals of the grace of justification, regeneration, and
sanctification. Baptism for ever pledges the first and the constant washing away
of sin. The Eucharist pledges the first and the constant partaking of Christ:
the latter is, in this view, the continuation of the former; and they unite to
assure the certitude of the common salvation

3. These are all external or objective pledges for assurance. The very existence
of an institute of worship, the everflowing water of baptism, and the table
always spread, are silent tokens that salvation is with us: we see heaven open
and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son ofMan 1:1 These
ordinances are midway between us and the living eternal Sacrament in heaven:
they are sealing ordinances in the Church

We approach them as outward and visible pledges, VERBA VISIBILIA, which cry on
earth as the resurrection of Christ does in heaven: Be it known unto you, that
through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.2 But the external
becomes the internal pledge: the seal without becomes the seal within 1 John
1:51; 2 Acts 13:38 SUBJECTIVE ASSURANCE The blessing of personal assurance is
the gift of the Holy Ghost, whose office is to bear His witness TO the
conscience of justification, of adoption WITH the spirit, and IN the soul of
sanctification. The assurance is the assurance of faith for the present, of hope
for the future, and of understanding as underlying all. As this internal
assurance is not independent of the external seals and pledges, so it is itself
verified by the testimony of the fruits of faith in the life. The testimony of
the Spirit is one, though not one and the same, with the testimony of conscience
THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT The Holy Spirit discharges, as has been seen, two
classes of office on behalf of the Redeemer. He testifies TO the soul the virtue
of the things of Christ, and He effects WITHIN the soul the formation of Christ
Himself. There is a sense in which both are equally within the human spirit; but
we now consider His witness as, so to speak, external

1. He is not expressly said to assure of pardon. That is rather implied and
involved than stated. The Savior declared personal forgiveness in His own name,
that men might know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins.1 So
often did He utter this word that we cannot doubt as to its being the universal
prerogative of penitence to hear it. It may be taken for granted that this most
blessed formula was among others to be for ever brought to remembrance by the
Holy Ghost: though our Lord has, so to speak, reserved it for Himself, If His
servants were to pronounce it in His name, it was only as the organs of the
Spirit. Jesus was exalted by God to give repentance and forgiveness of sins, of
which there are two witnesses: first, the preachers of the Gospel, we are
witnesses of these things; secondly, the Holy Ghost Whom God hath given to them
that obey Him.2 It is through the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that we know
that there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.3 Our Lord’s
forgiveness, for it is His, His Agent evermore pronounces 1 Matthew 9:6; 2 Acts
5:31-32; 3 Romans 8:1-2

2. One of His names is the Spirit of adoption. Though it is our own spirit
regenerate that as it were naturally says Abba, Father,1 it is the Holy Spirit
in our spirit: the distinction between the regenerate spirit and the Holy Spirit
is nearly lost in the New Testament. The Spirit Itself beareth witness with our
spirit:2 summartureí toó pneúmati heemoó. He mingles His life and breath with
ours: we cry Father, yet not we but the Spirit in us and with us. The sun
preserves the distinction, but it is lost again in the filial cry 1 Galatians
4:6; 2 Romans 8:16

3. In the temple of Christian privilege, the Spirit is a silent seal of
consecration: ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.1 This is the
personal Spirit of witness, WHO is the earnest, os, and concerning Whom we are
exhorted, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.2 Mark that it is the temple-epistle
which alludes to the sealing, and mentions no other witness of the Spirit,
though this one includes and perfects all the rest 1 Ephesians 1:13; 2 Ephesians
4:30 ASSURANCE AND CONFIDENCE The certitude of the believer is constantly
referred to by two terms: assurance and confidence. These may be considered
first as corresponding to each other, and then as united: the former being the
certitude of the inner man, the latter the expression of it in the outer life I.
The instances wherein the former, pleeroforia, is used are three, which must be
observed in their order

1. St. Paul, in his First Epistle, speaks of the Gospel having come to the
Thessalonians in much assurance:1 explained afterwards as the Word of God, which
effectually worketh also in you that believe.2 This is the internal assurance of
which he speaks as the being sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise,
esfragistheete, after that ye believed,3 pisteusantes, on their believing, and
it must be observed that the term used connotes both the sealing for God and the
sealing of the truth to the believer himself. The former meaning is more in
harmony with other instances of its use in the New Testament, but the latter
cannot be excluded; it is indeed preferred by many expositors, who seem to
confound the sealing of the truth to the mind with the sealing of the mind
receiving it

Believers are assured of the Word of Truth of the Gospel of salvation on their
believing, and this their assurance is their seal for God. They retain this
confidence, and always draw near in full assurance of faith,4 having their
hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. This is wrought by the Spirit; it is
not of the essence of faith itself but its highest prerogative; it is the
general privilege of those who truly believe 1 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 2 1
Thessalonians 2:13; 3 Ephesians 1:13; 4 Hebrews 10:22 2. As it respects the
future faith is hope: its confidence somewhat changes its character

Absolute confidence as to the present, it may increase as it regards the future.
And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full
assurance of hope unto the end:1 spoudeén prós teén pleeroforían teés elpídos
áchri télous. More and more full as the toil or labor of love2 increases, it
never outgrows hope. It becomes indeed the full assurance of hope: a subtle and
most beautiful expression that experience only can comprehend: the
substantiation of things hoped for 1 Hebrews 6:10-11; 2 1 Thessalonians 1:3

3. Once only is the full assurance of understanding spoken of: St. Paul prays on
behalf of the Colossians that they might add to the two other kinds of assurance
an abounding and undimmed confidence of the understanding, suneseoos, in all the
truths that belong to the mystery of God,1 which is Christ. It imports that it
is the privilege of all who receive Christ to have an intellectual and
experimental hold of Him, and of the whole circle of His doctrine. They know
truth, as truth is in Jesus:2 that is, not only the truth but truth

They have the highest knowledge which is the knowledge of faith, they have such
faith in this Object as makes it the certitude of knowledge. This is that
TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI which the old confessions held; the seal of the Holy
Ghost confirming to the believer the; verity of the Christian Faith, without
which all belief of the understanding is dead 1 Colossians 2:2; 2 Ephesians 4:21
II. The latter, parrhesia, occurs in remarkable correspondence with the former

1. There is in the New Testament a parrhesia for each pleeroforias, the external
profession of that internal assurance. We are exhorted to come boldly unto the
throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy:1 the confidence with which we ask for
the mercy and seasonable help we still and always need is the confidence of
uttered boldness. This is equivalent to the outward expression of inward
confidence in our sympathizing High Priest: let us hold fast our profession. The
inward and outward assurance go together, or are united at the foot of the
throne. We have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him:2 a
forcible expression in which faith, its assurance, and its confident speech to
God are delicately distinguished. And this is the confidence that we have in
Him,3 pros auton: this pros has a very wide meaning; it is the strongest
preposition that could be used to signify the intimate familiarity of trust.
Here then is the confident speech of the full assurance of faith 1 Hebrews 4:14;
Hebrews 4:16; 2 Ephesians 3:12; 3 1 John 5:14

2. Cast not away therefore your confidence,1 teen parreesian: this is the
confidence of hope, for ye have need of patience; of that hope wherein faith is
the substance of things hoped for.2 Again: And now, little children, abide in
Him, that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, parreesian: may not
have lost it, not be ashamed before Him at His coming.3 Faith is certain now, as
hope it is conditionally certain, and must persevere if it is not to be made
ashamed. Here then is the confident expectation and bold expression of the full
assurance of hope 1 Hebrews 10:35-36; 2 Hebrews 11:1; 3 1 John 2:28

3. Lastly, the confidence and boldness of confession answers to the full
assurance of understanding. They that have used the office of a deacon well
purchase to themselves a good degree and great boldness,1 parreesian polleen, in
the faith of Christ Jesus. The deacon’s reward of fidelity is the blessing of an
unfaltering confidence in the truth of what he preaches. When the Apostle says,
Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech,2
parreesia, he means that steadfast and tranquil proclamation which the sight of
the unveiled Christ inspires. As the boldness of hope increases so also the
confidence of the understanding. The transcendent blessing of faith and hope and
understanding is one in this boldness of confession which believes and does not
tremble, which believes and is raised above all shadow of doubt 1 1 Timothy
3:13; 2 2 Corinthians 3:12

III. The Epistle to the Hebrews, which has given us so many illustrations of our
doctrine, sums up its own teaching of assurance and boldness at the close, in a
sentence which drops the two words but retains their meaning: just as it sums up
its doctrine of the altar and temple in new terms: We have an altar!1 éstin dé
pístis elpizoménoon hupóstasis pragmátoon élengchos ou blepoménoon.2 The great
chapter of faith contains its full assurance of present acceptance, its full
assurance of a conditional hope, and its full assurance of understanding as to
the three supreme articles of all faith, concerning God that He is, and that He
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,3 concerning the Gospel
Righteousness which is by faith, and concerning the better country of
everlasting life in which all the saints shall be made perfect. As we are saved
by hope, faith as hope comes first: faith gives body and substance to things
unseen and future for present experience of their reality and trust in their
future possession; and its labors to make its assurance of hope perfect are the
subject of the whole chapter and make the two economies of grace one. The entire
strain witnesses the good confession of faith, the parreesia of its pleeroforia
1 Hebrews 13:10; 2 Hebrews 11:1; 3 Hebrews 11:6-7; Hebrews 11:40 THE TESTIMONY
OF OUR OWN SPIRIT The interior assurance is connected with the external; it
guards and confirms it; and is itself guarded and confirmed by the evidence of
the fruits of holiness, or the testimony of a conscience void of offence. This
may be called the witness of our own spirit, though Scripture does not so term
it

1. The direct assurance or witness of the Holy Spirit rests generally upon the
indirect witness of the external pledges. (1) There may be occasional departures
from this law: for instance, where the Gospel vocation is independent of the
Christian Church and its organization; where, in certain transcendent and
irregular dealings of Divine grace, the soul is rapt into a region higher than
the appointed ordinances. The ordinary public means of grace, including the
Sacraments, may seem occasionally to be only indirectly connected with the
soul’s assurance. (2) But the Word of God and prayer are invariably the vehicle,
instrument, and channel for His impartation of assurance: it is in answer to
prayer, sometimes solitary and sometimes only ejaculatory; and generally through
the application to the soul of the promises of the Holy Scripture. We also joy
in God through our Lord, Jesus Christ, by Whom we have now received the
Atonement:1 the objective Atonement provided for all men in Christ must be
received and internally appropriated; and without this appropriation, through
faith in the Word of reconciliation, there can be no confidence towards God.
Concerning this reception it is said that the love of God is shed abroad in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us:2 shed abroad in the
consciousness 1 Romans 5:11; 2 Romans 5:5

2. This is the seal set by the soul itself in its experience, to the verity and
value of the external pledges. Receiving the testimony given in the Word and
Sacraments to a heavenly grace provided for man, the satisfied believer, finding
in himself the Spirit’s own assurance, having received His testimony, hath set
to his seal that God is true:1 hath added his own seal to the seal of God. Thus
the Spirit’s interior seal becomes to those who believe their own seal of the
exterior Sacrament: they can say, Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for
we have heard Him ourselves.2 1 John 3:33; 2 John 4:42

3. The Spirit’s evidence, based on the Word and Sacrament, is guarded by the
ethical and moral testimony of the life. Where-ever the assurance of the Spirit
is mentioned there is to be found hard by the appeal to the resulting and never
absent evidences of devotion, obedience, and charity. For as many as are led by
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the Spirit
of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, in Whom
we cry, Abba, Father.1 The former verse gives the test whereby we know that we
are the sons of God: the test of our submission to His Spirit The latter gives
another test: the voice within us of the Spirit of adoption. Concerning both and
united it is said: if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.
So in St. John’s First Epistle, the witnessing, indwelling, and renewing Spirit
are one and indistinguishable. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him2—accepted in
the Beloved— and He in us—working out our holiness—because He hath given us of
His Spirit. God the Holy Ghost does not in His testimony supersede conscience:
He honors that ancient representative of the Divine voice within the nature of
man; and never disjoin? His evidence from that of the subjective moral
consciousness which condemns or approves— in this case approves—according to the
standard of law written on the heart, or the conscience objective. He is indeed
greater than our heart3—or conscience— and knoweth all things. He knoweth the
mystery of the Atonement and may silence the condemning heart. But if he assures
of pardon He commits the assurance to the conscience as its guardian; so that if
our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.4 The same Apostle
who said, We, joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom we have now
received the Atonement, kauchoomenoi, said also, For our rejoicing is this, the
testimony of our conscience: kaucheesis heemoon. The repetition of this
expressive word deserves to be considered. The very rejoicing which the Holy
Ghost inspires by shedding the love of God abroad in the heart reappears as the
rejoicing of the regenerate soul conscious only of walking by the grace of God,
in simplicity and godly sincerity.5 1Romans 8:14-15; 2 1 John 4:13; 3 1 John
3:20-21; 4 Romans 5:11; 5 2 Corinthians 1:12

4. Thus, God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the
immutability of His counsel,1 hath given seal upon seal, pledge upon pledge. The
Holy Ghost, the Parakleetos, gives us strong consolation, ischuran parakleesin.
There are the silent pledges in which each emblem being dead yet speaketh: there
is the inward personal assurance, the Sacrament in the heart; there is the
confirming attesting witness of the life; and, over all, as heaven is over all,
the Risen Son of Man, the Crucified Mediator upon earth who is in the Holiest
our Living Surety, Who hath entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the
presence of God for us.2 1 Hebrews 6:17-18; 2 Hebrews 9:24

HISTORICAL

Bringing the several Confessions to this standard of doctrine, and testing them
by this one article of assurance, we find many variations of more or less
significance

I. The Sacramentarian doctrine of assurance contains some most important
elements of truth, as has been seen, but some errors also, which may be noted in
the following tendencies

1. In Romanism and in Romanising theories it makes the evidence of salvation a
concomitant of the sacrament of Penance, or of the priestly absolution; and
this, when received, is fitful and occasional, and dependent on the contingency
of a sufficient compliance with the conditions. It falls very much below the
dignity and blessedness of a direct communication of the Eternal Spirit to the
spirit of the believer in Christ

2. The Sacramental theory in general denies rightly that to any mortal is given
the assurance of final acceptance; the day of judgment being the sealing
revelation, and last assurance of safety: looking for the mercy of our Lord
Jesus Christ unto eternal life.1 But it too often refuses to admit a state of
present certainty as included in the provisions of the Christian covenant, at
least as the common privilege of all who believe

1 Jude 1:21

3. It has introduced a special charisma or gift of assurance of Perseverance, a
sealing for the elect of the Elect: thus combining in one extraordinary
privilege the assurance of faith for the present and that of hope for the
future, or, in other words, adding to the witness of the Spirit a pledge of
final perseverance

4. In some forms it has sunk much below the true doctrine. As, for instance,
among those who so far recoil from the fanaticism, as they term it, of the
doctrine of assurance as to deny altogether the possibility of its attainment?
This is sometimes an exaggeration of ascetic humility, sometimes an irrational
recoil from enthusiasm, and sometimes the result of an undue preponderance given
to the sterner side of probation II. Mysticism has always abounded in its own
peculiar developments of the doctrine of probationary assurance

1. Its best and purest theology has generally maintained a present assurance of
faith, generally though not always imparted, but without the absolute assurance
as to the future

It has sometimes undervalued the objective grounds of confidence in its
preference for the internal light. Mysticism has been in all ages either
avowedly or virtually a reaction and protest against superstitious dependence on
the external props of Christian certitude, and such exaggeration of the soleness
of the inward witness was to be expected. It is seen among the Pietists of
Germany, among the Friends, and occasionally among the less instructed
Methodists: in fact, among all who have been suddenly aroused by strong tides of
religious revival from indifference or from ceremonialism to the intense pursuit
of personal salvation

2. The extravagant Mystics of the Illuminist and Quietist types erred
exceedingly: the former, forgetting the conditions of assurance, repentance, and
faith; the latter, making the perfection of religion to consist in an absolute
indifference to assurance and evidence and feeling of every kind. Their doctrine
of disinterested love, pressed to the extreme of the utter extinction of desire
of heaven and fear of hell, overturns the very foundation of any theory of
personal evidence of salvation

III. The doctrine of Assurance, taught by what may be called the Calvinistic
system, on the one hand, falls below the standard of Scripture, while, on the
other, it goes beyond its plain teaching. Both the defect and the excess must be
studied

1. It falls below the calm and steadfast confidence which the whole New
Testament declares to be the privilege for the present moment of him who
believes in Christ.

(1) It distinguishes too sharply between assurance and faith, and is disposed
rather to overvalue the external grounds of confidence in comparison of the
internal. Certainly faith may exist without assurance; nor is assurance
absolutely and unconditionally necessary to salvation. But, though faith itself
has no reflex thought of itself, looking only at Christ, it is in its perfect
saving energy accompanied by the assurance which is indeed indistinguishable
from faith in its highest exercise. He loved me and gave Himself for me1 was the
testimony of St. Paul, who, though he spoke in this style of appropriating
confidence only once, evidently intended to define by its highest privilege the
Christian’s true faith of the Son of God in which he lives.

(2) It makes assurance a special privilege of the few who through much
discipline attain it as a gift of God; and, accordingly, dwells too much on the
alternations and fluctuations of experience to which it pleases God for the
trial of their constancy to subject believers.

(3) It confounds the assurance of present faith with the assurance of hope:
making the former only the confidence that Jesus is what He is declared to be
generally, and the latter the confidence in personal salvation. That distinction
is contrary to Scripture, which does not present as the object of saving faith
only Christ’s Person, work, and ability, and willingness to save us generally if
we believe, but also His present relation to us individually as a Savior. Until
faith embraces the Lord as a personal Deliverer it is not that faith in its
integrity of which we now speak. Granted that a firm appropriating trust in
Christ, apart from the evidence of it, insures salvation, as salvation is an
objective act of God, subjective or experienced salvation has no meaning without
the knowledge of it. The word has not its full significance and its perfect
rights until the objective and the subjective blend. This will be abundantly
clear if we change the expression into justification or pardon or adoption or
life from the dead. These blessings pronounced by God must be heard by man, or
they are not truly his. Hence the Word of God bids those who are supposed to
have the assurance of present faith to confirm continually the confidence of
their hope by holy living 1 Galatians 2:20

2. On the other hand, it goes beyond the standard of Scripture. When once
attained, the assurance is indefectible: while the essence of saving faith is
regarded as the assurance that Christ generally is all that He is set forth, and
will do all that He promises—a faith therefore, we repeat, independent as such
of any personal appropriation—the assurance of our own personal salvation is an
independent fruit of faith, and a high attainment of the spiritual life. It is
the Divinely inwrought confidence of an eternal salvation, and the exhortation
not to cast away its confidence is, if not superfluous, only a prudential
expedient for moral discipline. But this subject belongs to our next section

3. Both the defect and excess of the doctrine, and also its true points, are
seen in the following words of the Westminster Confession: " This infallible
assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer
may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it:
yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him
of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary
means, attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all
diligence to make his calling and election sure." Here is a certain
inconsistency in making a free gift the result of diligent seeking. When it is
added that " true believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers
ways shaken," that is true of all assurance, though not precisely in the sense
of this document

IV. Methodism has done much to clear the Scriptural doctrine of Assurance from
the misapprehensions that have obscured it in its system of religious teaching
the following points are made prominent and sharply defined 1. It is asserted to
be the COMMON PRIVILEGE of all who believe; being the accompaniment of every
blessing of the Christian covenant: not, indeed, of the essence of justifying
faith, but a result of it that may be expected, and should be sought

(1.) Mr. Wesley says on the former subject: "Is justifying faith a sense of
pardon? Negatur. 1. Everyone is deeply concerned to understand this question
well; but Preachers most of all. 2. By justifying faith I mean that faith which
whosoever hath not is under the wrath and the curse of God. By a sense of pardon
I mean a distinct explicit assurance that my sins are forgiven. I allow (1) that
there is an explicit assurance;

(2) that it is the common privilege of real Christians;

(3) that it is the proper Christian Faith which ’purifieth the heart’ and
’over-cometh the world.’ But I cannot allow that justifying faith is such an
assurance, or necessarily connected therewith. 3. Because if justifying faith
necessarily implies such an explicit assurance of pardon, then everyone who has
it not and everyone so long as he has it not is under the wrath and the curse of
God. But this is a supposition contrary to Scripture as well as to experience.
Contrary to Isaiah 1:10, and Acts 10:34-35. Again, the assertion justifying
faith is a sense of pardon/ is contrary to reason: it is flatly absurd. For how
can a sense of pardon be the condition of our receiving it?"

(2.) As to the latter: " The second inference is, let none rest in any supposed
fruit of the Spirit without the witness. There may be foretastes of joy, of
peace, of love, and those not delusive, but really from God, long before we
have; the witness in ourselves; before the Spirit of God witnesses with our
spirits that we have redemption in the blood of Jesus, even the forgiveness of
sins.’ Yea, there may be a degree of longsuffering, of gentleness, of fidelity,
meekness, temperance, (not a shadow thereof, but a real degree, by the
preventing grace of God,) before we ’are accepted in the Beloved,’ and,
consequently, before we have a testimony of our acceptance: but it is by no
means advisable to rest here; it is at the peril of our souls if we do. If we
are wise, we shall be continually crying to God, until His Spirit cry in our
heart, Abba, Father!’ This is the privilege of all the children of God, and
without this we can never be assured that we are His children

Without this we cannot retain a steady peace, nor avoid perplexing doubts and
fears. But when we have once received this Spirit of adoption, this ’ peace,
which passcth all understanding/ and which expels all painful doubt and fear,
will ’ keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.’ And when this has brought
forth its genuine fruit, all inward and outward holiness, it is undoubtedly the
will of Him that calleth us, to give us always what He has once given; so that
there is no need that we should ever more be deprived of either the testimony of
God’s Spirit, or the testimony of our own, the consciousness of our walking in
all righteousness and true holiness."

(3.) He also in many passages of his writings shows that the testimony of the
Spirit is borne to our justification, adoption and sanctification severally and
respectively. As to the two former no evidence is needed: as to the witness of
sanctification he says: "To this confidence, that God is both able and willing
to sanctify us now, there needs to be added one thing more, —a Divine evidence
and conviction that He doeth it. In that hour it is done, God says to the inmost
soul, ’ According to thy faith be it unto thee!’ Then the soul is pure from
every spot of sin; it is clean ’ from all unrighteousness/ The believer then
experiences the deep meaning of those solemn words, ’If we walk in the light as
He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’" Here two remarks must be made. The
distinction maintained above, between the faith and its assurance, still holds
good. By the " conviction that He doeth it" is meant the certainty conveyed to
the soul that the work of entire sanctification is wrought. The " evidence "
that is the perfection of faith itself, and the confidence that it has its
object, are not always kept asunder in the Sermons. But it is undoubted that Mr.
Wesley taught that the witness of finished sanctification is to be expected.
Again, by " sanctify" here he means entirely sanctify: not being always careful
to observe his own rule on the subject. There is no text of Scripture that
directly promises the knowledge of so great an internal work; but none is
necessary. It is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit to make His indwelling and
work evident to the consciousness: " God ’sealeth us with the Spirit of promise’
by giving us ’ the full assurance of hope/ such a confidence of receiving all
the promises of God, as excludes the possibility of doubting; with that Holy
Spirit, by universal holiness, stamping the whole image of God on our hearts."
The subject of this last assurance will come up again. Meanwhile, it is enough
to say that the Methodist doctrine of the Spirit’s witness covers the whole
ground of the Spirit’s work. It rests upon the firm foundation of the Scripture
that we know the things that are freely given unto us of God.1 The assurance in
the several departments of covenant blessing may bear various characters. Given
to the pardoned sinner it is a sense of unspeakable relief to the conscience; in
the heart of the adopted child it is the irrepressible filial confidence; in the
regenerate spirit sanctified to God it is the silent seal of a Divine
indwelling, abiding in the soul as the awful sense of the Triune God within and
deepening into the assurance that He fills the whole heart, or the witness of
entire sanctification 1 1 Corinthians 2:12

2. It is the DIRECT WITNESS of the Spirit, not independent of the objective and
external grounds of assurance, but given through them, or indeed without them,
directly to the soul. " The sum of all is this: The testimony of the Spirit is
an inward impression on the souls of believers, whereby the Spirit of God
directly testifies to their spirit, that they are children of God. And it is not
questioned, whether there is a testimony of the Spirit; but whether there is any
direct testimony; whether there is any other than that which arises from a
consciousness of the fruit of the Spirit. We believe there is; because this is
the plain natural meaning of the text, illustrated both by the preceding words
and by the parallel passage in the Epistle to the Galatians; because, in the
nature of the thing, the testimony must precede the fruit which springs from it;
and, because this plain meaning of the Word of God is confirmed by the
experience of innumerable children of God; yea, and by the experience of all who
are convinced of sin, who can never rest till they have a direct witness; and
even of the children of the world, who, not having the witness in themselves,
one and all declare, none can know his sins forgiven." The directness or
immediateness of this testimony was contended against in the early days of
Methodism, as it has been opposed, more or less, in all ages. The opposition,
however, was of two kinds. Some denied the possibility on the general ground
that there could be no security against enthusiasm. But the Spirit within the
spirit of man is to all who know God the most real of all realities. Others
insisted that there could be no such witness apart from the testimony of the
consciousness of a sincere use of the external means of grace, and obedience to
the commandments of God: in other words, that the testimony of the Spirit must
in the nature of things be indirect if the means of grace are the objective
grounds of assurance. But there are some plain passages concerning the testimony
which expressly preclude the possibility that it is borne through the medium of
any symbol or sacrament

Whatever voice, or word, or ordinance may be employed—each and all may be
employed, and the Word in some form always—the assurance must ultimately be
conveyed direct from Spirit to spirit. Mr. "Wesley in his candor understates his
argument again and again. He deals with an objector thus: " ’ But the direct
witness is never referred to in the Book of God.’ Not as standing alone; not as
a single witness; but as connected with the other; as giving a joint testimony;
testifying with our spirit, that we are children of God." Strictly speaking,
there is no passage which more absolutely declares the direct and sole testimony
of the Holy Ghost. The summarturei is indeed a joint testimony; but our own
spirit is not supposed to bring its inferences to be confirmed; rather the
witness of the Holy Ghost to our adoption is borne through the spirit of our new
regenerate life. Elsewhere Mr. Wesley says, with more ‘precision: " the
preposition sun only denoting that He witnesses this at the same time that He
enables us to cry Abba, Father. But I contend not; seeing so many other texts,
with the experience of all real Christians, sufficiently evince that there is in
every believer both the testimony of God’s Spirit, and the testimony of his own,
that he is a child of God." These last words suggest the remark that the
Methodist doctrine is unfairly dealt with when it is supposed to rest upon one,
two, or three cardinal passages. The Sermon quoted ranges through a wide variety
of Scriptural proofs; and it does not include all Hard by the words here and
habitually quoted there are others which even yet more strongly declare the
Mystery of the inward assurance of the child of God: that, namely, which speaks
of the Searcher of hearts hearing the voice of the interceding Spirit in the
inmost consciousness of His suffering children

3. It is always confirmed by the accompaniment of the INDIRECT WITNESS, or
testimony of the conscience on the evidence of a sincere life. The latter phrase
seems preferable for the reason just assigned. Though Mr. Wesley writes of it as
" The Witness of our own spirit" his discourse is or the characteristics of a
good conscience. " Neither is it questioned whether there is an indirect witness
or testimony, that we are the children of God. This is nearly, if not exactly,
the same with the testimony of a good conscience towards God; and is the result
of reason, or reflection on what we feel in our own souls. Strictly speaking, it
is a conclusion drawn partly from the Word of God, and partly from our own
experience. The Word of God says, everyone who has the fruit of the Spirit is a
child of God; experience, or inward consciousness, tells me that I have the
fruit of the Spirit; and hence I naturally conclude, ’Therefore I am a child of
God/" This witness is indirect as a conclusion: but as the consciousness of
experience, or of conscience, which is the moral consciousness, it is as direct
as that of the Spirit Himself, who may be said to bear witness together with our
conscience. The two are united ever in the perfect experience of the Christian.
But both admit of variations. " Nor do we assert that there can be any real
testimony of the Spirit without the fruit of the Spirit. We assert, on the
contrary, that the fruit of the Spirit immediately springs from this testimony:
not always indeed in the same degree, even when the testimony is first given;
and much less afterwards. Neither joy nor peace is always at one stay; no, nor
love; as neither is the testimony itself always equally strong and clear." None
of the doctrines to which Methodism gives prominence is more diligently fenced
and defended from the imputation of fanaticism than this of the direct and
indirect witness of the Holy Spirit THE GRACE OF PERSEVERANCE

Provision is made in the Christian covenant for the maintenance of religion in
the soul to the end. The source of this grace is the effectual intercession of
Christ, caring for His own. The manifestation of it is the all-sufficient power
of the Holy Spirit; in its nature and operation it is superabundant and
persistent; not indefectible however, but conditional on perseverance in
fidelity The general subject belongs to the Ethics as well as to the Doctrines
of Redemption. So far as it belongs to doctrine, two things must be noted.
First, there is a specific GRACE OF PERSEVERANCE provided in the Christian
covenant which is too often forgotten in the ardor of controversy: this we must
dwell upon briefly. Secondly, the chief stress of the treatment must needs be
laid on the polemical or historical aspect of it: that is, in the confutation of
the conventional dogma of FINAL PERSEVERANCE PERSEVERINGGRACE IN ITS GROUND

Christ’s eternal love to His own, as proved once for all in His supreme
sacrifice, is the pledge of persevering grace being granted by Him according to
all the varieties of their need. That love shows itself in special and effectual
intercession for them: intercession which is the Redeemer’s expressed will, and
also His prayer giving efficacy to ours

1. There is a sense in which the Lord regards the body of believers as His own
for time and for eternity. By His atonement He has secured them for Himself, and
secured for them every provision for eternal salvation. They are His portion of
the human race; and their continuance in grace is provided for: not only for
their own sake but also for His. He waits to rejoice over them in heaven as His
purchased possession,1 as His heritage or the portion that falleth to Him: And
all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine.2 There is no more impressive and
affecting representation of the bond between Christians and Christ their Head
than this, that they are given Him of the Father 1 Ephesians 1:14; 2 John 17:10

2. For this body, as distinguished from the world, He intercedes. His will is
their eternal salvation. Father, I will that, theloo hina, they also, whom Thou
hast given Me, be with Me where IAmos 1:1-15 His one Divine reward for His
Divine-human obedience is the salvation of His own. It also takes a human form:
the Father highly exalted Him and gave Him supreme dominion. He did not Himself
stipulate for this; He never even seems to glance beyond this world for His
recompense; but He does most expressly lay claim to His people as His
inheritance; satisfied with them, but with nothing less than they: of all which
He hath given Me I should lose nothing.2 Death seems to appropriate part of
them; but death must relinquish its prey: I will raise it up again at the last
day. His request or intercession also—almost as strong as His will—is for their
grace unto perseverance. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the
world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.3 And in
praying—eroto—for sufficient grace unto perseverance, our Lord included all His
own to the end of time: not simply as His own, however, but as believers, for
them also which shall believe on Me.4 They are His heritage, but as believing in
Him: not one without the other 1 John 17:24; 2 John 6:39; 3 John 17:15; 4 John
17:20

3. Hence, nothing is more certain than the perseverance of those who continue in
that body. They shall never perish; neither shall any pluck them out of My
hand.1 The, Father and the Son in eternal essence one, are united in the counsel
of redemption. But there is a special emphasis upon their unity in the
accomplishment of the design of grace as to the elect: I and My Father are One.2
The members of Christ’s mystical body are eternally foreknown, and grace will be
found to have been sufficiently provided for their whole estate of probation. He
who redeemed the world especially redeemed the Church; and known unto Him from
the beginning was the whole contest and diversified trial through which His
Church must become eternally His. Therefore He added to the treasure of His
redeeming merit the continual energy of His active intercession, providing grace
for every time of need. The High Priest of mankind is especially the Advocate of
His people: If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father... Who is the
Propitiation for the sins of the world.3 1 John 10:28; 2 John 10:30; 3 1 John
2:1-2 PERSEVERING GRACE IN ITSMANIFESTATION The grace of Perseverance is the
constant impartation of the Holy Ghost: indwelling as a seal and bringing
effectual succor in every time of need

I. St. Paul, in one of those passages into which he condenses the entire
substance of Gospel privilege, says: in Whom also after that ye believed ye were
sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance
until the redemption of the purchased possession.1 As to God, the Spirit is His
seal on the regenerate soul. As to the believer, the Spirit is to him the
earnest of a future inheritance. As to Christ, the Spirit is His representative
in the soul until He redeems His possession. But it is remarkable that in the
Epistle which mentions most emphatically the seal of the Spirit, of the personal
Indweller, we have the most urgent exhortation, grieve not the Holy Spirit.2
Though nothing in this tranquil Epistle is said of the possibility of the seal
being broken, nothing is said as to its being inviolable. Be not ye therefore
partakers with them3 is an injunction which seems to refer as much to the wrath
of God as to these things which caused it: have no participation with them,
either in their doings or in the punishment of those doings. In another
document, which teaches the same doctrine of the sealing Spirit, we read: If any
man destroy the temple of God, Mm shall God destroy; for the temple of God is
holy, which temple ye are.4 1 Ephesians 1:13-14; 2 Ephesians 4:30; 3 Ephesians
5:6-7; 4 1 Corinthians 3:7 II. Persevering grace is imparted for every
requirement of our infirmity, and that in three ways

1. It is the grace of watchfulness to keep what is attained: I have prayed for
thee, that thy faith fail not.1 This was said to one who failed in part: and did
not wholly fail only because grace was given to him which he used. The grace he
received taught him the need of watchfulness. He was bidden, when converted,
strengthen thy brethren; and his Epistles are specially adapted to encourage
confidence in the riches of the grace of Christ, the Keeper of Israel, at the
same time that they lay very great stress upon the humility that receives and
the diligence that uses His effectual grace. Be sober, be vigilant follows hard
upon Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.2 A watchful spirit
is the gift of God; but its watchfulness is its own use of that gift 1 Luke
22:31-32; 2 1 Peter 5:7-8

2. It is the manifold grace which enables the soul to accomplish every duty of
life. God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, always having
all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:1 this applies not
only to the duty of liberality, but to every duty. Having all-sufficiency from
God we must abound in our own diligence

There is no commandment without promise: promise of reward for obedience, and
promise of help to perform. But the grace which strengthens for endlessly
diversified duty is pledged to those and to those only who use it. Work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both
to will and to do of His good pleasure.2 The good pleasure which is here the
spring and the rule of the Divine working in us must become our own good
pleasure. St. Paul elsewhere gives us a variation on this great saying. We pray
always for you that our God may . . . fulfill every desire of goodness and every
work of faith with power.3 1 2 Corinthians 9:8; 2 Php 2:12-13; 3 2 Thessalonians
1:11

3. It is the effectual grace of support that enables the believer to sustain the
pressure of affliction and to endure all the will of God. The Apostle’s prayer
for the Colossians is, that they might be strengthened with all might, according
to His glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness.1 But
another Apostle says that the grace which enables the soul to sustain what is a
sharper test than any Satan can apply—the visitation of Providence, and the
spiritual suffering which precedes the death of the body of sin in conformity
with Christ who suffered for us in the flesh2—is to be used as our own amour,
not God’s alone: Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind. Finally, however,
when we have done and suffered all, and while we are doing and suffering all,
persevering grace is the Divine gift: But the God of all grace. Who hath called
you to His eternal glory in Christ \Jesus\ after that ye have suffered awhile,
will make perfect, stablish, strengthen, [settle] you.3 .1 Colossians 1:11; 2 1
Peter 4:1; 3 1 Peter 5:10 PERSEVERING GRACE IN ITSNATUREAND OPERATION This grace
is, as has been seen, strong and persistent; but mighty and enduring as it is,
it is still conditional

I. However viewed, the grace of Christ towards His own, and the power of the
Holy Spirit within them, go far to secure absolutely the final salvation of the
regenerate. The surpassing and unlimited love of the Redeemer, the reluctance of
the Spirit to forsake the work of His hands, the plenitude of the means of
grace, the growing blessedness of true religion, the might of intercessory
prayer both Divine and human, the feebleness of the Lord’s enemies in comparison
of His lightest influence, all conspire to show that the utter relapse and final
ruin of a regenerate soul is a hard possibility. If the Holy Ghost forsakes the
soul for ever which He has once inhabited, such a departure, rendering the place
so deeply and unalterably desolate, must be spoken of in the language of the
prophet as His strange work, His strangeActs 1:1-26

1 Isaiah 28:21

1. This blessed truth explains much in Scripture that seems to declare that the
Christian heritage is absolutely secure.

If God be for us, who can be against us?1 Here is both the question of
confidence and the apostrophe of defiance. The latter is continued in the
glowing words which assert that nothing, sin always excepted, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord 1 Romans
8:31-39

2. It explains the tone of assurance with which the future is looked forward to
among the Christians of the New Testament. We are not of them who draw back unto
perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.1 There is a
drawing back; but we may feel ourselves secure. Hence the strengthener of his
brethren, the Apostle of perseverance, bids them make your calling and election
sure:2 bebaian humoon. It may be made SURE, and this is the guarantee of
assurance. It must be MADE sure, and this is the pith of perseverance 1 Hebrews
10:39; 2 2 Peter 1:10

3. But it must be reconciled with the most positive testimonies that no man in
the present life can go beyond the assurance of hope. What a man seeth, why doth
he yet hope far?1 The solitary passage in the New Testament which describes
faith and hope as one and interchangeable gives the formula of the true
doctrine. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for:2 the present substantial
realization of what is ours only in hope. And very impressive is the fact that
St. Paul in two other passages describes Christian hope as keeping pace in its
measures with the increase of faith: Now the God of hope fill you with all joy
and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy
Ghost;3 and in another with the increase of experience: tribulation worketh
patience, and patience probation, and probation hope. This hope maketh not
ashamed; but no other reason of this is given than that the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.4 1 Romans 8:24; 2 Hebrews 11:1; 3 Romans
15:13; 4 Romans 5:3-5 II. The grace of continuance is conditional,
notwithstanding all that has been said

Unconditional grace may be spoken of as provided for the world as such, and for
the mystical Church as such: as received by individuals it is conditional.
Whether in the beginning of preliminary life, or in the mature life of the
regenerate, or in the most confirmed saints, its very nature as grace is bound
up with the condition that it is used by the free concurrence of him who
receives it

1. All grace of God is unconditional in its impartation to the old race in Adam,
and to the new race in Christ. The grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is
by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.1 As all mankind share the
displeasure of God caused by sin, so all share the beginnings of His mercy
drawing them to repentance. This preliminary grace, whether manifest through its
appointed means or imperceptible in its mysterious influence on the human heart,
is unconditional. So also the plenary gifts of grace, which all believers
receive out of His fullness,2 are unconditionally bestowed on the mystical body
of Christ, whatever and of whomsoever composed that body may be The Church, as
such, is a predestined object of our Lord’s eternal complacency. Hence the
language of the Scripture runs in the strain of indefectible gift of grace to
the body and fellowship of believers as foreseen and predestinated from the
foundation of the world 1 Romans 5:15; 2 John 1:16

2. But all grace, whether preliminary or saving, is as it concerns the
individual, and with respect to its effectual operation, conditional. Therefore
St. Paul’s exhortation, beseeching us that we receive not the grace of God in
vain:1 received freely in one sense and as irresistible, in another sense it may
be received in vain. Unless eis kenon ceases to mean to no purpose, or without
result, and unless it can be shown that St. Paul was addressing spurious
Christians, saving grace is not irremissible, But he certainly addressed, by
every token in the context, true believers in Christ, when he uttered this most
impressive appeal 1 2 Corinthians 6:1 HISTORICAL AND CONTROVERSIAL The
conventional dogma of Final Perseverance belongs to the Augustinian or
Calvinistic type of doctrine. There have been sundry attempts to attach this
doctrine to other systems, but they have been vain : it comports with no other
theory of the economy of grace than which limits it to a definite and elect
number, predetermined in the councils of eternity

Supposing redemption to be universal, and the offer of grace free for all, and
salvation possible to every man, some have also supposed that the grace of an
effectual regeneration must needs be indefectible and eternal. But a more
thorough examination of the Christian covenant tends to show that this generous
interpretation of the doctrine of persevering grace cannot be made consistent
with the freedom of will and personal responsibility which lie at the foundation
of universal redemption. The arguments for the indefectibility of grace in the
Elect are such as rest, first upon the nature of the Christian Covenant, and
then upon misunderstood Scriptures THE COVENANT OF REDEMPTION

What is called Final Perseverance, or the doctrine that grace can never be
finally lost, is defended generally not so much by Scripture as by the necessary
principles of the socalled Covenant of Redemption. So absolute and all-pervading
in this view of the Gospel is the idea of a fixed and unalterable division of
mankind that it is made a canon to which the interpretation of every passage of
Scripture must conform. What seems to be wrong in these principles has been
already indicated, but may be summarized once more

1. The Absolute sovereignty of the Divine will presides over an imaginary
covenant between the Father and the Son before time began; a certain number were
to be redeemed and given to the Redeemer as the fruit and reward of His atoning
submission; and fidelity to that covenant demands the immunity from possible
fall of all who were included in the portion of Christ. There is no Scriptural
evidence of such an unconditional covenant, though there is a catholic truth of
inestimable importance underlying the error. The Redeemer has indeed His portion
of mankind divided to Him; but not by an absolutely sovereign and despotic
disposal of the eternal destinies of men. He rejoices over those who were given
Him of the Father; but He laments over one of them as lost. Moreover He speaks
of them as being drawn to Him one by one, and promises them: him that cometh to
Me I will in no wise cast out. Not in this style would He speak of those who
were unconditionally His before time began. He prays for the Glory which He had
before the foundation of the world, but not for the people who were then
assigned to Him

1 John 6:37

2. The relation of Christ to those thus given Him is supposed to be such that
their salvation is assured. He is their Substitute and Surety, and more than
their Representative: He assumes their place at all points; suffers for them,
obeys for them, and insures them an eternal sanctity. We have seen that the
Saviour’s righteousness is not otherwise imputed to His people than as their sin
was imputed to Him. We may conceive of an imputation of the active righteousness
in the sense that we are reckoned righteous as well as forgiven; but even of
that the Scripture does not so speak. We are predestinated elect, St. Peter
says, only through sanctification of the Spirit.1

1 1 Peter 1:2

3. The irresistibility of Divine grace as an operation of the Spirit within the
soul is necessary to the dogma of Final Perseverance. But grace, as such, is
never represented as irresistible: it is free in God, and to be freely received
by man. Like the will it cannot tolerate the idea of constraint, by its very
name. God is irresistible; and His will is irresistible; but not His grace,
which is only His undeserved lovingkindness moving on free intelligences. His
will redeemed the world; and that will was irresistible. The grace that bringeth
salvation to all men1 was absolute and unconditional; though even that grace may
be received in vain2 by individuals. As working within the heart it is an
influence of discipline: it teacheth us the way of holiness, paideuei 1 Titus
2:11; 2 2 Corinthians 9:1

4. The distinction between the special grace that insures salvation and the
common grace that may be, and by the terms must be, in many cases, unprofitable,
is arbitrary. No grace of God should be called common: its slightest influence
may lead to heaven, and is given with that intention. There is no necessity in
the system more hard, no dogma in it more intolerable than that which requires
us to believe in a large and most affecting expenditure of the grace of God
intentionally insufficient for salvation

5. The gift of Final Perseverance is an unreality, whether in the expression or
in the thought which it expresses. Perseverance is an ethical duty. The gift, or
charism, of perseverance is bestowed from moment to moment; it is the diligent
use of the grace of every hour. That it should be imparted once for all as a
blessing of the Christian covenant is a contradiction in terms; and the
necessity of choosing such a phrase for the doctrine is an argument against it
THE ARGUMENT FROM SCRIPTURE The testimonies of Scripture introduced into this
controversy may be divided into two classes: those which the advocates of Final
Perseverance use in offensive warfare, and those which they resist when alleged
against them. Both classes have been already alluded to; but the importance of
the subject demands that they be more formally exhibited in their seeming
contrariety

I. Positive declarations of the Bible in favor of the necessary perpetuity of
grace are confessedly few. The argument most depended on is as we have seen the
nature of the covenant of grace, or the compact between the Father and the Son
as already explained The few testimonies to which appeal is made may be referred
to the decrees of God, to our Lord’s sayings, and to the Apostolical testimonies
as such

1. Whom He called them He also justified, and whom He justified them He also
glorified.1 This golden chain, with others like it, only sets forth the order of
grace: not a necessary sequence, save in the case of the finally saved; the
links are beheld from eternity and not from time. It goes back to what we call
the past, proegnoo, He did foreknow; all whom He foreknew, prooorise, He also
did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. Then it goes forward,
as we might say, to the end: as if all were accomplished, them He also called,
elakese; them He also justified, edikaioose, their adoption and sanctification
being included in the image of His Son; and them He also glorified, edoxasen.
This representative text stands for all those which refer to the electing and
determinate purpose of God: passages which are to be interpreted as speaking in
the prospect of an eternal accomplishment already decided in the Divine mind
with reference to the believing heirs of grace and glory, therefore as referring
not so much to the individual as to the Church viewed in its corporate mystical
capacity 1 Romans 8:29-30

2. Our Lord’s declarations on this subject are few. His parable of the sheep, of
whom He says that they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
of My hand,1 must be interpreted in the light of that other of the Vine, whose
branches are eternal, while an individual branch might be cast forth and be
withered.2 This we shall mark hereafter: meanwhile, our Lord declares of His
sheep that as such they shall never lack pasture from Him, nor shall any wrest
them from Him. That they may not forsake Him He does not add; nor could that be
added by the same lips which testified, severed from Me ye can do nothing 1 John
10:28; 2 John 15:5-6 3. A few typical passages from the Apostles may be adduced:
each represents a class, though a very small one

(1.) St. Paul writes: Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath
begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.1 The
Apostle, when he speaks of the coming day of Christ, almost invariably has in
view the community character of Christians: death was to the individual at least
an alternative prospect; it was not so to the Church, which has only before it
the coming of Christ. Hence the IN is really equivalent to AMONG you. In any
case, the emphasis is in the relation between the beginning and the performing;
and the safeguard is supplied in the prayer that ye may be sincere and without
offence unto the, day of Christ. Such passages mast have a generous
interpretation, but not too generous. It is the will of God to accomplish fully
all that He begins in love; but not all the gifts of universal mercy are without
repentance: witness its vast miscarriage in those who turn the grace of our God
into lasciviousness,2 the grace that bringeth salvation to all men.3 1 Php
1:6-10; 2 Jude 1:4; 3 Titus 2:11

(2.) The only testimony of St. John that can be pressed into the service is
this: they went out from us but they were not of us; for, if they had been of
us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out that they
might be made manifest that they were not all of us.1 He is speaking of
Antichrists, teaching without the unction from the Holy One

Comparison with this Apostle’s own parable of the Vine will show that he could
not refer to a necessary continuing or abiding in Christ, as such 1 1 John
2:19-20

(3.) St. Peter, the Apostle who fell and rose again, whose gentle penalty was,
when thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren,1 is naturally appealed to on
this question. He has many important sayings in relation to it. All Christian
communions hold that doctrine of indefectible grace and final perseverance which
is taught in the word: kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,2
which indeed contain the whole truth in summary form. As the Atonement is set
forth by the Divine counsel independently of man, but made a reality to him only
through faith, —Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation by His blood
through faith,3 —so the final salvation to which it leads is set forth in the
Divine mind for the Church, but becomes personal privilege only through faith. A
passage, however, soon follows which has been a classical proof-text, and much
relied on, so far that is as isolated texts are relied on in this controversy.
It is that of the incorruptible seed. There are two kinds of life mentioned by
the writer. Of the one it is said, all flesh is as grass: the glory and beauty
of physical or temporal life perisheth. Of the other it is said: begotten again,
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth
and abideth [for ever].4 The glory and beauty of that life of which Christ says,
/ am come that they may have life, and may hare it [more] abundantly,5 never
passeth away. With St. Peter’s text may be compared St. John’s, Whosoever is
born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him.6 The two
passages are strictly parallel; but neither does St. John teach that the
incorruptible seed as such makes the regenerate absolutely sinless, nor St.
Peter that it absolutely insures eternal life 1 Luke 22:32; 2 1 Peter 1:5; 3
Romans 3:25; 4 1 Peter 1:23; 5 John 10:10; 6 1 John 3:9

II. Many passages running in an opposite direction are so clear as effectually
to overturn the high theory of Final Perseverance

1. There are some, indeed, which ought not to be pressed into the controversy on
either side. Such are those which refer to the falls of the saints: they might
often fall, but not finally, Simon Peter being an instance, with David and
Solomon, and many others. Nor should we urge the texts which enforce fidelity,
diligence, and watchfulness generally as necessary to salvation. It may be
fairly said that the Divine purpose includes the means with the end: the
opponents of indefectible grace are glad of an analogous argument when they
connect foreknowledge and election. As election is based on foreknowledge, so,
might it be said, final perseverance is assured on the foreknowledge of
fidelity. Nor should we use those which speak of the apostasy of Judaism or of
the fall of the Israelites in the wilderness: apart, that is, from the Apostolic
specific application of this latter, which does give a very solemn individual
aspect to the admonition. Nor is it right to appeal to the decline and
destruction of the Asiatic Churches. All these instances of a final lapse from
grace may be referred to communities and not to individuals: here again we must
allow our opponents the measure we mete with ourselves. But there is a series of
declarations running through the Word of God which the advocates of the
irremissibility of grace are obliged to wrest from their obvious signification,
or interpret by a special canon of Hermeneutics devised for the purpose

2. There are many sayings which are uttered by God, as it were without specific
relation to the redeeming purpose, as the Moral Governor of the universe simply.
If thou forsake Him He will cast thee off for ever:1 this expressed a universal
principle applicable to all economies, and to all times, and to all unfaithful
stewards of the Divine gifts, the unknown prophet who was raised up to rebuke
Eli, speaks thus the Divine message: I said indeed . . .. But now the Lord
saith, Be it far from Me; for them that honor Me I will honor, and they that
despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.2 This is not a theocratic principle only,
it is a statement of God’s everlasting law. No sophistry can avail to soften the
words spoken by God to the children of His people for ever: the righteousness of
the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression.3 Both in
the New and in the Old Testaments God is no-respecter of persons.4 As a Father,
He judgeth according to every man’s work.5 Our God—even in the Christian
covenant—is a consuming fire:6 consuming His people’s sins, indeed; but it was
not to express such a meaning the word was uttered; it was as a warning to all
who, having received the grace of the earlier covenant, reject that of the later
1 1 Chronicles 28:9; 2 1 Samuel 2:30; 3 Ezekiel 33:12; 4 Acts 10:34; 5 1 Peter
1:17; 6 Hebrews 12:29

3. Our Lord has left some clear sayings, recorded by the same Evangelist who has
most profoundly exhibited the bond between Christ and His elect. The
parable-allegory of the Vine is the pendant of that of the sheep that never
perish. Without Me— chooris emou— ye can do nothing.1 If a man abide not in Me,
he is cast forth as a branch and is withered.2 This follows the great words of
mystical union, Abide in Me, and I in you; the warning therefore is not given to
those who heard it as they were Apostles. Nor was the calling of Judas only
Apostolic; he was cast forth of the living Vine, and his loss was acknowledged
as the separation of one of the elect: those that Thou gavest Me I have kept,
and none of them is lost but the son of perdition.3 Three terms are used in
relation to Judas which show that he had been one of the objects of the
Saviour’s grace in common with the other Apostles: he was given to Christ of the
Father, he was chosen, and as lost he had partaken of salvation. It may be said
that while the Lord was in the world, and especially during His earlier
ministry, His teaching did not as yet penetrate to the strict bonds of the
eternal covenant. But there is no teaching of His servants on this or any
subject higher than His own. And the tone of His instruction from the beginning
to the end tends to exactly the opposite of the doctrine of a necessary
indefectible grace

Witness the close of the Sermon on the Mount: the last parables of the Talents
and the Pounds and the Virgins; and the final Eschatological discourses. We
cannot but feel that He speaks, not of a class of persons never really
Christians, but of us all. But the series of testimonies to which we here refer
belongs rather to the ethics than to the doctrines of the covenant of grace.
They are therefore not here quoted and classified 1 John 15:4-6; 2 John 10:28; 3
John 17:12 4. A few of the Apostolical testimonies may be added: each the
representative of a considerable class

(1.) The last words of the first Apostolic writer: let him know that he which
converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death,
and shall cover a multitude of sins.1 The sins thus hidden are such as cause
error from the way of eternal life: St. John forbids the other interpretation
when, as to the sin unto death, he says, I do not say that he shall pray for
it.2 St. James makes very emphatic the probationary character of religion: he
shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy.3 The Apostle is
speaking to Christian men, who may forget the royal law of charity; and what in
their case must mean JUDGMENT WITHOUT MERCY!

1 James 5:19-20; 2 1 John 5:16; 3 James 2:13

(2.) St. Peter thus exhorts: give diligence to make your calling and election
sure, for if ye do these things ye shall never fall,1 purely this is not
language used of an impossible lapse. Satan may indeed by a violent
interpretation be supposed to be self-deceived in seeking whom he may devour.2
But the Apostle warns all not to fall from their own steadfastness.3 1 2 Peter
1:10; 2 1 Peter 5:8; 3 2 Peter 3:17

(3.) St. Jude, in his short Epistle, speaks of backsliders like autumn, trees,
without fruit, twice dead;1 and of men once Christians who had become sensual,
having not the Spirit: these had been in the spiritual family, else how could
they make separations? The tenor of the Epistle is no other than a warning
against eternal apostasy. Those who are preserved in Jesus Christ2 are bidden
keep yourselves in the love of God.3 The doxology to Him that is able to keep
you from falling4 is one that all confessions join in. These three KEEPINGS must
be combined. The two former have the same Greek verb: those who are preserved in
Christ must preserve themselves in God’s love. The third varies the expression
in two words: God is able to guard from falling, and He is ABLE to guard

Here is the threefold cord; all true Christians rejoice in the combination of
its strands; but none should find in it more than the everlasting security which
unites Almighty power and human fidelity 1 Jude 1:12; 2 Jude 1:1; Jude 1:12; 3
Jude 1:24; 4 Jude 1:25 (4.) St. Paul’s view of redemption delights in the
perfect stability of the eternal counsels

He evermore sees the consummation of the Divine designs, and all the heirs of
salvation as already hid with Christ in God.1 But some of his words absolutely
deny the indefectibility of grace. Besides leaving on record some other
declarations which have been already referred to, he speaks of his rigor in the
care of his own soul, lest . . . I myself should be rejected:2 no believer in an
inalienable salvation would have adopted such language, certainly no inspired
teacher of the truth would have spoken so unguardedly even in his deepest
humility 1 Colossians 3:3; 2 1 Corinthians 9:27

(5.) The Epistle to the Hebrews contains passages which cannot accord with the
necessary permanence of grace. Though their meaning may be exaggerated by those
who make them deny the possibility of restoration after a certain measure and
degree of fall, it is no exaggeration that they teach the possibility of an
extinction of grace in such as had tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made
partakers of the Holy Ghost.1 This, with the previous injunction, that no man
fall after the same example of unbelief,2 the exhortation Cast not away
therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward,3 with the
assurance that we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our
confidence steadfast unto the end,4 and other such passages, are thought by some
simply to lay down a desperate and impossible hypothesis, or to refer only to an
external profession without corresponding reality, or to speak of a lapse from a
presumed state of grace, the hollowness of which is supposed to be detected. But
on such principles of interpretation Scripture can be made to prove nothing, or
rather can be made to prove anything 1 Hebrews 6:4-5; 2 Hebrews 6:11; 3 Hebrews
10:35; 4 Hebrews 3:14

(6.) The last organ of inspiration, whose writings perfect the New Testament,
gives his clear testimony. St. John’s First Epistle speaks of the possibility of
being ashamed before Him at His coming,1 and that to little children, his
affectionate term for true Christians

What he means by being ashamed a later text shows, that we may have boldness in
the day of judgment:2 there will be no shame at the Judgment Day but in those
who experience the dread calamity threatened by our Lord Himself again and
again: of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed.3 St. John’s Gospel contains
no teaching of his own, at least on this subject. In the Apocalypse also not
John but his Lord speaks: and, although the threats against apostate Churches
must not be pressed, the final words of the Redeemer are profoundly solemn: God
shall take away his part from the tree of life:4 not refuse it to him, but take
it away. Thus the Scriptures close with a testimony that is most decisive
against the doctrine of an inevitable and unconditional predestination to Final
Perseverance 1 1 John 2:28; 2 1 John 4:17; 3 Mark 8:38; 4 Revelation 22:19

III. Although they thus speak, the opponents of this doctrine feel that there is
a peculiarity in the present controversy which must always distinguish it from
every other

1. The instinct of the true Christian loves the dogma that he is obliged to
oppose: and the same instinct makes the true Christian who holds it act as if he
held it not. Practically all who bear this character are one in the doctrine
that Final Perseverance is a duty and a privilege. Those who deny that union
with Christ, once effected, is inviolable—and deny it confidently because our
Savior Himself says, If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a
branch1—nevertheless earnestly contend that such and so sacred a union is not
easily and is not often finally dissolved. They admit that many lapses, and many
grievous lapses, are consistent with that indwelling secret grace which is of
all things the most tenacious of its hold on the heart of man. They know full
well that there may be the residue of grace in the soul which seems almost
sealed in reprobation; that the eye of mercy, never more quick to discern the
secrets of the heart than when seeking for the traces of Good in the hidden,
depths of man’s nature, may behold life where the eye of man’s judgment would
see only death; and that Infinite Compassion may fan into flame the all but
extinguished fire which none but Himself could discern. They feel the full
meaning of the apologetic and almost retracting words which follow the plain
warning against total apostasy: but, beloved, we are persuaded better things of
you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.2 1 John 15:6; 2
Hebrews 6:9

2. There is a sense in which the doctrine of Perseverance is common to all
Confessions and must by all Christians be held. To the foreknowledge of the
Omniscient not only is the mystical body sealed, but the salvation of every
member of it is fixed. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of
the world:1 these words of St. James have a direct reference to the subject of
our discussion; the God of Israel is visiting the Gentiles to take out of them a
people for His name.2 The number of the saved is before Him as if the whole
process were over: an hundred and fifty and three were reckoned in the last
symbolical fishing; the exact and finished number of the eternally sealed is now
present to the Supreme Eye; and each individual of those who dispute over this
doctrine is either saved or not saved in that future which is to God as the
present 1 Acts 15:18; Acts 15:14; 2 John 21:11

3. But here we are on the brink of the unsearchable mystery of the union or
unity between the Divine foreknowledge and the Divine predestination. What is
now known to God must be to us nevertheless an issue not determined.
Contemplating this truth as in the light of God’s knowledge we may say that
everyone finally saved must persevere. But in that light we must not contemplate
it. God sees the end as an accomplished fact which man is working out as a
contingency. We are all in PROBATION: each one of his descendants as certainly
as Adam was. Personal ASSURANCE is given, or provision is made that it may be
given, to each as the daily bread of life. And PERSEVERANCE is nothing but the
holding that full assurance of hope unto the end.1

1 Hebrews 6:11


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  CHAPTER 32: 34. VOL 03 - CHRISTIAN ETHICS
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Christian Ethics CHRISTIAN ETHICS.

ETHICS OF REDEMPTION THE CHRISTIAN LAWGIVER The Relation of Gospel Doctrine to
Ethics;

Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy; The Christian Law;

Liberty;

Love and Law;

Biblical Methods of Teaching CHRISTIAN ETHICS SYSTEMATIC

PERSONAL ETHICS of Conversion; of Intention; of the Conflict; of Service; of
Devotion

RELATIVE ETHICS of Man and Man; of Family; of Commerce; of Politics; of the
Church By the term Ethics of Redemption, or Christian Ethics, is signified the
system of moral teaching which Christ the Redeemer has introduced in connection
with His atoning work and the general economy of His grace. That system may be
regarded, first, in its preeminence and peculiarity, as CHRISTIAN Ethics; and,
secondly, in the formal arrangement of its principles, as Christian ETHICS This
subject seems more appropriate here than in any independent position: it belongs
to the Administration of Redemption, treating as it does of the new life for
which the blessings of the New Covenant prepare the regenerate, and for which
the regenerate are prepared. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.1 After
dwelling so long on the estate of Christian privilege we pass naturally to the
obligations connected with it. The ethics flow from the life. And in our course
of doctrine it is obvious that the Morals of Christianity must be viewed only or
mainly as they derive a new character from the Christian revelation. This
principle must be remembered throughout the present Section In one sense it
contracts the field of ethical teaching; but in another it immeasurably expands
that field 1 Ephesians 2:10 THE ETHICS OF REDEMPTION

Jesus as Redeemer is the Supreme Legislator; and His teaching is the corrective
complement of all Moral Philosophy. In the Evangelical scheme doctrine and
ethics are closely connected: its revelations of truth are the foundation of its
new life; its morals and its doctrine are everywhere interwoven; and, finally,
the ethics of the Christian religion are the crown and consummation of its
entire system CHRIST THE LAWGIVER Our Lord is Supreme Lawgiver, whether we
regard His Person, His offices, or His manifested life. As thus supreme He is
also the sole Teacher and Arbiter and the highest Example of morals

Christianity may in this department be regarded as the legislation of Christ:
the NEW LAW given to the human race. The Savior both began and ended His
ministry by asserting His absolute and unappealable authority: Whosoever heareth
these sayings of Mine and doeth them!1 These words close the discourse with
which the New Teacher commenced His lawgiving for all ages and for all mankind;
and it is most plain that He assumes this universal prerogative, to be the
Master of all morals and duties. Similarly He finished His course by an equally
large assertion of His place in the world’s ethics. His disciples were to make
disciples (or Christians) of all the nations . . . teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you!2 Never did human lawgiver adopt this
tone. Never did those whom God had commissioned thus speak. When Moses began his
function, and had said I commanded you at that time all the things that ye
should do, he added the charge against the people, ye would not go up, but
rebelled against the commandments of the Lord your God.3 And his entire
legislation is thus wound up: the people did as the Lord commanded Moses.4 This
is in strong and most decisive contrast with the beginning and end of the new
legislation 1 Matthew 7:24; 2 Matthew 28:20; 3 Deuteronomy 1:18; Deuteronomy
1:26; 4 Deuteronomy 34:9

I. It is important to remember that the Legislator in the new economy is the
Lord Jesus in His Divine-human Mediatorial Person, both God and man in one

1. The Divinity of the Christian Lawgiver is the first postulate and glorious
distinction of Christianity as the perfect economy. The Creator alone can give
law to His creatures: there is One Lawgiver,1 and there can be no second:
nomodidaskalos many but only one nomothetees in all the Scripture. Moses is not
so called: he gave not that law from heaven, but was faithful in all his house,
as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after.2
But Christ as a Son over His own house prescribes its laws with Divine
authority. In the Sermon on the Mount He distinguishes Himself, not only from
the Rabbinical expositors of Moses, but from Moses himself, by His oftrecurring
’Ego de: But I SAY UNTO YOU!3 And we hear in this, as in all His words, the
Voice of the Son of God uttering His own eternal will 1 James 4:12; 2 Hebrews
3:5-6; 3 Matthew 5:1-48

2. The perfect manhood of Jesus, however, was and is the organ of this
legislation. In the indivisible unity of His Person He enacts His laws amidst
human conditions, and condescends to appear as the highest of human lawgivers.
He accepts and even responds to the words of Nicodemus, We know that Thou art a
teacher come from God.1 But never in the New Testament are we permitted for one
moment to listen to Him as only the supreme embodiment of merely human wisdom.
God was with Him, we may infer with the Jewish Rabbi; but we must take the
testimony of the Officers in a sense beyond their meaning, Never man spake like
this Man!2 for God was not only with Him but IN HIM 1 John 3:2; 2 John 7:46

3. Our Lord proclaims His will not as Divine simply, nor as simply human: never,
in plain terms, I am the Lord thy God! but never, I speak as a man. He speaks as
the Son of Man which is in heaven:1 as the new Teacher He uttered these words to
Nicodemus

Before the Incarnation it was God who at sundry times and in divers manners
spake in time past unto the fathers in the prophets.2 The Holy Trinity was in
the legislation of Paradise and Sinai and of the whole moral world: but under
many limitations —both as to Himself and as to the objects of His moral
government—which the Gospel has removed

God hath now spoken to us IN His SON, GOD-MAN, the Divine-human Representative
of universal law binding on all creatures upon earth 1 John 3:13; 2 Hebrews 1:1

II. The Redeemer’s legislation is bound up with His office as the Christ: this
has been already exhibited under the Mediatorial Ministry, but may with
propriety be touched on again under another and more limited aspect

1. In the threefold unity of His work He is the Prophet, explaining all law,
whether in its transitory or in its eternal forms; and changing the law of
commandments contained in ordinances1 into the perfect law of liberty.2 He is
also the Priest—not the High Priest, there is but One—who has expiated sin
against the law, and obtained the Spirit for a new obedience. As King He is in
heaven what as Prophet He was upon earth; He is the Legislator crowned in His
incarnate Person; the One Lawgiver Who is able to save and to destroy;3 the
Judge who will confirm the eternal sanctions of the law which He has given 1
Ephesians 2:15; 2 James 1:25; 3 Jas. 6:12

2. Hence His offices are really two. His priestly function has reference to the
broken law, broken long before Moses threw down the tables. His whole life and
history is one satisfaction to the Divine will: honoring it by a full obedience;
and then, defying its inquisition for Himself, paying the penalty of our
violation. His other work is that of teaching and ruling in one: guiding the
redeemed and sanctified to perfection of righteousness. Thus on these two
offices hangs the whole Christian system as it is redemption from sin and
discipline unto holiness. We are bidden in the Epistle to the Hebrews to
consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus;1 in His
perfect administration the Moses and the Aaron of the new economy united. As the
Apostle from God He announces all the Divine-will, and as High Priest from man
He makes provision for our obedience: not the one without the other

1 Hebrews 3:1

3. But we may reduce all to unity. In a certain sense our Lord came from heaven
to earth only as our Master and Lord;1 having virtually redeemed us before we
existed, and created us anew before we were created. This alone does justice to
the Redeemer’s dignity as the Restorer of all things. He was, and is, and ever
will be the only Moral Ruler of man: of other Worlds than ours, but also of
ours; and of ours in an economy of law strangely modified by grace. In this view
His atonement is part of His legislation; He appointed a task of redeeming
expiation for Himself, and, as Lawgiver, through the law died to the law. Here
is the supreme unity of all His offices: to this end Christ both died and
revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living.2 The highest reach
of our contemplation regards Him as the moral Governor of mankind Who has become
one with our race to restore us to our obedience and union with God. This unity
reigns throughout the New Testament Our Lord gives His new law before He even
speaks of His coming death; He refers to His atonement as the necessary ground
of our new sanctification to obedience, and, having died for us, He still
continues to be OUR Master and Lord. And to this one end and supreme unity of
His whole work give all His Apostles witness 1 John 13:13; 2 Romans 14:9

III. In His mediatorial history or official career the Christian Lawgiver
blended in a most mysterious and affecting manner the Divine dignity of His
Person and the Messianic humiliation. He learned the obedience that He taught;
He exercised supreme ethical authority even while learning it; and He presented
Himself, uniting the two, as the perfect Example of His own precepts. Here, as
everywhere, we find the unsearchable unity of His two natures in one personal
agency investing the whole subject

1. Our Lord learned obedience. In the mystery of His Person he united the
Supreme Lawgiver above responsibility and the human subject responsible for
obedience. During His humbled estate He began, continued, and ended with the
latter: from 1 must!1 in the Temple of His early consecration, and My meat is to
do the will of Him that sent Me!2 of His mid career, down to 1 have finished the
work!3 under the cross 1 Luke 2:49; 2 John 4:34; 3 John 17:4

(1.) Here there are some qualifications. The first is that the Savior learned
the obedience1—His proper Messianic obedience not so much in doing as in
suffering—to a law of moral obligation His own and unshared. And, however hard
it may be to our reason, neither of that truth nor of its consequences must we
be afraid. Before He gave us a new commandment He had a new one in a much higher
sense given to Himself. Again His obedience was necessary. The unity of His
Personality shielded Him from the possibility of sinning even as His miraculous
conception introduced Him sinless into the world. Christ is not divided, cannot
be divided, against Himself. Sin wrapped Him round as a garment; but never
entered His soul save in its vicarious bitterness. On the cross His seamless
robe was, as it were, in the hands of His enemies, but there lay the perfection
of the obedience to which the Incarnate was disciplined. He was taught as a Son
the mystery of unfathomable suffering for sin in us, and of equally unfathomable
suffering through temptation to impossible sin. He was not in probation. He
learned the things of a man, ta tou anthroopou: the things of God, ta tou Theou,
He never learned. Nor did He acquire dominion over the universal kingdom of
ethics by having been a Sojourner for a night among them. He brought down a
Divine power which gave them in Him a new perfection. His supreme government in
the ethical domain was not founded on His submission to human duty

1 Hebrews 5:8

(2.) Yet the Incarnate, though a Son, learned obedience: He proved and exhibited
the discharge of DUTY in all departments of life, and in this sense underwent
the experience of human obligations. As a Son, as an Israelite, as a subject of
Rome, as a Rabbi surrounded by disciples, as a public Instructor or Minister of
the circumcision, as a member of the human commonwealth, He manifested
submission to every authority. He practiced obedience as an impeccable human
being would practice it, or as God Himself might obey His own ordinances. This
obedience was, however, VIRTUE in the meaning which it has received in Christian
Ethics. It is indeed hard for us to conceive the virtue of passive endurance
unallied with the active suppression of a reluctant will. It is hard to
understand what virtue there can be in a submission which springs from the
necessity of a will eternally one with the Divine will. But, hard as it is, it
is not impossible. And only on this principle can we accept the obedience of the
Incarnate Son. The sublimest holiness is the recoil from impossible wrong.
Divine hatred of sin, sorrow for sinners, and endurance of the penalty of
transgression, became incarnate in Jesus. The sympathy which the Creator had
felt with His erring creature learned its mystery over again in the Redeemer The
New Teacher showed, beforehand, the secret of His own legislation: love is the
fulfilling of the law.1 In His devotion to God and charity for man—in that love
which in a sense unparalleled was in Him teteleiomenoo—He kept all the
commandments: both those which were given to Him alone and strained His human
endurance to the utmost, and those which He obeyed as it were unconsciously and
of necessity, finding in obedience the meat and drink of life. As He took not
our individual sins upon His soul for expiation, but rather our sin in its
fullness and essence; so He kept and honored not so much laws as the law. Some
individual laws had nothing in Him, and He never did nor ever could learn them;
but He nevertheless honored all law generally in the principle of the perfect
obedience of LOVE TO GOD AND MAN

1 Romans 13:10

(3.) Our Lord exercised Divine authority at the same time that He underwent the
Mediatorial discipline which His redeeming work required. The prerogative of His
Godhead could not be suspended, though it might be veiled. It was by His own
Divine will that He became subordinate. And, throughout His submission, there
was occasionally given the most abundant proof, both of act and word, that the
Supreme Lawgiver was present in Him, and that Jesus Himself Who spoke was no
other than He. During His humiliation there was a veil untaken away from the
face of the Greater than Moses. He does not say as yet: Behold, I make all
things new!1 although He brings new commandments and new institutions. He
appeals to the ancient legislation and them of old time,2 to the authority of
Scripture which cannot be broken,3 and to God as the Judge of all and the
ultimate appeal. But His constant reserve and general assumption of a secondary
place was only a veil. The valley of His humiliation is crowned by three
Mountains where the Lawgiver receives honor and glory: partly as the fruit of
His submission, but still more as the revelation of what He had with God before
the world was. On the first, that of the Beatitudes, He asserts His supreme,
that is His Divine, authority without one single allusion to any Greater than
Himself. On the second, that of the Transfiguration, His claims are confirmed by
the voice of God. And, on the third, the Mountain in Galilee, after His atoning
death, His words unite the subordinate and the supreme authority: the
subordinate, all power is given unto Me; the supreme, Lo, I am with you alway!4
If in the valley we hear the voice of a man, on these mountains we hear the
voice of God. But the voices are the same. After the Ascension there is no
longer any concealment, The Pentecost was the festival and glorification of the
New Law. Our Lord now speaketh from heaven;5 and from heaven, by common consent,
none can speak but God. It was in fact the same Voice that gave the legislation
of Sinai that then shook the earth. After being for a season lowered to human
accents, it now speaks through the Spirit. Thus throughout the whole Bible there
is but One Voice of moral authority. In all the New Testament, the will of God
and the will of Christ are one; and we may lawfully, when we hear our Master
say, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, carry on His words to this
further meaning: He that hath heard Me hath heard the Father.6 1 Revelation
21:5; 2 Matthew 5:21; 3 John 10:35; 4 Matthew 28:18; Matthew 28:20; 5 Hebrews
12:23; 6 John 16:9

2. The Lord gave a Divine-human and perfect example: the only Legislator who
ever did or ever could make His own life His code of laws. He began His ministry
by a perfect summary of all human duty, But I say unto you;1 He ended by
declaring, I have given you an example.2 But here again the mystery of the
twofold nature of the One Person of the Lawgiver suggests qualifications which
cannot be too deeply pondered, or too habitually borne in mind. It is too often
forgotten 1 Matthew 5:1-48; 2 John 13:15

(1.) His example was necessarily PERFECT. This has been often questioned: the
character of Jesus, as the Ideal of His own laws, has been impeached. By some
its peerless perfection has been denied, by some it has been disparaged in
comparison with that of other teachers, and even with that of His own disciples.
But many of the reproaches cast upon it by the eyes that seeing see not are the
reproaches equally of the ancient Jehovah The God of the Old Testament wears the
same moral attributes as Jesus in the New. The tones of His wrath are precisely
in the same strain as we hear in the old economy; and they are mingled with the
same gentleness and mercy. His anger is Divine anger; and His sternness is the
same—neither more nor less rigorous—as that of the Lawgiver Who appointed Moses
in all his house. But it is an offence to the censors of Jesus that He failed in
the opposite sentiment: that He shrank from the endurance which He demanded of
His followers, and failed, where He required them to succeed, in sovereign
contempt of suffering and death. But His meekness and recoil from woe were the
tribute of perfect purity to suffering unknown, and the expression of His HORROR
MORTIS, or affright at death, was really His Divine-human affright at sin or
HORROR PECCATI. It was because He was more than man that in meeting the infinite
consequence of sin He seemed less than perfect man. None, however, who deny the
mystery of the Atonement can feel the force of this. Yet even they may be
challenged to prove that there was in the suffering Jesus less than the
perfection of human patience and magnanimity. Even to them the For this cause
came I unto this hour1ought to explain and condone the Let this cup pass from
Me!2Reverence forbids our carrying this apology further, Suffice that no clear
eye and no pure heart can be in the presence of the Redeemer without yielding to
the conviction that He taught no virtue which He did not exemplify; so far, that
is, as a Sinless Being, who had never known nor could ever know sin, might be
its exemplar 1 John 12:27; 2 Matthew 27:39

(2.) Yet, as these last words suggest, His was not in all respects a perfect
EXAMPLE. His Divine-human excellence is in some sense too high, we cannot attain
unto it. Therefore neither does the Lord, nor do His Apostles after Him, exhibit
His life as at all points the directory of ours. In some details of duty He
could not set us a pattern: for them we must go to men subject to like passions
as we are.1He became the Author of eternal salvation,2ot to those who copy Him
in the process—He never passed through the process—but to all them that obey
Him. He gives the ideal and the sum of the blessed result: the way to it we
know, and He is Himself the way, but we do not see the print of His footsteps on
the path from the far country back again to holiness. Whenever His example is
spoken of, it is in affecting connection with humility, patience, self-sacrifice
for others, and utter abandonment of the world. But He did not reach those
heavenly affections as we must reach them. They were His Divine condescension
brought down from above, and translated into human forms: in us they are the
hard won triumphs of His Spirit overcoming their opposites. His virtue brought
Him from heaven to earth; ours must carry us from earth to heaven. We must
imitate His great submission; but none of us can ever utter His vicarious cry,
My God, My God, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME ?3 For He, unlike us, had never
FORSAKEN GOD 1 James 5:17; 2 Hebrews 5:9; 3 Matthew 27:46

3. Hence, to sum up, the principle of our DUTY is His obedience in love; the
strength of our VIRTUE is His Spirit; and the SUMMUM BONUM of our blessedness is
His Peace. In Him we see the whole Law reflected in its highest purity; by His
character we interpret it, and all our obedience is the silent imitation of
Himself. His excellence is Divine and human: to be adored and imitated. As God
He commands, and as Man shows us how to obey. The Lawgiver gives us both the
Pattern and the strength to copy THE GOSPEL AND ETHICS

Christianity is a DOCTRINE ACCORDING TO GODLINESS.1 Christian morals are as such
founded on specific Christian truth; they are taught in alliance with it; and
are exhibited as the end of all its teaching

1 1 Timothy 6:3 This might seem to be the place for considering the relation of
Christian Ethics to Moral Philosophy. But we must first establish the exclusive
principles of these new ethics as inseparably connected with the revelation of
Jesus. This is only a meet tribute to the preeminence of the Gospel, which has
learnt nothing from the philosophy of this world that it does not hold
independently of all earthly philosophy

I. Reserving for the next Section any remarks upon the general fundamental
principles of morals, we may say that the prominent doctrines first taught or
fully brought to light in the Christian Revelation are the foundation of
Christian Ethics. There are three great underlying truths which may be said to
be at the basis of all other foundations: the Fall, or from what; the
Redemption, through what; the Future, unto what; the moral discipline of Christ
aims to raise mankind. These doctrines themselves are treated elsewhere. It is
needful here only to indicate their essential relation to ethics

1. The Fall with its concomitant doctrine of Original Sin vitally and throughout
affects Christian Morals as a system. Christianity alone reveals what was the
original estate of mankind; how a perfect moral condition was lost through the
misuse of freedom; what is the place freewill still holds in the formation of
character; how the ethical good remaining in the elements of humanity is to be
accounted for; and for what a high destiny man was created and is still
reserved. It shows how entirely his nature is depraved as to the attainment of
good: teaching that there is in every mortal a bias to evil irresistible save
through grace; and that it is his destiny, merely as man, freely to work out
that evil which has become the necessity of his freewill. It lays the foundation
of its ethics amidst the ruins of our fallen dignity: raising a superstructure
which is at once a new creation and a reconstruction, building its new temple
out of the fragments of the old. It deals with the world as a deeply lapsed but
not utterly ruined world; as profoundly corrupted but not entirely dissolved.
And it deals with every man as having in himself, notwithstanding his heritage
from Adam, the elements of a moral nature that may be retrieved. But not
retrieved through any effort of its own: the Christian legislation begins by
requiring utter self-renunciation, self-distrust, or self-despair. It never
allows the Fall to be forgotten, amidst all the triumphs of grace

2. Redemption—objective, wrought FOR us by Christ; subjective, wrought IN us by
the Holy Ghost—does not so much follow as accompany the Fall in its relation to
the ethics of Christianity

(1.) The preliminary grace which we regard as the firstfruits of the Redeemer’s
intervention for the race explains the secret desire of man to be restored; and
thus lights up the whole sphere of ethics. It is that redemption before
Redemption which interprets the universal condemnation of evil and approval of
good recorded in the judicial court of human nature itself: so unerringly,
indeed, that the word Conscience, strictly speaking the human consciousness of
moral character, has been made generally to signify the human moral faculty. It
is this to which the Christian Lawgiver, and those who follow His teaching,
always appeal. It must never be forgotten throughout our study of the
Evangelical legislation. It gives consistency to the whole sum of its moral
teaching, and makes morals possible to man

(2.) The forgiveness it seals on the conscience—which imparts to the pardoned
the double consciousness, of sin on the one hand as a fact, and of guiltlessness
as an imputation on the other—takes away the barrier to moral endeavor, arid
gives it its strongest incentive. There is unspeakable strength in the thought
of having paid the penalty once for all in a Substitute who belongs to the race
and to each member of it who claims Him. Vain is all teaching of morality
without a preliminary forgiveness: vain the Benedictions on the Mount unless in
the anticipation of an Atonement which should first have silenced the Woes in
the City

(3.) Redemption from the curse of the law is also deliverance from the power of
evil through.the supply to the secret springs of human action of the power of an
indwelling God. It renders all things possible. As forgiveness, entire and
constant, removes the greatest impediment to moral effort—making guilt as if it
were not—so the Spirit of regeneration literally throws open to human aspiration
and attainment the whole compass of ethical perfection. Nothing is impossible to
one who is forgiven and renewed

Moreover, it is not too much to say that redemption as an internal experience
imparts a specific character to all Christian ethics. The sense of pardon gives
birth to a new order of ethical emotions and obligations, and the new life in
Christ is the sphere of a new order of ethical duties and attainments and
experiences of which we need not now speak more particularly

3. Christianity has brought to light the future life, with its powers and
terrors and hopes, and incorporated that also into the foundation of its ethics

(1.) This gives the morals of human life their probationary character;
responsibility derives from it a new meaning; time becomes inestimably precious
in relation to eternity; and every act, and word, and thought has a new
importance through its bearing on a fixed and eternal condition. It is appointed
unto men once to die, and after this the judgment!1 This was a new voice in the
sphere of the world’s ethical teaching: interpreting the instinct of universal
conscience; lighting up the dimmer revelations of the Old Testament; and making
the powers of the world to come, what they had never been so fully before, the
moving forces of the world that now is, by bringing life and immortality to
light.2 1 Hebrews 9:27; 2 2 Timothy 1:10

(2.) It furnishes the final and deepest sanctions of moral law. SANCTION is the
guard thrown around a command or duty to enforce its performance: the sanction
of the duty not done is the punishment of the person who fails. The only
sanction of law is the displeasure of God: but that displeasure in its fullest
expression is now by this doctrine, as ethical, postponed to the Great Day. The
preliminary tokens of it in this world are but the beginnings of wrath: the
judgment is indeed begun, and the word Eternal has entered into time; but
Christianity makes the future world, with its judgment at the threshold, the
issue of all its moral teaching. The penalty of eternal separation from God is
the great ethical argument: Christian probation is a decision of the question
whether the original doom shall be finally reversed or rendered eternal.
Accordingly this gives its true character to the sin from which men are to be
saved: without this its ethics are an unreality. It is ETERNAL SIN1 in its
possibilities. There is nothing against which the sentiment or sentimentality of
many thinkers so persistently rebels as this. Some so recoil as to reject the
Christianity which is based upon it, while others find their refuge in recasting
the doctrine of eternal retribution. To them Sin is merely a Flood of misery,
and Christ only our Noah or Comforter Who will hereafter either make all men
forget their sorrows in a universal restoration or put out of existence those
whom He cannot restore

1 Mark 3:29

(3.) The future is also the goal of creaturely perfection; that Summum Bonum, or
final blessedness of the soul to which the ethics of Christianity perpetually
point the aspiration of its disciples: not only as the consummate fruition of
the results of well doing but as the vision of God Himself. In a lower sense the
former may be said to be the final ethical argument: My reward is with Me!1 But
the highest reward is the joy of thy Lord.2 1 Revelation 22:12; 2 Matthew 25:21

4. All this being true, we may justly speak of Redemptional Ethics. The
Christian Religion knows no other. The need or problem, the method and process,
the stimulant and end of all ethics are in that one truth, that we are a race
delivered by the Hand of a Mediator. Redemption is the central idea: the Fall
flanks it on one side, Eternity on the other. All these elements are summed up
in St Paul’s last ethical compendium, which perhaps contains the largest and
most comprehensive statement of the three fundamental principles of Evangelical
morality, with the atoning work in the middle. The grace of redemption hath
appeared, saving to all men. It imparts forgiveness as grace, and teacheth, or
disciplineth to all that morality which is a realization of the redeeming
purpose. And the issue of all is the blessed hope and glorious appearing of the
Great God and our Savior Jesus Christ Who gave Himself for us.1

1 Titus 2:11-14 II. The Christian doctrine and Christian ethics are interwoven

1. We have not here two departments in the theology of Scripture. From Genesis
to Revelation, from Sinai to Pentecost, there is no difference between the
methods of exhibiting what man must believe and what he must practice. As in
natural religion, and its almost illegible characters, conscience is at once the
teaching that God is and that we are responsible to Him; so in the supernatural
revelation of the Bible doctrine and duty are bound up together in their
relation to the Supreme, 2. Every doctrine however has its ethical side: all
truth returns in duty to Him who gave it. This may be illustrated by reference
to the individual subjects that make up the sum of dogmatic theology. God is a
Person and man is a person: all their common relations must be ethical. The
Divine perfections are not objects of contemplation simply: so viewed they would
only exhaust the mind; in ethics they mightily strengthen it, and each special
attribute infers its corresponding obligation. The Trinity presides over a rich
domain of ethics that have to do with the economical relations of each sacred
Person to the Triune One and to every believer. The Mediatorial Work of Christ
is a congregation of revealed truths, each of which, whether referring to
Himself or His work, has its moral bearing The Life was the Light of men.1 The
appropriation of personal salvation introduces a series of teachings which are
as much ethical as dogmatic. There is a doctrine and a practice of repentance:
the doctrine of Divine conviction, the practice of confession and amendment. The
influence of grace is formulated as a dogma; the activity of man is ethical.
Justification by faith is a doctrine: righteousness its ethics. Sanctification
is a doctrine off the Spirit’s purifying consecration unto holiness: the
processes of renewal unto perfection are ethical. The subject of the Church has
its infinite variety of moral bearings. So also the new revelations of Christian
Eschatology. Death as doctrine has its ethics of preparation. So also the
Eternal Realities, and the Restoration of Christ which precedes them. But all
this will appear more fully in the sequel. It may be said that no doctrine is
ever taught without reference to a corresponding human duty; nor is any duty
taught for which a doctrinal reason is not given. There is the utmost parsimony
in the teaching: the utmost reasonableness in the requirements. We can always
give a reason of our hope in the doctrine; and of our duty in the ethics

1 John 1:4 III. Ethics are the crown and consummation of all teaching

1. It may be said generally that the manifold lines of revelation meet in the
restoration of the Divine image in man. This is their glorious vanishing point.
The various teaching of which the Fall is the centre explains the violation or
loss of that image; all that is taught concerning redemption is one diversified
account of the means of its renewal; and the revelations of eternity converge to
its restored and perfect reflection. All the doctrine of the Bible is summed up
in one word: God has become man that man might become one with God again

2. We find a constant disparagement of mere knowledge as such: thus hee gnoosis
fusioi hee de agapee oikodomei: knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up.1
There is, however, a knowledge spoken of in Scripture which is both doctrinal
and ethical. The word ceases to be only Greek, it takes a Hebrew meaning, and
becomes more than mere intellectual science. It is not gnoosis but epignoosin:
according to that great prayer, that ye might be filled with the knowledge of
His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.2 1 1 Corinthians 8:1; 2
Colossians 1:9

3. Hence theology is after all and in its highest form a perfect system of
Ethics. In every age, and in every aspect of it, this has been its aim. Outside
of revelation PHILOSOPHY was the unity of what doctrine and duty it had to
teach: it was the RELIGION of the Old World, which, however ardently it aspired
to unfold the grounds of morality, had but a scanty basis of theological dogma
whereon to erect its teachings. When we speak of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION as well
as of the CHRISTIAN FAITH, we make no real distinction; for, though the latter
term belongs rather to the system of what is believed, and the former to the
worship and practice resulting, both alike combine the confession and the life
of the professors of Christianity

4. The perpetual remembrance of the supremacy of Ethics tends to save
theological study from its hardness and barrenness. It limits the range of that
part of it which is speculative, and sheds a peculiar grace on all the residue.
But it must not be forgotten that, while Ethics are the consummation of
theological science, the underlying doctrines on which they rest are essential
to their integrity. They degenerate, unless these are always remembered, into a
subjective and sentimental reflection of human phantasies, varying with the
endless variations of opinion as to man’s natural history. The moral system
which is not based on a sure substratum of truth is a mere reconstruction of the
broken fragments of our fallen nature, without an architect or a plan CHRISTIAN
ETHICS AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY

What Natural Theology is to the theology of supernatural revelation, Moral
Philosophy is to Christian Ethics. They agree as to some of the main
fundamentals of ethical science, but afterwards widely diverge: the Christian
system of morals supplying what is essentially lacking in all moral teaching
that is independent of its guidance

It has been sufficiently shown that the morals of Christianity should be
introduced into every system of dogmatic theology; and that as a distinct
department, though much that belongs to redemptional ethics is anticipated in
the State of Salvation. Of course there is a large region of ethical science
that is only indirectly concerned with theology, the study of which leads us
into the wide region of Moral Philosophy proper. This science has occupied the
best thought of mankind; and the history of its development, both as apart from
Christianity and as connected with it, is deeply instructive. Into that history
we need not now enter. The first principles of our religion forbid us to regard
Moral Philosophy as the great science of which ours is only a branch. But, if
revealed theology is supreme, then Moral Philosophy loses much of its
independent meaning; for, what it only seeks and speculates about, the
infallible record has given us

I. Christian Moral Philosophy—for we may adopt this compromise—accepts and
enlarges, or rather corrects, the name and general definition of ethical science

1. The terms Ethics and Morals are scarcely to be distinguished. Ethics, from
othos or ethos, has relation to the home, seat, posture, habit, or internal
character of the soul; Morals, from mos, or custom, rather to the outward
manifestation of that internal character. Both words have been too much limited
to the region of the outer life. In themselves they are vague, and show their
earthly origin. The Christian revelation does not reject them; but they are not
found in its early documents, save in the eethee chreesta1 of the quotation from
Menander. The terms of the New-Testament which are strictly answerable to these
are only two: GODLINESS, as a habit of soul like that of God; HOLINESS, as a
habit of soul sanctified from sin. Into these two words, at least, all others
rise, as will be hereafter seen 1 1 Corinthians 15:33 2. But every definition of
the science must submit to Christian censure and correction

Aristotle termed it hee peri ta anthropina philosophia, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN
INTERESTS, which the Old Testament signifies by THE WHOLE OF MAN, and the New
Testament elevates into ta ton theou, MY FATHER’S BUSINESS,1 or THE WILL OF
GOD.2 In all ages that clear distinction has been made between natural and moral
science, or Physics and Ethics, which Kant has thus expressed: "Physics, the
science of the laws of nature; Ethics, the science of the laws of freedom." This
definition, so utterly opposed to modern Positive Philosophy— which lays man’s
acts under the dominion of the same necessity that reigns over matter, though in
a more refined form—is profoundly Christian, But it omits what is essential to
the new and supreme system, that the laws of freedom are under the government of
the Holy Spirit. Bentham is the representative of a very different principle. He
terms it " the art of directing the actions of men in such a manner as to
produce the greatest happiness:" this is the Utilitarian view, and, in the light
of our religion, imperfect and wrong. The more Christian Paley is not much
better: "The science which teaches men their duty and the reasons of it." This
is inadequate in all respects; though it is difficult to detect the secret of
its superficiality. But this will be seen when it is compared with Neander’s
definition: "Moral Philosophy is concerned with the development of the laws for
human conduct; Christian Ethics derives these laws from the essence of
Christianity."

1 Luke 2:49; 2 Mark 3:35

II. The fundamental principles of Moral Philosophy as independent of revelation
are accepted and confirmed by Christianity; which, however, modifies and
perfects some of those principles

1. The words expressing moral ideas are most of them retained in their usual
meaning: that which has been stamped on them by the consent of mankind. The
general vocabulary is the same: for instance, conscience, obligation, or the
ought and the must, law, right, good and evil, sin, judgment, reward, punishment
are found with the same application in the Scriptures as outside of them. Some,
however, of these words are elevated, as we shall see, into a higher meaning by
the interpretation of the Spirit of liberty and love; while there are many terms
of great ethical significance which are the pure mintage of Christian Ethics:
such as love, purity, sanctification, peace, holiness, blessedness, godliness. A
large and sacred and among us most familiar branch of ethical nomenclature owe s
its origin to the Founder of Christianity and the Apostles whom He instructed

2. The theories which have been and are current concerning the primary grounds
and obligations of morality are not even alluded to in the Holy Scriptures. They
never discuss what makes good to be good and evil to be evil, right to be right
and wrong to be wrong: all such discussions are superseded and swallowed up in
the testimony that none is good save One, that is God,1 and that the nature of
God as the ground of obligation is His will: I come to do Thy will, 0 God,2 The
moralists of the Bible know no eternal ground of obligation outside of or behind
or independent of the Supreme. Meanwhile the interminable discussion continues.
Some place it in the nature of God or in His will, some in the vague abstraction
called the fitness of things; some reduce it to the subjective moral sense in
man, some to the law of universal benevolence and the value of happiness; while
some appeal to the idea of what is right, thus begging the question; and,
others, lastly, find it in the intrinsic goodness of virtue. Christian thinkers
join in the discussion, and give their support by terms to every theory; but the
deepest among them will admit that to the moral agent the ground of obligation
is the Divine will, while to man as a creature the only ground is the Divine
nature of which his own is an image or reflection As to the materialist theories
that make conscience and right and good only inventions of men’s hopes and fears
and calculations, like God Himself, and all ethics, in their obligation and
their loveliness, only the result of unnumbered ages of social evolution,
Christianity reasons not of them but beholds them and goes on its way 1 Luke
18:19; 2 Hebrews 10:9

3. Moral Philosophy has, in later times especially, distinguished between DUTY,
VIRTUE, and the SUMMUM BONUM, as regulating the processes of ethics. These terms
are found in Christian ethical systems; but so much are they changed by their
regeneration in Christianity that they cease to be available for their old
service. They are raised into the unity of Holiness to the Lord:1 a conception
known only to supernatural religion. This sacred phrase, which carries us into
the inmost sanctuary of the new temple, contains the three terms: the Virtue is
in the HOLINESS, which is severe separation from evil; the Duty is in TO THE
LORD; and the Summum Bonum is the union with Divinity which is implied The Chief
Good of man is his blessedness in the fellowship of God: the term happiness is
no longer supreme. Christ hath shown man what is good. DUTY is transfigured by
its connection with redemption: ye are not your own.2 It finds its standard in
Jesus; its sphere in His kingdom; and its one object in the Redeeming Triune
God. And obligation is translated into love which is VIRTUE; love is the bond of
perfectness,3 in the following of the Lord and the reflection of His most holy
image. Love is the secret and the unity of the three 1 Zechariah 14:20; 2 1
Corinthians 6:19-20; 3 Colossians 3:14

4. Christianity, in defining the moral system founded on the New Testament, not
only is willing to accept the wide extension given to the science by Moral
Philosophy, but even enlarges in its turn upon that. Aristotle has been followed
by most systematisers who have made it include Social Economics, Jurisprudence,
and Politics: in fact, the whole sum and complex of human relations. Modern
thinkers and moralists omit from it the branches that concern merely the
activity of man and the education of his sense of the beautiful, or AESTHETICS.
But they directly include, as the New Testament indirectly does, all the rest:
with the addition of our relation to the Christian Church and the Future State.
It has been seen already that there is a sense in which Christianity makes all
its teaching on every subject whatever, throughout the whole economy of truth,
doctrine which is ACCORDING TO GODLINESS.1 Its relation to God, determines the
value of all knowledge

1 1 Timothy 6:3

III. Christian Ethics, while it accepts and supplements the speculative teaching
of Moral Philosophy on some most important subjects, condemns many of its
speculations on others

1. It assumes willingly this favorite phrase, MORAL PHILOSOPHY, but on the
condition that its leading term be elevated into a higher meaning. Its
philosophia, or Philosophy goes not merely seek after and love wisdom or truth,
but has found it. Nor does it reject the term DEONTOLOGY rightly understood: the
science of what SHOULD BE it teaches, but as the science also of what may be and
in Christ is attainable and attained, practicable and practiced. Truth in Jesus
is positive and absolute; and philosophy, in its elder limited meaning, is now
the same anachronism that mere natural theology is. The Philosophia moralis of
Cicero and Seneca was speculative inquiry: the philosophy of the ancient world,
East and West, was deeply religious, but only as feeling after the Supreme. The
school of seekers into the midst of which St. Paul entered was gathered round an
altar to the Unknown God, But the Gospel has declared the true God of holiness
to our dogmatic theology and the true holiness of God to our ethical: both in
one and both in perfection

2. Christianity, like all sound Moral Philosophy, excludes speculation as to the
existence of that substratum of all ethics, the human soul. There is a
philosophical system, falsely and most unworthily so called, which denies the
personality and separate existence of the ethical subject. Its watchword is that
all substance is one. Two schools diverge from this position: one which makes
the universe itself and all the universe God, Pantheism; and another which makes
all the universe only matter. In the former morals are lost, as being only the
capricious and transitory developments of God’s own acts, which do not mar His
character only because they are passing phenomena on the way to eternal good. In
the latter—which gives the present age the very dregs of philosophy—man is
supposed to have slowly invented as well the ground as the form and the sanction
of what he calls his morals. It may seem unjust to the Pantheism of Spinoza to
link it with Materialism. But, however unjust to the founder of modern Pantheism
it may be, it is no injustice to the system itself, which logically can have no
morals because it leaves no room for responsibility. In fact, neither Pantheism
nor Materialism—both victims of the restless pursuit of an unattainable
Unity—can have any place for a Moral Philosophy; nor can Moral Philosophy find
any place for them

3. Christianity, in its philosophy of morals, accepts the constitution of human
nature as the regulator of ethical inquiry: hut it has its own clear teaching as
it regards the genesis and development and tendency of that nature. It does not
leave it matter of speculation whether man is rising by the law of secular
evolution to perfection or is recovering a lost estate. Adopting or rather
enforcing the latter theory, it guards its ethical science against the danger of
reasoning too much from the elements of what is called human nature, viewed as
apart from the Fall

4. Its doctrine of Mediation does not alter the foundations of virtue, hut
introduces a God whose justice and mercy combine in a mystery of which Moral
Philosophy knows nothing. Pardon assured and sealed gives birth, as we have
seen, to a new department of obligations and graces. So also does regeneration
and an indwelling Spirit. A new order of words is introduced— grace, graces,
privileges, sanctification, union with Christ, —all unknown to human morals. In
fact, it is here that Moral Philosophy and Christian Ethics separate at least,
if they do not become estranged towards each other. Moral Philosophy as such
takes human nature as it is, and studies it apart from the secret history of the
Fall: it makes the best use of what it finds, without over-curiously
investigating how its subject became what he is. It also knows nothing of the
mystery of expiation: not denying it, neither does it appeal to it. Eight must
he vindicated, and wrong must he punished; and, according to its teaching, as
such, and supposing it not to borrow from the Gospel, the Divine justice and
human frailty must come to terms through some compromise that it cannot explain

5. The Future in Moral Philosophy as such is either omitted, or limited to human
perfectibility in the present world, or introduced as a factor of probability
only into Ethics. The Christian Future sheds its light on every region,
glorifies every word, and gives unity to the whole by revealing an end and
consummation of which mere human systems know nothing. Nothing certainly, that
is: almost every system of morals has indeed introduced the future as an element
of probability. Christianity uses this factor as absolute truth; and this has
always assured to it its power and pre-eminence over every other teaching
whatever

IV. Finally, it may be observed that a sound system of Christian Ethics lays the
best and only sure foundation of a Moral Philosophy worthy of the name. Some of
the noblest treatises on the subject have been written by professors of the
Christian Faith, who have expounded the whole range of ethical questions on the
principles of the New Testament

1. There is a sense indeed in which Christianity may be boldly said to have
originated moral science as such: it has created a doctrinal system as its
basis, and given ethics a distinct and definite character which it had not
before. In every system which has appeared apart from the New Law there has been
a marked absence of some of the first conditions of science properly so called.
All was tentative, empirical, and uncertain

Ancient philosophy never pretended to include in its discussion of Ethics more
than a very limited range of obligations. Why there was any obligation at all it
could never clearly define. It was indeed exceedingly elaborate in its treatment
of certain cardinal vices and virtues; but there its philosophy ended. The
Christian teaching may lay claim to be in the deepest sense a Moral Philosophy:
it gives a full account of the moral nature of man; it establishes the grounds
of ethical obligation; it exhibits the sanctions of law; it gives a most
comprehensive legislation, adapted to every variety of human estate; it provides
for the appeasing of conscience, and the renewal of the soul; it sets perfection
before the hope of all; and it shows to what that perfection finally leads. The
fundamental revelation on which all this is based may indeed be rejected; and
then of course the whole superstructure may be thought to fall. But it still
remains that there is no other to take its place; and that it is the only
philosophy of ethics that challenges the judgment of man and appeals to his
conscience and speaks to his heart. It literally has no rival, nor has ever had
one 2. What may be called Metaphysical Ethics Christianity sanctions but limits
in its range

Such questions as the being of God, His relation to the personal creature, or
rather the relation of the personal creature to Him, the measure and reality of
our knowledge of the Supreme, the bearings of His sovereignty on freedom of
will, are not left for discussion; nor are those which have to do with the
origin of evil and the immortality of the soul

Speculative Theology is permitted to occupy its own domain; but it is not
encouraged, certainly not encouraged to intrude into the region of man’s ethical
duties. Some very extensive systems of Christian Ethics have been deeply
vitiated by the error of forcing questions of mere speculation into the region
of faith

3. The relation of Psychology to Ethics may be and should be most carefully
studied. A thorough examination of the constituents of the human soul, and of
the mutual relations and interactions of the intellect and the sensibilities and
the will, throws much light upon the doctrines of the Fall and conversion and
regeneration and sanctification. Especially important is it in relation to the
connection between religious experience and religious obligations. It will be
seen that in all the dealings of God with man the constitution of his nature is
not interfered with. His ruin was ethical and psychological disorder; his
recovery is the restoration of order through the ascendancy of the new Spirit of
life, a new relation to God which regulates without violating the laws of human
nature

Christianity is a life from above, a supernatural life; but it is a life that is
to be conducted according to the laws which regulate human habits and the
formation of character

Reference will be made to this subject again. Meanwhile there is one principle
fundamental to the sciences of Psychology and Ethics which Moral Philosophy has
too much forgotten. There is one personality of the moral agent behind and
beneath all the constituents of his composite nature. Neither his intellect nor
his feeling nor his will is the man himself, who is the unity of these elements.
His intellectual nature gives him his CONSCIENCE, which is the man morally
conscious of himself: his constant knowledge of himself in relation to the
standard of right and wrong lodged in his reason. His sensibilities give him
another moral predominant quality, LOVE, which has the same ascendancy in ethics
that conscience has. His conative faculties, or his will, furnish a third moral
characteristic of the whole man: the determinate bias of his INTENTION or
ultimate choice. In the moral domain the man is as his intention is, as his love
is, as his conscience is. These three agree in one: referring respectively to
the future, the present and the past. And it is important to remember that the
man himself, the person with whom the moral law deals, is the synthesis of all
these, and, more than that, is the possessor of these and responsible for them.
Nor is it right to say that he has conscience as an intelligent being, love as
an emotional, and will as a free agent His whole being enters more or less into
each and all. His conscience is a feeling as well as a knowledge His love
occupies equally the three elements of his nature. And His will enters into them
all THE CHRISTIAN LAW

There are two characteristics of the Christian moral legislation, mediating, as
it were, between the principles of ethics and their application, which are so
marked that they require to be studied apart. The first is the connection
between liberty and law: and the second that between the law and love

LIBERTY AND LAW The Christian religion as the PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY finds its
perfection in the bestowment through the Holy Ghost of an internal freedom from
the restraint of law which is quite consistent with subjection to external law
as a directory of the life

I. There is nothing more characteristic of the Christian economy of Ethics than
that it sets up an internal rule: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
which makes us free from the law of sin and death.1 This interior rule responds
to the exterior, and in a certain sense supersedes it. The external law ceases
as a law of death: it has vanished with the conscience of sin removed in pardon.
And as against and over the soul with its dread impossibility of fulfillment it
is also gone. The Spirit of life within gives strength for all obedience; and
the law to be obeyed is set up within us, according to the promise which is the
glory of the New Covenant: I will put My laws into their mind and write them in
their hearts.2 This is more than the restoration of the almost effaced traces of
the law engraven on the heart of universal man. In Christianity this internal
law is supernatural; it is nature still, but nature restored and more than
restored: a supernatural nature. This is the interior polity of holy government
of which St. James speaks when he calls the Gospel the perfect law of liberty:3
perfect law becomes liberty from external obligation The nearer obedience is to
the uniformity of the ordinances of nature— being conscious and willing
obedience, though in its perfection not conscious of its willing—the nearer it
approaches the Creator’s end. Law is only the rule by which the Supreme works
His will In all the economy of the physical universe His law works from within
outwardly, and there is no need of any outward statute to be registered for the
guidance of His unintelligent creatures. The Divine Spirit in the heart of
regenerate men seeks thus to work out a perfect obedience to the law of love 1
Romans 8:2; 2 Hebrews 8:10; 3 James 1:25

1. In a loose and general way this may be called the rule of conscience, to
which the Apostle refers when he says, Herein do I exercise myself to hare a
conscience void of offence:1 as if the law that guided him was the decision of
his own moral sense. The Scripture, however, acknowledges no rule of conscience,
this being rather a witness than a governor. In modern ethical science the word
is made to include both functions. First, and very generally, it is made to
signify the moral faculty which discerns good from evil: as men are provided
with a faculty to distinguish fair from foul, and truth from error, so they have
a faculty which distinguishes the moral quality of things or right from wrong
This is simply, however, the Reason whereon the Creator has written those moral
principles which, never altogether effaced, are re-engraven by the Holy Ghost in
regeneration as the eternal standard by which men must judge themselves.
Secondly, it is the estimate whether instinctive or formed by reflection as to
the conformity of our own state and act to that standard. This is CONSCIENCE
proper, and the only conscience of which the Scripture speaks. It mysteriously
suggests the due retribution of good and evil; but this is an attribute which
sin has given it

1 Acts 24:16

2. They are distinguished as conscience objective and conscience subjective.
And, uniting them, we may speak of the internal law as that of SELF-GOVERNMENT
restored. The rule of God’s Spirit in the spirit of the regenerate is the
administration of conscience or the renewed self according to the normal idea of
the Creator. Men thus trusted—under authority to that Holy Ghost yet having
their own souls under them—are in the highest and purest sense a law unto
themselves.1 Yet this only as under the law to Christ,2 Who is the common Lord
of all 1 Romans 2:14; 2 1 Corinthians 9:21

II. For there is still an external law, containing the Christian commandments
contained in ordinances, which is continued by reason of the weakness of the new
nature

1. The external standard still maintains the dignity of law, and still asserts
the necessity of its permanence as an institute. Nowhere does the New
Testament—even when it sounds most loudly the note of liberty—proclaim that the
law is abolished. From the law of sin and death1 we are delivered, not from the
law that directs to holiness and life. Written in the fleshy tables of the
heart,2 the commandments are deposited also in an ark on tables of stone for
common appeal among probationary creatures. The political and social legislation
of the old economy has passed away, but not its eternal morals. They are
reenacted under other forms, and re-written in the pages of the New Testament as
the standard of requirement, the condition of the charter of privileges, and a
testimony against those who offend 1 Romans 8:2; 2 2 Corinthians 3:3

2. The outward enactments are still the directory of individual duty. All
relations have, in the order of the providence of the moral Governor, a sense of
their obligation lodged with them in the human heart, and the law serves to
educate that sense in its manifold details The best Christians need a
remembrancer: they obey the law within, but are not always independent of the
teaching of the law without

3. The external is the safeguard of the internal law: against its only or its
chief enemy, ANTINOMIANISM, which regards the law as abolished in Christ, or
treats it as if it were so

Theoretical or theological Antinomianism is the doctrine that makes a
Christian’s salvation eternally independent of any other obedience than that of
the Gospel offer of grace, or rather than that of the vicarious Redeemer. There
is a teaching which holds that the Substitute of man has not only paid the
penalty of human offence but has fulfilled the law also for the sinner: thus
making the salvation of the elect secure. The believer has, in this doctrine, no
more to do with a legal rule save as a subordinate teacher of morality

He will never to all eternity stand before any bar to be judged by the law. Now
this is the very truth of the Gospel so far as concerns the demand of the law
for eternal and unbroken conformity with its precepts: no one will bear that
inquisition either in the court of time or in the court of eternity. But there
is only a step between precious truth and perilous error here. Christ has
re-enacted His law as an Evangelical institute by which all shall be tested. The
Antinomian proper is one who treats the requirement of perfect holiness as met
by Christ, and refuses to measure his conduct by any law whatever. To him
obedience is only matter of expediency, and propriety, and it may be reward; but
not matter of life and death: his disobedience may be chastised by a Father, it
cannot be eternally punished by a Judge. The law is no longer a condition of
salvation: obedience not being a condition of acceptance as to the past or
negative salvation, neither is it a condition of acceptance as to the future, or
positive salvation. There is also a still more prevalent practical
Antinomianism, which uses liberty as an occasion to the flesh.

1 This may be, or may not be, connected with the theoretical renunciation of
law. It is found in all communities: the disgrace of all creeds and confessions.
The written commandments are a safeguard against both forms of the common enemy.
The noblest and best corrective is, as will be seen, but by love serve one
another. But, besides the gentle protest of charity there is the stern protest
of law with its sanctions. He who knoweth our frame has protected us, if need
be, against ourselves. As the Gospel disarms the law in one sense, it arms it
again in another: they are a mutual defense. He that despised Moses law died
without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment,
suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy:2 but we need not fill up the quotation;
suffice that it is a denunciation of those who sin wilfully after that we have
received the knowledge of the truth. The law protects the Gospel by protecting
itself. If Christian people recite their Creed to keep in memory the things they
surely believe, not less necessary is it that they should recite the
Commandments also to keep in memory what they must do to enter into life 1
Galatians 5:13; 2 Hebrews 10:26-29

LOVE AND LAW

Love has been seen, in the doctrine of Sanctification, to be the principle and
strength and perfection of consecration to God. In Ethics we have to consider it
rather as the fulfilling energy and the fulfilled compendium of law, and the
unity of these two LOVE THE COMPLEMENT OR FULFILLMENT OF LAW Love is the
complement or filling up of all that is meant by law: the summary of all
possible duty to God and man

1. Generally, this may be said to have been our Lord’s authoritative compendium.
He honored the principle as it had never been honored before. He made it the
source of all the merciful dealings of God with man. He assumed its perfection
for Himself: His love and His humility being the sole graces that He called His
own. He made it the badge of His discipleship: the one bond of community between
His people and their Lord. This thrice-honored grace the Redeemer also made the
epitome of all duty in its two branches, towards God and towards man. He was not
only rebuking the Pharisaic computation of the value of precepts, but spoke for
all time, when He said that on these two commandments—that is on the supreme
love of God, and the love of the neighbor as self—hang all the law and the
prophets.1 He did not enact these laws, or this twofold law, as new; nor did He
assign them a new importance in themselves. He simply declared that these were
the sum of all duty, and gave them a new significance in ethical systems In the
Old Testament they seemed to be AMONG the precepts; now they are OVER them

After the Lord had thus set the example it is not to be wondered at that every
writer in the New Testament has paid his tribute to love. St. James leads the
way by his nomon basilikan, the royal law,2 limited by him however to the love
of our fellows. St. Paul’s great expression is that love is the fulfilling of
the law:3 in both instances of its use the meaning is limited, as in St. James,
to the love of the neighbor. Again and again the New Lawgiver and His Apostles
sum up all duty, not as two kinds and orders of love, but as love generally. St.
Peter makes charity or love absolute the crown of the graces introduced into the
life and sustained there by faith: Add... to brotherly kindness charity:4 a
grace therefore that is directed both to God and to man; and, if not precisely
the sum of duty, yet the crown and consummation of all. St. Paul is still more
express: in his hymn to charity, the noblest ethical strain of the New
Testament, agapee is evidently the substance of all personal religion; nor is
there an internal grace or an external duty that is not regarded as an
expression of love. The same may be said of his epitome afterwards given: Now
the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good
conscience, and of faith unfeigned.5 As the end of the law is Christ, so the end
of the commandment is charity: a declaration of large compass. Inverting the
order of the words, pure faith leads to a cleansed conscience and purified
heart, the abode of perfect love. But it is St. John who carries the tribute to
its highest point. He makes the ethical Divine nature charity, God is love; and
the perfection of this grace the perfection of all religion, which is, like him
who possesses it, made perfect in love.6 1 Matthew 22:40; 2 James 2:8; 3 Romans
13:10; 4 2 Peter 1:5; 2 Peter 1:7; 5 1 Timothy 1:5; 6 1 John 4:16; 1 John 4:18

2. Charity in its full meaning in Christian Ethics is therefore the substance of
all obligation to God and our neighbor: it might suffice to say to God; for
there is no real and essential obligation but to the Supreme Lawgiver. There is
no possible act of the soul that is not an act of love, as love is the return of
the soul to its rest. It expresses all homage and reverence to the Divine Being,
with every affection of heart that makes Him its object; all delight in His holy
law; all devotion to His service. Love to man is purely ethical as it is the
reflection of the Divine love. The neighbor is united with the self as a
creature; and as self, literally understood, is lost in love, love views all
creatures and self included as one before God. Hence all the variety of our duty
to our fellows is the expression of charity, aiming supremely at the Supreme,
but reflected on all men for His sake. But we are permitted to speak of
obligation to our fellows: every obligation is summed up in charity which,
negatively, worketh no ill to his neighbor,1 and, positively, loves his neighbor
as himself.2 1 Romans 13:10; 2 Matthew 22:40

3. The fulfillment of law in a perfect character may be regarded as the
formation in the soul of a holy nature. Love is the pleeroma of religion as well
as of law; the sum of all interior goodness: a life governed by this grace is
necessarily holy; for all the faculties and energies of the being are united and
hallowed by charity. It expels every opposite affection; it sanctifies and
elevates every congenial desire. It regulates and keeps from affinity with sin
every emotion. It rules with sovereign sway, as the royal law within, the will
and intention that governs the life. Where pure charity is there can be no
disobedience to Heaven and no injury to the neighbor; there must be all
obedience to God, and all benevolence to man: therefore the whole of goodness is
in the perfection of this grace. When it thus reigns within, it diffuses its
influence over the intellect and its judgments: the mind conducts its operations
under the authority and restraint and sure intuitions of charity, and the heart
is united in God

4. The love, however, which is the anakephalaiosis, or summing up, of all law,
is of necessity perfect love, such as neglects no injunction, forgets no
prohibition, discharges every duty. It is perfect in passive as well as active
obedience. It never faileth;1 it insures the existence of every grace adapted to
time or worthy of eternity. It is the bond of perfectness.2 Therefore it is that
the term perfect is reserved for this grace. Patience must have her perfect
work;3 but love alone is itself perfect, while it gives perfection to him who
has it 1 1 Corinthians 13:8; 2 Colossians 3:14; 3 James 1:4 LOVE THE FULFILLER

Love is the fulfiller of law, as well as the fulfillment. This general truth,
which is not so directly declared as the former, is often indirectly laid down,
and is very important in many ways

1. It is the energy of the regenerate soul which the Spirit uses: faith which
worketh by love. When the Holy Ghost dethrones the self in the renewed spirit He
makes His agent the principle that is most contrary to self, charity. Strictly
speaking all men are actuated by love; but the love by which faith worketh is
turned away from self and looks outward Hence it is the strongest power in our
nature sanctified and set on its highest object

(1.) What love is cannot be defined: as we must think to know thought, and feel
to know feeling, and will to know volition, so we must love to know the meaning
of love, though even then it passeth knowledge. Something of which love in man
is the highest expression is found to be as universal as life: it is as mighty
in animated nature as gravitation in the world of matter. As instinct, or as
merely natural affection, it achieves or seems to achieve unconsciously almost
incredible wonders. But when regenerate, and made the energy of living faith,
under the Holy Ghost, it is capable of the utmost task that can be laid upon it,
even a full obedience to the Divine law. It is in fact the indwelling of Christ,
the indwelling of God by the Holy Ghost: he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in
God.1 Under such a condition what is impossible? Hence it is obvious, that love
as the Divine Spirit’s instrument is more than that affection of human
sensibility which generally bears the name. It is the bond of all the attributes
and perfect-ness of our nature

Though it is not literally the regenerate life —any more than the essence of God
is love— it is the strength of that life. It is the outgoing of the soul towards
its one Supreme Object; and this movement or energy is transmitted into every
manifestation of force in the moral sphere. All that is true in the physical
theories of CORRELATION of forces and CONSERVATION of energy may be transferred
to the domain of Ethics: save that in the omnipotent energy of the Spirit poured
into the Church, and into its individual members, there is a perpetual increase
of the living power that governs the moral world of Christendom. Love in the
Christian life is simply and solely seeking its way back to God: that is its
centripetal force. The spirit is kept from being lost again in its Creator
because of the original fiat which gave it personality: that is its centrifugal
force. Hence the orbit of holy duty. Love is the very strength of the Holy Ghost
in the inner personality of the regenerate. It is behind the intellect and the
sensibilities and the will: ruling the man who is the possessor of these. Though
it derives its name from one of the middle class of these three elements of
human nature, it is exalted to be over them all. And, though it has not a new
name, it has a new, nature and a new prerogative, for love is of God.2 This is
said of no one other grace as such 1 1 John 4:16; 2 1 John 4:7

(2.) But the strength of love as a principle of obedience may be viewed in its
particular relation to God. It has all the power of gratitude: We love [Him]
because He first loved us.1 If ye love Me, keep My commandments.2 If God so
loved us, we ought also to love one another.3 In these sentences, combined in
this order, we have the highest tribute to the strength of gratitude, as the
noblest form of love. It is worthy to be the response of the Divine charity to
sinful man. To it as a sentiment of grateful devotion is committed the obedience
of the regenerate life. And the manifestation of this love to those around us,
in imitation of the supreme charity, gives the highest nobility to virtue. It is
moreover the principle of delight in the Divine character, which inspires the
desire to imitate and become like God: a desire which is capable of being
intensified to unlimited strength, and may become one of the mightiest impulses
of the soul in man. This is either a silent, instinctive necessity of being
transformed into the image of Him Whom love adores, or an active energy that has
in it the potentiality of all holiness. The law, which is a transcript of the
Divine nature, becomes itself the object of love: 0 how love I Thy law,4 is the
note of the Psalm which sings the praises of God’s Word. As the Divine character
and law are both embodied in the Incarnate Son, human love set upon Him is the
strength of all holiness. Here our own words fail, and we take refuge in St.
Peter’s: Whom having not seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet
believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.5 1 1 John 4:19; 2
John 14:15; 3 1 John 4:11; 4 Psa. 114:97; 5 1 Peter 1:8

2, Charity is the guardian of obedience: the Evangelical and better form of the
Rabbinical "hedge about the law." There are two leading enemies of the
righteousness of the Gospel against both and each of which it is the only and
effectual safeguard. ANTINOMIANISM cannot stand in the presence of love. Its
grosser and more refined forms are alike repelled. Theological dogmatic argument
says: Is therefore Christ a minister of sin?1 How then can I do this great
wickedness, and sin against God?2 The heart’s best enforcement of both is, 0 how
love I Thy law!3 PHARISAISM, whether the spirit of a vain dependence on
mechanical external obedience, or in its milder form the hireling sentiment, is
utterly rejected of love. Its ethical precept warns: Thou shalt not tempt the
Lord thy God.4 This grace knows nothing of its own righteousness,5 never being
able to forgive itself for sin against God, and all the less because so much has
been forgiven; and it at once suppresses every tendency to the question, What
shall we hate therefore?6 by another, How much owest thou unto my Lord?7 unto
THE LORD!

1 Galatians 2:17; 2 Genesis 39:9; 3 Psalms 114:7; 4 Matthew 4:7; 5 Php 3:9; 6
Matthew 14:27; 7 Luke 16:5 3. Love also is the expositor of the law which it
keeps and defends. It is the scribe well instructed within the heart

(1.) The enlightened and regenerate reason is of course the interpreter of the
commandments; but love is the ever-present secretary of the judgment, and
renders the meaning of’ every law with an infinite grace peculiar to itself.
This heavenly Magister Sententiarum explains the phraseology of ethics in its
own sense; and defines the terms of its vocabulary in its own spirit. It does
not relax the meaning of any of the most rigid of them. The Must and Ought and
Shall have their full significance; the language of threatening and sanction is
not softened; nor is the Moral Governor of the universe reduced to a
personification of mere good nature. But charity, without abolishing or really
qualifying the ethical ideas of the Scripture, transfigures both them and the
language that expresses them. Yet this is only by giving the commandments their
deeper meaning: the spiritual interpretation, as we call it, is really the
generous interpretation of love. When the New Lawgiver ascended the Mount and
opened His mouth, Love Incarnate then first disclosed the hidden mysteries of
ethics; and its deep interpretation pervades the whole Sermon. Applied to the
commandments generally, and to the Decalogue in particular, it reveals a new
world of morals. The precepts of the first table, literally interpreted, seem
cold and hard and limited: but let love interpret them according to its
sentiment of perfect devotion! So it is with the other table. Let the
injunctions to remember the Sabbath, to abstain from stealing, and murder, and
adultery, and false witness be severally expounded by perfect charity, and how
their spiritual meaning searches the heart, quickens the pulse of duty, and
inflames the soul’s desire!

(2.) Again, love supplies the omissions of every statute and code; being quick
to discern, where the law is silent, its unexpressed meaning and inference. Love
is the fulfilling or the COMPLEMENT of the law, and its SUPPLEMENT also. It
fills up the interstices by a running commentary, and adds an undertone of
subsidiary precepts that perfect the directory of duty. It interlineates the
written code within and without, inserting its own boundless variety of
unwritten commands

(3.) It is also the Casuist which settles every difficulty. There are many
complications in the application of ethical principles. From the beginning there
has been a special department which, under the name of CASUISTRY, presides over
anomalies in morals, conflicting precepts, collision of duties and seeming
incompatibilities of obligation. Here Love abounds in all judgment,1 or
discrimination. It stands by the side of conscience, ever ready and seldom at a
loss for the right exposition. Seldom: for there will be instances after all,
Cases of Conscience, which no Casuistry will decide; scruples and doubts which
no human Ductor Dubitautium can determine; and which perplex and embarrass even
the sure instincts of love. But, generally, this interpreter keeps the honest
Christian, who simply and only aims at perfection, right. This Casuist, sent by
a heavenly commission into the court, lays down three general principles for the
extrication of the embarrassed soul that desires to do its duty: first, the
highest Object of obedience must invariably and at all costs have, the
preeminence; secondly, the most generous interpretation of every questionable
obligation is to be preferred; and, thirdly, self as an end is always to be
utterly rejected, or, so far as it is admitted subordinately as an end, it is
always the self of eternity rather than the self of time. The application of
these standing by-laws is illustrated by the Supreme Sovereign Himself, much of
Whose legislation had to do with collisions of duty. For instance, the disciple
who says, Suffer me first to go and bury my father, is bidden, let the dead bury
their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.2 The voice of Christ, Who
is God in His kingdom, must be supreme over every other, even the most powerful,
claim. In every such case of severe collision between the pure natural instincts
and the ’ service of God, God must be first and He will hold His servant
harmless. The earliest lesson from the lips of Jesus enforced this

Between what seemed His duty to His mother and His new vocation there was a
collision: Wist ye not that I MUST be about My Father’s business?3 Again, when
His disciples blamed the loyal woman of the alabaster box, the Redeemer taught
them a lesson: on His Person, while He was yet with them, it was impossible to
be too profuse in gifts, and she who seemed too lavish was shielded: Why
trouble, ye, the woman?4 Her large and liberal interpretation of duty, with the
decision to which pure love brought her, was defended and commended to all the
world. Lastly, of the third principle also He set in His own person the great
example: He pleased not Himself.5 And when the greatest of all conflicts in
ethics occurred, between the care of His own innocence and the salvation of
guilty men, He surrendered the former: Not My will but Thine be done;6 and
suffered Himself to be numbered with the transgressors. In Him infinite charity
expounded duty

It must do the same office in us. No other principle of exposition will carry us
safe through the complications of life. Expediency, common sense, reason may
err: love, armed with these principles, NEVER FAILETH.7 1 Php 1:9; 2 Luke
9:59-60; 3 Luke 2:49; 4 Matthew 26:10; 5 Romans 15:3; 6 Luke 22:3; 7 1
Corinthians 13:8 LOVE THE UNITY OF FULFILLER AND FULFILMENT The perfection of
the Christian system of ethics is seen in the combination of love the fulfiller
and love the fulfillment of law: law and obedience to law are one in charity. To
borrow terms in modern use, here is the unity of objective and subjective: a
unity which impresses its various and most important influence on the whole
study of New-Testament morals

1. It explains the fact that the Christian revelation is comparatively
indifferent to legal codes and formal enactments. It does not dwell so much on
the enforcement of specific obligations as on the vigorous maintenance of the
principle of charity: love is the strength of the MUST, which at once prescribes
obedience and gives the fullness of the commands to which obedience is due. It
is obvious, therefore, that Christianity cannot have, like the old covenant, the
distinction of moral and ceremonial and political law. Its legislation extends
only where love can reign: that domain cannot be one of mere ceremonial
observances; nor can it be the sphere of civil government, where charity is not
the vicegerent of God. The old economy, which contained indeed latently a hint
of this in Be ye holy!1 and Thou shalt love the Lord thy God!2 has vanished with
all its legislation

Even its DECALOGUE, as such, is retained only because our Lord has Himself and
by His Apostles exempted it from the operation of that principle, and
incorporated it in the Christian statute book. Introduced into the legislation
where charity is supreme, it is by our Lord reduced to one twofold principle,
the love of God and of the neighbor. It is in other respects dealt with in a
free spirit It is rearranged, abridged, and its spirit extracted; it undergoes
also a change in the fourth commandment, a spiritualization everywhere, and has
an endless supplement added 1 Leviticus 20:7; 2 Matthew 22:37

2. Love is an active principle, the law of the movement of the whole ofMan 1:1
towards God. And, therefore, if love is both the fulfillment and fulfiller, all
holiness must be no other than one concentrated and active outgoing of the
strength of the whole nature of him who obeys. It does not pause to distinguish
between what is forbidden and what is commanded. I will run the way of Thy
commandments, when Thou shalt enlarge my heart.2 There is no mere obedience to
prohibitive ordinance. The spirit that hates evil loves holiness; and, in going
to the limit of every interdict, it runs to the other side and finds the perfect
opposite. It avoids sin only on its way to holiness. Its resistance to evil is
the resistance of love: there is no fear in love, but there is deep wrath: an
anger that sins not, but abhors that which is evil and will not be content with
anything less than the abolition of the sin. Hence, further, charity, as an
eternal and evergrowing activity, pursues every precept into all its
ramifications. Here we have again the spiritual interpretation: charity is now
the well-instructed allegorist that spiritualizes every letter to infinity. It
cannot ask the question: Which is the great commandment in the law?3 And it
cheerfully consents to that strong word of the Moralist among the Apostles:
Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of
all.4 The ethics of love make provision everywhere that God may be all in all,5
that the very least ordinance shall be sustained by all the majesty of Heaven.
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.6 It is
impatient of greater and less in duty 1 Ecclesiastes 12:13; 2 Psa. 114:32; 3
Matthew 22:36; 4 James 2:10; 5 1 Corinthians 15:28; 6 Luke 16:10

3. Here we may recall the law of liberty,1 which is royal and perfect: royal and
sovereign, in virtue of its being perfect The law was given by Moses, but grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ:2 the grace of the Gospel is the truth of the
law; and of those who receive it we read: against such there is no law;3 which
means more than that they are uncondemned by the statute. Bat the very liberty
is itself law. He taketh away the first, the outer code, that He may establish
the second,4 the inner. Nevertheless, the law, as we have seen, remains for a
testimony, and for conviction, and for perpetual incentive. Its uses are thus
summed up by the old theology: its USUS POLITICUS, to regulate common life: its
USUS ELENCHTICUS, to convince of sin; its USUS DIDACTICUS, to instruct in morals
The true Christian, however, is not under [the] law, but under grace.5 He is not
indeed over law in the sense of being independent of it. His emancipation is
only so far as grace or mercy effects it through forgiveness; but that very
grace disciplines or teaches him to walk according to the strictest principles
of morality. The law is neither over nor beneath the believer: it is, like the
kingdom itself of which it is the rule, within us 1 James 2:12; 2 John 1:17; 3
Galatians 5:23; 4 Hebrews 10:9; 5 Romans 6:14

4. Christianity has introduced what is sometimes called the new law: it is the
law of Christ;1 or the law of faith.2 Now if all law is love, and all
fulfillments is love, it is obvious that there may be a righteousness of God3
attained to such a degree that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in
us.4 Loves presides over ethics which are adapted to a disordered constitution
and a lost estate. It covers a multitude of past sins and enables the believer
to present what is accepted as a full obedience. Thus is that saying true: Mercy
glorieth against judgment.5 If strict justice should proceed in its inquisition
according to the standard of heaven and unfallen creatures, mercy or love cries,
Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all:6 these my children shall be made
perfect in duty. Meanwhile, its perfect work is judged according to the
Evangelical standard of grace: it is accepted according to that a man hath, and
not according to that he hath not.7 Whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the
love of God perfected.8

1 Galatians 6:2; 2 Romans 3:27; 3 Romans 10:3; 4 Romans 8:4; 5 James 2:13; 6
Matthew 18:26; 7 2 Corinthians 8:12; 8 1 John 2:5

5. Lastly, this teaches that there cannot possibly be any works of
Supererogation. For, as law is love, love also is law. There can be no such
thing as overpassing the limits of obligation. The spirit of Divine charity
seems to suppress the terminology of ethics, and to change its character; but
only to revive it into higher life. The vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience, so far as they are Christian, are not in reality voluntary vows, but
obligatory laws. Blessed are the poor in spirit! Blessed are the pure in heart!
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness!1 are
benedictions pronounced upon the three severally as expressing the true
Christian character. Every counsel of perfection is a commandment with promise.
And, as to the whole theory on which these are founded, it may be said that
Jesus the universal Lawgiver is the One DIRECTOR OF SOULS: THERE is ONE
LAWGIVER,2 Who is GOD-MAN, the Lord; and His law is love, whether as to the
perfect principle that keeps it, or as to the sum of the commandments which it
must keep 1 Matthew 5:3; Matthew 5:6; Matthew 5:8; 2 James 4:12

BIBLICAL METHOD The New Testament, as the perfect development of the ethical
teaching of progressive revelation, furnishes the rich abundance of materials
from which may be constructed a systematic exhibition of applied ethics

It has been seen that the internal law which gives its character to Christianity
does not supersede the external; though it gives that law a peculiar freedom and
irregularity. It remains now to consider what materials there are for the
construction of anything like an ethical system; how those materials are
distributed, and on what principles they may be arranged. Here we have to do
with the Lord and His Apostles alone

I. The Supreme Lawgiver in His ethical teaching gathered up and dissolved,
re-enacted in part and in part amended, the ethics of the Old Testament

1. It is very observable that, though He spoke with a new and strange, because a
Divinehuman, authority, He did not profess to promulgate a new code of laws for
His disciples

He did not directly pronounce even the ceremonial law obsolete; in fact, He
observed it Himself and connected its observance with many of His miracles. But
He certainly gave sundry hints which were to be developed, after His perfect
sacrifice, into an abrogation of the whole positive law of Moses. The national
and political laws had lapsed in the order of Divine Providence. The purely
moral law our Lord necessarily ratified. While He released His disciples from
the ancient code as such, He honored the Decalogue, defended it from perversion,
and filled out its precepts as spiritually interpreted. A very large part of His
ethical teaching was a commentary on the Ten Words of the ancient code.
Moreover, He laid down some new principles or gave some new counsels which were
adapted to the interval during which He in His personal presence was instead of
law, being the Dictator, or Director of His disciples in an intermediate order
of things

Thus many of His precepts were not of permanent obligation, but adapted to the
purpose of those days. Such were some of the positive commandments, which sound
like absolute precepts, to sell all that thou hast . . . and come, follow Me.1
Others, on the contrary, He laid down rather for future use, after the Spirit
should have fully come. Such were those which prescribed prayer in His Name and
the assembling of His people, and so forth

Again, there were innumerable indications of His will given through the medium
of His miracles; and not a few precedents of morals established by Him as
Supreme Judge. But it may be said generally that He taught those parts of His
ethical system which were most special and characteristic— such as the virtue of
humility and self-denial—by His own example. He left all these materials for His
Apostles rather than leave a system of His own. His life, His words, and His
works were to them and are to us a boundless accumulation of the highest ethics.
His last personal question and His last personal command illustrate everything
that has been said. Lovest thou Me? shows that love was the spring of all
obedience. Follow thou Me!2 shows that imitation of His example was the supreme
morality 1 Luke 18:22; 2 John 21:17; John 21:22

2. The Apostles, when His words were brought to their remembrance, followed the
Master’s example, and dealt with the new ethics precisely in His Spirit

(1.) In the Acts new obligations arise, and a peculiar class of duties with
them: the descent of the Holy Ghost, the formation of the new Church, the claims
of devotion to the ascended Redeemer, the demands of the Gentile world, all
conspired to create a new order of ethical obligations, demanding a new order of
precepts. In the Epistles, however, we have the abundant exposition of the new
morals of Christianity, as the Spirit brought the Master’s words to the
disciples’ remembrance, or inspired them to make new applications of those
words. It is impossible to compare the Gospels and the Epistles without
perceiving that the Same Teacher is in both, as also that there is the same
manner of teaching. In the Epistles there is more statement of doctrinal truth;
but, as in the Gospels, we find that there is not a solitary revelation of truth
which has not, directly or indirectly, and almost always directly, an
application to practice. As in the Master’s days, occasional circumstances give
rise to important decisions. The precedents of the Lord’s Ethical Court are many

(2.) The Epistles teach largely by application of principles to individual
cases. They open up a wide field of their own, however, in the relations between
the duties and obligations of the Christian fellowship and those of personal
religion: hence the new ethical word oikodomeen, and the inculcation of all that
belongs to EDIFICATION, corporate and individual. But the ethical glory of the
Epistles is to be found in three departments which are opened and consecrated to
this service. First, they bring all into dependence on UNION WITH CHRIST through
that indwelling of His Holy Spirit which is the unity and common bond of the
Lord and His people. It we embrace this as truth and as more than mere figure,
and in the light of it read the New Testament, we shall find that the entire
field of ethics is illuminated by it. Again, the LAST THINGS begin to enter the
field with peculiar solemnity and pathos, giving to all the Epistles in some
parts, and St. Peter’s throughout, a specific and indescribable tone. Finally
each writer has his own constellation of GRACES AND VIRTUES, the consummate
beauty as well as the ethical completeness of which cannot be exaggerated. So
perfect are they that an exposition of these little compendiums of morals would
furnish a system of universal Christian Ethics. Not that there is anything in
the Epistles of which the Gospels contain no intimation. Every Apostle is still
only a disciple of Jesus,1 ematheeteuthee too leesou, and only develops more
fully the principles laid down by Him: neither in doctrine nor in morals does
the stream of Apostolic teaching rise higher than the fountain in the Master

1 Matthew 27:57

3. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find any trace of such an outline of
Ethics as should guide future systematization. The nearest approach is the
Sermon on the Mount, with which in the Epistles corresponds St. Paul’s great
ethical chapter in the Romans 1:1-32 But our Lord’s Discourse was a spiritual
commentary on the Decalogue. He takes its last precept, which forbids the evil
lust of the heart, and makes it the point of connection with His own new
legislation. St. Paul immediately after his exposition of the graces which flow
from entire consecration to God, introduces the second table of the Decalogue,
and in such a way as to intimate that he acknowledged it as the compendium of
Christian duty. It may be well, therefore, at this point to consider the claims
of this one summary of moral obligation, and to give the reasons why it is not
adopted as our basis 1 Romans 12:1-21 THE DECALOGUE The DECALOGUE, hee dekalogos
sc. biblos nomothesia, was the central obligatory code of the Old Covenant: the
most ancient as it is the most perfect of all summaries of moral duty

1. Though given to a special people, and with circumstantials and appendages of
limited application, it is universal and for the world. Its dignity was
impressed by this, that it was given by Jehovah Himself, while Moses was the
organ of the other legislation. There is a difference between the original
account in Exodus and the recession in Deuteronomy; but they concur in making
the commandments ten: THE TEN WORDS or THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, containing the
Covenant specially so called, and therefore deposited in the Ark of Testimony in
the centre of the sanctuary. The Decalogue was written on two tables of stone,
inscribed on both sides; and obviously divides the precepts in the middle, five
having reference to God and containing the Praecepta pietatis, and five
referring to man and containing the Praecepta probitatis. Reverence to parents
regards them as representative of God: even as Pietas in the old Latin combined
the two

2. These two Tables, brought into the New Testament and expounded on the
principle of the Sermon on the Mount, might be made the basis of all moral
teaching. Their spiritual interpretation would furnish all the necessary
principles of ethics. The Preface is a glorious announcement of the Personality
and Supremacy of God: the foundation of all religion, and the ground of
obligation for all that follows. To the children of Israel He was the Jehovah
who brought them out of Egypt; to Christians the God of universal redemption; to
all men everywhere the One and only Moral Governor. The first commandment
enjoins the supreme homage of the One God: its Jehovah has become the Holy
Trinity; and the spiritual interpretation of this law lays down all the
principles of theological faith in the Triune God, with the life of holy
devotion and obedience which corresponds with that faith. The second prescribes
the spiritual worship which alone the Deity will accept. Literally, it
interdicts idolatry and the use of emblems to denote the unseen Being; by
anticipation, therefore, condemning the superstitious ceremonial and honor paid
to images in degenerate Christendom. Spiritually, it further searches the
chambers of imagery and forbids every creaturely rival of the Supreme and Only
Object of the soul’s delight. The third commands the profoundest reverence of
the Divine Majesty, and forbids the irreverent use of the Holy Name in needless
oath and light swearing. Spiritually, it enjoins an awful reverence of the
Divine Presence: not only in His worship, where it requires the most perfect and
all-pervasive sincerity in every thought, word, and act that has Him for its
Object, but also in the whole of life, which must be conducted, down to its
slightest details, in His Name which is the Name of His Son our Lord. The fourth
ordains the observance of public worship of the One God, the ordinance for all
ages of an appointed day including the whole service of religion. This
commandment undergoes a remarkable change: while in Exodus the memorial of the
Creation is mentioned, in Deuteronomy, which looks within and also goes forward
to Christian days, deliverance from Egyptian slavery, pointing to Greater
Redemption, are alone introduced. The spiritualization of this precept makes the
worship of God a perpetual rest, and connects all with the final rest of heaven.
The fifth attaches an especial honor to parents: not only as parents, however,
but as representing all lawful authority; both Divine and human. Moreover, it is
the link between the Two Tables: placed in the first, it undoubtedly belongs
also to the second. The sixth forbids murder and every passion that leads to it.
The spiritual application of this short precept is perhaps the widest of all in
its range: as to the neighbor, it includes every act that shows an
undervaluation of the worth of his life down to the slightest thought or word of
hatred or violence; while, as to self, it includes every passion and practice
that tends to the injury of personal life and well-being, intemperance and
excess of every kind. The seventh includes in the word adultery all sins that
war against the purity of the sexual relations: of its spiritual range our Lord
has given us His own most suggestive illustration. The eighth protects property
and forbids dishonesty in act and thought: here then will come in the whole
substance of the ethics of property with its rights and obligations; and the
highest spiritual interpretation, remembering that men eternally owe love to one
another, will make it the basis of all the self-sacrificing ethics of the Gospel
of Charity. The ninth protects the character of the neighbor, and forbids
slander in every degree, and through all its stages along the whole line of its
vocabulary. The last is as it were a Deuteronomical repetition on the one hand,
and an advance towards the Sermon on the Mount on the other. It forbids the lust
of the heart, and is again and again alluded to in the New Testament as carrying
the commandments of the Second Table into the region of the hidden man where his
original sin forges every species of iniquity 3. But the Decalogue, as such, has
not often been used as the basis of an exposition of Christian Ethics

(1.) There has been no slight difference of view from the beginning as to the
principles of its own internal order; and this contention itself has tended to
prevent its adoption

Augustine, followed by the Roman Catholic Church, and in this by the Lutherans
also, reduced the first two precepts to one; thus giving three commandments to
the First Table The Second Table then contains seven, the tenth being
subdivided. The ancient Jews did not thus divide the tenth; but left the
prohibition of all concupiscence untouched and alone. They, however, sundered
the first into two, preceded by a Preface: the former of the two simply imposed
belief in the Supreme and Perfect Being. Josephus and Philo, followed by the
Early Christian Church, and the Greek and Re-formed of modern times, adopted
that order which, as in our English Bibles, is in general acceptance

(2.) There are, however, reasons in the Code itself which make it an inadequate
foundation of an ethical system: reasons which have been already more than
suggested, and may here be more fully referred to. Generally, it cannot be
questioned that the Decalogue as such, and as part of the Israelitish
legislation, was abrogated: that is to say, it survived the passing away of the
old economy because of its eternal moral principles; principles which are
reproduced, and more fully explained and based upon their true grounds by the
Saviour’s new legislation. While, therefore, the Ten Commandments still remain,
in their Hebrew form, as a memorial of the past, and, stripped of Hebrew
appendages, as binding on all nations, they are not the obligatory statement of
the entire morals of Christianity. Moreover, it is obvious that the negative and
limited character of some of the precepts does not fit them to be the formal
expression of the perfect law of liberty: the very fact that they require so
large a spiritual and positive expansion makes it embarrassing to hang on them
all the precepts and aspirations of Christianity. Again, our Lord has indicated
His will on this subject by summarizing all our duty into the one supreme
commandment of love in its two branches: including, not merely the Decalogue,
but the whole compass of moral precepts: ALL the law and the Prophets.1 And, in
His Sermon, which has been spoken of as a Commentary on the Decalogue, there is
a large body of ethical teaching that cannot, without considerable violence, be
brought into direct reference to any of its precepts. When we study morality in
the Apostolical Epistles we find the same independence of the Ten Words as a
formal code. In fact, very much of their ethical grandeur lies in a region
beyond any commandments contained in ordinances: in the region, namely, of the
experiences and aspirations and attainments of the Christian life. Hence, to sum
up, while the Ten Commandments are of eternal obligation, they are not the
adequate basis of Christian Ethics: they serve better for a standing witness and
testimony to the conscience before God than as the program of systematic moral
theology

1 Matthew 22:40 SYSTEMATIC CHRISTIAN ETHICS

Having considered Ethics in their specifically Christian principles, we shall
now treat these principles as applied: first, as forming the Christian
character, personal and individual; and, secondly, as regulating all external
relations. But this distinction cannot be observed rigidly

It is obvious that we adopt here the most natural and easy arrangement. There is
a sense in which no such distinction as this can be justified, inasmuch as the
internal character is dependent on the discharge of external obligations. But if
we press this too far, we lose our systematic arrangement altogether, and the
loss would be great PERSONAL ETHICS OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE The internal
obligations of the Christian life may be presented in an endless variety of
ways. The following scheme embraces all, and with some attempt at the order of
their development: first come the ethics of Preliminary Grace or Conversion;
then such as deal with the Ultimate Intention of the new nature; then those of
the Internal Conflict; then those of Consecration to Divine service; and lastly
the ethics of Devotion as expressed in the spirit and habit of worship ETHICS OF
THE PRELIMINARY GRACEOF CONVERSION

Christian Ethics begin, in a certain sense, before the regeneration of the soul.
There is a range of duties and obligations incumbent on the awakened sinner, for
which sufficient grace is given. This branch of morals has been included in the
general question of Preliminary Grace; and must only be touched upon here as
introductory to Christian Ethics proper 1. Generally the whole moral law is
incumbent on sinners as such, from beginning to end

There is a perpetual interdict, Thou shalt not! and a perpetual injunction, Thou
shalt! even though the strength to abstain and to do may as yet be wanting.
These may be regarded as the ethics of a state of slavery to sin. In this case
the law is set for conviction of sin, and of sinfulness its source, and of the
utter impotence of the mind unrenewed, demanding always repentance with all that
has been described as belonging to it. Those who yield to the influences of the
restraining and prompting Spirit of conviction, and strive to cease to do evil
and learn to do well,1 are in the way of duty approved by God. It is wrong to
say that all sincere works done before regeneration are only splendid vices, and
counted by the Judge as evil: however true it is that they are not meritorious,
and can do nothing towards justification, they are in the way of preparation for
Divine acceptance. It is incorrect even to affirm that there is no ethical duty
possible to the unregenerate. "We have seen that there is a religious life
before the regenerate life, and it has its morals

There are fruits meet for repentance,2 which are also the fruit of the Spirit,3
though not yet the Spirit of regeneration 1 Isaiah 1:6; 2 Matthew 3:8; 3
Galatians 5:22

2. The very faith that introduces the soul to salvation through union with
Christ must be preceded by, or rather must include, a submission to the
Mediatorial Redeemer which is an ethical law incumbent on every redeemed rebel
as such. It is the duty of every living sinner who hears the proclamation of the
Gospel to yield compliance to the supreme will of Christ. His conscience tells
him this, and it is at his peril that he refuses. There is a doctrine indeed
which removes the foundation of this ethical responsibility. But it is not the
doctrine taught by the New Testament It is unnecessary, however, to dwell on
these topics, as they have been abundantly exhibited already

3. It may be added, that, after conversion, this same repentance and faith do
not cease to be ethical obligations. Penitence in sundry forms is both the grace
and the duty of religion to the end: it may even be a profounder sorrow in the
sanctified than in the unregenerate; and even when it becomes only the
acknowledgment, sorrowful yet always rejoicing, of the sin which is through
Divine grace entirely gone, it is repentance still. And as to faith, or
self-renouncing submission to Mediatorial authority and acceptance of the
Mediator’s Person, it is literally made perfect in the Christian life. But on
these, and on all other topics connected with the transformations of preliminary
ethics in the regenerate estate, we shall speak more fully hereafter ETHICS OF
THE ULTIMATEINTENTION The direction of the supreme aim of the soul is foremost
in the ethics of the established regenerate life. These are classed under three
general heads: first, the Glory of God, in all the forms of that highest
intention; secondly, the Will of Christ, as the specific Christian end of life;
and, thirdly, the Perfection of our entire nature, as the issue of both these in
their combination This department includes a wide range of the ethical
principles of the New Testament. It may be said, indeed, to embrace them all, as
there is no temper of the soul or action of the life, whether regarding self or
regarding others, which is not under the government of the ultimate choice of
the will. But we must strictly limit ourselves to the characteristics of holy
intention as such

I. Perhaps the final expression of the end of the Christian life is that given
by St. Paul: do all to THE GLORY OF GOD.1 1 1 Corinthians 10:31

1. The highest example and illustration of the maxim is to be found in our Lord,
Who, when leaving the world, said: I have glorified Thee on the earthy having
finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.1 His whole human career as the
supreme pattern had this for its supreme object: to render a perfect tribute to
the glory of the Divine Name, to reflect that glory from Himself, and to bring
men to render God His glory. These three combined are the highest definition we
can conceive of the meaning of a phrase which has been adopted always to express
the ultimate and noblest aim of creaturely life

1 John 17:4

2. But the last branch of the definition indicates that living to the glory of
God has a specifically Christian meaning. It is very specially St. Paul’s
expression, who places it on the ground of redemption: for ye were bought with a
price; therefore glorify God in your body,1 redeemed equally with the spirit.
The honor of the Triune God of the Gospel salvation is now the final end of the
Christian life. The Corinthian Epistle, which uses the term more than any other,
begins by showing that God in Christ has taken all human glorying away, and made
Himself the one Object of all glorying: that no flesh should glory in His
presence2 is on one side of the Redeemer’s finished work, and he that glorieth
let him glory in the Lord on the other. When all shall be accomplished it is
said that the Lord shall come to be glorified in His saints.3 In these passages
we have the two ideas of rendering God His tribute and reflecting His honour
from ourselves. The third idea, that of bringing others to glorify Him, that is,
of so acting as to secure His honor, occurs again and again: Whether therefore
ye eat or drink, or do anything, do all to the glory of God:4 where the
uppermost thought is, that every action may be so ordered as not to bring
dishonor upon the Author of the Gospel. The reference here is to comparatively
insignificant things; but elsewhere, the highest range of duty is referred to
the same end: If any man speaketh, speaking as it were oracles of God; if any
man minister, ministering as of the ability that God giveth; that God in all
things may be glorified through Jesus Christ.5 Thus every thought and every word
and every action must in Christian Ethics aim to honor God, to reflect His
grace, and to shield His name from reproach; and in these three senses
Christians live TO THE GLORY OF GOD 1 1 Corinthians 6:20; 2 1 Corinthians
1:29-31; 3 2 Thessalonians 1:10; 4 1 Corinthians 10:31; 5 1 Peter 4:11 3. As an
ethical principle this widest and most comprehensive law may assume some other
forms and names

(1.) It is the making God the one object of life: the meaning or thinking or
intending the Supreme Triune, and in each Person, in all things from the least
to the greatest. This is what our Lord has called the SINGLE EYE, which looks at
the Divine will as the directory and end of every action. The lamp of the body
is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light,1 on which closely follows, Ye cannot serve God and mammon2 full force of
this precept is seen if we connect with it two other passages. Your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost;3 and His interior light shines upon the eye that gives
light to the whole of that life of which the body is the organ. And, beholding
God in all things, we obey the injunction: sanctify Christ as Lord in your
hearts,4 in the centre of your entire personality of soul and body. Thus we have
the full thought of a single eye to the glory of God. Elsewhere this grace is
called SIMPLICITY: he that giveth let him do it with simplicity,5 where our
Lord’s haplous becomes en haploteeti Purity of intention and singleness of aim
are united in simplicity and godly sincerity.6 These make up that UNITY of aim,
as opposed to multiplicity of regards and distraction of motives, for which the
Psalmist prayed: I will walk in Thy truth; unite my heart to fear Thy name.7
This principle of a fixed and habitual reference of every action to the will of
God pervades the Scripture, and is one of the glories of its ethical teaching

1 Matthew 6:22; 2 Matthew 6:24; 3 1 Corinthians 6:19; 4 1 Peter 3:15; 5 Romans
12:8; 6 1 Corinthians 1:12; 7 Psalms 86:11

(2.) It is presented in another form as the aim to PLEASE GOD, with its reflex,
the consciousness of pleasing Him. One of the first definitions of a perfect
godliness in the Bible is the word concerning Enoch that he walked with God,1
which in the New Testament is explained that he pleased God.2 Here again we have
the Supreme Example, that of Him who pleased not Himself,3 and Who once declared
of Himself, I do always those things that please Him.4 It was His aim to please
His Father, and it must be ours: He could say I DO ALWAYS; we in His strength
must copy Him. Thus we may close as we began with our Lord’s example, Who never
spoke but of two aims in His life, the glory of His Father’s name, and the
pleasing Him in doing His will. But the honor due to God belongs to Christ
Himself 1 Genesis 5:24; 2 Hebrews 11:5; 3 Romans 15:3; 4 John 8:29

(3.) The Apostle Paul bids the Colossian servants to serve not with eyeservice,
as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart fearing God. This passage, with its
parallel to the Ephesians, teaches that to please God, to please the Lord, is to
fear Him; and thus the glory of God and the pleasing Him are really one. Unite
my heart to fear Thy name1has almost its perfect echo in these words: in an
undivided heart fearing the Lord. Moreover, it teaches what the whole Scripture
teaches, that, as there can be only one object of fear, so there can be only One
Being to be pleased. The ethical purity of this intention consists in its
soleness and supremacy. Do I seek to please men? for, if I yet pleased men, I
should not be the servant of Christ.2 1 Psalms 86:11; 2 Galatians 1:10

II. The Christian Lawgiver, unlike any other in the history of religion,
presents Himself to His people as the Object of their final intention in all
things. This truth appears in several lights

1. It is exhibited as the bringing all life into entire DEVOTION TO THE LORD
JESUS. Our Savior is our God, and therefore He is the End of the soul as well as
its Redeemer. The term end being most literally understood, the ethics of
Christianity permit this application: for to me to live is Christ.1 If it
signifies more generally a leading purpose in the whole tenor of probation, it
is supported by St. Paul again: whether we live, we live unto the Lord.2 The
Christian is thus also under the law to Christ;3 and that most absolutely, for
the entire strain of the New Testament, even more than isolated texts, shows
nothing in the vista of human duty and aspiration beyond the will of the
Incarnate Jesus. This is a distinctively Christian end and aim in all things:
and its supremacy as such is proved by the remainder of the passage already
quoted: whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Lest, however, this should be
supposed to mean only that in the Divine order Jesus of Nazareth has the
destinies of men put into His hands, the Apostle says: whether we live therefore
or die we are the Lords. We are not now proving the Divinity of the Incarnate.
Here, indeed, is absolute demonstration: for of none but the Supreme can it be
said that the creature is His, and lives and dies to Him. But the specific
ground of this devotion of the being to Jesus is the fact of His redeeming
purpose and redeeming rights: to this end Christ died and revived, that He might
be the Lord of the dead and of the living.4 As to this nothing more need be said
than that the same argument is used concerning God and His Christ: Ye are bought
with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.5 1 Php 1:21; 2 Romans 14:8; 3
1 Corinthians 9:21; 4 Romans 14:9; 5 1 Corinthians 6:20

2. This is the place to dwell upon that negative end of life, which is almost
the peculiarity and altogether the glory of the Christian system: the entire
renunciation, or rather the entire forgetfulness of, SELF as the end of our
actions: its utter extinction as the final intention of anything we think, or
speak, or do. Forgetfulness, mark well: a most important truth has been aimed at
by the word negative; for if the annihilation of selfends is made a positive end
itself, the ethical grandeur of unselfishness is lost Hence the affecting
connection of this principle with the example of Christ. If any man will come
after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me:1
here the following of Christ is the sum of the new life, the daily cross its
constant element, the absolute renunciation of self as an end is the
introductory condition: not the less an introductory condition, because the
general company of the Redeemer’s disciples are ever learning it, and do not
come to the full knowledge of its truth, down to the last. Observe, however,
that we speak only of the Ultimate Principle and scope of life. Self may still
remain as a subordinate end: Work out your own salvation! Look not every man on
his own things, but every man ALSO on the things of others. All seek their own,
not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.2 These various words follow the
Apostle’s exhibition of the Supreme Example of self-renunciation: let this mind
be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Here is the suppression of self. They
then show that the self which is lost is found again in Christ, and is an object
of care combined with the neighbor, that care of self working out the will of
God. The Philippian chapter contains the perfect doctrine of Self 1 Luke 9:23; 2
Php 1:4-5; Php 1:12; Php 1:21

3. This leads to the IMITATION OF CHRIST, which has been and will be alluded to:
here it is also a supreme intention in life. There is no higher end than to
become like Him, Who is the Perfect Good Incarnate: There is none good but One,
that is, God;1 that is, Christ, God in man. There is no higher tribute to the
Supreme than to endeavor to be like Him: imitari quern colis. Our Lord, who at
the beginning bade His disciples imitate the perfections of their Father which
is in heaven,2 ended His teaching by commanding the emulation of Himself. His
last word to an individual on earth made both the duty and the individuality of
it prominent: follow thou Me.3 But here we must remember what has been already
made emphatic, that our Lord has set before us an example, not so much of the
means, as of the result of Christian endeavor. If He makes Himself the Pattern
in the pursuit of it, it is always and only as He is the model of the
renunciation of self. In that alone is He expressly proposed as an example 1
Matthew 19:17; 2 Matthew 5:44-48; 3 John 21:22

III. Another ultimate ethical aim is the attainment of the perfection of the
individual character, as the issue of personal striving after nothing less than
the realization of all the will of God, and thus by Divine grace making the
result our own 1. Generally, nothing is more certain than that this high ideal
is set before the Christian

One of the first words of the New Lawgiver was: Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father which is in heaven is perfect.1 The word teleioi implies the
possible attainment of the telos, the end or moral goal, of all life. This was
the new aspiration introduced into ethics by our Lord, Who made His heavenly
Father the standard, reproduced upon earth by Himself, of all moral excellence,
as summed up in Charity, which all His followers must aspire to reach

1 Matthew 5:48

2. That supreme standard must be aimed at by the Christian, depending on Divine
grace, from the very beginning of his career of discipleship through all its
processes to the end

(1.) Our Lord said to one who came to Him, If thou wilt be perfect!1 thus
engaging him to the pursuit of perfection at the outset, and applying a severe
test to his sincerity of intention. He was required to give the first pledge of
his determination by selling all that he had for the poor. Christ made Himself
the standard: everyone that is perfect shall be as his Master.2 Here the word
and the application are different; but the meaning is that those who have become
His disciples must aim to share His moral perfection 1 Matthew 19:21; 2 Luke
6:40

(2.) The processes of the Christian life must all be conducted under the
inspiration of this lofty incentive. It has been seen how the Holy Spirit
administers the Atonement as a provision for making men perfect before the law,
perfect as children of God, and perfect as sanctified to the Divine fellowship.
It will be enough now to indicate that in these three departments Christians are
taught to aspire to perfection by their own co-operant effort

These things write I unto you, that ye sin not.1 He that doeth righteousness is
righteous, even as He is righteous.2 These words confirm St. Paul’s: that the
righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but
after the Spirit.3 And without controversy they teach that the religious walk
must aim at a perfect satisfaction, through Divine grace, of every requirement
of law. As the children of God we are exhorted to keep the same high aspiration
before us, that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without
rebuke:4 tried by the highest standard, without fault, without interior stain,
without reproach of God or man, being in the Divine purpose which becomes a
human aim conformed to the image of HisSong of Solomon 5:1-16 As St. John says,
Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin:6 at least, the tenor of his
aspiration is to live in a state of sacred freedom from sin and likeness to the
Son of God, Who was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin.7
Thus there is a perfection of the regenerate estate which is an ideal that
diligence strives to realize. So also the exhortation runs in the temple of
Divine consecration: Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us
cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting
holiness in the fear of God.8 The end of the application of the Atonement is to
make the comers thereunto perfect. For by one offering He hath perfected for
ever them that are sanctified.9 The Divine teteleiooken expresses a design that
becomes human in the Corinthian epitelountes, which, as no one will deny, makes
the perfection of sanctity a Christian aim. It may be added that individual
graces are to be trained to their own several perfection: for instance, let
patience have her perfect work,10 one grace of the perfectMan 1:11 at least of
the man who aspires to perfection, who looketh into the perfect law of liberty,
and continueth therein:12 looks into it for ever with the inextinguishable ardor
of determination to be a doer of the work in its perfection and to be blessed in
his deed 1 1 John 2:1; 2 1 John 3:7;

3 Romans 8:4; 4 Php 2:15; 5 Romans 8:29; 6 1 John 3:9; 7 1 John 3:5; 8 2
Corinthians 7:1; 9 Hebrews 10:1; Hebrews 10:14; 10 James 1:4; 11 James 3:2; 12
James 1:25

(3.) Finally, there is an aspiration to perfectness which is not purely ethical,
though that element is not excluded. St. Paul’s most intense expression of the
one end of his life, This one thing!1 had reference to the final consummation of
body and soul in union with Christ. Not as though I had already attained, either
were already perfected! His view of the finished perfection of his entire nature
stops not short of the resurrection. For that of course he depends on the
fidelity of his Lord. But even that he makes his own aim: 1 press on if so be
that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus. He
exhorts the spiritually perfect to press on to the perfection of the last change
when the perfection of earth shall put on the perfection of heaven. How far this
entered into his ethical aim is obvious. It gives its sublime peculiarity to the
whole passage: This one thing!

1 Php 3:12-13

(4.) The end of time is eternity, and the end of life is the eternal union with
God. The finite may seek the Infinite. The highest aspiration of the saint must
be, through life and all the varieties of probation, to see God and be one with
Him for ever. This may be and must be the final intention. I shall be satisfied
when I awake with Thy likeness!1 Not preparation for death, nor preparation for
meeting God in judgment, but preparation to be with Him eternally! DEUS MEUS ET
OMNIA!

1 Psalms 17:15 ETHICS OF THE SPIRITUALCONFLICT The Christian personality is the
sphere of a contest between two opposing principles which are variously
described. The struggle is between the new man and the old, or the flesh and the
Spirit, or the believer and Satan. The peculiarity of this conflict depends upon
the doctrine of the probationary union of the regenerate with Christ the Captain
of our salvation. It appears in another form in all systems of ethics, which
refer to the discord between the worse and the better self; but Christianity
alone gives the key to this mystery in human nature. A very large department of
the moral teaching of the New Testament is occupied with the detail of virtues
and duties which spring out of the spiritual warfare on which our probation
depends. These topics must be taken in their order The doctrinal aspect of this
internal discord has been already given; we deal now only with the ethical, and
confining our attention to the one idea of the conflict. Many of the ethical
principles and definitions are of course exhibited under other heads. It will
conduce to precision if we consider the subject first in reference to the two
opposite elements with their contrasted virtues and vices in particular, and
then in reference to the various ethical duties and grace, arising out of their
relation to each other generally, and as common to all THE WARFARE IN FELLOWSHIP
WITH CHRIST

Though every part of the New Testament refers to the general principles of the
contest, St. Paul is the only teacher who gives us a complete view of the two
forces contending in the regenerate. He therefore must be our main guide in this
department; and his teaching, as summing up the whole of Scripture, represents
the ethical contest as no other than the believer’s fellowship in the Redeemer’s
conflict and victory. This is the profound bond which unites all the various
descriptions of the good fight of faith.1 This entire department of Ethics is
reduced to the prosecution of a contest which is in the Christian the renewal
and continuation of his Master’s contest and victory. Union with Christ stamps
it$ impress on the whole doctrine of the regenerate conflict. To set this in a
clear light requires only the consideration of a few passages which connect the
Saviour’s Headship with each department of the spiritual warfare in its two
branches: first, in the struggle of the new man with the old man still remaining
within him; and, secondly, as the contest of the new man with the external
forces of evil; these combining in the common idea of our union with the Lord in
our temptation 1 1 Timothy 6:12 THE INTERNAL STRUGGLE

I. It is peculiar to St. Paul to describe the contest as between the old man and
the new, and as between the flesh and the Spirit. In the former Christ is viewed
as Himself the life of the believer, raised from the dead with Him; in the
latter Christ is viewed as by His Spirit contending against the remains of the
evil nature. The two are really one, but each has its distinct range

1. The doctrine of regeneration has given us all the elements of distinction. In
many passages St. Paul speaks of the old man and the new man in seeming, though
only seeming, independence of Christ. The one personality of the regenerate
includes a new nature and an old for a time coexisting. The residuary old man is
again regarded as having an organic body of his own, the body of sin:1 in this,
by its members which are upon the earth,2 it performs the deeds of the body.3 It
is the body of this death4 with which the Apostle struggled before he was
regenerate, and with which, though under better auspices, he struggled
afterwards. In the former struggle the inward man is brought into captivity to
the law of sin;5 in the latter, that of which we now speak, the process is
inverted: Ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new
man;6 knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that henceforth we
should not serve sin.7 Sin, therefore, though remaining, is no longer the
master. This is the glory of Christian ethics 1 Colossians 3:9; 2 Romans 6:6; 3
Colossians 3:5; 4 Romans 8:13; 5 Romans 7:22-24; 6 Colossians 3:9; 7 Romans 6:6

2. But again that one personality is a man in Christ,1 and the new nature is no
other than Christ formed in you,2 as if His sacred morphoo, or form, were
impressed on the spirit through the Holy Ghost, of Whom it is said, he that is
joined unto the Lord is one Spirit.3 St. Paul tells the Colossians that they
have put on the newMan 1:4 using the same word as that to the Romans, put ye on
the Lord Jesus Christ;5 and the combination of the two passages shows that the
new man is not so much our nature renewed as Christ in it, and also that the
Christian conflict is the effort on our part to gain the ascendancy of the new
man over the old. This new man is the Last Adam, a quickening Spirit,6 within
the soul; and this term spirit is the link between the doctrine of the two men,
or the two Adams, in the regenerate and the ethical application of it to which
we now pass 1 2 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Galatians 4:19; 3 1 Corinthians 6:17; 4
Colossians 3:10; 5 Romans 13:14

II. Hence the contest is not between a new nature and an old simply, but between
the Holy Spirit of Christ and what is called, in this view, the Flesh. It is
important to define these two opposite principles, and the nature of the
conflict between them

1. The Flesh is nowhere more fully described than when it is opposed to the Holy
Spirit as the principle of regenerate life. There are in the New Testament
abundant references to the fallen nature of man; but none which equals St.
Paul’s Galatian picture of its works, as they are manifest in the world, and by
the natural conscience evidently condemned. They are these: adultery,
fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders,
drunkenness, revellings, and such like.1 These are an expansion of the Lord’s
words concerning what proceeds out of the heart.2 St. Paul’s catalogue includes
the evil thoughts, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. To this catalogue
covetousness, which is idolatry,3 is added elsewhere; and it thus includes every
form of sin against God, against the neighbor, and against the self; against
social, political, and ecclesiastical society. These sins are known and read of
all men; Christian ethics do not require any definition of them; they are
manifest. St. James in sacred satire says of them: This wisdom descendeth not
from, above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish,4 the middle term connecting them
with St. Paul’s works of the flesh.5 They are the best product of the thoughts
of the old man with his deeds.6 They are the filthiness and superfluity of
naughtiness7 which Christians must lay apart. Over against all these St. Paul
sets the one fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance:8 graces which are set in
peaceful array against the turbulent army of lawless vices. St. Peter sums up
all in another antithesis: on the one side the corruption that is in the world
through lust,9 for the works of the flesh; and for the fruit of the Spirit, the
becoming partakers of the Divine nature, which is in St. James the wisdom that
is from above.10

1 Galatians 5:17-21; 2 Matthew 15:19; 3 Colossians 3:5; 4 James 3:15; James
3:17; 5 James 1:21; 6 Galatians 5:19; 7 Colossians 3:9; 8 Galatians 5:22-23; 9 2
Peter 1:4; 10 James 3:17

2. The conflict between these in Christian Ethics must be carefully stated. St.
Paul’s leading text runs thus: The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, that ye
may not do the things that ye would.1 The same word epithumei, which expresses
the not yet extirpated bias of original sin in the nature, must be referred to
the Spirit’s new original bias in the spirit regenerate. If decorum would
suggest a different word in the latter case, we may adopt it; but the meaning
still remains, that, while the flesh would hinder us from doing what we would as
regenerate, the Spirit hinders us from doing what we would as yielding to the
impulse of the remainder of sin. But it must be observed that there is a
difference between this contest and that described in the seventh chapter to the
Romans. There the conflict is a failing one on the side of the man under
conviction but not yet regenerate. It is not between the Spirit, as the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus,2 and the flesh; but between the flesh and the law of my
mind, or the nous, under the striving of the Holy Ghost. This conflict is a
fruitless struggle against a power bringing me into captivity to the law of sin
which is in my members.3 In the regenerate contest the watchword is: Walk in the
Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.4 It is the
characteristic of the ethics of the Christian warfare that the Holy Spirit of
Christ in the regenerate spirit secures the possibility of a constant victory.
Still, it is a contest; the extinction of sin, and of the flesh, is not assumed;
the Flesh is still, as we shall see, the source of temptation for a season 1
Galatians 5:17; 2 Romans 8:2; 3 Romans 7:23; 4 Galatians 5:16 III. We may now
consider the relation of this conflict to our union with Christ and our
temptation with Him

1. St. James gives us the nearest approach to a definition of the process of
temptation from within. Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own
lust, and enticed.1 Temptation proper, in the case of a fallen creature, is
strictly speaking within. It craves the gratification that is offered from
without: then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin.2 The contest in
the regenerate man is this lust of the flesh opposing the Spirit of the new
nature; and the Spirit continually moving the renewed spirit to oppose its
desires In this sense our first parents were not tempted, though in their case
the temptation from without assailed a will capable of falling and was the means
of engendering the concupiscence that then engendered all sin. In this sense the
entirely sanctified from sin are not tempted; though in their case the will that
has known transgression is still liable to fall and all the more because of the
remaining effects of eradicated evil. In this sense the glorified in heaven,
after a probation ended, will be incapable of temptation. In this sense our
sinless Redeemer was absolutely both untemptable and impeccable. He was in all
points tempted like as we are, as without sin:3 that is, He was tried at all
points as we are tried, so far as was consistent with the entire absence of the
element that could conceive sin. In this sense, finally, God cannot be tempted
with evil, neither tempteth He anyMan 1:4 He permits the temptation in the
regenerate, but His Spirit striveth against the flesh.5 And, in that the renewed
spirit is enabled to vanquish every temptation consists the difference between
this species of temptation and that of the unregenerate involved as yet in the
snare of the devil, who are taken alive by him at his will.6 1 James 1:14; 2
James 1:15; 3 Hebrews 4:15; 4 James 1:13; 5 Galatians 5:17; 6 2 Timothy 2:26

2. Hence it will be obvious that the Christian’s union with his Lord in this
interior temptation must be carefully defined and limited. Not of this inward
conflict does the Savior speak when He says: ye are they which have continued
with Me in My temptations.1 He had no mother-lust which could conceive and bring
forth sin. In another sense, He is most intimately united with His saints in
this sacred conflict; and the same Omnipotent Spirit Who rendered His human
nature sinless is given to redeem our nature from sin. But there is another
aspect of temptation which brings Him still nearer to us; and that is, the trial
of the spirit from without. This He underwent to the utmost: indeed, as much
beyond the possibility of His servants7 temptation as their internal temptation
was impossible to Him. To those other and more exterior sources of trial we must
now turn our attention

1 Luke 22:28 THE EXTERNAL CONFLICT The regenerate soul, united to Christ, but
still in the flesh, is opposed by all the elements of the present world and by
the spiritual powers of evil of which Satan is the head: these two are closely
united in the general teaching of the New Testament, which represents the
temptation of our probationary life as very largely springing from these
combined sources I. The WORLD as an element of opposition to the Christian has
two distinct meanings, which must be regarded separately

1. The present world, or the state of things into which we are naturally born,
and with which we are united through the medium of the body, is not of itself
evil; but in a multitude of ways, and through a multitude of channels, presents
the materials which the lust of the flesh may convert into temptation. Its
innumerable objects may minister to the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life.1 Its necessary occupations may be converted into
evil and become the care of this world.2 1 1 John 2:16; 2 Matthew 13:22

2. The world may signify the course of human life as under the order of
Providential arrangements: and these, in their infinite diversity, are the
elements of probationary trial or temptation. Its joy and prosperity, its
adversity and sorrow, are alike tests of the character; making up the conflict
of life. This kind of temptation is ordered of God Himself. Hence the same
Apostle James who has already described the process of temptation from within
exhorts his readers to count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations:1
they are for the trial of your faith.2 1 James 1:2; 2 1 Peter 1:7

3. The world is the present evil world: the course of which is opposed to
religion, and the maxims, usages, tendencies, enjoyments, and objects of which
are at all points unfriendly to the cultivation of piety. Christ has appeared as
the atoning Savior to deliver us from this present evil age,1 by casting out the
prince of this world;2 but, during the process of our redemption, our existence
in it is a perpetual trial of our Christian graces. The world thus defined, is
thus utterly contrary to the religious life, and is under the power of the enemy
of Christ’s kingdom 1 Galatians 1:4; 2 John 12:31

II. The solemn doctrine of the Scripture is that the warfare of the Christian
life is not only the struggle between the flesh and the Spirit, and the new man
and the evil world, but also between the believer in Christ and the vast forces
of spiritual intelligences who are leagued, under Satan their head, against the
Christian cause in the world. Two Ephesian texts sum up the whole revelation of
the New Testament on this subject: indeed the Ephesian Epistle generally may be
said to condense into its practical bearing all the teaching of Scripture as to
our superhuman foes

1. From the first we learn that there is a conjunction between this class of
spiritual enemies and the internal and external opposition which has been
described. Ye walked, the Apostle says, according to the course of this world,
the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.1 As Jesus by His
Spirit directs the course of the regenerate world, so Satan directs the course
of the world that now is: whatever in it opposes the Christian life is placed
under his control. Here also he is represented as the interior instigator of
that other opposition of the old man and of the flesh: he worketh IN the
children of disobedience

1 Ephesians 2:2

2. From the other we learn not to identify these spiritual forces with either
the flesh or the world. There is an opposition on the part of our unseen foes
which is independent and direct. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.1 The repeated AGAINST
gives equal emphasis to the distinct antagonism of the several orders of fallen
spirits, as they are confederate under one head whose directing agency is
referred to as the wiles of the devil 1 Ephesians 6:12

3. But the Epistle which thus closes has already set in its forefront the great
revelation that Christ is supreme over all the forces of evil. He is set in the
heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and every
name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.1
Supreme authority over the present course of things, and the supernatural order,
is placed in His hands as the Incarnate Head over all things to the Church. And
the internal conflict is conducted under His sway, according to the exceeding
greatness of His power to us-ward who believe. Thus the proposition laid down
again and again is made good, that it is in union with Christ that the universal
contest is carried on by the regenerate Christian 1 Ephesians 1:19-22 THE
SPECIAL ETHICS OF THIS CONFLICT The ethics of the Christian conflict will now be
viewed as comprising the duties and the graces which are strictly connected with
it. These may be classified under the two general heads of Preservation,
internal and external, and of Confidence in the victorious issue Here we
obviously have the defensive and offensive aspects of the whole duty of the
servants and soldiers of Christ SELF-PRESERVATION The duties and the graces of
the Christian life as withstanding evil can hardly be separated even in thought.
They occupy a large place in the New-Testament precepts concerning
Self-discipline, and Watchfulness: these terms representing a wide variety of
Christian virtues

I. Personal interior discipline takes the lead: that discipline, namely, which
negatively prepares for the future conflict, or lessens its force when it is
present, or in many cases shields the soul from the conflict altogether. The
duties here referred to may be summed up as belonging to the family of
Self-denial: the sacred graces and duties and virtues of the Cross

1. At the root of all lies Self-renunciation. This has already been considered
in relation to the ultimate end of the soul. Now it is regarded as the
fundamental feeling the regenerate must entertain towards the sinful element
remaining, which, as the opposite of the new man or the Christ within him, he
must needs hate. It passes through many stages in the ethics of the Gospel: the
hatred, in principle, with the mortification or crucifixion as the issue; and
intermediate acts of self-denial (1.) Our Lord has made the first emphatic; and
that in many ways. He has placed it at the very threshold of His service.

If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross
daily, and follow Me.1 The first condition of these three is the root of the
other two, and not to be confounded with them: the arneesasthoo heauton is an
absolute renunciation of all complacency or confidence in self. This ethical
principle takes different forms. Its severest is SELF-ABHORRENCE, on which all
the more earnest and deeper ethical teaching of Christianity dwells so much. It
is more than hating life in the sense of not loving it so much as Christ. It is
the love of God turned in holy enmity against self as an enemy to God; an enemy
still so far as any evil remains; and, even if all evil were gone, hated
nevertheless in the remembrance of what it was. The Saviour’s teaching allows no
place for self-complacency, even when the self is sanctified: He taught His
servant to say, Not I, but Christ liveth in me!2 This hatred of self sometimes
assumes a morbid character in mystical theology; but a close study of the Lord’s
words will show that it is hard to exaggerate: the inmost secret of religion is
not found until the soul literally hates the thought of a self that is
independent of God and of Christ: that is, of any SELF at all. Hence the beauty
of HUMILITY, the fundamental grace of the Gospel This virtue is many-sided: it
has one aspect towards God, another towards man, and another towards self as the
subject of past and present sin. This last it is here: profound consciousness of
ill-desert before Heaven and impotence against evil. I have heard of Thee by the
hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself!3 This
sublimest expression of humility in the Old Testament illustrates all that has
been said: in the presence of the purity of God the soul, conscious of nothing
but sin of its own, loathes and abhors itself. It is paralleled by Simon Peter’s
Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord!4 In this self-distrust, deepened
into self-contempt, is the secret of strength. Humble yourselves therefore under
the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you.5 Submit yourselves therefore to
God; Resist the devil:6 each is the counterpart and also the condition of the
other. SELF-CRUCIFIXION WITH CHRIST has reference to the entire sinful nature,
the flesh with its passions and lusts,7 its passive susceptibility and active
impulse. As our Lord condemned sin in the flesh,8 every true disciple must, in
spiritual fellowship with Him, do the same. They that are Christ’s have
crucified the flesh MORTIFICATION has reference to each individual tendency to
sin. It is, on the one hand, stronger than that crucifixion: mortify,9 or kill,
your members which are upon the earth must mean that in the strength of the
Spirit the believer aims habitually at the death of, and does, in fact kill,
every form of the life of sin as it emerges. On the other hand, it is less than
that crucifixion, which is the destruction of the whole body of sin:10 not that
it is utterly destroyed in the one act of crucifixion with Christ, but it is
impaled on the interior cross where it must, having no provision11 made for it,
die

1 Luke 9:23; 2 Galatians 2:20; 3 Job 42:5-6; 4 Luke 5:8; 5 1 Peter 5:6; 6 James
4:7; 7 Galatians 5:24; 8 Romans 8:3; 9 Colossians 3:5; 10 Romans 6:6; 11 Romans
13:14

(2.) The external practices of a godly asceticism are both the expression and
the instrumental aids of this internal discipline. First, and as mediating
between inward and outward discipline, comes ABSTINENCE, which is either a grace
or a duty: this means in general the non-indulgence of appetite as towards
things and affections as towards persons; and may be either only internal or
external also. It is the apechein which the ancient moral philosophy so highly
extolled. FASTING is then the more express and formal act, brought from the Old
Testament by our Lord, Who indirectly enjoined it both by His example and by His
precept: when ye fast!1 But this precept leaves the time, character, and degree
of fasting to the judgment of him who practices it. Bodily exercise profiteth
little:2 this regimen and sacred discipline are acknowledged to be useful. I
keep under my body and bring it into subjection3 is a revelation of the
Apostle’s most earnest selfrestraint in general, which according to his own
testimony took the form of express fastings: in fastings often.4 But whatever
ascetic practices are adopted must be under the restraint and regulation of one
law: Exercise thyself [RATHER] UNTO GODLINESS.5 1 Matthew 6:16; 2 1 Timothy 4:8;
3 1 Corinthians 9:27; 4 2 Corinthians 11:27; 5 1 Timothy 4:7

(3.) And, as godliness is the design, the warranty, and the safeguard of
asceticism, so SELF-GOVERNMENT is its best result. This has been an ethical law
in most systems of moral philosophy; but the Christian differs from all others
in combining the internal government of the Spirit with this government of self.
St. Paul in his final ethical summary shows the combination: The grace of God
which bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us that, denying
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly:1
the paideuousa is the Divine discipline; the sophronos is the human; and they
concur in the perfection which is the Saviour’s design. The whole man is the
object of this self-government; nothing is excluded, not even the will which
itself governs. The law is rigorous as to THOUGHTS, which generally mean the
secret motives. These are amenable to control, but not without much discipline:
Keep thy heart with all diligence.2 The government of the tongue is still more
emphatically prescribed: the tongue being generally the expression of the inward
life; particularly the organ of worship to God and the instrument of usefulness
to man. St. James has expounded here some of the Lord’s most strict sayings: By
thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.3 If
any man offend not in word, the same is a perfectMan 1:4So speak ye, and so do,
as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.5 Here WORD AND DEED are
combined as another Apostle combines them: whatsoever ye do in word or deed!6
Lastly, all the actions, greater or less, of life are to be ordered in all
things and true. Of this St. Paul, the special teacher of self-government, has
given in his own example the crowning precept, I therefore so run, not as
uncertainly:7 words which, when interpreted by the whole context, show what the
minute control of the entire life should be. But SELF-RESIGNATION to the
guidance of the Spirit is the secret of all the virtues which belong to the
process of the internal transformation. This grace is peculiarly Christian; and
is known by many names. As the Spirit is a Teacher and Guide, it is subjection
to His will, both passive and active. As He is a Friend, it is the sympathy with
His design and yielding to it: Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.8 Quench not
the Spirit.9 While this last may refer rather to the restraint sometimes put
upon His extraordinary influence, the former refers to the soul’s habitual
reverence and awe in the consciousness of an internal Divine monitor. The
general and universal duty is: If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the
Spirit.10 The interior rule of the Holy Ghost is the new secret of Christian
ethics: a secret dimly felt after in heathen philosophy, promised in the Old
Testament, and fully imparted in the New

1 Titus 2:11-12; 2 Proverbs 4:23; 3 Matthew 12:37; 4 Jas. 3:2 5 James 2:12; 6
Colossians 3:17; 7 1 Corinthians 9:26; 8 Ephesians 4:30. 9 1 Thessalonians 5:19;
10 Galatians 5:25

II. Next come the various graces of self-preservation: as they are summed up in
WATCHFULNESS, which implies a perpetual consideration of danger from without;
and SOBRIETY, which is the perpetual guard over the state of the soul within.
St. Peter unites these most impressively: Be ye therefore sober, and watch unto
prayer:1 here the Christian is surrounded by the snares of the passing world;
while Be sober, be vigilant, applies the same exhortation in the face of the
spiritual adversaries of the soul. His words are only the echo of his Master’s:
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak.2 Combining these passages of our Lord and the Apostle
whose office it was to strengthen his brethren, we have the relation of
Watchfulness to the flesh, the world, and the devil. We mark also that its value
as a grace is not only that it prepares for temptation but that it also protects
against it. And, finally, when we hear the Redeemer saying, Could ye not watch
with Me one hour? we learn that this virtue also is to be practiced in union
with Christ, in Whom alone the spirit was willing and the flesh not weak.
SELF-EXAMINATION is that general watchfulness exercised at set times; and
issuing in self-knowledge and self-distrust, as opposed to careless living and
presumption. This duty is enforced by the moralists of every school; it is
taught by the light of nature, according to the adage which expresses a
universal instinct, KNOW THYSELF. Hence we do not find it expressly enjoined as
a practice: it underlies all New- Testament ethics. Some most solemn
enforcements of it are in St. Paul’s writings. One has reference to the supreme
question of an indwelling Savior. Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith;
prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in
you? except ye be reprobate.3 Another aims against self-deception in the general
business of religion: If a man think himself to be something, when he is
nothing, he deceiveth himself.4 But let every man prove his own work. And yet
another has reference to the preparation for the Lord’s Supper: If we discerned
ourselves, we should not be judged:5 self-judgment and the Lord’s judgment are
alone mentioned, and in a very remarkable conjunction. But the duty of
self-examination requires itself to be guarded against morbid self-anatomy, and
especially against certain perversions of it under human direction. The supreme
safeguard is that it be conducted according to the standard of Scripture, and in
the presence of the Searcher of hearts.

God is my witness, Whom I serve with my spirit,6 is St. Paul’s example. But
there is none more impressive than that of David, in his Psalm of the
Omniscient. Examining his life, he could appeal in defense of his integrity to
his God: but examining more deeply his heart, he would fain withdraw that appeal
The result is the affecting cry: Search me, 0 God, and know my heart; try me and
know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the
way ever-lasting.7 To the earnest Christian who serves God in his spirit,
selfexamination must be more or less an habitual state of soul as well as an
occasional practice

1 1 Peter 4:7; 2 Matthew 26:40-41; 3 2 Corinthians 13:5; 4 Galatians 6:3-4; 5 1
Corinthians 11:31; 6 Romans 1:9; 7 Psalms 139:23-24 THE VIRTUES OF CONFIDENCE

CONFIDENCE as to the issue of the Christian conflict gives birth to some bright
graces, and is the animating principle of many noble virtues. These are some of
them active, and some passive, and such as combine both characters

I. What men call COURAGE the New Testament terms Virtue, or apetoo, which St.
Peter places first among the graces that Faith inspires. But St. Paul dwells on
it still more; it runs indeed through his whole ethical teaching. Watch ye,
stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.1 This quaternion is one
of the Apostle’s unique passages. Andrizesthe krataiousthe, are a reminiscence
of the Old Testament; but in their Christian meaning the former is an injunction
to manly and heroic energy, and the latter precept gives the reason of it in the
strength which we are supposed to obtain from above. The relation of the
believer to an indwelling Savior, Whose Spirit unites His servant to Himself,
gives this ethical principle a peculiarity which needs not to be here dilated
on. Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might,2 says all that
requires to be said. I can do all things through Him that strengthened me.3
There is no inbred infection of the flesh, no power of seduction or terror in
the world, no malignity of superior beings, that should daunt the Christian man
1 1 Corinthians 16:13; 2 Ephesians 6:10; 3 Php 4:13

2. Corresponding with this is the grace of PATIENCE, which is indeed linked with
it by the term FORTITUDE. It is a passive grace of the entire Christian life,
though St. James gives it a work to do: let patience have her perfect work.1
Strictly speaking this virtue has three aspects: one towards the providential
appointments of God, which will be hereafter considered as SUBMISSION; another,
towards the injuries of men, when it is rather to be called MEEKNESS; and a
third, towards the toilsome processes of the Christian life and manifold
conflict. It is this we now consider, and must assign it a high place and
important function. It secures against impatience with self; and strengthens the
soul to persist notwithstanding many failures. It arms the mind with fortitude
in the midst of the never-ceasing assaults of the world. And it suffers with
magnanimity the manifold onsets of Satan, knowing that the same afflictions are
accomplished2 in the brethren everywhere

While this grace is most important, it must of course be guarded against the
abuses to which its tolerance is liable: it must be combined with a vehement
longing for final and eternal freedom from evil. But HOPE is everywhere in
Scripture the inspiring grace of the great conflict; being both passive and
active. It is a grace that, like Patience, has many aspects. The word itself has
a wide range of meanings. Christ is OUR HOPE,3 as the Pillar and Ground of all
human expectation through the hope of the Gospel.4 Hope also is one of the
theological graces, with Faith and Charity, being a blessed combination of the
two others: it is Faith looking only to the future, but looking at it with the
confidence of love

Undoubtedly, however, the Christian grace of Hope is most generally connected
with the joyful expectation of future victory. Thus the Apostle Paul exhorts to
a rejoicing in hope,5 the counterpart of being patient in tribulation. As we
have seen it is both active and passive. Every man that hath this hope in Him,
purifieth himself:6 his hope in the Supreme Fountain and Pattern of purity
animates him to purify his own soul. Putting on the breastplate of faith and
love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation:7 where the helmet is the
defense, the passive defense, of the otherwise unprotected head 1 James 1:4; 2 1
Peter 5:9; 3 1 Timothy 1:1; 4 Colossians 1:23; 5 Romans 12:12; 6 1 John 3:3; 7 1
Thessalonians 5:8

3. Lastly, there is a grace which has many names in the New Testament, but not
one in particular, and may be characterized as the glorying of the soul in God’s
work within it

St. Paul speaks much of exultation in the Lord and the riches of His grace. In
one remarkable passage he strips man of all his own boasting: that no flesh
should glory in His presence.1 Then after showing what Christ is made to the
believer, he adds, that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him
glory in the Lord.2 Here then we have the counterpart of that ethical principle
with which this section began, the abhorrence of self. The utter contempt of
self apart from God is quite consistent with religious complacency in the
operation of God in edifying the new man. This tranquil and rational confidence
in the new character sustained by Divine grace the Apostle means when he bids us
walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.3 And the same also when he
bids the Philippians think on and do whatsoever things are honest,4 or semna,
dignified and decorous. This precept may take the form of CONTEMPT towards sin:
not only we are bidden to abhor that which is evil,5 but also to be ashamed of
it, and to disdain every vice, great and small. Of some vices, indeed, the
Christian moralist speaks as if the very mention of them was discreditable. The
best illustration, however, of this feature in the ethical teaching of the New
Testament is the way in which the Apostles refer to the several classes of
virtues and vices that belong respectively to the un-regenerate and to the
regenerate character. They all and unanimously describe the one as the works of
an evil and condemned nature, the other as the product of a Divine and heavenly
Spirit

They do not speak of vices as the growth of human nature simply, but as
belonging to the flesh, as from below, and as pertaining to the old man which is
corrupt and condemned. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this
ethical principle in the teaching of the New Testament. It is equally impossible
to define it exactly: its force must be felt rather than learnt by definition.
All the Apostles set in opposite array the virtues and vices: always with a note
that the latter are products of a condemned and dying evil habit, and the former
the growth of an omnipotent internal energy. St. Paul gives a cardinal instance
of what is meant. He calls emphatic attention to his dictum: This I say then,
Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.6 And then he
gives the most complete catalogue of the sins which humanity abhors, and of
which it is ashamed. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these:
{adultery,} fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft,
hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings,
[murders,] drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Here is a confused mass of
all lawlessness, against which every law of God and man is set. The very
description is, as it were, scornful and contemptuous. There is no sin against
God, and the neighbor, and the self, which may not be traced here. They are all
works of the flesh. The catalogue includes sin under every aspect, but it is
significantly said that they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its
passions and lusts. They are the dying product of an expiring principle. But the
fruit of the Spirit is described as the organic result of the tree of life in
the soul: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, self-control. While the sins enumerated are the works of the flesh,
active and spontaneous though morally dead, the opposite virtues are the fruit
and the work of the eternally Living Spirit. Death cannot resist life. The
abominable vices that both begin and end the evil catalogue—as if the career of
the flesh was rounded with lust—are opposed by the heavenly virtues of religion.
Love leads the army in this war, and self-restraint brings up the rear.
Christian character has here its most beautiful description as a band of
militant graces, each of which is passive and tranquil. MEEKNESS is our Lord’s
own special grace: it is humility as passively resisting evil. JOY is a grace
which becomes a virtue, and ought to be encouraged as duty. So also PEACE, which
here includes the opposite of variance. LONG-SUFFERING, or tolerant bearing of
wrong, rising into benignity or GENTLENESS and GOODNESS, which thinks only of
getting and diffusing good, lead to general FAITH in GOD and the eternal triumph
of goodness, a triumph which is assured. St Peter gives the graces of religion
which insure against falling in the contest with sin

DILIGENCE is his general preface and motto; FAITH is the mother grace, as the
LOVE by which it works is in St. Paul; the great conflict has for its issue the
escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust and being partakers of
the Divine nature.7 Here, however, the graces are seven: VIRTUE, or Divine-human
energy; KNOWLEDGE; TEMPERANCE; PATIENCE, or submission with hope; GODLINESS;
BROTHERLY-KINDNESS; CHARITY. This Apostle also aims to inspire the confidence of
which we are now speaking But no encouragement is more emphatic than that of St.
James: Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and
receive with meekness the engrafted Word:8 evil is something added that must be
put away, leaving nature in its integrity; yet this is not nature, but the
engrafted Word. To this must be added his description of the wisdom which
descendeth from heaven: as wisdom that is from above contrasted with that which
is earthly, sensual, devilish.9

11 Corinthians 1:29; 2 1 Corinthians 1:31; 3 Ephesians 4:1; 4 Php 4:8; 5 Romans
12:9; 6 Galatians 5:16-24; 7 2 Peter 1:4-6; 8 James 1:21; 9 James 3:15; James
3:17 ETHICS OF CHRISTIANSERVICE The service of God bears in Christian ethics a
special relation to Christ as our Lord. The duties and graces of this relation
are many; and they may be summed up under the several heads of absorbing
devotion to the common Master; self-sacrificing zeal for the good of all the
objects of His charity for His sake; fidelity to our trust and stewardship in
all its branches This extensive department of Christian ethics needs not to be
entered upon very fully; as much of it has been already and much will be
hereafter introduced under other heads

I. It has been already seen that the Christian religion has this great
characteristic, that it makes Jesus, the GOD-MAN, the End of human life. It also
makes Him in a special sense the Lord and Master of that life as our sphere of
service to Him; and it is with this ethical principle that we now have to do

1. It unites all Christians in one common cause. On the eve of His passion, when
our Lord gave a final summary of His will, He asserted His claim in the most
affecting manner: Ye call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well; for so IAmos
1:1-15 But this was not a relation of the Apostles alone: they represented the
entire Christian fellowship, united to one Teacher and one Lord, through all its
orders down to the lowest to whom St. Paul said, Ye serve the Lord Christ.2 The
slave to whom he addressed these words is now the Lord’s freedman;3 and the
estate of slavery, unchristian in itself, served to illustrate that absolute
free bondage to Christ which is the glory and the first law of all Christian
service 1 John 13:13; 2 Colossians 3:24; 3 1 Corinthians 7:22

2. Hence it absorbs all the actions of life. The duty of the Christian is to do
all in the name of the Lord Jesus.1 This is the new, all-pervading, sovereign
and blessed law of human probation: penetrating to the minutest detail, and
giving to every act a character of reality, dignity, and cheerfulness:
Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.2 This
ethical principle of our religion needs no further illustration. It is the law,
written or unwritten, that gathers Christian ethics into unity. Its sanction is
clothed with all the terrors of the judgment. And its reward is the supreme
approbation of the Lord Himself, Who still says to those who with perfect
loyalty and unlimited devotion call Him Lord, Ye say well, I AM:3 kaloos legete
eimi gar 1 Colossians 3:17; 2 Colossians 3:23; 3 John 13:13

II. The Christian standard of devotion to the interests of our fellow-creatures
is higher than it had ever entered the heart of man, until Christ came, to
conceive. It requires all His followers to aspire to the charity of the Lord
Himself, and to imitate His example in the self-sacrifice of their life. Outside
of Christianity no such standard as this is to be found; though in many ethical
systems an unconscious and undirected aspiration to it may be perceived. When
our Lord said, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,1 He spoke of His own
glorification through perfect self-sacrifice for man. But in this the servant
must be as his Lord; for He added, If any man serve Me let him follow Me.2 And
again, after rehearsing in the feetwashing the morrow’s great self-sacrifice, He
enjoined upon His followers the imitation both of His spirit and of His act: I
have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.3 The law of
perfect service is simply and purely the law of SELFSACRIFICE, which in union
with the Redeemer and in imitation of Him makes the whole of life a ministration
to mankind. But some side-lights are thrown upon this principle that bring it
within the range of human possibility and show its consistency with the whole
system of Christian ethics. These let us briefly consider 1 John 12:24; 2 John
12:26; 3 John 13:15

1. It is the necessary consequence of union with Christ and consecration to Him.
St. Paul prefaces the sublimest exhibition of the supreme self-sacrifice by the
words: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.1 The text Toúto
froneíte en humín hó kaí en Christoó Ieesoú expresses very strongly the thought
that the Redeemer’s sentiment must needs, if not hindered, fill His servants
also: let the supernatural order of grace have its course. At the same time it
suggests that this is an ASPIRATION towards a lofty ideal which is not easily
attained. In one remarkable passage, however, he goes far to express its
attainableness. The love of Christ constraineth us:2 where the sunechei seems
like an echo of the Master’s passion-words before the Passion, how am I
straitened!3 poos sunechomai. It is the sublime feeling which knows no man after
the flesh, but which yearns after the salvation of all in the tender mercies of
Christ.4 In New-Testament ethics this absolute self-renunciation for mankind is
at least the legitimate ideal of the spirit of the Christian’s service 1 Php
2:5; 2 2 Corinthians 5:14; 2 Corinthians 5:16; 3 Luke 12:50; 4 Php 1:8

2. It is, however, an ethical standard which may be best studied in connection
with the virtues and vices belonging to this domain. The Christian teaching
denounces SELFISHNESS in all its forms, pursuing it as it was never pursued
before through all its disguises. But here we consider it as an evil that may
cling to the Lord’s servant. As such it is overcome by the CHARITY which
embraces every opportunity of doing good to the bodies and souls of men, and
which is called BROTHERLY-KINDNESS if shown towards those of the same religious
household. A large part of the very last document of Scripture, St. John’s First
Epistle, is occupied with the enforcement of this grace, and without making
careful distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian objects of it.
Here HUMILITY esteems every gift as from God, and thinks soberly of self,
according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.1 The SOBRIETY in
the spirit of the laborer for Christ may be opposed to all ENVY or jealousy of
others and all overvaluation of personal importance: it being implied that the
Administrator of gifts does not bestow upon any one more than a small amount.
But it is certainly intended to show the necessity of remembering always how
transcendently more important the good of others, the edification of the Body,
and the salvation of souls, is than the measure of any one person’s contribution
of effort. He who remembers the boundless work that has to be done in the world,
will not think of himself more highly than he ought to think:2 the Apostle who
gave the precept was too much absorbed with the grandeur of the charity in which
he was engaged to think for a moment about himself at all. INSENSIBILITY to the
wants of men, or apathy, or want of zeal, has no place in the Christian heart.
St. Paul complains bitterly: I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care
for your state

They all seek their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ’s.3 The natural
instinct of those who are devoted to the Lord leads them to care for all who are
His, and for themselves only as included among them. In short, the ethics of the
New Testament are always tending, whether they reach it or not, to the point of
an entirely disinterested charity, whether as it regards the love of God Himself
or the love of the neighbor for God’s sake 1 Romans 12:3; 2 Romans 12:3; 3 Php
1:20-21

III. Fidelity is the watchword of another wide department of the ethics of
Christian service. It is that grace in the servant which shows him to be worthy
of his Master’s trust

Two passages, beginning and ending the New-Testament teaching on the subject,
place it in the true light. As to the servant trusted our Lord says: Who then is
that faithful and wise steward whom his lord shall make ruler over his
household? Blessed is that servant!1 The servant is a dulos, and the steward is
an oikonomos. St. Paul gives the description of the faithful servant as showing
all good fidelity:2 pistin pasan agatheen The same word pistis which expresses
our trust in God’s fidelity expresses His trust in ours. It is a grace which
stands alone as having the epithet good, and it must pervade the whole of life.
The verb which mediates between faithful and fidelity is found in St. Paul’s
words concerning his stewardship of the Gospel, but may be universally applied
oikonomian pepisteumai, a dispensation is committed unto me, or I have been
trusted with a stewardship.3 Here then are all the elements of our ethics: the
Master commits a trust, and the trustworthy servant shows fidelity in all
things. It may be added that the very faith which trusts God is the strength of
the faithfulness which God may trust. We have now to trace the applications of
this principle, giving under each a few examples that represent many. No ethical
principle is more pervasive 1 Luke 12:42-43; 2 Titus 2:10; 3 1 Corinthians 9:17

1. Christ’s servant holds his own person in trust, For ye are bought with a
price: therefore glorify God in your body,1 as the instrument of His service
alone. We are specially the property of Christ: whether we live therefore or
die, we are the Lord’s.2 The CARE OF SELF is part of our stewardship as we are
entrusted with our own persons. On this is to be based the duty of preserving
health, training the body to its utmost efficiency, cultivating every faculty of
the mind, and keeping the whole man in the highest possible vigor: ready for
every good work, and meet for the Master’s use.3 St. Paul inculcates on Timothy
a due solicitude both for spiritual and for bodily health: as to the former,
Keep thyself pure4 is a general principle; and as to the latter, Drink no longer
water5 may be quoted as a significant hint. Perhaps there are few applications
of the principle of fidelity which are more neglected than this. Every one of us
is put in charge with his spirit, and soul, and body, to educate them to the
highest pitch of service for the longest possible time, and in the most perfect
possible vigor 1 1 Corinthians 6:20; 2 Romans 14:8; 3 2 Timothy 2:21; 4 1
Timothy 5:22; 5 1 Timothy 5:23 2. Fidelity extends to the whole of life, with
special reference to our individual vocation

Nothing is excluded from the sphere of this duty. The whole compass of life must
be governed by it, and the true Christian is, what St. Paul exhorts the wives of
deacons to be, faithful in all things.1 They are the faithful,2 hoi pistoi, as
being believers: one word embraces both meanings. Their final seal is that of
being called, and chosen, and faithful.3 But the duty is very generally
connected with the special vocation. The difference here marked is shown in two
parables of our Lord which are the key to all His many parables on this subject.
In the one He called His ten servants and delivered them ten pounds, and said
unto them, Occupy till I come.4 All His servants have one common gift of life to
profit withal. In the other, unto one He gave five talents, to another two, and
to another one; to every man according to his several ability.5 In both the
reckoning is strict; both the equal pounds and the unequal talents are specially
entrusted; they show in a certain sense that all servants have a special
vocation; and yet they seem to note a difference between what is common to all
and what is proper to each. With regard to special ministries and vocations, St.
Paul says, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful;6 of himself
he testifies that Christ Jesus counted me trustworthy, putting me into the
ministry.7 Of this fidelity our Lord Himself is the supreme pattern: Wherefore,
holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly vocation, consider the Apostle and High
Priest of our confession, [Christ] Jesus, as being faithful to Him that
appointed Him.8 But this glorious example blends again special vocation with the
general calling of life; for we all must be looking unto Jesus the Author and
Finisher of the Faith,9 and of fidelity to the Faith. "We reach the same
conclusion when we recall how constant is the reference to fidelity in the use
of special opportunities and faculties of usefulness: especially that which the
possession of earthly goods affords. Here the virtue of PRUDENCE, or economical
wisdom, is allied with fidelity: Who then is that faithful and wise steward?10
The parable of the Unjust Steward, apart from its more general meaning, stamps
this precept with deep impressiveness. Make to yourselves friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also
in much. No servant can serve two masters.11 In these last words we have the
Christian Lawgiver’s law of fidelity in its highest principle and its lowest
application. It is the supreme reference of all things to one Master and one
service; and it is the prudent and faithful observance of that law in the most
sedulous and scrupulous care of the least trifles of life

1 1 Timothy 3:11; 2 Acts 10:45; 3 Revelation 17:14; 4 Luke 19:13; 5 Matthew
25:15; 6 1 Corinthians 4:2; 7 1 Timothy 1:12; 8 Hebrews 3:1-2; 9 Hebrews 12:2;
10 Luke 12:42; 11 Luke 16:9-10; Luke 16:13

3. Fidelity, as the test applied to service, is guarded by threatenings and
stimulated by the hope of reward. It is a duty as well as a virtue; nor is there
any obligation in ethics which is more closely bound up with human
responsibility

(1.) It is not necessary here to dwell on the nature of the punishment reserved
for unfaithfulness: we have to do only with the character stamped on it by our
Lord. He uses three terms which give this department of ethics an awful
solemnity. Thou WICKED and SLOTHFUL servant! Cast ye the UNPROFITABLE servant
into outer darkness.1 Wicked in his heart, slothful in His Master’s business,
and unprofitable both to himself and to his Lord! The weeping and gnashing of
teeth fearfully indicate that the penalty is an abiding regret which is no other
than hopeless remorse. The only mitigation is the proportion of the doom; But he
that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few
stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.2 It
must never be forgotten that the far larger part of the references to the final
judgment make it the test of servant-fidelity: at least in the case of Christian
believers 1 Matthew 25:26-30; 2 Luke 12:48

(2.) The rewards promised to Fidelity are represented in many lights. It brings
its own recompense in the Master’s approval, who does not wait for the end to
say Well done, good and faithful servant! That will be the crowning blessedness
of a persistent fidelity: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.1 As
unfaithfulness is followed by a withdrawal of the trust, so fidelity increases
it: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
things.2 Faithful stewardship in probation leads to a stewardship whose
probation will have ceased for ever. But another element of the reward brings it
back to the present life. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant
knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things
that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.3 They who enter
hereafter into the Lord’s joy enter now into His secrets and confidence. Their
service is the service of friendship; while their friendship is the friendship
of servants. Here is the inmost secret of our ethics of service, which once more
bases them on union with Christ. It is this lastly, which explains how the
reward is reckoned of grace. While we must say: We are unprofitable servants;4
we have done that which was our duty to do,5 He, in His boundless grace, will
say the opposite of this. Forgiving the neglect of our service, and not
remembering in how many instances we have not done the things which are
commanded, He will reckon to all our poor fidelity the virtue of His own
faithfulness, and we shall receive a full reward,6 misthon pleeree 1 Matthew
25:23; 2 Matthew 25:21; 3 John 15:15; 4 Romans 4:4; 5 Luke 17:10; 6 2 John 1:8
ETHICS OFGODLINESS The last department of specially Christian ethics, the issue
and consummation of all the rest, pervading all and crowning all, comprises the
duties, virtues, and graces that have GOD alone for their Object. These may be
summed up in the one word Piety or Godliness; which is the Christian character
based upon Entire Consecration, is expressed in the Worship of praise and
prayer, and issues in Union with God CONSECRATION TO GOD

Personal Consecration to God is the entire oblation of Self to the Giver and
Redeemer of our being according to the terms of the covenant of grace. This
principle of Selfsurrender is evidenced by universal submission of the heart and
life: by devotion to the will of God as expressed either in His commandments or
in His providential appointments; that is, in active Obedience and in passive
Submission. A life thus governed tends in all things to God; the character thus
formed is a godly character; and the habit of the soul is that of eusebeia or
godliness. We have seen the fundamental principles of this entire self-surrender
under the doctrine of Sanctification. It is necessary here only to make some
observations on its ethical bearing

1. It is the beginning, the strength, and the consummation of all religion as
the human service of God. As man’s act it is negative and positive. It is the
absolute renunciation of proprietorship in self: Whosoever he be of you that
forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple.1 Know ye not that....
ye are not your own? for ye are bought with a price.2 It is the absolute
surrender of the whole being to God: Yield yourselves unto God.3 This
self-surrender is to be made in the strength of the grace of redemption, the
salvation of the Gospel being its argument and its strength: I beseech you
therefore by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.4 These words sum up
the whole doctrine. Religion, or godliness, is the habitual, conscious, never
interrupted, offering up of the spirit, soul and body, to the service of the
Living God in the entire activity of life: the self surrendering self 1 Luke
14:33; 2 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 3 Romans 6:13; 4 Romans 12:1

2. This consecration is unto universal Submission, which is active and passive.
As active it is the devotion of the heart to the performance of all the
commandments of God as they constitute His one will: this is Obedience, the
first and all-embracing duty of the creature towards the Creator as Moral
Governor: an obligation expressed in many ways throughout the two Testaments,
and literally absolute, being the foundation alike of the Law and of the Gospel,
which is itself the announcement of the new obedience of faith.1 As passive it
is the duty and grace of entire Self-abandonment to all the appointments of
Divine providence either as they are afflictive or as they are inscrutable; in
the former case, it is RESIGNATION; in the latter it is this conjoined with
Acquiescence, or silent submission to the will of God

1 Romans 16:26

WORSHIP The worship of God is the highest expression of the religious spirit,
offering to God the creature’s tribute in Praise, or uttering the creature’s
need in Prayer. These may be regarded as distinct and as united in the spirit
and habit of devotion

I. Many terms have been sanctified in the language of religious mankind to
express the highest tribute of the human spirit to the Supreme. In Holy
Scripture these terms are varied, expressing the sentiment of Reverence whence
all worship springs; the act of Adoration which silently and Praise which
audibly extols the Divine Name and Perfections; and Thanksgiving which expresses
gratitude for the mercies of God

1. REVERENCE is the supreme and eternal duty and grace of .the created spirit.
It is both the source and the issue of all godliness. The three passages, Holy
and reverend is His name!1 Hallowed be Thy Name!2 Sanctify the Lord Christ in
your hearts!3 in their combination teach us first how awful is God in Himself,
then that the coming of His kingdom is the universal acknowledgment of His
majesty, and finally that this reverence must be the inmost sentiment of our
individual hearts. Reverence is fear tempered by love. In the Old Testament the
fear predominated, in the New Testament the love; but the sentiment of reverence
pervades all religion on earth and in heaven. Whether as sacred dread or loving
fear, it abideth always. As the spirit formed by religion it is universal in its
influence. It is the habitual sense of the Presence of God that gives dignity to
life, and makes the character of him who cultivates it venerable. It extends to
all Divine things as well as to the Name of God Himself: to His Word, to His
ordinances, to His created temple of the world, and to all that is His. In His
Presence more particularly it is

AWE 1 Psalms 91:9; 2 Matthew 6:9; 3 1 Peter 3:15

2. PRAISE proper is in Scriptural language either Adoration or Blessing.
Adoration, as the word indicates (from Os the mouth) is the prostration which as
it were kisses the earth at the Divine feet. It stands for every act in which
the spirit of reverence expresses itself The Hebrew term yishtach is sometimes
used, like the Greek proskuneesai, to indicate homage before the creature. But
the closing words of the New Testament show its highest and only true
application: refusing the Apostle’s lower prostration the angel said: worship
God.1 But the prostrate mouth speaks in Blessing and Praise. Hallelujah! Praise
ye the Lord!2 is in both Testaments the most exulting of all notes. The Hebrew
baareek, to bless, is often translated by praise.3 This term, however, like
adoration, has a human as well as a Divine application. Moreover, it is wide in
its range. In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed:4 this is the
Benediction of God to man, which becomes in another passage shall bless
themselves,5 or shall rejoice before God. Again, daily shall He be blessed 6(or
praised) is the return of benediction to Heaven. But here it is observable that
Christ is, in the unity of the Father, the object of this supreme praise. The
term Blessed, or eulogeetos, is used in the New Testament only of God and of
Christ. The Son of the Blessed7 is Himself God blessed for ever.8 Other
Scriptural terms might be mentioned, variations on these words and having
reference to the forms of praise in public worship; but these we need not
discuss in particular. Christian individual devotion employs a variety of
expressions which are not necessarily derived from Scripture; and it is an
important principle of reverence that these should be always reserved
exclusively for their highest uses. To sum up all: the devout spirit offers to
God the ADORATION of a creature, the HOMAGE of a subject or servant, the PRAISE
of a worshipper

1 Revelation 22:9; 2 Psalms 150:1-6; 1; 3 Revelation 19:1; 4 Genesis 12:3; 5
Genesis 22:18; 6 Psalms 72:15; 7 Mark 14:61; 8 Rom. Romans 9:5

3. THANKSGIVING is a duty of which GRATITUDE is the grace. This obligation of
godliness is acknowledged by the universal sentiment of mankind; but as a
Christian grace it has some blessed peculiarities. It is gratitude, as for all
the benefits of Divine providence, so especially for the general and personal
gifts of redemption. The very term most in use shows this; it is charis, which
is the Grace of God in Christ, operating in the soul of the believer as a
principle, and going back to Him in gratitude: Thanks be unto God for His
unspeakable gift.1 The ethical gratitude of Christianity connects every good
gift and every perfect gift with the Gift of Christ. Moreover, it is a
thanksgiving which in the Christian economy, and in it alone, redounds to God
for all things: in everything give thanks.2 This characteristic flows from the
former. The rejoicing which we have in the Lord, and the everlasting consolation
we possess in Him, makes every possible variety of Divine dispensation a token
for good. The Christian privilege is to find reason for gratitude in all things:
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you 1 2 Corinthians 9:15;
2 1 Thessalonians 5:18

II. PRAYER is, like brotherly love, a duty in the obligations of which all men
are, as it were, naturally theodidakoi, taught of God.1 It is the expression of
man’s dependence upon God for all things. Its general grounds have been
discussed already, and will be considered more fully under the Means of Grace:
it is here viewed only as belonging to the ethics of the Christian character, in
its spirit and in its acts 1 1 Thessalonians 4:9 1. What habitual reverence is
to praise, the habitual sense of dependence is to prayer

Nothing less than this is signified in the injunctions that men ought always to
pray,1 and pray without ceasing:2 if the former refers rather to the importunity
of request, the latter inculcates the duty of evermore, consciously or
unconsciously, waiting upon God. Both are united in the words: praying always
with all prayer and supplication.3 More particularly the spirit of prayer
depends upon three elements: First, the inwrought habit of mentally connecting
with every action of life the Supreme, for in Him we live, and move, and have
our being;4 secondly, the abiding consciousness of dependence on the Mediator
through Whose constant advocacy our spiritual life is sustained; and, lastly,
the presence of the Spirit of adoption in our hearts, Who maketh intercession
for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.5 Here is the deep secret of the
spirit of prayer. He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the
Spirit, that He maketh intercession for the saints according to God.6 The
froneemaa tou pneumatos is according to God what the carnal mind, froneema tou
sarkos, is according to fallen nature: the habitual movement of the unspoken
impulse. The Spirit’s groaning intercession within the veil of the heart answers
exactly to the intercession of the High Priest within the veil of heaven; and
both are without interval or rest. Hence the duty of PERSEVERANCE in devotion
refers to insistency in particular requests and the continuing instant in
prayer:7 instant for the former, continuing for the latter. To combine these two
is perfection 1 Luke 18:1; 2 1 Thessalonians 5:17; 3 Ephesians 6:18; 4 Acts
17:28; 5 Romans 8:26-27; 6 Romans 8:7; 7 Romans 12:12

2. The formal acts of prayer are manifold, expressed by a number of terms common
to both Testaments, and combining the spirit and the act. The leading word
proseuchee is one of those. It is always prayer to God, and that without
limitation. When St. Paul exhorts, in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,1 he distinguishes from
this general PRAYER the deeesei, or SUPPLICATION for individual benefits. It is
the difference between prayer and petition. The REQUESTS of the supplication,
aiteemata, simply express the individuality of the prayer: the supplication
noting our need (dei), and the request the utterance of that need. When our
Savior said, In that day ye shall ask Me nothing, He used another term
signifying, in the case of the disciples, the interrogation of perplexity: there
it is erotan, which is changed for aiten in what follows: Verily, verily, I say
unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you.2
The former word is used of our Lord’s own prayer, never the latter: hence the
former has in it more of familiarity, and is never used of human prayer. Save,
indeed, in one passage, which leads us to the prayer of INTERCESSION. St. John
changes aiteesei into erooteesee concerning the sin unto death, I do not say
that he shall pray for it:3 we may ask in confidence concerning every other sin,
but concerning this we are to leave the erotan to Christ. Intercessory prayer
has no term to express our precise idea of it. The exhortation is generally to
supplication for all saints,4 and for all men,5 after the example of the Lord’s
intercession. In the passage to Timothy St. Paul uses for once the word
enteuxeis, intercessions, which however means familiar and confident prayers, as
coming from the word entugchanein, literally to fall in with a person and enter
into familiar speech with him. In the strength of Christ’s intercession we also
are commanded to intercede, or to speak confidently with God on behalf of
others: save indeed with the one reservation mentioned above. Intercessory
prayer must blend with all our supplications; as our Lord teaches in the
solitary command which He gives concerning private prayer, enter into thy
closet, when the Father Which seeth in secret is to be addressed as Our Father!6
and the individual supplication not lost in but blended with the common prayer.
When thou hast shut thy door is the Mediator’s solemn injunction of formal,
habitual, regular private exercises of devotion: confirming the injunctions and
examples of all Scripture. But the devout soul everywhere can shut the doors of
the senses, and sink into the presence of God: there worshipping with all the
effect of local seclusion, and by EJACULATORY prayer holding habitual communion
with Him who makes the heart of the regenerate His temple 1 Php 4:6; 2 John
16:23; 3 1 John 5:16; 4 Ephesians 6:18; 5 1 Timothy 2:1; 6 Matthew 6:6; Matthew
6:9 III. The perfection of these supreme offices of devotion is seen only in
their combination

United they constitute Worship, as it respects God; as it respects man, the
spirit of devotion; and in their effect upon the religious life one constantly
reacts upon the other to the gradual perfection of both

1. Divine worship as the highest offices of religion embraces both elements: the
presentation to God of His tribute, and the supplication of His benefits. In the
first and only description of that worship which our Lord Himself gave,
contained in His conversation with the woman of Samaria, He used again and again
the one and only word prosekuneesan to express the whole service of God:
pre-eminently adoration, but including all the sebasmata or devotions1 of the
worshipper, as St. Paul in a solitary passage terms them. Hence the full meaning
of the phrase COMMUNION WITH GOD,2 as both giving and receiving. The word
Hosanna, which enters the New Testament from the Old, combines prayer and
praise: Hosanna [save now!] to the Son of David. Blessed is He that cometh in
the name of the Lord!3 1 Acts 17:23; 2 Php 4:15; 3 Matthew 21:9

2. The spirit of devotion in the worshipper is blended of praise and prayer.
Those are to a great extent indistinguishable. The devotional language of
Scripture strikingly illustrates this. To seek the Lord in prayer and to wait
upon Him in reverent silence seem to mean the same thing. The Lord is good unto
them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him:1 the active seeking must
be accompanied and qualified by the passive waiting

Although there are few positive precepts on the subject, it is obviously the
tendency of revealed religion from beginning to end to inculcate a service which
blends contemplation and the meditative habit with all prayer.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy
sight!2 MEDITATION is the silent pondering of the soul on Divine things through
the medium of the Word, the devout consideration of some particular truth, or
revelation, or promise: as preceding, accompanying, and following all prayer it
is the strength and best grace of devotion. CONTEMPLATION is the same posture of
the devout mind, but with some exclusive reference to God Himself. It expresses
the highest aim of the soul to behold the Supreme in anticipation of the eternal
Vision, In the devotional ethics of Mysticism the differences of the two stages
of meditation and contemplation are much dwelt upon; and the latter is regarded
as the final goal of all devotion: the state of detachment from every creature
and the pure beholding of God alone as the only Being. Nor does Scripture
discourage this sacred ambition; its safeguard, however, is this, that all
contemplation be combined with prayer. The error of false Mysticism is to
believe that the soul may be raised into a state in which every affection of the
heart is stilled and all emotion lost in the fixed and unchangeable vision of
Him in Whom all desire of personal blessedness is forgotten 1 Lamentations 3:25;
2 Psalms 19:14

UNION WITH GOD As the consummation of all ethical duties is the worship of God,
so the end of all worship is union with Him. To this most glorious issue all the
revelations of Scripture converge. It is the end of all teaching and the seal of
all perfection. Our Lord’s Prayer for His people makes this the goal of
Christian aspiration: that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me and I
in Thee, that they also may be one in Us.1 But the union with God is, like all
other relations to the Supreme, attained only in and through the Mediator: I in
them and Thou, in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.2 A few observations
on this their supreme end and aim may close the department of personal ethics,
whether of duties or of graces 1 John 17:21; 2 John 17:23

1. Union with God is the realization of the one object of the redeeming economy.
It is the perfect and diametrical opposite of sin, which is in its essence
separation from the supreme centre of spiritual life. Sin is the violation of
duty, the absence of virtue, the loss of the summum Bonum of blessedness:
nothing less than union with God is the perfect restoration to duty, and the
consummation of virtue, and the supremest and fullest blessedness. Any view of
Christian morality which carries its vision to any point short of this is of
necessity defective

2. An unhealthy dread of Mysticism has hindered the appreciation of this truth.
Union with God has undoubtedly been the watchword of some of the sublimest
systems of ethics based on erroneous doctrine. Buddhism in the East and
Pantheistic Mysticism in the West are instances: so far as personal ethics are
concerned Christianity can find no fault in them but that of deep defect. But
their end was not as their beginning. They issued both in the deepest darkness
of error: in the East it was the abyss of absolute extinction or Nirvana, and in
the West the worse abyss of Antinomian indifference to moral distinctions. But
the Union of which we speak is one that preserves inviolate the personal
identity of him who attains it: he becomes ONE WITH GOD in thought and feeling
and will: the emphasis being laid on the WILL

3. But our Lord’s words dwell on that unity with the Supreme Source of life
which is to be enjoyed by a corporate fellowship of saints. It cannot be too
deeply pondered that the last and highest words, whether of our Lord or of His
Apostles St. Paul and St. John, speak of a Body one in the fellowship of the
Holy Trinity, and so one that the individual, though not lost, is never again
remembered as such, This carries us forward to the next Section

RELATIVE ETHICS The ethics of our relations to our fellow-creatures are
inseparably bound up with the ethics of personal character. But they may also be
viewed as entirely distinct: or rather as prescribing the obligations of duty in
more direct relation to others. First, there are obligations arising out of the
common and mutual relations of man and man. Secondly, there are those which are
based upon the sacred and necessary relations of domestic society. Thirdly,
there are those which are connected with the voluntary or accidental relations
of men in social life, and the Divine ordinance of commerce. Fourthly, though
under some reserve and restriction, we must include political ethics. Fifthly
and lastly, there are the ethics of our higher relation to the society and
fellowship of the kingdom of God. Upon all these Christianity pours a clear and
steady and sufficient light: gathering up all former teaching, and impressing
the whole with the seal of perfection ETHICS OF MAN AND MAN

All men are related as fellows or neighbors. Obligations to universal man as
such may be classed under five heads as the duties of Charity, of Justice, of
Truth, of Purity, of Honor: each of these, with its subordinates, being marked
out in Holy Scripture emphatically and distinctly. There is, however, a sense in
which all are summed up in the first; again the remaining three may be regarded
as one in the second: thus making Love and Justice preeminent in the relations
of man to his fellow, as they are in his supreme relations to God

CHARITY

Much has been already said of CHARITY, which in the New-Testament is reserved
for man’s widest obligation to his neighbor: it is the one term which is common
to heaven and earth in this sense. It is more than the limited love of the
brethren which in us answers to God’s favor to His own: St. Peter, as we have
seen, makes the distinction very clear, and to brotherly kindness, charity.1
This noblest of all the graces belongs by prescriptive right to all departments
of ethics. As appointed to regulate the universal relations of mankind, it has a
very wide family of virtues under it, which may be subdivided as in a certain
sense active and passive, or, rather, positive and negative

1 2 Peter 1:7

1. It is PHILANTHROPY in the conventional use of the word to signify practical
care for the wellbeing of the race which knows no limits, but extends, whether
as Benevolence or Beneficence, to man as such. The word philanthroopia,1
however, is used only of God; it is not used expressly even of the God-man,
though the only passage in which it occurs attributes this sentiment to GOD OUR
SAVIOUR. KINDNESS is natural regard to our kind; therefore not employed to
denote the Divine regard, for which the word is Lovingkindness, though this is
extended to all the works of the Divine hand. Charity or love, as the duty which
every man owes to his fellow-man, presides over a wide range of obligations,
from the supreme SELF-SACRIFICE which is ready to lay down our lives2 in
imitation of Him who laid down His life for us, down to the gentlest act of
COURTESY which sheds its charm upon common life, blending love and justice into
one 1 Titus 3:4; 2 1 John 2:16

2. But its most impressive exhibitions are such as are called forth in imitation
of the Divine charity. Such is MERCY: strictly, speaking, God alone can be
merciful; but in the same sense as man may sin against man he is bound to be
merciful to the offender, and to forgive him if need be seven times in a day.1
And more than that; for, when reminded of His words by Peter, the Redeemer said:
I say not unto thee, until seven times; but, until seventy times seven.2
Longsuffering belongs to God alone: we, following the Divine example, are
required to practice FORBEARANCE, which is the disposition not to press to the
uttermost our claims against a fellow-creature. This is by our Lord called
COMPASSION, and PITY, and FORGIVENESS. Shouldst not thou also have had
compassion on thy fellow-servant even as I had pity on thee?3 All these
affections towards universal man are required of those who bear the Divine image
as restored in Christ. Throughout the New Testament this unlimited charity,
meditating the most unbounded kindness and capable of the most unbounded
forbearance, is inculcated as a grace taught of God to those who in union with
Christ partake of His Spirit. Our Lord denounces the vice that seems to honor
love while it robs it of its perfection as absolutely universal. Ye have heard
that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But
I say unto you, Love your enemies4 . . . Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father which is in heaven is perfect. St. John, in his last Epistle, the
supplement and complement of all Scripture, gives this its strongest expression.
He, like all the writers of the New Testament, but more directly than any other,
makes the charity of redemption the standard of universal duty

Hereby perceive we Love, because He laid down His life for us; and we ought to
lay down our lives for the brethren.5 Not for the brethren only, however: these
words must be conformed to the precept of the Savior, who commends to us the
perfection of the Father’s impartial love as our standard. And, if the love of
God in the Atonement is made the example, it is also made the source of our
strength to copy it: If we love one another, GOD DWELLETH IN US, AND HIS LOVE IS
PERFECTED IN US. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because HE
HATH GIVEN US OF HIS SPIRIT.6 1 Luke 17:4; 2 Matthew 18:22; 3 Matthew 18:33; 4
Matthew 5:43; Matthew 5:48; 5 1 John 3:16; 6 1 John 4:12-13

JUSTICE

JUSTICE, as co-ordinate with Love in the ethics of man’s relation to man, is the
principle of respect for the rights of others. Like charity, it is a virtue of
which God gives the highest standard in His acts. But here there is a
difference. The retributive justice which belongs to God, Who alone can
distribute rewards and punishments, may be reflected in the justice of human
judicial courts where law is administered. But the virtue that honors the
infinite variety of mutual human rights is righteousness in the phraseology of
Scripture, which however uses both righteous and just as adjectives. It is the
paying universally what we owe. St. Paul explains this, and, at the same time,
shows the profound connection between love and justice, when he says;

Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath
fulfilled the law.1 Here love is the eternal debt of righteousness, which
justice must be for ever paying. Now Charity, as we have seen, does not suppress
righteousness either in God or in man: in us it is the strength by which the
debt is paid as well as the watchful registrar of the debt itself. The Christian
ethics of justice are deeply affected by the supremacy of love; as will be seen
by considering the various forms of justice as they are presented in the New
Testament

1 Romans 8:8

1. Justice recognizes in every member of the human family certain inalienable
rights that belong to man as created in the image of God and redeemed by the
incarnation of His Son. The precept Honor all men1 occurs in a connection which
shows that the inheritor of human nature as such is to be respected. Every man
is in a certain sense a brother of Jesus; and, loved as such, must receive the
tribute which is essentially his due. Closely connected with this is the
indestructible right, subject to certain restrictions which do not touch the
right itself, to the control of himself: in other words that freedom of will
which is personal liberty. It is injustice to despise any man as such, to
whatever degradation he may have sunk in his race: here at the one extreme,
justice must give freedom to every slave, and hold slavery in abhorrence, and,
at the other, must be courteous.2 The perfection of COURTESY is to give to
everyone on all occasions his human due, as interpreted by love: while to those
of high degree it is reverence, and to the lowly is condescension, it is to all
alike the honor due to man as man, and especially to the weaker and more
honorable sex. Like Hospitality, which is courtesy not so much in spirit and in
word as in act, this is a grace too often unrecognized and unvalued 1 1 Peter
2:17; 2 1 Peter 3:8

2. There is another class of rights which are not inherent in all, but earned by
the moral industry and fidelity of our neighbors; those which are based upon
acquired character

Every man’s reputation is dear to him: whether it be his general good fame or
his particular repute. Justice guards both as the right of our fellow-men; and,
reinforced by love, more than guards them. It abhors Slander, which, by
backbiting, scandal-mongery, or innuendo, would rob another of his character;
and Detraction, which would rob him of his fair repute. The law of justice says:
Render therefore to all their dues.1 Love had in the preceding chapter gently
corrected this: in honor preferring one another.2 1 Romans 13:7; 2 Romans 12:10

3. Justice respects the rights of property in general. If Christianity
introduces any modification here it is not as it respects our relation to the
holder of property, but the relation of the holder of property to God. He holds
it only in trust, and as a steward; and obligations arise of a personal
character which have already been referred to. Relative morals, however, are
independent of this; and require that we rigidly observe the laws of what in
modern language is called HONESTY

4. Reserving this for the ethics of commerce, we may refer to another range of
application. All men have a right to our fidelity to TRUTH. Society is based on
this principle. Justice, attended by love, mast be SINCERE in the intention of
the present moment; mast be true, in the sense of VERACIOUS, in spoken words
referring to the past; and must be FAITHFUL to every engagement concerning the
future. All these virtues belong more or less, as we have seen, to personal and
interior ethics; but they enter here also. Our neighbor has no claim, no right,
more imperative than that which expects truth from us. Christianity heightens
the claim by showing that we belong to a corporate body, the union of which
depends upon the fidelity of each to other. Wherefore putting away lying, speak
every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another.1
Similarly, the vice or injustice of stealing is condemned: Let him that stole
steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which
is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Here the interpretation
of love comes in. It is not enough to abstain from robbing another; the opposite
virtue must be practiced, the giving to those who need instead of taking from
those who have 1 Ephesians 4:25; Ephesians 4:28

5. Finally, the law of love, blending its influence with that of justice,
introduces a variety of ethical sentiments of great importance. It is our
obligation to respect and to our utmost ability to preserve the purity of others
by a pure demeanor towards them: this duty of justice interpreted by love is
elevated into a perpetual law of life. The question in Christian ethics is not,
What does my neighbor expect from me? but what ought he to expect? and, what
ought I to do for him whether he expects it or not? Both love and justice lie at
the foundation of our Lord’s precept: All things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them; FOR THIS is THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS.1

1 Matthew 7:12 ETHICS OF FAMILY LIFE The Family relation is the ordinance of God
lying at the foundation of all human society

Christian Ethics leave nothing wanting here as it respects the main elements of
that ordinance: the relation of Marriage, that of Parents and Children, that of
Masters and Servants, and the regulation of the Household generally as the home
of all

MARRIAGE

Christianity confirms, simplifies, and vindicates from abuse the original and
sacred ordinance of marriage. Moreover it elevates and hallows it afresh by
special benedictions

I. The original appointment of MONOGAMY IS confirmed: From the beginning of the
creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave father
and mother and shall cleave to his wife1 . . .. What therefore God hath joined
together let not man put asunder.2 Our Lord in these words gives us the sum of
His decisions on this question, with all the principles the ethics of which must
regulate marriage both as a religious and as a civil institution. From these
principles there should be no appeal 1 Mark 10:6-8; 2 Matthew 19:6

1. Everything like Gnostic or Manichaean dishonor of this state of life is
contrary to the spirit of the Christian legislation. Whatever disparagement of
marriage may be found in any part of the New Testament is to be interpreted in
harmony with this original ordinance of the Creator, as the Savior, creating all
things new, has confirmed it. He Himself may seem to have occasionally set it
aside, as when He spoke of those which have made themselves eunuchs for the
kingdom of heaven’s sake. The utmost that may be inferred from this is, that the
ordinance was not made binding on every member of the race; and that either
devotion or discretion may find it expedient to renounce or defer the marriage
bond with its responsibilities. St. Paul illustrates this, both by example and
by precept. He teaches the dignity and the sanctity of wedded life; and his
suggestions of entire abstinence were given only for the present distress.1 1 1
Corinthians 7:26

2. MONOGAMY was as an institution made for man, like the Sabbath, and not man
made for it. Although there is no express decree on the subject in the
Scriptures, it may be fairly assumed that the original union of Adam and Eve was
the type of the union of male and female among their descendants; especially as
there is a general equality in their numbers. But no reason can be assigned why
the Supreme Lawgiver might not in some cases sanction the suspension or the
occasional change of the law. Hence the commanded, permitted, or uncondemned
concubinage of some of the ancient servants of God. Undoubtedly, the current of
the Old Testament shows that monogamy was the normal appointment; and in the New
Testament our Lord has finally confirmed this When St. Paul says that a bishop
must be the husband of one wife1 he seems, but only seems, to tolerate polygamy
in private Christians. We have here an alternative exposition

Either the Apostle teaches that the rule of one wife—not yet absolutely pressed
upon all men, any more than the manumission of slaves—was peremptory for the
bishop; or he prescribes that the bishop must never replace the wife whom he may
have lost. There is something anomalous in each side of the alternative. But
both interpretations are consistent with the principles that a man should be the
husband of only one wife

1 1 Timothy 3:2

II. In the Old Testament marriage is often used to symbolize the relation
between God and His people; and in the New Testament this is more emphatically
the case. St. Paul, himself not a married man and the only Apostle who has been
supposed to depreciate the institution, elevates it into a standing type of the
union between Christ and His people, both collective and individual. He that
loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but
nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church. This is a great
mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.1 Here it is the union
between the Lord and the mystical Body which is in the Old Testament the Queen,2
and in the New the Bride and the Lamb’s wife.3 But in another passage we hear:
he that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit: the allusion to one flesh4 in the
preceding verse makes it very plain that the personal union with Christ is in
the Apostle’s thoughts 1 Ephesians 5:28-32; 2 Psalms 45:9; 3 Revelation 21:9; 4
1 Corinthians 6:17

1. But, apart from the mystical fellowship which it illustrates, no higher
tribute to marriage is conceivable than this. It carries the dignity and
sanctity of the marriage relation to the highest point short of making it a
sacrament. It is the most intimate and sacred union conceivable; the mutual
complement necessary to the perfection of man and woman, and one which cannot be
supposed to subsist with more than one person. As an institution for continuing
the human race it is as pure in its own sphere as that Union between the
Bridegroom and the Bride to which the spiritual increase of the Church itself is
due. This sheds a strong light upon the various kinds of dishonor done to the
ordinance The violations of ethical obligation refer to the two final causes of
marriage. First, in all those tempers and acts which interfere between the
persons to impair the perfection of their unity, Christ’s union with the Church
being always in view: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto
the Lord; for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of
the Church . . .. Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the
Church.1 Here there is much to ponder. The inmost grace of the wife as such is
the love of submission: the earthly reflection of that loyal homage of devotion
which the man was commanded to offer: He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him!2 The
inmost grace of the husband is perfect self-sacrificing love. The two are one;
and their union is sacred. Their communion, therefore, down to the slightest
offices of affection, must be pure. Thence arise interior ethics which need not
to be dwelt upon; a hint of which, however, St. Paul gives when he says: Defraud
ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time . . . that Satan
tempt you not for your incontinency.3 This leads to the other class of offences:
the sinful indulgence of those lusts which war against the second primary
purpose of marriage: ADULTERY, with all the train of vices that precede,
accompany, and follow it 1 Ephesians 5:22; Ephesians 5:25; 2 Psalms 45:11; 3 1
Corinthians 7:5

2. As it respects DIVORCE, the Christian law cannot be understood without
reference to the Mosaic legislation, which it generally comprises. Our Lord
makes very express reference to the matter: correcting ancient traditional
errors on this subject, just as He corrected traditional errors on the subject
of adultery. He could not have declared more absolutely than He did that
marriage is a permanent compact, which neither the parties concerned nor any
human power can dissolve; save on the conditions appointed by God Himself.
Whatever those conditions might have been in the days of the people’s hardness
of heart1 it is clear that our New Lawgiver has decreed that one only offence,
fornication, shall dissolve the marriage bond: whosoever shall put away his
wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth
adultery.2,3 Under the old law, the penalty of adultery was death; our Lord’s
legislation tacitly abolishes that: moreover, He gives porneia the same meaning
as moichatai, which generally signifies the same offence committed by a married
person. A remarkable phase of the same question occurs in connection with the
new relations between married persons of differing faith. Our Lord had intimated
that the divorced might marry again. St. Paul, in his treatment of the question
as to the desertion, deliberate and final, of an unbelieving partner, says that
the forsaken one is free: let him depart: a brother or a sister is not under
bondage in such cases.4 What the extent of this freedom is Scripture does not
say; but it has generally been held that desertion is, equally with adultery,
valid ground of divorce under the New Law 1 Matthew 19:8; 2 Matthew 19:9; 3 Mark
10:11-12; 4 1 Corinthians 7:15

3. The principles thus laid down must be inviolate, whatever human legislation
may do: rather, all human legislation must conform to them. According to those
principles marriage is not merely a civil contract: the Scriptures make it the
most sacred relation of life; and nothing can be imagined more contrary to their
spirit than the notion that a personal agreement, ratified in a human court,
satisfies the obligation of this ordinance

Again, throughout the history of revelation, husband and wife are ONE FLESH,1
and there is no precedent in Scripture for making them merely partners or for
giving the wife independent rights. The kindred therefore by AFFINITY, or
through the marriage union, are as really related, though not so closely, as
those who are kindred by CONSANGUINITY

1 Genesis 2:24

HISTORICAL

Many ecclesiastical controversies have arisen in this field of ethics which it
is not within our province to discuss. These have had to do with the sacramental
character of marriage, the compulsory celibacy of those devoted to the service
of the Church, the law and practice of divorce, the modern application of the
ancient Levitical law touching prohibited degrees, and the particular question
of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife. Some of these points will be
considered when we reach the sacraments, and others of them must be, noticed
here only so far as they involve the New-Testament ethics

1. As to the first point: there have been two extremes, as we have seen, on the
subject of the religious relation of marriage. It is in the Scripture a mystery
but not a sacrament. The notion of a specific sacramental grace, doing for man
in the sphere of nature what the mystical fellowship with Christ does in the
supernatural sphere, is an error, but a venial one in comparison of that which
makes marriage a merely external union or mutual compact. The former error—to
which reference will hereafter be made— has no sanction in the Word of God, and
involves a certain dishonor done to the idea of a sacrament. But the latter
seriously affects the very foundations of human religious society

2. It might be expected that the ancient churches which held the sacramental
character of marriage would be rigid as to the doctrine of divorce. The Romanist
doctrine of matrimony in fact allows of no separation of the parties, such as
should allow them to marry again; but it multiplies causes of separation A MENSA
ET THORO, and for pronouncing any marriage NULL AB INITIO. Legislation in
Protestant states has varied much; but the general tendency has been to reduce
the estate of Matrimony to a human arrangement under the control of human law,
which by mutual consent the parties may for almost any reason dissolve. On the
Continent of Europe there is scarcely any trace left, even among the Evangelical
communities, of the ancient high tradition; and the present English law is
imitating the Continent in this laxity: much to the scandal of our Christianity

3. POLYGAMY, in theory and practice, has had its advocates in every age; and in
every age Divine revelation has protested against it with more or less of vigor.
The Concubinage of the Old Testament may be cited in opposition to this
statement. But when the instances in question are examined in the light of the
New Testament, they will be found to confirm our principle. The polygamy of the
patriarchs was in some cases an exceptional arrangement taken up into the scheme
of Divine Providence. That of Solomon and the later kings was condemned and
chastised. We have to do, however, with the New Testament, which leaves no room
for doubt as to the full ratification of the original law Where Christianity is
established Monogamy must vindicate itself as the order of God; but when
Christianity is in conflict with heathen practice, the same discretion should be
used in the suppression of old habits as is taught in the case of slavery. As to
the Mormon revival of Polygamy it may be said that it is self-condemned

4. St. Paul speaks more than once of the Forbidden Degrees. When he is
condemning the particular form of Corinthian incest, that one should have his
father’s wife,1 he calls it Fornication, the generic term for offence against
the purity of the marriage relation. He appeals to the Levitical code as still
in force, but only as being grounded in the constitution of human nature. None
of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him.2 A man shall not take
his father’s wife.3 This prohibition stands at the head of a number of
interdicts, which are carried into their particulars: the force of the
prohibition resting upon the natural abomination of union with the remainder of
his flesh. The interdict does not absolutely extend to all the instances which
this last expression would lead us to expect: they are taken for granted, as,
for instance, the child of a brother. It is observable that there may be no
union with the wife of a father’s brother: thou shall not approach his wife: she
is thine aunt. From this it appears that this relationship, not one of blood,
was sufficient reason for the prohibition. Hence it may be presumed that the
sister of a wife would be under the same interdict. How far the probibited
degrees of kindred extend is, however, matter of national legislation 1
Leviticus 18:14; 2 Deuteronomy 22:30; 3 Leviticus 18:6 PARENTS AND CHILDREN

Ethical principles regulating this relation exhibit a considerable development
when we pursue them through the whole of Scripture. Christianity has consummated
that development by removing certain peculiarities of the Mosaic legislation, by
confirming the original ordinances of nature, and by superadding a specific
reference to the common bond between Parents and Children in the Christian
household of Faith. What Christian legislation says on this subject may be
briefly summed up under the heads of Parental and Filial obligation respectively

1. Parental obligations include necessarily the Maintenance of children, their
Education in its fullest sense, their Preparation for life, and Nurture for the
Lord. These are all involved in the rights of children to the care of their
parents as representatives of Providence. Care in things temporal is not
forgotten: If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own
house, he hath denied the faith.1 It is upon the moral discipline that the New
Testament lays its chief stress, as will appear from one of St Paul’s pregnant
sayings: Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but nurture them in the
chastening and admonition of the Lord.2 Here we gather that, negatively, the
discipline is to be discreet, just, impartial, considerate; positively, it must
include the entire education and specific admonition of the Christian faith.
Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children:3 this precept runs through
the old economy and on into the new. Again and again it was enjoined upon the
parents of the ancient dispensation that they should instruct their children in
all the facts of the national history and in all the variety of symbol and type
by which Divine things were taught by God.

It shall come to pass when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by
this service? that ye shall say.4 Hence the parental responsibility does not
admit of transfer. The teaching of preceptors, whether in secular or in
religious matters, is at best the necessary supply of the parents’ duty: it must
not supersede it, especially in Divine things. Claims of business, recreation,
traveling, even of public worship and other services, must not interfere with
this most absolute and paramount obligation of life. With the parent is the
teaching of example and ceaseless influence as with no other and delegated
authority. Catechetical and Sunday schools were never intended in any sense to
interfere with this 1 1 Timothy 5:8; 2 Ephesians 6:4; 3 Deuteronomy 6:6-7; 4
Exodus 12:26-27

2. The filial obligations corresponding to parental rights, are Obedience,
Reverence, and the Piety of grateful requital. In the order of nature, as
represented by St. Paul, Obedience takes the lead: the reverence is a later
expression of the filial sentiment. Children, obey your parents in the Lord; for
this is right.1 It is right in the essential fitness of things, and what is
generally right is specifically right in the Lord. Neither in the Old Testament
nor in the New is there any restriction to this precept: as pertaining simply to
the parental authority it is absolute, in all things.2 Of this Jesus Himself set
the supreme example. And He went down with them, and came unto Nazareth, and was
subject to them.3 Both parents are included in this authority. Reverence grows
out of and strengthens and at the same time hallows this obedience. It is the
reflection on the parents, as representatives of God, of the honor due to Him.
Honor thy father and mother4 is a commandment which belongs rather to the first
table than to the second: the word tima, is the same which is used of the
respect due to the Supreme Father and to the Son: he that honoreth not the Son
honoreth not the Father.5 Our Lord Who was subject to His earthly mother and
Joseph said; I honor My Father.6 It is used also of reverence for royal
authority, Honor the king;7 as of the respect due to man as in the image of God:
Honor all men. If it is not said that God honors all men, at least this honor
have all His saints: If any man serve Me, him will My Father honor.8 Profound
respect for parents as such is a duty which has no restriction: not even when
their character forbids its being reverence in the strict sense of the word

1 Ephesians 6:1; 2 Colossians 3:20; 3 Luke 2:51; 4 Ephesians 6:2; 5 John 5:23; 6
John 8:49; 7 1 Peter 2:17; 8 John 12:26

3. But this filial honor to parents as such must take the form of recompense for
their care as opportunity offers. Incidentally St. Paul introduces a touching
reference to this. Using in one instance the term Piety, as uniting the service
of religion to God and to parents, he says: let them learn first to show piety
at home, and to requite their parents.1 The emphasis on this Christian virtue is
remarkable: for that is good and acceptable before God. It also has its highest
example in the Supreme Pattern whose last earthly care was to provide for His
ever-faithful mother: Woman, behold thy son I Behold thy mother!2 1 1 Timothy
5:4; 2 John 19:26-27

4. There are certain limitations to these rights and obligations which nature
prescribes and some which Christianity adds. There is a legal majority: of that
the Scripture says nothing. Though this majority releases the child from some
restraints, the sanctity of the parental and filial relation remains inviolate
to the limit of life. The requital of parents implies that the bond continues to
the end. There is a limitation, however, which seems to be introduced by
Christianity in repression of the law of nature: namely, in all instances of
conflict between the express will of Heaven and parental wishes. The law of God
is to be supreme in all such cases of collision: Wist ye not that I must be
about My Father’s business?1

1 Luke 2:49 MASTERS AND SERVANTS The moral teaching of Christianity has a very
marked bearing on the family bond of Masters and Servants, including every
variety of relation that may subsist between the employer and the employed,
which in Scripture are generally regarded as pertaining to household life

1. The mutual rights, duties, and responsibilities of these relations are not in
their widest range matter of direct statute in the Christian Scriptures: partly
because they belong to the relations between man and man, and those of commerce,
and those of the household; partly, because servants in the New Testament were
generally, and in the Old very often, slaves. But the principles laid down by
St. Paul are of permanent application, and mark the specific points in which
Christian legislation affects the subject of ordinary servitude On the
employer’s side there is the obligation of justice, the arbiter being the Lord:
Give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have
a Master in heaven.1 It is obvious that the Apostle here carries the question of
what is just to servants into a higher court than human, because when he wrote
the servant had scarcely any legal rights. Justice is now regulated, so far as
wages go, by human law. But in all other respects the principle of justice must
be observed under the control of a feeling that before the Master in heaven all
are servants alike. On the side of the servants the duties are more copiously
laid down: Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please
them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining, but showing all
good fidelity.2 Here the duty of the employed is determined by a standard from
which modern ideas are fast receding. Obedience, cheerful and solicitous to
please; humility, and silent acceptance of a superior will; all negative and all
positive fidelity: these are the virtues of those who serve human masters
according to the Divine will. Many other matters that complicate the relation
are left to the operation of a high principle that Christianity alone has
introduced: the common relation of masters and servants is in the Lord.3 The
exhortations to do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;4 to adorn the
doctrine of God our Savior in all things; and not with eyeservice as
menpleasers,5 have their application to all servants of every degree to the end
of time. And in them lie the special Christian ethics of this relation of
universal family life 1 Colossians 4:1; 2 Titus 2:9-10; 3 Colossians 3:23; 4
Titus 2:10; 5 Ephesians 6:6

2. The question of Slavery arises here. The Epistles of the New Testament
undoubtedly recognize it as an extant institution which must be undermined and
abolished by the operation of Christian principle and not otherwise. It had been
sanctioned by the Mosaic law; but in a form very different from that of Greece
and Rome. Slaves, if Hebrews, recovered their liberty in the seventh year; in
every case they were carefully protected and had their full religious
privileges, being incorporated into the Jewish household. But, like polygamy and
many other anomalies, slavery was tolerated only until the fullness of time. The
coming of the New Legislator cleared away from the Divine statute book many
statutes that were not good:1 not good absolutely, that is, though good for a
preliminary dispensation. It introduced a universal amendment as well as
spiritual codification of the old laws. And with regard to slavery He abolished
it in principle by His very incarnation

If the Son therefore shall make you free!2 applies to this kind of bondage also.
The Apostle Paul lays down the effectual emancipatory principles. First: There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.3 In the presence of the Lord
there is and there can be no such thing as slavery; and this is the consolation
of him whom men call a slave, But if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.4
No slave is required to be absolutely contented with his position: indeed, he is
virtually enjoined to use all right means for his release. Thou owest unto me
even thine own self.5 The whole of the Epistle to Philemon is a specimen of the
way in which the Gospel sanctifies the abuse which it will in due time destroy.
The first of these passages shows that Christianity knows no slavery; the second
that the slave ought to be free; the third that Christian principles alone will
accomplish his freedom 1 Ezekiel 20:25; 2 John 8:36; 3 Galatians 3:28; 4 1
Corinthians 7:21; 5 Philemon 1:19 THE HOUSEHOLD

Over and above the obligations and duties which have been referred to, there is
yet another which imposes upon the Head of the household the responsibility of
its holy government as a society separate and distinct in itself and having its
ramifications elsewhere. One in every family is the representative of the
Supreme, and is in the Christian household the teacher, the priest, and the
ruler under Christ directly responsible to Him

1. The Household or Family occupies a prominent place throughout Scripture. It
was the first form of society; and has continued to be the germ and
representative of every other fellowship. In no dispensation has the family been
merged in the congregation and forgotten or lost. Abraham before the Law had the
church of God in his house. In his legislation Moses laid the heavy
responsibility of household religion on every parent

David, rather in his Psalms than by his example, exhibits the same principle.
Our Lord sanctified family religion by being the most blessed illustration of it
for all His earlier years; and by governing His Apostolic company as a Master of
the House,1 speaking of His disciples as them of His household. The Epistles
generally penetrate through Churches to the families, addressing men as the
heads of households, which includes more than their children. St. Paul writes,
Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own
houses well.

2 Here the house includes servants and all dependants; and the passage is
further remarkable as indicating a certain analogy between the house of God
which is the family and the house of God which is the Church 1 Matthew 10:25; 2
1 Timothy 3:12

2. There is only one head of the house; who is responsible for its instruction,
worship, and godly discipline. That head may be of either sex, married or
unmarried; consequently the household as such is independent of the married
relation, and even of children. But the head is the husband, or bond of the
house, in the normal state of things: though husband and wife are one, there
cannot be a united head. As bound to maintain its Christian discipline, its Head
is the priest of the family; and, unless incompetent to perform his duty or
neglecting it, presents its worship daily to God. FAMILY WORSHIP is an
institution specially prescribed and honored in the Old Testament: tacitly or
indirectly in the New The church in thy house1 does not refer to the household
of Philemon as such, but to that portion of the Christian community wont to meet
there; yet it does indirectly suggest a family worship. Christians in regard to
this obligation as well as that of brotherly love are Theodidaktoi: ye need not
that I write unto you; for ye yourselves are taught of God.2 There ought to be
no collision between the worship of the family and that of the congregation No
household as such can ever be a church, save under anomalous and transitional
circumstances such as those already referred to; and, on the other hand no
public worship in the assembly dispenses from the family obligation to worship
God. St John, in one of his two smaller Epistles, gives the final testimony of
the New Testament as to the strictness of family discipline. Respecting the duty
of keeping false doctrine and corrupt teachers out of the household, he writes:
If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into
your house, neither bid him God speed:3 whether he come in person or by his
writings, or in any way whatever. And this is made more emphatic by the fact,
that the guardian of the household faith was in this case a woman This final
testimony does not receive all the attention that it demands. Issued in the name
of the Savior, arid by the representative of a religion of charity, the
injunction to have no domestic fellowship with an enemy of the Incarnation is of
great weight 1 Philemon 1:2; 2 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 3 2 John 1:10 ETHICS OF
SOCIAL ANDCOMMERCIAL RELATIONS

Christianity sanctions the principles on which commerce is based; enforces the
rigorous principles of personal morality in the conduct of it; and lays around
it some specific safeguards of the utmost importance. We have only to do with
the specific Christian teaching

I. Commerce stands here for all that industry and activity which develops the
resources of the earth, creates property, and advances culture. The Religion of
Jesus sanctions all its fundamental principles, though for the most part only in
an indirect way. It teaches that Property is of God, whose will has ordained
that His creatures should have exclusive possession of certain things which they
may call their own. Our Lord came not to destroy the ordinances of nature and
the original charter on which mankind inherited the earth

He has confirmed that primary constitution of things according to which man was
ordained to replenish the earth and subdue it,1 and extract from it its
resources. The same natural law that declares it wrong to take from another his
possession requires the deeper principle that he has a possession which may be
taken: the prohibition, thou shalt not steal,2 implies the personal right to
something of one’s own. The question how such property is acquired now, or was
acquired originally, and by what tenure it is held in its various forms, does
not here enter into consideration. It is enough that the Divine order for the
development of man individually and collectively requires the idea of personal
possessions, and their use and multiplication in commerce. It is lawful to
possess and accumulate the substance which commerce makes its Capital and from
which it derives Interest. This is a fundamental principle which the Bible
nowhere contradicts; in it all the laws of honest merchandise have the fullest
sanction. In fact, every other theory is opposed by the tenor of Scripture. In
its pages might is nowhere the foundation of rights; the possession of property
is never made dependent upon the caprices of popular will, or social compact.
There is no sanction of COMMUNISM. The COMMUNITY OF GOODS in the Acts was
extraordinary, and the result of a special influence of the Spirit; voluntary,
and binding on none; transitory, and soon gave way again to the common order of
life; and prophetic of a far distant future 1 Genesis 1:28; 2 Exodus 20:15

II. The ethics of commerce, as they are affected by Christian teaching, are of
more importance. They are both direct and indirect; partly general principles,
and partly safeguards

1. It is a primary law of the New-Testament legislation that the principles
which regulate personal holiness must be carried into the commerce of life. For
instance, Thou shalt not steal;1 the precept which forbids all injury to the
property of another, must carry its sanction into trade: condemning fraud of
every kind, whether by false representation, by adulteration, by overreaching,
or by any other of those numberless methods of advancing one’s own interest at
the expense of others which are the disgrace of modern trading. But the positive
virtues which belong to ordinary life must be carried into commerce. Not
slothful in business2 is a general precept which may bear this special
application: it is true that tee spoudee mee okneeroi has no such reference to
business in the modern sense of the word as many suppose; but that which is a
virtue in the whole course of life is a virtue in commerce, and the secret of
success. The hand of the diligent maketh rich:3 the blessing of God rests upon
the operation of a natural law. Let him that stole, steal no more is followed
by: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good,
that he may have to give to him that needeth.4 We commanded you, that if any
would not work neither should he eat.5 1 Exodus 20:15; 2 Romans 12:11; 3
Proverbs 10:4; 4 Ephesians 4:28; 5 2 Thessalonians 3:10

2. While the Christian legislation sanctions all kinds of industry and all
enterprises of civilization, it throws around the whole many safeguards which
may be said to constitute a large part of its commercial ethics. For instance,
the precept, Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord
Jesus1 forbids the engaging in any occupation which cannot be sanctified in all
its details by that Name. This injunction would cut off very much of the
speculative enterprise of commerce, though by no means all of it. The indirect
precept contained in the injunction, Set your affection on things above, not on
things on the earth,2 with others like it, such as this, It remaineth . . .
those that use the world as not abusing it,3 affects these ethics profoundly,
inasmuch as they forbid all accumulating for the sake of hoarding riches. It is
possible though difficult, and it is necessary, to make a distinction between
the commercial possession of substance, or the possession of it as a steward,
and the personal complacency and delight in it. Substance may be and must be
increased in order to prosperous commerce, and many of the Divine promises
expressly sanction and sanctify this. But there is no teaching either in the
Gospels or in the Epistles which permits the accumulation of earthly treasure
for self. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth4 is a precept for every
spiritual man in Christ, who must in the ground of his nature be poor in spirit.
The design to acquire the means of usefulness sanctifies thrift; but there is no
department of probation which requires more watchfulness and discretion 1
Colossians 3:17; 2 Colossians 3:2; 3 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; 4 Matthew 6:19
POLITICAL ETHICS

Revelation has from the beginning been bound up with the social and political
affairs of the world; and has shown the contact of religion with every kind of
developing rule among men: from the primitive household and family, its simplest
and typical form, to imperial despotism. We have now to do with the general
principles of New-Testament teaching, both as to the rulers and as to the ruled

I. The institution of government is Divine: not founded on any compact or
agreement among men, as the modern figment is. The more carefully we examine the
basis of tribal and national distinctions among men—in other words what goes to
constitute a distinct people—the more clearly shall we perceive that it is
conditioned by a certain relation to God Whose worship was the original bond of
unity to every race, and Whose representative the earthly ruler was. Government
was made for man and man was also made for it. The form of that government is
not prescribed rigidly and definitively: certainly not in the Christian
legislation. Every form of valid authority is sanctified in the Old Testament.
The New Testament introduces a universal Monarchy in the spiritual economy of
things; and only in a very subordinate way deals with the kingdoms of this
world.1 But the foundations of civil and political society for earth were laid
in heaven: the powers that be are ordained of God.2 Human magistrates represent
the Supreme Judge: being in the state His deputies. He is the minister of God to
thee for good: for the protection and peace of the law-abiding. He is the
minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath:3 for the administration of the
Divine justice on transgressors. These principles are indisputable. The same
term is used concerning the representation of ecclesiastical authority in the
church and in the world: they are both diakonoi and leitourgoi, or ministers.4 1
Revelation 11:15; 2 Romans 8:1; 3 Romans 13:4; 4 Romans 13:6

II. Obedience to magistrates and the government of the land is made part of the
Christian law: expressly included in His ethics by our Lord on the broad ground
of the duty to render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,1
though the Caesar of that day held the land in bondage. St. Paul recognized in
his own person, and commands all men to recognize, what was at best a despotic
and cruel authority

1 Matthew 22:21

1. The duty of submission is, first, in a certain sense, passive. Whosoever,
therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that
resist shall receive to themselves judgment.1 This forbids, negatively, personal
insurrection and resistance. How far submission is to be carried, at what point
resistance is permitted—not to the individual as such, but to a people—is a
question which our present ethics do not contemplate. Inter arma leges silent.
The obligation comes in, however, before the arms are taken up. No individual
Christian may resist without betraying his trust, and losing the meekness of his
wisdom. When the question is concerning the law of his God,2 the servant of
Jehovah must resist, but not until submission has had its perfect work 1 Romans
13:2; 2 Daniel 6:5

2. Positively, obedience to the government requires that diligence be given to
uphold the honor of the law at all points, and that for conscience sake. Much
emphasis is laid both by our Lord and by His Apostles on paying tribute to whom
tribute is due: a principle which involves very important issues. For this cause
pay ye tribute also.1 Let it be observed that St. Paul’s ethics of submission to
government follow and are, as it were, incorporated with his sublimest and most
comprehensive doctrine of Christian morality

1 Romans 13:5-7

3. The Bible, from beginning to end, inculcates and honors PATRIOTISM. It has
been sometimes said that neither the sentiment of love to country nor that of
personal friendship finds a place in Christian ethics. It is true that the
supreme devotion to a kingdom which is not of this world1 everywhere has the
preeminence; and that the individual sympathies of friendship are merged in
brotherly love. But both these sentiments are really inculcated and encouraged.
There is no profane history that surpasses or equals its annals in examples of
both, and Christianity must have the benefit of the old religion of which it is
in a certain sense a continuation

1 John 18:36 ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP A wide department of what may be
called Ecclesiastical Ethics has been created by Christianity The Christian
Society inherited the Ethics of Judaism. But the bond of fellowship has changed,
as also its relation to the world; and with these changes corresponding duties
and responsibilities have arisen. Our ethical system will not be complete
without some remarks on the general principles of Christian duty as connected
with Christian communion, under the three heads of the external organization,
the internal fellowship, and the common mission, of the Christian Society as
laws are prescribed for it in the New Testament. The next section, that of the
Church, will open up this subject more fully

Here it will be viewed only in its general principles as regulating one specific
branch of Christian Morals. It must be remembered that the question concerns
only those who belong to the community of Christ; the preliminary duty of the
Church to offer its privileges to all, and of every man to accept these
privileges, is not here discussed. It has been considered already and will arise
again

I. Membership in the external Church confers rights and imposes obligations.
Here we have to regard the religious Society founded by our Lord as being the
depository and representative of His will, and the trustee of His commandments

1. It is His law, that every believer should be added1 to the church by the rite
of baptism: this is not left optional, either to the adult believer himself, or,
as we shall see, to the parent of Christian children who must be baptized. The
Eucharist also imposes a duty whilst it confers a privilege: This do in
remembrance of Me. This do ye, as oft as ye drink it.2 1 Acts 2:47; 2 1
Corinthians 11:25

2. Submission to the authority of those whom He sets as pastors and rulers over
His people is a Christian duty, to which corresponds the obligation of the same
pastors and rulers to watch for the people’s souls and instruct them in the
truths of religion: obey them that have the rule over you.1 The sanctions of the
commandments binding upon the Society in its external constitution are manifold:
the extreme is what became afterwards known as separation from the Church, or
excommunication

1 Hebrews 13:17

3. The ethics of ecclesiastical worship are distinct from those of devotion
generally. They involve some matters of great importance, which, however, will
be more fully considered when the Church is the subject. Public worship, the
sanctification of the Lord’s Day, and attendance on services prescribed by due
authority, belong to this class of positive laws Not forsaking the assembling of
ourselves together, as the manner of some is.1 Modern Christianity brings into
prominence some ethical questions as to the obligation of submitting to
ordinances of Christian fellowship and worship which the several communities
appoint, without express authority of the Word of God. In other words, every
community has the nature of a Society as well as of a Church; and every one who
binds himself to the usages of the Society is bound by them. On the other hand,
the Society must so regulate its legislation as to pay deference to the
Scriptural and superior enactments for the universal Church as such. Those
Societies within Catholic Christendom have prospered most which have wisely
adapted their bye-laws, and skilfully subordinated them to the laws of the
Church as laid down by the Savior and His Apostles. But the further
consideration of this whole question belongs to the next section, that of the
Church

1 Hebrews 10:25

II. The internal fellowship of the Christian Society involves a large body of
ethics that may here be alluded to in a preliminary way. They fall under two
branches: such as refer to the obligations of brotherly love and mutual kindness
among the members themselves, and such as govern the relations of the fellowship
to the outer world or them that are without.1 1 1 Corinthians 5:13 1. The
specific form of charity which is BROTHERLY KINDNESS:1 shown in mutual
watchfulness, practical admonishing one another2 bearing one another’s burdens,3
mutual edification and sympathy and help. The foundation of all these ethics is
given in our Lord’s words: All ye are brethren.4 They prescribe the most
self-denying and careful and persevering attention to the claims of the sick and
sorrowful and needy of the flock; and the support, according to every man’s
ability, of all the institutions of charity that the Society contains 1 2 Peter
1:7; 2 Colossians 3:16; 3 Galatians 6:2; 4 Matthew 28:8

2. One of the most important branches of the ethical obligations we now consider
is that which regulates the bearing of the Christian Society on the world
without. Here there are two distinct and seemingly opposite aspects of the
subject

(1.) There is a sense in which the Christian Fellowship is bound to maintain its
absolute separation from the world. It is a community which is passing through
the present scene of things as a band of pilgrims. Much of our Lord’s directory
of duty, as well of His Apostles’, regards the present constitution of things as
passing away, tolerated only by the Christian discipleship, and permitting
usages which are to be conformed to only under protest or by way of
accommodation to national laws. Of this character is the legislation concerning
Oaths and some other matters which will be considered elsewhere. It may be said
that a keen solicitude to maintain the honor of the religious community as the
kingdom of heaven is inculcated. But it shall not be so among you!1 This
principle involves many difficulties especially in regard to social relations:
and this therefore is a very difficult branch of conventional ethics. There is a
separation from the world which is rigorously demanded of the Christian
fellowship as such: Come out from among them and be ye separate!2 By five
distinct terms St. Paul marks the contrariety between the world and the Church.
What fellowship, [metochee,] hath righteousness with unrighteousness? what
communion, [koinoonia,] hath light with darkness? And what concord,
sumfooneesis, hath Christ with Belial? or what part, [meris] hath he that
believeth with an infidel? and what agreement, [thesis,], hath the temple of God
with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will
dwell in them. The Epistles constantly make the dignity of the Christian
fellowship an argument for high propriety: Do all things without murmurings and
disputings; that ye maybe blameless and harmless, children of God, without
rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as
lights in the world, holding forth the word of life.3 1 Matthew 20:26; 2 2
Corinthians 6:14-18; 3 Php 2:14-16

(2.) But this passage carries our thought to another aspect of these ethics. The
Christian Society must penetrate the world around with a holy influence. Ye are
the light of the world! Ye are the salt of the earth!1 The duty of our Lord’s
disciples is to carry with them an influence which shall pervade social life;
and while, with regard to it—its festivities, recreations, diversions—the
Christian law strictly demands that all should be so ordered as not to dishonor
that Worthy Name by the which ye are called,2 it demands also that in the midst
of the world, or of that kind of semi-religious life which often comes near to
what the New Testament calls the world, a pure and holy example should be set by
those who are spiritual 1 Matthew 5:13-14; 2 James 2:7

(3.) There is great difficulty in reconciling these two aspects of our ethics.
But they must be harmonized. The passage quoted above from the Philippian
Epistle is chiefly of a negative character: it shows what the sons of God must
be in contrast with others. There is another passage in the same Epistle which
is more full and complete in its bearing on this subject.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are reverend,
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if
there be any praise, think on these things. Those things which ye have both
learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall
be with you.1 This perfect compendium of Christian morals regards the Brethren
as setting their thought —their rightly estimating, studious and pondering,
affectionate and ardent, practical and energetic, peaceful and triumphant—
thought on all the obligations of morality in its highest perfection. But some
of the elements of the description show that it is an excellence which must be
known and seen and read of all men. The Church is before the world’s bar

1 Php 4:8-9

III. The ethics of the Church’s mission next claim attention. Hitherto we have
considered the obligations arising from the common fellowship as within; but
there is a duty incumbent on every Christian to co-operate with his fellows for
the spread of the kingdom of Christ around and to the ends of the earth

1. Here is the corporate obligation of universal Christendom to preserve the
Faith, to diffuse it, to wield its truth in the contest with all error, to
demand from men submission to the Gospel, and to put forth every effort to
evangelize the world. The Catholic Body as such has this for its first and great
command, which briefly comprehends every other

2. This corporate obligation rests upon the several Evangelical branches of
Christendom: it may be an unreality to speak of its resting upon the universal
Church as such; since it has been long the demonstrated will of the Spirit that
the various sections of the Christian Commonwealth should carry on the work of
discipling all nations. Hence it is the duty of every religious community,
either alone or in combination with other similar bodies, to engage in the
common effort to spread the Gospel: an obligation never enough remembered until
the present century

3. The most solemn and binding of all personal responsibilities are those which
require every individual member of the body to make its universal work his own.
This is the peculiarity and also the perfection of Christian ethics, that every
duty which it enjoins and every grace which it commends has some reference, more
or less direct, to the Church of God which is the kingdom of Christ. The
relation of the individual to the fellowship of the saints pervades the New
Testament. There can be, strictly speaking, no isolated religion: every
Christian man belongs to the visible household of faith, and is partaker of all
its privileges and responsibilities. In virtue of the universal priesthood of
believers—of which more hereafter—all who name the name of Jesus are regarded as
under an obligation to preach His Gospel, and promote His glory in the Church,
and make the salvation of souls their business for His sake. The Christian is
born into a new world; and his relations to the new economy do not permit him to
regard himself for a moment as an independent unit. After St. Paul had spoken of
the ministries of the appointed and ordained agents of tie Spirit, he goes on to
speak of the growing up of the entire community into the Head, even Christ; from
Whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every
joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every
part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.1 This
great word, read in the light of the hymn to charity, is the final expression of
ecclesiastical ethics. None of us liveth to himself.2 Every joint supplieth
strength; every part effectually worketh;3 and the growth of the whole body in
love is the contribution of all the members in particular. The Christian ceases
from self not only in Christ but in His body the Church: it is no longer to him
an independent principle and end of action; no longer an end at all as distinct
from a higher end. This is the doctrine of that Philippian chapter which shows
how Self is lost in Jesus, and then found again in the care of our own and of
others’ souls. Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus: here is the
supreme example of self-renunciation. They all seek their own things, not the
things which are Jesus Christ’s: here is the perfect opposite. Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling:4 this shows that solicitude for self is not
to be utterly abolished

Look not every man on his own things, but also on the things of others: here is
the unity of care for self and care for our neighbor in the common
self-surrender to the Lord and His service 1 Ephesians 4:15-16; 2 1 Corinthians
13:1-13; 3 Romans 14:7; 4 Php 2:5; Php 2:21; Php 2:13; Php 2:4


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  CHAPTER 33: 35. VOL 03 - THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
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The Christian Church THE CHURCH ITS HISTORICAL FOUNDATION Gospel Preparations;

Pentecostal Establishment ATTRIBUTES AND NOTES Unity One and Manifold;

Holy and Mixed;

Visible and Invisible;

Catholic and Local;

Indefectible and Mutable;

Militant and Triumphant;

Bearing of the Notes on Ecclesiastical History INSTITUTE FOR WORSHIP DIVINE
SERVICE OR WORSHIP THE MEANS OF GRACE THE WORD AND PRAYER THE SACRAMENTS
Ecclesiastical Theories as to the Sign and Seal;

Multiplication of Sacraments;

Under-valuation

BAPTISM

Scripture;

Historical and Controversial. .

EUCHARIST

Scripture;

Historical and Controversial. THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY THE UNIVERSAL PRIESTHOOD
OFFICES EXTRAORDINARY AND TRANSITIONAL THE ORDINARY AND PERMANENT MINISTRY THE
PASTORAL OFFICE THE DIACONATE VOCATION AND ORDINATION

HISTORICAL Theories of the Ministry THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD The witness of
truth The missionary institute THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM The Christian Church
is the sphere as well as the organ of the Spirit’s administration of redemption.
As a corporate body it was founded by our Lord Jesus Christ; is invested with
certain attributes and notes as the representative of His agency among men;
discharges its functions as an institute of worship and depository of the Faith;
has definite obligations to the world as an instrument for its conversion; and,
lastly, bears special relations in its temporal form to the eternal Kingdom of
Christ

These several branches of the one subject must be considered in relation to
Biblical, Dogmatic, and Historical Theology: from the Word of God we gather the
materials for the true doctrinal statement; and make this the standard by which
to test the various ecclesiastical phenomena of the Christian world. That this
whole question belongs generally to the Administration of Redemption has been
already shown at the outset, where the special relations of the Holy Spirit to
the work of the Redeemer was the subject. It may be added that many topics
connected with this department of theology must needs be distributed over
several sections, especially those of the Three Offices of Christ and the
consummation of the Kingdom in Eschatology THE HISTORICAL FOUNDATION OF THE
CHURCH A large portion of the New Testament is occupied with the details of the
establishment of the Church as Christ’s new institution: more particularly, this
is a prominent subject down to the beginning of the Acts. We may embrace the
whole under two heads: the preparations made by our Lord in the Gospels, and its
actual foundation on the Day of Pentecost THE PREPARATIONS IN THE GOSPELS

1. Our Lord proclaimed the advent in His own person of the kingdom of heaven,1
or the kingdom of God.2 His new revelation to mankind was the Gospel of the
Kingdom:3 the Baptist preached its coming, as the forerunner both of Christ and
of the Apostles; and the Savior made it the subject of His teaching until the
day in which He was taken up.4 By this term He linked His own government with
the ancient Theocracy: but not with its earthly form; for His was the kingdom of
heaven,5 as such predicted, though not by that name, throughout the prophets.
The new kingdom, however, was a mystery revealed: and the main secret of that
mystery lay in the fact that, while it was still the kingdom of God, it was also
the Messiah’s, the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,6 the kingdom of Jesus
the Son Incarnate. The phrase pervades the Lord’s teaching; down to the last He
was speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.7 It was not however
His purpose that it should be retained as the denomination of His new community.
The company of His people is the sphere of His reign to the end of time; but the
name and character of the dominion is held in abeyance until the consummation of
all, until its final manifestation as the one kingdom of heaven and earth, of
God and man, of Christ and His saints: it was of that the Incarnate Redeemer
spoke, when, at the close of His ministry, throwing off all reserve, He termed
it My kingdom.8 As our study here begins with this name, so it will revolve back
to it at the close; and meanwhile the first prayer of Christendom is, Thy
kingdom come:9 a prayer that will end only when all prayer shall cease

1 Matthew 4:17; 2 Mark 1:15; 3 Matthew 24:14; 4 Acts 1:2-3; 5 Revelation 11:15;
6 Revelation 1:9; 7 Acts 1:3; 8 Luke 22:30; 9 Matthew 6:10

2. At a memorable crisis in His history our Lord gave His institution its new
name: MY CHURCH.1 Twice, and twice only, He used it; and on two occasions
closely connected: both instances, be it observed, occurring in the very midst
of St. Matthew’s special collection of parables and discourses concerning the
kingdom. In the former, it seems to be the great temple or house of prayer for
all nations,2 in all ages, and for the worship of eternity; in the latter, the
visible assembly of Christian people, gathered together in one place for the
administration of His laws. Putting the two passages together, we have a summary
of the Saviour’s will concerning His future congregation. He gave it then a name
that we need not yet further expound: the word ekkloosia has from that day had
the pre-eminence over every other by which the fellowship of Christians may be
described No one who considers this origin of the term will consent to allow it
to be displaced by any other. The abuses of it should not bring it into contempt
1 Matthew 16:18; Matthew 18:17; 2 Mark 11:17

3. It is observable that our Lord, having given this new name, and thrown a
brief but effectual ray of light upon first the invisible and then the visible
congregation of the future, did not again mention the word: leaving it for
future use. His parables and discourses flowed on in their former channel,
keeping the kingdom of God in view. But the last discourses including the last
prayer give some elements of teaching concerning the future Church which are of
the deepest interest. These will only be alluded to now: the fuller exposition
of their meaning must be reserved for the future. Provision was made for the
permanent memorial of redemption in the Holy Supper: the sacrament of His
people’s corporate unity with Himself and with each other as the heirs of a new
covenant. Baptism, the sacramental rite of initiation, was also substituted for
the ancient rite of circumcision, now virtually abolished. The new congregation
or church was, as it were, formally consecrated to God by its Head in what may
be called the High-priestly Prayer:1 the first Prayer in His own house.2 In it
He refers to the company of believers as given Him of the Father: the suffering
obedience which nevertheless purchased the gift is kept back or dimly alluded
to; as kept from the would, or, as one afterwards said who heard the words,
preserved in Jesus Christ;3 and to be made perfect in one, in that spiritual and
eternal unity of perfection of which the highest type is to be sought though it
can never be found in the interior relations of the Trinity. But it is
observable that the Savior speaks of this new community, describes it, and prays
for it, as future. Even after His passion, when the resurrection had put all
power in His hands, and He appeared in the midst of His disciples as their
glorified Head, the New Fellowship was yet in the future

He spent forty days in speaking about its history or destiny,4 and His Apostles’
duty in the coming days; doubtless gave many instructions that have not been
recorded; but always His Church was yet to come 1 John 17:1-26; 2 Hebrews 3:6; 3
Jude 1:1; 4Acts 3:4

4. While it is true that the Church, in the strict sense of the word, and as a
corporate institute, was not founded while the Lord was upon earth, in another
sense He was laying its foundation during the whole of His ministry. He left a
large body of instruction concerning it which waited only for the Day of
Pentecost to disclose its fullness of meaning. The germs and principles of all
that is to follow in this branch of theology are to be found in the Gospels:
indeed, we may be more bold, and say that nothing on this subject, or any
subject, can go beyond the meaning of the Lord’s own words. He spoke of the
Comforter as the future Divine Presence in the congregation; but His office was
only to glorify, expound, and expand the sayings of the Redeemer Himself. We
shall find that this holds true in a very remarkable degree concerning the
doctrine of the new Church or Kingdom. A large part of the Saviour’s teaching in
the four Gospels treats of its nature, of the methods of its spread, of the
character of its subjects, of its relations to the world, and of the principles
of His own government in it. The development of this teaching will appear in all
that the subject brings before us THE PENTECOSTAL FOUNDATION The Day of
Pentecost was the epoch of the foundation of the Christian Church. The prepared
disciples of Christ were assembled, and upon them the Holy Ghost came down,
making them the New Temple of the Triune God. Those were added whose faith
received the preaching of the Finished Gospel; and the disciples were
constituted into an organized and visible fellowship, to continue for ever
during this dispensation under the government of the Spirit as the
representative of Jesus its Head

1. The institute of the Feast of Weeks, representing the presentation of the
Jewish harvest firstfruits, typified the oblation of the first-fruits of the
Christian ingathering. It also, though not by Divine enactment, commemorated the
giving of the Law, and had its antitype in the full revelation of the New Law of
Faith. The Risen Lord appointed a meeting of His disciples in Galilee for the
proclamation of His Kingdom; but bade them wait in Jerusalem for the founding of
His Church. There they received, as representatives of the Saviour’s old
discipleship and the germ of the future body, that baptism of the Spirit which
was to them, as their special dignity, instead of the baptism of water. But the
Holy Ghost represented the Triune God, now fully revealed, Who took possession
of this consecrated body, and made them the new Temple or Church. The Shekinah,
which was the symbol of the union of God with man, appeared for the last time,
and was resolved into the Personal Spirit, the Presence of God in the midst of
His people, and resting upon every person present from the Apostles downward.
And it sat upon each of them.1

1 Acts 2:11

2. After the wonderful works of God had been proclaimed by the many new tongues
of the worshipping assembly, the one new tongue of the preaching brotherhood
began the everlasting Gospel. The new Law was the proclamation of the finished
work of Christ The day of the foundation thus gives the first and perhaps the
most complete exhibition of the process by which the Church is to be formed to
the end of time. The ekkloosia is the company called out from the mass by the
preaching of the completed redemption of the Incarnate Mediator. It is the
CHURCH as gathered from the world; it is the CONGREGATION as assembled together;
it is the FELLOWSHIP as replenished with common gifts. And these three ought to
be one

3. This Day also began the organization of the community: that is, if we include
the final words of the chapter as belonging to its history. The elements of
order, prepared in the Gospels, now take their instant and permanent form.
Pentecost is the typical day of the future of Christendom: in the morning the
worshipping assembly, glorifying God for the accomplishment of all His purposes;
in its noon the full Evangelical preaching; the rest of it given to organization
and fellowship. Amidst such shaking of heaven and earth as was never known
before, whilst the Christian company was in its first ecstasy of worship, and
the crowd in the strong excitement of conviction, the water of Baptism begins to
flow as the symbol of order and of introduction to the new fellowship. And, as
the rite of initiation was remembered in honor of the Lord’s final command, so
the community was immediately organized within. Here first indeed we have the
ekkloosia, or church, mentioned as an historical fact: the Lord added to the
church daily such as were in course of salvation.1 And what was the course or
process of salvation? The Apostles’ doctrine:2 that is, the Great Confession of
an earlier day expanded by the Apostles; their fellowship, that is, the
submission to all the obligations of the society life that day begun, and the
enjoyment of the blessings of the Christian covenant under Apostolical sanction;
the breaking of bread, the Lord’s Supper this, not the Apostles’; and, as
embracing, and pervading, and sanctifying all, the prayers ordered by the new
Spirit of adoption 1 Acts 2:47; 2 Matthew 16:18

4. The later New Testament—the Acts and the Epistles being interwoven into one
history of the beginnings of the perfected fellowship—shows us the gradual
consolidation of the economy of the Church, under the guidance of the Apostles,
who were for a season all in all as Christ had been. As My Father hath sent Me,
even so send I you.1 We see the formation of a pastoral ministry in its elements
afterwards to be developed. We see the growth of the community from without by
the preaching of the Word, from within by the incorporation of the children of
believers. Meanwhile, orderly arrangement never fails The new brotherhood was
not molded by an esoteric influence, acting like a philosophy: the leaven
leavened a lump which the Holy Spirit shaped into a body as fully and exactly
organized as any known to men. Simple as are the elements of this primitive
ecclesiastical polity, it is very sharply defined. The visible Jesus, surrounded
by His disciples, was not more isolated and apart from the mass of the people
around, than His Church is, under the influence of His Spirit, marked off and
isolated from the world. And that organization, thus perfectly sketched, remains
as the standard of order in the congregation for ever

1 John 20:21

5. This Day placed the Christian community under the jurisdiction and government
of the Holy Ghost. What the presence of Christ was in the Gospels, the Head
without a corporate body, the presence of the Spirit is, representing the
Invisible Head of a body now visible. This doctrine is vital in many ways. It
overturns the delusion of any earthly vicar of Christ There is one body and one
Spirit.1 What the great hierarchical theory gives to the Pontiff is taken only
by usurpation. The delegated headship of the Holy Ghost is the security of the
infallibility and in-defectibility of the Christian Body in the conservation of
the truth. The Spirit of life2 is strong against every enemy of the Church: the
gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.3 For He is the Giver of life: of
all ecclesiastical life, as well organic as individual. He moulds its elements
and fashions them as He will: being to kurion to soopoion, as defined in the
Nicene Creed. There are crises in the history of Christianity when new forms are
given to the outward organization, and He makes those a people who were not a
people.4 This truth may be and has been perverted; but the Spirit Himself
vindicates it in His own way, and the history of Christendom cannot be
understood without it. More generally He is the Source of all energy and
strength to the body of Christ upon earth: He is the breath of lives,5 of many
lives, inbreathed into it, and Himself the Inbreather. Lastly, the Spirit is the
Representative of the Lord, Whose Headship abideth ever. He acts for Christ in
His one Person. As the whole Trinity generally is represented by the Spirit, and
not the Father alone, so it is the whole Christ and not the Eternal Son alone.
But, as the Lord’s Vicegerent in His Church, Be does not exclude the Lord
Himself. When the Savior declared the necessity of His going in order that the
Spirit might come, He so spake as to reserve His own dignity as that of One who
would be never absent. I will come to you. He shall take of Mine.6 It is not as
in the case of that other Forerunner: He must increase, but I must decrease.7
The Lord Christ Himself, and not the Spirit, is Head over all things to the
church.8 We know that the presence of our Intercessor is behind the veil, we
know also that in the Holy Ghost He is here also: at hand as well as afar off.9
One name is common to the heavenly and the earthly Head: that of Parakleeton or
Advocate. He who pleads FOR the people, our Advocate with the Father10 in words
unheard, pleads IN them by the Spirit Who maketh intercession for us with
groanings not spoken.11 It is time that the phraseology of the Acts introduces a
great change in the Divine personality: the I is that of a Third Voice not heard
before. As, passing from the Old Testament into the Gospels, we have a new
Divine Speaker, so it is in the Acts. Separate Me!12 is the command of the Holy
Ghost. But, as the Father sometimes is heard during the earthly dispensation of
the Son, and is never absent, so the Lord Jesus in the Acts is never absent, and
sometimes speaks in His own name. He is King in His kingdom: He has that
universal kingship which He will surrender at the last day; He has that special
kingship over His redeemed which will not really begin or be consummated till
the last day. But He is in Apostolical language the Head over His Church, the
Head of the Church, rather than its King. This indicates, if possible, a yet
nearer and closer relation. The Incarnate Person has a union with. His Body
unshared and preeminently His own. It is the Church of God13—or the Lord—which
He hath purchased with His own blood.14 We return to His own first word: MY
CHURCH!

1 Ephesians 4:4; 2 Romans 8:2; 3 Matthew 16:18; 4 1 Peter 2:10; 5 Genesis 2:7; 6
John 14:18; John 16:15; 7 John 3:30; 8 Ephesians 1:22; 9 Jeremiah 23:23; 10 1
John 2:1; 11 Romans 8:26; 12 Acts 13:2; 13 Acts 20:28; 14 Matthew 16:18
ATTRIBUTES AND NOTES OF THE CHURCH The Church in the later New Testament is
represented passively as the Temple of God, actively as the Body or organ of
Christ’s manifestation: the former, as the sphere of Divine worship and holy
influence; the latter, as the instrument of Christ’s manifold operations on
earth. To both, in their unity, there are certain attributes assigned in
Scripture, the study of which brings before us the whole subject in the most
complete way. These qualities are Unity, Sanctity, Invisibility, Catholicity,
Apostolicity, Indefectibility, Glory. But we also find by the side of these,
which generally describe the Body in its higher and ideal character, qualities
in some measure their counterparts or opposites: such as Diversity,
Imperfection, Visibility, Localisation, Confessionalism, Mutability, and
Militant Weakness. Hence we gather that the true church of Christ is a body in
which these opposite attributes unite

1. These correlative qualities of the one Church of Christ suggest a certain
analogy with the Person of its Head in Whom Divine perfections and human
attributes meet. It also is one organized body with two natures or modes of
presentations. The concept church is not that of a Divine body and a human; but
of one reality under two exhibitions, as in the case of our Incarnate Lord. But
the analogy must not be pressed too far. Here there is the same reserve and the
same protection that was found necessary in the higher doctrine. As the Son of
God uses human nature as His body or flesh, He is the same with humanity As He
occupies it as a temple He is distinct from it. The church is the temple of
Christ: it is inhabited by Him. It is His body: the complement or fullness of
Himself. The higher and Divine church is in the visible and human as a temple:
distinct from it. It acts and works in the human as a body: inseparable from it.
We have to speak of all its attributes—higher and lower, Divine and human,
temporal and eternal—as belonging to the one church. And the habit of doing this
saves from much confusion

2. These attributes are in Historical Theology transformed into Notes, by which,
as tests, the true Church is supposed to be known. In the Apostles’ and Nicene
Creeds, as united, those are specified as four: One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic.
The controversial theology of Borne has multiplied these Notes very abundantly.
We shall adopt the method of connecting each attribute with its seeming
counterpart as the ideal community is realized in the world. There will, of
course, be less to be said on each series of opposites as we proceed, because
each more or less anticipates those that follow. Moreover, these Attributes and
Notes do not exhaust the subject, being dwelt upon only as introductory to what
follows ONE AND MANIFOLD

Unity and Variety are both and alike essential to the idea of the Christian
Church; and their sound combination is a test that may be applied to all
ecclesiastical systems

SCRIPTURE The Scriptural doctrine on this subject will be most fully exhibited
by considering, first, the universal Body of Christ of which the Christian
Church is the last earthly form; secondly, the Christian Fellowship proper as an
institution. As to the first, the note of manifoldness is most conspicuous; as
to the second, oneness and multiplicity unite

I. Taking the largest view of the Church of Christ as the fellowship of the
people of God in every age, we may affirm that unity in manifoldness has been
its law of existence and development. Its oneness from the beginning is
recognized throughout the Scripture as founded upon the common redemption,
whether revealed or unrevealed. The Holy Company of all ages has been one in the
unity of many forms and varieties of manifestation. It is the company of the
nations of them which are saved;1 the Church of the Redeemed out of every
kindred and tongue and people and nation;2 the unseen unity of all those of whom
it is said in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is
accepted with Him;3 the children of God that are scattered abroad,4 and gathered
together in Christ. Hence it binds together the several economies: the
Patriarchal Church, the Jewish and the Christian: one as the kingdom of God,5 or
the Civitas Dei running its course through all ages. In this large sense it
unites all the forms of the Church to which we shall refer: the Church as
universal, or as in a province, or as in a city, or as in a building, or as in a
house 1 Revelation 21:24; 2 Revelation 5:9; 3 Acts 10:35; 4 John 11:52; 5 Mark
1:15

II. But the Christian Church as an institution founded by Jesus is one and
manifold; its unity in the Spirit of its Head being the blending of many
believers in one common confession, and their participation in one common grace.
The teaching of the New Testament may be viewed, first, as to the essentials of
oneness and then as to the breaches of that oneness. From these we may gather
the true doctrine of Scripture

1. The unity of the Church has but one ground, that of a common union with
Christ; nor is there any positive reference to it which does not make that
prominent. The first word on the subject is that of the High Priest, whose
Unction is the bond of His people’s union with Himself and with each other: that
they all may be one: as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also
may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.1 The former
part refers to a unity never to be seen or understood of men; the latter to such
a spiritual manifestation of that holy fellowship as may suggest to all who
witness its effects the secret of its bond. It was reserved for St. Paul to
expound these words of our Lord, in the Epistle which comes nearest to the idea
of a treatise on the Church. He speaks of unity nine times in one paragraph, and
in five applications. There is one God and Father of all;2 and there is one
Lord, the common Revealer of that Father and Redeemer of men; and in Him there
is one faith, one baptism, or confession of doctrine. Again, there is one body
and one Spirit: the mystical body visible in the world as the organ of its
invisible Head, the oneness of which, let it be observed, is the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace: the oneness of all who receive the reconciliation
with the Father through the Son, and its seal in the communication of the Holy
Ghost. Lastly, there is one hope of your calling: the unity of that heavenly
aspiration which makes the pilgrim companies one in the hope of eternal
blessedness. This is the fundamental, and almost the only, text on the subject,
and it gives all the elements of the direct and positive Evangelical teaching
concerning the unity of the Church 1 John 17:21; 2 Ephesians 4:3-6

2. If we turn to the negative or indirect teaching, we find much that is
instructive on this subject. First, the omissions are remarkable. There is no
prescription of a necessary uniformity according to any supposed theory:
external oneness is never directly even alluded to as existing beyond an
individual congregation, while, on the other hand, a certain measure of external
differences and mutual independence must be assumed in order to give reality to
the exhortations to unity. Secondly, the constant tone of Apostolic doctrine
points to the maintenance rather of a spiritual than of a visible oneness. This
appears in the figurative language used to describe the Christian fellowship,
which always shows that the only unity directly aimed at in Scripture is the
mystical. It is that of His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all:1
the pleerooma of Christ, whatever the precise meaning of the word may be, must
signify one pure and perfect spiritual complement of this Divine-human Person,
one in His unity, or in Himself. Now that is said of the Church; and that body
is never spoken of as one in any external sense. In our Lord’s allegory it is
the Vine2 from the unity of which dead branches are cut off: that unity is in
Christ Himself and belongs to a tree of life; which strictly speaking has none
but living branches. The same remarks hold good of the figure which describes
the universal Church as a Temple, or House. In the final sayings of the New
Testament, when external organization must have been nearly complete, we read
only of spiritual oneness, not of outward uniformity. Christian fellowship is
with the Father and with HisSong of Solomon 3:1-11 and that through the Spirit,
which He hath given us.4 The violations of that fellowship are doctrinal and
practical: he that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh,5 and
he that committeth sin.6 The former is said to have gone out from us.7 There is
not a word in this final document of the unity of the outward body. In the
Apocalypse the seven churches are one in the central Lord who holds them in His
right hand;8 nor among their offences is their violation of external unity
mentioned. The divisions condemned in the New Testament as schisms are always
factious or doctrinal divisions within particular churches. The overt acts of
separation, according to the modern notion of heresy and schism, are not
contemplated in the New Testament. The breaches of unity are breaches rather of
the spirit than of the form: of the latter there are but few traces

1 Ephesians 1:23; 2 John 15:1; 3 1 John 1:3; 4 1 John 3:24; 5 1 John 4:3; 6 1
John 3:8; 7 1 John 2:19; 8 Revelation 1:20

3. Hence we may gather up these Scriptural elements into the statement that the
One Church is the unity of all the congregations of believers in Christ in which
the pure Gospel is preached, the sacraments duly administered, and the
discipline of the Christian fellowship maintained in its purity

(1.) The basis of this unity is the common property of a sound confession of
faith in Jesus. This is called holding the Head,1 or building on the one
foundation.2 With this must be conjoined the unity of worship offered to the
Holy Trinity through the Mediator, the Christian sacraments as the seals of
admission and continuance in the Church, and the maintenance of sacred
discipline 1 Colossians 2:19; 2 1 Corinthians 3:12

(2.) As to the expression of this oneness it is regarded in the New Testament as
seen of God, and of Him only. He beholds the one great assembly and hears the
secret harmony of what may seem to result from many discordant voices. As to man
it is the object not of sight but of faith: " I believe in one holy, catholic
church,"—not faith IN it, but faith that it exists—is the later expression of
the Scriptural principle, This admits of its exhibiting the reality of oneness
by manifestation in many ways: by an essential agreement in faith, worship, and
discipline, witnessed of all men; by methods of combination for the express
purpose of declaring union, and that not only by admissions of individual
brotherhood, but also by acknowledgment of ecclesiastical relations; and by
intercommunion and fellowship in all holy enterprises of Catholic Christian
charity

(3.) The Scriptural ground of this unity is the general supervision of the Holy
Spirit: The Lord knoweth them that are His in the great house; and this is the
inscription on the seal of its security, the obverse being only this, Let every
one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness.1 In Apostolic
days the presence of the Lord’s inspired representatives was the bond of union
among the churches; but we find no express provision for that bond after their
departure. In every individual church unity is maintained by discipline,
committed to the hands of responsible pastors 1 2 Timothy 2:19-20

ECCLESIASTICAL

Differences as to this attribute or note of the Church are bound up with its
best and worst developments. The subject belongs strictly to ecclesiastical
history; but a few hints may be noted here, having relation both to doctrine and
ethics

1. It has been seen that within the Scripture there is a unity observable which
is quite different from uniformity. In Israel there was indeed only one temple:
no breach of unity was permitted, and the separation of the kingdoms was not
sanctioned by God. The Romanist theory, fake now, was true then: the High Priest
was the bond of absolute unity to the covenant people. But after the Captivity,
another temple was built in Egypt; synagogues organised local centers of
worship; and sects arose. Our Lord sanctioned none of the sects as such, neither
did He condemn them as such: the Monachism of the Jews and the ascetic isolation
of the Essenes He did not once refer to. He certainly condemned by implication
the worship of Samaria, not as a violation of unity, however, but as false: ye
worship ye know not what. For salvation is of the Jews.1 We naturally study with
great interest all the hints of the Master’s will on this most important
subject; and certainly gather from some indications that it was not His purpose
to bind His people in the bonds of a very rigorous uniformity. The disciples
rebuked on one occasion those who followed not them; but they in turn were
rebuked by their Lord. The Apostles were a bond of unity after their Master’s
departure. But there is no hint of a continuance of their authority as uniting
the whole Church; and the council of Jerusalem was not repeated

1 John 4:22

2. Leaving the Scriptures, we find at once the tendency that has made the unity
of the Church a prominent question. During the ante-Nicene and Patristic ages
generally the foundations were laid of a doctrine of absolute uniformity. The
growth of heresies and schisms was the first occasion of this very early idea of
a mechanical unity: these two words becoming very soon fixed in their meaning as
follows. HERESY is the self-willed choice of some particular error and
consequent departure from the Christian Confession

Every church which renounces the fundamental doctrines of Christianity is out of
the unity of Christendom: not that it must necessarily be at once cut off; the
tribunal is an invisible one; and the excision is from on high. As to the
outward expression of unity the violation is SCHISM: strife within the community
itself, separation from it, whether by voluntary act or as cast out. In the
latter case there may be a justification which shall clear the apparent breach
from sinfulness. But in the Patristic age there was no thought of a justifiable
schism. Three representative men may be cited as the leading exponents of these
views, and of the different ways in which they were maintained. Ignatius, an
Apostolical Father of the first century, laid down the principle that the one
episcopate was the only bond of union: meaning, however, only that in every
church the chief minister was the guarantee of order as against schism and of
sound doctrine as against heresy. Irenaeus in the second century made the One
Church, as the congregation of all churches under this episcopal government, the
only organ of the Holy Ghost: where we have a singular combination of visible
and invisible unity. Cyprian of the third century (250), in his work De Unitate,
pointed to Rome as the centre of unity, though rejecting Roman jurisdiction: a
position which was very generally assumed

3. The further development of the principle that internal unity must be
expressed by external uniformity belongs to Ecclesiastical History. By degrees
the Roman bishop of bishops assumed to be to the whole church what each bishop
was to the individual church. The ecclesiastical was conformed to the civil
order, the Caesar of a temporal universal empire must have for his counterpart
the spiritual Caesar, or the Vicar of Christ as the centre of unity and final
appeal. The spirit of protest against this began in the East, which resented
both the FILIOQUE added to the Nicene Creed and the authority by which it was
added. The breach between Eastern and Western Christendom has never been healed:
it remains as a standing protest against the erroneous doctrine of unity. While
Rome denounces the Protestant communities as out of the pale of the one body of
Christ, the Orthodox Greek Church denounces Rome as the first of all Protestant
dissenters, heretics, and schismatics. In the West the Protestant Reformation
utterly rejected the theory of an external unity as held by both communities,
whether Catholic or Orthodox 4. A few remarks may be made upon modern tendencies
in the interpretation of the note of unity since the Reformation

(1.) It is generally conceded to be impracticable to aim at oneness in the
visible church save in the fundamentals of faith, worship, and discipline. It
must be obvious to every dispassionate mind that there has never been since the
times of the Apostles any other unity than that which God alone can discern.
Eastern and Western Christendom would agree that there has been none such since
the seventh century: and each despairs of the restoration of union save on terms
which the other cannot accept. Among Protestant communities only one judgment
ought to prevail here. There are found, however, certain Hierarchical or
High-Church enthusiasts who dream of a unity which a lineal Apostolical
succession of orders gives to Eastern and Western Episcopal communions. But this
is the most unreal of unrealities. A compromise is attempted by those who,
whether Anglican with episcopacy, or Lutheran without it, give up the hope of a
universal unity, but cling to that expressed by national churches in every land.
This is the religious unity of race or nation or territory. But ft can never be
proved that the Head of the Church divided His kingdom, or Intended that it
should be divided, territorially. The Congregational theory which admits only of
voluntary aggregation of churches, and neither has nor desires any guarantee for
more than that, goes to an extreme but in the right direction

(2.) But this tends to the modern correction of the notions of Heresy and
Schism. There are some important principles which are now generally accepted.
These two violations of unity generally go together: the airesis or heresy being
self-willed choice of private interpretation in opposition to Scripture, and the
schisma the following of a party. Few schisms can be named which have not been
the result of doctrinal error: few leading heresies which have not issued in
schisms. Here, however, there is a distinction. Heresy can never be perpetuated;
but the result of schisms may. Ecclesiastical schism may be taken up by Divine
wisdom into the development of the kingdom of Christ: having been in fact not
schism in the sight of God, or soon losing the taint. Apparent schism may be the
only cure of heresy. Many minor heresies may co-exist with holding the Head. But
where, on the one hand, there is such infidel subtraction from the faith, or, on
the other, such superstitious addition to it, as neutralize the fundamentals,
separation may be inevitable and lawful. Discipline may be so relaxed or
perverted as to necessitate separations which are not schismatical: Dissent and
Nonconformity are not necessarily and as such sinful. Schism may be the sin of
the community left as well as of the community leaving. But all this rises to
the higher principle that the Holy Spirit is the Giver of life corporate as well
as individual. He quickeneth whom He will. The body is more than its raiment:
any such act of the sovereign Spirit must aim at the more effectual growth of
the Church. He thus prevents unity from degenerating into stagnant uniformity He
calls them His people that were not a people, in order to provoke others to
jealousy

Lastly, whenever the Spirit thus goes out of His way to divide existing
churches, He never fails to authenticate His own act: as Paul among the Apostles
was able to authenticate his vocation and work As to heresy or self-willed and
needless schism it is still one of the works of the flesh:1 condemned of itself
1 Galatians 5:19

(3.) There are two opposite errors on the whole subject which, always
observable, are very prominent in modern times. One is the overvaluation of the
importance of unity, as uniformity. This is rebuked by reason, Scripture, and
the evidence of the fact that the Holy Ghost does administer the work of Christ
by sects and divisions. Much of the progress of the Gospel, and many of its most
glorious achievements, at home and abroad, may be traced to the labors of
Christian Societies to a great extent independent of each other. But
undervaluation of it is equally wrong. Though variety is ordained of God, the
nearer to uniformity, or at least to thorough mutual recognition, the estate of
Christendom can be made the better will it be for its peace and dignity and
prosperity. In due time Christ Who at His first coming made both one,1 uniting
Jews and Gentiles, will blend all communions into unity, and His Church shall by
His presence be in all its multitude of branches made perfect in one.2 1
Ephesians 2:14; 2 John 17:23 SANCTITY AND IMPERFECTION The Church, as the organ
of the Holy Ghost, is necessarily holy. But its holiness as imputed is
consistent with much imperfection; and as real and internal is only by degrees
carried onwards to a perfection which will not be reached in this world

I. The meaning of agia, sancta, as applied to the Body of Christ, is the same
which the term has been seen to bear as applied to individuals: with regard to
both it signifies simply that which is set apart from the world and consecrated
to God

1. The Church is spoken of as holy in the Divine purpose: the end proposed by
the Creator. Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness,1 must be referred
to redeemed mankind also. In this the Three Persons concur. He hath chosen us in
Him before the foundation of the world.2 Who gave Himself for us, that He might
redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own.3 This
final aim—to gather out of the world a people for His name—is ever kept in view
by the Holy Spirit of God, in Whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.4
The common design of the Holy Trinity was the new creation of a perfect humanity
or body of mankind: as THE CALLED, kleetoi, from the world or mass of the
unregenerate into THE CHURCH, ekkleesia 1 Genesis 1:26; 2 Ephesians 1:4; 3 Titus
2:14; 4 Ephesians 4:30

2. This design is accomplished through all the means of grace. The process is
spiritual and in union with Christ, Who as the Head can have only members like
Himself. Hence their vocation is an holy calling.1 Of them the Lord says, I have
chosen you out of the world,2 and of the Father they are accepted in the
Beloved.3 The temple of the living God,4 and the temple of the Holy Ghost5
dwelling in it, the Church is sacred: its holiness is real, though its
sanctification is a process at best: that He might sanctify and cleanse it with
the washing of water by the Word.6 The building, fitly framed together, formed
by holy members and at the same time forming them, groweth unto an holy temple
in the Lord.7

1 2 Timothy 1:9; 2 John 15:19; 3 Ephesians 1:6; 42 Corinthians 6:16; 51
Corinthians 6:19; 6Ephesians 5:26; 7Ephesians 2:21

3. This design is supposed by anticipation and in prophecy to be accomplished.
Always over the visible and imperfect church hovers the image of a sanctified
Ideal already in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.1 Thus in the design of
redemption, in the process on earth, and in the glorious result, already the
congregation of Christ is before the mind and in the purpose of God holy

1 Ephesians 2:6 II. More particularly, the holiness of the one church is that of
an external imputation; of an internal process; and of the gradual approach of
these to coincidence, never perfect in this world, but to be perfected at the
coming of Christ

1. There is a relative and imputed sanctity. As holiness unto the Lord was
stamped on the bells of the horses,1 so all in what our Lord called My house2 is
impressed with a certain character of holiness down to its very dust. Hence all
that pertains to the outward and visible community—the assembly and the building
itself in which they gather, the Divine service, the table, the sacraments—are
all among ta osia, the holy things.3 This is not affected by the unholiness that
lingers still in the external fellowship. The Epistles are written to the
companies of saints,4 among whom, however, are many whose unholiness is rebuked.
Our Lord’s own Catholic Epistles are written to the churches which are His and
yet needed much amendment: until He removes the candlestick out of his place,5
it shines upon a holy company. Jerusalem at the worst was still the holy city.6
But this is only a relative sanctity, and avails not of itself, being alone

1 Zechariah 14:20; 2 Matthew 21:13; 3 Acts 13:34; 4 1 Corinthians 1:2; 5
Revelation 2:5; Revelation 2:7; 6 Matthew 27:53

2. There is an internal and real sanctity, which inheres in the body, being
derived from the sanctity of the individual members of the mystical fellowship,
never wanting in any community that holds the Head. Their life, aim, and
communion are holy; the sanctity of the Church is really their sanctity; and of
them the Creed says: I believe in the communion of saints. This holiness is
matter of faith; it is also imperfect necessarily: for whatever perfection of
sanctity individual members may reach cannot be imputed to the whole body unless
all share it alike

3. The internal and external are gradually becoming one, in the whole Church as
in the individual Christian. Within the universal community, reckoned holy,
there is going on the silent, ceaseless operation of a sanctifying grace: by
love, by discipline, by melting, and by burning, the Church as a whole, and
every branch and congregation, is brought gradually towards perfect purity.
Hence the importance during the interval of process that we should remember St.
Paul’s twofold seal. The Lord knoweth them that are His:1 whatever the
anomalies, while the candlestick remains we may have perfect confidence in the
Divine discrimination of His own. Let everyone that nameth the name of the Lord
depart from iniquity: he that in the visible fellowship puts away sin, and lives
in holiness, may also have rejoicing in himself when oppressed by the errors in
doctrine and variations in practice observable in the GREAT HOUSE. We have this
double watchword to fall back on. One inscription on the seal bids us remember
that God discerns His own from all others. The obverse inscription tells us that
we must insure our own salvation: according to our Lord’s principle, What is
that to thee? Follow thou Me!2 But St. Paul’s large and tolerant watchword must
be somewhat limited in the case of any one community. In the individual church
the case is different It is not said of this, let both grow together until the
harvest.3 On the contrary, an effectual discipline is appointed: pastoral
oversight must see to it that disorderly members be reproved, and, if persisting
in evil, put away; while the injunction is laid upon Christians, Withdraw
yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly.4 1 2 Timothy 2:19; 2 John
21:22; 3 Matthew 13:30; 4 2 Thessalonians 3:6

III. This leads to the consideration of two currents of error which this Note of
the Church detects: the exaggeration of the relative and of the absolute
sanctity respectively

1. As to the former, many circumstances have had the effect of limiting the
sanctity of the body to its outward fellowship. The notion of an inherent virtue
in the sacraments, especially when these sacraments were multiplied so as to
hedge in all life, tended to externalize the idea of religion generally, and of
the ordinances of Christian fellowship in particular. So also the early and
unregulated alliance of Christianity with the State had the same effect, as the
perversion of what was in itself not necessarily evil. Whether the developed
Roman theory, that the Church is invested with the supreme authority over the
world, or the Erastian, that it is only an organ of the State, or the
Latitudinarian, that the Church and State are several aspects of the same thing,
the evidence of fact, multiplied into endless instances, goes to prove that the
union, as it has been generally seen in Christendom, has always had this evil
issue. Neglect of discipline, one of the worst results of bringing into too
close relations the world and the Church, has tended the same way. The Lord’s
Take these things hence!1 gave a law and established a precedent too soon
forgotten. The illustrations of this are endless, but they carry us too deeply
for our present purpose into ecclesiastical history

1 John 2:16

2. The external sanctity has sometimes been undervalued. Some schisms in the
early Church—Montanism in Phrygia, Novatianism in Rome, Donatism in Africa—were
the result of undue rigor in rooting out the tares: the extremest fanaticism was
the consequence In more recent times Puritanism, whether on the Continent or in
England, has pushed its high principle too far. Hence Modern Congregationalism,
its lineal descendant and representative in this country, counts no sanctity of
the external Church as valid to establish a Christian character or availing for
membership without the profession of conscious faith. The Baptists go further,
and refuse to admit that the dedication of children to God in baptism confers on
them any even external relation to the Church as holy. This at least, is their
principle when carried to its issues 3. The true theory seems to be that which
aims at the medium

(1.) All who approve themselves believers in Christ, and who, whether as adults
or as children, are baptized, belong to the external body, and are entitled to
all its privileges

Due respect to the outward and visible church requires the recognition of all
baptized and consistent members of it, without demanding personal testimony of
conscious experience

Bat the internal sanctity of the fellowship has its rights. The Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper, the seal of the communion of saints, and their note of profession
among men, must be guarded with care, its approaches being fenced in every
possible way suggested by pastoral vigilance and mutual watchfulness. In some
manner communicants ought to be examined and approved one by one

(2.) The method of accomplishing this has varied with every age and almost with
every community. By many of the later national churches it has been too often
entirely neglected: public warnings and confessions being only to a slight
degree reinforced by private investigation. The CLASS-MEETING among the
Methodists is their method of meeting one of the greatest difficulties of the
times. It does not profess to impose a new condition of membership in the
Christian Church. It is only one out of many forms— certainly the most
widespread and permanent—which the Ecclesiola in Ecclesia, or the society within
the Church, has assumed. No religious community has long maintained its vigor
and purity without some such expedient. This one in particular honors the
Church’s note of external sanctity by admitting freely every anxious applicant
on the sole condition that he as a baptized member of the Church of Christ is
desirous to flee from the wrath to come and to find salvation in the name of
Jesus. It brings everyone under pastoral supervision, direct or indirect:
indirect, as the leaders of these classes are themselves part of the minister’s
flock, and direct, inasmuch as these little companies are under the discipline
of a quarterly visitation. This institution provides the means of mutual social
edification, in addition to the general means of grace, and thus does much to
promote both the external and the internal sanctity of the community: the
external, because it tends to give more reality and dignity to the outward
fellowship of the Christian Church; the internal, because it brings all the
members under the influence of an edifying mutual exhortation and prayer. Apart
from its modern name, this form of fellowship may be traced almost up to the
times of the Apostles VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

These attributes of the organic fellowship of Christ have played a prominent
part in ecclesiastical controversy. But there are none which are clearer in
their elementary principles

I. The Church is, as the Redeemer’s mystical body, animated by His Spirit,
essentially invisible. In its deepest and most comprehensive sense it is a
spiritual and unseen reality; and therefore an ideal or the mystical fellowship.
But, in its manifestation as the kingdom upon earth it is no other than the
invisible Church taking visible form. Lastly, in its eternal consummation the
invisible and the visible will be one

1. My kingdom is not of this world:1 this declared to Pilate as the
representative of those outside the spiritual and super-terrestrial character of
the community; afterwards, within the circle of His disciples, the Lord dwelt
upon the same aspect of His fellowship. The entire strain of the Final Prayer
presents before God a mystical and invisible body, with hardly an allusion to
any other than that. This, in the language of St. Paul to the Ephesians, is the
body of Christ, and the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.2 It is as an
organic body spiritually organized and is invisible as its Head Himself is, like
every faithful member, hid with Christ in God.3 1 John 18:36; 2 Ephesians 4:1;
Ephesians 4:23; 3 Colossians 3:3

2. But this language concerning the mystical fellowship is addressed to a
visible community as concerning itself. St. Paul does not speak of the Saints
which are at Ephesus as distinct from the Faithful in Christ Jesus, though the
whole question of visible and invisible lies in that distinction. The entire New
Testament goes upon the assumption that every extant community is the earthly
embodiment of the kingdom of heaven. In this the servants are faithful to the
teaching of their Master, "Who taught the unity, though not identity, of the
visible and the invisible communions. The only two recorded instances of our
Lord’s use of the word illustrate the unity and the difference of the two. Upon
this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it:1 here is the foundation of the invisible Church which is the temple
built by Christ spiritual and eternal, yet built up by human fellow-laborers
with Himself: here the mystical idea is prominent though not exclusive of the
other. That same Church is also shut in and the offender is in the midst, and
discipline enforced, before the spiritual presence of Jesus who says: Where two
or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst:2 here the
visible and concrete reality is prominent. But the two churches are one. So also
the High-priestly prayer, which consecrates the spiritual temple, is uttered
over a body that had just been bound together in visible sacramental unity. To
return, however, from our Lord to His Apostles, St. Paul dilates upon the
administration of gifts in a visible ministry, and then glides into the increase
of the invisible body. So the great house is a visible one, but it has an
eternal, invisible foundation; as its seal testifies, the Lord knoweth them that
are His:3 and the Lord alone 1 Matthew 16:18; 2 Matthew 18:20; 3 2 Timothy
2:19-20

3. The Apocalypse gives us a clear vision of the visible and invisible reduced
to final and eternal unity: mystical still, but eternally visible as one
glorified organic whole, the Church is a distinct spiritual counterpart of the
Lord Himself. Moreover He is the Bridegroom, and His Church the Bride adorned
for her husband,1 in the last exhibition of both which the Scriptures contain 1
Revelation 21:2

II. The application of this double Note in historical theology concerns only the
relative importance of the two ideas of visible and invisible. No confession has
ever denied the reality of either. The differences between them have concerned
only the results flowing from the undue preponderance of one or the other

1. Romanism exalts the visibility almost to the suppression of the invisibility:
not, however, denying the latter. It teaches that there is " one Ruler of the
church invisible, Christ; and one Ruler of the visible, the successor of St.
Peter." The spiritual body has a place in its interior theology, but is not, by
any means, a governing idea: its theory is constructed in entire independence of
the mystical reality, which is acknowledged indeed to be its crown and glory,
but only in another state and to the eye of faith. Hence, it makes one of the
many notes of the true church —of which a large number is sometimes
reckoned—Exclusiveness: there is no salvation beyond the pale of the one visible
institution

2. The Protestant idea strives to unite the two attributes: but giving always
the priority and pre-eminence to the invisibility. The Roman Dogma will have
nothing to do with an invisible church apart from the visible: the Protestant
rejects the thought of a visible which is not created by the invisible to be its
organ. The Reformed Confessions differed from the Lutheran only so far as their
doctrine of election obliged them to differ. In the former the elect are the
true fellowship; but the visible church is a holy institution "to depart from
which," in Calvin’s words, "is to deny Christ." Calvin says, further: " God
substitutes the judgment of charity, in which we acknowledge those to be true
members of the Church who confess the same God with us in profession of faith,
in goodness of life, and in participation of sacraments." The Lutheran and the
Reformed were agreed at the outset as to the close connection between the
congregation visible and the body politic; but the close alliance of Church and
State is not so generally accepted by their modern representatives

3. Much of the differences between the modern communions results from variations
in theory as to the possibility of bringing the visible and the invisible into
coincidence or unity. Here are two opposite extremes, and a middle way between
them. The Broad- Church theory holds that the distinction should never be made,
except in extreme cases of apostasy and excommunication: the whole world,
waiting for baptism, is as it were the visible church, and the invisible must be
left with God. The stricter Congregationalist theories strive to limit it as
much as possible to authenticated professors, and aim very closely at making the
visible the measure of the invisible in every society. This has introduced the
modern distinction between the church and the congregation. Lastly, there has
been a compromise, adopted under various forms among various communities: that
of the Society within the church, which is not a theory of the mystical within
the visible body, but the attempt to save the general fellowship from some of
the evils which are inseparable from the constitution and working of the visible
fellowship as the Apostles left it: an attempt that in some form or other has
been made in almost every earnest and faithful communion CATHOLIC AND LOCAL The
ascription of catholicity to the Christian body dates from a very early time.
The term catholic means universal; and when local is added, as its counterpart,
the two expressions signify that the one church of the Redeemer, His body on
earth, has such a universality in its design and destiny as is consistent with
the local independence of individual churches

Nothing more is meant than this; but we shall find that the word catholic has a
very different application in ecclesiastical history

1. The testimony of Scripture on this subject is very simple. The ancient
church, Hebrew and Jewish, was strictly local and national. All who might enter
it from other lands must submit to what was a Jewish rite: retaining their own
nationality as men, they must as worshippers become Jews. But the ancient
Scriptures predicted a future religious fellowship which should embrace all
nations, and be independent of everything national The New Testament explains
what in this matter the old predictions left indistinct. In the Gospels almost
all the discourses and parables bearing on this subject dwell much on this
enlargement of the kingdom: it is in fact hardly ever left out down to the last
commission In the later New Testament the theory is that of a church which is to
be diffused through all nations; and the labors of the Apostles are directed
accordingly. But, while thus catholic, the local community meets us everywhere.
We read of the church,1 that is, of Jerusalem, and the churches of Galatia. The
last time the word is mentioned, it is in connection with distinct and
independent branches of the one universal Fellowship: the seven churches which
are in Asia2 being a sevenfold unity 1 Acts 2:47; 2 Galatians 1:2

2. The earliest use of the term Catholic, in the middle of the second century,
probably introduced into it a meaning that the Scriptures do not refer to. The
word was used to distinguish the one universal and faithful body from the
fragmentary companies of heretics and schismatics which were therefore not parts
of the catholic body. That meaning the word has never lost: the Great Majority.
But, since the division between East and West, and the plain fact that the
majority of professing Christians is on the side of the dissentients from the
see of St. Peter, the term has been conventionally used by Rome to signify
simply the one and only church, outside of which there is no salvation. The
Eastern communities do not so much affect the term, preferring that of Orthodox
and Apostolic

3. The Christian Church may be regarded as CATHOLIC: designed and adapted for
universal diffusion; and embracing the totality of those communions which
maintain the great truths in which the essence of Christianity lies. The term,
therefore, ought never to be used of any particular community. The Church is
also LOCAL or Particular: it exists in independent and even isolated forms,
whether as it respects individual, or connexional, or national bodies; and it
may, holding the catholic verities, maintain in its Confession truths that are
not catholic, and adopt un-catholic usages, without impairing its catholicity.
For the one church of Christ is at once adapted for every variety of mankind,
and influenced in its turn by every variety of human life. It is not more
certainly Universal than it is Particular APOSTOLIC AND CONFESSIONAL The New
Testament to some extent sanctions the attribute of Apostolicity. After our Lord
had chosen the Twelve—distinguished by this number whether as disciples or as
Apostles,1 — He declared that upon them, represented by St. Peter, and
proclaiming a sound confession, He would build His church. To these He entrusted
the keys, gave His commission, and promised the special effusion of His Spirit.
St. Peter, the representative Apostle, was the instrument of laying the
foundation of the new community both among the Jews and among the Gentiles. From
the Day of Pentecost the disciples continued steadfastly in the Apostles’
doctrine and fellowship.2 When St. Paul wag added to the company, he became, as
they were, an absolute authority under the Lord; and it is he who says that the
members of Christ’s body are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and
Prophets.3The same pre-eminence is given to them in the Apocalypse. Leaving the
New Testament, we soon find the term Apostolic used as a note of the visible
Christian body 1 Matthew 10:1-2; 2 Acts 2:42; 3 Ephesians 2:20

1. At first the application of it was sound: the true church traced its
institution, under God, to the Apostolical foundation, and maintained the
Apostolical faith and traditions as yet un-corrupted. But gradually the theory
arose which merged the authority of the Twelve in that of Peter, and the Church
was regarded as Apostolic so far as it was one with the see of Rome. But the
primacy of Peter, only representative in the New Testament, ceased altogether
when he departed; and thus this application of the note is convicted of being
unscriptural 2. The Apostolic note is applied, altogether independently of Rome,
by many churches in the form, of Apostolical succession. That there is an
uninterrupted succession of ministers which the Divine eye can trace up to the
Apostles’ times, there can be no doubt. But it is utterly impossible to prove
that in any part of the world there is a ministry that can trace its orders up
through episcopal hands to the Apostles. This theory of the transmission of the
Apostolic authority is closely connected with a wider theory of sacramental
grace, which is elsewhere examined. As belonging to the Apostolic note, the
doctrine of succession has no place in sound theology: at least in its modern
conventional sense

3. Another error—based on a theory curiously opposite to the last—interprets the
Note thus: that the true church is one in which the Spirit, after the long
pretermission of ages, has restored the Apostolate, with the original gifts and
prerogatives of speaking new tongues and other miraculous endowments. But the
Scripture does not make the existence of the Christian fellowship dependent on
the permanence of the Apostolic office: on the contrary, St. Paul and St. John
write as contemplating a state of things in which they and their prerogative
would be absent

4. During the last few centuries all Evangelical communions, not in bondage to
this idea of succession, have held that the Apostolical doctrine and discipline
may be maintained in common by communities which on minor points, not absolutely
determined by the Apostles, differ according to their various standards of
confession. Hence we may lay down our dogma: the Church is Apostolic, as being
still ruled by the Apostolical authority living in the writings of the Apostles,
that authority being the standard of appeal in all the Confessions that HOLD THE
HEAD INDEFECTIBLE AND MUTABLE

Both these attributes are clearly given to the one church in Holy Scripture.
They refer to the perpetuity of the Christian community and of the Christian
faith delivered to it

1. As to the former, it is enough to quote our Lord’s words on two occasions:
when He first spoke of His church, and when He last spoke of it. The gates of
Hades shall not prevail against it.1 He saw in the great futurity the
anti-church—the kingdom of falsehood, vanity, and death, the power of
Hades—striving from age to age to dissolve His kingdom, but in vain. It cannot
fall; for, like the faith of every true member of it, it is founded upon a
Rock.2 In His own Epistles in the Apocalypse, however, He expressly threatens
Ephesus to remove thy candlestick out of its place:3 that is, to extinguish the
light, and quench the existence, of an individual church. His prophecy was
fulfilled. Thus we have His authority for believing that the Christian Church
shall never fail, but that Christian churches may pass away 1 Matthew 16:18; 2
Matthew 7:23 : 3 Revelation 2:3

2. As to the latter, the perpetuity of the Faith, it needs no special evidence
beyond the assurance I am with you alway.1 Our Lord is the Truth;2 the Faith is
one with Him; and He is to be glorified by the Spirit in the Church showing the
things of Christ and guiding the Apostles into all the truth.3 We need no
further witnesses. On the other hand, that churches may corrupt the faith, in
part and in whole, and become apostate, is proved by a catena of evidence going
up to the Apostolical foundations which did so corrupt it These testimonies of
Scripture establish our dogma: that the Christian Church, in its unity, is at
once and while it is extant below both indefectible and mutable 1 Matthew 28:20;
2 John 14:6; 3 John 16:13 MILITANT AND TRIUMPHANT

1. There is no necessity for any illustration, either from history or Scripture,
of these last correlative attributes. Here at length all exposition, all
confessions, all communions agree. The same one body which is waging war with
principalities and powers, slowly winning and hardly maintaining its conquests,
is at the same time triumphant, rejoicing in Paradise with its Head in
anticipation of that deeper joy, that joy of their Lord, into which all shall at
once enter in the end of the days. The Church militant expects its most severe
conflicts yet in the future; but the apocalyptic agonies shall at the set time
be swallowed up in the song of eternal triumph. These two attributes are the
most comprehensive as they are the last. And, as they belong to the one church,
so in a certain sense they are themselves one. We hear the Apostles say: Now
thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ!1 The warfare
and the victory go on together, as we hear in the Apocalypse, where the toiling
assembly below hears the doxology of the general assembly above, and all but
joins in it: like the prophet Isaiah in the typical vision of the mystical
temple.2 1 2 Corinthians 2:14; 2 Isaiah 6:1-13

2. The measure of the sympathy between the militant and the triumphant
fellowship is clearly defined in Scripture; but the early Church soon began to
chafe at its restrictions From Origen onward may be traced an ever-widening
current of doctrine, the issue of which was the creation of a new intermediate
estate of the Christian company, not precisely militant and not yet triumphant,
that of Purgatory. Connected with this was the enlargement of the article on the
Communion of Saints, so as to include the good offices of prayer between the
living and the departed: intercession for the dead in Purgatory on the part of
saints on earth; on the part of saints in heaven, intercession both for the dead
in Purgatory and the militant living. This department of theology is simply an
addition to Scripture, the teaching of which, as we have seen, and shall see
again, altogether repudiates it THE CHURCH AS AN INSTITUTE FOR WORSHIP The
Church of Christ is not only His representative Body on earth, it is also the
Temple of Divine service, continuing and perfecting the worship of the past.
This service may be studied under two aspects, as it includes offering presented
to God, and blessing received from Him. The former embraces the entire ordinance
of worship, with its nature, reasons, and observances; the latter embraces the
means of grace, Common Prayer, the Word, and Sacraments. These, however, are
really one, and their relations to each other as one are of great importance.
Both require for their realization the institution of the Evangelical ministry.
We have then now before us the Divine worship, the Means of Grace, and the
Christian Ministry As to the unity of worship and the means of grace, it must be
remembered that both are taken in their widest meaning. Worship includes all
that belongs to the service offered by men to God, as He is the Object of
adoration and the Source of blessing: including praise and prayer in all their
forms. Communion with Him, therefore, is the channel of all benediction; and we
may speak generally of waiting upon God in the means of grace. But this latter
term (Media Gratise) has also its technical signification, as designating the
appointed and specific channels through which the Divine Spirit pours His
influences into the Church. Into the Church: for, while all doxology and all
benediction is individual, we are now regarding them as ordinances of the
congregation. Their congregational character is represented by the ministry,
which must be regarded as an institution for the corporate body, affecting
individuals only as being members in particular

DIVINE WORSHIP The worship of the Christian Church may be regarded in its Divine
principles and in its human arrangements. As to the former, its object is the
revealed Trinity; its form is Mediatorial, through the Son Incarnate, by the
Holy Spirit; its attributes are spirituality, simplicity, purity, and reverent
decorum; its seasons are the Christian Sabbath preeminently, and all times of
holy assembly. As to the latter, it is left to the congregation itself to
determine the minor details, according to the pattern shown in the Scripture:
this latitude extending to the order of worship, its set times, its forms,
liturgical or otherwise, and its decent ceremonial generally THE DIVINE ORDER
The Divine and permanent laws of the perfect economy of public worship prescribe
the following general principles

1. That always and everywhere the TRIUNE GOD be its object, as now fully
revealed in the Christian dispensation. All homage or adoration or gratitude
must, virtually or actually, pay its tribute to the Three-One Name; and whatever
acts of worship are offered to One Divine Person must be offered to That One in
the unity of the Other Two. The God of the Christian temple is the Same Who in
the ancient temple received the threefold Doxology and bestowed the threefold
Benediction

2. That the stated form of all worship, whether of praise or prayer, must be,
either informally or avowedly, MEDIATORIAL. God the Father, the Representative
of the Trinity, is to be addressed only through the mediation of the Incarnate
Son, Whose intercessory office, based on His one sacrifice, has special
reference to our privilege of boldness to enter into the holiest.1 And through
Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.2 That Spirit of grace and
of supplications3 alone inspires the energy of intelligent and acceptable
worship; and His influence is equally present in every assembly from the least
to the greatest. These are the full mediatorial preparations, in heaven and upon
earth, —there through the High Priest and here through His Spirit, —for the
perfect devotions of the Church below. We find this Divine order observed in all
the prayers and praises of the later New Testament. In harmony with this law we
arrange all our liturgical worship

And, though we do not presume to add the formula of mediatorial words to the
Lord’s Player, we silently present it through the name of Him Who gave it to us
1 Hebrews 10:19; 2 Ephesians 2:18; 3 Zechariah 12:10

3. The preparations of the heart in man, also, are from the Lord.1 It is the
first condition of Divine worship that it be SPIRITUAL. God is a Spirit: and
they that worship Him must warship Him in spirit and in truth.2 This law of
Christ is the law of all the Scripture; but He thus solemnly re-enacted it, as
He re-enacted the law of love, to show its supreme importance: it demands the
heart of man as the shrine of worship, sanctify Christ as Lard in your hearts;3
it forbids all representations of the Supreme save those which He has appointed
and are spiritual in their meaning; and it reduces all externals of service to
their true place. PURITY also is an essential of this worship: the pure in
heart4 in His temple see God, and none really approach Him, though found in the
congregation, whose motives are not sincere; without wrath and disputing.5 ORDER
is another Divine law of worship: God is not the author of confusion,
akatastasias. And His will is that all things be done decently and in order,6
eusheemonoos kai kata taxin. In the presence of God a sacred decorum is the rule
as well of nature as of grace. Again, worship must be COMPLETE in its tribute to
the Supreme: in the adoration of His name which is Praise; in the remembrance of
His mercies, which is Thanksgiving; in the acknowledgment of unworthiness, which
is Confession; in the expression of dependence, which is Prayer; in the oblation
of Charity, which is Intercession. Lastly, worship must be INDIVIDUAL. There is
in Christianity, as our Lord teaches it, no representative worship but His own;
and in that we are united with Him. The devotion is the Church’s devotion, but
its harmony is the blending of the melodies of all its individual members not
one of whom is forgotten 1 Proverbs 16:1; 2 John 4:24; 3 1 Peter 3:15; 4 Matthew
5:8; 5 1 Timothy 2:8; 6 1 Cor. 16:33,40

4. Amongst the permanent Divine ordinances of worship must be reckoned THE
SABBATH as its chief and representative season. This institution was an
appointment of God from the beginning of time to that end. Rest from labor was a
physical design subserved in connection with a spiritual design: that man might
cease from every other occupation in order to hold communion with his Creator.
This was the supreme purpose of the day; and as such bound up with all the
Old-Testament regulations of religious service. Christianity has retained the
institution as belonging to Divine worship; but, by the same authority which
gave the original law, has modified it. Its connection with the Jewish
sabbatical cycle ended, and therefore its place as a covenant sign between
Jehovah and the peculiar people. Its original purpose to commemorate the
creation and bear witness to the government of the One God was retained; but, as
the new creation of mankind in Christ Jesus had more fully revealed the Triune
God, the day of our Lord’s resurrection, the first day of the week, became the
Christian Sabbath, or Lord’s Day. The special relation of the day to the worship
of the Church, apart from its place in the Moral Law, is to be found in the
opportunity it affords of full public assembly, generally impossible at any
other time, with which the continuance of religion in the world is vitally
connected. To sum up, the Lord’s Day in the Christian Church is the great season
of worship and of assembling to worship; it retains its original design of
commemorating creation, it adds the festival of redemption, and it periodically
suspends this world’s labor to anticipate the worship of heaven. Some points in
this general statement require expansion

(1.) It has been doubted whether the account in Genesis asserts the institution
of the Sabbath at that time: God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it1
may, it is said, be proleptical. But the obvious intention of the narrative is
historical; there are also indications of the hebdomadal division of time2
throughout the early books; and our Lord’s testimony is that the Sabbath was
made forMan 1:3 Hence we find the institution referred to as one that had been
familiarly known before the Mosaic law was given on Sinai: Remember the Sabbath
day, to keep it holy.4 1 Genesis 2:3; 2 Genesis 8:10-11; Genesis 29:27-28; 3
Mark 2:27; 4 Exodus 20:8

(2.) So far as the Sabbath was introduced into the ceremonial law, and was made
the basis of a Sabbatic cycle of days; so far as it became a sacrament of the
old law, commemorating the redemption from Egypt, a sign between Me and you
throughout your generations;1 that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth
sanctify you,2 and fenced about by severe enactments; —it is abolished in
Christianity. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect
of a feast day, or a new moon, or a sabbath day.3 1 Exodus 31:13; 2 Jeremiah
17:20-27; 3 Colossians 2:16

(3.) The new ordinance of the Sabbath in the Gospel was given by Christ Himself,
the Lord also of the Sabbath.1 Before His passion He dealt with it as with all
His institutions, by preliminary indications of His future will. He condemned
false interpretations, while He included it in the law which He did not come to
destroy.2 By His example and precept He relaxed its severity. With His
resurrection began His formal appointment of the First day, and with the
Pentecost He finally ratified it. In the interim we may suppose that He enacted
by word what in His majesty He had sanctioned by act. Hence we find the first
day, as the Lord’s Day, hallowed throughout the New Testament: the last tribute
uniting the Resurrection and the Pentecost: I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s
Day.3 To use St Paul’s word on another occasion, the law of the Christian
sabbath is not of men, neither by man, not of the Church nor by the Church, but
by Jesus Christ.4 1 Mark 2:28; 2 Matthew 5:17; 3 Revelation 1:10; 4 Galatians
1:1

(4.) It is, so to speak, the sacrament of holy time in the Evangelical economy.
The first day of the week sanctifies all the days which follow, but it retains
its symbolical meaning. It is the day of holy convocation, concerning which it
is said, pre-eminently though not solely, not forsaking the assembling of
ourselves together.1 As Baptism is a sign of the severance between the world of
the unregenerate and the church of the renewed, and as the Eucharist is a
standing memorial of the redeeming Atonement, and both till He come,2 so the
Holy Day is an abiding memorial of the permanent obligation of congregational
worship. Hence it is one of the three Dominical institutes: the LORD’S HOUSE,
the LORD’S SUPPER, the LORD’S DAY, TEE KURIAKEE HEEMERA 1 Hebrews 10:25; 2 1
Corinthians 11:26

(5.) Lastly, this general view of the Sabbath in relation to worship connects it
with the Church, though it is scarcely right to number it among the INSTITUTIONS
OF CHRISTIANITY. It is an institution of the Christianity that is as old as the
Creation. But this connects it with the Moral Law, where, as a positive
enactment, it is of perpetual obligation in he Ethics, not of the Church only,
but of all religion. The Sabbath as an ordinance for worship is the day which
assembles the congregation; but in that worship itself the injunction of the
Sabbath is read as one of the precepts of the eternal code of morality. What its
spiritual interpretation is as a permanent law for mankind is a question of
ethics, and has already been considered as such. At present we have considered
it in its relation to Divine service THE HUMAN FORMS

Public worship is left, as to its form, to the discretion of the congregation,
subject, however, to the authority of the Divine laws, and guided by the usage
of Scripture. The questions that here arise are not strictly included in
dogmatic theology: they therefore need only slight indication

1. The rights of the laws already laid down being reserved, the Church may
appoint times and seasons and places of religious service. There is no
restriction: the Lord’s Supper itself is not limited to any certain day. There
is no hour that may not be feet apart. Daily service, and canonical hours, are
not in themselves evil, save in connection with superstitions, and as tending to
absorb family and private worship. Days of Thanksgiving and of Fasting have the
plenary sanction of Scripture. But Saints’ days have not that authority; and,
although much may be said in favor of making the names of our Lord’s inspired
servants prominent in the service, it is expedient to abstain. There is but a
step, as the history of the corruptions of Christianity shows, between this and
the Invocation of Saints. As to places, there is no Temple or Sanctuary: this
word is reserved for the spiritual community or body of the Church, and the
regenerate spirit of the Christian. In a certain sense there is a House of God,
but wherever the congregation may meet there is, in the truest sense, the House
of Prayer: Whose house are we.1 1 Hebrews 3:6

2. As to the arrangements of Divine service, there is the same latitude. The law
of Decency and Order requires that the worship be regulated, and that no room be
left for caprice. The relations of worship, and sacrament, and preaching must be
arranged by the community. As to the much-vexed question of LITURGICAL PRAYER,
it may, at least, be said that its use is within the prerogative of the
congregation. The Savior gave the germ of it in His sacred pattern, in His
sanction of the Temple and Synagogue service and hymns, and in His sacramental
institutes. It has been one of the most universal usages of Christendom; its
abuses do not discredit its use; it approves its value in experience, both as
insuring the completeness of worship and by aiding tranquil devotion; virtually
it enters into all extant services; and, as supplementing while not superseding
spontaneous or rather un-liturgical prayers, it may with assurance be both
practiced and defended 3. As to the superadded ceremonials of public worship,
there is hardly the same latitude The jurisdiction of the Church here, or its
power to ordain ceremonies, is attended with great difficulty. We have not now
to decide between the hard requirement that forgets everything but the purely
spiritual nature of the worshipper and the opposite extreme that panders to all
his senses. Neither of these can be right. There is a spirit in worshipping man,
or he could not worship the Invisible; and he is also flesh and blood, or he
could not worship in public assemblies. There is a simple aesthetical vesture of
Divine service without which it ought not to appear before God, without which it
cannot commend itself to man. But what is now conventionally called Ritualism
must be entirely condemned; that is to say, the introduction of symbols not
ordained by the Head of the Church: symbols in the architecture of the building,
in the dress of the officiating minister, and especially in the conduct of the
worship itself. It tends to dishonor Holy Scripture, by making ceremonials teach
doctrines that the Word of God alone should teach: in fact, Ritualism is another
form of the Oral Tradition which is made co-ordinate with Scripture as the
teaching authority. It endangers the dignity of the Sacraments, which, as the
sole elements of ritual given us in a religion that closed the ritual temple,
should be rigidly guarded in their simplicity as the Savior left them: whereas
the ritual superadded to them in later times teaches principles and applications
never contemplated by the Founder of Christianity. And what is called the
ritualistic spirit dishonors the Spirit of devotion by such numberless and
ever-varying appeals to the senses as distract the soul from its one function.
Concerning such additions of men’s will-worship the Lord of the Temple says
still: Take these things hence!1

1 John 2:16 THE MEANS OF GRACE As an institute of worship the Church of Christ
has its ordinary channels for the communication of the influences of the Holy
Ghost to the souls of men. These are the Media Gratiae, or MEANS OF GRACE.
Though the Spirit is not bound to these, they are " generally necessary to
salvation." They are not, however, equally and in the same sense necessary. The
Word of God and Prayer are unitedly and severally what may be called the
absolute and universal means: as such they may be first discussed. The
sacraments are economical means, distinct from the former, yet entirely
dependent upon them for their virtue THE SUPREME MEANS: THE WORD AND PRAYER

These are the supreme means as they are the basis of all: they give their virtue
to the ordinances of the Church, including the sacraments. They are united: the
Word gives the warrant to prayer and all its objects; Prayer is the instrument
which makes the Word effectual. But as means of grace they may be regarded
separately THE WORD The Word of God in the Scriptures contains the whole compass
of that spiritual truth which the Holy Spirit uses as His instrument for the
communication of every influence on which the salvation of man depends. As the
revelation of God’s law He uses it for conviction; as the Gospel promise He uses
it for salvation; as the depository of ethical truth He uses it for
sanctification through all morality and the discipline of holy life Let us view
this in the light of Scripture itself; and then glance at ancient and current
divergences

I. The doctrine of the Word concerning itself is that it is the universal
channel of grace; that it is not this of itself, through any inherent efficacy,
but as the organ of the Holy Ghost; and that its efficacy is nevertheless in a
certain sense inherent, as the Spirit’s instrument, though it may be resisted.
These topics have been discussed, in their application, under the Administration
of Redemption. Their bearing on the Word as chief among the means of grace may,
however, be briefly considered

1. The sufficiency of Scripture is declared throughout both Testaments. The
praises of the law of the Lord abound in the Old Testament, especially in the
Psalms. One of them expatiates on the subject by taking all the ten names given
to the Law and applying them to every phase of human need and religious
experience.1 In the New Testament we have not one passage only, but a pervasive
testimony. What St. Paul says of the Scriptures generally, that they make wise
unto salvation,2 and are profitable for every function of grace, for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,3 must be true of
the supreme Scripture, the words of Christ, which are and comprise in themselves
all the truth. He therefore prays, Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is
truth.4 1 Psalms 119:1-176; 2 2 Timothy 3:15-16; 3 John 16:13; 4 John 17:17

2. The fallen estate of man forbids the thought that the mere presentation of
truth should save him. He has an organ or faculty to receive it, for it is as
much adapted to his soul’s need as bread is to the need of his body; but the
organ or faculty itself needs quickening

Hence the inherent power of the Word requires the influence of the Spirit to
make it effectual. The Apostle Paul declares that his preaching was in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power1 generally; but he also declares that
the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
judged.2 The language or alphabet of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost must be
taught to him who shall understand His consecutive and general teaching

He appeals, as the Lord appealed: why do ye not understand My speech (lalian)?
even because ye cannot hear My word (logon).3 A man must submit to the doctrine
of sin generally, which is hearing Christ’s word or testimony concerning Himself
and the sinner’s relation to Him, before he can receive the full exposition of
that doctrine, as it is salvation 1 1 Corinthians 2:4; 2 1 Corinthians 2:14; 3
John 8:43

3. But there is an inherent efficacy in Scripture, as applied by the Spirit. It
is the universal means of grace, though men may resist it. The Word of God is as
efficacious as it is universal and sufficient. It is its inherent efficacy that
detects unbelief and convicts it: it is not only effectual in saving, but in
condemning also. It is the same Gospel power of God which is a savor of death
unto death, and a savor of life unto life.1 The Scriptural doctrine of the
Divine Word as the means of grace will not allow it ever to be made of none
effect.2 It is an instrument that never fails. Regarded as the Word spoken to
mankind, it cannot be without its power. The Spirit is never absent from the
Word: in it He lives and moves, and through it He sheds an infinite variety of
influences on all who either reject or receive it, Regarded as the means of
grace within the Church, it has a sacred, specific, and always present grace
accompanying every truth and every promise. The Spirit is in the Truth, as the
virtue was and is in Christ: ready for impartation to every touch of faith The
self-evidencing energy of the Bible is its sure credential. No living man can
say that it has utterly failed to find him out, and move his inmost being, and
work upon his deepest convictions 1 2 Corinthians 2:16; 2 Matthew 15:6 II. It
will be enough to indicate some more or less prevalent errors belonging to two
entirely opposite types

1. There has never been wanting a tendency to make the Scriptures sufficient of
themselves, without any supernatural accompanying influence, to effect the
salvation of men. The ancient Pelagians and semi-Pelagians regarded the Word of
God as the intellectual and moral discipline which best suits the spiritual
nature of man, its honest use leading sincere inquirers to perfection. As human
nature retains its original elements unimpaired, its natural powers are supposed
to be sufficient under the influence of truth to guide to salvation. Modern
Rationalism has the same general estimate of the Word of God: not regarding it
as in any specific sense the means of grace, but only as one among many
instruments of moral discipline

2. The highest Mysticism of every age seeks through means to rise above means
and become dead to them. To the more Scriptural mystics of every communion the
Word* is to be valued by its substance of truth; which exerts its influence upon
the mind, but only in order to raise it to the higher intuition of God.
Meditation on the principles and truths of the Word leads to Contemplation which
leaves all words, thoughts, and images behind This is the line beyond which
Mysticism becomes unsafe

3. The doctrine which makes the Divine sovereignty its supreme principle holds
the Word to be the means of an absolute and irresistible grace. Whatever effect
it produces is produced by the effectual operation of One who cannot be
resisted. The Holy Ghost, as a personal Spirit, free in all His acts, and
applying redemption only to those whose names are already written in the Book of
Life, uses the Word to accomplish His purposes, or accomplishes them without it,
as seemeth good to Him. When the Word is used, it is literally His CHANNEL of
grace to the souls predestined to salvation

4. The doctrine which we hold combines all that is good in them, and rejects the
evil. It gives a high, indeed the highest, place to the Scripture as the
instrument of all grace. It pays its tribute to the Spirit Who alone makes it
such. But it regards the Spirit’s operation as operating not simply and alone
THROUGH the Word, but also IN it and WITH it, for salvation

PRAYER

Prayer, or communion with God, is not generally reckoned among the Means of
Grace, technically so called. It is regarded rather as the concomitant of the
others. But, while it is undeniably true that Prayer is a condition of the
efficacy of other means, it is itself and alone a means of grace. In many
respects, it is the highest, simplest, most universal, most comprehensive, and
most effectual of these means

1. It is the most universal. Wherever the creature is found, Ask and it shall be
given you1 is the law that governs its relations to the Creator. The mediation
of Christ, which embraces or wraps round the history of all mankind, has
established this never-failing medium of communion between the Supreme and every
human being. The constitution of nature is framed with reference to this law,
and all the acts of Providence suppose it. No philosophical speculations can
avail to disturb the original ordinance, though none can avail to explain it. In
the whole compass of the Word of God the question never rises as to the
difficulty of adjusting the fixed economy of things to this everlasting
interference with it: in fact, this everlasting interference is part of the
fixed economy. However much the question may be argued, here is the very last
word on the subject. The Personal God is the Hearer and Answerer of prayer: as
His existence is always postulated and never proved, so His regulation of all
things on earth according to the Pre-established Harmony of petition and supply
is taken for granted throughout. Prayer is the eternal medium of grace, as grace
is distinguished from gifts that are bestowed independently of the creature’s
will: though, strictly speaking, much of that grace is independent also

1 Matthew 7:7

2. It is all-pervading. The Word by which man lives is made the channel of
blessing when its promises are pleaded in prayer. Sacraments derive from this
their efficacy. And it is adapted to all conditions of life; private, social,
and common prayer open and keep open their several channels into the individual
soul, the family, and the congregation. But, while prayer pervades all other
means, it extends beyond them all. There is no moment of life, there is no
occupation, nor can the petitioning spirit be found in any place, where the
turning of the soul to God may not be attended by the full virtue of this
everlasting ordinance

3. Hence we see the importance of uniting the Word and Prayer most closely as
the abiding, pre-eminent, and essential means of grace. They do not disparage
the other means; but must not by them be superseded. This will, however, appear
more fully in the consideration of what follows THE SACRAMENTSAS THE ECONOMICAL
OR COVENANT MEANS OF GRACE The Savior, who came not to destroy but to fulfill
the law, has retained under new forms those two of the ancient ritual
observances which were the specific badges of the old covenant as such:
Circumcision, the rite by which the covenant was entered, has become Baptism;
and the Passover, the rite by which it was annually confirmed, has become the
Lord’s Supper. These have been instituted for the perpetual observance of the
Christian Church, and placed among its means of grace. As means of grace they
have elements of difference, and elements in common with the other means. Their
difference is that they are Federal Transactions: signs and seals of the
covenant of redemption. As signs, they represent in action and by symbols the
great blessings of the covenant; as seals they are standing pledges of the
Divine fidelity in bestowing them on certain conditions, being the Spirit’s
instrument in aiding and strengthening the faith which they require, and in
assuring to that faith the present bestowment of its object. Thus they are, on
the one hand, objective institutions which assure the continuance of the
Spirit’s administration of redemption in the Church, and, on the other,
subjective confirmations to each believing recipient of his own present interest
in the covenant. Moreover, as the covenant is NOT OF ONE, but implies the
condescension of God in entering into covenant relations with His people, the
signs and seals are mutual: they are emblematic ordinances by which the Divine
fidelity is pledged, and they are on our part the outward and visible token by
which our faith gives its pledges to God of a cordial acceptance of His terms:
both, however, by the Holy Ghost. These federal transactions as belonging to the
means of grace have also their elements in common with other means. They are
based upon the mediation of Him who is the supreme Means of Grace; they are
appointed by the same authority; like other means, they are external notes and
badges of Christian profession; and, finally, they depend for their efficacy on
the Holy Spirit’s power working in and through human faith. These ordinances
have been from the beginning termed SACRAMENTS. Their nature, and efficacy, and
number, and general relation to the means of grace are questions which have been
much controverted, and given rise to some of the most important differences
among the Christian Confessions What more this topic requires will be best given
in a brief view of the history of the sacramental principle in general

1. In the New Testament no designation is given to these symbols. All types, or
prophecies in act, ended with Christ the universal Antitype, and all symbols, or
visible prophetic representations of invisible realities, ended with the Tongues
of fire on the Day of Pentecost, and therefore with the Holy Ghost, the
universal spiritual reality. So for as they are prophetic types and symbols they
must cease with their fulfillment. This gives deep emphasis to the fact that two
symbols were retained, or rather instituted anew, for permanent observance. They
are closely connected with the blessings they signify: they are also distinctly
separated from them; and by plain command, which we see always obeyed throughout
the New Testament, they are made perpetual. This will appear more fully in the
discussion of the several Sacraments themselves

2. Very early two names were given to the sacramental institution. In the Greek
Church the term Musteerion1 was used: mystery, not in the more general Pauline
meaning of a secret disclosed, but in that of the profound significance of some
perceptible emblem: hence it is preserved as a remembrancer of the past in the
English Communion Service, " these holy mysteries." By the Western Church the
corresponding word SACRAMENTUM was employed: in Roman usage the term had a wide
variety of meanings, all however based on the idea of a sacred obligation. It
was the oath, particularly that by which the soldier was bound to fidelity:
obtemperaturus sum et facturus quicquid mandabitur ab imperatoribus juxta vires.
The two ordinances were in the early Church regarded as the rites of religion
through which Christians came under the most solemn obligation to do their part
in complying with the conditions of grace. Baptism, however, had more of the
sacramental character, the Eucharist more that of mystery. In ecclesiastical
Latin the word sacramentum came to signify anything consecrated; in the Vulgate
it was adopted, as the translation of musteerion; and, as the sign of a sacred
thing, became the conventional name of the institute. Later diversities may be
referred to the several topics of the Sign, and the Seal, and the Divine
appointment 1 Revelation 1:20

SIGNS As to their significatory character there has been no real difference from
the beginning among those who have held fast the Sacraments as belonging to the
permanent economy of the Gospel. Augustine’s " aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur
" or " verba visibilia," Visible Words; and Chrysostom’s etera orooen etera
pisteuooen, " one thing we see, another we believe," have been accepted by all
Christians alike as rightly indicating the meaning of the emblems, whether of
the old covenant or of the new. Here there is no discussion. It has pleased God
in every age to include among His divers manners1 the method of teaching by
symbol. The Savior Himself so taught: witness His records in the Gospels, from
the scourge of cords down to the Feetwashing. Nor is there a word spoken in the
New Testament that formally abolishes symbols generally, though the institution
of the two sacraments may be fairly considered as implying that they were to
stand alone in the worship of the Christian congregation

1 Hebrews 1:1

SEALS Their character as seals has been the subject of much discussion and of
wide discrepancy The various theories which have predominated may be studied to
great advantage in their historical order

1. In the Early Church we find the germs of every later teaching. But to one who
studies attentively there can be no question that a strong tendency betrayed
itself almost as soon as the Apostles departed to dwell more on the Mysterium
than on the Sacramentum, and to make the whole of religion depend as it were on
these two sacramental rites

2. This exaggerated estimate of the ceremonial ordinances took its final form in
the Tridentine teaching, which makes the sacraments, not seals of a covenant,
but depositories of grace flowing through them of necessity and through them
alone: their intrinsic efficacy being supposed always to accompany the priestly
administration; if performed, that is, with intention according to the mind of
the Church, and on recipients who do not interpose the obstacle of mortal sin.
The Council of Trent has this canon: Si quis dixerit per ipsa novae legis
sacramenta ex opere operato non conferri gratiam sed solam fidem divinse
promissionis ad gratiam consequendam sufficere, anathema sit. This dictum is
capable of two constructions. As in the case of Justification it may be said
that the faith ALONE is all that is condemned; but the common instinct of
Protestantism has seen in it the foundation of the error of a necessary
impartation of grace lodged only in the sacraments. This very ancient and
wide-spread error, though not held by the Greek Church, has three
characteristics. It elevates unduly the means, which are supposed to contain and
as it were mechanically or magically discharge their grace. It makes too much
depend upon the mind and purpose of the administrant. And its negative
condition, the not interposing an obstacle, or the OBICEM of mortal sin, tends
to the dishonor of Evangelical faith, and complicates the subject by involving
with it the definitions of mortal and venial sin. The direct influence of the
Holy Spirit is also omitted

3. The Lutheran and Reformed types of doctrine concerning the sacramental idea
condemn the EX OPERE OPERATO, or that which makes the sacramental act
efficacious per se or without reference to the faith of the recipient; but they
in some other respects differ

Lutheranism lodges the virtue in the sacraments, makes it inherent in them by
the ordination of Christ, but saving only to the believer: it approaches the
Romanist theory as to their being the appointed and generally the only channels
of salvation. Adopting a maxim of Augustine, Accedit verbum et fit sacramentum,
—the Divine word added makes it a sacrament—it regards that consecrating word as
conveying into the elements a grace which they must needs impart, to the evil
for condemnation and to believers for their good. It makes the sacraments
necessary means of grace: not merely the first, and generally necessary; but, as
to the specific grace they represent, the only means. A participation in these
institutes is held essential to a participation in the things they signify.
Hence the sacraments are made in a certain sense the centre of the plan of
salvation. This must be remembered in every estimate of Lutheranism as such

4. The Reformed doctrine lays more stress on the concurrence of the Holy Ghost:
virtus Spiritus sancti extrinsecus accedens. Not the Word, as in Augustine’s
dictum, but the Spirit, makes the sacrament a channel of grace; and, as that
Spirit is not bound to forms, He can dispense His grace without the sacraments,
before them or after them. Still, though not absolutely necessary, sine qua non,
they are preceptively necessary: and, as the appointed seals and pledges of the
administration of redeeming grace, they must be observed. The early Socinians
went beyond the Swiss Zwingli in making sacraments only signs of Christian
profession, and emblems intended to exert a moral influence on the mind: a view
which is extensively prevalent among the lesser sections of Christendom both on
the Continent and in England

5. The early Arminian doctrine is sometimes classed with the system to which
these lastnamed views belong. But let us hear the words of the Remonstrant
Confession: Sacramenta cum dicimus, externas Ecclesiae caeremonias seu ritus
illos sacros ac solennes intelligimus, quibus veluti foederalibus signis ac
sigillis visibilibus Deus gratiosa beneficia sua in foedere praesertim
evangelico promissa non modo nobis repraesentat et adumbrat, sed et certo modo
exhibet atque obsignat, nosque vicissim palam publiceque declaramus ac testamur,
nos promissiones omnes divinas vera, firma atque obsequiosa fide amplecti et
beneficia ipsius jugi et grata semper memoria celebrare velle. These words
should be carefully studied in their connection, and translated; as presenting,
beyond those of any other Symbol, all the elements necessary to make up the true
sacramental idea. The definition lays stress on their being Federal signs and
seals: not only adumbrating the evangelical blessings of the Christian covenant,
but exhibiting and applying them; while they express also our public faith, and
grateful remembrance This testimony includes all that is included in our great
British Confessions; and, if it adds anything, the addition is an improvement.
The Westminster Confession says: " Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the
covenant of grace. There is in every sacrament a spiritual relation, or
sacramental union between the sign and the thing signified; whence it comes to
pass that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other." And in
the Shorter Catechism the Presbyterian standard thus speaks: " A sacrament is a
holy ordinance instituted by Christ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ and the
benefits of the New Covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers."
Here the last expression gives additional strength to the idea of the seal: not
only are blessings pledged, but they are then and there imparted. So the Article
of the Church of England: " Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or
tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses
and effectual signs of grace, and God’s goodwill towards us, by the which He
doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and
confirm our faith in Him." With these symbols —Arminian, Reformed, Anglican—our
general Proposition agrees DIVIDE INSTITUTION As to the Divine institution of
the sacraments there have been two leading errors. One, represented by some of
the more pantheistic Mystics in earlier ages, and by the Quakers in modern
times, denies the permanent obligation of these ordinances. According to the
latter Baptism was intended only for the first introduction of Gentiles into the
new community; the Eucharist was only the sanctification of the common
nourishment of life; and, generally, the Christian economy has and can have in
it no ritual. The other error has gone to the opposite extreme, and multiplied
the sacramental institutions of Christianity ADDITIONS TO THE SACRAMENTS

1. The origin of this multiplication of sacraments may be traced to the
indefinite use of the term in early phraseology: it was applied to almost every
mystery of the Christian Faith and almost every religious symbol. Thus
Augustine, while allowing their supremacy to the Two, speaks in an uncertain and
wavering manner concerning some other rites of a sacramental nature. Bernard was
disposed to add the Feet-washing, and many writers before and after him mention
other symbolical acts of Christ among the sacraments. The Seven Sacraments were
first defined by Otto of Bamberg, A.D. 1124; these received ecclesiastical
sanction at Florence, A.D. 1439, and were confirmed at the Council of Trent.
They were variously illustrated and defended by the Scholastics. It was supposed
that each was symbolized by or symbolized one of the seven cardinal virtues,
Faith, Love, Hope, Wisdom, Temperance, Courage, Righteous-ness; they were
explained by the analogy of the spiritual life with the physical, as to Birth,
Growth into adult age, Nourishment, Healing, Reproduction, Instruction, Death;
and so forth. The final definition at Trent admits the pre-eminence of the
Eucharist: Sanctitate longe caeteris antecellit. Baptism, Confirmation, Orders
were held to have an indelible character, never effaceable, and never to be
repeated. The anathema is pronounced upon those who deny that the Seven were
all, if not equally, instituted by Christ: admitting therefore that the
appointment of our Lord is the only and final test of a true sacrament

2. It is remarkable that the Greek and the Roman communions, differing in so
much besides, agree in accepting seven sacraments. Both base their acceptance on
the authority of the Church as interpreting the will of Christ, and vindicate
them as enfolding and hedging round and sanctifying the whole of life at its
several stages: Baptism is the sanctification of birth, Confirmation of adult
life, Penance of the life of daily sin, the Eucharist of life itself, Orders of
legitimate authority, Matrimony of the Church’s law of continuance and increase,
and Unction of the departure hence. Other communions have attempted, and are
attempting, to introduce the distinction between sacramental ordinances which
are not sacraments and sacraments proper, but the test of our Lord’s own
institution absolutely forbids any addition to His two covenant institutes. "A
sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,
ordained by Christ Himself as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge
to assure us thereof." Our Lord has chosen and hallowed two, only two; and it is
vain to elevate acts which are rather benedictory or only symbolical than
sacramental into sacraments proper

3. The Apology for the Augsburg Confession allowed Penance to be one of the
Saviour’s sacramental institutes, and Melanchthon was disposed to admit into the
number Ordination. These were not retained, however, in the churches of the
Reformation, although the Lutherans preserved Confession as a wholesome part of
the rejected Orders The definition in the English Article strikes the true note:
the Five added by Rome " are not to be counted sacraments of the Gospel, being
such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are
states of life allowed in the Scriptures; but yet have not like nature of
sacraments with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any
visible sign or ceremony ordained of God." To this, however, may be added that
they have no connection with the covenant character of the Gospel of Christ
Having this test to apply, we may consider the additional sacraments in their
order THE FIVE ADDED SACRAMENTS

1. The supposed sacrament of CONFIRMATION sprang out of a rite anciently known
as CHRISM or THE SEAL, which was thought to add the positive gift of the Spirit
to the baptismal removal of guilt: thus early binding up with its error
important truth. It was administered not before the seventh year, and only by a
bishop, as succeeding to the Apostolical prerogative of imposition of hands. In
its final development in the Middle Ages the imposition and anointing constitute
the Matter of the sacrament; and the Form: Signo te signo crucis et confirmo te
chrismate salutis in nomine, etc. The Scriptural ground for this fails before
strict examination. Our Lord’s baptism with the Holy Ghost has of course no
relation to the question. Nor are the instances in which Apostles imparted the
Holy Ghost to the Samaritans: this was a special recognition of Samaritan
Christianity by peculiar and almost Pentecostal tokens.1 The baptism and
anointing of John’s disciples at Ephesus were simultaneous: these had not before
received Christian baptism.2 Another passage commonly adduced is that in which
St. Paul says that after they believed the Ephesians were sealed: here the Greek
requires, when ye believed ye were sealed.3 The reception of the young by formal
profession of faith into the congregation has been a laudable usage in some
communions. But there is no sacramental institute for that purpose 1 Acts
8:1-40; 2 Acts 19:4; 3 Ephesians 1:13

2. The system of PENANCE elaborated in the early Church was based upon the
presumed necessity of making satisfaction to God for sin committed after
baptism. As finally elevated into a sacrament, its Matter—to use the scholastic
phrase—is Contritio cordis, Confessio oris, Satisfactio operis. The Form is the
judicial act and word of absolution The Contrition of heart is not required to
be absolutely perfect. Attrition, or a sincere desire to repent, may be enough;
the Confession is auricular, including omnia et singula peccata mortalia, and at
least once in the year. The satisfaction supposes that the priest is a judge
who, in the name of God, imposes penances as the condition of the remission of
temporal punishments of the sin, which, as to the reatus culpae and its eternal
consequences, is forgiven for Christ’s merits’ sake. These temporal penalties
may be exacted in this life or in the intermediate state: both being temporal.
They may be commuted for satisfactions of various kinds, fasting, prayer, alms;
which, however, were connected often with the most unevangelical forms of
self-discipline. On this sacrament of Penance hangs the doctrine of Purgatory,
the scene where the supreme satisfaction of Christ is supplemented: as also
Indulgences, based on the fund of merit stored in the Church, and granted,
avowedly for the remission of temporal penalty, often, in popular acceptation,
for the remission of all sin whatever. This most important institute is not
based upon the Word of God: the Scriptural Absolution is the declaration of the
terms of forgiveness, its Confession is not auricular and enforced, its only
Satisfaction is the perfect obedience of Christ, and its only Judge and
Confessor the Lord Himself

3. The sacrament of ORDERS or consecration to the priesthood is closely
connected with the last: quo tribuitur potestas consecrandi corpus et sanguinem
Domini, nec non remittendi et retinendi peccata. As the baptized were endued
with grace by imposition of episcopal hands, so episcopal hands alone could
confer the specific grace of the priesthood. But there is nothing either in our
Lord’s appointment of His ministers or in the Apostolical confirmation of it,
that sustains such an investiture with such tremendous privileges and
responsibilities. Of this more will be said in the appropriate place

4. MATRIMONY was elevated to the dignity of a sacrament mainly on the ground of
the Apostle’s words: This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and
the church.1 As a sacrament the ordinance of marriage is treated most
elaborately in the Roman and in the Eastern Theology. It has really, however,
the slenderest title of all the usurpers of the sacramental character; being
only a natural relation sanctified, and honored as signifying the Saviour’s
union with His Church. In strange contradiction to this high character of the
ordinance was its undervaluation in the celibate life, whether in or out of the
priesthood 1 Ephesians 5:32

5. EXTREME UNCTION rests mainly on the anointing in St. James 1:1-27 where,
however, the rite had no reference to death. Its sacramental institution by
Christ is supposed to be found in an allusion to a similar subject in St. Mark’s
Gospel,2 concerning which the same remark may be made. It is a comprehensive
sacrament, the Viaticum, useful for the soul and, if God will, for the body too:
effectus est mentis sanatio et, in quantum autem expedit, ipsius etiam corporis
(Cone. Flor. 1439) 1 James 5:14-15; 2 Mark 6:13 UNDERVALUATION OF SACRAMENTS The
opposite error, that of those who deny the authoritative; institution of
sacramental means of grace, in the sense in which we understand the term, that
is, ordinances which pledge or seal, as well as symbolize, to those who worthily
receive them the grace of redemption, should be carefully avoided

1. There are those, as we have seen, who would honor the spiritual character of
the religion of Christ by dispensing with His own express appointments. But they
are surely on the way to the same error who regard our Lord as having placed in
His Church two rites which are only rites, only symbols teaching the eye whether
of the assistants or the spectators, and thus make Him the Founder of a purely
ritual and symbolical service. Had that been His design, we should have accepted
it with reverence. But it was not His design. There is nothing ordained by Him
for the permanent observance of His people which is not accompanied by the Holy
Ghost, and made the channel of its own appropriate grace. The rites of
Christianity have their concomitant benedictions; and are never without them,
save to such as bring no preparation of faith, the absence of which makes all
religion a mere ceremonial. The true doctrine is between two extremes. It avoids
the delusive over-statement that connects specific blessings, regeneration, and
the sustenance of Christ’s life, with the sacraments as their sole conductors to
the soul: these are only the covenant pledges of a gift that is with and through
them imparted, but not necessarily with and through them alone. And it avoids
the delusive under-statement that makes sacramental ordinances mere signs that
aesthetically act on the minds of those who wait upon them. This, it may be
repeated, is to abolish the distinction between those symbolical actions of our
Lord—such as His setting a child in the midst, blighting the figtree, washing
His disciples’ feet, breathing forth the Holy Ghost—which were actions that
taught their lesson by symbol first and were afterwards interpreted by His
words, and those permanent ceremonies which He ordained to be Means as well as
signs of His grace to the believer

2. There is, however, an undervaluation of the sacraments which springs from no
theological opposition or scruple, but is the result of indifference or
ignorance. There are many unbaptised children whose parents are responsible for
the neglect of the Saviour’s command, a neglect which will not be visited on the
children themselves. But the neglect is, perhaps, more striking in the case of
the other sacrament It is not that it is treated with irreverence; but, for want
of adequate instruction, multitudes come to regard the Lord’s Supper as a
religious solemnity in some way or other connected with the acceptance of
religious responsibilities, and dependent for its blessing upon the vigor of
faith and expectation in the communicant, but without any distinct perception of
its peculiar and distinct place in the Evangelical economy. The recoil from one
extreme has carried these too far in the opposite direction. It ought to be
matter of solicitude on the part of Christian ministers to teach their people
the right doctrine of the sacraments: especially that which lays emphasis upon
their relation to the new covenant, its benefits and obligations. They are
"signs and seals of the covenant of grace established in Christ: which is a
covenant with promise on the part of God, and with Conditions on the part of
man." Nor should they be suffered to forget the meaning of the Sacramental
institute: " an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given
unto us, ordained by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and
a pledge to assure us thereof." BAPTISM

Baptism is an ordinance appointed by our Lord to be the rite of initiation into
the new covenant of grace and fellowship of its kingdom; being the sign and seal
of the blessings of that covenant conferred upon those who thereby avow their
acceptance of the one condition of faith in Jesus Christ with its obligations.
It is the sacrament of union with Christ, of pardon and renewal through His
Gospel, and of membership in His Church: being the outward and visible sign of
the sealing of the Holy Ghost, Who is the interior Bond of communion between the
believer and the Lord, the Agent in imparting that forgiveness and regeneration
of which the washing of water is the sign, and the Sanctifier of the people of
God. The nature, mode of administration and subjects of this rite are clearly
set forth in the New Testament; but have been variously interpreted in
ecclesiastical doctrine and practice. It will be expedient, therefore, to
examine the authoritative Scripture first, and afterwards briefly to view the
subject in the light of controversy THE DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF BAPTISM IN
SCRIPTURE The Word of God furnishes a preliminary history of this rite as linked
with the Old Covenant, through usages which are changed in the New; it gives a
clear account of its institution and observance; and defines its meaning and
relation to the economy of grace These topics correspond to the teaching of the
Old Testament, of the Gospels and Acts, and of the Epistles respectively

I. Many rites, ceremonies, types, symbols, and predictions pointed forward to
baptism and found in this simple ordinance their fulfillment. Its special
Old-Testament representative was the covenant rite of circumcision: the type of
baptism as it was the rite of admission into the old covenant of grace,
established first with Abraham for all nations in his Seed the Christ, and
renewed through Moses with the same People now more distinguished from the rest
of mankind. As given to Abraham it was the seal of the righteousness of the
faith which lie had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all
them that believe, though they be not circumcised.1 It was as it were the
baptism of the father of the faithful, and in its very origin predicted its own
future abolition. As limited in Moses, it was the symbol of the sanctification
of physical life and natural increase, and the seal of participation in external
and limited privileges. In both respects it was ordained only till the Seed
should come to Whom the Promise was made.2 Baptism took its place as the sign of
the sanctification of the whole of life both of man and woman, of a spiritual
birth and increase; as the seal also of internal, universal, and unending
privileges. Of another order were the two great historical types, the Deluge,
and salvation by its waters, and the passage of the Red Sea. Each of these is
alluded to in a very significant way. St. Paul says that the circumcised people
were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea:3 a solitary instance
of the term baptism being carried back to the Old Testament. St. Peter gives an
equally unique instance of the use of the word Antitype: speaking of the Deluge
he says, the like figure (antitupon) whereunto, even baptism, doth also now save
us.4 Passing by the ritual types, such as the ceremonial washings of the old
law, we find a wider field in the Prophets who predicted the effusion of the
Holy Ghost,5 of which Christian baptism was to be the symbol, under the
similitude of cleansing waters:6 poured out, for ever flowing, and sprinkled
upon the soul The ancient baptism of proselytes from heathenism —ancient as to
us, modern as to the Hebrews—probably had no foundation in the Old Testament
beyond the general practice of washing before sacrificing to God. But it seems
indisputable, from Rabbinical authorities, that after the captivity every
proselyte was circumcised and baptized; moreover, that this baptism included the
women and children of his house. This accounts for the general familiarity with
the rite assumed in the Gospels. It sheds light upon the institute of John the
Baptist and our Lord’s baptism of His disciples. It must be borne in mind in our
interpretation of St. Peter’s words on the Day of Pentecost: there can be no
doubt how his hearers would understand, The promise is unto you, and to your
children.7 1Romans 4:11; 2Galatians 3:19; 31 Corinthians 10:2; 41 Peter 3:21;
5Zechariah 13:1; 6Ezekiel 36:25; 7Acts 2:39

II. The institution of Christian Baptism has its gradual history. We have the
Gospel preliminary baptisms; the Saviour’s express and formal New-Testament
appointment: and the occasional observance of the rite as described in the first
records of the early New- Testament Church 1. The Baptism of John has a distinct
significance and stands alone: to Ioannou Baptisma

It was the baptism of repentance as the preparation for Christ and the New
Covenant;1 even as it was the rite of transition from the Old Testament to the
New. As it belonged to the Old, Jesus Himself, made under the law,2 submitted to
it; as it belonged to the New, He received it not: His New-Testament baptism was
the effusion of the Holy Spirit upon His human nature, restoring to MAN in Him
the Spirit forfeited by the Fall. Our Lord’s preliminary act of baptizing, as
administered by His disciples, was partly a continuation of the Baptist’s, even
as He preached over again John’s repentance; partly an accommodation to the
later Jewish usage of baptizing proselytes; and partly a preparation for His own
final ordinance. Neither of His two sacraments was absolutely new: both were
rather the sanctification of a certain remainder of past observances which
linked then with the old economy 1 Acts 19:3; 2 Galatians 4:4

2. The Christian institute itself was enacted in one clear and definite
injunction. It had been prepared for in act, as we have seen; doubtless also in
word during the Forty Days: hence the formula was understood when finally used:
into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.1 The baptized
were to be dedicated by man, and consecrated by the Spirit, to the possession
and service and redeeming grace of the Mediatorial Trinity. Both sacraments were
appointed by Christ, to be fully interpreted by the Holy Ghost The Supper
preceded the death of which it was the commemoration; Baptism preceded the
Pentecost which was its fulfillment. That day declared its meaning: the One
Triune Name, and the various blessings of the Persons in that name; its
substitution in place of circumcision as appointed for all nations; its covenant
character, as sealing the benefits of the Christian charter of privileges to all
who on their part believe and observe the commandments

1 Matthew 28:19 3. From the day of Pentecost onward the rite is observed as an
indispensable ordinance

There is no instance of conversion with which it is not connected: they were
baptized, both men and women.1 But the full formula does not occur: baptism was
in the name of Christ or of the Lord2 (epi and en as well as eis), representing
the Trinity. Once, in the case of Samaria, the sacrament was supplemented by the
imposition of Apostolic hands and the gift of the Holy Ghost; once, in the case
of Cornelius, it followed that gift; once it was a fruitless ceremony, in the
case of Simon Magus. Always it was administered by the officers of the church:
those who preached thus admitted their converts into the community

St. Paul was a high exception, but he gives the reason of his satisfaction at
having baptized so few in Corinth: partly, his jealousy for the name of Christ,
partly his higher obligation to preach the Gospel. The households of believing
persons were thus consecrated: including obviously their children, whose baptism
is not mentioned because implied in the Lord’s benediction of them. That they
received it, however, needs no other proof than that baptism superseded
circumcision, and that children are already addressed as members of the
Christian Church 1 Acts 8:12; 2 Acts 2:38 III. The later Apostolic teaching on
this subject remains to be considered: it will be found abundantly full and
clear

1. The new ordinance is everywhere regarded as having superseded circumcision as
a sign and seal of the Christian covenant. Nothing can be plainer than that the
old rite was done away with. If admitted in any case, it was for reasons of
expediency; if not practiced as the rite of an imperfect covenant, but only as a
national usage slowly given up, it was a thing indifferent. But circumcision, as
the initiatory rite of the preparatory dispensation, was lost in baptism.
Negatively and positively St. Paul says: Ye are complete in Him, which is the
Head of all principality and power . . . in Whom also ye are circumcised with
the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the
flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with Him in baptism.1 Let us note
the points here

There is no longer any circumcision save that which is WITHOUT HANDS; but this
rite, which, like the Passover, had its last observance in our Lord, revives in
another ceremony: baptism is the circumcision of Jesus, and teaches the old
lesson in another way. The same death of the sinful flesh which the ancient rite
signified is signified also by the new one. But it was done away by being
transfigured, and baptism is the sign and seal of the better covenant: bound up
with it essentially 1 Colossians 2:10-12 2. We may view this more generally and
more particularly

(1.) All the blessings of the Christian covenant are represented as summed up in
the Promise made to Abraham; that Promise was Christ, the Seed, and the blessing
of Abraham, the Holy Spirit As many of you as have been baptized into Christ
have put on Christ:1 here is the relation of baptism to the reception of Christ
and union with Him. Be baptized, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost:2 here is its relation to the bestowment of the Spirit. These connect it
with the two branches of the covenant Promise 1 Galatians 3:27; 2 Acts 2:38

(2.) But this is general: we may find many references to the specific blessings
which are exhibited and pledged to the believer in his baptism. Foremost is
justification or the forgiveness of sins: St. Peter cries, Repent, and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of
sins;1 and Ananias to Paul, Be baptized, and wash away thy sins.2 Christian
Sonship, both as adoption and as regeneration, is sealed in baptism: Ye are all
the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been
baptized into Christ have put on Christ.3 Naturally, however, the relation of
baptism to circumcision would suggest its more frequent connection with
regeneration than with adoption. After having spoken of the symbolical design of
circumcision, the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, the Apostle
goes on: Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through
a faith in the working of God, Who hath raised Him from the dead.4 This passage
makes baptism represent the dying to sin and rising to holiness: one part of the
ceremony, the immersion, signifying the conformity to our Lord’s death; the
other, the rising out of the water, conformity with His resurrection. With this
may be connected the parallel to the Romans. It was our Lord Who first connected
baptism with the new birth, Except a, man be born of water and of the Spirit;5
and St. Paul winds up the long strain of Christian teaching in his words to
Titus concerning the laver of regeneration.6 Less directly baptism is sometimes
connected with sanctification. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one
body:7 where the Church is referred to as the Lord’s sanctified body, of which
it is said, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by
the Word.8 St. Peter calls the Christian baptism the antitype of the typical
salvation of the ark wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water;
which, in its antitype, baptism, now saveth you also (not the putting away of
the filth of the flesh, but the inquiry of a good conscience after God);9 where
justification and sanctification unite, though neither of the terms is used. In
the Epistle to the Hebrews, as in St. Peter’s First, we cannot but feel that the
inward sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ corresponds with the outward
sprinkling of water, its sign. So also in St. John’s mysterious words, This is
He Who came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by
water and blood.10 Even if the primary allusion is to the Lord’s ministerial
work as begun at the Jordan, and ended on the cross, there is also a reference
to the external washing of baptism and internal washing of the Atonement of
which that is the sign: pardon and the new life

1 Acts 2:38; 2 Acts 22:16; 3 Galatians 3:26-27; 4 Colossians 2:12; 5 John 3:5; 6
Titus 3:5; 7 1 Corinthians 12:13; 8 Ephesians 5:26; 9 1 Peter 3:21; 10 1 John
5:6

3. Now, in all these passages the sacrament of baptism is, as it were,
identified with the blessings which it signifies; and in such a way as will not
allow us to think for a moment of its being a mere ritual sign. St. Paul speaks
of one Lord, one faith, one baptism:1 this gives the last of the three a very
prominent place; as it not only makes it the badge of Christian profession, but
also seems to embrace in one word all the blessings of Christianity, not
otherwise mentioned In fact, the privileges of the covenant are supposed to be
sealed, obsignated, imparted to true believers in connection with their baptism.
This ordinance is never made the sole instrument on the part of God, nor ever
the sole condition on the part of man; but it is invariably the seal of the
transaction between God and the believer as in the presence of the Church.
Blessings may be bestowed before the sealing transaction; and still larger
blessings follow it; but in any case they are all, according to the rule
certainly, sealed over and pledged to the baptized believer as one of the
congregation. However looked at— whether as affusion, sprinkling, immersion, —it
is a SIGN of the descent of the Spirit, and the washing away of sin. And it is a
SEAL once for till given of the bestowment of the blessings of the Spirit upon
the believer continuing to believe. But it must ever be remembered that, in
every reference to this symbolical ordinance, we find it flanked on the one hand
by the absolute necessity of faith as a condition, and on the other by the sole
efficiency of the Spirit as the Agent of all good

1 Ephesians 4:5

4. It must not be forgotten that the initiatory sacrament has in the Epistles a
universal character, as extending and enlarging the meaning of the former rite,
and adapting it to a more catholic economy. The cardinal passage has been
already quoted in part: For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ
have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor
free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are oil one in Christ Jesus. And
if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the
promise.1 Circumcision here vanishes in the very nature of the case, as we need
not further explain. Our Lord’s sign must be on every one that is His; and
baptism for all, for men and women, for adults and children, takes its place.
Water everywhere flows for all the world: See, here is water.2 By this the God
of the Christian covenant should sprinkle many nations:3 in a figurative view of
the passage. Nothing that circumcision either signed or sealed under the old
economy can be lost under the new: therefore children have their privileges in
the Christian covenant sealed to them in their baptism. Accordingly, they are
addressed as members of the church in every Epistle. If it be asked, What is the
blessing sealed to them? the answer is, all that they are capable of receiving.
As children of a race under condemnation they are justified freely by His grace
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.4 Children of wrath as belonging
to the lineage of the first Adam, they are grafted into the Second: their
baptism is the seal of their present adoption, and the pledge of their
regeneration when they are capable of it

Unholy by nature, they are sanctified through baptismal consecration to God:
Christ has blessed them, their alien estate is past, and noic are your children
holy.5 In the case of adults personal faith, and conscious acceptance of the
terms of the covenant, are essential Of this infants are incapable; but the Lord
is their everlasting Sponsor; and when He said, of suth is the kingdom of
heaven,6 He admitted them to all the privileges of His covenant, including the
gift of the Spirit, to take from them the doom of the race, and to afford them
all the preliminary influences of His salvation. The baptism of the children of
believing parents is, therefore, a sign of the washing away of original guilt,
and a seal of their adoption into the family of God; a sign of the regeneration
which their nature needs, and a seal of its impartation in God’s good time 1
Galatians 3:27-29; 2 Acts 8:36; 3 Isaiah 52:15; 4 Romans 3:24; 5 1 Corinthians
7:14; 6 Matthew 19:14 BAPTISM IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY The development of doctrine
concerning this ordinance or sacrament needs to be exhibited only in broad and
general outline

I. The primitive Church attached to it a very high importance as the SACRAMENT
OF THE NEW LIFE. It was in the East usually termed the photismos or
Illumination; and hyperbolical language abounds in the description of its
virtues and privileges. The ritual of the ordinance soon began to reflect this
teaching

1. Very early it was regarded as the instrument of the conveyance rather than as
the sign and seal of Christian blessings; but the forgiveness it conveyed was
only of past sins

Hence arose by degrees the necessity of a new Sacrament of Penance. The absolute
necessity of baptism was expressed in unqualified terms; though in the case of
its accidental absence only contempt was ground of condemnation. Martyrdom with
its baptism of blood was supposed to supersede it or condone its absence. The
Eastern Church has always preferred dipping, the Western sprinkling

2. The Catechumenate as an institution sprang out of this sacrament by an
internal necessity, at first preceding adult baptism and afterwards following
that of infants. With its Catechists, Catechumens, and Catechisms, it has always
in some form existed in Christendom: though its early character has never been
fully maintained in later years, much to the loss of, the Christian cause. In
the third century the catechumens were divided, with reference to their final
initiation into the mystery of the Supper, into Audientes or outside hearers of
doctrine, Genuflectentes or those who prayed with the Church, and Competentes or
candidates for full and determinate admission to all the privileges of
Christianity

3. The ceremonial of baptism soon became elaborate: so elaborate as to form,
equally with the ceremonial of the Eucharist, a perfect contrast to the
simplicity of our Lord’s institution. In the fourth century the water was
consecrated; and Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost were the seasons of the year
preferred for its celebration. Tertullian mentions the Sponsors, the Confession,
and the Creed. Three immersions were usual in some parts, and a triple
sprinkling, both with reference to the Trinity. Exorcism and the renunciation of
Satan occupied in the rite an important place, which both in East and West they
have retained. The particulars of the ritualistic development must be elsewhere
studied

4. INFANT BAPTISM gradually, and of necessity, rose into ascendancy. The
objection of Tertullian establishes the fact of the practice: he urged against
precipitancy in performing the ceremony that its blessing once forfeited never
could be retrieved or fully restored. As early as Cyprian (Cone. Carth. 253)
early baptism was decreed: the third day, though the eighth was admissible. From
that time it was an uncontested usage of Christendom, and that on the ground of
its being an Apostolical usage. On this latter point Origen is express, and he
is but one of a large consensus of authors. For instance, in the Pelagian
controversy it was used as an argument in defense of Original Sin

5. In the third century heretical baptism was matter of earnest controversy.
Cyprian denied its validity, on ecclesiastical principles, but the authority of
the Church at Rome prevailed: resting its plea on the ground of the objective
value of the rite, by whomsoever performed in the name of the Holy Trinity, II.
The Romanist doctrine confirmed at Trent the doctrinal decisions and the
symbolical ritual which had long been current in the mediaeval Church. It
ordained that Baptism must be supplemented by Confirmation. It decreed that in
Baptism " that is taken away which has the character of sin: it is not merely
cut down or not imputed." Concupiscence not in itself sinful, either in Adam or
in us, remains as the fomes or fuel of possible sin, and for the matter of our
virtue and reward through its constant suppression. In fact all the benefits of
redemption are applied to the soul. Nothing, however, so clearly exhibits the
doctrine as the variety of ritual: from the blessing of the water, through
exorcism, the chrism, the white garment, to the giving of the name

III. Lutheranism, in harmony with its high theory of the sacraments, makes
baptism ordinarily necessary to salvation, conveying by Divine appointment the
blessings of remission of sins and regeneration. Without faith, however, the
adult receives no benefit; and the Spirit works in infants the receptivity of
faith, about which, it need not be added, there have been endless discussions.
Repentance after baptism is, as it were, a " regressus ad baptismum," a return
to the baptismal position. The Reformed Churches generally make the internal
effect, concur with the external act in the case of the believing elect

Infants are presumed to be elect, and the benefit in their case is only seminal
and prospective. The Anglican Formularies are, taken as a whole, a combination
of the Lutheran and the Reformed. They distinctly teach regeneration to be the
secret virtue of baptism, in adults believing and in all infants. But there are
two views of the doctrine which have always had their supporters: first, that
which is more Lutheran and sacramentarian and supposes a renewal of the soul of
the infant or a certain infusion of a new life; and, secondly, that which
regards the new birth as in infants a change of relation only, by which they are
translated into the kingdom of grace: meaning adoption rather than regeneration

IV. The doctrine of the Baptist Communities differs from that of Christendom at
large in two points: they insist that baptism was appointed to be an expression
of adult faith in Christ, denying the right and duty of infant baptism; and they
maintain that the only valid baptism is that of immersion in water. Agreeing
with them in what they hold, the majority of Churches differ from them in what
they deny; but not attributing so much importance to the points of difference as
they do

1. It is important to establish the validity of infant baptism, inasmuch as by
degrees that becomes, in established Christian communities which admit infants
to the rite, the only baptism. Moreover, the settlement of this question is
bound up with the wider question of what constitutes membership in the external
body or fellowship of Christendom

(1.) The Christian Fellowship is the continuation of a community in which
children had always been reckoned members. The Church of God in Christ has been
one through all ages: the ancients believed in the Seed that should come to Whom
the promise was made,1 and were circumcised, they and their children; we believe
in the Christ who has come, and are baptized, we and our children. The Gentiles
were grafted into the old, the good olive-tree,2 which olive-tree is really the
True Vine. The covenant with Abraham was for all the families of the earth3 in
due time; and, meanwhile, the sign and seal of that covenant was impressed on
children not as subjects of the Hebrew commonwealth merely, but as members of
the Hebrew Church. Not a word in the New Testament indicates any change: the
promise of the Spirit is unto you, and, to your children;4 households were
baptized and the family still sanctified; and even the very silence of the New
Testament forbids that we should take from children a birthright they had
enjoyed from the beginning. From this argument there is no appeal 1 Galatians
3:19 2 Romans 11:24; 3 Genesis 12:3; 4 Acts 2:39 (2.) The theory of the Church
held by those who reject infant baptism is not a sound one

It is simply this, that none are to be admitted to membership who do not give
credible evidence to the congregation of being regenerate. This principle, as
adopted by the Congregationalists, allows all such professors to communicate and
to bring their children to baptism for their training towards the full
privileges of the new covenant. As adopted by the Baptists, it allows of no
membership at all until a credible profession of living faith is made and sealed
in the sacrament. These views are altogether too narrow for the spirit of the
catholic Gospel. It is impossible to limit the Church, or admission to its
ordinances, to the regenerate as approved by men. All who profess faith in the
doctrines of Christ, who are seeking salvation, whose lives do not contradict
their profession or impeach their sincerity, may be accepted to baptism; and
their children with them. To such all the ordinances of religion are open;
according to their faith they are dealt with, and the Lord knoweth them that are
His.1 Their principle refuses to infants, who cannot consciously believe and
intelligently profess the faith, a place in the congregation of the regenerate.
We deny that the visible Church is limited to the regenerate. Children belong to
the Christian fellowship as an institute for making men perfect Christians: they
are adopted into the family of God and the household of faith; they are to be
trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;2 they are members before they
finally ratify their vows; and the gentle supposition of Christianity is that
the influences of the Spirit upon them will bless their instruction amidst
Evangelical ordinances to their full participation in all the privileges of both
the visible and invisible fold. Meanwhile, the Lord still says, Of such is the
kingdom of God.3 12 Timothy 2:19; 2 Ephesians 6:4; 3 Mark 10:14

2. The mode of baptism might seem to be a less important matter in a religion
which is not ritualistic. But the Baptist community thinks otherwise. In dealing
with this subject we have only to show that the three kinds of baptism—by
immersion, by affusion, and by sprinkling—are equally valid according to the
appointment of Christ; but that the weight of the evidence is in favor of the
last, or of the two latter, which in this argument may be regarded as one and
the same

(1.) The equal admissibility of the two kinds, pouring or sprinkling and
immersing, is proved by three considerations. First, the influences of the
Spirit, of which baptism is the outward and visible sign, are described
throughout Scripture in language which aptly represents both. I will pour out My
Spirit;1 and then will I sprinkle clean water upon you.2 These begin the series;
it is ended by the washing of regeneration.3 Secondly, the word baptize in the
original Greek, whether in its classic or in its Scriptural use, is capable of
both significations: then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in
Jordan4 (ebaptisato). Except they wash (bap-tisontai) they eat not.5 The defiled
person was sprinkled from his uncleanness,6 which in the Apocrypha is
baptisomenos apo nekron baptized from a dead body; and in the Revelation
bebammenon aimati describes the Saviour’s vesture stained in blood,7 according
to the prophet, Their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments.8 In fact, the
word in all its forms refers to the contact of water without prescribing the
manner. Thirdly, the practice of the Christian Church from the beginning has
allowed both, as we have seen, and this should have its weight

1 Joel 2:28; 2 Ezekiel 36:25; 3 Titus 3:5; 4 2 Kings 5:14; 5 Mark 7:4; 6 Numbers
19:13; 7 Revelation 19:13; 8 Isaiah 63:3

(2.) But there are many considerations which lead us to regard affusion or
sprinkling as the ordained form of the rite. The catholic design of the Gospel
suggests that the simplest and most universally practicable ordinance would be
appointed. Again, the most important realities of which baptism is only the sign
are such as sprinkling or affusion indicates: the blood of atonement was
sprinkled on the people and on the mercy-seat; and the gifts of the Holy Ghost
are generally illustrated by the pouring of water and the anointing. Moreover,
the multitudinous baptisms of the New Testament forbid the possibility of
immersion: especially when it is remembered that whole families were baptized,
and individuals sometimes, where large quantities of water cannot be supposed to
have been accessible. As to the passages which describe this sacrament as burial
with Christ and resurrection with Him, they must be interpreted by the analogy
of those which describe it as dying with Christ and putting Him on. It may be
said, further, that there are words which obviously would have been employed
instead of baptism if the practice of immersion had been deemed essential. This
last argument is of great force when we remember how carefully the institution
of the two sacraments has been guarded in the revelation of the New Testament.
As it respects the Lord’s Supper, there is no room for misapprehension: every
departure from the simplicity of the ordinance is self-convicted

Now, if it had been the Saviour’s will that every convert and every infant
throughout all ages should be immersed in the baptismal flood He would have told
us so in language that could not be mistaken. But the vast majority of the
Christian world has understood by baptism the pouring or sprinkling of water. It
may be said that this only shows our Lord’s intention to have been to allow a
large latitude of observance. Be it so: of this none can complain. But it may be
inferred that, if the more cumbrous and difficult rite was not ordained, the
simpler one would everywhere be understood to be more in harmony with His will

V. The doctrine taught by Methodism may be said to hold the mean between two
extremes as to the efficacy of this Sacrament, 1. Its authoritative standards
repudiate the notion that Baptism is merely a sign or badge of Christian
profession; as also that which, going a little farther, is content to make it
only an impressive ritualistic emblem of the washing away of sin. The Methodist
teaching on the Sacraments, seals as well as signs of the Christian covenant,
will not allow that either of the two ordinances is without its accompanying
grace to the recipient who complies with the covenant conditions. As to Baptism,
Mr. Wesley’s note on Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit1 runs thus:
" Except he experience that great inward change by the Spirit, and be baptized
(wherever baptism can be had) as the outward sign and means of it." 1 John 3:5

2. Those standards do not teach that Baptism is the sole ordinary appointed
means of communicating the virtue of the atonement in the remission of sins and
the bestowment of the new life. They reject the dogma of Baptismal Regeneration
as tending unevangelically to bind together the sign and the thing signified.
This term, common to all high sacramentarian theology, Romanist, Oriental,
Lutheran and Anglican, expresses the principle that in the economy of grace
Baptism is the sole ordained channel of the renewing Spirit. It certainly is the
Divine and authoritative seal; but not the only or the necessary channel. The
impartation of regenerate life may be distinct from the seal: it may accompany
it, it may have preceded it, and it may, as in the case of infants, follow it
But, however viewed, its importance is great, as an integral part of the new
covenant in Christ

3. Mr. Wesley was trained to believe in a possible regeneration of infants. In
his sermon on the New Birth he says: "It is certain our Church supposes that all
who are baptized in their infancy are at the same time born again." "Nor is it
an objection of any weight against this, that we cannot comprehend how this work
can be wrought in infants. For neither can we comprehend how it is wrought in a
person of riper years.’" For himself he never distinctly defined this: " But
whatever be the case with infants, it is sure all of riper years who are
baptized are not at the same time born again." His views of the preliminary
grace signified by the new birth of infants have been more fully expressed by
later expositors of Methodist doctrine. Mr. Watson’s summary may be accepted as
giving their meaning. "To the infant child it is a visible reception into the
same covenant and church, —a pledge of acceptance through Christ, — the
bestowment of a title to all the grace of the covenant as circumstances may
require, and as the mind of the child may be capable, or made capable, of
receiving it." " It secures, too, the gift of the Holy Spirit in those secret
spiritual influences by which the actual regeneration of those children who die
in infancy is effected; and which are a seed of life in those who are spare! THE
EUCHARIST The Lord’s Supper is a rite ordained by our Lord for perpetual
observance in His Church, as a sacramental feast in which bread and wine are
signs of His sacred body and blood offered in one oblation on the cross, and
seals of the present and constant impartation to the believer of all the
benefits of His passion. In this supper the Church joyfully and thankfully
celebrates before the world the sacrifice once presented in the past, until He
come again without sin unto salvation. Moreover, the Lord’s people partake of
the elements as the symbol of a common Christian life and sustentation, as the
mutual pledge of union and brotherly fellowship, with all its enjoyments and
obligations. Thus this ordinance is the Sacrament, as it signifies and seals the
mystical nourishment of Christ; the Eucharist, as commemorating the sacrifice of
redemption; and the Communion, as the badge of united Christian profession.
While most Christian people agree as to this last, there have been many and
great divisions both as it respects the blessings conveyed in the Sacrament, and
the nature of the Eucharistical commemoration. We shall find it useful, as in
the case of the other Sacrament, to examine the testimony of Scripture, and then
consider the controversies of dogma SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE The statements of the
New Testament are few, but exceedingly distinct. They describe the institution
of a new rite instead of the Passover, and connect it especially with the
ratification of the new covenant. St. Paul adds the account that he received by
special revelation, and in it, a few additional points of doctrine. Besides
these four records of the institution, there are sundry incidental allusions
tending to complete our view of the circumstantials of the rite itself. We must
glance at the doctrine and the ritual of the second sacrament, which was
instituted in connection with the Passover, and to supersede it for ever

1. Now the ancient rite was an annual commemoration of the typical redemption of
the Hebrew people; and the Lord’s Supper is the solemn act of the Church’s
commemoration of the redeeming death of the Savior of the world. St. Paul’s
account, the last and fullest authentic statement of the institution, stamps
great prominence on this. He adds In remembrance of Me1 to the giving of the
bread, as well as to the giving of the cup; and, with reference to both, he
appends, Ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.2 Our Savior blessed the
elements and gave thanks:3 offering the praise of His own atonement which His
people continue for ever. Hence the rite is the great expression of the Church’s
gratitude for the gift of Christ, and especially for His atoning death. It is
the feast of thanksgiving within the Christian assembly, and it is the feast of
testimony before the world, showing4 [forth] His death. And the first word used,
eucharisteésas, gives the ordinance a name: it is a thankful and glorying
commemoration, or the EUCHARIST 1 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; 2 Matthew 26:26; 3
Luke 22:19; 4 1 Corinthians 11:26

2. The ancient Passover was also the annual ratification of the covenant between
God and His people. As such it was itself a sacrifice both of expiation and
thanksgiving; and summed up or represented all other covenant sacrifices. When
our Lord substituted His Supper, He used language that included all, and
specially referred to the solemn covenant transaction in which Moses divided the
blood of atonement into two parts: half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar,1
to denote the propitiation of God; with the remainder he sprinkled all the
people, to signify to them the Divine favor, and the book of the covenant2 also,
to signify the ratification of the covenant of which that book was the record:
This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.3 These
words of Moses our Lord connects with the new passover of His new covenant:
Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the New Testament which is shed for
many for the remission of sins.4 Obviously, the blessings of the better
covenant, symbolized by the bread and wine, deliverance from guilt and life in
Christ, are pledged and sealed to all who receive these tokens in faith. He who
truly discerning the Lord’s [sacrificial] body in the emblems, and shall examine
himself as to his submission to the terms of the covenant, and then eateth and
drinketh not unworthly,5 has his faith confirmed by this sacred pledge: can set
to his own seal that all the blessings of redemption are his always and his
while he thus receives the seal of the covenant. The Holy Spirit uses the
sacramental ordinance for the assurance of faith: hence the meaning of the term
SACRAMENT as applied to this solemnity 1 Exodus 9:19; 2 Hebrews 9:19; 3 Hebrews
9:20; 4 Matthew 26:17; Matthew 26:28; 5 1 Corinthians 11:28-29

3. But the ancient Passover was the rite that kept in annual remembrance the
birth of the people as such and their community life in the bond of the
covenant. When our Lord ordained His Supper, He distributed to each and laid
emphasis on the ALL. So St. Paul makes this the external bond of unity: For we
being many are one bread and one body; for we are all partakers of that one
bread. And this follows the declaration that the cup is the communion of the
blood of Christ,1 and the bread the communion of the body of Christ. The Supper
is the sacrament of union with Jesus the True Vine; and of union with one
another in Him: hence it might seem that the elements represent not only the
sacrificed body of Christ, but the spiritual body itself saved by that sacrifice
and made part of Himself. The real bond of union, however, is not the bread and
wine; it is the common participation of life in Christ by the Spirit. But the
sacramental eating and drinking together is the outward and visible sign of that
union. The Supper therefore is the perfect badge of common discipleship: the
mutual pledge of all the offices of brotherly love. It is guarded by the most
solemn sanctions. All who profess faith in Christ’s atonement, who desire His
salvation, and are willing to keep His laws, are invited to come, forbidden to
remain absent. But God is the Judge. He was provoked to jealousy by those who
partook of both the Lord’s table and the table of devils.2 He smote with
condemnation those who did eat and drink unworthily.3 The Church also must watch
over the ordinance of its holy fellowship, and the individual must judge
himself. After all vigilance is used the Lord’s Supper in this world will never
be without its Judas: it is the typical and imperfect feast of a fellowship that
will one day be perfect. Meanwhile, as the sacrament of unity in Christ and with
Christ, it is termed by us, with Apostolical sanction, the COMMUNION 1 1
Corinthians 10:16-17; 2 1 Corinthians 10:21; 3 1 Corinthians 11:27

4. The notices scattered through the New Testament give us plain indications of
the ritual of this ordinance. The elements, or constituents, are bread and
wine:1 common bread and unadulterated wine. These elements were consecrated; the
bread was solemnly broken, and the cup was blessed. The ordinance was called the
breaking of bread,2 as if the distribution to each from one common loaf was
preserved symbolically. The consecration was the setting apart to the most
sacred possible use; the express thanksgiving for redemption commemorated by the
bread and wine; and invocation of the grace signified

Each element was received separately, and by the act of each recipient. The
communion was frequent:3 at first daily, certainly every Lord’s Day. It is
obvious that there is no precept on this subject, though there are two extremes
which the language of the New Testament shuts out. Annual, or very occasional,
celebration does not comport with the words As often as ye eat this bread,4
interpreted as they are by the signs of frequent communion in the early part of
the Acts. On the other hand, St. Paul says, when ye come together into one
place,5 or the congregation; which implies a formal assembly that could not be
of daily recurrence. The ceremonial was simple: not for eating and drinking
simply,6 but sacramental and symbolical. It was indeed connected sometimes with
a preceding feast, the abuses of which are noted in the Epistle to the
Corinthians, It was celebrated by the minister as Christ’s representative: the
bread which we break, the cup which we bless. But there was nothing priestly in
the ministerial act, nor was the Lord’s Supper, the Kuriakón deipnon, in any
sense the one central act of worship:7 they continued steadfastly in the
Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers.8
Lastly, it was observed as an ordinance perpetually binding: the Corinthian
community was no exception to a general rule

11 Corinthians 10:15-17; 2Acts 2:42; 3Acts 2:46; 41 Corinthians 11:26; 51
Corinthians 11:20; 61 Corinthians 11:20-34; 7 1 Corinthians 11:20; 8 Acts 2:42
THE EUCHARIST IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY The history of doctrine on this subject may
be broadly viewed as falling under four heads: first, the Patristic period, when
germs of error are seen growing up in teaching and ritual; secondly, the
controversies which issued in the Tridentine doctrine of Rome; thirdly, the
different formularies of the Reformation; and, lastly, the present aspect of the
question throughout Christendom generally and especially in English theology

I. In the Patristic age, down to the first great controversy on the subject in
the ninth century, we mark in every school of doctrine the signs of coming
development. That development took two forms which afterwards united: respecting
the sacramental presence in the Communion, and the sacrificial offering in the
Eucharist, 1. As to the former, there was always much difference in expression.
The earliest Fathers, while using very ambiguous language, never went beyond the
figurative presence. So even Cyprian alludes to the Calix, quo sanguis Christi
ostenditur. They speak of the Eucharist as being the body of Christ, and the
heavenly food, but only as they speak of the Gospel and faith being the same.
Down to Chrysostom there is no hint of the conversion of the substance, though
Ignatius and Justin use the term meta-boloo. But both Ambrose and Chrysostom
strike the note of future transubstantiation, though generally using the
language of a purer faith: the latter declares that the priest held in his hand
what was the most adorable in heaven, and the former, Hoc quod conficimus corpus
ex virgine est

2. The sacrificial idea was added to the Eucharist in the third century, though
it entered furtively. At first it was an oblation of gratitude for the gifts of
God in life as crowned in redemption: the people brought the bread and wine
themselves: part was consecrated for the Eucharist proper, the remainder was
left for the lovefeast and the use of the ministry This resemblance to the
ancient oblations soon went further. Even Tertullian speaks of sacrifices for
the dead; and Cyprian of the priest as offering in the place of Christ, Sacerdos
vice Christi vere fungitur. Then the Greek Fathers refer to the unbloody
sacrifice, and even the sacrifice of propitiation. Cyprian and Augustine are
content with the Sacrificii peracti memoria: but Chrysostom and others delight
in representing the Eucharist as a repetition of the great oblation, though in
such terms as only suggest the error of the future: suggesting it however in the
plainest manner

II. During the Middle Ages this sacrament had the concentrated attention of the
Schoolmen fixed upon it. There were two crises of controversy, and then the
dogmatic construction of Mediaeval materials went steadily onwards towards Trent

1. In the middle of the ninth century Paschasius Eadbertus wrote a treatise in
which the idea of Transubstantiation was first expressed: " that the earthly
substance of the bread and wine, sacrificed by the virtue and consecration of
the Spirit, are converted into the selfsame body and blood which the Blessed
Virgin by the virtue of the same Spirit conceived and brought forth: only the
corporeal appearance and taste remain for the exercise of faith." Eatramnus
opposed him, asserting only the symbolical and denying the actual change and use
of the elements

2. Precisely two hundred years later (1030) Berengarius wrote a treatise
asserting the spiritual participation of the whole Christ, and the logical
contradiction of the other theory. His protest was vain, and Gregory VII.
compelled him to recant

3. Ecclesiastical sanction was given to the theory of TRANSUBSTANTIATION, as
elaborated by Thomas Aquinas and Hildebert, by the fourth Lateran Council, under
Innocent III, 1215. But the dogma took various forms. Aquinas supposed that the
Divine power retained the accidents without any substance behind: thus the
substance was not so much changed as annihilated, or there was a simple
substitution instead of change; others adopted the notion of what is called
IMPANATION: the unity of Divine and. human, following the analogy of the
Incarnation. The consequences rapidly followed: the dogma of CONCOMITANCE, as
laid down by Aquinas, was made the ground for withdrawing the cup from the
laity, the blood being in the body and the bread sufficient; the sacrilege of
which had been protested against from Leo the Great downwards. The feast of the
Adoration of the Host, Hostia, or sacrifice, was established in 1264. The
Mass—probably from the " Ite missa est" of the Western Liturgy—was decreed as
the bloodless repetition of the one sacrifice for the benefit of quick and dead,
at the same time with Transubstantiation, in 1215

4. The Council of Trent fixed the Roman dogma: it boldly affirms that the
substance is gone and the accidents only remain, in the emblems; it teaches that
the presentation to God of the elements is a propitiatory offering, and includes
the body, soul, and Divinity of the Redeemer, though the transubstantiation
itself is only of the bread and wine into the body and blood. Moreover, masses
were sanctioned for the living and the dead, and for particular individuals,
their effect being to remove the temporal consequences of sin; and the private
masses of the priests were permitted. The connection between Transubstantiation
and the Sacrifice of the Mass governs all the sacramental acts: the Elevation,
the Adoration, the Reservation, the Circumgestation or procession which presents
the Adorable Presence to the worship of all beholders

5. The Greek Church differed in some points: retaining Transubstantiation it
imposed unleavened bread, gave the cup to the laity, and always administered to
children, which last peculiarity the Western Church had gradually abandoned

III. Protestantism was mainly a revolt against this teaching: first against its
abuses and then against its fundamental principles. We must glance at the forms
it assumed after the Reformation

1. Lutheran Protestantism abolished—that is in its final form and standard, for
the abolition was very gradual—the Sacrifice of the Mass, with its concomitants.
It retained the Sacramental Presence of the body and blood of Christ, but not in
the form of Transubstantiation: the sacramental union was the basis, and
expressed by sub, in, and cum pane, under, in, and with the elements. Hence the
term Consubstantiation, which required the doctrine of Ubiquity, or the presence
everywhere of the glorified body of Christ, after a Divine and celestial manner.
The reception of the elements is by all who partake the receiving of the
corporeity of Christ: but to the advantage of believers only, as the sign and
seal of remission of sins; to the unbeliever for condemnation. The impartation
of Christ’s glorified humanity is moreover for the benefit of the whole nature
of man: for the nourishment of his soul and for the sustentation of the germ of
the resurrection in the body. This view of the Lutheran doctrine is much
developed in its later theology. The basis of the whole system is the assumption
that the words of institution must be taken literally, not figuratively: This is
My Body; this is My blood.1 And the Lutheran formularies elevate the sacrament
to the very highest point as a means of grace: for the impartation of the
forgiveness of sins; the strengthening of faith; union with Christ and each
other; and all other benefits of the Passion. But the real distinction in the
doctrine is its element of Consubstantiation; the very presence of the glorified
body and blood of the Lord in, with, and under the elements, these still
remaining only elements however, received by the communicants

1 Matthew 26:26

2. Reformed Protestantism diverged widely from the doctrine of Luther. It
altogether gave up the Lutheran manducatio oralis, and substituted the
manducatio realis sed spiritualis; it gave up therefore the hyperphysical or
physical presence. It insisted that This is My body meant This SIGNIFIES My
body;1 and that the sacrament was the sign and pledge of a spiritual union with
the Head of the Church. But there were certain decided differences among the
Reformed communions themselves

1 Matthew 26:26

(1.) Zwingli represented the view that tended towards the merely commemorative
design; but his doctrine went beyond that: Christ to the contemplation of faith
is not only subjectively but objectively present; and that spiritual eating of
His heavenly body which is the appropriation of His atoning grace is a
sacramental eating or receiving of the signs and seals of a present Savior. He
rejected the " IN pane et vino," but would retain the "CUM pane et vino," and
with this a specific sacramental blessing

(2.) Calvin went much nearer to Lutheranism. What the elements symbolized was to
him the Person of the Redeemer as well as His atoning work; and His body as part
of His person. This is received spiritually, but not the less on that account
really: the communicant is lifted up by faith to heaven, and his soul is as
surely invigorated by the spiritual body of Christ as his body by the emblems.
With these views perhaps the Presbyterian Confession and certainly the Anglican
substantially agree

(3.) The Remonstrant Arminians leaned rather to Zwingli than to Calvin; and
perhaps laid more stress than either upon the commemorative design of the
ordinance. But that they ought not to be classed with the Socinians and their
descendants, who make the sacrament only a memorial of the death of Christ,
whatever value that death may have, will appear from these words of the
Remonstrant Confession: " The holy supper is the second sacred rite of the New
Testament, instituted on the night of His betrayal, to celebrate the
eucharistical and solemn commemoration of His death; in which believers, after
they have duly examined themselves and tested their true faith, eat the holy
bread publicly broken in the congregation, and at the same time drink the holy
wine publicly poured out, to show forth with solemn thanksgivings the bloody
death of Christ undergone for us (by which, as our bodies are sustained with
meat and drink, or bread and wine, so our souls are nourished up into the hope
of eternal life), and to testify publicly before God and His Church their own
vivifying and spiritual fellowship with the crucified body and shed blood of
Christ (or with Jesus Christ Himself crucified and dead for us), and with all
the benefits obtained through the sacrifice of the Redeemer, as well as their
mutual charity towards each other." It is true that the covenant seal is
omitted; but we must remember what has been already adduced as to the Arminian
doctrine of the sacraments generally IV. It remains that we refer to certain
modern tendencies

1. Protestantism has renounced altogether the perversion of the Eucharist into a
propitiatory sacrifice or mass; as also the perversion of the mystery of the
spiritual presence into the sacrament of the impartation of the whole Christ
through material elements that are only the accidents, or bread and wine without
the substance. The Tridentine dogma is a fundamental violation of the symbolical
and covenant character of the ordinance, and is refuted in its two main elements
by all that has been shown to be the New-Testament doctrine

2. But the doctrine of the REAL PRESENCE—not the reality of His presence,
accepted by all, but His PRESENTIA REALIS— is held by the Lutheran Church:
which, however it may guard the doctrine by limiting the corporeal presence of
our Lord to the elements in their use only, and denying any local
circumscription of that presence, still errs against the truth of Scripture,
that the Sacred Body is in heaven, and that the whole Christ, and not His
glorified flesh only, is imparted spiritually through a sacramental union with
Him by the Holy Spirit

3. The Anglican Church retains in her formularies nothing that favors the Romish
error; but many of the elements of Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Zwinglian doctrine
are combined The Twenty-eighth Article, however, ought to be decisive, that "
the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper only after a
heavenly and spiritual manner: and the means whereby the body of Christ is
received and eaten in the Supper is faith." The modern theory of comprehension
in the English Church allows all types of doctrine to be held: but by no just
interpretation can the article of the Real Presence be attributed to that Church
as represented by her authoritative formularies. The Presbyterian teaching of
the Westminster Confession is substantially the same, and conformed to the
Scripture. But the notion that the sacrament is only a commemorative and
representative rite is held by many of the religious communities of England

4. The true doctrine generally is that which bears in mind the design of the
ordinance to be a sign to the believing Church of all the blessings purchased by
the oblation of the one sacrifice for sins, and a seal to the believer of his
constant and present interest in those blessings. Whatever other ends it
subserves, as a perpetual memorial of the life and death of Christ, as a badge
of union among Christian people, and as a sacred service in which all holy
affections and purposes are quickened, it is also the abiding exhibition to the
eye, in sensible emblems, of the blood of atonement and the bread of life, and a
sure pledge to those who accept the propitiation, as it is offered to penitent
and believing faith, of their present, and constant, and eternal heritage of
life in Jesus, Each of the terms SIGN and SEAL must have its full meaning
preserved, while they are made one to the eye and hand and experience of living
faith. That which the sign represents and the seal pledges is a benefit
proceeding from Christ which must not be separated from Christ Himself. It is
the Spirit’s function only as He is the Spirit of Jesus, —of His person as well
as of His work, —to take the sacramental emblems and show their meaning to
believers THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY For the discharge of the offices of worship
towards God, and for the administration of the means of grace, an order has been
set apart: men called to this function by the Holy Ghost, approved of the Church
by its representatives, and ordained to office by their brethren in the same
order. The history of this institution in the New Testament is very simple, and
may be thus summed in its results. First, the ancient ministry of the Temple and
priesthood was entirely abolished. Secondly, an irregular vocation appeared in
ministerial gifts and functions which were transitional, adapted to the days of
the foundation, yet patterns also for future extraordinary vocations according
to the Spirit’s wisdom and the exigencies of the Christian society. Lastly, the
established constitution takes its final form as an Episcopal or Presbyterial
body described not so much by name as by office, and in some respect conformed
to the model of the Synagogue: its function being ministerial, in the Divine
service; pastoral, in the spiritual care of the flock; and ruling, in the
government of the Church. But, simple as the Scriptural arrangements are, they
assume in historical theology the widest variety of developments THE UNIVERSAL
PRIESTHOOD The ancient Temple, with its typical offerings, having been done away
in Christ, an entire change takes place in the ministry of the congregation.
There is one High Priest, who hath passed into the heavens; the whole Church is
a spiritual temple; and all its living members are a sacrificing priesthood.
Whatever the New Testament says concerning sacrifice in the new worship either
has reference to the priestly character of all true believers, or is
figuratively applied to the functions of the ministry. The universal priesthood
of Christianity is, however, only the New-Testament fulfillment of the typical
priesthood of the entire congregation of Israel. Its fundamental principle is
most important, as teaching the true dignity and essential equality of
individual Christians, and the corporate sanctity of the Church whose
inalienable prerogatives are represented by its ministry. But it has been
perverted to the undermining of a distinct ministerial order, and therefore
requires qualifications and guards

Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation:1 this word spoken
to the ancient people is the foundation of what may be called the doctrine of
the universal priesthood. Israel after the flesh was separated from the rest of
the world as much as the sons of Levi were separated from the rest of the
Israelites. So the spiritual Israel in union with Christ are unitedly and singly
taken out of the world; and it is in them that the type has its perfect
accomplishment. All the Apostles rejoice in this truth, the influence of which
pervades their language. St. John feels it when he says: Ye have an unction,
chrisma, from the Holy One.2 St. James also when he calls religion a
threeskeia,3 which alludes to a ceremonial service. St. Paul and St. Peter call
upon believers to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable,4
and to regard their whole life as spent in a spiritual house, where they offer
up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ:5 their devotions
and almsdeeds and good works being their priestly oblations. The doctrine thus
established, guards against one abuse, and must itself be guarded from another
almost equally perilous 1 Exodus 19:6; 2 1 John 2:20; 3 James 1:26-27; 4 Romans
12:1; 5 1 Peter 2:5

1. There is no separated order of priesthood in the new service: one is our
Priest even Christ, and all we are priests through fellowship with Him,
presenting through Him as our Representative our spiritual sacrifice.1 The
sacerdotal theory of the Christian ministry is a dishonor to our Lord, and is
specially condemned by the tenor of the Epistle to the Hebrews. We have an
altar:2 but that altar is the Cross, which He hath consecrated that it may
sanctify all our gifts. We all have it and surround it and may habitually
minister before it 1 1 Peter 2:5; 2 Hebrews 13:10

2. Yet there is a separated ministry in the New Testament representing the
universal priesthood. While the offices of religious worship are more or less
common to all, in private and social and public assemblies, there is provision
made for the responsible presentation of the Church’s religious acts of service
and discharge of the Church’s teaching function. After St. Paul and St Peter
have bidden all believers to present their living sacrifices,1,2 they go on both
of them, and in the same passage, to speak of the ministries of prophecy, and
teaching, and eldership. The Epistle to the Philippians illustrates the whole
subject of the Apostolic use of sacerdotal language. At its close the pecuniary
offering of that people is said to be a priestly sacrifice acceptable, well
pleasing to God;3 in the beginning the bishops and deacons4 are representatives
of the people; and in the middle St. Paul speaks of the Apostolic devotion of
his own life as a priestly libation upon the sacrifice5 of their faith. The
ancient Levitical service supplied figures for the new ministry; but the new
ministry was an ordained function equally defined with that of the old
priesthood which it superseded 1 Romans 12:1; 2 1 Peter 2:5; 3 Php 4:18; 4 Php
1:1; 5 Php 2:17 OFFICES EXTRAORDINARY AND TRANSITIONAL

Christianity was founded by the instrumentality of an extraordinary body of
agents, preeminently endowed and authenticated. Their ministry was transitional;
and, as such, continued for a season the various extraordinary administrations
of the Holy Ghost under the old economy, not one of which passed away without
being consummated and glorified in the service of the New Faith. While their
function was designed to be transitory, it was at the same time to exhibit the
types of an irregular vocation for special service according to the will of the
Free Spirit in all ages wisely guiding the destinies of Christendom

References to all these extraordinary agents are dispersed through the Acts and
the Epistles; but there are certain passages in which St. Paul enumerates and
describes them

Comparing his words to the Ephesians with those to the Corinthians we gather
that God set, that Christ gave1 as the fruit of His ascension, and that the
Spirit divided to each,2 these several functions. We find the whole in an
inverted order in these words: Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same
Spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and
there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in
all.3 While all are the energeemata of the One Triune God, they are the
diakonaiai, or ministries of the Lord Jesus, and the charismata of the Holy
Ghost. They are distinguished also as gifts of individual knowledge and faith;
gifts of devotional utterance in new tongues; gifts of miraculous acts of
healing; and gifts of administration in office. It is with these last, as
including the others and yet surpassing them, that we have to do; and we must
consider them first severally, and then in their common transitional character 1
Ephesians 4:11; 2 1 Corinthians 12:11; 3 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 1. There are three
orders of this original and extraordinary service: Apostles, Prophets, and
Evangelists

1. The APOSTOLIC office was pre-eminently a ministry ordained of the Lord
Himself. He chose twelve, whom also He named Apostles.1 St. John, who never
mentions the Apostles as such, save symbolically in the Apocalypse, gives
nevertheless—as in regard to the sacraments, and the Ascension, and some other
matters—the best definition of what he omits. As the Father hath sent Me, even
so send I you:2 the idea of mission or embassage, which has its highest meaning
in Christ and in the Holy Ghost,3 is attached to the Apostolate, but descends no
lower. Apostles were ambassadors to the world; their credentials were a direct
mission from the Lord in person, confirmed by miraculous powers. Their office
was to preach the Gospel to all men, in the name of the Risen Lord, whose
resurrection they proclaimed; and everywhere to lay the foundation of churches,
or to sanction the foundation laid by others, to be the models for all the
future. As the Spirit was the invisible representative of the Lord, so the
Apostles were the visible. Their absolute authority is indicated in two ways:
first, as teachers of Christianity, by word and writing, they had the gift of
inspiration; and, secondly, as founders of the Church, they had the power of the
keys, of binding and loosing, that is, of uttering the unchangeable decrees of
ecclesiastical government. Their sway everywhere is seen to be uncontrolled, and
from their word there is no appeal. They had, and could have, no successors:
they form a body of men chosen to lay the foundation of the universal Church,
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets,4 and to commit to it the
final documents of Scripture. A succession of such men would not have been in
harmony with the known will of Christ, which we may interpret as purposing to
leave a Fellowship with a settled organization, and a finished doctrine, and a
natural development under the supreme guidance of the Holy Ghost. But being dead
they yet speak in their writings, which are the only representatives of the
Apostolical company in the visible community. It is from St. Paul, the one
Apostle of the Gentiles, that we gather our fullest information concerning the
Apostolical prerogative 1 Luke 6:13; 2 John 20:21; 3 Hebrews 3:1; 4 Ephesians
2:20

2. The PROPHETS occupy a large place in the New-Testament history. They spoke,
like the Apostles, under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost: not
necessarily, or chiefly, predictions, but always utterances distinguished from
ordinary teaching. Their function was a fulfillment of the Pentecostal promise:
And on My servants and on My handmaidens I will pour out in those days of My
Spirit; and they shall prophesy.1 These words teach us to expect an abundant
effusion of this gift; and we find it accordingly. The Epistle to the
Corinthians shows that it was common to men and women, that it was occasional
and not the special endowment of an order, and that it sometimes pervaded the
service of the congregation.2 But when St. Paul tells the Ephesians that they
were built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets,3 he allows us to
infer that there was a well-known body of men whose ordination was directly from
the Spirit; to whom, though not as a permanent class uttering revelations which
were to be preserved, the truth was immediately revealed. This high prerogative
of the new order is confirmed by the remarkable words of the same Epistle: As it
is now revealed unto His holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit.4 1 Acts
2:14-18; 2 1 Corinthians 14:3; 1 Corinthians 14:24-25; 1 Corinthians 14:20; 3
Ephesians 2:20; 4 Ephesians 3:5

3. The link between Prophets and EVANGELISTS is given in the account of
Timothy’s ordination: According to the prophecies which went before on thee;1
and, Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy.2
Timothy is the type of this third order: the last charge to him of St. Paul, his
superior, is: Do the work of an Evangelist, euangelistou, make full proof of thy
ministry, diakonian.3 That ministry was the performance, in subordination to the
Apostles, of the Apostolic offices of preaching everywhere the Gospel and
founding churches. It was strictly subordinate, as is testified in the Acts by
the Apostles’ confirmation of their work through the bestowment of the Spirit,
and by the plenary instructions given to Timothy and Titus by the Apostle who
appointed them.4 It was an office that vanished with the apostolate on which it
depended In due time the name was given to the writers of the Gospels which the
first Evangelists preached: Eusebius seems to have been the first to give it
this application, and it has been accepted by the consent of Christendom 1 1
Timothy 1:18; 2 1 Timothy 4:14; 3 2 Timothy 4:5; 4 Acts 8:14-15 II. The
transitional character of these offices suggests their connection both with the
past and with the future

1. By them the Old Testament was linked with the New. The human instruments in
the foundation of both economies are men extraordinarily appointed and
supernaturally endowed. The Apostles in the New Law answer to Moses in the Old;
the Prophets have risen again, having begun at the advent of Christ and not
ceased until the foundations of His kingdom were laid; and the Evangelists
correspond with those great men who anciently combined the legislative and
prophetic functions. But there is the difference which the universal mission of
the Gospel introduced: the publishers of the Evangelical glad tidings were only
predicted in the Old Testament 2. In their relation to the future, these offices
have, in the strictest sense, passed away The Apostles have no successors. Their
number was sealed: Twelve to represent the tribes of Israel, Matthias having
been most solemnly added to complete their body when Judas fell from it; and One
supernumerary introduced to represent the Gentile world. If others, such as
Barnabas, seem to bear the name, a careful examination of the texts will show
that they receive it only in an accommodated sense, or as appendages of the true
Apostles. The prophetic office also has been withdrawn. And in the full meaning
of the office there are no longer Evangelists, or men endowed with a delegated
apostolical authority. But, though they passed away, their relations to early
Christianity cannot be studied without leaving the impression that the same
Spirit Who set them in the Church may reproduce their extraordinary influence
without their names and without their miraculous endowments. We need no other
Apostles, for the Apostolic body rules over us still; we need no Prophets, for
the prophecy is sealed; but Evangelists, in the spirit and power of Apostles and
Prophets, though not in their Spirit, —that is, not with their vocation—will
always be needed while the earth is anywhere covered with the darkness of
heathenism THE REGULAR MINISTRY The New Testament, especially in its latest
documents, makes it certain that a regular and uniform ministerial constitution
was appointed for the service of the Church after Apostolical supervision should
be withdrawn. This ministry was divided into two offices: one, having more
particularly the care of the spiritual interests of the flock, and the other
more particularly that of its temporal or quasi-temporal affairs. The former is
the Pastorate, the latter the Diaconate; and these two have been generally
retained, though with different names and varying functions, by most bodies of
Christian people The term Ministry, diakonia, is the most comprehensive that can
be used. It is sanctified by its application to the Lord Himself, Who announced
that He came to minister,1 and was once called a Minister of the circumcision;2
it is used by St. Paul of the ministry generally; while it descends to the
lowest office, to serve tables.3 The origin of the word is obscure; most
probably it is to be derived from an obsolete diako or diooko, to run, connected
with dioko, to hasten after. Conventionally it is limited in modern times to the
pastoral office, or the ministry of the Word; which is only one of many
instances illustrating the remarkable freedom with which the original
terminology of ecclesiastical government has been dealt with in later ages.
Generally it may be said that no one function as described in the New Testament
finds its precise and unvaried representative in the modern Churches: a fact
which should tend to lessen the confidence and mitigate the asperity of
controversy concerning ecclesiastical principles 1 Matthew 20:28; 2 Romans 15:8;
3 Acts 6:2 THE PASTORAL OFFICE The terms employed to denote the ordinary
spiritual office-bearers of the Christian community are in their English
equivalents Presbyters or Elders, and Bishops or Overseers or Superintendents.
These, however, constitute one order in the New Testament. The functions
assigned to them are those of ministering the Word, and watching over the flock,
and ruling the churches: they are accordingly called Teachers or Preachers,
Pastors, and Rulers

NAMES The only official names of a permanent character are presbuteroi, and
episkopoi: the former being far the more common

1. The New Testament uses these terms interchangeably for one and the same order
of spiritual officers. The passages which prove this will also throw light upon
the functions of this undivided order. St. Paul sent to Ephesus, and called the
elders of the church, tous presbuterous,1 and at the close of his charge bids
them take heed to the flock over which the Holy Ghost had made them overseers or
bishops, episkopous. In the Pastoral Epistles also the two names signify one
order. Titus was left in Crete for this among other obvious and undeniable
reasons, to ordain elders in every city;2 and as the first qualification of
these elders his Superior says, A bishop must be blameless.3 So St. Peter
affirms that the duty of the elders is to feed the flock, episkopountes, or
taking the oversight.4 Hence, writing to the Philippians, the Apostle mentions
only two orders of spiritual officers, the bishops and deacons,5 as also in his
former Pastoral Epistle to Timothy 1 Acts 20:17; Acts 20:28; 2 Titus 1:5; Titus
1:7; 3 1 Peter 5:1-2; 4 Php 1:1; 5 1 Timothy 3:1; 1 Timothy 3:8

2. The differences between the terms are obvious. That of Elder had reference to
age or dignity, and was derived from Judaism; that of Bishop to office, and was
derived from the Greeks. There is therefore no office of eldership as such, but
there is of course an episkopoo: this is mentioned once in a sad connection,1
and once as an object of desire.2 It is remarkable, however, that no Episcopate
is alluded to, in the sense of a collective body of bishops; but once at least
we read of a Christian Presbytery, as having ordained Timothy,3 after the
pattern of the Jewish: pan to Presbuterion, all the estate of the elders,4
literally THE WHOLE PRESBYTERY. The Elders of Judaism were seniors in age,
chosen as assessors in the Sanhedrim with high priests and scribes. The Elders
of Christianity formed a body, generally but not always seniors in age, who
presided over the Christian community as the only directing and governing
authority. The term Presbytery, therefore, runs up to the most reverend
antiquity, and is invested with a dignity quite unique 1 Acts 1:20; 2 1 Timothy
3:1; 3 1 Timothy 4:14; 4 Acts 22:5

3. There are some traces of a pre-eminence given to one member of the
Presbyterial body. During the New-Testament age the Apostles themselves were
absolute in all churches and over all their affairs: the Evangelists
representing their authority where it was delegated. But every corporate
governing body must have a head, at least as Primus inter pares; and in the
Apocalypse that one representative of the presbytery seems to be pointed out in
the ANGEL who is addressed in each of the Epistles to the Seven Churches The
term Angel is symbolical, probably like Stars, though in another sense: The
seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.1 It may be said that this
would be making the stars symbols of symbols; that the angels therefore must
represent something more real than an ideal guardian of the flock. Allowing
this, there are those who say that it symbolizes the ministry collectively,
which is exceedingly probable; yet even then the individual term Angel, though
not the name of an office, suggests the Divine sanction of an arch-presbyter
within a single limited pastoral charge. But there is no clear and distinct
indication of the appointment of any such authority as pertaining to a distinct
order, such as we have seen revived in the present century; and certainly not as
bearing the name of Bishop 1 Revelation 1:20

FUNCTIONS The three functions of dispensing the Word of doctrine, watching over
the flock, and ruling in the congregation, are distinctly laid down especially
in St. Paul’s Pastoral Epistles, to which in this connection it may be
sufficient to refer as containing the sum and substance of New-Testament
teaching on the subject

1. The ministration in Divine service includes the ordering of worship,
administering the sacraments, and preaching the Word. Here the term Minister is
especially appropriate: as angels are ministering spirits, so pastors are
ministering men: but both as offering their liturgical service first to God and
then from God. The responsibility of the due celebration of worship rests with
the Ministry: the service, that is, whether of prayer or praise, which has been
already described. As the representatives of the Divine will to the
congregation, the duty of these spiritual officers is to administer the
Sacraments, to preach the Gospel for conversion, and to teach the souls by their
instrumentality converted. All this is in their commission, and for all this
they must seek every Divine and human qualification. In the Gospels and Pastoral
Epistles these endowments are, as might be expected, amply described

2. The responsibility of the pastoral care springs out of the former. The
feeding of the flock is the instruction of its members, old and young; but it is
also the vigilant distributive attention to all its interests in the whole
economy of life. The undershepherds must imitate the Archipoimoon Who calleth
his own sheep by name.1 For the general and particular care of the church the
elders are responsible. But in this, as in the dispensation of the Word, and
indeed in all their functions, they have the ministries of the whole
congregation at their disposal, and cannot dispense with them. Among the gifts
bestowed on the Church were the helps or antileémpseis2 and the New Testament
exhibits Christians of all classes as being employed in the services of prayer,
preaching, and care of the sick. But in all and over all the Presbytery have the
supreme responsibility 1 John 10:3; 2 1 Corinthians 12:28

3. This pastoral relation passes naturally into what we have Scriptural
authority for calling the spiritual government of the Church. Its ministers are
called hagoumenoi, rulers or proestotes, presidents, and all its members are
bidden to obey them that have the rule.1 This authority may be viewed under two
aspects: first, as committed to them by the Chief Shepherd, to Whom alone they
are finally responsible as representing Himself; and, secondly, as representing
the authority of the congregation committed by its own formal delegation to its
representatives

1 Hebrews 13:7

(1.) Such rule as they have is ordained of Christ, and the solemn sanctions of
their responsibility are connected with the great day when they must give
account to Him who now walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks and
holdeth their seven stars in His right hand.1 The extent and objects of this
authority are to be measured by the degree in which the Presbytery are the
representatives of the ordinary ministerial authority of the Apostles, in
governing the Church by maintaining and guarding the doctrines and laws of
Christianity, by exercising discipline as to receiving and excluding the members
of its fellowship, and by the general regulation of its affairs. That government
of the body which was committed to the Apostles, they committed through
Evangelists to faithful men,2 who should discharge their ordinary ministerial
function when the guidance of inspiration ceased 1 Revelation 2:1; 2 2 Timothy
2:2

(2.) Their jurisdiction may be said also to be representative of that of the
congregation itself. Though there is no power but of God, and the government of
the ministry is included as ordained of God,1 there is a sense in which it is
only the authority of the whole Church delegated to its ministers. The three
Mediatorial offices are committed to the entire body of His people who are said
to have received an unction from the Holy One,2 that is, the Christly anointing
from the Christ: they have the doctrine of truth and know all things and can try
the spirits;3 they are invested with the priestly function, so far as they have
an altar and offer up spiritual sacrifices;4 and they are kings, a royal
priesthood.5 But all that the Church has received as a corporate body from its
Head it lodges again in a certain sense with its ministers: all, literally and
without deduction. The body of the people have resigned to them the right to
teach; they have deputed their elders to that office. As a congregation their
priestly functions are in the hands of their ministers; though in discharging
them these are no longer priests. And the rule of the flock they have given over
by the Lord’s will to their ministerial superintendents 1 Romans 13:1; 2 1 John
2:20; 3 1 John 4:1; 4 Hebrews 13:10; 5 1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 2:9

4. This Presbyterial government is one and not divided. Distinctions between a
Teaching and a Pastoral or Ruling Eldership have been established in various
communities, as will be hereafter seen; but the Scripture does not sanction
them, for it generally speaks of ministerial teaching as a necessary part of
pastoral duty. Remember them that had the rule over you, who have spoken unto
you the word of God.1 That a bishop be didaktikos, didactic, or apt to teach,2
was spoken of by St. Paul as indispensable. Afterwards the Apostle says: let the
elders that rule WELL be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who
labor in the word and teaching.3 Very earnest elders must be doubly honored,
with a doubtful side-glance at their ample sustenance: doubly if their
excellence is in ruling, and still more if also in teaching 1 Hebrews 13:7; 2 1
Timothy 3:2; 3 1 Timothy 5:17

5. Lastly, these offices of the Presbytery have relation not only to individual
churches but to congregations of churches. Neither in the Old Testament nor in
the New is there anything to favor the supposition that a congregation was ever
regarded as isolated and independent in its government. The unity of the
churches as representing the one Church appears everywhere: whether in our
Lord’s use of the term—first, My church1 universal, then, tell it unto the
church2 local—or in the Acts or in the Epistles or in the Revelation, where the
seven churches which are in Asia3 refer to variety in unity. Everywhere we find
Apostles representing the church, then pastors and teachers representing the
congregation. The Ecclesiastical government of the future was sketched in the
New Testament. We do not find the exact pattern shown us, but sufficient to
indicate that there was in every region a bond of unity among the churches, and
that, supposing the Apostles withdrawn, that bond was the Presbytery. In the
Acts we have the first council at Jerusalem, and the assembly of elders at
Miletus. With respect to the former we read: as they went through the cities,
they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the Apostles
and Elders which were at Jerusalem. And so were the churches established.4 With
respect to the latter, St. Paul sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the
church.5 When they had come he proceeded to speak to them as representatives of
Asia: Ye know, from the first day that I came into Asia. An entirely isolated or
independent Christian community is unknown in the New Testament 1 Matthew 16:18;
2 Matthew 18:17; 3 Revelation 1:11; 4 Acts 16:4; 5 Acts 20:17-18 THE DIACONATE
The first officers whose appointment is mentioned after Pentecost were set apart
as helpers of the Apostles in the service of tables: the feasts and charities of
the Church. The Seven originally designated were in all respects an
extraordinary creation; but in due tune a distinct order is mentioned by the
name of Deacons, whose vocation was, first, to assist the Presbyters in their
several offices generally, and, secondly, as their assistants, to take charge of
the sick and the poor. To the Deacons corresponded a much less prominent order
of Deaconesses

1. The Seven were to the subsequent deacons what, as we have seen, the
extraordinary ministers were to the ordinary. Their appointment was one of the
results of the transitory community of goods; a temporary expedient out of which
a permanent institution grew An outpouring of love altogether new and peculiar
to the Christian fellowship demanded a service of which the ancient economy,
temple or synagogue, had no type. Hence the men appointed to assist the Apostles
were scarcely below them in spiritual endowments; and indeed added to these new
functions the offices of preachers and evangelists and prophets. Certainly
nothing in their duties corresponded with the Minister,1 hupeerétee of the
Synagogue. As we read often of THE TWELVE, and more than once of THE SEVENTY, so
once we read of THE SEVEN.2 1 Luke 4:20; 2 Acts 21:8

2. The later New Testament mentions the office and qualifications for the office
in such a manner as to show that it was mainly though not exclusively secular:
the deacon is not required to be apt to teach, and the good degree1 he is said
to purchase is simply the higher more distinctively pastoral office to which the
lower ministries sometimes led

They were an order common to all. Their first care was for the sick and poor;
they dispersed the alms of which the Presbyters were the treasurers: and sent it
to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.2 They were employed to serve
tables:3 that is, to take order for the love feasts which at first were daily
connected with the Lord’s Supper. This, however, became gradually a less onerous
service, and allowed more time for private and public instruction; so that they
were by degrees intermediaries between the elders and the people, just as the
elders were intermediaries between the individual church and the churches
elsewhere. St. Paul describes their duties in the vivid sketch he gives of their
qualifications, among which are that they be grave, not double tongued, and
holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience,4 these pointing to the
offices of private instruction in smaller assemblies or classes and local
preaching as connected with the function of the deacon. The service is often in
modern times rendered without the name 1 1 Timothy 3:13; 2 Acts 11:30; 3 Acts
6:2; 4 1 Timothy 3:8-9

3. The deaconesses constituted a distinct order, originating in the necessity of
the female portion of the congregation, especially among the Greeks. The office
was strictly like that of the deacons so far as concerned the care of the poor
and private instruction: it allowed women to minister in countless ways to the
good of the saints under the direction of the elders. These seem to be referred
to when St. Paul says: let not a widow be taken into the number—katalegesthoo,
be enrolled—under threescore years old,1 though this limitation of age was not
regarded as imperative and was afterwards relaxed. The other qualifications show
how important was the office in the Apostle’s judgment; and generally how
extreme was the care taken as to the character of the women who discharged any
functions in the congregation. But the deaconesses were more limited than the
deacons as to public teaching. Let the women keep silence in the churches; for
it is not permitted unto them to speak,2 lalein. There is nothing more severe in
St. Paul’s writings than what follows: it is a shame, aischron, for women to
speak in the church Natural decorum was the ground of his interdict, which would
apply, however, only to the more public assembly 1 1 Timothy 5:9-10; 2 1
Corinthians 14:34-35 VOCATION AND ORDINATION To this ministry there is a Divine
vocation, of the Spirit; and a human, of the Church And this vocation is, in the
New Testament, generally sealed by Ordination, through laying on of the hands of
the Presbytery VOCATION, OR THE CALL To every service in the Christian
fellowship there is a vocation: the ministerial, whether pastoral or more
administrative, is connected with a special call, more emphatically marked than
any other on account of its greater spiritual importance

1. The Divine call is supposed throughout the New Testament. As in the old
economy no man taketh this honor unto himself but he that is called of God,1 so
in the new our Lord chose the Twelve and the Seventy; He also gave His special
sanction to the twelfth Apostle Matthias, and the thirteenth Paul. Of the
ordinary elders it is said, all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made
you bishops.2 The Scripture gives no specific indication of the way in which the
secret vocation of the Spirit shows itself; save that the person called must be
one who has a spiritual experience of the Christian religion, must have the
requisite gifts for the office to which he is called, and must purchase to
himself his degree by the usefulness of his preparatory service, these being the
fruits meet for his candidature. GRACE, first: Who reconciled us to Himself by
[Jesus] Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;3 GIFTS,
secondly: the elder must be apt to teach; FRUIT, lastly: he must have used the
office of a deacon well, or, literally, have ministered well.4 1 Hebrews 5:4; 2
Acts 20:28; 3 2 Corinthians 5:18; 4 1 Timothy 3:2-13

2. The vocation on the part of the church is much more expressly dwelt upon.
Generally, the body of elders or ministers pronounces the call of the
congregation: the Apostles set apart the deacons; the prophets and teachers1
announced their specific call to Paul and Barnabas; Timothy and Titus evidently
had the same function as the representatives of the Apostles and of the Church.
Obviously, this implies the consent and ratification of the people, though not
their initiative: in the case of the deacons, the judgment of the congregation
was naturally more relied on and had more weight than in the case of the elders.
But in neither case was the approval of the community omitted; though we are
without the means of judging how in many instances their suffrages were obtained
or their consent shown

1 Acts 13:1

ORDINATION

What is now called ordination took place generally by imposition of the hands of
the Presbytery. This ceremony was borrowed from Judaism, being the symbol and
medium of the appointment to office, and the pledge of all requisite grace for
its discharge

1. It was the designation to the sacred business of their lives. They on whom
hands were laid were set apart as the act of the congregation representatively
performed. Hence it was the pledge on the part of the Church of the maintenance
of those thus enrolled. Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach
the gospel should live of the gospel:1 an appointment of Christ which explains
the Apostolic injunction to elders, that they feed the flock not for filthy
lucre2 and that they must be given to hospitality.3 1 1 Corinthians 9:14; 2 1
Peter 5:2; 3 1 Timothy 3:2

2. On the part of the body of elders it was the formal admission of the ordained
into their own number: With the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery.1 Over
this body Timothy himself presided when others were ordained: lay hands suddenly
on noMan 1:2 In this case Timothy, like Titus, was the representative of the
Apostle, who, however, seems himself to have presided over the Presbytery which
ordained Timothy: stir up the gift of God, which is in thee through the laying
on of my hands.3 From which it follows that in this function the Apostle was
only the chief or President of the body, and did not supersede them 1 1 Timothy
4:14; 2 1 Timothy 5:22; 3 2 Timothy 1:6

3. On the part of the Spirit it was the pledge of His bestowment of grace for
the discharge of the duties of the office: that gift, namely, which St. Paul
speaks of as latent or inherent in Timothy. The laying on of the hands of the
Apostles was never without a specific blessing: specific as to the blessing,
specific also as to the Apostolic hands. But in every subsequent age the
ministerial GIFT is imparted: not as a present mysterious virtue, or grace, or
sacramental gift, but as the pledge in the soul of all needful strength and
guidance for every emerging duty

HISTORICAL The development of ecclesiastical opinion as to the function and
authority of the Ministry, or the Power of the Keys, has been bound up
inseparably with the development of the idea of the Church itself. A few leading
points only will require attention here: much of the subject belongs to
Ecclesiastical history

I. The ante-Nicene distinction between Clergy and Laity contained the germ of
the latter Hierarchy, with most of its accompanying errors, but with some
striking peculiarities

1. The Apostolical Fathers began the development very early. The first of them,
Clement of Rome, speaks of the laikos anthropos, the LAYMAN. Another, Ignatius,
distinguishes bishop, presbytery, and deacon; and makes the bishop the centre of
catholic unity. In the third century the ministry were called the CLERUS or
CLERICI: both as the lot or portion of God, after the analogy of the Levitical
tribe, and as the elect guides of the people Their rank was an ORDO SACERDOTALIS
or ECCLESIASTICUS; and here we have the origin of Clergy and Ecclesiastics.
There were in this order two departments: the Ordines Majores, comprising the
diaconate, the presbyterate and the episcopate, of Divine institution; the
Ordines Minores, comprising all the lower functions from the sub-deacon to the
door-keeper. During that period celibacy was optional. The consent of the people
to the appointment of their pastors or bishops was required. Laymen were
permitted to teach, though not in the presence of the clergy or without their
consent. The episcopal institute as that of a distinct order sprang from
ecclesiastical custom, based upon the necessity of continuing the Apostolic bond
of unity. It became universal in the middle of the second century: but Irenaeus
and Cyprian did much in the third to exalt the office to its highest dignity.
The hierarchical idea, with its full complement of gradation in its train, was
only by slow degrees fully developed. The Chorepiscopi, or country-bishops, were
the lowest in episcopal rank The Metropolitans were the bishops of the leading
cities: Antioch being the see for all Syria: Alexandria for Egypt; Rome for
Italy and the West, In the fourth century the term Patriarch was attached to
these, and to Constantinople and Jerusalem. the five ecclesiastical and
political centers of the Roman Empire. To this system the East has adhered. The
West has passed on to the Pontificate: the unity and consummation of all lower
spiritual orders

2. These beginnings of error are to be traced in another direction. Almost every
doctrinal deviation from the faith as a whole had its specific influence on the
theory of the Christian ministry and its relation to the sacrifice of Christ. So
far as Judaizing prevailed it brought back the sacrifice and the sacrificing
priesthood with the sacrificial altar. The notion of a necessary external unity
pointed to the supremacy of the bishop as the bond of union in the individual
church, according to Ignatius; and of the supremacy of one bishop to secure the
unity of all the churches. Even the wholesome doctrine of Catholicity, in
opposition to schisms and heresy, tended the same way. The Power of the Keys,
which originally guarded the purity of the fellowship, became to the clergy a
great temptation; and tended, together with the exaggerated notion of the
mysteries of which they had the keys, to invest their character with an
unevangelical prerogative. In the second century two views predominated on this
subject: one which made the binding and loosing identical with retaining and
forgiving sin; and another which made it refer more generally to all
ecclesiastical authority. Both, however, took a high stand on this subject.
Cyprian asserted that the power of the keys was entrusted first to Peter and
then to the other Apostles: making that difference between the two on which so
great a superstructure has since been raised. The prescriptions of penance for
Peccata Mortalia, or sins which threatened spiritual life, with the
excommunication and reconciliation or reception into the Church again by
absolution, did not before the time .of Augustine give the priest more than the
authority of intercession as the representative of the congregation. Leo the
Great did much to exalt the priestly independent power as his own official
prerogative

Confession was not as yet made to the priests under obligation; and, while the
binding and loosing had some reference to Divine forgiveness, it had more to
certain ecclesiastical privileges. Public expulsions from the church on
Ash-Wednesday, and public receptions afterwards on the Ascension Thursday, were
usages of Rome in the fifth century. These gave place during the Middle Ages to
private penance and private absolution

II. From the time of Constantine to the Reformation—twelve hundred years—there
was a steady development of the germs of error observable in the first
centuries. The main points only need be here noted: to follow them out into
their details belongs rather to ecclesiastical history

1. Though some of the highest authorities—Jerome, Chrysostom, Theodoret—asserted
the original identity of bishops and presbyters, the episcopal order came to be
regarded as representative of Christ and the Apostles, the special organs and
instruments of the Holy Ghost. The bishops assumed the sole right to ordain, and
in the West to confirm: their hands alone being supposed to communicate the
sealing grace of the Gospel

2. When Christianity was made the religion of the empire the ministry of the
Church became in the strictest sense a HIERARCHY. After A.D. 395, the Empire
being divided into East and West, this Hierarchy had two heads: the Patriarchs
of Rome and Constantinople

These long contended for the mastery; but Rome finally gained the victory. ROMA
LOCUTA EST became the standard of judgment. The bishop of Rome claimed to be
PAPA, POPE or PRIMATE of the whole Church, and to possess a dignity beyond that
of all other bishops, though in order still only a bishop. Rome was the only
Sedes Apostolica in the West, and was therefore the Latin Patriarchate. But the
patriarchal system was oligarchical, not monarchical; and the four (Ecumenical
Councils, —of Nicsea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon—made the bishop of
Rome only PRIMUS INTER PARES among the patriarchs and bishops, just as every
bishop was only Primus inter Pares among the presbyters. The separation of the
Greek Church from the Latin is proof that the claim was never conceded. But it
was reserved for the Reformation to bring the only good argument— that of
Scripture—against the Hierarchical system, which as such seemed naturally to
require a head. It is historical fact that Leo I., called the Great, who died
A.D. 461, laid the firm foundations of the modern Papacy; and that Gregory I.,
who died A.D. 604, consolidated the system which culminated with Gregory VII.
and Innocent III. in the Middle Ages

3. The Jewish priesthood and worship had gradually become the model of the
Christian service. Ordination was accompanied with oil: this being to the
special priesthood what baptism was to the universal priesthood, and, like
baptism, having a Character Indelibilis By slow degrees every trace of popular
election and confirmation passed away; and the clergy virtually became the
church. Their sole administration of the sacraments, the number of which
gradually increased, gave them more than the ancient Jewish priestly ascendancy.
The central service of the Unbloody Sacrifice was waited on by priests clothed
in vestments surpassing those of the Temple service in variety of symbolical
meaning, and concentrated on them all the confidence and awe which the Levitical
priesthood inspired

4. Seminaries of ministerial instruction—of which the Catechetical School at
Alexandria was the model—abounded in the East from the fourth century. In the
West there were many such schools privately set up by the bishops: such as the
Monasterium Clericorum of Augustine. But the majority of the clergy were found
to be profoundly ignorant as ages rolled on; although their ignorance was not so
universal as is sometimes represented 5. The history of Monasticism is only
indirectly connected with that of the ministry

Asceticism marked the private life of many of the clergy from the beginning; in
the fourth century this became Anchoretism or hermit life separated from the
world (anachoreo to retire, erouia a desert); thence came the coenobite or
cloister life, or monasticism proper, the ascetic life organized (koinos bios
vita communis, common life); and in the middle ages the monastic orders were the
climax. The vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience undertaken by them all were
not of themselves ministerial. The monks were Religiosi but not therefore
necessarily Clerici until the tenth century

6. The Mediaeval doctrine of the Keys underwent much development; and was
finally completed by Thomas Aquinas. He distinguished between the Potestas (and
the Clavis) Ordinis and the Potestas (and the Clavis) Jurisdictionis: the former
opening heaven directly, the latter through the excommunication and absolution
dispensed in the ecclesiastical forum. The sacramental power of the Keys became
the centre of the sacrament of penance. Absolution, according to the final
doctrine, procures forgiveness of sins. The opus operans of the penitent’s
repentance is followed by a pardon ex opere operato. But as judge in foro Dei,
the priest can give absolution only as passing judgment on the reality of the
penitence. This must after all, even in this doctrine of the Keys, be left
conditional and with God alone

7. The full Roman Catholic doctrine places the administration of grace in the
hands of an Ordo Sacerdotalis; an ecclesiastical hierarchy jure divino—with its
Clerus Minor rising to the Clerus Major—which in its stricter sense the bishops
really form, culminating in one visible Head, the successor of St. Peter and the
representative of Christ on earth. The Church is represented by general
councils, consisting of the collective episcopate summoned and presided over by
the Pope, who has the Suprematus Jurisdictionis over all bishops. By the same
Divine right the Church—the authority of which the Vatican Council of 1870 has
really vested in its Head—has the Potestas Ordinis, magisterii and ministerii,
the ordering of all doctrine and worship; the Potestas Jurisdictionis, that is
the Potestas Clavium or Power of the Keys, the authority to dispose of all the
treasures of the grace of Christ; the Potestas Regiminis, or religious authority
over the world, which however is an authority always, to a greater or less
extent, in conflict with the Potestas Saecularis

III. The general principle introduced by the Reformation was this, that the
living church is the subject and source and centre of all power: that the
Potestas Clavium, or Power of the Keys, was committed by Christ to the Apostles
as His representatives, and through them to the universal body. The ministerial
function or office is of Divine appointment; but its various forms and names are
of human arrangement. As human and Divine at once, the ministry is
representative of the whole Church, acting through it and in it and devolving
upon it its rights

1. The Lutheran doctrine was higher than that of the Reformed. It connected the
ministerial office more expressly with the KEYS. Its Ministerium Yerbi et
Sacramentorum assigns to the pastor authority to preach the Gospel and remit
sins. The following sentences from the Formularies will further explain: "
Wherever the (true) Church is there is the right of administering the Gospel.
Whence it is needful that the Church retain the right of calling, choosing, and
ordaining ministers." " No one ought to teach in the Church or administer
sacraments unless duly called." The connection between the Divine and human call
is left indefinite: but "by Divine right bishops and rulers in the Church are to
be obeyed. But if they teach or ordain contrary to the Word of God the Divine
command forbids obedience." The Power of the Keys was regarded as consisting in
preaching the Gospel or the terms of forgiveness; but both Luther and the
Lutheran Standards and doctors left much room for confession and personal
absolution of the minister

2. The Reformed type of doctrine was more rigorous. It laid more stress on
ecclesiastical discipline, which it reckoned among the notes of the true Church;
and rejected private confession and absolution altogether. It introduced a more
stringent theory of the equality of pastors. By the side of the Ministri
Docentes it placed the Ministri Ministrantes or Layelders who represented the
Church in another sense and in matters of economy and discipline: set apart, and
generally ordained, but not to teach

3. The Anglican doctrine of the Ministry, established at the Reformation,
differed in some respects from both these. It retained Episcopacy with the name
of Bishop and its special prerogatives: which Lutheranism disguised under the
name of Superintendents and reduced it to a mere human expedient. It retained
the Hierarchy, as adapted to a territorial and national religion. It went
further than the other bodies in its interpretation of the Power of the Keys:
using language as to the private absolution of the minister which at least in
some of its services is more than merely declarative and significative. The
presbyter is also styled priest by an equivocal abbreviation of the word. And,
lastly, the Anglican doctrine assumes a special gift and influence of the Holy
Spirit in ordination: though the strictly sacramental character of orders is
denied, it lays much stress, and rightly so, on the express provision of grace
provided for every ministerial function

IV. It will suffice to indicate the theological points involved in these several
tendencies: as they affect, that is, doctrine concerning the Christian Ministry

1. The Hierarchical tendency has reached its natural consummation in the
dogmatic definition of Papal Infallibility in 1870. The Pontiff, or Bishop of
Rome, or Pope, speaking ex cathedra, that is, avowedly pronouncing the mind of
the Church, or of the Spirit in the Church, is the infallible oracle of truth.
Thus the long controversy as to the meaning of the Keys being given to St. Peter
before they were given to the Apostolic company, seems to be settled, though in
a manner inconsistent with other parts of the New Testament. It is forgotten
that the special authority given to Peter, that of first opening the kingdom of
heaven to Jews and Gentiles, and decreeing what was binding on the Church, and
declaring the terms of forgiveness, —the Power of the Keys— was never arrogated
by him for himself alone, or even as superior to the rest; and that he declared
only that God made choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the
word of the gospel,1 but no more. Moreover, Simon Peter is the only Apostle
whose fallibility is expressly afterwards declared: he was to be blamed;2 and
not a word is said of his primacy among the living Apostles being transmitted in
any way whatever 1 Acts 15:7; 2 Galatians 2:11

2. From the time of the Reformation there has been a reaction against the
Hierarchy which has in some communities gone to extremes. The QUAKERS, as a
branch of the mystical family, swept away the ministry with the church and the
sacraments: substituting, however, a secret and distinct influence of the Holy
Ghost on His own selected organs for the benefit of the assembly. Thus the
ministry in their teaching is a perpetual creation instead of a separated order.
Their ecclesiastical government is simply the government of a society on
principles of human expediency. More recently the PLYMOUTH BRETHREN, or
BRETHREN, have arisen as the English branch of a community the principles of
which are found in other lands and have never been unrepresented in the Church.
This sect denounces the denominations of Christianity, falls back upon the Word
of God, retains the sacraments, but rejects the separated pastorship, whether as
a body or represented by an individual. The order of the ministry is renounced;
and the teaching of the Brotherhood is left to the Spirit’s supply of gifts or
charismata of teaching. This system utterly lacks the consistency of that of the
Quakers. Both these Brethren and those Friends, however, are condemned by the
Pastoral Epistles

3. The Catholic Apostolic Church strives to combine almost all the theories
already alluded to. Its ministry is one of charismata, or gifts, restored
according to the pattern in the Corinthian Epistles, and the Epistles of the
Revelation. Its Power of the Keys is very similar to that of the Romanists. Its
priestly service seeks to go back to the early ages; but halts midway

4. The importance of the Laity or general body of the congregation has been in
modern times steadily more and more acknowledged. The abuse of terms which made
the church and the clergy synonymous has passed away to a great extent; though
its effect is not nor is it likely to be entirely removed. It is more and more
generally acknowledged that laymen may act as Evangelists towards the world, and
even as teachers within the church; that they may be employed in instruction of
children, or as catechists; that they may read the Scriptures, publicly and
privately; that they may sustain manifold offices more or less spiritual; that
they may mainly direct the financial affairs of the community; and that they
ought to be representatives in many ecclesiastical courts of the economics of
the Church

There are excesses in this direction, which go to the extreme opposite of the
hierarchical excesses. Such is the lay power which is retained by the
constitution of the established church as a final appeal. Such is the
lay-representation in the Presbyterian government proper: ruling elders, chosen
for life, in the presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies

These presbyters—laymen in all other respects, and representatives of the lay
element— have a voice in matters which affect the ministerial jurisdiction as
such. This applies also to several of the minor Methodist bodies not professedly
Presbyterian. In the congregational system the power of the Pastor as such is
reduced to a very slight element in comparison with that of the body of the
laity

5. Methodism is in regard to its doctrine and practice on this subject eminently
high at once and free. It is Presbyterian as to the basis of its theory: its
ministers are of one order only, its Conference being composed of
representatives of the Presbytery of the body of Societies or Churches forming
the Connexion. It is episcopal, after the earliest type

Augustine says (de Civ. xix. 19): Episcopatus nomen est operis, non honoris.
Graecum est enim, atque inde ductum vocabulum, quod ille qui praeficitur eis,
quibus praeficitur, superintendit, curam eorum, scilicet gerens, epi quippe
super, skopos, intentio est: ergo, episkopein latine SUPERINTENDERE possumus
dicere. Hence the Superintendent in English Methodism occupies precisely the
position of early episcopacy and of episcopacy in some parts of Lutheranism. The
name Bishop is retained in America, Methodism employs the laity in every
diaconal function; though it does not retain the name deacon. It has its
Leaders, Local Preachers, Poor Stewards, and Society Stewards, generally of the
laity, male and female. It uses the service of women in private ministries, as
catechists or teachers in Sunday-schools and leaders. It more carefully than
most other religious bodies distinguishes the functions of the pastorate and of
the laity: reserving for the final ministerial jurisdiction all questions that
affect the Power of the Keys as left by Christ in His Church, The Methodist
doctrine is that our Lord left the Keys—the general government of His body, the
special binding and loosing of authoritative decrees, and the reception and
expulsion of its members—to the Church itself, as represented, however, by the
men whom the Spirit would raise up with concurrence of the congregation to
represent its authority THE CHURCH IN ITS RELATION TO THE WORLD, The Church of
Christ, at once visible and invisible, exists to continue and perfect the work
which He began. It is His organ for the preparation of His final kingdom. As
such it has a twofold relation to those without: first, to maintain itself, in
the midst of the world, as the depositary and witness of saving truth; secondly,
to win the world to the obedience of Christ, as a Missionary Institute

Some of the topics here indicated have been already more or less fully
discussed. Some of them must be reserved for Eschatology. But the view or the
Administration of Redemption would not be complete without some general remarks
here on the three branches of this subject THE WITNESS OF TRUTH The Church, as
an organization in the world but not of it, is the depositary and guardian and
witness of the truth. The truth which it has received is the standard of its
faith and discipline; as it respects both individual Churches and union of
Churches on whatever principles united

1. One of the chief prerogatives of the ancient people was that unto them were
committed the oracles of God.1 The last declaration of St. Paul was that the
house of God was the pillar and ground of the truth:2 a final testimony of the
Apostle which, taken in all its large context, gives a most impressive view of
the prerogative, responsibility, and dignity of the visible Church. These words
go back to our Lord’s which declare that the Spirit of the truth should abide
with His people: the promise was not, by the very terms, limited to the
Apostles. In this, as in all, they were representatives of the entire community
for ever; representatives also of its permanent Ministry as a whole; besides
being as Apostles a unique and pre-eminent class. The Church universal is the
guardian of Scripture. There was a company of disciples prepared by the Word
SPOKEN to receive the Word WRITTEN To show that the cause of God was not
absolutely dependent on the complete Canon, that canon took centuries for its
determination. But it was completed for the long future; and no individual
church is faithful which either adds to or takes from the collection of the
sacred oracles. Further it is also the guardian of the truth which is derived
from Scripture

One end of its existence is contradiction of error as it arises: hence, the
variations of dogmatic definition in Creeds and Formularies, The THREE CREEDS
were, until the Reformation, a protest against all the errors of the world and
of the Church itself. Since then it has pleased the Spirit that various
communities should have their various STANDARDS, ARTICLES, or CONFESSIONS OF
FAITH 1 Romans 3:2; 2 1 Timothy 3:15-16

2. The individual churches have been raised up to bear witness to sundry and
several neglected elements of the truth: it being manifestly the mind of the
Spirit that the denominations should act as mutual restraints and excitements.
It was not His will that there should be uniformity in the Confessions of
Christendom: when that uniformity existed for a season corruption was at the
door. He administers the Work of Christ by unity in essentials, and mutual
antagonism in things of less moment 3. But it is also the doctrine of Scripture
that even the truth as it is in Jesus is not in this world to be revealed in all
its fullness. For we know in part.1 A perfect church on earth is not one of the
promises or predictions of Scripture. Nor is a finished and rounded scheme of
Christian Theology to be expected. Before the exact text of Scripture shall have
been determined, and all errors eliminated out of the confessions, and a perfect
system of doctrine unfolded, He will have come Who is Himself the truth and will
not give His honor to another 1 1 Corinthians 13:9 THE MISSIONARY INSTITUTE The
Church of Christ exists for the sake of the spread of the Gospel through the
world: it is in virtue of its original commission a missionary body. Its
obligation rests upon all individual Societies and all their members. With the
fulfillment of this commission the functions of the Church will cease: the
kingdom of Christ will more and more fully be revealed; until by His coming it
will be translated from a kingdom of grace to a kingdom of glory The doctrine of
Vocation has brought out the distinction of the Christian Church, that it has
received a commission for all nations: partly, in contradistinction to the
limitation of the Theocracy; partly as the term and goal of its own mission

1. Hence the preaching of the Gospel was the revelation of the mystery1 that the
Gentiles should be called. And it is declared by our Lord that the Gospel is to
be preached for a witness unto all nations,2 before He Himself should come: only
for a testimony, however; for shall He find faith on the earth?3 It is true that
in the history of the New Testament we find both principles only by degrees
established. The admission of the Gentiles was very slowly acknowledged: not
Jerusalem but Antioch was the missionary centre. The universal preaching of the
Gospel was too soon assumed to have prepared for Christ’s return 1 Romans 16:25;
2 Matthew 24:14; 3 Luke 18:8

2. No truth concerning the mission of Christianity has been so unfaithfully
dealt with by the Church itself. Until the Roman Empire became Christian,
missions, the record of which are lost, were vigorously conducted. But from that
time down to the Reformation they were affected by two evils, which however did
not hinder the spread of Christianity. The faith was propagated to a great
extent by the agency of the civil power; it was diffused in its corrupt form,
and sometimes by heretics: but the foundations were everywhere laid on which a
better superstructure was afterwards upreared. The Reformation was not mindful
enough of the missionary obligation: the English Church organized her missions
only for the sake of her colonies in the seventeenth century; the Lutheran
Church made energetic beginnings in the Danish mission; but it was the Romish
Propaganda that showed most vigor

3. With this century began the Missionary era proper, after the preparations of
the last century. It is now acknowledged by most Christian communities that the
churches exist as such in order to the preparation and diffusion of the kingdom
of Christ among men MISSIONARY SOCIETIES have everywhere sprung up, and are the
glory of the present age In strange contrast with this is the fact that there
are some communities, and many individuals in other communities, who believe
that the diffusion of the Gospel is a subordinate matter; and that the
destruction of His enemies and the establishment of His kingdom must be effected
by the visible reappearance of the Lord, Who will for a thousand years before
the end reign upon earth. But the uniform tenor of the New Testament declares
that this Gospel is to be preached in all the earth, to every creature, and that
Christ’s presence with His missionary Church will continue always to the end of
the world. This subject will return in the last section, that of Eschatology THE
CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM The New Testament ends as it began, with the Kingdom of
God and of Christ. That kingdom is the kingdom of heaven, as being in its origin
not of this world. It is the kingdom of heaven on earth, as the spiritual
authority that is already pervading human society. It is the kingdom of heaven
also as the final form into which all the individual Churches of Christ upon
earth shall melt. It is the kingdom absolutely as it is the one manifestation of
Christ’s mediatorial rule, which had its earlier Old-Testament stage of
preparation in Israel, its New-Testament fulfillment among Israel and the
Gentiles, and will have its glorious consummation at the Coming of the Lord

1. The one basileia, or Kingdom, was established in Israel and as a THEOCRACY;
which was really a CHRISTOCRACY in disguise, as the rulers in the ancient
economy were types and representatives of Christ, Who in all ages and in all
economies has ruled virtually or actually in the house of God

2. The kingdom of grace coincides with the Church, as it has been exhibited in
its united visibility and invisibility, good and evil combined. The kingdom,
during the interval until the coming of the Lord, is, however, mainly regarded
as invisible. Our Lord speaks of it as already come: behold, the kingdom of God
is within you;1 entos umon, among you invisibly. He that is least in the kingdom
of God is greater than he,2 John the Baptist. And from the days of John the
Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence—or is gotten by
violence—and the violent take it by force.3 Concerning this, and some other
similar passages, it is to be remembered that our Lord speaks by anticipation,
as well as with reference to the present, and that His words are of prospective
and abiding significance. Verily, I say unto you, that there be some of them
that stand here which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom
of God come with power.4 This does not refer to the final Parousia, or the
Redeemer’s visible coming in His kingdom, but to the invisible coming in the
kingdom of grace. This was the outpouring of the Spirit, the founding of the
Church, and the revolution which laid waste the old Theocracy and its holy city.
In this period of grace the Redeemer is KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS,5 KING OF PEACE:
His metropolis being Jerusalem, the city of the vision of peace 1 Luke 17:21; 2
Luke 7:28; 3 Matthew 11:12; 4 Mark 9:1; 5 Hebrews 7:2

3. The kingdom even now has in some respects the preeminence. It is the subject
of most of our Lord’s parables. Many of the prerogatives and privileges which
are too often assigned to the Church really belong to the Kingdom. It is, for
instance, the supreme good which must be sought and purchased, at the cost of
all that we have: the treasure hid in a field, and the one pearl of great
price.1 Whatever differences are here, the kingdom stands for Him who is the
inestimable treasure in it: for you therefore which believe He is precious.2 The
Benedictions of our Lord’s commencement are the enjoyments of this kingdom; they
begin and end with it: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.3 It is not said of the Church that it is
righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.4 The Evangelical
proclamation is this gospel of the kingdom:5 one of the largest and most
comprehensive sayings in the New Testament

Whatever glorious things are said of the Church, it after all carries with it a
reference to the evil world whence it came: a glorious church, not having spot
or wrinkle, or any such thing.6 The kingdom is also mixed, for they shall gather
out of His kingdom all things that offend;7 but the predominant idea in it is
that of the sphere of Christ’s supreme sovereign manifestation

1Matthew 13:44; Matthew 13:46; 21 Peter 2:7; 3Matthew 5:3; Matthew 5:10; 4Romans
14:17; 5Matthew 24:14; 6Ephesians 5:27; 7Matthew 13:41

4. It is this kingdom that is an everlasting kingdom.1 It is now not yet
revealed; and of it St. John, after having spoken of his apostleship to the
Churches, says: I, John, who also am your brother and companion in the
tribulation and kingdom and patience in Jesus [Christ].2 We are all fellows in
the patience of the kingdom in Jesus: en tee basileia kai hupomonee en leesou 1
Daniel 7:27; 2 Revelation 1:9


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  CHAPTER 34: 36. VOL 03 - ESCHATOLOGY, OR THE LAST THINGS
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Eschatology, or the Last Things

ESCHATOLOGY.

PRELIMINARIES DEATH AND THE KINGDOM OF THE DEAD DEATH AND IMMORTALITY THE
INTERMEDIATE STATE:

Scripture and Ecclesiastical History THE DAY OF CHRIST THE SECOND COMING
Scriptural Doctrine and Historical Hypotheses THE RESURRECTION Scriptural and
Historical THE GENERAL JUDGMENT The Judge; the Judged; the Judgment, with its
Standards and Results THE CONSUMMATION END OF MEDIATORIAL KINGDOM Doctrine and
Error SALVATION OF THE HUMAN RACE.

Theories:

Annihilation, Univrersalism, and Intermediate Tendencies NEW HEAVENS AND EARTH

ETERNAL LIFE

It has been seen, as we have proceeded, that all the facts, doctrines and ethics
of theology point forward to one great Consummation. The things concerning
Christ and His kingdom HAVE AN END. To exhibit that End, whether as universal or
as individual, in one connected whole is the province of Eschatology, or the
doctrine of the Last Things. It is obvious that all the lines here converge to
one event, the Return of the Redeemer, which is the supreme Hope of His people:
His Coming, however, cannot be disconnected from the Resurrection of all men and
the universal Judgment. Before that final event of time, therefore, the
destinies of Christ’s cause belong to the other world as well as to this, and we
have a profoundly interesting department of theology in Death and the Kingdom of
the Dead: here time is strangely blended with eternity, though it is time still.
After that final event, when time shall be no more, we have only the
Consummation of all Divine designs and human destiny GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

Before entering on these topics in detail a few observations may be made on the
general characteristics of this branch of theology, as it is specifically the
prophetic part of the perfected revelation of Christianity

1. As such it is almost if not altogether shut up to the predictions of Christ
and His Apostles. Of the future of mankind, whether in this world or in the
next, we can from other sources know nothing. Men may speculate as to the
destinies of the race, and argue as to what is to be by an induction of what has
been 5 yet all this adds nothing to knowledge. But the very same authority which
gives us our theology of the past and of the present gives us also our theology
of the future. If we examine the New Testament carefully we find that a very
large portion of it is occupied with THINGS TO COME. Our Lord Himself spoke very
much of the future of His kingdom and Church. What He predicted in the hearing
of His Apostles was to be brought to their remembrance. Moreover, He said of the
Holy Ghost, He will show you things to come.1 One remarkable form of the
accomplishment of this prophecy was His own disclosure of the future to His
Church by the Spirit through the last Evangelist: The revelation of Jesus which
God gave unto Him to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to
pass.2 1 John 16:13; 2 Revelation 1:1

2. There is an analogy between the Old-Testament prophecies of what were then
the Last Things and those of the New Testament. In ancient times the prophets
enquired and searched diligently . . . searching what or what manner of time the
Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify.1 The same may be said of their
successors the Apostles. There is throughout evidence that the law of
disciplinary reserve which governs the prophetic part of Divine revelation rules
with scarcely any relaxation. What the First Coming of the Messiah was to the
ancient saints His Second Coming is to us: we have the same certain but
indefinite future; very much more clearly outlined as to its great events, but
equally undefined as to times and seasons, and vanishing into equal if not
deeper mystery. It might have been expected that it would be otherwise; and that
the coming of the Object of all prophecy would have introduced a new order of
prediction, leaving no room for uncertainty or error as to the future. But it is
far otherwise. A few words, here and there spoken, might have precluded a
thousand controversies. But they are unspoken. As the Master of Wisdom said in
the older and more immature economy it is the glory of God to conceal a thing,2
the glory of His wisdom; so still the honor of kings is to search out a matter,
and all the Lord’s people have this royal prerogative. From beginning to end the
law of revelation is probationary: man’s original sin of penetrating to
forbidden knowledge seems to be remembered in the Divine economy of discipline.
While on all points that concern probation the teaching is distinct and
sufficient, nothing is disclosed for the gratification of curiosity. From the
Apostles’ first question, Lord, dost Thou at this time restore again the kingdom
to Israel?3 there has been constant evidence of the error of the Church to
speculate unduly: sometimes in fanciful, sometimes in tragic, sometimes in
sentimental outlines the future of Christianity has been sketched with more or
less of confident temerity. The Saviour’s answer, It is not for you to know
[the] times or [the] seasons, which the Father hath set in His own power,4 is of
wide and unlimited application. We are taught that we must be content to leave
some portions of the unknown future in their obscurity; and to muse without
definitions before the unlifted veil: remembering that for us it may be lifted
even while we are musing. This is a severe discipline, especially to the
theologian, who delights in a clear confession of faith, and is sorely tempted
to aim at the same formal analysis of the Last Things as he has been able to
give of the work of Christ finished on earth and of the present administration
of the Holy Spirit. He would fain weave into a system the scattered hints of
prophecy. But nothing is more certain than that the Holy Ghost does not
encourage this desire: prophetic theology can hardly be dogmatic 1 1 Peter
1:10-11; 2 Proverbs 25:2; 3 Acts 1:6; 4 Acts 1:7

3. Meanwhile, it is equally certain that there is a peculiar blessing attached
to the humble, patient, and earnest study of the dread realities of the future.
Eschatology, or the doctrine of the Last Things, appeals to certain principles
and instincts of our nature which it alone has power to touch. There are
elements in the constitution of man the cultivation of which is of great
importance to religious discipline; and their education is almost entirely
dependent on this branch of subjects. These have also an irresistible attraction
to all classes, especially in times of sorrow and in advancing life; and their
very indefiniteness and obscurity and unsearchable mystery enhance that
attraction. Moreover, a considerable range of the ethics of Christianity grows
out of the contemplation of future destiny and preparation for it. Hence there
is the amplest encouragement to the study of these things, though there is no
encouragement to the systematic, or, as it were, scientific arrangement of them.
It is left on record as a general principle that Blessed is he that readeth, and
they that hear the words of the prophecy:1 not blessed because either reader or
hearer will ever know the times and the seasons which symbolically expand before
the vision; but blessed because this kind of meditation tends to withdraw his
mind from all lower interests and will keep him at the Saviour’s feet in the
attitude of adoring expectation, humility, and trust 1 Revelation 1:3

4. The methods of analysis that may be adopted are many, and will be shaped
variously according to the bias and prepossessions of the theologian: especially
his bias on the subject of the Millennial future glory of the Church and the
second coming of the Lord

Some are so prejudiced against the perversions of Millenarianism that they place
the Lord’s return generally under His judicial office and thus rob Eschatology
of its keystone

Others are so bewitched by that one theme that they virtually divide redemption
into two sections: the first and the second Coming of Christ. Certainly, the
return of its Head as such is the undying hope of the militant body on earth. It
is the vanishing point of all Christian expectation. It commands the great
futurity; but in theological order Death and Hades belong to the preparations
for His advent; the Coming itself precedes the resurrection and judgment; and
beyond it, though still suffused with its glory, opens out the Consummation of
all things DEATH AND THE KINGDOM OF THE DEAD

Death is a word of large meaning in theology. There is a sense in which it does
not belong to the Last Things, being one of the first facts in the religious
history of mankind As the penalty of sin it has already been considered. Here it
must be viewed chiefly, though not exclusively, as the last event in the
probation of man translated by it into the region of the dead, which in its
relation to the coming of Christ and the final consummation may be called an
Intermediate State DEATH AND IMMORTALITY

Death spiritual and eternal will reappear at a later stage in Eschatology. Its
physical aspect is here more directly concerned; and it must be regarded, first,
as in a certain sense abolished by the death of Christ, but, secondly, as
nevertheless continued in the discipline of the Gospel and made the minister of
the Divine purpose. All is summed up in one word, that Christianity has taught
us what death is as the result of sin under the economy of grace

DEATH

It is said by St Paul that Jesus Christ hath abolished death, and hath brought
life and immortality to light through the Gospel.1 Death is in fact abolished by
being also brought under the light by the same revelation: that is, Christianity
has finally and fully explained what death is, and under what conditions the
human race is subjected to it notwithstanding the great redemption 1 2 Timothy
1:10

1. Death in the new dispensation never means the opposite of existence: were it
such, it could not be said to be annihilated, unless indeed the Saviour’s
intervention as the Second Adam gave back to mankind an existence that would
otherwise have been forfeited. But it is never said that existence was forfeited
by sin: the threatening of death that took effect upon disobedience was
primarily a separation of the soul or spirit from the body. The body began at
once to sink towards the earth whence it came; and the spirit began to know
those preliminary infirmities that issue in the agony of the final severance,
the most violent and unnatural experience to which in this life transgression
has made man subject: the physical type of the separation of the soul from God

2. This is the only death that can befall the soul, so far at least as the
sentence pronounced upon the sinner is concerned. The immortality or continued
conscious existence of man’s spirit is everywhere assumed in Scripture and
nowhere proved. And, so far as the doctrine of death is before us, continued
existence and immortality are one. The absolute immortality of the human spirit
is not in question as yet. Absolute immortality, indeed, can never be matter of
argument. God only hath immortality;2 if He has given it to man as such it must
be as something that is made inherent in man’s reflection of God’s likeness The
Christian doctrine of death leaves untouched the natural immortality of mankind
The arguments in its favor, in their variety and their various degrees of
strength, belong to the subject of the Divine Image in man. Those which rest
upon the immateriality of the soul and its indivisibility, upon its high
aspirations, upon its universal instincts, are valid pleas against the
materialist; but all subordinate to the original testimony given to the stamp of
the Creator’s own nature impressed upon it. Apart from that no argument
demonstrates the immortality of the soul, even as there is none that proves the
being of God. But we have only now to make emphatic the fact that the Christian
doctrine of death implies that immortality: first, because nothing is said to
the contrary when the separation of soul and body is spoken of; and, secondly,
because death is said to be in its widest meaning done away in Christ 1 1
Timothy 6:16

DEATH ABOLISHED Death as a penalty, whether physically or spiritually
considered, is abolished in the Gospel of our redemption

1. In the widest possible sense it is negatived or done away. There is no
restriction in the words used to signify the Saviour’s endurance of death in the
stead of the human race. He underwent in dying the curse of the law; received
the wages of sin not due to Himself; and all mankind are delivered as one whole
from the original sentence. For the entire family of Adam it is virtually and
provisionally abolished. Our Lord tasted death for everyMan 1:1huper pantos. He
removed this specific condemnation from the race; and if annihilation were, in
any sense whatever, the meaning of the sentence, the Substitute of man, the
Second Adam, abolished it. But we have no hint in Scripture that annihilation
was the import of the original sentence. It was rather the separation of the
soul from the body and of both from God; and that as an absolute sentence upon
mankind was reversed and abolished

1 Hebrews 2:9

2. It is really abolished to all who are found in Christ. He that believeth on
the Son hath everlasting life:1 the opposite of that wrath of God which abideth
on the unbeliever. He that hath the Son hath life.2 It is true that the
abolition is conditional, and gradually revealed both in the soul and in the
body; even as the full revelation of the death from which we are saved is
gradual We were saved by hope:3 this law runs through the Christian economy; we
receive only the firstfruits, every blessing and every deliverance being at best
given in its earnest alone until the redemption of the purchased possession.4
But the day will come when every trace of this sentence shall be effaced. The
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.5 It was also the first enemy
destroyed 1 John 3:36; 2 1 John 5:12; 3 Romans 8:24; 4 Ephesians 1:14; 5 1
Corinthians 15:26 DEATH A PERMANENT DISPENSATION

Death, in its more limited sense as physical, is taken up into the Evangelical
economy: continued as an ordinance for the human race, and as a discipline for
every believer. It is this death which specifically belongs to Eschatology

1. The continuance of death is bound up with the Divine purposes touching the
development and the destiny of mankind. What that development would have been
without sin we know not: all that we know of the eternal counsel concerning the
human species deals with it as a race continued through a succession of dying
generations. It is appointed unto men once to die1 in their federal relation
with the first Adam, that they may rise again with the Last. The economy of
redemption which was established before the gates of Paradise opened on human
history retains death as a law in the government of the world. This is all that
can be affirmed; and speculation beyond these limits finds no encouragement. It
may be said that this was, in a certain sense, letting the original tendency go
on, inasmuch as physical death had reigned upon the earth before Adam was
created; and further that the earth was adapted to the condition of man as
living and dying. Such a view requires us to believe that without sin man would
have risen above the general law: the tree of life being a sign of what might
have been a sinless immortality. But this, like the question whether or not the
Son would have become incarnate had the Fall not taken place, is left in
profound silence in the holy record Suffice it that when the history of the
world has reached its last term death shall cease

Mankind waits till the Deliverer comes for its emancipation. Then will He prove
Himself the Lord and Abolisher of death by superseding and displacing it; and
the last undying generation will give evidence that this firstborn of sin was
only assumed into the Divine counsel for human development within the limits of
time

1 Hebrews 9:27

2. Christian death is abundantly and most impressively brought to light as not
abolished absolutely; but as taken up into the Divine plan for the individual
just as it is for the race

(1.) It enters into the probationary discipline of believers. Hence it is
hallowed and dignified as part of the fellowship of their lot with Christ. For
if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him:1 here the suffering of death
physical must be included; the sacred graces of our Lord’s dying experience must
be reflected in the dying of His saints That unknown element in His suffering
which negatived the sinner’s eternal death is of necessity unshared, but His
physical surrender to death admits us to a fellowship with it Hence it is the
last sacrifice of Christian obedience; according to the Apostle’s word, I am now
ready to be offered.2 This refers to less or to more than martyrdom,
specifically so called: in a sense all death is a martyrdom, by which the
servants of Christ testify of redemption and glorify God.3 There is no grace of
Christian life which is not made perfect in death: not that death is the
minister of the Spirit to destroy sin, but the last earthly act and oblation of
the sinless spirit in which the sacrifice of all becomes perfect in one.
Therefore it is the appointed end of human probation. Other methods of placing a
limit to the probationary career, especially in relation to the unfallen
creature, may be imagined: this is the appointed end since sin and redemption
began. The very execution of doom is made the goal of destiny, in which the
sentence is finally reversed. And thus in a certain sense death is the
preliminary and decisive judgment for every individual on earth who knows the
connection between sin and deliverance 1 2 Timothy 2:11; 2 2 Timothy 4:6; 3 John
21:19 (2.) Finally, Christian death is transfigured into a departure from this
life to another

Every former name is retained in the dispensation of the Gospel; no new one,
strictly speaking, is added; but all are sanctified to a higher character and
put on their perfection

It is Dissolution, but not as limited to the idea of going down to the dust of
death: it is the separation of spirit and body; the body being also dissolved
into its component elements in the earth, and the spirit, no longer a soul,
gathered to the fathers and to Christ, returning to God who gave it, but not
dissolved into the abyss of Deity. The Christian thought of being unclothed1 is
an advance upon any former revelation: the body is only the clothing which,
folded in the grave, will be hereafter re-fashioned for the naked spirit

Death is rest,2 as of old: but rest in the ceaseless service of the Lord. It is
sleep; but it is sleep in Jesus.3 It is still the penalty of sin; but no longer
only a penalty. For to those who believe in Jesus death is no more death: not
only is its sting gone, but itself is already as to its terror—which is its
shadow following it, the Second Death— annihilated; whosoever liveth and
believeth in Me shall never die.4 Finally, it is more than the Old- Testament
going the way of all the earth:5 it is a Departure or Decease, for these two
words are one. Such it was in the case of our Lord: Moses and Elias spoke of the
Decease, teen exodon, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.6 And among the
last allusions to death in the New Testament it is regarded as only a removal to
another sphere: the time of my departure is at hand;7 which is the simplest and
sublimest description of it given to our faith and our hope 12 Corinthians 5:4;
22 Thessalonians 1:7; 31 Thessalonians 4:14; 4John 11:26; 5Joshua 23:14; 6Luke
9:31; 72 Timothy 4:6 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE

Throughout the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, the departed souls of men
are represented as congregating in one vast receptacle, the interior conditions
of which differ much in the Two Testaments and vary in each respectively. On
their estate the light steadily increases as revelation proceeds, though even
its final disclosures leave much obscurity which only the Lord’s coming will
remove. It is, however, made certain that the intermediate state is under the
special control of the Redeemer as the Lord of all the dead who have ever passed
from the world; that those who have departed in unbelief are in a condition of
imprisonment waiting for the final judgment, while those who have died in the
faith are in Paradise, or rather with Christ, waiting for their consummation;
and that the universal resurrection win put an end both to death and to the
state of the disembodied dead. Some few hints which the New Testament gives as
to the conscious personality of the subjects of the Lord’s kingdom in Hades have
been made the basis of doctrinal determinations and ecclesiastical institutions
and speculative theories which belong to the department of historical theology

OLD TESTAMENT

1. In the earlier revelation the collective inhabitants of the earth pass
through death into a state or place which is to the spirit what the grave is to
the body. This has one invariable name: sheol, shaowl, the house appointed for
all living.1 The word was derived from a root signifying to be hollow; or from
one denoting a chasm or abyss; or from a third, meaning to ask, in reference to
its insatiable demand for souls. It is to be distinguished from the grave, which
is often used in the English translation. For instance, when Jacob says, I will
go down into the grave unto my son mourning,2 the word is shaolaah, unto Sheol:
Joseph was supposed not to be in any grave. The patriarchs went to their
forefathers: Abraham, as afterwards Aaron, was gathered unto his people;3,4 they
were gathered to their people, but in the great majority of cases were not
buried with them From the beginning the hollow place in which the body was
deposited had neither more nor less reality than the Sheol or under-world,
supposed to be local and within the earth, into which all souls descended,
retaining their conscious personality. They are never called souls, however, or
spirits; but, in writings later than those of Moses, rephaim, signifying
languid, or nerveless, or shadowy beings: different therefore from the giants of
the Pentateuch 1 Job 30:23; 2 Genesis 37:35; 3 Genesis 25:8; 4 Numbers 20:24

2. It is moreover in the earlier books, and indeed throughout the canonical Old
Testament, one indistinguishable receptacle of a11 the dead; generally a place
of terror and gloom cut off from God, not without conscious and continued
existence, but with only a feeble hold of life; brightened to the righteous by
hope, but by fluctuating hope The testimonies of Job and of Hezekiah represent
the darkest aspect of Sheol. Are not my days few? Cease then, and let me alone,
that I may take comfort a little, before I go whence I shall not return, even to
the land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness, as darkness
itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as
darkness.1 We hear Job’s own answer to his desponding question, If a man die,
shall he live again? that his sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not, . . .
but his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.2
Hezekiah’s forecast is as gloomy as Job’s: The grave cannot praise Thee; death
cannot celebrate Thee,3 Job’s anticipation, yet in my flesh shall I see God,4
finds no permanent and true fulfillment this side of the resurrection 1 Job
10:20-22; 2 Job 14:14; Job 14:21-22; 3 Isaiah 38:18; 4 Job 19:26

3. There are hints, though only hints, of distinct allotments of doom. While the
Old Testament everywhere assigns to the departed a continued existence —
immortality, therefore, as making the spirit survive bodily death—it preserves a
silence almost unbroken as to retribution after the probation of life. But the
one Pit, bowr, into which all alike descend has its lower depths. The servants
of God, faithful to His covenant, have in Him their portion, and therefore He is
their God, not the God of the dead but of the living;1 but in the mystery of
gradual revelation the secret of the prison is reserved for the coming of
Christ. Of Enoch it is not said that he died; he was not, for God took him;2 but
this was only a standing testimony, that death is not essential to the
development of man

Balaam’s wish, to die the death of the righteous,3 is indefinite, and did not
necessarily refer to anything beyond this world. But many of the prayers of the
Psalmists more than hint at a difference hereafter: draw me not away with the
wicked, and with the workers of iniquity.4 The speculations of the Preacher
point to the same difference; as one, however, that the day of judgment will
bring to light: for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.5 1
Matthew 22:32; 2 Genesis 5:24; 3 Numbers 23:10; 4 Psalms 28:3; 5 Ecclesiastes
11:9

NEW TESTAMENT In the New Testament there is a resumption and very remarkable
development of doctrine concerning the state of the dead in the interval
preceding the final resurrection

1. Before His own resurrection our Lord adopted the ancient description of the
unseen world, using the term hades, which the Septuagint had invariably employed
as the Greek representative of the Hebrew sheol. But He subdivided it into two
departments: the place of Lazarus He called, with the Jews, Abraham’s bosom;1
but He does not place the rich man in Gehenna, which had also become the
Rabbinical term for the place of final woe In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being
in torments; but in the same Hades he could see Lazarus though afar off. Our
Lord this once uses the word in the Old-Testament meaning of the general
receptacle of departed souls. But elsewhere He employs it to signify the empire
of ruin and desolation and subversion of human life: in this sense He said of
His Church, The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it;2 and of the doomed
city of Galilee, thou shall be brought down to Hades.3 In the Apocalypse the
Lord returns to the old idea of one vast disembodied realm: I have the keys of
Hades and of death,4 though, as in the Dives-parable, with a predominant
reference to the condemned prison-house in it. This last the Lord calls Gehenna
again and again, as in that ever-memorable word concerning the fire of hell,
that never shall be quenched;5 and in that solemn denunciation of the Pharisees
which seems to make this hell a state, like eternal life, which may be the
present characteristic of the soul: twofold more the child of hell,6 or Gehenna,
than yourselves. Before His departure our Lord gave a new designation to the
realm of the blessed in Hades: Today shall thou be with Me in Paradise.7 1 Luke
16:22-23; 2 Matthew 16:18; 3 Matthew 11:23; 4 Revelation 1:18; 5 Mark 9:43; 6
Matthew 23:15; 7 Luke 23:43

2. What had been the descent of the Redeemer into Hades has been elsewhere
considered: it introduced, not only a new state of things in the under-world,
but a new terminology for the intermediate state. The Paradise and Gehenna of
the Gospels— figurative names, one taken from the original Garden, and the other
from the Valley of Hinnom where the perpetual fire burnt up the refuse—reappear,
with Hades including both; but neither of them emphatically, nor with certain
reference to the intermediate condition of souls. The place is not described so
much as the state or character and employments of its occupants The Lord’s
victory over death and glorious descent has changed the whole scene. The saints
who are in life and death united to Him are spoken of as those who sleep in
Jesus:1 He is their koimeethentas, or Cemetery, where sleep is life while life
is sleep. The current language of the Epistles refers to their death as
departure to be with Christ,2 with right to an house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens,3 and the attainment of an almost consummate state in the
general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, where
are the spirits of just men made perfect.4 All this seems inconsistent with a
locality in any sense corresponding to the under-world of Sheol: in fact the
term Hades would be all but lost, save in the symbolical Apocalypse, were it not
for the explicit declaration that in the resurrection its victory will be taken
away: 0 Hades, where is thy victory!5 With the Lord’s resurrection Paradise
seems to have risen also into a lower heaven: as it were the third heaven6 if
not the seventh. Of the elevation of Paradise some hint was given when many
bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His
resurrection:7 these may have been the mysterious symbolical firstfruits, whose
spirits reunited to their bodies appeared unto many on their way with Christ
from Paradise to heaven. The disembodied ungodly are never spoken of save as
being generally or by implication in Hades. It is said in the Apocalypse that
death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.8 As
symbols they vanish for ever; and the real persons they represent know the
second death in the lake of fire,9 which is the same as the Gehenna of fire in
the Gospel. In the language of Christendom these terms have been exchanged for
hell, which is moreover often regarded as, in its full terror, existing for the
lost before the judgment. St. Peter uses yet another word, when he speaks of the
spirits in prison10 to whom the Savior preached or announced the accomplishment
of redemption

1 1 Thessalonians 4:14; 2 Php 1:23; 3 2 Corinthians 5:1; 4 Hebrews 12:23; 5 1
Corinthians 12:2; 6 2 Corinthians 12:2; 7 Matthew 27:52-53; 8 Revelation 20:14;
9 Mark 9:43; 10 1 Peter 3:19-20

HISTORICAL

Historical theology has here a wide domain, especially if we include, as we
ought, the entire range of the opinions and practices of mankind beyond the pale
of revelation EXTRA-BIBLICAL BELIEFS

Comparative Theology gives ample evidence that all, or almost all, the religious
systems of antiquity have had their Region of the Dead. From east and west and
north and south all travel thither in their various systems of belief. In the
east, however, what we call the intermediate state was distorted into an
ever-recurring series of transmigrations until the final heaven of souls was
reached in a state of absorption into God. In all the mythologies with which
revelation came into contact there is an estate and a place and a government of
the lower world. So was it in Egyptian eschatology. So also in the classical
Hades or Plutus, and Persephone or Proserpine received the dead, the Inferi,
into Hades or Tartarus below it, and into the Elysian fields: their jurisdiction
being that of strict retribution. The speculations of mythology were far more
definite than those of the Old Testament in one sense; but had not in them the
distant Messianic hope that lightened the gloom of the Hebrew Sheol. And, when
the True Light appeared, the dim and distorted shadows projected upon the future
all vanished: giving place to a clear and definite doctrine of Hades, as linked
with the probationary past still, but now declared to be the threshold only of
the resurrection and eternity, neither of which was in distinct human conception
until the Gospel brought them out of darkness into light CHRISTIAN BELIEF AND
SPECULATION Many and various speculations of Christian Theology, which have not
been confined to any particular age, may be noticed

1. That of the SLEEP OF THE SOUL in the Intermediate state very early prevailed:
strictly speaking, it was the sleep of the whole man reduced for a season to
nonentity, to be called into existence by a new creation linking the personality
to its former self. This notion regards the spirit as only soul and having no
existence apart from the body: forgetting the tripartite distinction of body and
soul and spirit, according to which the immaterial principle in man is soul as
using a corporeal organization and spirit as independent of the bodily organ.
The article in the Creed " He descended into Hades " expressed the early
condemnation of this hypothesis. In the third century Origen opposed the same
belief as held by the THNETOPSYCHITAE. In the Middle Ages and at the Reformation
the speculation was revived; and again and again condemned under the name of
PSYCHOPAN-NYCHIA, or the spirit’s intermediate night The idea has exercised a
strong fascination on many who, like Luther occasionally, have found it hard to
believe in a continuance of consciousness without the corporeal organism; and
they have sought support in the fact that the dead sleep in Jesus:1 a figurative
expression which by no means favors the view. It has seemed to many that the
subject is relieved of much difficulty if we assume that in the consciousness of
the soul the moment of death is literally the moment of resurrection, the long
interval being in that consciousness less than a moment. But both the Lord’s
parable of Dives and the whole scenery of the Apocalypse present the
intermediate state as a scene of life. The Apostle says that to be absent from
the body is to be present with the Lord;2 and the tenor of the New Testament
runs that way. This hypothesis, however, has found and still finds many
supporters in modern times 11 Thessalonians 4:14; 2 2 Corinthians 5:8

2. The basis or tendency of that theory is materialistic; but there has never
been wanting a current of anti-materialist speculation, which, asserting that
the resurrection is past already,1 equally annihilates the intermediate state
though in a different way. Those who early represented this notion, condemned by
St. Paul, held the Gnostic error that redemption wrought its final triumph in
the deliverance of the spirit from its bodily prison. They supposed the dead to
have already come to the spirits of just men made perfect;2 misunderstanding
that perfection as the release from matter of all creaturely existence. This
error, like the former, is inconsistent with the uniform doctrine of Scripture
that the dead are assembled in an antechamber of eternity, a waiting-place for
final decision; and that the consummation of the individual, whether for weal or
woe, is that of his triple nature: death being a violent dissolution of elements
never intended to be disjoined, and the resurrection being the raising of the
whole man in his integrity in order to his appearance in the body of his former
probation before the bar of God 1 2 Timothy 2:18; 2 Hebrews 12:23

3. The dogma of Purgatorial discipline in the great Interval has been already
alluded to when the sacraments were studied. It must be noticed here in its
connection with a vast system of formulated doctrine, concerning the souls of
the departed, which has been erected especially by the Western Church. The older
mediaeval theology taught that there were five regions: Heaven and Hell, on the
extreme frontiers of Hades, if not beyond; the Limbus Infantum, where the
unbaptised infants wait, without suffering but without the vision of God, for
their higher beatification; the Limbus Patrum, where in the same negative state
of mere poena damni the Old-Testament fathers long expected Christ’s coming and
finally welcomed Him; and Purgatory, where the mass of imperfect Christians are
fitted for heaven, aided in the process; whether that of literal or of spiritual
fire, by the suffrages of their friends on earth. This dogmatic addition to the
Faith was confirmed at the Council of Trent. But it does not profess to find its
foundation in Scripture. It is true that it appeared early among the tendencies
of Christian speculation

We find traces of it in Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine; it was largely
developed by Gregory the Great—the last of the Fathers proper, and the first of
the Pontifical Fathers— about the beginning of the seventh century; and it was
laid down as dogma by the Council of Florence in 1439. But it is not the
unforced teaching of any passage in the sacred Canon. And the superstitions
based on it in the current Roman theology, with the abuses to which it has
ministered, are its sufficient condemnation: if any other argument is needed
than its too close affinity with heathenism, and the dishonor it puts on the
perfect satisfaction of the Atonement, 4. Modern views of the continued
application of the Redeemer’s work in the other world do not lie open to the
same objections; though they also are beset with much difficulty and equal
danger. They have taken a variety of forms, some having a seeming Scriptural
support, others only defended by sentiment. It has already been seen in
connection with the Mediatorial History of the Redeemer that His Descent into
Hades was accompanied by a proclamation of His Gospel. Sound exegesis requires
this; but sound theology will be careful to found no dogmatic teaching upon a
revelation which is strictly limited to our Lord’s own personal assumption of
the keys of Hades.1 He is declared to be the Lord of the dead;2 but it is not
said of Him or of His servants that they preach to the dead

Nothing is more plainly revealed, for all who hear the Gospel, than this:
Behold, now is an accepted time; behold, now is a day of salvation.3 There is no
branch of theology the study of which requires more self restraint and strict
submission to the Word of God 1 Revelation 1:18; 2 Romans 14:9; 3 2 Corinthians
6:2

5. There is need of avoiding opposite extremes. It is hard to conceive that the
spirit which we trace only as developed in strict harmony with a bodily organism
can exist in full consciousness without it; but we must hold that mystery of a
resurrection before the resurrection—a resurrection of the spirit from its body
—until the time of the revelation of all solvable mysteries shall come. It is
equally hard to understand that the spirits of just men consummated1 with Christ
are only in a state of comparative consummation, and wait for a fuller
disclosure of what is to them almost as full of mystery as it is to us. Yet it
is so, and we must submit to regard the intermediate state as one in which the
grace of patient waiting will have her perfect work;2 the grace which
pre-eminently belongs to time, and in time almost shares the supremacy of love,
but cannot exist in eternity. The reaction from the dogma of purgatory has
tended rather to efface the distinction between what is after all the kingdom of
the dead3 and what has yet to be revealed as the kingdom of the living beyond.
The extremes of assuming a perfect unchangeable fixedness of condition, on the
one hand, and of assigning to Paradise the true work of probation, on the other,
must be avoided. The permanent and consummated destinies of the good and the
evil are associated with the day of judgment and its issues. We must not
antedate those issues; nor ought we, with regard either to the saved or the
lost, to think of heaven as entered or hell as opened before the crisis of which
the angelic oath gives a watchword, that there shall be time no longer,4 chronos
ouketi estai. Not until then may either exegesis or speculation think that the
mystery of God should be finished 1 Hebrews 12:23; 2 James 1:4; 3 Romans 14:9

6. The Apocalypse shows that the disembodied spirits of the saints follow the
Lamb whithersoever He goeth.1 Remembering all that this phrase means in the
Gospels, we conclude that they enjoy the blessed discipline of communion with
Him. Moreover, we are told that having washed their robes, and made them white
in the blood of the Lamb,2 they still serve Him day and night in His temple;
that the Lamb Which, is in the midst of the throne shall feed them;3 that, with
us their fellow-servants also and their brethren,4 while they reign on the
earth, they are still companions in the kingdom and patience that are in Jesus,
crying: How long, 0 Lord?5 All this indicates a progress in blessedness and in
the development of moral energy during the disembodied state. They have the
discipline of hope; and of hope as not yet eternal in the heavens, though no
longer probationary. They wait for the consummation, their Lord’s and their own.
And their progress in the spiritual life is not simply that which after the
judgment will go on for ever, but an advance from stage to stage peculiar to the
intermediate state. Time is behind them; time is also before them; the day of
eternity is not yet fully come 1 Revelation 14:4; 2 Revelation 7:14-15;
Revelation 7:17; 3 Revelation 6:11; 4 Revelation 1:9; 5 Revelation 6:10

7. As to the locality and the bodily investiture of this state we know only that
we know nothing. In proportion to the scantiness of revealed doctrine has been
the abundance of speculation. By some it has been supposed that the spirit is
naked and absolutely bodiless: an idea which our physical training on earth
renders inconceivable, but which is not on that account to be rejected. Others
suppose that the descriptions of the Apocalypse are not entirely figurative, but
that the separated spirit will as it were create for itself, or have provided
for it, an ethereal vehicle answering to the soul once animating the body But
this intermediate corporeity, this Prima Stola, which has found large acceptance
among modern theologians, and early received its highest poetical expression in
Dante, has no countenance in Scripture. The white robes1 of the Apocalypse are
by the Apocalypse interpreted: and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

2 The notion is inconsistent with the Scriptural idea of death, as well as with
the description of the departed as pneumata or spirits;3 and it is a peculiar
version of the first resurrection which unscripturally anticipates the
resurrection proper. No subject has been more fantastically dealt with; but
speculation is here misplaced. Suffice that all who die in the Lord are united
to Him in His glorified incarnate nature; and His heavenly body is their home 1
Revelation 3:5; 2 Revelation 7:14; 3 Hebrews 12:23

8. This leads us back once more to the probabilities of the estate of the
ungodly departed, already hinted at in another connection. Whatever the progress
of the disembodied spirit of the saint may be from glory to glory, there is
nothing in Scripture to sanction the hope of any influences in the intermediate
state that shall tend to translate from their dishonor the disembodied rejecters
of Christ. In the present day the word of God is most keenly scrutinized for any
the faintest gleam of encouragement. But none is found upon which hope may be
surely grounded. Certainly as to the despisers of the atonement no language can
be more explicit than the testimony of our Lord and His Apostles. And as to
those who have not deliberately rejected Him of Whom they never heard, the
silence of revelation should be our silence. There is no distinct announcement
as to the publication of the glad tidings of redemption in the other state to
those who never heard them on earth. This, like many other secrets of that
state, is kept hidden in the Divine counsel, Son, remember!1 may seem to imply
that until the Day of Judgment warning counsel is given for profit; but those
words were spoken to one whose condition could not be changed: There is a great
gulf fixed.2 And, what is more, the definitive separation is not only ordained
of God but it is also declared to rest upon an internal disability: If they hear
not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from
the dead.3 The Savior certainly speaks of one kind of sin which is to be
forgiven neither in this world, nor in that which is to come;4 and it might
appear that there is pardon to be offered at least for all other sins. But it is
undeniable that the entire phrase was current in the sense of NEVER. Moreover,
the words might mean that the sin against the Holy Ghost would be committed as
well in the coming dispensation of the Messianic kingdom after Pentecost as in
His own preliminary dispensation. Certainly no doctrine can be based on such
designedly mysterious words. Undoubtedly the whole tenor of the New Testament
teaches us that, as there is none other Name under heaven given among men,
whereby we must be saved,5 all who are not saved must reject that Name in some
way revealed to them. From this conclusion neither Scripture nor human charity
permits us to decline. But how that light is to irradiate the dread future we
know not, and it is presumptuous even for charity too curiously to inquire: this
and many other mysteries must be left to the infinite love and the infinite
wisdom of the Holy Trinity. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?6 1
Luke 16:25; 2 Luke 16:26; 3 Luke 16:31; 4 Matthew 12:31; 5 Acts 4:12; 6 Genesis
18:25 THE DAY OF CHRIST: RESURRECTION AND JUDGMENT The second coming of our Lord
is the one all-commanding event of prophecy and the future: itself supreme, it
is always associated with the universal resurrection, the judgment of mankind,
and the consummation of all things. Though these epochs and crises are in the
style of prophecy presented together in foreshortened perspective, they are
widely distinct. But while we treat them as distinct, we must be careful to
remember their common relation to the Day of the Lord; which is a fixed and
determinate period, foreshadowed in many lesser periods to which the same term
is applied, but the issue and consummation of them all THE SECOND COMING OF
CHRIST

Throughout the ancient economy a future period called the day of Jehovah appears
as the one perspective of all prophecy. In the New Testament this day is
declared to have come; all the purposes of the Divine mercy and judgment are
regarded as accomplished in the advent of Christ, which is the last time or the
end of the world. But the day resolves itself into days; and what Old-Testament
prediction beheld as one undistinguished whole is now divided into times and
seasons, which all however converge to one decisive and fixed event, the return
of Jesus from the invisible world. There is a rich and steady light thrown upon
the Christian day of Jehovah, which is variously described in relation to the
final manifestation of the Person of Christ, and the final consummation of His
work. As it regards the latter, there are some historical theories of very
considerable importance which must be examined THE LAST APPEARANCE OF JESUS This
event cannot be studied to advantage apart from the work of the Redeemer. But a
few observations on the final manifestation of His Person will pave the way;
besides being a fit tribute to the Lord Himself. The great crisis is connected
with Him as His final Mission, His second Coming, and in both His Day. In this
order we have a certain ascending progression, terminating in the Divine-human
dignity of the Lord Whose day is always associated with His highest glory. The
first expression suggests that even in heaven the Incarnate is still subordinate
and will be SENT of the Father, this being the end of His mediatorial estate of
humiliation. That He may send Jesus, the Christ who hath been appointed for you:
Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things.1 In
harmony with this the New Testament ends with the Revelation of Jesus Christ
which God gave unto Him.2 But in that revelation He foreannounces Himself as
waiting for the hour when in His majesty He will return to the earth with no
trace of His humbled estate. He will, as the glorified Divine-human Person,
COME. So had He promised His disciples: I will come again.3 This same Jesus,
Which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner,4 said the
angels of the Ascension omitting the Again. Behold, He cometh with clouds,5 is
the corresponding human testimony of the last Apostle when in prophetic vision
he beheld His glory and spoke of Him. Thus it is the coming, in one sense, in
another, it is the second coming, or the coming again of the Lord. Hence, also,
the Scripture rises above both these phrases, and speaks of that future event as
His Day,6 or that day,7 or the day of Jesus Christ,8 which is in the new economy
all that the day of Jehovah was in the old. The day of the Lord9 is the horizon
of the entire New Testament: the period of His most decisive manifestation in a
glorious revelation of Himself which could not be, and is never, predicated of
any but a Divine Person. And this may be regarded as the most emphatic word used
concerning the great Future

1 Acts 3:20-21; 2 Revelation 1:1; 3 John 14:3; 4 Acts 1:11; 5 Revelation 1:7; 6
Luke 17:24; 7 2 Timothy 1:18; 8 Php 1:6; 9 1 Thessalonians 5:2 THE CONSUMMATION
OF HIS WORK The Second Coming of our Lord is His final and definitive appearance
for the consummation of all things pertaining to His work of redemption 1. The
terms used to describe it are such as refer both to His Person and to His office

They must be taken in their combination as including both. The most prominent is
Parousia, indicating that when He comes He will always be present: the time of
His absence shall have passed for ever. It may not mean the blessed paradox that
present always by His Spirit He will then be always present in person: but the
word simply signifies His Presence, which will then be so different from what it
is now that the change from one to the other is no less than a coming again.
Hence it is apokalupsis, the disclosure or manifestation of Himself from heaven
which has received Him. It is the epufaneia, His manifestation in a glory which
His people will share: When Christ, Who is our life, shall appear,1 or be made
manifest, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory At His first coming, when
He became incarnate, the saving grace appeared, epefanee, and we still look for
the glorious appearing of the Great God and our Savior.2 These several terms
must be united. They are found all together in one classical passage. When the
Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, en tee apokalupsei tou Kuriou Leesou,
that Wicked, also to be revealed,3 He shall destroy with the brightness of His
coming,4 tee epifaneia tees parousias autou. Thus it follows from the
combination of all, that, while He is always present by His Spirit, He will yet
be revealed from the other world, from whence also we look for the Savior;5 and
His glorious power and perfections will attend Him for the rejoicing of His
saints, and the confusion of His foes 1 Colossians 3:4; 2 Titus 2:11-13; 3 2
Thessalonians 1:7; 4 2 Thessalonians 2:8; 5 Php 3:20

2. It is very important to note that this great event is always connected with a
complete end and consummation of that work which the Lord began in His first
appearance: which, indeed, had been commenced with the beginning of human
history, but still more truly commenced in the fullness of time. With regard to
His atonement, it is said that He will appear a second time without sin unto
salvation:1 that is, without any redeeming relation to the sin which He will
still find, and for the complete and bodily salvation of those whom He has
already saved in spirit. This is a cardinal text, and the variation in the
phraseology, chosen with great precision, must be observed. In this verse the
word is oftheesetai, while in another which says that He appeared to put away
sin2 it was pefanerootai: His manifestation between these two, now to appear in
the presence of God for us, is emfanistheenai, The first is the most visible
exhibition of Himself as King, in the judicial form of His kingly office. He
vindicates His atonement as against all who have despised it. Sin will be
finally punished as the rejection of Himself and His redemption. The Lord Jesus
shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking
vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ:3 upon all hearers of that Gospel who shall then be found without
Evangelical knowledge of God: of which more hereafter 1 Hebrews 9:28; 2 Hebrews
9:24; Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 9:28; 3 2 Thessalonians 1:7

3. Hence the Parousia is the object of expectation only to the Church as such,
as a collation of the passages in which it is used will prove. The word
literally means the Lord’s PRESENCE with His people for ever, and the tabernacle
of God is with men1 in St John. It is applied in Scripture, and in current
theology, to the beginning of that presence by a common metonomy; the Coming
being made to stand for what follows the coming The individual Christian has his
share in the hope; but not as expecting necessarily to see it. To him the night
cometh when no man can work.2 As to the corporate body the night is far spent,
the day is at hand.3 The Church never dies nor thinks of death, though she
buries her dead. But throughout the New Testament the two prospects are always
in view, and referred to in the same style. As the individual must remember that
death is at hand, though with every probability of surviving many years, so the
Church must remember the coming of the Lord, though it may probably be ages in
the distance 1 Revelation 21:3; 2 John 9:4; 3 Romans 13:12 THE TIME OF THE
LORD’S APPEARING The period of the Second Coming is perpetually referred to in
the New Testament; but in such a way as to demand the utmost caution in the
interpreter. The historical review of the question will bring it again into
consideration; meanwhile the following hints are of importance

1. It is evident that the Day of the Lord is one definite season or karios,
preceded by times or chronos. But it is evident also that the several terms are
applied to other events which foreshadow its coming. The whole space of the
Christian dispensation is described as these last days1 of which it is said that
the darkness is past, and the True Light now shineth.2 It is this of which the
Lord said, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it, and was
glad.3 He also spoke of events anterior to the final consummation as His coming.
For instance, when He declared, There be some standing here, which shall not
taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom.4 He referred
to the destruction of the Jewish polity, and to the Pentecostal glory of His
kingdom assumed in the Ascension, To that great event, immediately impending
over the generation to which the Lord was a Prophet, may be referred many of the
predictions which are sometimes referred to the final catastrophe. Moreover, it
is undoubted that every special intervention for judgment, whether in the case
of a church or even of an individual, is spoken of as a coming of the Lord. It
is, indeed, sometimes very difficult to decide when the prophecy leaves behind
all lesser accomplishments and points to the supreme consummation. But, allowing
all this, there is a constant and clear allusion to one definite day which marks
the second coming, or the return of Jesus to the earth which He has left 1
Hebrews 1:1; 2 1 John 2:8; 3 John 8:56; 4 Matthew 16:28

2. Again, it is obvious that the Supreme Prophet of His own dispensation has
made it a law of His kingdom that its final consummation shall for ever be
uncertain as to its date

Even after His resurrection He said: It is not for you to know the times and the
seasons, which the Father hath put in, His own power.1 During His humbled estate
He condescended to be a partaker in His human faculties of that ignorance: But
of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven
neither the Son, but the Father.2 Hence in His eschatological discourses He
answered the disciples’ double question, Tell us, when shall these things be?3
in such a manner as to prevent their attempting to define either the date of the
nearer end of the world, the destruction of Judaism, or that of the more distant
end of all things. He gave, after the manner of ancient prophecy, an answer that
embraced all the future in one sublime series of predictions: giving the
prominence to that more immediate catastrophe which concerned the present
generation; so much so that He did not hesitate to say: Verily, I say unto you.
This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.4 The final
consummation, however, was present to His thoughts, and nothing short of it,
when He added, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass
away. In His eschatological revelations in the Apocalypse the order is inverted.
First, it is said, Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him,
and they also which pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn
over Him;5 and then follows a series of subordinate comings before the end,
Behold I come quickly,6 which returns to the beginning again This is one key to
all the eschatological notes of the New Testament. St. Peter, speaking of the
great event, says, One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day,7 in order to suppress the spirit of restless impatience. Nor
is there a single passage in all the Apostolical writings which lends any help
to an exact chronological determination 1Acts 1:7; 2Mark 13:32; 3Matthew 24:3;
4Matthew 24:34-35; 5Revelation 1:7; 6Revelation 22:12; 72 Peter 3:8

3. In harmony with this truth, it must also be maintained that the New Testament
gives some hints of an historical development in its eschatology. There are some
events which are predicted as to take place before the return of Jesus

(1.) Our Lord Himself has given one clear note. And this Gospel of the kingdom
shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then
shall the end come.1 He does not say that all nations will receive it, though
St. Paul prophesies that the fullness of the Gentiles,2 to pleeroma ton ethnon,
will enter into Christendom, by a general conversion which leaves the question
of the personal conversion of all individuals untouched. Of course, it is
understood that these nations are literally the entire congregation of the
tribes of heathenism scattered over the whole earth. Let this be connected with
the commission given to the Christian company as represented by the Apostles;
and it will be manifest that the times of the Gentiles3 stretch over the whole
stadium of the present missionary work of Christendom. The final and proper
coming of the Lord cannot take place until the whole world has been, in the
New-Testament sense of the word, evangelized. The Lord will never again preach
His own Gospel in person, though He will be always with those who preach it unto
the end of the world.4 1 Matthew 24:14; 2 Romans 11:25; 3 Luke 21:24; 4 Matthew
28:20

(2.) The calling of the Gentiles implied, in a sense, the diminishing of
Israel’s prerogative; but if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the
world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?1 The
conversion of Israel is to follow the ingathering of the heathen, and issue in a
virtual resurrection of Christendom. The whole tenor of Scripture points to a
restoration of the Jewish nation through its acceptance of the Messiah; and that
as taking place before the final return. St. Paul here also is the interpreter
of prophecy, as well as a prophet himself. At the close of the Epistle to the
Romans he gives its rightful prominence to the revelation of the MYSTERY which
was now at length made known to all nations for the obedience of faith;2 but on
his way to the close he had alluded to the same secret of heaven as affecting
the Jews. I would not9 brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this MYSTERY,
lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that hardening in part is happened
to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.3 The hardness of heart
that has fallen upon the rejecters of Jesus is to continue— not through any
determinate counsel of God, but in the order of their own probationary course;
as the same Apostle preached, Seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves
unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles4—until the great mass
of the heathen nations is at least nominally converted. But their hour will
come. As touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.5 The
descendants of Abraham must, sooner or later, enjoy the fulfillment of a
thousand promises, and enjoy them as a people; for the gifts and calling of God
are without repentance.6 There will be to them times of refreshing7 prepared for
by penitent faith. But this involves no restoration to their own land; nor any
distinction between them and the rest of mankind: the calling and gifts of the
Gentiles also are not repented of; they also may say We are the circumcision;8
and the children of the promise are counted for the seed.9 The middle wall of
partition is broken down10 for ever. And all the predictions of the Gospel which
introduce the entire scenery of the Law and the Temple are to be understood as
figurative representations of the Christian Church

1Romans 11:15; 2Romans 16:24-26; 3Romans 11:25; 4Acts 13:46; 5Romans 11:28;
6Romans 11:29; 7Acts 3:19-21; 8Php 3:3; 9Romans 9:8; 10Ephesians 2:14

(3.) What this life from the dead1 may mean is part of the MYSTERY2 of the great
change in the relative position of Israel and the Gentiles which will take
place. It is not the literal resurrection; for the Lord has not yet come. It is
doubtless the great result to the Catholic Church; and we may make it the
foundation of the largest millennial hopes that ever gladdened the hearts of
Christ’s suffering people. There is in prospect a resurrection state of His
cause in comparison of which all previous life has been death. Though the first
resurrection has long begun, and multitudes of souls have heard the voice of the
Son of God and lived, yet the future age has in store the more abundant life, of
which we enjoy at the utmost only the firstfruits 1Romans 11:15; 2Romans 11:25

(4.) Yet the coming of the Lord will not even then be literally at hand. A great
Apostasy, or a series of apostasies, governed by one spirit of Antichrist, and
issuing in one mysterious development, is in the unrolled history of the Church
before the Lord’s Day This enemy of the Faith is described as having two
characteristics: it is a political power, and a gigantic spiritual delusion,
separate and combined. But these will be finally concentred in one personality,
the anomos, that lawless One,1 who is sometimes called the Antichrist
pre-eminently. This Antichrist, if that is his name, no man knows. Previous
manifestations, as St. John teaches, have never been wanting. The Roman power or
the Beast has been broken, but other forces, political and intellectual, have
always been opposing, and will reach a height as yet unparalleled. Spiritual and
ecclesiastical corruption in a carnal church has overshadowed Christendom for
ages; but it has a career yet to be run, before it will vanish away. Prophetical
theology has its many hypotheses for the explanation of the symbols of Daniel
and the Apocalypse, and the plain words of St. Paul. But there has not yet been
found on earth the power or the being to whom all St

Paul’s terms are applicable. Before the end he will be made manifest. Of the
tribulation thence resulting, when Satan, hitherto bound, is for a little season
let loose, our Savior said that it will be such as was not since the beginning
of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.2 For it will be the last: the
longsuffering of Jesus will be exhausted. When His Church shall be oppressed to
the uttermost He will suddenly appear, taking vengeance on them that know not
God, but to be glorified in His saints.3 12 Thessalonians 2:8; 2Matthew 24:21;
32 Thessalonians 1:8-10

HISTORICAL On the subject of our Lord’s Return, Christian speculation has from
the beginning found matter of deep and inexhaustible interest. Errors have
abounded; and all the more as the standard of appeal is the prophetic, and
therefore the obscurer, part of Scripture. The history of opinion may be traced
with ease so far as concerns the leading idea—that of the Millennial
Kingdom—which has been its centre. There have been no sects based solely upon
opinions on this topic; but almost all Christian communions have been more or
less infected by them. It will be sufficient to note the critical stages of
thought in the ante-Nicene age; the aspect of the question during the Mediaeval
times down to the Reformation; and its development in more modern theology

1. But first it must be observed that the New Testament itself contains the
germs of all subsequent speculation on this subject. Beginning with the
Apostles, we find the restless spirit of inquiry as to the future dates of the
Divine dispensations at once repressed by our Lord: in an interdict which was
never afterwards removed. He who well weighs the words of Jesus will never feel
any disposition to calculate the times and the seasons: not even when the
Apocalypse earnestly enjoins their study generally. The Thessalonians were
disposed to err on this subject; and the Apostle simply declares that the coming
of the Lord must not be regarded as instantly impending: he does in fact
intimate that all thought on this subject must take account of intermediate
events. The visions of the Apocalypse described, for the then present community,
scenes which were shortly to come to pass, for the encouragement of the
suffering Church; but those who first read them were not taught precisely when
to expect the downfall of the persecuting emperor, and the events that followed.
And, on the whole, the tone of New-Testament teaching regards the Day of the
Lord, His coming and His eternal reign, as at hand always. Neither the Apostles
nor the Churches knew when He would come. Nor can we without presumption suppose
that any study of the prophecies will give us a knowledge denied to them

2. There was an early CHILIASM, or MILLENARIANISM—the Greek and Latin forms
respectively of the thousand years of our Lord’s supposed reign on earth—which
was predominant in early times especially among the Jewish or Judaising
Christians: part of the residue of their carnal Messianic expectation so
tenaciously held. In the second century this doctrine was largely held by
orthodox Christians, and was adopted by the heretical Montanists. It was
undoubtedly the faith of some of the Fathers, such as Papias, Justin, Irenaeus,
Cyprian, Tertullian, and Lactantius; but by no means at any time the faith of
the Church, as is proved by its absence from all the early Creeds. It may be
said, further, that as a general belief Chiliasm vanished from Christendom with
the fourth century. It was resolutely opposed by those—such as Caius of Rome and
Dionysius of Alexandria—who denied the apostolicity of the Apocalypse, on the
twentieth chapter of which the notion of a pre-millennial advent is mainly
based. The Alexandrian theology, always spiritualistic and allegorical,
condemned it on account of its grossly carnal conception of the earthly reign of
Christ with the saints. Clement and Origen strongly argued against it in every
form. With the accession of the empire, under Constantine, to Christianity the
main inducement to cherish the hope of a speedy visible return of a victorious
Redeemer passed away. Augustine and other teachers introduced an interpretation
of the First Resurrection and the Millennial Reign which referred both to the
present estate of Christianity: and this has been in subsequent times the
prevalent catholic interpretation. Hence the doctrine of a pre-millennial Coming
of Christ was excluded from every form of the Early Creeds, the keynote of all
these being, FROM THENCE HE SHALL COME TO JUDGE THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

3. Mediaeval Chiliasm was generally the badge of fanatical and heretical sects.
At the close of the tenth century Christendom was deeply disturbed by an
undefined expectation that, the thousand years—dating from the first
Advent—having elapsed, the end of the world would come. When that fear was
suppressed the notion again deeply slumbered But after the Reformation, the
Anabaptists in Germany preached a carnal reign of Christ upon earth, as the
Fifth Monarchy Men in England afterwards did, and with frightful consequences to
life and morals. Hence the Lutheran Symbols were emphatic in condemning it. The
leading Confession conjoins in its condemnation the idea of a personal Reign and
of the final restoration of all souls: "Damnant Anabaptistas, qui sentiunt
hominibus damnatis ac diabolis finem poenarum futurum esse. Damnant et alios,
qui spargunt Judaicos opiniones, quod ante resurrectionem mortuorum pii regnum
mundi occupaturi sint, ubique oppressis impiis." Similarly the earlier English
Articles, or Confession of Edward VI. The Reformed Churches were equally
strenuous. The Belgic Confession assigns the date of Christ’s Coming as that in
which the number of the elect shall be complete. " Credimus Dominum nostrum
Jesum Christum, quando tempus a Deo praestitum, quod omnibus creaturis est
ignotum, advenerit, et numerus electorum completus fuerit, e coelo rursus
venturum." The Articles and Formularies of the Anglican Church are not in favor
of Pre-Millenarianism. " Christ ascended into heaven, and there sitteth until He
return to judge all men at the last day." It may be safely affirmed that the
Confessions of the Reformation, as well as its leading divines, were opposed to
the doctrine of two resurrections, and of a personal reign of Christ on earth
intervening between them THE PRE-MILLENNIAL ADVENT No Church having incorporated
the doctrine into its profession of faith, it has been in modern times confined
to schools of thought within the several communions, influenced, for the most
part, and led by individual students of prophecy. Modern hypotheses for the
solution of the mystery of a double resurrection are far too numerous and far
too diversified to be sketched even in outline. They spread into a great variety
of schemes; almost every holder of the general idea having his own
interpretation. From Mede, perhaps its earliest and ablest supporter in England,
and Bengel in Germany, a century later, through a multitude of students of
prophecy in nearly all religious communities, there has been an always
increasing number of believers in the intermediate coming of the Lord. Widely
differing on a thousand subordinate points they agree in this one, and all their
speculations may be said to be variations on the theme of a Pre-Millennial
Advent. This belief has, during the present century, been incorporated into many
systems, being almost the leading characteristic of some. Still it is generally
speaking held only by individuals and private schools of interpretation:
inconsistently by divines of the Lutheran, Anglican, Westminster, and some other
Confessions; consistently by those alone who in other respects deny the analogy
of the faith as expressed in the ancient creeds and the formularies of the
Reformation and the general consent of the Catholic Church, being limited by no
Confession

1. The main foundation of the system is the Apocalyptic passage which is thought
to predict the binding of Satan a thousand years, the first resurrection of
martyrs and other elect saints who reign with Christ upon earth, the subsequent
loosing of Satan for a season, a final apostasy, and the coming of the Redeemer
to vindicate Himself and His Church.1 Now we have seen that our Lord expressly
speaks in one and the same discourse of a first resurrection, understood
spiritually, and of a second resurrection understood physically.2 If we apply
the same principle here, this much contested symbolical prophecy is made
perfectly harmonious with the rest of Scripture, and the most substantial ground
of the pre-millennial advent is taken away 1Revelation 20:1-9; 2John 5:28-29

2. Those who understand both resurrections literally build so many and such
contradictory systems on this passage that it is impossible to reach any
consistent dogmatic result. Some, like Mede, admit a glorious presence of
Christ, but not a personal visible reign. Others think, following Bengel, that
there will be two periods of a thousand years. Some again hold that the reign of
Christ will be visible, at Jerusalem, and in the midst of His risen and
glorified saints; that the Temple at Jerusalem will be rebuilt, the ancient
sacrifices restored, though only as commemorative; and that the end of the
Christian economy, as it precedes the final consummation, will be little other
than another glorified Jewish dispensation. Rejecting this, many think that the
Lord will reign from heaven amidst His risen saints: He and they alike being
only occasionally visible, after the analogy of the Forty Days’ Interval between
the visible and the invisible Christ before the Ascension. A still more moderate
class allow that there are certain events in the program of prophecy which must
previously take place, and patiently wait for them; though the endeavor to
insert these events before the Return really undermines their doctrine. Baffled
in this endeavor, the majority are content to live in daily expectation of a
Savior, Whose coming will vanquish all opposition, and begin a new, better, more
effectual, and more glorious dispensation of the Gospel: though this requires
them to suppose that the residuary processes of the mediatorial work will be
miraculously condensed or foreshortened in a way for which the Scriptures allow
no encouragement

Finally, in despair of any other solution, not a few blend all theories into one
indiscriminate confusion, and profess to believe that the return of Jesus will
accomplish all prophecies in a manner of which no theory ever devised gives a
hint: that He will carry on a judgment for an indefinite period, and gradually
glorify the earth into a meet residence for a generation of the holy which will
be propagated, as some of them think, throughout eternity

3. The inconsistency of this hypothesis with the Scriptural representations of
the work of Christ is its sufficient refutation. There is but one visible
appearance of Christ set before the expectation of His people. We have seen the
several terms which describe this appearance; but it is observable that one, not
yet mentioned, is reserved by St. John for his final document. He speaks of the
Lord’s manifestation to take away our sins,1 efaneroothee; he speaks of only one
other manifestation: when He shall appear,2 ean faneroothee. Here is the clear
and sufficient final testimony of the Bible. Again, the testimony of Jesus
declares that the coining of the Lord will bring deliverance to the laboring
Church: lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.3 This is
inconsistent with such a Millennium as modern theories paint; in it the earth is
transformed as the scene of a reign in which only an election of the saints are
concerned; in which, moreover, the redemption from sin and from sorrow has not
taken place: not till afterwards there shall be no more death, neither sorrow.4
And the notion of such a personal reign after His glorious coming is encumbered
with hopeless difficulties. A church, made perfect in spirit and body, glorified
with the Glorified Christ, in the midst of a world still in sin and death,
cannot be reconciled with sober interpretation of Scripture. A rebellion of the
world against such a rule would be a thing incredible: the lapse of such a
Christendom would be death from life, a second and profounder FALL OF MAN. But
yet such a lapse must be assumed on this theory. Again, where would be place for
the judgment, awaiting all alike? There must be another resurrection of those,
who, during the Millennium, had been converted, and a second coming of the Lord
to raise them, and to conduct the more general judgment. Finally, the
intercession of Christ is represented as continuing ever, even as His spiritual
presence in His missionary Church endures to the end of the world; but both of
these are inconsistent with the Millennial hypothesis in any form which subtlety
may give it 11John 3:5; 21 John 2:28; 3Luke 21:28; 4Revelation 21:4

4. It cannot be denied that there are many difficulties in any view of the
subject, and in ours. There are wide differences of opinion among expositors who
hold fast the general principle that there is only one Second Coming answering
to the First. Some suppose, with Hengstenberg, that the Millennium dates from
the establishment of the Germanic Empire, about 800 A.D., and that it is now
behind us, with the end close approaching

Others, and they are the majority, assume that the thousand years indefinitely
describe a future triumphant state of the Church that will be followed by a
temporary lapse, after which the Lord will suddenly appear for the destruction
of the yet unrevealed leader of the final opposition. Others fall back upon the
interpretation which may be called the catholic one, since it ruled the mind of
the Church from the time of Augustine. It is content to understand figuratively
the glowing representations of the ancient prophecies as applying to the present
Christian Church. It takes the Apocalypse as a book of symbols, which does not
give consecutive history, but continually reverts to the beginning, and exhibits
in varying visions the same one great final truth. Satan was bound or cast out,1
when the Savior ascended: he has never since been the god and seducer of the
nations as he was before, and as he will for a season be permitted to be again.
The saints, martyrs, and others—the martyrs pre-eminently—now rule with Christ:
and hath made us a kingdom!2 they themselves sing; and they reign upon earth.3
The Apostles, and all saints, have part in the first resurrection,4 and in the
present Regeneration reign with Jesus, though the future Regeneration shall be
yet more abundant The unanimous strain of prophecy concerning the glory of the
Messiah’s kingdom is to be interpreted as partly fulfilled in the spiritual
reign of Christ in this world which is not yet fully manifested as it will be;
and partly as the earthly figure of a heavenly reality hereafter

There can be little doubt that the principle is correct which makes this great
vision a recapitulation of the whole contest of our Lord with Satan: the
strongMan 1:5 who was bound6 by the Stronger than he. The Angel is He Who was
manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil,7 and Who gave His
people the pledge of victory over all the power of the enemy.8

1John 12:31; 2Revelation 1:6; 3Revelation 5:10; 4Revelation 20:6; 5Luke
11:21-22; 6Matthew 12:29; 71 John 3:8; 8Luke 10:19 THE RESURRECTION The
resurrection of the dead, as the immediate effect of our Lord’s coming, will be
the first or preliminary act of the consummation of His redeeming work. It will
be to the entire family of Adam the restoration of their bodies to the spirits
from which death had severed them; but it is the specific rising again of the
saints in union with their Head of which the New Testament especially speaks.
The prominent notion given us is that man recovers his entireness; his flesh
being adapted to a new sphere, and resumed in order to its final glorification
CHRIST AND THE RESURRECTION In its relation to the Redeemer the resurrection is
of essential, fundamental, and universal importance. It gives Him one of His
pre-eminent names: I AM THE RESURRECTION.1 And there is no function of His
Messianic office which is more habitually and more exclusively referred to
Himself! As the Prophet He first revealed it fully, not as a new doctrine bat as
one that had been in obscurity; as the Priest He procured it by His atonement,
which was the ransom of the whole nature of man; and the word of His authority
as King will effect it. Without following this specific arrangement we may with
advantage trace through the New Testament the connection between the Saviour’s
work and the resurrection of all men

1John 11:25

I. Our Lord has confirmed and perfected the imperfect revelation of the Old
Testament: this was part of that life and immortality on which He shed His light

1. He expressly declares that the resurrection was everywhere in the old economy
presupposed. The rebuke of the Sadducees was very explicit. But that the dead
are raised, even Moses shewed at the Bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.1 As the children of God, so
called in the Saviour’s new terminology, are the children of the resurrection,
so the ancient fathers were, and are, and will ever be His in their integrity:
His now in their spirit, hereafter in spirit and body. The key thus put into our
hands by the Master His Apostles have instructed us to use freely. Concerning
Abraham we hear again that he offered up Isaac, accounting that God was able to
raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure:2
this FIGURE of the future resurrection of Jesus and of the general resurrection
in other forms runs through the Old Testament. It was with this confidence that
the patriarchs desired a better country, that is, an heavenly,3 not without
allusion to which Joseph gave commandment concerning his bones.4 The Psalms
often rise to the hope of a redemption from Hades, generally, and in such
language as implies a restoration of all that death shall consume in the grave:
but God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,5 the object of the
redemption being the psychical soul, animating a body, as well as the spiritual
soul kept in prison. And to that hope God responds in Hosea: I will ransom them
from the power of the grave,6 where there is the remarkable addition that a
figurative is based upon a literal truth. The same may be said of many passages
which refer in the like figurative way to the resurrection; such as the
wonderful prophecy, Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall
they arise,7 and the vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel The translation of Enoch
and Elijah shed more or less brightness on all the conceptions of subsequent
ages. It may be said generally that the literal restoration of the body was but
dimly alluded to, and that with special reference to the saints. In Daniel,
however, the literal resurrection is proclaimed, strictly as universal, and as
linked with judgment: And many of them that deep in the dust of the earth shall
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.8 In
this, as in some other points of revelation, the prophecy of Daniel seems to
take a large step towards the New Testament: this is specially observable in the
combination of resurrection and judgment

1Luke 20:37; Luke 20:36; 2Hebrews 11:19; 3Hebrews 11:16; 4Hebrews 11:22; 5Psalms
49:14-15; 6Hosea 13:14; 7Isaiah 26:19; 8Daniel 12:2

2. But St. Paul speaks of the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, Who hath
abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the
Gospel.1 Though the distinction between Pharisees and Sadducees proves that the
resurrection was accepted and believed by many, and our Lord appeals to Martha’s
latent faith in it, yet He always speaks, as His disciples do, of the
resurrection as a truth which only in the Gospel is fully announced and
confirmed. The proclamation of the glad tidings counteracts death in all its
manifestations. Taking up that last prediction of Daniel the lifegiving Redeemer
sums up His great gift as consummated in two stages. After having said that the
believer is passed from death unto life He speaks of the hour that cometh, and
NOW is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
shall live; and then He speaks of the hour that is coming— and not now is—in the
which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they
that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil
unto the resurrection of judgment.2 The fuller revelation of immortality and
eternal life includes, therefore, the foreannouncement of a resurrection of the
whole man, and of the whole race of man, to an endless existence

When, accordingly, we hear the Savior uniting the life of His own people with
their resurrection—that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may
have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day3—we must remember
that this limitation, like that of St. Paul and St. John afterwards, presupposes
the background of that earlier passage 12 Timothy 1:10; 2John 5:24-29; 3John
6:40

II. As to the relation of the Redeemer’s person and work to this event, the
testimony of the New Testament is fall and explicit: the Lord’s own words here
leading the way

1. He calls Himself and is called generally the Life;1 and this largest name is
on one solemn occasion limited to the bodily resurrection, with the sublime Egoo
eimi appended: I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.2 The Redeemer’s testimony
here is the grandest and most comprehensive we have on the subject: the I AM
includes a source of life and power deeper than the mediatorial: For, as the
Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in
Himself.3 But the order of the words indicates that life, as it concerns us, is
bound up with the resurrection. Man is appointed to pass through a rising again,
in order to final and unchangeable life: he must know the power of a first
resurrection for the soul, and a second for the body. Both these are described
in the words that follow, presenting the Lord’s relation to us. Here, however,
we have to do with the body. And the importance of its resurrection the Savior
exhibits by the fact of His progressive miracles in the three acts of recalling
life: to show that the Son of Man had power on earth, as to forgive sins, so
also to raise the dead, He restored the spirit of the daughter of Jairus, which
had scarcely left the body; He arrested Death on the way to the sepulcher with
his prey, in the miracle at Nain: and He made him give up Lazarus after some
days in the grave 1John 14:6; 2John 11:25-26; 3John 5:26

2. But it is difficult here to separate the Person from the work The universal
resurrection is, like everything in the process of human development, the fruit
of the Atonement; though this is not clearly stated, save in connection with the
universal judgment, it necessarily flows from the mediation of the God-man.
Because He is the Son ofMan 1:1 He hath authority both to raise and to judge all
men. This will be the last function of the mediatorial lordship: requiring
Divine power in the hands of a Man. I; will be like the Lord’s own resurrection,
the sum and consummation of all miracle: rather as it were a second creation,
the formation of ALL human bodies out of the dust as at first Adam was formed,
but in a resurrection which shall preserve their identity for ever. The new
creation shall be a reconstruction also

1John 5:27

III. With special reference to His people, the risen Lord is the Pledge and the
Pattern and the Source of their resurrection life

1. He is Himself, as the PLEDGE, called the Firstfruits of them that slept,1 and
the Firstbegotten of the dead:2 in this sense also the Prototokos besides being
such as the Son before every creature,3 and as the Incarnate brought into the
world.4 In no relation more emphatically than in this He and His saved people
are one: the resurrection is of the righteous and unto life; it is efanastasis.
When St. Paul uses this term, he indicates that those who rise not to eternal
glory remain, as it were, dead, or rise only to die again Their resurrection is
only to the second death.5 As there is a better resurrection,6 in comparison of
the resurrection back to the present life, so there is also a better or a true
resurrection in comparison of the resurrection of judgment.7 And of that
specific rising from the dead Christ is the pledge

11 Corinthians 15:20; 2Revelation 1:5; 3Colossians 1:15; 4Hebrews 1:6;
5Revelation 20:6; Revelation 20:14; 6Hebrews 11:35; 7John 5:29

2. The glorified body of the Redeemer is the PATTERN after which the bodies of
His saints will be raised. Speaking of our spiritual conversation in heaven,
with which, therefore, the body has nothing to do, the Apostle says: From whence
also we look for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; Who shall fashion anew the
body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of His glory.1 There are two words
here of great importance: the summorfon suggests the same idea as that above in
conformable unto His death:2 the body is to be subject to the blessed law of our
predestination to be conformed to the image of HisSong of Solomon 3:1-11 This
word CHANGE is not the same as in the Corinthian chapter; here it is
metascheematísei, which refers only to the new fashion of the risen body; there
it is allageesometha we shall all be changed,4 which refers to the entire
transformation of the already existing bodies. Now it is of this latter only
that our Savior was the pattern. He saw no corruption;5 and consequently could
not be a perfect example at all points of our restoration from death, any more
than He is the pattern at all points of our redemption from the final penalty of
sin. There is an analogy here with His example of holiness: He leads not the way
in the process of attainment; but is the consummate exemplar only of what we are
to attain. We shall live in glorified bodies like His; but in our redemption
from the dust He has no part with us 1Php. 3:23,24; 2Php 3:10; 3Romans 8:29; 41
Corinthians 15:51; 5Acts 13:37

3. And the risen Jesus is the SOURCE of that life, as the common life of man in
body and soul. Union with Him is the ground and condition and secret of the
resurrection of believers. It may not be possible to establish that here lies
the secret of the emphasis kid upon the efanastasis, the resurrection within the
resurrection. But it is certain that the passages which dwell most copiously
upon this event refer only to the rising of the saints

If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life
because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the
dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken
your mortal bodies by (rather, on account of) His Spirit that dwelleth in you.1
Hence, the great resurrection-chapter is, as it were, an expansion of the Lord’s
own word, Because I live, ye shall live also.2 1Romans 8:10-11; 2John 14:19 THE
RESURRECTION OF THE BODY The Object of the resurrection, as the active exertion
of the Divine-human power, is the Body. But this formula must be understood in a
wide latitude of meaning. It must include the perfect or undivided integrity of
the Man raised up; the actual sameness or unity of the body as the organ of the
spirit; and the change that adapts it to its new state when raised. Hence three
terms are the watchwords of our doctrine: the Integrity, the Identity, the
Glorification of the flesh raised in the last day

I. The main, or at least the most important, teaching of Scripture is that of
the return of the whole man to existence: to existence, that is, in the
integrity of the nature which in the idea of the Creator was that of a spiritual
being using a bodily organization. Man suffers in death the penalty of a
dissolution which will then be repaired. He is perfect only as spirit, soul and
body. Of physical death it is said, then shall the dust return to the earth as
it was;1 the psychical soul, the spirit as using material organization, in that
sense of necessity vanishes with it. The spirit shall return unto God who gave
it: not into His essence, but into His keeping; for final issues which it was
not given the ancient Preacher to know. Behold, all souls are Mine,2 Jehovah
said once, in vindication of His righteousness as determining the destiny of
every individual of the race involved in hereditary guilt: and we hear, again
and again, the same vindication with reference to their bodies. The man in his
entireness is the man before his Maker, both now and hereafter. Hence the
resurrection is the goal of all redeeming acts. We have, says the Apostle, the
firstfruits of the Spirit;3 but that is not the realization of all our hope; we
still groan within ourselves. The resurrection is the finished redemption of the
man; waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.4 We now
groan, being burdened, for rest: we shall after death groan, being unclothed, to
be clothed upon.5 Everywhere throughout Scripture it is the person who is said
to rise again. No criticism can rob us of Job’s ancient testimony: Though after
my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.6 The fathers
died and were gathered each to his people. Though all live unto Him,7 God waits
for their resurrection that He may fully appear to be the God of Abraham and the
God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.8 As He is not ashamed to be called their God;
for He hath prepared for them a city,9 so will He not be ashamed of them as its
inhabitants. Speaking of that city in which we have our politeuma, our
citizenship, St Paul says, He shall change our lowly body that it may be
fashioned like unto His glorious body.10 We are enrolled in our present
integrity, and in that shall we take possession. This general view of the
resurrection is of great importance

1Ecclesiastes 12:7; 2Ezekiel 18:4; 3Romans 8:23; 4Romans 8:23; 52 Corinthians
5:2-4; 6Job 19:26; 7Luke 20:38; 8Genesis 25:8; 9Hebrews 11:16; 10Php 3:16

II. The specific resurrection is of the flesh; and the express revelation of
Scripture is, that the same bodies shall rise from the graves. But the identity
of the body is not the identity of the man: nor is the identity of the body
dependent upon the continuation of the particles in their union which were
deposited in the grave. A brief reference to Scripture examples and testimonies
is sufficient to obviate misconception on this subject

1. If appeal is made to our Lord’s resurrection body, it must be remembered that
there is no analogy. We have seen that death never finished its work of
dissolution on Him: His bodily organization was inviolate. The only permissible
argument is that, as His glorification took place upon a physical frame, so also
will ours. But it is not said that we shall be raised as He was, in order to be
afterwards glorified: it is raised a spiritual body;1 raised immediately as
such. Nor have other instances of resurrection to which allusion is sometimes
made any bearing on the question of identity. Some few were restored to earthly
life by our Savior Himself, which, however, are not spoken of as patterns or
illustrations of the general resurrection; nor do we know even that Lazarus—
save in Martha’s supposition—was permitted to decay. The same Lazarus was
certainly restored 11 Corinthians 15:44

2. The only express reference to the subject is in St. Paul’s resurrection
chapter. The Apostle rebukes the folly of the doubter; and uses the argument of
analogy, not to solve what he leaves a mystery, but to obviate objection. The
present world furnishes abundant analogies but no resemblances of the future
resurrection. Nothing in the buried flesh germinates as the life in a seedcorn:
the new life is a direct creation. God giveth it a body even as it pleased Him.1
He does not mean that the disembodied spirit will form for itself a new vehicle;
but that in the resurrection the spirit will have a spiritual-psychical organism
given to it, which, in the wonder of Divine power, will be to it the same organ
it had in time. The literal return of the dissolved body he never affirms 11
Corinthians 15:38 III. The change wrought will fit the body for new conditions
of spiritual and psychical existence

1. There will be new heavens and a new earth,1 to which the new inhabitants will
be fitted. The children of the resurrection2 will be isángeloi, they neither
marry nor are given in marriage;3 and, as reproduction will cease, so also
nutrition, God shall destroy both it and them:4 hee koilía toís broómasin.
Though the relations of sex will not be entirely destroyed—for that would
destroy individuality —they will be glorified. The soul will be so renewed as to
be a new creation, and the body will be more than a mere restoration: a new
creation also. A strictly, carnal resurrection was part of a system of Judaizing
error which affected expectations connected with the second coming of Christ,
even as it had perverted the doctrine of His first coming and His relation to
the law. St Paul contends against that. But a still higher view is given by him
when he is not opposing heresy: Who shall change our vile body5—the body of our
humiliation—that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to
the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.6 What
that glorious body is to be, the last revelation of Jesus to St. John in Patmos
tells us: but that only dazzles our imagination while it enkindles our hope.
Those who never see physical death will be changed.7 This is a very strong word,
and illustrates that glowing series of counterparts which St. Paul dilates upon:
corruption and incorruption; dishonor and glory; weakness and power; a natural
body and a spiritual body, all consummated in this mortal, having put on
immortality.8

1Revelation 21:1; 2Luke 20:36; 3Matthew 22:30; 41 Corinthians 6:13; 5Php 3:21;
6Revelation 1:13-16; 71 Corinthians 15:51; 81 Corinthians 15:42; 1 Corinthians
15:44; 1 Corinthians 15:53

2. There is one express prophetic passage, which a few incidental allusions are
thought to confirm, seeming to predict a first resurrection of martyrs and
saints before the Millennial appearance and reign of the Lord. The prophet being
supposed to signify a literal resurrection, St. Paul is further supposed to have
referred to this when he said: Christ the Firstfruits, afterwards they that are
Christ’s at His coming; then cometh the end.1 But everything is here kept out of
view save the order of relation between the resurrection of the Head and that of
His members. There is no distinction or interval hinted at between their rising
and the rising of all men. Again, St. Paul is thought to have alluded to this
when he spoke of his hoping to attain unto the resurrection of the dead,2 teén
exanástasin teén ek nekroón. Even if teen ek is admitted into the reading, this
is no argument that the Apostle aspired to the distinction of sharing in a first
resurrection before the rest of the dead.3 Exanastasis and anastasis are, as may
be seen, used interchangeably. And the sequel of the chapter already quoted
proves that St. Paul, like the other writers of the New Testament, knows no
resurrection which is into the physical conditions of this life. There is no
passage that can be made without pressure to serve the theory of a twofold
resurrection: that in the symbolical vision of the Apocalypse being excepted. As
to this doubtful text more is said on the doctrine of the Millennium.4 It is
enough now to affirm that such a principle of interpretation must be applied as
shall bring it into conformity with the universal strain of the New Testament,
which speaks of one common resurrection to one common judgment. And that
principle is a spiritual sense put upon the first resurrection in that passage
11 Corinthians 15:23-24; 2Php 3:11; 31 Corinthians 15:44; 4Revelation 20:5

HISTORICAL

1. The resurrection is pre-eminently a doctrine of Christianity. The germs of
it, as of all other truths, are found in the Old Testament; but its full
development, as one branch of the life and immortality brought to light by Jesus
Christ, was reserved for the final Revealer. In the New Testament its
development begins afresh. Before His own resurrection our Lord announced it
generally as a truth, partly in connection with His ultimate judicial office,
and partly as a protest against error; but the Apostles, and especially St.
Paul, have given us the full positive basis of our expectation. And, in the form
stamped upon it by them, it is a doctrine new to the world, of which ancient
Hindu Zoroastrian, Egyptian, and other speculations scarcely gave a hint. It is
as a doctrine, whether of Anthropology or of Eschatology, a new and distinctive
Christian revelation

2. Every recension of the Apostles’ Creed contained this article: chiefly eis
sarkos anastasin, sometimes anastasin nekron. The early Fathers discussed the
subject with great fullness, either in pure exposition or in opposition to the
Greeks, who denied, and the Gnostics, who refined away, this truth. The Gnostic
sects, in their abhorrence of matter, and misinterpreting the first spiritual
resurrection, affirmed that the resurrection is past already.1 The Alexandrian
school, with Origen at their head, laid stress on the spiritual body2 of St.
Paul; and upon the difference between nekron and sarkos as connected with
anastasis: their Christian philosophy was infected by Platonism, which in some
cases, though not in this, elevated their conceptions. But they were opposed by
a very literal theory, which went to the opposite extreme: Irenaeus and
Tertullian accepted a first resurrection, after the analogy of the Lord’s body
during the Forty Days, to be followed by a final and fuller spiritualization.
These two opposite views—the spiritual and the carnal—alternated, until
Augustine struck out a middle course: Erit spiritui subdita caro spiritualis,
sed tamen caro, non spiritus; sicut carni subditus fuit spiritus ipse carnalis,
sed tamen spiritus, non caro. He, moreover, thought that all would rise at the
age of thirty years, the standard of perfection which Christ made the normal
one. The Mediaeval Schoolmen took the two opposite sides, but mostly adhered to
Augustine

Those who went to the extremes were exceedingly fanciful: some of them taught
that the same bodies would rise again; the same, even to the hair and nails, and
every character of the body committed to the grave 12 Timothy 2:18; 21
Corinthians 15:44

3. The Protestant doctrine was generally faithful to the ancient Creeds: the
Apostles’ Credo carnis resurrectionem; the Nicene, Exspecto resurrectionem
mortuorum; and the Athanasian, Ad cujus adventum omnes homines resurgere habent
cum corporibus suis

Subsequent Confessions conform to these with a remarkable unanimity. The
Lutheran divines very copiously dilated on this topic. They taught that the new
body would be the same substance, but clothed with new qualities: differunt non
ratione sub-stantiae, sed quoad qualitates et dona (corpora gloriosa, potentia,
spiritualia, coelestia). Impiorum corpora sunt vasa ad ignominiam et
contumeliam. Their high sacramental doctrine was thus expressed: " Our bodies
were framed in Adam for immortality; by the incarnation of the Son of God they
were taken into affinity with Him; in His resurrection they began to be
glorified; they were washed from sin in the laver of regeneration; by faith they
became members of Christ in His mystical body, the temples of the Spirit; and
fed and sanctified by the body and blood of Christ unto eternal life." 4. Modern
speculations are too various to be examined at length: they are, for the most
part, modifications of errors held in early times. There are a few which should
be mentioned, as a sound theology must oppose them. Some literalists would
restore the earthly body absolutely; while others, erring on the opposite side,
teach that a new spiritual body will be created without any point of union with
the old, or supposing that in the restitution the human form or eidos will be
retained without the human substance Not a few think that there is a germ of a
higher corporeity which remains in the body dissolved, and will form for itself
in some inexplicable manner a new frame: thus in fact making the BODY the
principle of resurrection. While others, like the ancient Greek fathers, teach
that anima corpus suum creat, and that the SOUL will, by the miraculous power of
God, form its own vehicle out of the transfigured matter around it There is a
well-known hypothesis, that the Holy Spirit invests the disembodied with an
ethereal vehicle which will be the nucleus of the resurrection body. But in this
matter we must be content to wait: it doth not yet appear what we shall be.1 The
new creation at the end will after all have some analogy with that at the first,
when God created the body. Behold, I make all things new:2 a second time Let us
make man.3 11 John 3:2; 2Revelation 21:5; 3Genesis 1:26 THE JUDGMENT The
judgment is emphatically the final revelation of the Judge: as such the
Consummation of a judicial work that has ever been going on in the world. It
will be executed by Christ as God-man, in strict connection with His coming to
raise the dead; and its range will be universal and individual. The principles
of the judgment will be the application of sundry and just tests, which will
reveal the characters of all, to be followed by a final and eternal distinction
or severance. In the case of the ungodly this judgment will be condemnation in
various degrees but eternal; and in the case of the godly their everlasting
confirmation in glory and the rewards of heaven THE JUDGE The JUDGE is our Lord
Jesus Christ in His indivisible Person as the God-man; but His Person may be
regarded both as Divine and as human. The office requires both, and each, and
together

1. Assuredly God is the Judge of all,1 even in the Christian dispensation. And
Christ is God. None but the Creator can appoint the destiny of His creatures,
and bring to His bar all subjects of His dominion; but our Lord Jesus hath power
to subdue all things unto Himself.2 The Judge must of necessity be the Searcher
of all hearts: in Whose hands thy breath is, and Whose are all thy ways.3 The
Savior is appealed to as Thou, Lord, Which knowest the hearts of all men.4 There
could be no delegation to the creature of universal judgment, even as there
could be no delegation of universal and absolute miraculous power. Is there a
God beside Me ?5 . . . I know not any! If the Redeemer were appointed Judge as
simply man, according to the notions of some, His function would be only the
visible accomplishment of the judgment and sentence of the invisible God; but
that is not the style of Scripture. Our cause is altogether and only in His
hands 1Hebrews 12:23; 2Php 3:21; 3Daniel 5:23; 4Acts 1:24; 5Isaiah 49:8

2 Yet in the economy of redemption the Father hath given Him authority to
execute judgment also, because He is the Son ofMan 1:1 And He will judge the
world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained.2 In relation to no part
of His office is the manhood of Christ more necessary to our failing hearts, and
of no office therefore is it more expressly declared. He is not of like passions
with us, but He is of like flesh and blood; He knoweth our frame; He remembereth
that we are dust.3 His experience of temptation—notwithstanding His necessary
sinlessness—makes Him a sympathizing High-priest and a merciful Judge, in whose
Divine-human soul, now and ever, to the last extreme of what is consistent with
immutable holiness and law, mercy rejoiceth against judgment.4 1John 5:27; 2Acts
17:31; 3Psalms 103:14; 4James 2:13

3. Our Lord Himself declares that the Father judgeth no man, but Hath committed
all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor theSong of Solomon 1:1-17
In other words the judgment, as the last mediatorial act, is committed by the
most Holy Trinity to the Second Person as incarnate, because He is the Mediator
of God and men, Jesus Christ, Man; and the exercise of that function must
redound to His honor. Hence it will be the final vindication of His own dignity.
He who, at His first coming, was meek and lowly of heart,2 never speaks of His
second coming but in language of the most lofty self-assertion. Here only He is
the King, on the throne of His glory.3 His Divine-human majesty will receive its
rights in the judgment. In that day He will Himself be DISCERNED,4 or rightly
judged of, and seen as He is: then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn5
because of the dishonor done to Him by the human race. Accordingly, it will be
the overthrow of His enemies, then emphatically His own foes: those Mine
enemies.6 Whether it be the one enemy, or those who hold with him, the vengeance
of the Lord awaits them all alike. Sin will be reduced to its essence as
unbelief in Jesus, and its punishment is decreed as the act of Christ’s own
vindication of Himself. And it will be the final display of His saving
attributes towards His saints. The most profound secrets of the Saviour’s
gracious will to His people can never be known till then. Ye cannot bear them
now:7 words which were as applicable to the blessings of the Christian covenant
as they were to its mysteries. In this sense also that day will be the day of
the revelation of Christ and, lastly, our Lord will then vindicate His moral
government, exercised through all ages of His mediatorial history. He Himself
was the most signal instance of the anomaly that perfect goodness should be
encountered by perfect wrong. He will then vindicate Himself as the
Administrator of moral government from the beginning. The deep, strong argument
for a final judgment is the necessity for such a final rectification. He will
prove that this instinct of human nature has not been implanted in vain 1John
5:22-27; 2Matthew 11:29; 3Matthew 25:31-34; 41 Corinthians 11:29; 5Matthew
24:30; 6Luke 19:27; 7John 16:12 THE JUDGED The JUDGED are the Race of mankind,
in all its generations, and specifically every individual member of the race 1.
Throughout the whole economy of human things the unity of the race is maintained

Though all men will not literally undergo the penalty, it is appointed unto men
once to die;1 and still more absolutely after this the judgment:2 other things,
even death, are contingent; judgment like sin is certain. He cometh to judge the
earth;3 which in Daniel is more fully set forth: The judgment was set, and the
books were opened,4 when the Ancient of days did sit.5 In the New Testament the
doctrine of eternal judgment6 has become one of the principles of the new faith.
Before Him shall be gathered all nations:7 these words of the judicial Gospel
are very explicit They are confirmed in the Acts, He will judge the world in
righteousness;8 and in the passage which, taking it as a whole, gives perhaps
the largest and most solemn, and at the same time most gracious, view of the,
judgment: in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ,
according to my Gospel.9 The vision presented of the vast congregation of the
human race, the quick and the dead, is the most wonderful that the human mind
has ever been required to conceive: no finite thought can do it justice. Among
the last sayings of the Word of God on this subject there are two points to be
specially noted: the congregation of the nations are the quick and the dead10
and small and great:11 many who never died shall be judged, and all our
Saviour’s little ones who have not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s
transgression12 in any sense. The judgment, therefore, must be conceived as part
of a final administration generally, of which the inquisition of iniquity and
its requital will be only a part

1Hebrews 9:27; 2Psalms 96:13; 3Daniel 7:9-10; 4Hebrews 6:1-2; 5Matthew 25:32;
6Acts 17:31; 7Romans 2:16; 82 Timothy 4:1; 9Acts 10:42; 101 Peter 4:5;
11Revelation 20:12; 12Revelation 20:14

2. The individuality of the judgment is implied in all the passages already
adduced; and it is the most solemn secret of man’s own instinct. It is appointed
unto men once to die, and after this is judgment;1 even as He hath appointed a
day2 and the Judge. The only thing absolutely both universal and individual is
the judgment: not even sin and sorrow can compare with it in this. In the Old
Testament, we read God will bring thee into judgment;3 and in the New, Who will
render to every man according to his deeds.4 This obviates every false
presumption as to judgment by class, whatever form the notion may take. A
theory, never shaped into words, but which is sometimes called MULTITUDINISM,
silently infects many speculations. It is hard to reconcile the infinite detail
with Divine dignity; but not harder to receive a special judgment than a special
providence. Moreover, there is no common conscience: the conscience of every
living man is the sure pledge and earnest of an individual judgment. And it
precludes the thought that believers will escape the final ordeal. For we must
all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the
things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or
bad.5 Here there might be some doubt; as it is only said to receive the things.
But in another passage the contrary must have been stated, if true: So then
everyone of us shall give account of himself to God;6 to the Lord Christ. God
must be justified at the last day, as well as now, in absolving the sinner: now,
by the Atonement; then, by the form and reality of judgment, as declaring the
finished result of grace, and allotting to the saints their several rewards.
However, it must be observed that there is a difference put between the judgment
of the good and that of the evil. Judgment must begin at the house of God7 both
now and hereafter: but it will not be true hereafter that the righteous is
scarcely saved. The ordeal will not be then a doubtful one; its peculiar
strictness and severity are confined to the present life 1Hebrews 9:27; 2Acts
17:31; 3Ecclesiastes 11:9; 4Romans 2:6; 52 Corinthians 5:10; 6Romans 14:12; 71
Peter 4:17

3. The universality at once and the individuality of the judgment form one of
the most powerful arguments that can be used in dealing with men. St. Paul’s
application in the case of Felix is an instance in relation to the unconverted:
And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix
trembled.1 As to the believer he makes a most solemn use of it in another
passage: Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men.2 So, again,
with special rebuke to the spirit of human judgment and censoriousness: But why
dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at naught thy brother? for we
shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.3 And here we may refer to
the sublime descriptions of the scenery of the great day, which are found in
both the Old Testament and the New: some literal, such as the ministry of all
the holy angels,4 and especially the voice of the arch-angel and the trump of
God;5 some figurative, such as the books were opened;6 but all being the
translation into human language of the most tremendous realities that the mind
of man can conceive. It may be said that without these adjuncts of dread the
great day is scarcely ever mentioned 1Acts 24:25; 22 Corinthians 5:11; 3Romans
14:10; 4Matthew 25:31; 51 Thessalonians 4:16; 6Revelation 20:12 PRINCIPLES OF
THE JUDGMENT The principles of the Judgment may be exhibited and summed up in
the following five watchwords: the Test applied according to various measures of
probationary privilege; the Revelation of character; the Separation of classes;
the Execution of the condemning sentence; and the Confirmation or ratification
of the acceptance of the saved. All these will be combined in one result. The
omniscient Lord will justly apply His unerring tests THE STANDARD OF PRIVILEGE

1. The universality of the law of conscience is the first, and in one sense the
most comprehensive test, as preceding or underlying all others. Faith or
unbelief in Christ will be thus witnessed; though this standard is not generally
referred to in that case. But the moral consciousness of all men who have not
heard the Gospel will be appealed to: accusing or else excusing in the present
life according to the standard of the work of the law written in their hearts;
so, says St. Paul, it will be in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men
by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel.1 Hence this test, that of the internal
judge and deputy, will be the only one for a large number of mankind

Emphatically the Apostle speaks of the revelation of God, Who will render to
every man, according to his deeds;2 and that with reference to the Jew first,
and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God.3 How that
test will be applied to individual men and vast nations that never heard or
could hear the Gospel, we must leave to God the Judge of all.4 There is no word
in the Bible, we may be sure, that proclaims the perdition of the Gentiles as
such. How the Only Wise God our Savior5 will reconcile this righteous judgment
with the truth that there is none other Name under heaven given among men,
wherein we must be saved,6 than that of Jesus is a mystery; but not an
unsearchable one

St. Peter perceived that, as St. Paul taught, God is no respecter of persons;
but in every nation He that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted
with Him,7 and many have been bold to suppose that a like preparation for Christ
will hereafter both be accepted of Him and accept Himself. But this is beyond
the limits of dogmatic theology 1Romans 2:15-16; 2Romans 2:5-6; 3Romans 2:10-11;
4Hebrews 12:23; 5Jude 1:25; 6Acts 4:12; 7Acts 10:34-35 2. The measure of
revealed truth granted will be another test or standard of judgment With
reference to this very subject our Lord said of the Jews, They have Moses and
the prophets;1 and the Old Testament ends with its prediction of judgment thus:
Remember ye the law of Moses.2 Our Lord’s own words will be the standard,
specifically, to His own generation: It shall be more tolerable for the land of
Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee!3 More generally, this will be the
test for all who have heard the Gospel: The word that I have spoken, the same
shall judge him in the last day.4 And the measure of religious knowledge of the
Gospel imparted to peoples and individuals will, according to our Lord’s own
repeated exposition of the principle of judgment, constitute a subordinate test:
To whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.5 There are varieties
of light and manifestation, within Christendom itself, almost as distinct as the
line which divides the best heathenism from Christianity 1Luke 16:29; 2Malachi
4:4; 3Matthew 11:24; 4John 12:48; 5Luke 12:48

3. The several tests of Faith and Works, distinctly and combined, are
represented as constituting the standard applied only to Christians; but to them
both these will be applied (1.) Now, in relation to the judgment and its final
decision, faith and works are really one The work of faith1 is the sum and
substance of the whole life. Works will be the test and faith the test; but
these will be one and the same: faith the principle and works the expression of
a Christian life in Christ. We are justified now not by faith and by works; but
by faith without the merit of works, and with the evidence of works. So will it
be at the supreme vindication of the righteousness of faith 11 Thessalonians 1:3

(2.) That the works are, throughout the New Testament, made so prominent as the
judicial test has many reasons. It is the standing and most solemn rebuke of all
Antinomianism. It has also reference to that final and full manifestation of the
Divine righteousness, against all who might impugn it, which is made so
prominent everywhere

And, finally, as will be seen hereafter, the works will be the standard by which
the allotment of the various degrees of reward will be determined. Gradations
will be as manifold then as now: these will not be decided by faith but by
works. My reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be:1
this is our Lord’s last testimony on the subject 1Revelation 22:12

SELF-REVELATION

Both in the Old Testament and in the New the day of judgment is represented as
the final manifestation of all secrets: of all secrets, whether as such unknown
fully to man, or as known only to himself, or as designedly kept hidden by him
and known only to God. The depths, whether of the Satanic or of the human
spirit, are penetrated only by the Searcher of hearts. But nothing is more
constantly impressed than that all secrets shall then be made manifest. Only in
two applications is the term SECRETS used: to the mysteries of God’s Providence
on earth, and the mysteries of the human heart and life. But as to both the true
meaning of the word mystery is preserved: what is hidden in the present world
will be made known in the world to come

1. Hence all the judged will be in a certain sense their own judges. Our Lord
lays stress upon this in the parables of the Talents and the Pounds: Out of
thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant.1 The Holy Ghost is in
this life the representative of Christ’s judicial function; and He makes the
sinner condemn himself in the conviction of sin which is the voluntary
acceptance of the justice of the sentence. We may refer also to St. Paul’s
memorable words: If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.2 This
principle, applied to the Lord’s Supper, is of general application: we may have
boldness in the day of judgment.3 1Luke 19:22; 21 Corinthians 11:31; 31 John
4:17

2. The righteousness of the Judge will thus be vindicated: That Thou mightest be
justified in Thy sayings, and mightest overcome when Thou art judged.1 The
future Judge will, by the perfect correspondence between the books of His own
unerring remembrance and the books of the human consciousness read in the light
of that day by every man for himself, approve His own righteousness both in
justice and in mercy. And the present Judge keeps this now in our remembrance:
If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have
no cloke for their sin.2 1Romans 3:4; 2John 15:22

3. And thus the Redeemer will maintain His unshared glory. The last exercise of
judgment will be the last exercise of mercy. Mercy glorieth against judgment.1
The revelation of the holiest saints to themselves will prove that only infinite
mercy saved them: therefore the revelation of their own hearts to them also. But
that revelation will not be suffered to produce shame in those who are judged:
if a miracle is needed to efface this element from the memory of sin it will be
wrought; for nothing may interrupt the continuity of paradise and heaven

1James 2:13

SEPARATION The idea of Separation or discrimination inheres in the Greek term
krisis, and in all the disclosures of the judgment

1. It will be the final separation or sifting of the world. Judgment is even now
continually and indeed decisively proceeding. The Savior said: If any man hear
My words, and believe not, I judge him not.1 This must be understood as meaning
that His own preeminent work was salvation; and that final judgment was reserved
for the last day

Elsewhere He said: For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see
not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.2 As our Lord in His
own person for a season, so now by the preaching of the Gospel the Spirit
evermore, executes the offices of Judge. But no judgment in the economy of
grace, and within the bounds of temporal probation, is irreversible: there is a
great gulf3 between characters, but it is not fixed; but the judgment to come
will4 be final, absolute, and unchangeable. Hence it is the LAST or ETERNAL
JUDGMENT.5 1John 12:47; 2John 9:39; 3Luke 16:26; 4Acts 24:25; 5Hebrews 6:2

2. This separation, again, will be in two senses twofold: a broad separation
between two classes; and also a discrimination within those classes themselves.
As to the former, the distinction will be between the sheep and the goats;1 the
wicked and the just;2 the saints and those who obey not the Gospel.3 Everywhere
this division into two vast masses is maintained: acceptance or rejection of
Christ being the alternative. But within these great masses the same process of
sifting discrimination and decision goes on. For every man there will be a
distinct judgment, succeeding or included in the former, by which his position
and degree either in salvation or perdition will be determined 1Matthew 25:33;
2Matthew 13:49; 32 Thessalonians 1:8

CONDEMNATION

There can be no doubt that the term judgment is most frequently connected with
condemnation: this, in fact, is the more common meaning of krisis. Judgment
determining the sentence, condemnation pronouncing it, and execution
administering it, are almost synonymous terms with regard to the wicked: in
Scripture, as in the common language of human justice. It is katakrisis

1. This requires the strictest meaning of the term punishment. It is not a
Father’s chastisement the testimony speaks of: that is expressed by paideia; as
when we read, in three forms of this word, of the Lord Who scourgeth every son
whom He receiveth.1 Of that discipline it is said, Shall we not much rather be
in subjection unto the Father of spirits, AND LIVE? But this sentence is always
unto death. There is not one hint throughout the Scriptures of a discipline to
which the great day commits the rebellious that they may be purified and
amended. Surely, if it had been so, no economy of reserve would have kept back
the revelation 1Hebrews 12:6; Hebrews 12:9

2. As to the nature of the condemnation it is, negatively, loss, or the poena
damni or damnation: the quality and essence of sin being separation from God,
and its direct penalty separation from the soul’s life and centre and rest. Sin
is no other than the severance of the will from the Divine will. Our merciful
Lord never pronounced, nor ever will pronounce, a sentence more terrible than
this: to be without God in eternity is Hell

Depart from Me, ye cursed:1 cursed supremely in that departure itself Here we
have one instance of that series of correlatives running through all the
revelations of this stern doctrine which no subtlety of exposition can soften
away. Come, ye blessed of my Father!2 Depart from Me, ye cursed! Men in their
integrity come; men in their integrity depart. But, positively also, the
condemnation of judgment is to punishment internal and external: the departure
is not only from Christ but into everlasting punishment, kolasin aioonion. The
internal mourning because of Him3 is always connected in the figurative language
of Scripture with external suffering, and that inflicted by the wrath of the
Lamb.4 But what the dread figures mean it is not possible to define. We know
that no material emblems can describe, certainly they cannot enhance, the
blessedness of the vision of God; and we know also that no material emblems can
describe the misery of the conscious eternal exclusion from that vision. And the
penalty will be eternal. These shall go away into everlasting punishment.5 Here
there is no room for a timeless abstraction in the interpretation of the term
aionios. Whatever it means to the righteous it means also to the wicked, who
shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.6
The word punishment implies the abiding continuance of him upon whom the wrath
of God abideth.7 1Matthew 25:41; 2Matthew 25:34; 3Revelation 1:7; 4Rev. 4:16;
5Matthew 25:46; 62 Thessalonians 1:9; 7John 3:36

3. The judgment on the lost is regarded in Scripture as condemnation to bear the
fruit of his own doings. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.1
There is the sinner from whom the neglected talent is withdrawn, leaving the
spirit officeless, unmoored, and shut out: take from him the pound.2 And there
are the enemies of whom it is said: bring hither and slay them before Me. But
always the dreadful burden is laid upon the sinner himself. He is viewed as the
author of his own character, and as responsible for his own ruin. In the
integrity of his body and soul he reaps the fruit of his own devices: part of
his sin was the sensual misuse of the body; part of his sin was the turning away
of his spirit from God; in the reunion of body and soul he suffers the result.
And from this it follows that the final condemnation is that of a nature now
fitted for it: the harvest is the character formed by the seedtime. There lies
the most awful aspect of this awful subject. It is not that the Judge assigns
eternal punishment for temporal sin; but that sin is taken confirmed into
eternity. Non cessante peccato nequit cessare poena. It is not because man has
sinned only, but because his nature is turned away from God, and he sins still:
one of our Lord’s most solemn words of threatening prediction was this, Ye shall
die in your sins.3 1Galatians 6:7; 2Luke 19:24-27; 3John 8:24

4. That judgment will be accepted and submitted to by all throughout the
universe. No profounder mystery is in the Apocalypse than the hallelujahs which
are uttered over the demonstrations of the Divine wrath as they proceed from
judgment to judgment in their direful procession. Our Lord gives hints, of some
kind of remonstrance at the last. He interprets beforehand the thoughts of many
hearts as they receive from Him recompense for deeds done, or not done, to Him
in the persons of men, His representatives: as if, in His own absence as a
revealed Savior, human faith working by love might find in His needy ones
Himself in another form. But He says nothing of a thought remaining in any
created spirit suspecting or censuring a miscarriage of justice. On this,
however, we dare not dwell CONFIRMATION OF PAST SENTENCE

It is part of the dignity of the saints that the judgment in their case will be
only the ratification of a previous decree in their favor and already known to
themselves

1. Though judged, in the more general sense of that administrative word, they
shall not come into condemnation.1 Death was really the judgment to them; men
have often personified it in their instinctive hope as the Great Revealer.
Through it they pass into the presence of Christ Who receives them as a Judge
and Divider. Moreover, some descriptions of the resurrection, and notably the
great one of St. Paul, describe it as in its discrimination a preliminary
decision. This may be harmonized with the fact of a judgment, even in their case
a judgment to come.2 1John 5:24; 2Acts 24:25

2. Their Place and order in the State of salvation has yet to be determined.
Shame and everlasting contempt1 are only for the ungodly; but Daniel himself
must stand in his lot at the end of the days:2 in the degree purchased by a life
of duty. And this suggests a wonderful paradox, that believers are in Christ
even while standing before Him, and they hope, like St. Paul, to be found in
Him.3 And still another passage finds here its solution Do ye not know that the
saints shall judge the world?4 which is St. Paul’s version of our Lord’s Judging
the twelve tribes of Israel.5 Every individual saint will be confirmed in the
state and position for which his Christian character fitted him. He will have
his own particular one among the many mansions; his own specific jurisdiction,
whether over the ten or the five cities; his own degree of the Vision of God
1Daniel 12:2; 2Daniel 12:13; 3Php 3:9; 41 Corinthians 6:2; 5Matthew 19:28

3. It may be said finally that the last Judgment will, in the case of believers,
introduce a new economy of service in the universal kingdom of the Triune God,
no longer the kingdom of the Mediator. The infinite variety of employments which
the Savior always in His parables suggests to our expectation and hope will
occupy the talents and individual gifts of the redeemed for ever. But in that
new world they are not, nor can again be, in probation. Their state is
confirmed, and will admit only of a necessary development of good. Hence there
is not, nor can be, any Second Day of Judgment

4. The judgment on evil spirits is represented as in their case also the
confirmation of a past sentence. Of them it is said that God spared not angels
when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of
darkness, to be reserved unto judgment:1 which judgment is further said to be
the one last judgment of the great day.2 The angels who never fell will without
any ordeal be established in their everlasting order; and, with saints already
saved, witness the judgment of the rest and join with the Redeemer in the
exercise of that judgment they joining as His attendant ministers, and the
saints in virtue of their union with Him as their Head 1 2 Peter 2:4; 2Jude 1:6
THE CONSUMMATION The final issues of our Lord’s return may be said to be the
consummation of all things

This, with reference to the Redeemer, will be the end of His mediatorial kingdom
as such, while as it respects Man it will be the finished redemption of the
race, and its restoration to the Divine ideal and primary purpose of the
Creator. In regard to the scene of redemption, the world, it will bring in a
renewal or transformation; and, as to the Church of Christ collectively and
individually, it will seal its perfection in the eternal vision of God and
blessedness of the heavenly state

Generally, there is a close of all things which is only a new beginning of all.
The supreme telos is the point, the vanishing point, to which all the rays of
revelation converge: Then cometh the end.1 With reference to this, as well as to
all subordinate processes of His work, our Lord said: The things concerning Me
have an end.2 As every part of the Bible, and the whole volume of the Book, is
finished with its Amen, so the great and boundless scheme which it records waits
for its close, when the entire universe shall respond with its own Amen. But
with this there is always conjoined the idea of a new beginning

Behold, I make all things new.3 The re-established order will be so new that the
old things shall hardly come to remembrance; but the relation between the new
and the old is in many points a mystery reserved. Meanwhile, the combination of
these is the only notion of CONSUMMATION, an end opening to a new beginning. The
end of human development, combined of sin and redemption, is but a contribution
from one little section of what is to us an unlimited universe presided over by
a Being Whose infinite resources prepare our feeble minds for wonders which we
cannot sketch, even in outline, to our imagination

Human science has taught us much of the amazing consummation which the physical
universe has reached; the science of faith knows no limits to its hope. There is
a third tetelestai of the Divine economy, the fullness of time in the fullest
sense, which we expect. The first was when the world was finished as the scene
of redemption: the second was when the Lord’s cry declared the new creation
finished. We must reverently look at the dim reflection of the third as it is
thrown upon us only from the Word of God. The contemplation ought to be one of
wonder and of joy. As Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ in the distance,
so may all the children of faithful Abraham rejoice to see in the future the day
for which all other days were made 11 Corinthians 15:24; 2Luke 22:24;
3Revelation 21:5 THE MEDIATORIAL KINGDOM There will be an end and beginning of
the Redeemer’s Kingdom, as it is a kingdom of grace translated into glory

1. The mediatorial economy will cease in its relation to the Triune God: the
redemptional Trinity which introduced the economy of subordination in the Two
Persons will be again the absolute Trinity. The Son Incarnate will cease to
mediate; as Incarnate He will be for ever subordinate, but there will be nothing
to declare His subordination: no mediatorial rule over enemies, no mediatorial
service or worship of His people. The Triune God will be seen by all mankind in
the face of Jesus Christ:1 and the mediation of grace will become the mediation
of glory. The Intercessor will pray for us no more, but will reveal the Father
openly for ever. A mediator is not a mediator of one;2 but the prayer of our
Lord will then have been fulfilled: that they also may be one in Us.3 Man taken
up into the US of the Triune God will need a mediator no longer 12 Corinthians
4:6; 2Galatians 3:20; 3John 17:21

2. The kingdom will cease because its ends will have been attained. Then cometh
the end when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father:1 to
the Father as the Representative of the Trinity; when He shall have put down all
rule and all authority and power. The process of His victories is described in
the Apocalypse: first and last, the Antichrist, which is a spirit of infidelity,
anti, AGAINST CHRIST, having many forms, such as the Beast and the Man of Sin,
and also a final personal manifestation; every description of heathenism to the
ends of the earth; the corruptions of Christianity, exhibited in Babylon and the
Second Beast and the Harlot; and finally Death, the last enemy that shall be
destroyed. In all these conflicts the Church is the fellowship of companions in
tribulation and in the kingdom and patience in Jesus Christ.2 We are one with
our Lord, and He is one with us, in this progressive warfare and final victory.
It is as Head over all things to the Church3 that the Redeemer exercises now and
will then close His rule; nor is any other suppression of authority alluded to
than that which opposed the designs of His mediatorial kingdom. Moreover, there
is nothing said of the destruction, only of the putting down, of all hostile
authority and power 11 Corinthians 15:24; 2Revelation 1:9; 3Ephesians 1:22

3. The kingdom will have a new beginning: new as the kingdom of the new heavens
and a new earth1 made one. The Spirit of Christ will be the immanent bond
between Him and us, between us and the Holy Trinity: He that is joined unto the
Lord is one Spirit.2 The Incarnate Person will be glorified then as never
before: His personality as Divine will be no more veiled or obscured by any
humiliation, nor will it be intermittently revealed. GOD shall BE ALL IN ALL:3
first in the Holy Trinity, and then through Christ in us 12 Peter 3:13; 21
Corinthians 6:17; 31 Corinthians 15:28

ERRORS On this subject some errors, chiefly ancient, may be noted

1. Amongst early struggles to reconcile the absolute unity of God with the
economical Trinity, we find traces of the Noetian and Sabellian heresy that with
the consummation of Christ’s work the triune essence of Deity will be dissolved:
the Holy Ghost ceasing to be the name of the operative manifestation of God, and
the Son surrendering His office and sinking into the Deity, so that in this
sense God shall be all in all. But the relation of the Son to the Father is
distinctly personal at the close as throughout: the word which describes to us
the very last agency of Him Who has done so much as the Mediator of God and men
defines the last act of the Son in His very relation of Sonship; for the kingdom
is delivered up to God, even the Father.1 The sanctified host of mankind is one
with Christ; and thus the sanctifying work of the Spirit is ended. The
Trinitarian economy has ceased; and God the Holy Trinity is all in all 11
Corinthians 15:24

2. It has been thought that the Son, having accomplished the object for which He
assumed our nature, would renounce that nature and give it up also to the
Father. But neither can we give up our Head nor will the Head give up His
members. His human nature is a vesture that He will not lay aside; indeed it is
more than His vesture, it is part of His eternal Self. There is no independent
human personality to be renounced

3. A subtle notion sometimes slumbering and sometimes waking in theology may now
and then be detected, that another government will be finally set up, wider,
deeper, more catholic and more effectual than the old; and that among the all
things new will be new expedients correcting the deficiencies and anomalies of
the superseded economy

Shrinking from the plain assertion that the failure of the Son incarnate will be
repaired by some new and better dispensation, this nevertheless they perpetually
hint at. In fact, every speculation that insists upon finding a basis for the
hope of a universal restoration of all creatures to God really proceeds from
such a thought MANKIND SAVED AS A RACE In the consummation Mankind as such and
as a race will be saved. The Divine purpose in the creation of man in His own
image will be accomplished: through the atoning mediation of Him Who came to
destroy the works of the devil1 among men. The whole history of the race has
been the carrying out of one design: one design in the attainment of which many
others have been subsumed, and the attainment of which may open out many others.
, Here it is important to remember that the purpose of our Lord’s coming is
always regarded as being accomplished. He came as the predestined and necessary
Savior. The Old-Testament prophetic triumph was, He shall not fail nor be
discouraged;2 the New-Testament response is, He must reign till He hath put all
enemies under His feet;3 and the song of all the Scripture is that His right
hand and His holy arm hath gotten Him the victory.4 The redeeming purpose of
Christ as to the family of Adam must, be accomplished, and has been
accomplished: not merely in the gathering of an elect residue from the
generations, but in the salvation of humanity. But how can this be said to be
the case? There are two answers: the race in its vast majority, the race as
such, is actually saved; and as to the residue, it will be cast out not only
from God but from mankind, and not accounted of 11 John 2:8; 2Isaiah 42:4; 31
Corinthians 15:25; 4Psalms 98:1

1. The majority of the objects of redemption are either already or certainly
will be the Lord’s for ever; He is not only Lord of the dead1 by prerogative,
but also by actual possession. All infants whose development has been cut off on
earth pass by prescriptive right to Him. And we may believe, without being able
to state positively the grounds of our assurance, that many of the men of
goodwill who never heard the angelic peace on earth will nevertheless sing glory
to God in the highest.2 This we seem to hear in the proleptic description given
by the King of those who will marvel at their deliverance and their Deliverer:
When saw we Thee?3 Of the increase of His government4 apart from the direct
preaching of His Gospel we know little, but we may hope much. And as that
increase runs on into the best ages of the Millennium, the flow of the nations
into the city will abound more and more. Although there will be a great falling
away, and the Son of Man leaves with us His question Shall He find faith?5 that
defection will be only for a short season 1Romans 14:9; 2Luke 2:14; 3Matthew
25:37; 4Isaiah 9:7; 5Luke 18:8

2. In the same sense that it is said, All Israel shall be saved,1 it may be said
that Mankind is saved. The lost will not mar the unity of the race: disowned of
God they are disavowed of men: What is the chaff to the wheat?2 They are
supposed to leave the communion of humanity and go into the fellowship of the
devil and his angels,3 into shame and everlasting contempt;4 and of them also we
may say, They went out from us, but they were not of us.5 But our best argument
and assurance is that He Who knows the price of His own life and death shall be
satisfied.6 1Romans 11:26; 2Jeremiah 23:28; 3Matthew 25:41; 4Daniel 12:2; 51
John 2:19; 6Isaiah 53:11 ERRONEOUS HYPOTHESES

There are two opposite theories respecting the Redemption of the Race which
differ from the one given in the Scripture: that of those who maintain the
doctrine of a final restoration of all moral intelligences, and of men in
particular; and that of those who think that the reprobate members of the race
will be annihilated. Some intermediate speculations retain the doctrine of an
eternal continuance of the lost, but endeavor in various ways to extenuate the
idea of its punishment, or mitigate its horror

UNIVERSALISM The belief or the hope that the consummation of all things will be
the restoration of all intelligent beings to the image and favor of God has
found advocates in every age. This hope has always sought its best support in
what may be called a priori arguments; it claims also some passages of Scripture
as maintaining its principle; but it has never been accepted by the Christian
Church generally from the beginning, nor in any of its branches until its recent
development, I. Its general principles, however plausible, admit in every case
of a sufficient answer

1. If it is said that punishment is in the nature of things only remedial, that
assertion cannot be maintained. Reformation is the design of chastisement; and
the amendment of the offender is necessarily bound up with our notion of
corrective discipline; but the idea of penalty that underlies all human thinking
on this subject has in it no other element than that of retribution. If appeal
is made from human jurisprudence to Divine, then we have only to say that the
Scripture at least carefully distinguishes between pure chastisement, which aims
to amend the offender and deter others from like offence, and the vindication of
law. While prevention, reformation, and retribution co-exist in the judicial
principles in human jurisprudence, —none can deny this, —they co-exist also in
the Divine economy. As the last extreme in the former is the infliction of pure
penalty, so it is in the latter: there is a sin unto death1 in the court of
man’s justice, and there is also in that of Divine. As an argument for necessary
restoration this fails also when the test of experience is applied to it. There
is no connection between suffering the penalty of transgression and amendment of
life. If the latter follows the former, it is through the operation of something
besides the penalty. Although we are not supposed to be yet on Scriptural
ground, we cannot but point to the perpetual strain of its warning against
neglect of the purposes of discipline, the issue of which is said to be a state
of reprobation that cannot be amended. What the Bible describes we see in human
life: that men, rebelling against chastisements and the Spirit of grace that
inflicts them, go on to more and more ungodliness, hardened by their calamities.
And if the penalty remains, without the grace of probation, what rational
judgment can make the design of punishment an argument for necessary restoration
to God 1 The natural religion of mankind has, with a true instinct, regulated
its conceptions of the future by the principle of a final and strict retribution
as such. And in the revealed religion of the Bible we find such a testimony as
this: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.2 Earlier in the same
Epistle, St. Paul asks: Is God unrighteous Who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a
man) God forbid, for then how shall God judge the world?3 If the two sentences
are weighed, Emoi ekdikeesis and ho epiferoon teen orgeen, and the emphasis of
the last, the wrath, observed, it will be impossible to doubt that there is a
coming manifestation of the Divine indignation against sin with which the
amendment of the sufferer has nothing to do. This is felt by all who regard the
threatened death as an extinction of the condemned spirit, of whom we shall
speak more hereafter 11 John 5:16; 2Romans 12:19; 3Romans 3:5-6

2. The argument against a final condemnation of any intelligent creature is
often urged on the general ground of the tendency of all the works of God
towards perfection. It is assumed as a principle that, if a Supreme Controller
of all development exists, He must make all His works issue well in the end. It
is hard to resist this argument: it seems logically unanswerable. This is the
strong plea of Optimism; what we call evil is made the necessary stage to
ultimate good. An analogy is sometimes drawn with the phenomena of the physical
universe; but this is an unfortunate analogy, for the perfect development
sacrifices many individuals on the way. It would be only answering the argument
according to its folly to say that the perfectibility of the race is consistent
with the final loss of many individuals from it. But the fact is, that any such
perfectibility, apart from the leaven of the Gospel, does not seem a reasonable
theory. The progression of the race, intellectually, socially, and
aesthetically, may be granted; on the whole it is advancing steadily. That
progress is, on the one hand, much due to the Gospel; and, on the other, it is
by no means synonymous with moral improvement. High culture and conformity to
perfect law do not necessarily go together. As to the individual we often see a
manifest progression in all that is evil down to the last, in unhappy connection
with a steady progression in all that is intellectually good. Moreover, the
argument, as a whole, proves too much: if it is insisted that all God’s works
must reach a standard of perfection, we are obliged to invert the application,
and ask why they were imperfect at any stage This and many other pleas of the
Universalist must be reduced to silence by the plain fact that evil exists

II. The argument from Scripture is more strictly within the reach of our
faculties; and this must to us be the final arbiter. Here we find the general
representations of the Divine character appealed to, then the special design of
the Atonement, and lastly express declarations of the New Testament as to the
issue of the whole work of Christ

1. The strength of the first plea is simply this: that if the Divine Being is
infinite in love, infinite in power, and infinite in wisdom, it is impossible
that any creature of His hands should be shut out from His presence eternally.
There is something in this plea that almost disarms resistance; until we call to
mind that both the revelation of nature, which knows the terrors of the Lord and
persuades men and that of revelation, conspire to exhibit to us a Being who
contradicts the argument. The love of God as an attribute is always carefully
qualified in such a way as to guard it from perversion. Herein is love, not that
we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son [to be] the propitiation
for our sins:1 it requires an hilasmon, provides it for the world, and mourns
over its rejection by many. There are necessary limits to the exertion of the
Divine power, if not to the power itself; and the relation of a Moral Governor
to free intelligences gives one of those necessary limitations, at least in the
doctrine of Scripture. And in Scripture it is literally the Wisdom of God that
predicts its own failure: because I have called and ye refused!2 This style of
argument leads to Atheism, or Manichaeism, as the case may be; but not
legitimately to Universalism. Whatever force it has on this subject must issue
to the advantage of the annihilationist principle. But the fact is, however
strange the assertion may seem, that, with the Bible in our hands, we must make
no appeal to the nature of God in the abstract. It would, if pressed to the
utmost, render the great Atonement a superfluous exhibition of resources against
evil; nay more, it would pursue the difficulty farther back, and ask why evil
was permitted at all. Both the beginning and the continuance of sin are
inscrutable; but the one not more than the other 11 John 4:10; 2Proverbs 1:24

2. The argument from the design of the Atonement is still more easily answered.
We must, of course, accept the statements of the New Testament on this subject,
as there is no room here for abstract discussion of what we might conceive the
Redemption should be. It is said that Christ came to put away sin,1 atheteesin
which indeed is very strong, but does not involve the idea of universal
abolition, as the context shows. Nor does the passage which says that Christ was
manifested to destroy the works of the devil,2 lusee

There is not a single allusion to the Sacrifice which makes its object the
annihilation of moral evil. The Atonement has provided for the effectual
destruction of sin in those who receive it; and we maintain, with Scripture,
that it availed for many who nevertheless perish, whatever that word may mean.
St. Paul’s words are urged, that He might gather together in one all things in
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth;3 with which must be
connected: by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself.4 The context shows that
these passages mainly refer to the redemption of mankind as the bringing back of
the race to its unity with the other orders of the universe. We must remember
here the fundamental canon of the analogy of Scripture. It is declared of the
same Redeemer that He taketh not hold of angels;5 and, whatever the mysterious
reconciliation between man and the other orders of intelligence may mean, it
cannot signify that the Savior has reconciled the devil and his angels to God.
He was made a little lower than the angels that He, by the grace of God, should
taste death for everyMan 1:6 This is a flexible text The Predestinarian
understands huper pantos of the whole mass of the actually redeemed: all for
whom the Lord died are saved. The Universalist takes the word in its widest
extension: he may follow Origen, who interpreted huper pantos not for every man,
but for everything, and read not chariti de Theou, by the grace of God, but
choris Theou, outside of God: thus bringing all sinners, from the greatest to
the least, within the sphere of redemption. We maintain that the context limits
it to man; and that the entire New Testament speaks of two designs in the
Atonement: one extending to the whole race, and the other limited to its actual
beneficiaries. Thus it is said that [the free gift came] upon all men unto
justification of life.7 But it speaks of God, the Savior of all men, as the
Savior specially of those that believe.8

1Hebrews 9:26; 21 John 3:8; 3Ephesians 1:10; 4Colossians 1:20; 5Hebrews 2:16;
6Hebrews 2:9; 7Romans 5:18; 81 Timothy 4:10

3. It is said that a few allusions to the final consummation expressly
foreannounce a restoration of all things to God. That they are few is no
argument against them: the express assertions of everlasting penalty are also
few. Nor is it a refutation that they seem to contradict others; for there are
on many subjects seemingly antithetical statements, the reconciliation of which
must be deferred to eternity. But the passages quoted in the Restoration service
have no direct reference to the question: those which are quoted against it were
spoken expressly on this subject and no other. St. Paul in the sayings of the
resurrection chapter, so often pleaded, obviously refers only to the design of
Christ’s death as accomplished in His saints: the keynote of the whole is Christ
the first-fruits;1 and then they that are Christ’s at His coming. These are the
ALL of whom it is said that, as they died in Adam, in Christ they shall be made
alive: it will be true that the whole race of the dead will live again, but not
in Christ. The Lord will put down all rule and all authority and power.2 Both of
these and of death the verb katargein is used, which does not include the idea
of literal destruction; and when it is added that God may be All in all,3 we
must understand that GOD is all, as distinguished from the mediatorial and
intermediate government through man’s Representative, and God in all the saved,
who alone are mentioned. To the enemies under His feet4 are elsewhere opposed
the possession whom He hath redeemed and purified unto Himself:5 here are the
opposite poles throughout eternity 11 Corinthians 15:23; 2ver. 1 Corinthians
15:24; 3ver. 1 Corinthians 15:28; 4ver. 1 Corinthians 15:27; 5Titus 2:14

III. There has been a steadfast protest against this dogma in the catholic
Church of Christ from the beginning; although many influential individuals in
early times held it, and some more modern sects have striven to bring it into
vogue. Origen sometimes more boldly, sometimes more timorously, advocated the
idea of a universal restitution: not Restoration as of man merely, but
UNIVERSALISM, including Satan and his angels. Destrui novissimus inimicus ita
intelligendus est, non ut substantia ejus, quae a Deo est, pereat sed ut
voluntas inimica, quae non a Deo sed ab ipso processit, intereat. Destruetur
ergo non ut non sit, sed ut inimicus non sit et mors. Nihil enim Omnipotent!
impossible est, NEC INSANABILE EST aliquid Factori suo. . . . Quae quidem a
nobis etiam cum magno metu et cautela dicuntur, discutientibus magis quam pro
certo et definito statuentibus. Origen was written against and formally
condemned. He had few followers, though Diodorus of Tarsus, Gregory of Nyssa,
Theodore, and a few others followed hesitatingly in his track The early Creeds
note the progress of the catholic doctrine. The Apostles’ and the Nicene speak
only of the life everlasting. The Athanasian adds: Ad cujus adventum omnes
homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis, et redituri sunt de factis
propriis rationem, et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam aeternam, qui mala in
ignem aeternum. In the Middle Ages the Pantheistic mystics favored alternately
the extinction of evil and its transformation into good. Some of the sectaries
that troubled the age of the Reformation revived the notion of universal
restoration, and were specifically condemned by the Lutheran Confessions. In
modern times a large number of sects have arisen, especially in America, who
hold this doctrine; some of them deriving their name from it. But it has never
been taught in any Confession of Christendom; however largely it may enter into
the private speculations and hopes of individual thinkers

ANNIHILATION The end that Universalism reaches in one way is in another way
reached by the hypothesis of ANNIHILATION, which saves the race as a whole at
the expense of the very existence of the unsaved part of it. As in the
alternative hypothesis, we have to consider some fundamental principles; then
the direct testimonies of Scripture; and lastly its historical relations to the
creed of the Church

I. The principles underlying this view may be regarded as opposite aspects of
the one fundamental argument, that man has no immortality apart from the gift of
Christ, and that this immortality is the one blessing of His redemption

1. The question of man’s natural immortality is not allowed to be absolutely
decisive; and perhaps more has been made to depend on this in the controversy
than it will bear. Those who maintain that in the image of God, impressed upon
man, there was a reflection in the creature of His eternity, and that this
natural image was not destroyed by the Fall, are in possession of an argument
which settles the subject at once. That is undoubtedly the view of Scripture,
which nowhere asserts or proves the deathlessness of the human spirit any more
than it asserts or proves the being of God. To us, therefore, the question is
determined at the outset. But our conviction has no force against those who
maintain that the gift of immortality was forfeited when man sinned

2. The question, therefore, must revert to the other aspect of it. Was the
benefit of redemption the restoration of immortality, or a new gift of it, to
the fellowship of those found in Christ? This is asserted by the advocates of
Annihilation, whose manifold arguments may be met in manifold ways

(1.) First, there are two aspects of Christ’s redeeming intervention, one
absolutely universal and one particular. As to the former, in whatsoever sense
the race of man died in Adam it lives again in Christ. The universal
resurrection is the proof of this; and on the ground of it all men are dealt
with, not as on probation for eternal existence, but as on probation for their
destiny in that eternal existence. The reconciliation of God to man, or to the
whole world, implies that all men are by their very birthright members of a race
saved from extinction. This we believe, because we believe in universal
redemption

Annihilationists do not believe it. They limit the benefit of our Lord’s
relation to the race to the offer of living for ever. They reach the end of
Predestinarianism in a way of their own: Predestinarianism consigns the
unredeemed to eternal reprobation, the annihilationist theory to eternal
extinction. Both deny to the race as a race the reality of redemption in Christ;
and make it matter of individual experience

(2.) A special and individual redemption there undoubtedly is; it does not,
however, consist in the negative immortality, but in the positive life, which is
in the Christian system never existence merely nor continuing to exist. On this
the Lord’s own words are decisive: I am come that they might have life, and that
they might have it more abundantly.1 Life is a gift that a man may have or not
have now: he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.2
Surely ouk opsetai zooeen is not a phrase that could signify extinction: it is
not that he shall see death but that he shall not see life. And St John’s
Epistle makes this, if possible, more plain: he that hath not the Son of God
hath not life.3 Life is in Christ; life is Christ; and Christ is a possession
which a man may have or not have, either in time or to eternity. It has nothing
whatever to do with continued existence as such. The only passage that even
seems to hint at the contrary is in the same Epistle: he that doeth the will of
God abideth for ever.4 But there the contrast is with the world and its passing
lusts, in comparison of which religion and its fruits are permanent; just as in
another passage the life of regeneration is contrasted with the perishable
things of time: being born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible,
by the word of God which liveth and abideth [for ever] For all flesh is as
grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and
the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever.5 In
these passages there is no thought of extinction in any sense. The world does
not perish save in its fashions. The phenomenal universe will in some form abide
for ever. But pure and perfect existence, clothed with all the blessedness of
the life of God, will be revealed only when the phenomena as such have
disappeared 1John 10:10; 2John 3:36; 31 John 5:12; 41 John 2:17; 51 Peter
1:23-24

3. The Annihilationist hypothesis meets the Universalist on common ground with
respect to certain fundamental or a priori principles; while, on some others,
they are singularly at variance

(1.) It is common to the two systems to dilate on the impossibility of
reconciling the eternal misery of a punished soul with the attributes of God as
He is depicted in Scripture. But there is no sound argument in this: at least
what strength it has must lie on the Universalist side. That God should destroy
a soul that He had created is as inconsistent with some of His attributes, His
power for instance, taken alone, as the eternal punishment is inconsistent with
His love, taken alone. In fact, this system of thought does not relieve the
difficulty, save in appearance. How could the power of an omnipotent being
suffer rebellion to begin? Having suffered it to begin, how could it be baffled
finally, and for ever, in the attempt to save the sinner? The abiding
continuance of sin and its necessary doom is, in some sense, a more conceivable,
a more tolerable, idea than its origination. These improvements on the theology
of Scripture do seem to unite in ridding the universe of every trace that sin
has existed, in restoring God to His supremacy, and thus in delivering our minds
from one of the heaviest burdens they can bear. But they cannot blot out the
fact that evil has been permitted, and wrestled with, and severely punished for
generations uncounted, both in this and other worlds. They reconstruct our God;
but the God they give us needs still to be reconstructed if certain human
notions of Him are to prevail. Certainly the Divine Being never thus vindicates
Himself. He does not speak of it as a strange thing that the universe should pay
everlasting tribute to His holy justice. But this is, after all, speaking
foolishly. All theories alike are confounded before this awful subject

(2.) Another argument, common to the two, is that the punishment of offences
committed in time must needs have a temporal limit. But the analogy of the
temporal penalties themselves is strong against measuring the consequences of
the sin by its seeming importance; persistent sin against God is beyond all
finite reckoning; and, lastly, there is no eternal punishment but of eternal
sinning: the eternal state of separation from God is both sin and its
punishment. It may be added that annihilation is to all intents and purposes an
eternal punishment of sin committed in time: the Universalist escapes this
difficulty; yet only to plunge-into another, that of making the Supreme the
Author of a threatening of eternal doom which shall prevent its own execution.
But we vainly talk about the relations of time to eternity. And certain it is
that the price set on the Atonement, and the penalty for rejecting it, are
represented in the New Testament in a very different style from that adopted by
this theory. The despised of the Cross hath no more sacrifice for sins:1 his sin
remains without a covering, and me wrath of God abideth on him.2 Sinners rise
again in a resurrection of condemnation:3 they are condemned already,4 but then
their condemnation will be to everlasting punishment.5 Does the Scripture tell
us that they are called up into their perfect existence in spirit and soul and
body—created as it were anew—to perish as finding their misery in the
consciousness of their loss? Then the fearful looking for of judgment and fiery
indignation6 has no meaning; for whatever the penalty of Hades may be,
annihilation must be in comparison a blessing and only a blessing. Moreover the
second death is not annihilation. Of the beast and the false prophet it is said
that these both were cast alive into a lake of fire.7 Of the devil it is said
that he was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the
false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever . . .
8 THIS IS THE SECOND DEATH: corresponding to the second and better life in life:
that which is more abundantly given.9

1Hebrews 10:26; 2John 3:36; 3John 5:29; 4John 3:18; 5Matthew 25:46; 6Hebrews
10:27; 7Revelation 19:1-21; Revelation 20:1-15; 8Revelation 20:10-14. 9John
10:10

II. The argument in support of the final annihilation of the unsaved portion of
mankind lays much stress on the terms of the Biblical vocabulary concerning life
and death, and the meaning of everlasting as the predicate of both. Life is held
synonymous with existence, and death with ceasing to exist; and everlasting is a
term which is made to suit the theory of each respectively: applied to life it
has its full significance of unending duration, applied to death its
significance is reduced to absolute or perfect. Appeal is made to the sense in
which these words, with their various correlatives of destruction, perishing,
and so forth, are used in classical Greek

1. With regard to this last argument it is enough to say that the whole
phraseology of revelation, especially New-Testament revelation, has undergone a
great and momentous change. Scarcely one of the religious and ethical terms of
classical Greek but has been raised to a higher meaning. No writer would have
protested more earnestly than Plato against his terms for destruction being
applied to the final destiny of what he thought the immortal spirit of man. It
may be said, further, that the New Testament did not take these words directly
from classical Greek, but from the Septuagint. The Septuagint will speak for
itself. Very many passages might be cited in which the strongest terms that
express destruction are used without involving anything like the idea of
extinction. Let us take one passage, for instance, which singularly unites some
of the strongest of all: it must be cited in full. Poimenes polloi diefqeiran
ton ampelwna mou emolunan thn merida mou edwkan merida epiqumhthn mou eis erhmon
abaton. eteqh eis afanismon apwleias di’ eme afanismw hfanisqh pasa h gh oti ouk
estin anhr tiqemenos en kardia.1 Here is a constellation of the entire
terminology. But was the pleasant land of Jehovah abolished, or annihilated? The
answer is given by Jehovah Himself. In the sublime words that follow we read:
They have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns; they have put themselves to pain,
but shall not profit; and they shall be ashamed of your revenues because of the
fierce anger of the Lord.2 The application of these words to our present subject
is obvious: no flesh shall have peace,3 and that because no man layeth it to
heart.4 But they are quoted to show how little truth there is in the sweeping
assertions that the inspired terminology of destruction is the terminology of
annihilation. The student will do well in this matter, and in the interpretation
of the New Testament generally, to track every word through the Concordance of
Trommius 1Jeremiah 12:10-12; 2Jeremiah 12:13; 3ver.Jeremiah 12:12; 4ver.
Jeremiah 12:11

2. A careful examination of the leading terms Life and Death as used in the New
Testament will show that, as they are applied to the spirit of man, they mean
something superadded to mere existence, either as a blessing or as the opposite
of blessing. Life is evermore the communication of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus;1 it is the correlative of salvation, blessedness and union with God. It
is the opposite of condemnation, of misery, of the Divine displeasure; never the
antithesis of annihilation, not even in relation to the bodily existence, and
much less in relation to the existence of the spirit. Death is the correlative
of the sentence of condemnation, of the withdrawal of the Spirit, and of a state
of alienation from God: those who have not passed from death unto life1 are said
to be dead in trespasses and sins;3 and we may enlarge the application of St.
Paul’s word concerning one dead while she liveth.4 Anyone who traces it through
the New Testament must come to the conclusion that it expresses the exact
opposite of the new life, the life eternal, which is imparted by Christ. Hence
the advocates of the opinion we now consider are obliged to resort to a
proleptic sense: sinners are counted dead by anticipation. But it might as well
be said that the saints have not, but only shall have, everlasting life

Similarly, the synonyms which vary the idea of death, or rather which describe
the way in which it is inflicted, do not carry the notion of absolute
suppression of existence. The strongest term that is ever used is applied by our
Lord to the state from which the prodigal was rescued: he was lost or was
destroyed, apolooloos een, and is found.5 By that one word Jesus for ever
rescued this verb from the misapplication forced upon it: the loss of the soul
is a state the opposite of its being found again. The prodigal lost in the far
country came to himself first, and then came to his father; but he had been
destroyed, or had destroyed himself. If the Restorationists, using this passage
against that doctrine of annihilation which none more forcibly argue against
than they, appeal to it as confirming the hope that those who are lost in the
other world will be found again, they are met by another most peremptory word of
Christ, Good were it for that man if he had not been born:6 for that man who was
the son of perdition,7 the huios tees apooleias, a prodigal who was not found;
for, had there been a certainty of his coming back from his far country, eternal
life would have made his birth a blessing notwithstanding all intermediate woes.
A member of the same family of terms is used by St. Paul when he says that at
the appearing of Christ those who are found not having obeyed the Gospel suffer
punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord,8 olethron. The
construction of this passage is such, at all points, as to be a warning to
theorists on this solemn subject. The addition of aioonion would be needless if
the olethron meant what they suppose it to mean: absolute extinction of being.
As eternal life is the confirmation for ever of a life that now is in Christ, so
eternity is added to the word which St. Paul elsewhere uses to express a present
penalty of hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition:9 men
empiptousin eis, temptation and a snare; these also buthizousin eis,
destruction. This everlasting destruction is to take place when He shall come:10
it is not therefore before the judgment, nor is it after the judgment. It is
from the presence of the Lord, apó prosoópou toú Kuríou, for the meaning of
which let the Septuagint vouch, which so translates in Genesis: They hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord11 as the first effect of sin, and Cain
went out from the presence of the Lord12 as the second and still worse effect,
our text being the third and worst of all. Finally, as to the aionion, Daniel’s
eis aischuneen aionion is quite sufficient: what is everlasting contempt?13 But
St. Paul himself gives the law for his use of this word in this relation when he
says, the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen
are eternal:14 phenomenal or passing things, and abiding or eternal things, are
the only correlatives

1Romans 8:2; 2John 5:24; 3Ephesians 2:1; 41 Timothy 5:6; 5Luke 15:32; 6Mark
14:21; 7John 17:12; 82 Thessalonians 1:9; 91 Timothy 6:9; 102 Thessalonians
1:10; 11Genesis 3:8; 12Genesis 4:16; 13Daniel 12:2; 142 Corinthians 4:18 III.
The history of this phase of Christian speculation lends it no substantial help

1. Most of the earliest Fathers believed in the absolute eternity of the
punishment of the reprobate. The first testimony after inspiration ceased is
that of Clemens Romanus: meta gar to eselthein hamas ek tou kosmos ouk eti
dunametha ekei esomologeesasthai ho metanoein. Justin Martyr asserts this, in
opposition to Plato’s teaching that they would last a thousand years; but some
passages in his writings are thought to hesitate: for instance, when he says to
Trypho, est an autas kai einai kai kolaxesthai o theos thelee, which, however,
is a truth that all must admit. Sentences may be gleaned from the ante- Nicene
writers which lean in almost every direction; but the idea of a total cessation
of being, or of its gradual extinction, cannot be traced save perhaps in a few
isolated passages of Hernias, Irenseus, and the Alexandrian Clement. The
question, however, of these sporadic opinions is of very little importance; save
as showing that the seeds of almost every subsequent speculation were early sown

2. Arnobius, at a later time, gave expression to the idea of a gradual cessation
of sufferings, ending in the annihilation of the individual: "A corporalibus
vinculis exsolutos expectat mors saeva, non repentinam adferens extinctionem,
sed per tractum temporis cruciabilis poenae acerbitate consumens." This strange
inversion of the dogma of purgatory was maintained here and there by many of the
Fathers. Didymus of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, perhaps Theodore of
Mopsuestia, and Gregory of Nazianzum, inclined to this as philanthropoteron kai
tou kolazontos epaxios, more charitable and more worthy of the Divine Punisher.
But it is admitted that the strong, full, and scarcely checked stream of
doctrine after Arnobius set the other way: neither turning aside to the
Restitution of Origen nor to the Annihilation of Arnobius. During the Middle
Ages a Pantheistic view of the absorption of all good and all evil too in God
molded much thought, but it generally, though not always, took the form of the
Apocatastasis

3. In modern times the tenet of an eventual annihilation of the perishing soul
has been argued out with great ability by individual men, who have offered it to
their fellow- Christians as a refuge from the dread doctrine which the Church of
God in every age has found in the Bible. The notion has been elaborated with
many diversities of hypothesis; and with an enthusiastic determination to make
all things bend to it. It is not possible, nor is it necessary, to systematize
the shapes which the central idea is in process of assuming: the witnesses to it
do not agree, and we must wait till there is at least more semblance of
agreement. Meanwhile, a few closing remarks may be made

(1.) It must be admitted that the theologians of this new school have
steadfastly asserted some fundamental principles. They hold fast the doctrine of
the eternal punishment of sin; and that of the absolute and inherent claims of
the Divine righteousness. They do justice, in their manner, to the terrors of
the Lord, and vindicate the reality of heavenly wrath against unrepenting and
obdurate transgressors. They are among the most determined opponents of the
Restitution theory in all its forms: regarding it as their most formidable rival
for the suffrages of human mercy and hope. Both these hypotheses set out with
the foregone conclusion that every trace of evil must be swept out of the
universe: each waiving the consideration that it has existed, and that the same
supreme Will which permitted it to be, may, in His eternal wisdom, suffer it to
continue under new conditions. But they are mutually intolerant: each on its own
side of the cross of redemption thinks the other a despiser of that cross. The
two hypotheses of Extinction and Universalism meet with no such thorough
refutation as in the writings of their advocates respectively. The
Annihilationists, however, pay a tribute to the Divine holiness, and the freedom
of the human will, and the essential evil of sin, which their opponents at the
other extreme fail to pay

(2.) But this is all that can be said. Their dogma is inconsistent with the
Spirit’s testimony concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, as these three
are illustrated by the gift of Christ to the race. Sin is estimated in the New
Testament by the price of its expiation; it is the act of man, generic and
individual, possessed of a nature capable of offending an infinite Being. Before
it was committed, that same nature was in the eternal counsel assumed by the Son
of God to retrieve its consequences on behalf of the whole race: whatever
objection may be urged against this high and catholic view, it must be
maintained that the infinite value of the offering implied an infinite offence.
According to this new view, man at the time of his transgression was only a
living soul, not having yet the quickening Spirit, and therefore utterly
incapable of such an offence. Christ comes not to save an immortal sinner; but
to give a mortal sinner, who had sinned, the offer of immortality. Such a sin of
such an Adam as this doctrine has invented is not matter for such an
intervention. Nor does this doctrine comport with the Redeemer’s finished and
accepted righteousness. That was wrought out for the race; and restored as a
free gift all that sin had forfeited. Now man, we repeat, did not forfeit the
possibility of living for ever; he forfeited that life itself. If death were
annihilation, that was reversed for the nature of man by Him who assumed it; if
death were the forfeiture of eternal life in God, that was given back to all who
should believe. [The free gift came] upon all men unto justification of life.1
Hence the judgment, with all its preliminaries, accessories, and results, is
equally misapprehended. The resurrection belongs to all men as the fruit of the
Atonement, because all men are by the Incarnation vivified by a Head common to
all The mystery of the union between Christ and His Church is based upon a yet
deeper, although not a more blessed, mystery, that of His union with mankind. It
is the Son of man Who comes in His glory,2 not the Head of the Church; and in
the final separation those who are not His He has LOST. The judgment will make
the eternal distinction. Here our new dogma is uncertain and faltering. Some of
its advocates, holding that death is the dissolution of an integer which does
not exist, save as an integer, make the sinner a nonentity until he is recreated
to be marred for ever. Others, maintaining the survival of part of the man, make
that part of him pay the full penalty of retribution before the resurrection: on
the one hand, denying that in the body the deeds done in the body are punished,
while, on the other, they think they pay honor to the instant execution of
judgment by making the resurrection the crisis of the despatching stroke,
justice being at length satisfied. Some, however, protract the ages of suffering
indefinitely, until, by some process of disintegration, of which neither
Scripture nor philosophy knows anything, their sin has brought forth in eternity
the death which it conceived in time. Meanwhile, the dreadful harmony, though
not alas the melody, of Scripture, is set to the note that there will be a
division of the one race of Adam: the innumerable company of the saved entering
into the city brought down to the renewed earth, and the lost, with no mention
of their number, WITHOUT the walls, with the devil and his angels.3 1Romans
5:18; 2Matthew 25:31; 3Revelation 22:15

(3.) Many other objections to this hypothesis of annihilation might be
mentioned, which do not affect theology so much as isolated interpretations of
Scripture, and the psychological or physiological theories of human nature which
it forces or tempts those who accept it to adopt. The student must be constantly
on his guard as to both these points; otherwise he will be bewildered by the
variety of plausible arguments with which both the heavier and the lighter
literature on this subject abound. But, after all, it cannot be too habitually
remembered that this solemn question does not depend upon isolated texts, nor
upon speculations as to the nature of personality and consciousness. It is
connected with the great principles and steadfast tendency of all the teaching
of revelation, which everywhere speaks to man as an immortal being, having an
eternal destiny, the issues of which are bound up with his use of the means
provided of God for his salvation in this probationary state INTERMEDIATE AND
MITIGATING HYPOTHESES

There always have been, and still are, certain opinions held on this subject
which can hardly be called intermediate, since they deny both the views already
discussed, but which nevertheless aim to abate the extreme rigor of the
Scriptural doctrine of eternal separation from God, They refuse to allow that
any moral agent will ever perish out of existence; or that evil will be banished
as such from the universe; but they introduce certain mitigations which must
stand or fall on their own merits

1. It has been held by some that while the state of the lost is one of hopeless
separation from the vision of the Blessed One, it will be also one of absolute
submission to and even adoring contemplation of Divine justice. In other words,
the final penalty of sin will be an everlasting poena damni, or sense of
irreparable loss unrelieved by hope and accepted in despair. Certain indications
of that feeling in the description of Dives and Lazarus are continued beyond
Hades into the state beyond; and emotions made eternal which prove that the
active rebellion of the sinning will is for ever over. This theory does justice
to the undeniable truth that the empire of sin will be subverted and every
created will brought into subjection. To suppose that lawless rebellion and
defiance may continue eternally offends as much against the kingly authority of
Christ as universal restoration offends against His priestly work. But it is
hard to distinguish between the sentiment of submission to the Divine authority
and the germ of holiness: as it has been sometimes described it is utterly
inconsistent with eternal punishment. One of the most solemn words towards the
close of Scripture says that fear hath torment,1 ho fobos kolasin echi

Fear is not torment in itself, but it hath torment; hath it in the germ, and
what the full development is our Savior tells us: these shall go away into
eternal punishment2 or kolasin aionion 11 John 4:18; 2Matthew 25:25

2. But, apart from this, the sentiments ascribed to the rich man by our Lord,
and the word of Abraham to him, Son, remember! have been fondly dwelt upon, as
implying a possible benefit of reflection which must be taken into account so
far as Hades, or the Intermediate State, is concerned. A generous interpretation
of our Lord’s words has been suggested by many most eminent divines, who connect
them with those other words concerning a possible forgiveness of all sins save
one in the other world. They put the whole strength of a possible repentance in
the Remember; and suppose that the rich man’s regard for his brethren shows the
first stage of it. The step from this is an easy one to converting processes
that shall finally reduce the number of the irreparably lost. Others limit much
of the severer language of punishment to that intermediate state, leaving for
the eternal condition a penalty adapted to a degraded, lowered, and
comparatively unconscious existence. This singularly inverts the order of
Scripture: assigning the sensuous woe to the state in which the body has no
part, and forgetting the express reference to the punishment in the body of
deeds done in the body

3. In ancient and in modern times much stress has been laid upon the infinite
diversity in punishment and reward, as constituting an important element in our
judgment on this solemn subject. It is observed that our Lord Himself, Who has
uttered the most clear words of Scripture as to the eternal separation of two
classes, has again and again referred to gradations in this eternal estate.
There is no more definite prophetic teaching than that which speaks of the few
stripes and the many stripes.1 And the charity of the Christian heart is
perfectly justified in deducing from them the utmost possible legitimate
inferences. But they must be legitimate: the words give no sanction to the idea
that heaven and hell will shade off into each other by imperceptible degrees, or
that the few stripes are disciplinary for salvation in opposition to the many
stripes which are eternally punitive. Had this meaning been in our Lord’s
thoughts He might most easily have made that meaning clear. Collating such
words, however, with others, we are bound to assume that, though the great gulf
is fixed now in Hades, the judgment day will prove that the lost estate of some
of the lost is more tolerable2 than that of others 1Luke 12:48; Luke 12:47;
2Matthew 10:15

4. But all palliative hypotheses and reasoning have, by a natural necessity,
revolved back to the power and goodness of the Redeemer Himself, the last only
hope of mortal distress: what reserves of infinite resource may be in Him! In
the mystical contemplations of Augustine and other Fathers, and of multitudes
since, may be heard occasionally the sublime but very bold idea of an
Intercession that may avail to bring back the prodigals whose lost estate is
described as apolesthai, even as the prodigal in time was lost and was found.1
How easy is it to form the conception of an effort put forth by the Great
Restorer, urged by His own mercy, by the memory of His passion, and the
compassionate appeals of His saints glorified, to create at least a place and a
state, neither heaven nor hell, for the spoil of eternal justice! But He Who is
the Sole Intercessor for man leaves no assurance of such an intercession: indeed
He has done all that in Him lay to preclude the thought of any such possible
intervention when the mystery of His kingdom is finished

1Luke 15:24 NEW HEAVENS AND EARTH Not only in psalm and figurative prophecy, but
in plain teaching also, the new beginning and consummation of man’s universe, of
an actual heaven and earth, is taught in Scripture

1. Generally, there will be a regeneration of all things, as if there were a
certain analogy with the salvation of the individual man: the earth, being
justified or released from its condemnation, renewed and regenerate, and
sanctified to God and man for ever. The original sentence will be repealed, and
there shall be no more curse.1 The earth will be in the fullest sense
sanctified; and then it will be said pre-eminently: every creature of God is
good.2 So our Lord speaks of the general palingenesía, or new birth, in a
designedly indeterminate way: in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit
in the throne of His glory.3 That is first in the present time: He now sits on
that throne, and the Apostles now judge the twelve tribes of Israel. But it is
also in the future. The same may be said of the times of restoration of all
things.4 As man is to rise again, so in a certain sense will the scene of his
history. When the heavens and earth are said to pass away and there was found no
place for them,5 this must not only be harmonized with other words, as a vesture
shall Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed,6 but also with the
Apocalyptic scenes that follow, which expressly declare: and I saw a new heaven
and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and
there was no more sea.6 This is evidently the new Genesis, with express
reference to the former, no longer, as the prophet Isaiah predicted, to be
remembered, nor come into mind.7 1Revelation 22:3; 21 Timothy 4:4; 3Matthew
19:28; 4Acts 3:21; 5Revelation 20:11; 6Hebrews 1:12; 7Isaiah 65:17

2. Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. If this prediction refers to
the physical world, the glowing descriptions that follow must also depict in
earthly strains the consummate transformations of the final kingdom. St. Peter
says: We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness.1 In the Apocalypse heaven and earth are made
one: I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of
heaven.2 Hence what the present heaven and earth are to our probationary estate
the future will be to our eternal and fixed state: not heaven to be ascended to
from earth; but the Lord will make BOTH ONE. The highest heaven, like eternity,
will be for ever unknown to man. God alone inhabiteth both. Our heaven will be
our earth, and our earth heaven: the tabernacle of God is with men,3 the
Incarnate Son dwelling in redeemed mankind as a temple, and redeemed mankind
dwelling in Him; but both on a transfigured earth 12 Peter 3:13; 2Revelation
21:2; 3Revelation 21:3

3. This is all that we learn from the Bible. It is supposed by many that St.
Paul introduces into the heart of his most theological Epistle, into one of the
most didactic portions of the New Testament, a poetical reference to the entire
ktisis as longing for and finally sharing in the glorious liberty of the
children of God1 at the Adoption. And this would seem to imply, what the
Scripture never asserts, that the irrational creature was subjected through
man’s sin to death, and will share in his redemption. But, unless it can be
proved that the ktisis here is not groaning man as a creature, or heathenism
subjected to vanity, this passage has no dogmatic force. Nor is such an
extension of the great expectation necessary. When the Apocalypse says that
there was no move sea,2 and that for the present phenomenal heaven and earth
there was found no place,3 it teaches us to interpret the whole as meaning no
more than that the scene and sphere of human development will undergo a
corresponding change. As man’s body will be fashioned after our Lord’s glorious
body, so the earth will be fashioned after the similitude of heaven. Men will
not therefore be in every sense isaggeloi 1Romans 8:21; 2Revelation 21:1;
3Revelation 20:11

4. All this will take place through the power of Christ, by the agency of fire.
But whatever agency the material fire may exert, the change upon our earth will
not be effected by material fire alone. The result will be as utterly beyond any
conception we now have as the spiritual body of Christ exalted in heaven. Withal
it must be remembered that it is only the earth as the scene of redemption that
will undergo this change. It is the earth that being overflowed with water
perished1 which is reserved unto fire. In the vast greatness of the realms of
God and His Christ we and our whole economy are but as the mote in the sunbeam;
and it is an error to involve the entire universe in this consummation. Science
may trace a connection between every atom of matter and the whole compass of
material nature, and refuse to admit the possibility of the abstraction of our
world from the sum of things. But we are now in a region in which physical
knowledge is inarticulate or without authority; and, moreover, its own theories
have nothing to say against the possible extinction of worlds. However, as the
declaration, He made the stars also,2 at the beginning, refers only to the
phenomenal relation of the universe to our earth, so, at the close, there was
found no place for them3 refers only to the sphere of human redemption 12 Peter
3:12; 2Genesis 1:16; 3Revelation 20:11

5. As to the renovation of the earth two opposite errors are to be observed,
with many variations on them. One is that of a too spiritual view, which makes
the material universe, like the idols, nothing in the world, and man’s ethereal
vehicle literally a spiritual body But we have no reason to think that anything
made by God is destroyed: in this sense also The gifts and calling of God are
without repentance.1 Worlds are known to be undergoing changes which to us are
equivalent to disappearance; and creation and glorification may be henceforward
an everlasting law. But the opposite is that of a too literal restoration. This
way tends much Lutheran speculation, that makes corporeity the law and end of
existence: the Gospel is supposed literally to be preached to every creature;2
the Eucharist to be the sustentation of both body and soul; the Holy Ghost as
much the physical as the spiritual Lifegiver; and the redemption of Christ a
restoration of all created nature, here the exact opposite of ancient
Gnosticism. From this the transition is easy to a literal resurrection of all
animated existence. Modern, like ancient, Millenarianism adopts this theory, so
far as concerns the intermediate kingdom of Christ; and this is one of its many
extreme difficulties 1Romans 9:29; 2Mark 16:15

ETERNAL LIFE The consummation of all consummations as it respects the human race
is the entrance of the redeemed into eternal life. Viewed as to God this is the
realization of His purpose with regard to mankind in the Incarnate Son. As to
Christ it is His presentation of Himself, one with His own, to the eternal
Father. Regarded with reference to the heavenly world it is the reconciliation
of all the inhabitants of heaven and the race of man: the fellowship being now
eternal and complete. As to the whole Church it is the sealing ratification of
its oneness with its Head, for His possession and His service. As to the
individuals of that Church it is the perfection of their own nature in itself
and in that union with the Triune God which is eternal blessedness

I. What in human terms we call the Divine idea of humanity we must also in human
terms speak of as not having been realized; precisely in the same sense, and in
no other, as that in which it is said: It repented the Lord that He had made man
on the earth.1 But the idea not fulfilled in the first Adam has been realized in
the Second Adam. He, therefore, the spiritual Father and Head of the new
humanity, will represent the new creation unto God, and present this new and
better mankind faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.2
The Adam of Paradise will not be the father of this race, but only the first
among many brethren, sons of God through Christ. The human family will be added
to the vast multitude of other aggregate families: with the distinction of a
relation to God— of Whom every family in heaven and earth is named3—in the
Eternal Son unshared by any other 1Genesis 6:6; 2Jude 1:24; 3Ephesians 3:15

II. Hence, there are some indications that the end of human history will be the
restoration of harmony to the universe; as if man will then at length, perfectly
redeemed, join with the other orders of intelligent creatures in the worshipping
service of the eternal temple: their harmony, without human voices, not being
counted perfect. But this does not sanction the speculative notion that the
number of the saved from the earth will precisely fill up the vacancy caused by
the fall of those who kept not their first estate. This speculation of the
Middle Ages introduces a Predestinarian element into the final consummation
which the Scripture-does not warrant. Nor does the testimony of Jesus by the
Spirit of prophecy sanction the thought that the consummation will unite all
spirits with all men in the blessedness of union in God. Discord will be
suppressed, but not in that way. The reconciliation of which St. Paul speaks is
of heaven and earth: it does not couple hell. And the union is effected as the
result of the Atonement by the sacrifice of Jesus, which was offered in human
nature and in human nature alone

III. The consummation will be the perfection of the mystical body, the company
of the Preserved in Jesus Christ. This Church of the redeemed will be, in
eternal union with Christ, one with the Holy Trinity. Behold, the tabernacle of
God is with mm, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. But
what is this tabernacle? I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down
from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.1 Reserving
this last symbol, we must fix our thought upon the former; the glorified Church
is the Tabernacle or Temple of God: the fullness of Him that filleth all in
all.2 But it will be specially one with Immanuel, God with us. The last words
concerning it drop the name church, inasmuch as that carries with it a
suggestion of a larger mass out of which it is called. When the process is over,
the Church, or ekkleesia, shall lose its name. It will be the Bride of Christ: a
term often prepared for in earlier Scripture, but reserved for the last
revelation, to intimate the unity of the corporate body of the elect, its
everlasting and most intimate union with Christ, and the perfect love which He
will bestow on it for ever. It will be His Kingdom also: we shall reign for ever
and ever.3 This intimates, not that the Savior will rule over His Church, or
through His Church rule over the universe of other worlds, but that the
fellowship of the redeemed and glorified will be His servants to serve Him for
ever. That holy company will be a priesthood also: to present eternal worship,
not through Christ, but in Him and with Him

Priests eternally as worshippers, they will be kings for ever as servants. Their
service will be no longer limited and partial. It will have the universe as its
sphere; and in its eternal activity, and infinite variety, will surpass every
conception that can be formed of it here

Without the tribulation, and without the patience, of the kingdom in Jesus4—save
peradventure in sympathy with other worlds where patience may still share with
love the honor of being the royal law—they will be for ever its ministering
servants 1Revelation 21:2-3; 2Ephesians 1:23; 3Revelation 22:5; 4Revelation 1:9

IV. The consummation will not, however, merge the individual in the body
corporate, any more than the body corporate will be merged in God. Eternal
blessedness will be the portion of every soul in the innumerable company of the
redeemed: that individual blessedness will be the perfection of the created
nature of man, which, implying its deliverance from all evil, rests not short of
its union with God, the Beatific Vision, and the fullness of the spirit’s
satisfaction in the creaturely reflection of the Divine image

1. Negatively, eternal life will be in its final issues the absolute and perfect
removal of every evil: that is to say, of the results of sin and the possibility
of sinning. Every trace of this sojourner for a night will be effaced from body
and soul and spirit: a consummation reserved for the heavenly state. And this
negative fruition of rest and deliverance is itself the positive perfection of
man according to the primitive constitution of human nature From the moment when
the dust of the earth yielded to the Finger of God the material for the creation
of its most perfect product, the human personality has never yet, save in Jesus,
seen its highest estate: nor in Jesus upon earth. It will remain for heaven to
blot out the last remembrances of the Fall. On the earth the sanctified carry
with them the results of past transgressions to the grave; in the intermediate
world, though they see the King in His beauty1 with the eyes of the disembodied
spirit, their bodily eyes see corruption.2 Only on admission into heaven will
the Redeemer save the whole man: at His second coming shall He appear the second
time without sin. UNTO SALVATION:3 unto that residuary salvation which will
change the firstfruits of the Spirit4 into full redemption The temporal state
with all its restrictions and infirmities will give place to an eternal from
which these shall have vanished for ever. But salvation at the best is a
negative term. We are lost, and it is our dignity to be capable of being
conscious that we are lost, in the thought of our entering into an eternal
state. The finite will be received into the bosom of infinity; time will be
taken up into the bosom of eternity. The most blessed negative result of this
will be that change or progression will be only and absolutely upward and
forward. Development will continue, but without the possibility of lapse into
evil: separation from God, which is sin, will be impossible for ever 1Isaiah
33:17; 2Psalms 49:9; 3Hebrews 9:28; 4Romans 8:23

2. But all this is only negative. There are some positive terms by which, hope
is taught to define without definition its conception of eternal life. They rise
in a sacred gradation from the vision of God to union with Him and the perfect
reflection of His image in Christ Jesus for ever. This gradation marks the
stages of the religious life on earth; but it will be perfected in the eternal
state

(1.) The glorified saint will be admitted to the direct, intuitive VISION OF
GOD, of the Triune God as revealed in Christ, the eternal Mediator of that
vision. In this life we have the same vision, but yet We walk by faith, not by
sight:1 these words describe the present estate of Christians, as opposed to
that in which we shall be present with the Lord.2 St

John also tells us, when despairing of any other thing to say, that we shall be
like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.3 What the glorified Redeemer is now we
know not: for in this world we see through a glass darkly.4 St.. Paul makes
himself a representative of every saint in probation, even the most privileged,
when he says: Now I know in part: but then shall I know even as also I am
known.5 The vision of Christ is vouchsafed to faith now; but faith sees Him only
as in- a mirror: receiving as in a glass the glory of the Lord.6 With His own
face unveiled, and to the direct intuition of our unveiled faces, He cannot
reveal Himself: that will be the prerogative of heaven. He is pleased indeed to
use the same word to express our vision of Him here, emfanisoo autoo emauton,
and the vision of Him in heaven emfanistheénai toó prosoópoo toú Theoú but the
same vision will be seen by very different eyes. Whatever meaning the promise
has for the present, its fullest meaning is for the future: Blessed are the pure
in heart, for they shall see God.7 This is the BEATIFIC VISION of the Father in
the Son of God in Christ, which the contemplation of faith now prepares for and
longs for: no other than, the fulfillment of the Saviour’s request: that they
may behold My glory.8

12 Corinthians 5:7-8; 21 John 3:2; 31 Corinthians 13:12; 42 Corinthians 3:18;
5John 19:21; 6Hebrews 9:24; 7Matthew 5:8; 8John 17:24

(2.) This vision implies a distinct personality, which will never be lost in
God. But in a certain sense it must be lost in God, for the Saviour’s last
prayer, which was really His last promise, was that they all may be one; as Thou
Father art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us.1 Not content
with this, He proceeded and said: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be
made perfect in One. This union with God is, as we read, begun on earth: that
the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast
loved Me.2 Of such union as this there is no analogy on earth, nor among created
things: it has its type in the Holy Trinity itself 1John 17:21; 2John 17:23

(3.) This is Eternal BLESSEDNESS: the term which Christian theology uses to
express the utmost bliss of which the created spirit is capable in the vision
and enjoyment of God, and in the pure, undimmed reflection of His image.
Perfectly reflecting the image of the Eternal Image of the Father, we shall have
reached our truest and fullest personal consummation: eita to telos, the spirit
of man finds its rest in Him who is the principle and beginning of its life,
being now the glorified realization of what Adam was in Paradise, with such a
superadded union with the Son of God as Adam had not. Here is the final issue of
the Redeemer’s work of God in the soul of man: His own purity, the vision of God
in Him, and perfect blessedness. Once more, this is but the consummation of what
is begun on earth. In the spiritual vision of Himself, He enables us to purify
our souls, even as He is pure,1 for we are changed into the same image, from
glory to glory.2 And all who are thus transformed by grace shall be translated
into the glory beyond. In our glorified bodies our glorified spirits will see
God, and in that vision enjoy the eternal benediction of the pure in heart: we
shall know that absolute blessedness to bestow which was the final end of the
whole work of the Redeemer on earth:

God, having raised up His Servant, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every
one of you from his iniquities.3 11 John 3:3; 22 Cor. 2:18; 3Acts 3:26 TO GOD
ONLY WISE, BE GLORY THROUGH JESUS CHRIST FOR EVER. AMEN.1

1Romans 16:27


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