======================================================================== WRITINGS OF F W GRANT - VOLUME 1 by F.W. Grant ======================================================================== A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by F.W. Grant (Volume 1), compiled for study and devotional reading. Chapters: 100 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 00.00. Grant, Frederick W. - Library 2. 01.0.1. A Divine Movement and our path with God today. 3. 01.0.2. Preface 4. 01.0.3. Table of Contents 5. 01.0.4. Introduction 6. 01.01. Chapter 01 - Philadelphia: What is it? 7. 01.02. Chapter 02 - The Overcomer in Philadelphia 8. 01.03. Chapter 03 - You Have Kept My Word 9. 01.04. Chapter 04 - Holy and True 10. 01.05. Chapter 05 - You Have Not Denied My Name 11. 01.06. Chapter 06 - The Question of Association 12. 01.07. Chapter 07 - A Circle of Fellowship or Independency 13. 01.08. Chapter 08 - Clerisy and Ecclesiasticism 14. 01.09. Chapter 09 - Heresy 15. 01.10. Chapter 10 - The Assembly in its Practical Working 16. 02.0.1. Atonement 17. 02.0.2. Table of Contents 18. 02.01. Chapter 01 - The Need to be Met. 19. 02.02. Chapter 02 - The Last Adam and the New Creation. 20. 02.03. Chapter 03 - The Seed of the Woman 21. 02.04. Chapter 04 - The Ark and the Altar 22. 02.05. Chapter 05 - The Offering of Isaac 23. 02.06. Chapter 06 - The Passover and the Sea 24. 02.07. Chapter 07 - The Tabernacle-Service 25. 02.08. Chapter 08 - The Burnt-Offering 26. 02.09. Chapter 09 - The Peace-Offering. 27. 02.10. Chapter 10 - The Sin-Offering 28. 02.11. The Trespass-Offering. 29. 02.12. Chapter 12 - The Two Birds. (Lev_14:1-7; Lev_14:49-53.) 30. 02.13. Chapter 13 - The Day of Atonement. 31. 02.14. Chapter 14 - The Red Heifer 32. 02.15. Chapter 15 - Prophetic Testimony 33. 02.16. Chapter 16 - The Testimony of the Psalms. 34. 02.17. Chapter 17 - Atonement in the New Testament. The Gospels. 35. 02.18. Chapter 18 - Romans and Galatians. 36. 02.19. Chapter 19 - Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Corinthians. 37. 02.20. Chapter 20 - Hebrews. 38. 02.21. Chapter 21 - The other Apostolic Writings. 39. 02.22. Chapter 22 - What Christ Suffered in Atonement. 40. 02.23. Chapter 23 - The Penalty in its Inner Meaning. 41. 02.24. Chapter 24 - Redemption and Atonement. 42. 02.25. Chapter 25 - Resurrection the Sign of Complete Atonement. 43. 02.26. Chapter 26 - Union and Identification with Christ. 44. 02.27. Chapter 27 - God Glorified and Glorifying Himself. 45. 03.0.1. Christian Holiness. 46. 03.0.2. Table of Contents 47. 03.0.3. Introduction. 48. 03.01. Chapter 01 - Antinomianism : where is it? 49. 03.02. Chapter 02 - Holiness Rooted in a True Atonement. 50. 03.03. Chapter 03 - Justification and Acceptance in Christ. 51. 03.04. Chapter 04 - Is There Such a Thing as Being Born Again? 52. 03.05. Chapter 05 - Christian Security and its Moral Results. 53. 03.06. Chapter 06 - Sin in the Believer. 54. 03.07. Chapter 07 - God's History of His People. 55. 03.08. Chapter 08 - The Moral Application for the Christian. 56. 04.01. Facts and Theories as to a Future State 57. 04.02. Table of Contents 58. 04.03. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1889.) 59. 04.04. INTRODUCTION 60. 04.05. PART 1. - MAN AS HE IS 61. 04.06. CHAPTER I - IS THE BODY ALL? 62. 04.07. CHAPTER II - MAN A TRIUNE BEING 63. 04.08. CHAPTER III THE SPIRIT OF GOD 64. 04.09. CHAPTER IV THE SPIRIT OF MAN 65. 04.10. CHAPTER V THE SOUL 66. 04.11. CHAPTER VI FUNCTIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS OF SOUL AND SPIRIT 67. 04.12. CHAPTER VII SOUL AND SELF 68. 04.13. CHAPTER VIII THE FALL 69. 04.14. CHAPTER IX MAN'S RELATIONSHIP TO GOD 70. 04.15. PART II - DEATH AND THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 71. 04.16. CHAPTER X DEATH 72. 04.17. CHAPTER XI CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH . . . 1 73. 04.18. CHAPTER XII CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH . . . 2 74. 04.19. CHAPTER XIII OBJECTIONS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT 75. 04.20. CHAPTER XIV SHEOL, HADES AND PARADISE 76. 04.21. PART III - THE ETERNAL ISSUES 77. 04.22. CHAPTER XV THE AUTHORITY AND USE OF SCRIPTURE 78. 04.23. CHAPTER XVI IMMORTALITY: IS IT CONDITIONAL? 79. 04.24. CHAPTER XVII ETERNAL LIFE: WHAT IS IT? 80. 04.25. CHAPTER XVIII THE FIRST SENTENCE 81. 04.26. CHAPTER XIX DESTRUCTION, AND ITS KINDRED TERMS. - THE OLD TESTAMENT 82. 04.27. CHAPTER XX THE NEW TESTAMENT TERMS 83. 04.28. CHAPTER XXI A FURTHER SURVEY OF THE SCRIPTURE TERMS 84. 04.29. CHAPTER XXII THE PROVISIONAL CHARACTER OP DEATH 85. 04.30. CHAPTER XXIII THE MINISTRY OF DEATH 86. 04.31. CHAPTER XXIV PURIFICATION AND BLESSING OF THE EARTH 87. 04.32. CHAPTER XXV OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS 88. 04.33. CHAPTER XXVI THE AGES OF ETERNITY: - THE QUESTION STATED 89. 04.34. CHAPTER XXVII THE NEW TESTAMENT SOLUTION OT THE QUESTION 90. 04.35. CHAPTER XXVIII THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES AS TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD 91. 04.36. CHAPTER XXIX THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT 92. 04.37. CHAPTER XXX JUDGMENT: WHEN AND WHAT? 93. 04.38. CHAPTER XXXI THE DOOM OF SATAN 94. 04.39. CHAPTER XXXII GEHENNA 95. 04.40. CHAPTER XXXIII THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS - 1 96. 04.41. CHAPTER XXXIV THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS. - 2 97. 04.42. CHAPTER XXXV THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS. - 3 98. 04.43. CHAPTER XXXVI "EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT" IN MATT. XXV 99. 04.44. CHAPTER XXXVII "THE GOSPEL OF HOPE" 100. 04.45. CHAPTER XXXVIII ANNIHILIST - RESTORATIONISM - MR.. DUNN�S THEORY ======================================================================== CHAPTER 1: 00.00. GRANT, FREDERICK W. - LIBRARY ======================================================================== Grant, Frederick W. - Library Grant, F. W. - A Divine Movement and our path with God today Grant, F. W. - Atonement Grant, F. W. - Christian Holiness Grant, F. W. - Facts and Theories as to a Future State Grant, F. W. - Genesis in the Light of the New Testament Grant, F. W. - God’s Evangel Grant, F. W. - Leaves from the Book Grant, F. W. - Notes on the Epistle to the Hebrews Grant, F. W. - Some Lessons from the Book of Exodus Grant, F. W. - Spiritual Law in the Natural World Grant, F. W. - The Crowned Christ Grant, F. W. - The Lessons Of The Ages Grant, F. W. - The Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven Grant, F. W. - The Numerical Structure of Scripture Grant, F. W. - The Prophetic History of the Church Grant, F. W. - The Revelation of Christ S. A Circle of Fellowship" or Independency? S. An Address to my Brethren and Fellow-Members of the Church … S. But one thing needful. S. Continue Thou S. Creation as a Type S. David on His Throne a Type S. Hope of the Morning Star S. Household Baptism — A Review of Objections S. Independency S. Keeping Christ’s Word S. Man’s Neighbor. S. Neglect of the Reading Meeting S. Our Path and our Associations. S. Outside the Camp. S. Papers on Eternal Punishment. S. Reasons for my Faith as to Baptism S. Remember your guides. S. Re-tracings of Truth S. Some Themes of the Second Part of Romans S. Soul and Spirit S. The Age of Law S. The Age of Law: Part 2 S. The Church in a City. S. The Church’s Path S. The Doctrine of the Soul in Life and Death S. The Gospel of Healing." S. The Gospel of John, Part 3 S. The Ground of the Church of God S. The Lessons of the Ages S. The Mediator S. The One Only Name S. The Poor Man of Psa 41:1-13 S. The Redemption from "Vanity." (poem) S. The Swallow’s Nest S. The Trial by Human Government S. The Trial of Human Government S. The Trial of Innocence S. The Time of Innocence S. The Trial of Conscience in the Age Before the Flood S. The Trial of Conscience in the Age Before the Flood S. The Women of the Genealogy ======================================================================== CHAPTER 2: 01.0.1. A DIVINE MOVEMENT AND OUR PATH WITH GOD TODAY. ======================================================================== A Divine Movement and our path with God today. by Frederick W. Grant ======================================================================== CHAPTER 3: 01.0.2. PREFACE ======================================================================== Preface The “Christian Update” series Volume One (A discussion, defense, reproof and exhortation concerning the principles and practices of so-called “brethren”) ISBN 0-88172-138-7 Published 1990 by BELIEVERS BOOKSHELF INC. P. O. Box 261, Sunbury, Pennsylvania 17801 The Christian Update series consists of outstanding religious writings of 19th century authors, which writings have been edited to make them easier to read and understand. We have a gold mine of truth from these God-gifted writers who opened up for us the Scriptures in a way not known for 1500 years. Unfortunately, today, many of these writings are not being read, or when read, are not easily understood, because the style of writing has changed in the last century from a strong emphasis on literary beauty (with long and involved sentence structure), to emphasis on simplicity and readability. Also, words have changed meaning or are no longer in common usage. Therefore, believing it to be the Lord’s leading, I am editing some of these writings to make them easier to understand, while maintaining the writer’s exactness of meaning and as much of his style as possible. Some footnotes have been added, and references to papers no longer in print and to events no longer well known, have been omitted. I pray that this "Christian Update Series” will help those who read it, to grow in the truth and give them a greater appreciation of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Roger P. Daniel ======================================================================== CHAPTER 4: 01.0.3. TABLE OF CONTENTS ======================================================================== Table of Contents Introduction (By the Editor) Chapter 1 Philadelphia: What is it? Chapter 2 The Overcomer in Philadelphia Chapter 3 “You Have Kept My Word” Chapter 4 Holy and True Chapter 5 “You Have Not Denied My Name” Chapter 6 The Question of Association Chapter 7 A Circle of Fellowship or Independency Chapter 8 Clerisy and Ecclesiasticism Chapter 9 Heresy Chapter 10 The Assembly in its Practical Working ======================================================================== CHAPTER 5: 01.0.4. INTRODUCTION ======================================================================== Introduction Mr. Grant’s “A Divine Movement” has been selected for Volume One of the Christian Update series because of the unique, practical and important truths it presents, not because it is an easy book to read even in its edited form. These truths generally are not taught to Christians today, first because these truths are not popular — they do not agree with the position taken by most Christian leaders. Secondly, I fear that many of us who know (in differing degrees) and should be teaching these truths as a practical reality, have so let them slip that we shy away from presenting to others what we ourselves fail to practice. Thirdly, some may feel that the finer details of the truth about God’s Church are too difficult for, or beyond the need for particularly the young Christian to know. However, the most complete knowledge about God’s Church and our practical relationship to it, is one of the most important doctrines (truths or teachings) that any Christian can learn. The Church is Christ’s special object for this present dispensation. He is its heavenly Head, and each believer, simply by being saved, is a member of the body of Christ which is the Church. “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word; that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish … For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones … This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:22-33). I pray that the thoughts that Mr. Grant presents in what follows, concerning our practical relationship to the true Church, will cause each of us to carefully search both Scripture and our own hearts — two things that we often don’t like to do, perhaps because we are afraid of what we might find. The subjects which Mr. Grant discusses definitely are the ’meat,’ not the ’milk’ of the Bible, but I believe that the words and thoughts of this book will be understandable to any Christian of at least high school age who desires — purposes — to chew up and digest the meat of Scripture, instead of simply being content with the easy, surface truth — the milk of God’s holy Word. The Bible quotations are from the New Scofield Bible except when wording is critical. Then, the very accurate “New Translation” by J. N. Darby or Mr. Grant’s own translation, have been used. Also, the old-English words such as ’hath’ and ’thou’ have been updated to the 20th Century ’has’ and ’you.’ However, when reference is to God, the old English words “Thee, Thou, Thine” have been retained. Although I don’t see any Scriptural reason for retaining these words, I have found that many Christians feel very strongly that the older words are more respectful to God than “You.” R. P. Daniel ======================================================================== CHAPTER 6: 01.01. CHAPTER 01 - PHILADELPHIA: WHAT IS IT? ======================================================================== Chapter 01 Philadelphia: What is it? My purpose in this book is to follow a gracious movement of God and to show the Scriptural principles that characterize it. I also will discuss the difficulties and oppositions to this movement. My aim will be to exercise people with relation to it and to help those already exercised to settle questions that may disturb them. (The people involved in this movement commonly are called “brethren” or “Plymouth Brethren” although they do not accept any such name, Ed.) I do not propose to discuss any history of this movement, for a history would prejudice minds in opposite ways by the introduction of names. We tend to make men commend the truth rather than making the truth approve the men who follow it. Therefore, I will look only at principles, with their necessary results on our conduct, only referring to history when necessary to explain their importance to us. Each person then must apply the principles for himself. But with divine light and an unprejudiced soul truly before God, the application should be reasonably easy. It will test us, of course, as to whether we really are following God’s path. Let us not seek to escape the test but find the blessing which God has for us in it. When special times of sifting come, the sense of spiritual weakness and the love we have for one another would make us gladly seek escape. But, escape would be unwise and unbelieving. Satan is the sifter of God’s wheat, and it is a serious thing to let him win, because sifting is God’s method for purification. Take Simon Peter in the Gospels: he is in special danger, foreknown by the Lord as specially likely to fail, and yet Peter cannot be spared the sifting. “I have prayed for you,” says the Lord, not that you won’t be sifted, not even that you may not fail, but “that your faith fail not; and when you are restored, strengthen your brethren” (Luk 22:32). Here, good was to come from Satan’s sifting, even for one who might seem to have failed completely under it. What comfort there is in this for us! If the Lord is ready to put into our hands any work for Himself, what wonder if, first of all, He is pleased to let us, like Peter, find in sorrow and suffering the value of Satan’s sieve in breaking down our carelessness and self-confidence. Going on to the question at the head of this chapter, I propose to look briefly at the Lord’s addresses to the seven ’churches’ in Rev 2:1-29; Rev 3:1-22, which addresses are prophetic of seven successive conditions of the Church at large, covering the entire period of time from the apostles’ day until the Rapture. A great proof of this is the exacting correspondence between the prophecy and its historical fulfillment. Let’s briefly look at the first five churches. EPHESUS, to which, in its fresh eagerness, Paul gave the doctrine of the Church, here heads a history of decline. Outwardly, things still look good. The departure is realized only by God. First love is no longer there. This is the beginning of the end, a root upon which many evil fruits will develop if there is not recovery. SMYRNA shows us the double attack of Satan on the Church in this weakened condition. Outwardly, there is persecution by the Roman Empire. Internally, there is the introduction of Judaism into Christianity which develops as the enemy’s seed, the “synagogue of Satan” — the mixing together of true and false in a legal and ritualistic system claiming earthly possession and promise, and already slandering (blaspheming) the faithful remnant. PERGAMOS shows us the lost pilgrim character of the Church. They are “dwelling where Satan’s throne is.” The Nicolaitans, religious subjectors of the laity, now act as such, while Balaam-teachers seduce God’s people into idolatry and evil alliances with the world. In THYATIRA, we see the above fully developed in Romanism. That which Balaam-teachers did before as individuals, a woman (type or picture of the professing church) does now, speaking as a prophetess with the claim of divine authority. But God brands her with the terrible name of ’Jezebel,’ the idolatrous persecutor of the true prophets in Ahab’s day. However, development of this evil line ends here. A remnant begins to be marked out again (“the rest in Thyatira”) which prepares us for a different condition of things in the next address. Accordingly, in SARDIS, we don’t see Jezebel or her corruption. Things have been received and heard, but they are ready to die. The general state is death, but with a “name to live” and “a few names that have not defiled their garments” in this place of the dead. We have here the national (government-controlled) churches of the Reformation, with their more-Scriptural doctrine, but which is difficult to maintain in the midst of what (the world claiming to be the true Church) is spiritually dead, with only a name to live. This brings us to PHILADELPHIA. If the previous interpretations are correct, Philadelphia must be something that has developed in the years since the Reformation, outside of the spiritually-dead state churches. Philadelphia has the Lord’s approval in a way that no other of the seven churches has, except Smyrna, with which, in another way also, Philadelphia is linked. Here the synagogue of Satan once more appears, as in Smyrna. There seems to be some revival of the Judaistic-principles typified by this, or at least something brings these principles to the front of the Lord’s address. It is understandable why Christians would shrink from appropriating to themselves the Lord’s commendation found here, although that very approval must cause every Christian to desire the character which our Lord can thus commend. But, since no circumstance can make it impossible to fulfill the conditions necessary for His approval, there surely must have been Philadelphians (people with a Philadelphian-character) in every generation since these words of Scripture were written. It is blessed to see that what the Lord approves in Philadelphia is given in such plain words: keeping His Word, not denying His Name, keeping the word of His patience. All this seems simple, and it is to one who is simply leaning on the Lord! Yet, if we apply it carefully, not letting ourselves off easily, these words will search us out to the very bottom. Although there always have been individual Philadelphians, a Philadelphian-movement is another matter, and this is what we should look for as occurring sometime after the Reformation. Although we shouldn’t flatter ourselves with being what we are not, we must consider that, if there is such a movement, what is our personal relationship to it? This may cause us anxious inquiry, and it would be very disappointing if a satisfactory answer was not available. If the Lord has given me in these addresses, clues to His relationship to the successive phases of the Church on earth, then I must ask myself where I fit into this. If I do not belong to that line of development that ends in Thyatira (Papal Rome) and I do not belong to the state-churches of the Reformation, or those churches similarly constituted, then I must find my place either in Philadelphia or in Laodicea (the seventh church). Now, if the Holy Spirit is at work in the midst of such a state of things as Sardis implies, not merely to sustain a remnant, but in testimony against evil, in what direction will He work? It will be to separate the spiritually living from the spiritually dead. He will lead Christians to seek out their own company, giving expression to the ’love of the brethren’ — the meaning of the word Philadelphia. This work of the Holy Spirit has characterized, in varying degrees, many movements that have arisen since the Reformation, which movements taught and practiced, more or less, the separation of Christians from the world and the communion (fellowship) of Christians as a visible reality. Every protest against the misery of an unsaved church-membership and every attempt to maintain the difference between the Church and the world has proclaimed the related truth of the Church’s practical unity. Philadelphia — brotherly love — is a word that covers all this seeking to make visible the true Church, so long thought to be invisible because of being hidden in the world and in the religions of men. Thus, ’Philadelphia’ stands for a well-defined movement in the history of the professing church, which movement has assumed many different characters. These differences may be used to deny the nature of Philadelphia as defining any distinct path for God’s people today, but this is only a superficial view of the matter. Other considerations will make us modify this first conception and make us realize that the Word of God, here as elsewhere, requires complete honesty in our obedience to it, to get His blessings. Let’s now consider the first warning that the Lord gives us in the address to the church of Philadelphia (Rev 3:7-13). ======================================================================== CHAPTER 7: 01.02. CHAPTER 02 - THE OVERCOMER IN PHILADELPHIA ======================================================================== Chapter 02 The Overcomer in Philadelphia If the desire of the Philadelphian is the separation of the Church from the world and its restoration to visible unity on earth, how the Lord’s words “you have a little power” appeal to us. Power for such work plainly is not man’s, although God graciously acknowledges what is there. The ideal is not attainable, but this is to be distinguished from an impractical aim. Infidels have rightly declared that the Christian standard is not completely attainable, but every Christian knows that to “walk as Christ walked” is very far from an impractical aim. If we are acquainted at all with the feeble efforts of Christians to walk with God, we must realize that, in the path in which Christ would lead us, we must have the deepest humility to escape the deepest humiliation. The warning given to the Philadelphian speaks volumes here, for all depends on his heeding it: “Hold fast that which you have, that no man take your crown.” It is by holding fast that ’overcoming’ is accomplished for the Philadelphian, since this verse (Rev 3:11) gives the only evil that is in view in Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s “little power” makes the above warning more impressive. The unattainableness of the ideal, the little progress that we make towards it, the weakness manifest in others as in ourselves, all combine to dishearten us. But, that which often seems to be the failure of principles is only our failure to act on the principles, but this is bad enough. If the principles have failed by not being carried out; if they are too heavenly, would it not be wise to ’materialize’ them somewhat? If a lower (more earthly) path is more practical, is it not better? Don’t you realize that to give up a single point of the Lord’s will is to give up ’obedience’ as a principle! How many points we then give up is only a question of detail. It is not difficult to find the wrecks of failed Philadelphias littering the centuries since Luther. Every genuine revival, being the work of the Holy Spirit, has tended in the Philadelphian direction. It has brought Christians together, it has separated them from the world, it has proved afresh the power of Christ’s Word, it has revived the sweetness of His Name. The sense of evils in the professing church, intolerable to the aroused conscience, has forced many, in obedience to God’s command, to “depart from iniquity” (2Ti 2:19). Is it not the constant reproach of such movements that, in a generation or two, they sink to nearly the common level of things around? They have not been able to retain the blessing. If gathered to some principle that the natural conscience owns, or some assertion of right that men value as their possession, such movements may still grow while the old men weep at the remembrance of past blessing, now lost, and realize their temple to be in (spiritual) ruin. All this must take place unless God prevents it. The first generation had to break through natural surroundings at the call of God, and they willingly followed Him in suffering and self-denial. Then their children came into the heritage their fathers had obtained for them, but without the exercise that their fathers had. Nature attracts them to the path by force of habit. They accept easily and easily can let go. They don’t know the joy of sacrifice. They don’t have the vigor gained by painful work. So, it is easy to predict what will follow, not necessarily from anything wrong with what they hold as truth, but from the incapable, unexercised hands that hold the truth. The argument of success resulting from such failure, deserves consideration. Does success, as men count it, imply that the success is good in God’s eyes? Or conversely, does failure and break-up prove that the wrecked thing was evil? Carry out honestly such a supposition and see where it will lead you. Take, for instance, the Church in the days of the Apostles, as seen in Scripture, and the blessed truth given it at the beginning. Where will I find this Church or the truth possessed by her when I come to the beginning of uninspired history? The answer is plain and terrible; God even prepared us for it. It was needful even 1900 years ago that Jude (Jude 1:3) should exhort us to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.” Paul speaks of “the mystery of iniquity already at work” (2Th 2:7), and he and Peter, of the special evils of the last days. John found the signs of the ’last time’ in there being already “many antichrists” (1Jn 2:18). Outside of Scripture, the historical church, in the words of J. N. Darby, “never was as a system the institution of God or what God had established, but at all times, from its first appearance in ecclesiastical history, the departure as a system from what God established, and nothing else.” And as to doctrines, “it is quite certain that neither a full redemption nor a complete, possessed justification by faith as Paul teaches it, a perfecting forever by Christ’s one offering, a known personal acceptance in Christ, is ever found in any ecclesiastical writings after the Scriptures, for long centuries.” So, what about this apostolic church which seems to have vanished? Were its principles at fault in its quick failure? What principles of Scripture secure us from failure? Scripture exhorts us, if we are Philadelphians, to “hold fast,” and this recognizes the danger of not holding fast! No one should be surprised, then, that the wrecks of Philadelphia are strewn along the road, while Rome retains her boasted unity and power over people. It is accounted for by the simple Scriptural fact that error roots itself in the world easier than truth. So the Lord asks by Jeremiah (Jer 2:11), “Has a nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? But My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.” May we not argue the reverse way, that in an adverse world with Satan’s power rampant, if a people could find a way of steady Scriptural increase and prosperity, this exceptional vigor would have to be accounted for, and not the fact of reverses and discouragements. We clearly should understand what the Lord’s warning words mean: “Hold fast that which you have, that no man take your crown.” What are we to “hold fast”? It is not a certain deposit of doctrines. I do not deny such a deposit or that it should be held securely, but this is not what the Lord speaks of here, as it is in the message to Sardis. The comparison between the two is important. It is said to Sardis, “Remember therefore how you have received and heard, and hold fast and repent.” There, a measured amount, a clearly-defined deposit of truth is indicated. This is instructive when we recall what Sardis stands for. A wonderful blessing was given in those Reformation days. They had received and heard many important truths and they knew the value of it all. But, in their eagerness to secure it for the generations to come, they put it into creeds and confessions. They weren’t wrong in this, for they had a right to say for themselves and to declare to others what they believed they had received from God. Those confessions, when read by the light of the fires of martyrdom for the signers, are blessed witnesses of the truth for which, when felt in power, men willingly could give their bodies to the flame. But the wrong was that they took those creeds and forced them, with all the emphasis that penalties enforced by a State-church could give, upon the generations following. Their measure of knowledge only, was to be that of their children. If there was error in the creed, that error must be continued. Finally, all this was placed for maintenance into the hands, not of spiritual men, but of the world church they had started! The Holy Spirit thus was grieved and quenched. He was leading them far beyond where they actually stopped and was ready to lead them into “all truth” (John 16:13). But they wrote their creeds, not just to show how far the Lord had led them, but as the ultimate degree of knowledge. Henceforth, it was to what they had received and heard in the 16th century, that they looked back. The word was no longer, as with the Reformers themselves, “On with the Holy Spirit, our Teacher,” but rather, “Back to the Reformation.” The words of the Lord to Sardis are, therefore, marvelously accurate, saying literally, “You have taken the measure of truth you have, as if it were all the truth. Well, you have limited yourselves very much, but at least be true to what you have: be watchful and strengthen the things that remain, that are ready to die.” Philadelphia is also called to hold fast, but hold what? What she has, of course; and that is a little power and Christ’s Word kept and His Name not denied. Notice that there is no longer a measured quantity. Nor is it His commandments or His words, but His Word that is to be held securely. The distinction is drawn in John 14:21-24. Love is not measured by profession or emotion, but by obedience. The Lord says, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me.” The response to this is, “and he who loves Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him.” But there is a deeper love than that shown by keeping commandments. It is a love which takes account of all God’s Word, whether positive command or not. And here, God’s response is correspondingly greater, “If a man love Me, he will keep My Word (not Words) and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our abode with him.” Here is a full and permanent communion not found in the previous case. Philadelphia has kept — is keeping, as long as she remains Philadelphia — not His commandments but His Word as a whole. She doesn’t know it all; that is impossible. Just for that reason, she doesn’t have a certain amount of truth to which she is faithful. She is like Mary at the Lord’s feet, to listen and be subject to whatever He communicates. His Word as a whole is before her. Not limiting the Holy Spirit, she is willing to be led on. Her ear is open. She has the blessedness of the man “who hears Me, watching daily at My gates, waiting at the posts of My doors” (Pro 8:34). Of course, this is not unique to any special time, for it is always God’s way to lead on one who is ready for His leading. But since the mid-1800s, Scripture has been opened to us more as a whole than at any former time since the apostles. Further, this has been in connection with a movement that has all the features of Philadelphia. Certain great truths, having been recovered to the Church, have helped to open up in a new way both the Old and New Testaments. The dispensations have been distinguished; the Gospel cleared from Galatian error (law-keeping); our place in Christ learned in connection with our participation in His death and resurrection; the real nature of eternal life and the present seal and baptism of the Holy Spirit in contrast with all former or other Spiritual operations and gifts, has been learned; and the Rapture has been distinguished from His Appearing. We owe it to the Lord to fully acknowledge what He has done. Must we not connect it to the fulfillment of Christ’s word to Philadelphia in contrast with the “received and heard” of Sardis? So we must ask ourselves the solemn question. Is the previously discussed attitude still maintained and is it to be maintained? Are we to go on, still learning from the Lord, or are we now to be content with no more than these blessed truths? A large measure is still a measure, and once we get back to what we have received, we accept the bucket in place of the flowing well. At the feet of Jesus, who will presume to say that we have all of His blessed Word? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 8: 01.03. CHAPTER 03 - YOU HAVE KEPT MY WORD ======================================================================== Chapter 03 You Have Kept My Word The more we understand what is implied in the keeping of Christ’s Word, the more we will realize its importance. To really keep Christ’s Word implies going on with Him in steady progress, not wilfully permitting any part of it to be dark, unfruitful or in vain for us; not allowing ourselves to be robbed of difficult books or chapters. We often permit this to happen without a thought about it, as if God had given us too large a Bible and we were confused rather than served by the largeness of His gift. Do we really believe that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2Ti 3:16)? Are we sure that this is true of prophecy, history, type, parable, even of the long genealogies, of the lists of David’s officers, of the cities of Israel, etc.? Are we personally seeking to make all of it profitable to us? Let us be absolutely honest with ourselves and with God. If we do not accept the profitableness of all Scripture, are we not denying in some measure the doctrine of God’s inspiration of Scripture? If so, then we are not “men of God” for whom all Scripture is fruitful (2Ti 3:17). Is this not a serious matter? Take the admonition from the typical history of Israel. Was it not evil that Israel, brought into the promised land by God’s power, failed to possess it all? Is it not a serious matter that for us also, “there remains very much land to be possessed?” Two things — apart from unbelief as to the inspiration of God’s Word — are used to argue against the above, but they are both evil, unbelieving arguments. However, since they sound reasonable, they need exposure. The first is an old argument of Isaiah’s day (Isa 29:9-11) against the divine vision. Delivered to the learned with the request to read it, the answer of the ’learned’ is, “The book is sealed.” So today, man’s argument is, “The language can’t be understood: history, type, parable, are strange speech. People everywhere disagree as to the interpretation. How can we succeed where so many have failed? What good is guessing?” Of course, no good can come from guessing, for uncertainty as to truth makes it dangerous to proceed or even to stand still. The plain duty of every Christian is to keep on the firm ground of known truth. Scripture has been used so carelessly as to make it the mere plaything of the mind, hardly to be taken seriously. However, there is certainty at every point for anyone who, in faith, will seek it. “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God … and it shall be given him” (Jas 1:5). “If any man wills to do His (God’s) will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God…” (John 7:17). If we believe that God deals truthfully with us, the above verses must be true. So, let us use the greatest care as to the interpretations that we accept. Otherwise, free license is given to the imagination. The second argument, which also is as old as Isaiah, is the most widespread and the most dangerous. It is the language of the people, not of their leaders. It appears as the language of humility: “I am not learned, so I can’t understand.” This denies the all-sufficiency of the Holy Spirit as the Teacher of Christians, or it denies His presence with His people. It makes the understanding of God’s things to depend on a man’s education or on his I.Q., instead of on the Holy Spirit. It makes Christ, who dwelt among the poor and the needy, now to only reveal Himself to the educated, intelligent and wealthy. It makes the Lord’s disciples, those unlearned Galileans, an anomaly for all future times. It gives the intellect a huge practical advantage over the heart and conscience — the moral being. It makes the learned the judges of truth for the unlearned. It makes Scripture filter through the minds of the learned before it is fit to be the living ministry of God to others. Thus, it subjects the many to the few, and fulfilling its own argument, makes Scripture inaccessible and impracticable for the mass of mankind. What wonder if, under the influence of such a belief, people find what they expect to find — a closed instead of an open Bible. What wonder if the Holy Spirit, grieved and limited by the unfaithfulness of Christians, will not “lead us into all truth” (John 16:13). The above isn’t intended to discredit learning or to deny the right place of intellect in the things of God. In spite of sin, one who believes God must believe that God has made his understanding, reason, imagination, conscience and heart all for Himself. Consequently, when one receives the gospel and is in real nearness to God, all these things are made alive and greatly enlarged. Let a man really desire to know this God who has revealed Himself to him; let this desire be his top priority in learning, and then every bit of truth that he learns will be the means of daily strength and growth — not monstrous as when only the head develops, but the growth of the mind, heart, conscience, all alike and together, on towards the perfect, always proportionate man. This learning from God is the privilege of every Christian, regardless of his social-economic-educational position. Christ said, “Labour not for the food which perishes, but for that food which endures to everlasting life” (John 6:27). This food is spiritual knowledge — knowledge of the highest kind, which is needful for the proper control of every other kind of knowledge. Since “all things were created by Christ and for Him” (Col 1:16), it is not possible to see things aright until we connect them with Him for whom they were created. Then, all natural science will become spiritual science; all -ologies will work into theology. What value will the world be to me if it is not God’s world? Since the world and even the universe were made to manifest Him, how great should my interest be in them! Christians are partly guilty for the neglect which has allowed the natural sciences to become the possession of unbelieving men. So, instead of Christianity standing firm on the two feet of Nature and Scripture which both testify of God, it limps along with one useless foot a burden on the other. Knowledge? Yes, labor for knowledge, but first get Christ who is the key to it, and then the whole field lies open to you. Take possession for Him of all things. Labor, be loyal, be in earnest: “every spot that the sole of your feet shall stand on shall be your own.” Labor more earnestly for spiritual food than for what you call your ’necessary’ food. Every instinct of your spiritual nature desires spiritual food and if these are denied, starved, neglected, you will dwarf yourself spiritually and become satisfied with what is almost starvation. Only eternity will reveal to you the extent of your loss, but then, it is too late. As I have said, I believe that God has since the mid-1800s opened up the Bible to us in a remarkable way, and now He is testing us with it. Alas if we turn away! Are not these newly-revealed truths for us? Do we have faith in Him who has given them to us, that He has not mocked us with His gift? Shall we be bewildered and oppressed by the greatness of these riches? The field is boundless, but its green pastures and glorious distances invite us to explore them. Where are the people who find in the labor needed for this exploration, the necessary exercise for spiritual health and vigor? Here are endless beauties and glories, so little realized, which can be the possession of all of us because they belong to all of us! Do you say that your measure only can be small? Beloved, have you earnestly tried to find your measure? Are you positive that you have reached your God-given boundary line? Could you tell God that you are honestly and with your whole heart working hard to learn with Him all that He has for you? If so, God’s rule, given in several places including Mark 4:25, will apply: “To him who has, shall more be given.” Where, then, will your limit be found? Think of what God has done for us in giving us these things! Here is continuous occupation for us. Is that a loss or a gain? With the necessity of much occupation with the things of the world just to get daily food and clothing, is it loss or gain that we should have, at the same time, an equal necessity for spiritual things? It is a necessity. “Labor not for the food which perishes but for that food which endures unto everlasting life” (John 6:27) was spoken by lips that cannot lie, and here, the spiritual labor is said to be the more necessary. Who will disagree with the Lord? Who will say that this rule applied only to the Galilean peasants who could follow Him, not because of the miracles, but because they ate of the (spiritual) loaves and were filled, and does not apply to the hard-worked masses of today! The necessity for this spiritual labor is inherent to the spiritual life itself, and has its corresponding reward and blessing. Among other things, it balances and relieves the natural labor. The weight of the earth’s atmosphere presses on the average-sized man with a force of about 14 tons, yet we are not conscious of it because, as the air penetrates the body, there is an equal force acting outward. In like manner, the pressure of natural things can be met by the opposing pressure of spiritual things so that we may walk at ease and in freedom. I’m sure that you will find this true, for spiritual occupation increases our faith and spiritual energy, enabling us with divine power to meet life’s demands. Our spiritual land is good, but it must be cultivated for its value to be realized. Then, the profits from it will make it impossible for us to be spiritually poor. Unworked, however, our heavenly inheritance still will leave us in spiritual poverty on earth. Since we need so much occupation with our own things to meet the constant demands on us in the world, God in His faithfulness to us has not put the truth into creeds which we might easily learn by heart and lay aside, nor has He written everything out so plainly that there is no difficulty in understanding it. Bitter arguments have raged about even basic fundamentals. It is better in God’s thought, that we should have constant need for reference to, and the most careful study of our Lesson Book, caused by exercises of the most painful nature, than be allowed to sink into spiritual laziness. Most truth is not in the plain language of the epistles. The Lord taught much in parables. The book of Revelation uses symbols almost entirely. The Christian truths in the Old Testament are taught in types and history, which we are taught to allegorize. The man of understanding in Proverbs is expected “to understand a proverb and its interpretation, the words of the wise and their dark sayings” (Pro 1:6). So, “if you cry after knowledge and lift up your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, then shall you understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God” (Pro 2:3-5). We even are told that “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing” (Pro 25:2) — hiding it where a diligent person can find it as a reward. All this implies a personal labor that cannot be delegated to another, although we all are to help one another in it. God does not recognize a laity to be spoon fed once or twice a week, taking with little question what is given them. God does not recognize a division of labor — worldly things for the common people and spiritual things for a special class. No, we personally are to “be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height” (Eph 3:18). Indeed, we need every Christian to help us understand the Scriptures. Of course, there are God-given teachers. No one with Scripture before him could deny that. But Scripture does not restrict teaching to the teachers, any more than it confines evangelizing to the evangelist. It is the intended glory of all these special ’gifts’ to enable those whom they (the teachers, etc.) speak to, to do without them — to send men from themselves to Christ. Sitting at His feet, then, we hear Him say, without reference to any special gift, “one is your Master (Teacher), even Christ, and all you are brethren” (Mat 23:8). Teachers are special helps given to the entire Church by the ascended Lord, and he who undervalues the help given, dishonors the Lord from whom the teachers have their mission and qualification. But men often turn special help into special hindrances and this often has been done with teachers. The moment the teacher is allowed to give authority to the truth — making it true because he says so — instead of the truth he teaches giving him authority; the moment the teacher is allowed to come between men and the Word, instead of bringing them to the Word; the moment the teacher is made the substitute for personal labor in the divine Word instead of a help and encouragement towards personal labor, then there is perversion of the gift and disaster follows! The whole evil of the Church teaching — man’s rule usurping God’s rule — has come in this way. Clergy and laity are thus formed. The message to Philadelphia presses on us that Christ’s Word, which all Scripture is, is given to His people, and those who keep (obey) it are commended by Him. What I have been urging is that, for this, they must know for themselves what it is that they are to keep. All Scripture is before them, and they cannot have the spirit of a Philadelphian if they willingly allow any of it to be taken from them; if their Bibles are willingly permitted to lack, as it were, whole pages, perhaps whole books of what is inspired of God for our profitable use. Further, the need for earnest, untiring labor in the Word is what is insisted on as necessary for all progress, for the maintenance of spirituality and for a right state with God on the part of all of God’s people, not of just a special class. Let me further press the last part of this theme. What a new state would begin for us if we would find that between our necessary work in the world and our still more necessary and fruitful occupation with Scripture, our time was so fully taken up that we would have little or none remaining for anything that was not absolutely productive and profitable; if all that was idle, vain and frivolous, disappeared out of our lives; if the newspaper (radio, TV, etc.) were supplanted by fresh discoveries in the things of God.* Peter exhorts us that “laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speaking, [we should] as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the Word that we should grow thereby” (1Pe 2:1). God does not desire us to remain babes. The milk is to make us grow up spiritually. Peter conveys to us in these words some of that energy which, under God, had helped to make him, the unlearned Galilean fisherman, a leader in divine things. We are to be, he says, as ardent after the Word as a newborn babe is for milk! The one business of a newborn babe is to get milk. Is the Word of God sought and longed for like that in your life? Then notice the exhortation concerning the incompatibility of spiritual occupation with “all malice and guile and hypocrisies and envies, and all evil speaking.” If the Word of God is feeding our souls, all evil things will pass away just as the dying leaf falls, crowded out by the new bud. Psa 1:1 gives us a delightful picture: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.” This is the negative side, but the positive side follows, and the power is in this: “But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law does he meditate day and night” (Psa 1:2). This is a sweet and glowing picture. Look at the result: “And he is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, which brings forth its fruit in its season; its leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he does shall prosper” (Psa 1:3). It would be a blessed thing if that picture was true of each one of us. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 9: 01.04. CHAPTER 04 - HOLY AND TRUE ======================================================================== Chapter 04 Holy and True “You have kept My Word” is the first commendation to Philadelphia. The people thus commended are first of all Philadelphians, so what God commends in them is all the more important. Let’s emphasize that, while God is speaking to a company of people who are characterized by love of the brethren, His praise is not that “you have loved the brethren.” This does not even form a part of the commendation, which is, rather, “You have kept My Word and not denied My Name … you have kept the word of My patience.” Yet, in the promise to the overcomer, God does refer to their Philadelphian name, for inscribed on the pillar which he who has only “a little strength” finally becomes, is not only “the name of my God” and “my new name,” but also, “the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem.” This city is the eternal home of the brethren (believers in Christ) and has, I believe, distinct reference to Philadelphian-character. However, in His approval of them, He says nothing of this character. Why? The title under which the Lord addresses them fully accounts for it. He is addressing Philadelphians. Thus, if people don’t have this character, He isn’t talking to them. He is speaking to those who seek the recovery of the true Church which should have been like “a city set on a hill (or) a light on a candlestick,” but which has dropped almost into the invisibility that men ascribe to it. God’s first words remind these seekers of Church-visibility of His holiness and truth: “These things says He who is holy, He who is true.” How much they will need to remember this! Think of the Church that is so scattered and which we would so desire to see restored. What are we to do for its restoration? Shall we proclaim to all that it is God’s will that His people should be together? Shall we spread the Lord’s table, free from all denominational names and terms for communion, and invite all who love the Lord to come together? The one loaf on the table does witness that we are one bread, one body, and there is no body that faith can own, except the body of Christ. Why then should we not do this? I answer, “Tell them that the Lord welcomes all His own, but also tell them that it is ’the Holy and True’ who welcomes them, and that He cannot give up His nature.” How has the true Church become the invisible Church? Is it her misfortune or her fault? Take these seven epistles of Rev 2:1-29; Rev 3:1-22 and trace the Church’s descent (as we did in Chapter one) from the loss of first love in Ephesus to the allowance of the woman Jezebel in Thyatira, and on through dead Sardis to the present time. Can we just ignore the past and simply, as if nothing had happened, begin again? Suppose all Christians accepted your invitation and you were really able to assemble all the members of Christ at the Lord’s table with their jarring views, their various states of soul, their entanglements with the world and with their evil associations. Would the Lord’s table answer to the character implied in it being His table? Would He really be owned and honored as Lord (Master) in that coming together? With the causes of all the scattering not judged, your ’gathering’ would be a defiance of the holy discipline. It would be another Babel (confusion). Do you think that outward unity is so dear to Christ that He would desire it apart from true confession, cleansing and fellowship in the truth This address to Philadelphia intentionally opposes all such thoughts. Why doesn’t the Lord present Himself here, as He did to Sardis, as the One who “has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars” — fullness of spiritual power, with His people in His keeping? It may seem strange that dead Sardis is thus reminded but not Philadelphia. However, such a statement to Philadelphia would indicate the recovery of the Church by their own means. To Sardis, the statement is exhortation instead of assurance. Rather, Philadelphia needs the warning that they are living in the last days — days of apostasy (falling away) — and thus must guard against an outward unity that would set aside all the godly value of unity. How perfect, in its place, is every word of God! Let’s notice again what the Lord commends. “You have a little power … have kept My word and not denied My Name, and … have kept the word of My patience.” Mark these ’My’s’ which occur eight times in this address. They show that the true Philadelphian clings to Christ, to His Word, to His Person, to His strangership in the present time, and to His certainty of the future. The work of a Philadelphia is to obey Christ, to hold fast the truth as to Him and to be waiting for His coming. The work of gathering will look after itself if the above is done. The Lord will see to that! Christ the Center is to unite us, not something that is external to Him. Thus alone will there be fruit for God and commendation from Him who here speaks to His people. It is easy to see how the Philadelphian character may be lost by a false idea of it. Real true brotherly love is a precious thing, but see where the apostle Peter puts it: “Add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly love” (2Pe 1:5-7). In God’s order, many things need to come before brotherly love. No doubt, all of the above things are true of all Christians to some degree, but there is a relationship of these things one to another, shown in the order of appearance in this verse, and that is what is important here. There is no true love of the brethren — no Philadelphia — unless all these things are found in it. For it all, Christ must have the first place in our lives. Philadelphian-gathering is to Christ, and it is Christ who gathers. A common faith, a common joy, a common occupation find their source in the outward sign of the spiritual bond that unites us. Those who know what gathering at the Lord’s table means, know that communion there can only be hindered by the presence of what is not communion. Harmony cannot be increased by discord. I’m not speaking of lack of understanding. Rather, I’m speaking of an unexercised conscience and of a heart not receptive to divine things (which means it is receptive to worldly, fleshly things). How must the power of the Holy Spirit be hindered by such! The Scriptural rule for times of decline is to gather “with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart” (2Ti 2:22) and the way to find those is not to advertise for them, but to “follow righteousness, faith, love, peace,” walking on the same road that they are on. The Lord will bring you together. If we really seek the blessing of souls, we will guard carefully the entrance into fellowship (the breaking of bread). We are responsible to see that such an entrance (reception) is “holy and true.” Careless reception is the cause of much trouble and is part of the cause of the general decline in spiritual things. “Evil company corrupts good morals” (1Co 15:33). Men cannot walk together unless they are agreed. When trial comes, as it will, those who have never been firmly convinced of the divine reason for the position they have taken, will scatter and flee from it with reckless haste, carrying with them an evil report of what they have turned their backs on. Such persons usually are beyond recovery and often develop into bitter enemies of the truth. We are taking a great responsibility on ourselves if we press people to take a position for which they are not ready; in which, therefore, they act without faith. The apostle Paul warns us of the danger of leading people who do not have an exercised conscience, to follow a faith that is not their own: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom 14:23). No wonder that there are wrecks all along the road of a ’divine movement’ for which real, exercised, personal faith is so constantly required, and in which so many are trying to walk without it. We should remember that it is the Holy and the True who is seeking fellowship with us, and only that which answers to this holy and true character can survive the tests that surely will come. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 10: 01.05. CHAPTER 05 - YOU HAVE NOT DENIED MY NAME ======================================================================== Chapter 05 You Have Not Denied My Name Philadelphia is produced in practice only by understanding and obeying Christ’s Word and by a new sense of relationship to Him and of what He is to His people. Every genuine revival has something of this character. I am here speaking of the revival of saints, although the effect will be seen in a new power for the saving of sinners. When genuine interest in the Word of God is revived and the love of Christ is felt in new power, increased communion with Him will cause the ’communion of saints’ to be more valued and sought after; and the desire to be obedient will cause any yoke with unsaved to be an intolerable bondage. If such a revival were felt in the whole Church, every unequal yoke (2Co 6:14-18) would be broken by the energy of the Holy Spirit and the whole Church would be brought together! But such a complete revival has never taken place, so the consequence of partial revivals has been more or less to separate Christians from Christians — those who want to go on with the world from those who do not. Hence, every such godly movement has to bear the reproach on the part of both the world and of many Christians of causing divisions, as the Lord’s words declare that He came to do: “not to send peace but a sword” and to make a man’s enemies to be “those of his own household” (Mat 10:24-39). In such a situation, compromise and expediency soon begin their fatal work. That which the Holy Spirit alone can accomplish, is taken in hand by the wisdom of man. Scripture is perverted for their ’causes,’ for they cannot do without Scripture. Truth is partly suppressed or ignored; the cry of ’love’ is invoked; and liberal tolerance with the promise of wider and speedy results, becomes the method of operation. From such activities of men, the religious confederacies of today have arisen with their large followings, which seem so triumphantly to justify them, but in which the truth of God tends to be watered down or ignored so that men may keep peaceful company with one another. The uncompromising truth does arouse men and set them at opposition. The jarring sects of Protestantism have arisen from those ’private interpretations’ of an open Bible, which ’wiser’ Romanism has condemned in favor of what is strangely called ’catholic’ (universal). Rome’s word is not compromise but authority. Protestantism also dislikes the word compromise, preferring the word tolerance. They say that you must be liberal in divine things — the very thing in which you have no rights, for the Word of God claims to have the highest authority. Scripture is not tolerant! “If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord” (1Co 14:37). Therefore, the sharp-edged teaching of ’all Scripture’ tends to be in disrepute today. As men did with Jesus in His day, so now, they bow it out. They seldom allow Scripture to dictate to them where obedience will cost them much. There seems to be only a few people who are ready to receive and welcome all the truth of God. There can be no other reason why all Christians are not of one mind today, than that they do not desire at all costs to follow the truth. The Lord Himself says, “he who wills to do God’s will, shall know of the doctrine” (John 7:17). How could it be otherwise? What then does the confusion in Christendom tell of the condition of God’s people? In general, the problem is not strife about doctrines, but laziness and indifference to them. Some, very active in evangelism, almost have given up doctrine as only hindering their work. However, if they pause to realize the meaning of this, they must admit that either God or they are mistaken, because God’s Word is full of doctrine (teachings) which we are told to obey. On the other hand, how many simply have received what they have heard without exercise about it, without following Paul’s rule to “prove all things, hold fast that which is good” (1Th 5:21). As a consequence of carelessly receiving many things, Scripture seems inconsistent and unintelligible. The searching of Scripture brings only perplexity. People who hold Scripture in a general way but give up its ’minor’ details, would be astonished if they really knew how much of what they think that God has given them, is not the living Word of God at all. This carelessness and laziness affects even the most fundamental truths about the Person and work of Christ. There are many conflicting views about atonement in the so-called orthodox denominations. What is the remedy? Many answer, “Leave out the views; do not define.” But suppose Scripture defines. Then they will say, “Don’t go too deep into Scripture.” But Satan is the one who suggests this. He says to one person, “Be humble, don’t imagine that your opinion is better than anyone else’s,” and to another, “Be charitable: good men differ about these things,” and to another, “Don’t contend for this: you will make enemies, you will lose your friends,” and to another, “You are not learned: don’t occupy yourself with what requires a theologian to decide,” and to another, “The ’church’ has settled this.” Getting more the dragon’s voice, he says to another, “Surely there are mistakes in the Bible: you do not mean to contend for verbal inspiration?” The form of the argument varies, but the voice is that of the liar, the one who “abode not in the truth” (John 8:44). Satan’s constant aim is to discredit the truth. “Don’t go too far; Don’t be too sure; Don’t be dogmatic; Don’t be uncharitable.” The Devil knows exactly what approach to use that will make each of us most responsive to his touch. Further, he can mix his poisons so well, that there is little taste or smell of the main ingredient, but it will do its evil work. The easy-going apathy of Christians is amazing, that will allow their best blessings to be stolen from under their eyes. In other matters, they quickly fight for what is theirs. “The children of this world are, in their generation, wiser than the children of light” (Luk 16:8). Many Christians have all the wisdom of the world in worldly matters, but the most childish incapacity in the things that should be theirs as Christians. What is the meaning of this word to Philadelphia, “You have not denied My Name”? Perhaps you think of such denial as gross apostasy or as the lapse under pressure of past days of persecution when a little incense offered to some heathen god would save a Christian’s life. Since few are tested that way now, you may believe that you have no need to look closely at this matter. But if Philadelphia specially applies to professedly-Christian times as today, then it is strange that not having done what few believers today have any strong temptation to do, should form a special commendation of Philadelphia! If the above were all that is meant by our subject phrase, we don’t need to put much emphasis on the warning to hold fast that which you have, and overcoming won’t be difficult or even possible since there is, for most, no problem to overcome. Have we possibly, then, misinterpreted? Must not there be something special in both the commendation and warning that indicates a special liability just on the part of Philadelphians to this specific sin — some special trial to which they would be exposed, which would make them deny His Name? What does it mean to deny His Name? What is His Name? All names are significant in Scripture, but the names of God are significant above all! If God acts “for His Name’s sake,” He declares what He is. If we are gathered to Christ’s Name (the true form of the words in Mat 18:20), it is because of what we realize Him to be, that draws us unto Him. Thus, His Name is the revealed truth of what He is. He is away from the earth, so we do not have Himself, visibly, to come to. But the truth of what He is, draws us together, and as drawn, we confess what He is to us. Also, in so coming, we have the promise of His presence with us (Mat 18:20). We are united together like a wheel. First, we are united by the circumference — ourselves one to another — but if that were all or even the main thing, the wheel would have no strength. Its strength primarily depends on the center. Likewise, our union is formed and maintained by the Center, Christ. In direct proportion to the strength of attachment to the Center, the circumferential union — that to one another — is defined and made secure. Carry this thought back to our subject. Think of what Philadelphia stands for. If the true gathering of Christians is expressed in it, and it is to a true Christ (to the truth of what Christ is) that they are gathered, then what is more central for the Philadelphian than not to deny the truth of what Christ is — this all-essential, all-sufficient Name! Now, another question, and let no one who values Christ treat it lightly. How would the devil, the enemy of God and man, the constant and subtle opposer of all good, and with angelic knowledge of what he is opposing, seek to corrupt and destroy a Philadelphian-movement? The answer is obvious. He would attack the central point on which all depended, the truth of Christ, His Person and His work. Thus, a main test for a Philadelphian movement would be the CONFESSION OR DENIAL OF THE NAME OF CHRIST as the Center of gathering! Have I strained the argument? If not, let us take one more step. These addresses in Rev 2:1-29; Rev 3:1-22 are prophetic, so this address to Philadelphia is a prophecy. So, we see implied here, in connection with this Philadelphian movement to recover (on principle) the Church of God, an attack of Satan on the Lord Jesus Christ as the Center of gathering. Has it occurred? I ask you who have knowledge of the history of the last 160 years in relation to this movement, to bear witness of this before God. Have there been questions affecting the Person of Christ and the gathering to His Name? Has not history fulfilled this prophecy? Then, how does this prophecy affect our position? Are we, by our position, denying His Name? Let us remember that Satan is well versed in this terrible warfare. He has skill acquired in 6000 years of experience with man. “He is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44). Nothing is more common than to see him in the clothing of religion, and he is familiar with the speech of ’love.’ He can appear as an angel of light and his ministers can appear as ministers of righteousness. Well may we look to our armor; well may we cling to the Word of God; well may we be praying with all prayer; well may we be “not ignorant of his (Satan’s) devices” (2Co 2:11). All the world is on his side. The flesh (the old nature), even in a Christian, pleads for him. We cannot defeat him by using his own weapons and tactics. In the battle with him, we should always keep in mind what Pro 5:6 says of the strange woman; “lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are changeable that you should not know them.” Let us fix in our minds that the Lord, in commending Philadelphia for not denying His Name, shows that the great danger in such controversies as have arisen is that the Philadelphian, in his desire that the people of God be together, will forget in some way the gathering Center and link himself with the denial of the Name of Christ. We will look at links later, but let us anticipate the apostle’s warning words that one who receives or even greets the man who brings not this doctrine (of Christ) is a partaker of his evil deeds (2Jn 1:7-11).* Therefore, one who knowingly greets the denier of Christ’s Name, is part of that denial. The history of Satan’s first attack on this divine movement in the mid 1800s clearly began with a practical denial of Christ’s Name. Only on one side was there even any suspicion of such denial or of greeting the deniers. Even those who were separated from (now known as open brethren, Ed.) could not and did not charge the other side with such a denial or with any compromising adherence to those persons who were denying the Lord’s Name. There, if anywhere (and the attack of the enemy is sure), the danger signals of this prophecy display themselves! In this so called open-exclusive division,** God allowed Satan to sift God’s wheat and he did his job well. Plenty of failure could be pointed to on both sides. Godliness, too, could be urged on both sides. In a sieve, things get well mixed. Thus, it is important to clearly stand on the ground given by this prophecy and see that, while on the one side of this division, men were pleading for the Center, the other side was thinking mainly of the circumference. Both need to be maintained, and it is quite possible to err on all sides, but the one who holds fast to Christ will find that He is the attractive power for His people. In drawing a circle with a compass, the circumference only can be drawn from the center. Philadelphia is neither praised nor blamed for her conduct in relation to Christ’s people. It is “My Word, My Name, My patience” that are spoken of. To get His point of view is all-important! If Christ is honored, the Holy Spirit is free to work, so truth finds its place in relation to Him, and there is progress. People can be led on. All who will, can judge the above case. The Holy Spirit cannot be mistaken or turned aside into other channels than those connected to the Rock from whom the water flows. And here is a distinct and precious evidence of Christ’s approval. Apart from this connection, the stream grows sluggish and dries up. People may be blessed and ministered to, because God is gracious, but the supply is elsewhere. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 11: 01.06. CHAPTER 06 - THE QUESTION OF ASSOCIATION ======================================================================== Chapter 06 The Question of Association In this section, I will turn from the question of the doctrine of Christ, since in connection with the division discussed in chapter five, there are counter-charges and later developments that cannot be ignored. We must look at association in the light of Scripture to settle how far reaching is the guilt of denying Christ’s Name. Its importance demands a close examination. The question of association closely relates to the whole character of things today and should deeply concern us all. Scripture is strictly against principles that weave the Christian into the texture of ’society,’ making it difficult to gain his attention as to what is spiritually harmful to him. Yet “the world passes away … but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1Jn 2:17). The association of man with man is a divine necessity. The institution of the family recognized it from the beginning. The differences in capacity of men bring them together; the lack in one is met by the other’s efficiency. Union means ministry of each to each; the need of it being a most helpful discipline; the supply of it, an appeal to affection and gratitude. The Church of God is an organism in which this principle is fully owned — a union founded on both difference and unity, a body built up by that which “every joint supplies, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part” (Eph 4:16). Sin, however, transforms all good into evil; the greater the good, the worse the evil. The religious unions of today often are mere ’confederacy’ or even ’conspiracy.’ In it, the individual, which God’s union always provides for and maintains, is interfered with. Conscience is suppressed, evil is tolerated for supposed final good, and morality is superseded by permissiveness. Whatever motivates people to unite, the true fear of God is the only remedy for wrong union. This fear effectively will purge evil from all our unions, or else it will set God’s free-man loose from a desire for a wrong union. If we want to walk with God, we cannot hold the hand of one who refuses His will as sovereign. Our goal must be His goal, and the way to it, His way. To seek to unite God with evil is profanity. (One meaning of profanity is “to pollute, to make common,” i.e., to mix evil with good. Ed.) Thus, our associations are of great importance. They witness to the path on which (whatever our profession) we are really walking. Scripturally, we can only “follow righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2Ti 2:22). In the true Church of God, where our relationship to one another is of His establishment and not of our own will, it is inevitable that reconciling holiness in our ways with the eternal bond that unites us with one another, will cause serious perplexity. The world in which the Church is, is the Church’s complete opposite, and the evil in the world constantly is appealing to the evil, old nature in the Christian. We should fear the world’s friendship much more than its hostility. Not even a truce is possible between its prince (Satan) and our God. Already in the apostles’ time, the wisdom of the world, the lust of the flesh and the power of Satan were invading the sacred enclosure. Paul again had to define its boundary lines and repel the intruder. The foundation doctrine of the resurrection was being denied. The Corinthians’ whole profession of Christianity was being brought into question. If such things could come in so soon in Corinth, in the very presence of an apostle, how can we expect better times and be permitted to escape necessary warfare? It is in Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians that he insists so earnestly that any yoke with unbelievers forfeits the enjoyment of our relationship to the Father. We must come out from among unbelievers and be separate and not even touch the unclean thing. Only then will we have the assurance, “I will receive you and be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord almighty” (2Co 6:14-18). The peril of evil association could not be more emphatically affirmed. Some say that the unequal yoke has only to do with unbelievers and thus does not define our attitude towards Christians. Before looking at specific Scriptures, I want to deal with an argument that connects itself with such an objection. It is urged that we must have direct Scripture, not inference, to guide us in all these matters. But, Scriptures gives us principles and not a complete code of divine law. This necessitates inference at every step. Inference can’t be separated from a rational life, and God condescends to reason with His creatures, “Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord” (Isa 1:18). The argument against reason in God’s things has been carried to lengths that are as unscriptural as they are irrational. Scripture nowhere discredits any God-given faculty that man has. In speaking against what God has given, we necessarily speak against the Giver. God is honored as Creator when His creation is honored. Sin has come in and perverted every faculty, but the work of God is to purify and not destroy. When one begins to realize his relation to God, reason becomes most reasonable in accepting the creature-limit, and rationality fills the life and character of the new man in Christ. One might as well say that, if we have light, we don’t need our eyes, as to discredit reason in the things of God. It is only in the light that the eyes are of any use! Moreover, God tests us by our use of reason. He holds us responsible to have our eyes open and to use them honestly. The apostle speaks of this exercise as being what he found necessary to have “a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man” (Acts 24:16). Exercise shows that a man is morally and spiritually awake; and by it, he is kept in spiritual health and vigor. Therefore, God insists on the necessity of this and acts with a view to it being maintained. Scripture is so written “that the man of God may be perfect” (2Ti 3:17) — not all the world, and not even the drowsy and sleep-loving among Christians. Now, let us apply these things to the unequal yoke and we shall see that the refusal of such texts as having an application to fellowship among Christians is unspiritual and immoral. Does the principle involved in the question, “what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion has light with darkness?” apply only to a yoke with unbelievers? Suppose we are all believers. Are we free to yoke ourselves with a believer who is walking in unrighteousness? God’s personal holiness and the requirements of His holiness are the same for the saint and sinner alike, except that the sin of the saint is worse than that of the sinner in proportion to the difference in light and grace between the two. Thus, the unequal yoke fully applies to a yoke between Christians if one of these Christians is allowing in himself the unrighteousness which cannot be gone on with in the unbeliever. Because men will not infer, in no way hinders the just judgment of God as to the matter. The consequences of our acts will as surely follow as if we swallowed poison in the belief that it was good food. Many have found the disastrous effects of alliances, whether social, commercial or religious, made under the pacifying illusion that the alliances were OK because they only involved Christians! How many, so deluded, have wakened up to find that after all, the question in Amo 3:3 was much deeper than they had thought: “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” The various ways that these principles affect our lives are easily seen. Wives go with their husbands in things they believe wrong before God because the verse “wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (Eph 5:22; Col 3:18) is supposed to release them from all moral responsibility. Likewise, “Children obey your parents in all things” (Col 3:20, Eph 6:1) is used to reverse the moral nature of things, placing the earthly tie above the divine one. We are also told that we have no Scriptural authority for judging assemblies. If this is true, then we can’t treat the sins of assemblies as we treat sin elsewhere. All the above are the fruit of an immoral principle. How can those who preach and practice such things escape the woe of the prophet on “those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isa 5:20)? The eternal principles of God’s government and the changeless holiness of the divine nature are against them. Returning to the Scripture teaching on association, 2 Timothy gives us Paul’s last words when the Church already was far gone into failure. The Church is no longer called the house of God, as in 1 Timothy. Although it was still that, Paul rather compares it to both a great house with its vessels even for dishonorable uses, and to a house in ruins, except for its foundation. Notice the inscription on its foundation stone: “Nevertheless, the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, The Lord knows those who are His” (2Ti 2:19). Precious assurance, but what does it indicate? It indicates that the Church was becoming invisible except to God who knows every person who has come to Him for salvation. But there is more to the inscription. Just when all the difficulties of the path are being shown, just when the evil might seem to have won, and laxity to be thus unavoidable, the directions — God’s road map for the path through all the tangle — are found, simple, straight and stable: “And let him who names the name of the Lord, depart from iniquity” (2Ti 2:19). Thank God. Here is the answer! Here alone is absolute safety. Commit yourself unhesitatingly to this, no matter what is the question to be decided, individual, social, religious; no matter what the issue may be; no matter what may threaten you. Here alone will you find the path through the desert, up over the most rugged mountain, down in the valley of death, yet “the path of the just is like the shining light, that shines more and more unto the perfect day” (Pro 4:18), because the light of heaven is upon it. Notice how the Lord’s sacred name is here. If one only names “the Name of the Lord” (the correct word) — the Name of Him to whom, in the face of man’s opposition, one is to be subject — then he must depart from iniquity (unrighteousness). What is unrighteousness? Righteousness is all that is right in God’s eyes, and you can only measure this correctly as you think of the place that the blood of Christ has put you, of the grace shown to you and which you are to show, and of the blessed path in which you are called to follow Him. Unrighteousness is the opposite of all this. In all this, you will find plenty of daily exercise. The next verses (2Ti 2:20-22) say, “but in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and fit for the Master’s use and prepared unto every good work. Flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” These verses show us the disorder and the directions to follow in a time of disorder, regarding both separation from the evil (the negative) and association with what is good (the positive). “Those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” are the same as those who, “naming the name of the Lord, depart from unrighteousness.” Thus, the man who purges himself from the vessels to dishonor, finds his own class. But, are the vessels to honor and the vessels to dishonor the only two classes found here? If only those who purge themselves from the vessels to dishonor are vessels to honor, then all who are unpurged must be classed either as vessels to dishonor, or there must be a third class, simply left aside as not fit (not prepared) for the Master’s use — a solemn condition in either case! Are we to apply this to fellowship in the assembly? There are no exceptions made to these words. The following of righteousness, faith, love, peace with those purged from evil associations, implies that the unpurged cannot be righteously breaking bread in the assembly. If these are unfit for the Master’s use, they cannot have their part in that place of responsibility and privilege where God uses each and all as He sees fit. The members of the body are, by the fact of being such, responsible to edify (build up) one another. If they are unfit for this, they are disqualified for the responsibility and privilege of being part of the outward expression of that one body — the local assembly. If they cannot call on the Lord out of a pure heart, they cannot really call upon Him at all. The local assembly, if of one mind with the Lord, has to approve His judgment. This principle again is shown by the question, “What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness?” (2Co 6:14). By being put as a question, a clear and positive answer is implied. Every conscience is expected to respond. Assembly fellowship must be based on righteousness. The voice of the Holy and True is heard there. Permit evil to be allowed in one person or many, and full practical fellowship with Christ must cease. We cannot walk with God and go on with sin! Thus, the entire Corinthian assembly, with the immoral person in its midst, was leavened (made part of the evil) by their allowance of it. They had to purge out the leaven (evil) by self-judgment and separation from it, that they might be a new lump (1Co 5:1-13). As long as the sin was allowed, they were not a new lump because the leaven was in the lump, not just in the individual. In Christ, they were unleavened, but they were to represent in their practical condition what grace had made them, positionally, to be. However, some people say that even though Corinth allowed evil in its midst, it was unleavened. Even if it was leavened, some add, it would be too late to purge out the leaven. The last assertion denies the power of divine grace for every condition that can be found among God’s people. Yet, there was something exceptional in the state of things at Corinth which cannot be pleaded for in any other assembly since. They may not have known what to do since such a case had not been provided for. They might have mourned over it to God. God then tells them what to do, that none might again be able to say that they didn’t know what to do. They were to “put away from among themselves that wicked person” (1Co 5:13). Some object to saying “from the Lord’s table,” but, in fact, the command goes even further, saying, “from among yourselves.” To only put someone away from the table might, for the careless, be perfectly consistent with treating the person as one of themselves in other respects. But the apostle Paul shows how much farther this ’putting away’ is to go, by adding, “with such an one, no, not to eat” (1Co 5:11). There was to be the refusal of all association, even to an ordinary meal! A leavened lump means that every part of it is capable of spreading leaven. That is the idea in old leaven — a piece of the old lump that could be introduced into the new so that the new lump would become leavened too. It shows that every one who approves the retention of evil, is really a partaker of the evil. He, in practice, denies the holiness of God and thus cannot himself be holy. I’m not speaking of physical contact. One might work in the same factory or office with the evil person, without defilement. Rather, I’m speaking of a corrupt and corrupting principle that associates the Name of Christ with that which dishonors Him, and in that sense, denies His Name. Thus, the Philadelphian is reminded that God is “the Holy and the True,” but holiness is lost in communion (association) with evil. Purging out the evil means separation from it. Here in 1 Corinthians, the assembly acts. In Timothy, one who would be a vessel to honor must purge himself from the vessels to dishonor: that is, he must, at all costs, personally act. If the local assembly stands in the way of this, then, to keep a good conscience, he must separate from the assembly. In this, there is the judgment of an assembly. If one rightly has separated himself (and the rules are well-defined; not just some whim or something we don’t like), we too must separate ourselves and thus judge the assembly. If we do not, we are not with God. Thus, we are forced to judge every individual in this leavened lump. To go on with those who deny the holiness of God is to be, ourselves, unholy. To deny the Name of Christ as the Holy and the True is to cease to be Philadelphian! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 12: 01.07. CHAPTER 07 - A CIRCLE OF FELLOWSHIP OR INDEPENDENCY ======================================================================== Chapter 07 A Circle of Fellowship or Independency We now must consider another question which closely connects to what we have just considered. Independency is the most successful way yet found to evade Scriptural discipline and also the most successful snare to cause the children of God to resist His will, while often honestly believing themselves to be standing only for the principles of the Word: against confederacy, for purity and for unsectarian maintenance of the body of Christ. Therefore, we must look carefully into, first, what independency really is, and then at its fruits. In its simplest and boldest form, independency denies any Scriptural authority for a circle of fellowship outside of the individual (local) gathering. This denial is made in the interests, they reason, of unsectarian recognization of the one Church only, the body of Christ. They claim that to form and maintain a circle is sectarian and that the adoption by such a circle of a common discipline is absolute sectarianism because it makes the whole a ’party’ that may take the Name of Christ, as some did at Corinth (1Co 1:11-13), and make that precious Name an instrument of division. This charge may not be one of denying the Name of Christ, but it comes so close as to make it most serious. Those who hold to a circle of fellowship and yet refuse to adopt a sectarian name (a name that sets them apart from other Christians), can neither afford to give up their claim of gathering simply to Christ’s Name, nor accept what is charged against them. Let us examine, then, what is meant by these assertions and bring all to the test of Scripture. The truth will become clearer by every fresh examination, and the only danger is in our examination being done carelessly. What is meant by the expression “circle of fellowship”? (The expression itself is not found in Scripture, as neither are other words like trinity or rapture, but the truth expressed by each is found there, Ed.) The thought must be partly believed even by the objector himself if he has others gathered with himself in any local assembly, for these few obviously do not make up the entire Assembly of God in that city. So, there must be a within and a without, a being, in some sense, of us or not of us; a something that is kept from being a part — a sect — by it having no arbitrary, no merely human terms of admission. If there are no terms, then it is a mere rabble of lawless men, to be refused by every Christian. If you say, “We are to be subject to Scripture only,” that implies that it is Scripture as you see it, not as your fellow Christians see it, and you take your place as before the Lord, to be judged by Him regarding this. Your being separate from others makes a circle of fellowship, but it does not make you a sect. You own Christians everywhere as members of the body of Christ and receive them wherever a Scriptural hindrance to their reception does not exist, and you speak of being gathered simply to Christ’s Name, without any thought of making the Name of Christ an instrument of division. Well, then, at least in the city of our above example, there is a gathering of Christians that I can and should recognize, apart from the whole body of Christians in that place. I say should because I am responsible to God as to whom I can assemble with. So, here alone, I find those with whom I can assemble, no unscriptural condition being imposed on me. Now, were there another assembly in the same city, of the same character, then I would have to ask why they were not together, for the sin of division is a serious one (1Co 1:10), and I would have to refuse this. If then, in this city, there is a gathering that I can and must acknowledge, suppose now, I move to another city and find a gathering that I equally can own as gathered to Christ’s Name only, would it be right for me, in the new locality, to now refuse to own as a separated company those in the old city, whom, when I was there, I owned, and if I were there now, I would still have to own? Is it possible that my going from New York to Boston would make that wrong for me at New York which at Boston, would be right, and if I went back to New York, would be right again? If so, that is either complete independency or the most curious shifting of right and wrong that one can imagine — morality shifting every few miles of the road. However, if not, then we are connected, in principle, to a circle of fellowship — a grouping of local assemblies, meeting on common, Scriptural ground and discipline, wherever they may be located. The recognition of each other by such gatherings throughout the world is thus right and everything opposed to it, is wrong. However, Scripture and history have shown us that it is impossible to maintain this in practice for the entire Assembly (Church) of God, if God’s principles are of any value to us. For, were I taking the trip spoken of above, must I not ask for those in Boston who are of one mind with us? Would those in Boston expect anything else of me. A circle of fellowship may be refused in theory, but the facts disprove the theory. The only alternative is grossest independency — associating wherever one wills and recognizing obligations nowhere but where the individual wills. This would be the most complete sectarianism that could exist. We are to recognize the whole body of Christ, but not their unscriptural associations. In the interests of the righteousness demanded by God for the body of Christ, I refuse denominations, but in the same interests, I must accept the circle of righteous, unsectarian fellowship. The gracious words of Mat 18:20, which provide for a day of failure and confusion and approve the two or three gathered to the Lord’s blessed Name, obviously approve such gatherings in every place. Therefore, a circle — a grouping — of such gatherings exist. It would be as sectarian to refuse identification with these as to take our place with the various denominations. Nor would it save us from this, to say that we were acting for the good of the whole Church of God when the disproof is so easy from Scripture itself. Further, to accept these Scriptural gatherings is to accept their Scriptural discipline, for the Lord’s approval of the gathering is His approval of their discipline. Of course, I do not mean that they can add to Scripture or invent an unscriptural form of discipline, or that the Lord approves what might be a mistaken judgment. He always is the Holy and True, the Lord and Master of His people. But, these “two or three” of Mat 18:20 have authority for discipline, and woe to him who resists its rightful use: “If he hear not the church (assembly), let him be to you as a heathen man and a publican (tax collector)” (Mat 18:17) refers to just such feeble gatherings as we have been discussing. The same things are true for the discipline as for the gathering itself. If the discipline is righteous and respected at “A” where it is applied, it must be respected at “B” and at “C.” If the decision is a local matter, then the Lord plainly has put it into the hands of those who are in circumstances to judge it aright, although protest and appeal are surely to be listened to and those who judged the matter are required to satisfy those elsewhere who are honestly exercised about it. Questions about truth as opposed to conduct affect all, and can be put before all. No local gathering has authority in any such matter, for that would be making a creed for others to obey. Further, the truth as to Christ is an especially deep and vital matter, for we are gathered to His Name. Where truth of this kind is subverted, the ’gathering’ ceases to exist except as an instrument in Satan’s hand and we must refuse both it and all who continue with it. If the question is about facts, then those who have the facts are required to make them known to their brethren. Here, a circular letter could have its place, not to establish a rule or principle of action, but as a witness, which, of course, is open to question as all ’facts’ are, if there is contrary evidence or that given is insufficient. No letter has authority in itself: it can only present facts and all must judge the credibility of the testimony. With these limitations resulting from the fallibility common to us all, we must acknowledge both a circle of fellowship and the discipline connected with it, if we would be free from independency. Independency always acts against God. It makes the members of the one body say to each other, “we have no need for you.” It denies the unity of the Spirit which should be recognized throughout the body. The more we lament and refuse the sectarianism* that exists all around us, the more we are compelled to and shall rejoice to own simply the body of Christ wherever possible. This circle of fellowship, while it is not the body, provides us the means of owning, in practice as well as in theory, the body of Christ in a truthful and holy way, so far as the Church’s state of ruin permits it to be done. With love to all Christ’s own and with an open door to all, on the conditions of truth and holiness, such a circle is not sectarian, but a protest against it. Gathering on the ground of the one body is completely different from any claim to be the one body, and it does not imply any man-made (sectarian) condition of intelligence for communion. The maintenance of a common discipline is not sectarian, but it is an essential part of that communion itself: absolutely necessary because the holiness of God is the same everywhere and is not a thing for the “two or three” here or there to play with as they desire. Independency, in setting aside the practical unity of the Church, also sets aside a main guard of holiness. Holiness is no longer the object of common care, nor is there common exercise about it. Independency releases one from a sense of personal responsibility to the house of God. Rather, it makes one feel that it is only his own house that he is to keep clean, in his own way. This laxity towards the people of God at large (but which is so consoling to an unexercised conscience, that it is a great charm of independency to multitudes today), naturally has the effect of lowering one’s estimate of holiness, thus preventing one’s own house from being kept really clean! Where a circle of fellowship and a common discipline are not maintained (perhaps as a natural fruit of independency), the unholy principle is contended for, that an assembly cannot be judged for the same sin that would compel the judgment of an individual. Thus, almost any local discipline can be evaded by a little dexterity. If the gathering at “B” will not receive you from “A,” it will receive you from “C,” and “C” will receive you from “A.” So, by a little juggling of which assembly you attend, no one is safe anywhere from the violation of a discipline which you recognize as a Scriptural one. Any person, if not too well known, becomes lost in the maze of bewildering inter-communions between independent local gatherings. One who has a conscience and would be clear from unrighteousness, soon has to resign himself to a general hope that what looks so confusing, will in the end, uphold the interests of holiness; or in despair, wash his hands of what he can’t avoid. Independency is an ensnaring system because both pessimism and optimism can find excuses for it and thus go on with it. One gets free of an amazing amount of trouble without seeming to give up all the Scriptural principles of gathering as many others have, and yet be almost as free as these others from the wearying responsibility of being one’s brother’s keeper. Why should we be our brother’s keeper, they ask, when we only get trouble for our efforts? Find a narrow path instead of a broad, open one that is so pleasant to all of us; and for all this we have only to shut our eyes at the proper time and ignore what we can’t help. The countless small divisions of independency make less show than the terrible rents which we are exposed to otherwise. Why not let this sad-faced Merarite go, with his pins and cords of the tabernacle always getting tangled, and be content with Kohath and Gershom? But, if the Lord’s tabernacle is to be set up in the wilderness, we must have the pins and cords. In result, the truth of God suffers and tends to be lost. But what should we expect when we choose what we will have of it and what we will discard? Fellowship becomes of uncertain quality, with obedience to the Word having little to do with it. Worship is largely displaced by service, for we have lost the necessary pins and cords. One may still go on with the help of what little truth he can still find room for, but the full truth tends to slip away in the jangle of the many opinions of men. One’s voice may be little heard in a day like this, but I would press upon the Lord’s people, first, their Master’s claim. I press that independency, little as one may imagine it or care to think of it, means ultimate shipwreck of the truth of Christ because it means independency of Him. One will find plenty of associates in independency, for it gives the kind of liberty and freedom so coveted today, but Christ’s authority is not in it. Thus, it cannot have the approval which Philadelphia, in spite of its “little power,” finds from her gracious Lord: “You have kept My Word and not denied My Name.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 13: 01.08. CHAPTER 08 - CLERISY AND ECCLESIASTICISM ======================================================================== Chapter 08 Clerisy and Ecclesiasticism There is no position that we can take, however right it may be, that will free us from the dangers of Satan’s snares. We have no sooner escaped them in one direction, than we realize that we have come nearer to them in another direction. The Church truly is militant. To have learned our proper, God-given place in the ranks is a very different thing from withdrawing from the battle. In fact, Satan specially attacks those who are walking with God, God permits us to learn spiritual warfare so that every spiritual sense will be forced into activity, that we may “by reason of use, have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Heb 5:14) and also to make us learn thereby, the value of what is our own, as men realize the value of what they are in danger of losing. In Israel’s wilderness journey, all the people were in the camp. The dangers that surrounded them were dangers for all alike. Further, in Christianity, the warfare comes nearer to us in proportion to how spiritual we are. And there is no non-combatant class. There are none, by sex or any other way, exempted from the drill, discipline and actual encounter. Just as every Christian is both a priest and a minister of Christ, so every Christian is a soldier of Christ, and to be a good one, he must have the knowledge of his spiritual weapons, the nerve and dexterity (only acquired by practice) to use them, and an understanding of the tactics of the enemy he faces. There are leaders in this warfare. In Israel, every person was ranked under his captain. But, there is a great difference between fleshly and spiritual warfare. In man’s warfare, the responsibility assumed by the leader removes responsibility from those who follow him, and one may admire those who go at the will of another, knowing that, perhaps, someone has made a mistake. However, in spiritual warfare, we may pity but not admire such followers. The responsibility of the leader removes none of the responsibility from the follower. If the follower is misled, he is guilty of being misled and has not only compromised himself, but the whole cause with which he is identified. He is guilty because there is only one infallible Leader for His people, whose voice is to be heard everywhere amid all the din of the battlefield. The responsibility of every lesser leader is to make men listen to that Voice: every one of these leaders has to say, “Be you followers (imitators) of me, even as I also follow Christ” (1Co 11:1). If we value the welfare of God’s people we must press on them their personal responsibility to God, and that no one can save them from it in any part of Christian practice. Yet, the great mass of Christian men and women seek to escape from their responsibility. They believe in the practice of substitution — letting someone else do it — in almost every line of Christian activity. Specially in that which concerns the assembly, this principle of substitution so blinds the eyes and so leads God’s people astray that it calls for the strongest repudiation by each person to whom the Lord has given any ability to influence the minds of his fellows. This form of substitution proceeds from that state of spiritual sluggishness like that of Pro 6:10-11, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep; so shall your poverty come as one who travels (a tramp) and your want as an armed man.” My Christian friend, allow no one to stand between you and Christ! Christ alone is your Master. You must give account to Him alone. The vigor, brightness and faithfulness of your life depends on how you abide (remain) in dependence on Him alone. Of course, you don’t refuse the help that He gives you through another: that would be pride and self-sufficiency. God has given us to each other for all the mutual help we can give. Don’t let that truth be weakened in the least. But we fall into one of Satan’s most subtle and successful traps when we allow the esteem (respect) we have for one another, the rightful confidence in someone’s genuineness, wisdom, godliness, etc., to make him the director of our consciences in the things of God. Such would be Romanism in principle, for Romanism gives Christ a human vicar (substitute) — the Pope — to whom people give Christ’s place, as if Christ was far away from His people. We must seek no substitute for ourselves and have no substitute for Christ. We must not falsify our blessed relationship with Him, into which He has brought us. We must be completely with and for Him. We must have nothing worldly in our lives. Finally, we must not approve another to fill the offices that we have vacated. Clerisy means the official taking up by a class (specialized group) among Christians of what the rest — the masses — have given up to them. It means the unspiritualizing of the masses, the laity, who resign the duties for which they are ’unfitted,’ into more capable hands. Of course, they are unfitted only because they give up so much of their relationship to Christ so they can be correspondingly freer for the demands and pleasures of the world. However, people don’t think of it in this way. Most Christians have grown up in a clergy-laity atmosphere and therefore don’t realize its sinfulness or how it cleaves to them. Even if we have escaped from clerisy to some degree, let our spiritual warmth be chilled a little, and almost insensibly and quite informally, we fall into it again.* As an example, doesn’t a person’s sex have something to do with our degree of conscience? Isn’t conscience considered more a masculine than a feminine characteristic? For instance, as to discipline in the assembly, are the women as much exercised about it as the men? Is it even admitted that they have as much right to be exercised? Yet the women are responsible for every act of discipline and if they take part in it with a bad conscience, it will affect their whole spiritual life. In fact, if they are unexercised, they make it a small matter whether they are pleasing God or not, and thus must have either a dull or bad conscience. Some women even have been taught that matters of this nature are outside their realm because they are not part of the assembly or that they are not moral beings. Many women are inclined to take the place that is so often assigned to them. Whatever the motives, it is a serious mistake. It begins a habit that will cling to them in other things and spread among the men too, until a large part of the assembly simply confirm the judgment of their ’leaders’ and the reign of clerisy is, in practice, established. If serious questions now come before the assembly, the incapacity of the majority will become more apparent. Their habitually unexercised, now-dull consciences won’t have the ability for judgment. The merely human motives which always have swayed them, will sway them still. They will be swayed by arguments that derive their force mainly from the people who use them, or they will drift and perhaps break up under the influence of family and social ties. Drifting is a serious matter: it always tends towards stranding and breaking up because there is no intelligent guidance of the vessel. This is truer in spiritual things than in natural things because divine wisdom does not govern. This wisdom is only given when formally sought after. In the divisions among the Lord’s people, drifting and the use of human wisdom have always intensified the evil. Christian men and women, really exercised before God, will necessarily walk and act together, but the unintelligent followers of leaders will fall apart with these leaders or break up into smaller fragments (groups) when God permits the inevitable collision to test their spiritual condition. A right spiritual state of the mass of Christians would, to a large extent, hold the leaders in check, who as leaders, naturally lead the divisions; who knowingly or not, have in fact formed divisions. The masses of Christians are responsible for that helpless leaning on their leaders, which leaning has helped the leaders to fall. The masses have lost the One Voice (which never can divide or contradict itself) amid the many, often-discordant voices of men. Thus clerisy — a state of spiritual decline away from Christ — can be remedied only by returning to the One who must be Master in every detail of individual and collective life. We must allow no substitute — no vicar. We must look beyond the actors in the various divisions among the Lord’s people, for there was a state of things that necessitated the divisions. Wherever you find an unspiritual, unexercised mass that can be wheeled into line at the bidding of some trusted man or men, with at best, only slight knowledge of both the facts and the Scriptural principles connected with the problem, you have the state of things that is at the bottom of the trouble. It is clerisy and ecclesiasticism (devotion to a certain man-made church order). These two things are the complement of one another and they exist among even those who have a horror of them elsewhere, while they don’t realize that they are cherishing the very things that have produced them! You will hear intelligent Christians say something like this, regarding things in which they have taken definite sides with their party: “Well, we personally didn’t know much about these things, but Mr. X looked into them and we all have confidence in him,” etc. (I leave the word party stand, offensive as it rightly is, because for those who can say the above, they have acted only with a party). Sometimes, even when widespread division has taken place among the Lord’s people, many who divided from each other have never known what was in question, and everything that would have enlightened them was kept from them! How can the commendation “You have kept My Word” apply to such, when they neither knew nor cared enough to find out, to what and how God’s Word applied? Most assembly decisions involve practical local matters and must be reached on the spot and shouldn’t be spread around. I don’t speak of such things. These are not the matters that usually cause division. What does cause division is usually some question of truth or principle as to which the local assembly has no binding authority at all for others. Of course, if a teacher of error is in their midst and they are satisfied that he subverts the foundations of Christianity, their duty is simple: they must clear themselves. But their decision may be appealed to the Word of God and Christians everywhere are required to consider the appeal. The judgment by an assembly, in this case, has no force whatever unless the assembly can show the evidence of the evil that has necessitated their action. If the doctrine taught was Scriptural, such a decision has no power at all. The Word of God is the charter under which the assembly acts and thus is above all its actions. The Church does not teach or define doctrine! The very semblance of power in the hands of an assembly to set forth what Christians are to receive is to be refused by everyone who would be loyal to Christ. Thus, individual exercise is an absolute must. We cannot hide behind one another. “You have kept My Word” rings in our ears. The truth committed to Christians is the most important trust that they can have. If it could be said of Israel, “What advantage, then, has the Jew? … chiefly, because unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom 3:1-2), what then must be the value of our inheritance? God has allowed a few believers to return to something like the simplicity that prevailed at the beginning of the Church and to recognize the common relationship of Christians to one another. He has freed us in measure from the traditions of men and from human inventions in the things of God. He has done all this so we can enjoy and profit by the unadulterated Word of Christ! It is all that we have for blessing. The Holy Spirit, who has taught us both His presence with us and His authority in the Assembly, is the “Spirit of truth” (John 16:13). His great work on earth is to show us the things of Christ. He is the Holy Spirit — holiness is the holiness of truth, sanctification (being set apart to God) is by the truth. We are taught by God to love one another, and this Philadelphian spirit is shown us by the apostle of love (John) to be “love in the truth” and “for the truth’s sake” (2Jn 1:1-2). Today, men are talking of the unity of Christendom (professing Christianity) and they are proving the practicality of bringing masses of Christians together for many good purposes. But who can expect anything beyond good ends when truth as a whole must be set aside to maintain good fellowship? Differences must be avoided, even gross error condoned, and since “evil company corrupts good morals” (1Co 15:33), what must be the end of such associations without even the guard imposed by discipline maintained in the churches? The Church can maintain the truth only by allowing full liberty for the truth to maintain itself, without sectarian (man-made) restriction of any kind. Where the “doctrine of Christ” is upheld, and thus the gathering to His Name is guarded, Scripture allows for no further restriction on the part of the assembly. The assembly may, of course, always refuse to listen to what is unprofitable and vain, but the truth only gains by being trusted as having full power to speak with its own authority to the believer. “Let the prophets speak … and let the others judge” (1Co 14:29). “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1Th 5:21). Thus, the exercise of conscience is for the blessing of all. Those who can go to sleep under a not-to-be-disputed creed, are wakened up by a lively (but godly) discussion of the Word. The relationship and consequences of truth are, in this manner, searched out and made known. Haven’t we been too afraid of such discussion which, while reverent and brotherly in character, tends to make the truth a present and living issue and therefore to give it power? If God had seen the creed to be the better way to maintain this, He would have given it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 14: 01.09. CHAPTER 09 - HERESY ======================================================================== Chapter 09 Heresy We now come to the formidable word heresy. There is not much difficulty in what Scripture says about it; the difficulty is in the meaning that men have given it. The Greek word for heresy often is translated ’sect’ in the King James Version of the Bible: the sect of the Pharisees, Sadducees (Acts 5:17; Acts 15:5) gives the general thought. These were not divisions in the sense of separations from Judaism, but were doctrinal parties in Judaism. When Paul speaks of having “after the strictest sect of our religion, lived a Pharisee“ (Acts 26:5), he acknowledges other sects of his religion and certainly would not have used the word in an offensive way. The impossibility of using the word in these cases as something offensive, shows how little our modern idea of it can be taken as the idea of the New Testament. Christianity was looked at, in its beginning, as a similar sect — the “sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5). At that time, Christians were not as yet fully separated from the Jewish worship. Thus, when the apostle Paul before Felix confesses that “after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers” (Acts 24:14), we must not put unscriptural thoughts into it. The Jews would have used the same word for the parties to which they themselves belonged, and that was the force of the word — literally a choice or an adherence. Those who used the word did not mean to decide by it as to right or wrong, but simply to classify as different the existing schools of thought or doctrine. The apostle resented the term heresy as applying to Christianity because it ignored the divine revelation given in Christianity and characterized it as a mere human choice — an opinion. On the other hand, Paul could not resent the implication that Christianity was a system of doctrines, which it is and is intended to be, claiming men’s adherence and gathering disciples. The apostle asserted this claim (which always is the claim of truth) in the very presence of those who called him before their tribunals for it. He even sought to proselytize — win over — King Agrippa before their eyes (Acts 24:1-27; Acts 25:1-27; Acts 26:1-32). Yet Paul refused to allow Christianity to be called a sect because God had spoken in it, and all men were to hear. It was no opinion but revealed truth, and this is the key to the condemnation of heresy in the apostolic writings. There is to be no opinion, no mere human choice among Christians. The one truth claims the allegiance of all. The Word of God has been given to us, and the one Holy Spirit is given to bring us all to one mind about it. All departure from this is to be utterly condemned. Heresies are spoken of in only three passages in the Epistles. In 2Pe 2:1, the “damnable heresies” of the King James translation has hidden the true meaning. The phrase is literally “heresies of destruction” — heresies that destroy men. These are doctrines brought in by false teachers — doctrines that even deny the Lord who bought them. Here, the teaching obviously is fundamental error, but this does not prove that all heresy is fundamental error. The term is a much wider one than this. Notice that these false teachers bring in these doctrines “secretly” — not necessarily just whispering them about, for the word means “by the side”: thus in an indirect or not straightforward way. Satan, in attacking the Lord among Christians, naturally takes his own subtle, sneaky way. To expect straightforwardness in the teaching of error is not to know or understand Satan. In view of the divisions that Paul had heard of in Corinth, he adds, “and I partly believe it, for there must also be heresies among you, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you” (1Co 11:18-19). Here, the differences among them were openly showing themselves when they came together at the Lord’s table. These differences came from following different and discordant teachers (1Co 1:10-13). Therefore, Paul calls these differences the fruit of heresies. Also, in speaking to the Galatians, Paul calls these heresies the “works of the flesh” (Gal 5:19-20). This is all we have in Scripture as to heresies themselves. There is one mention of a heretic: “A man who is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he who is such, is subverted and sins, being condemned of himself” (Tit 3:10-11). For reject, the Revised Version has refuse, with avoid in the margin. The Alford and Ellicott Greek text uses the word shun. J. N. Darby uses have done with. Literally, the word means ask off, or in familiar talk, ask him to excuse you. Thus, “have done with” seems to be the best rendering among the above. The discipline of the assembly is not implied here and the assembly is not in question. This verse deals with a man determined to have and maintain his own opinion. When this is clear, the instruction is to leave him to himself — refuse to listen to him. The reason given is, “for he who is such, is subverted [turned aside, gone out of the way, can’t be helped], and sins, being self-condemned.” The truth bears its own testimony to the conscience, but such a person hardens himself against it. Therefore, there is no use going on with him. We must find elsewhere the principles that regulate assembly discipline in such cases. The whole question as to whether it is a matter for assembly discipline, is whether the doctrine taught is fundamental or not. For this, every Christian has the means for judgment — the Bible — and the responsibility for making that judgment. As to what is not fundamental, one could not expect all to have the same competency. So, we should treat party-making as the apostle treats it, by appeal to the conscience and heart. The assembly also has the right to refuse to listen to what doesn’t build it up. For the rest, God must be trusted and we must learn patience with each other. The truth can be trusted to prevail with the true-hearted and authority (short of divine authority) can never help it. All manner of creeds and laws have failed to maintain the truth; and an unwritten creed of conduct in the assembly concerning non-fundamental heresy will be worse in this respect, not better. Such a creed would subject all to the will of the few, which will vary with their character and temperaments, with their knowledge or ignorance of the matter in question and with the many influences that may work on them. Nothing must stand between the Word of God and the believer, and the Holy Spirit must be the only authoritative Teacher! “You need not that any man teach you” (1Jn 2:27) should be engraved on our hearts. Only where the Holy Spirit is honored and relied on, and only where the Word of God is received as God’s Word, can there be any assurance for anything. If God’s Word is doubtful, where shall we find anything that is less so? On the other hand, nothing must stand between the teacher’s conscience and his Lord as to what he teaches. The Lord says, “He who has My Word, let him speak My Word faithfully” (Jer 23:28). Who shall dictate to a teacher what he is or is not to say? Who is to dictate what the Lord’s people shall receive or not receive? Who is able to be the substitute for the Holy Spirit among God’s people and to do for them what He refuses to do — to keep them from the need of “proving all things” by keeping them from ministry that needs proving, and giving them only what has been decided previously to be good food? Even if the above sifting of ministry could be done, it would be bad, because it would keep the children of God as babes, unexercised and unaccustomed to decide for themselves between truth and error. Were their teachers not as competent as they believed them to be — possibly in error in some things — it would insure that those accustomed to receiving ministry without exercise would receive the error with no more question than when they were receiving the truth. Such principles, when received and acted on, introduce more than all the evils of an ordinary clergy: they introduce a practical Romanism which prepares the way for a large departure from the truth. Such infantile Christianity is advocated today in many ways and places as the proper condition of the saint. For instance, I have some letters of two brethren with a third brother, and one of these letters refers to a book by a rationalistic, high-church Episcopalian. The other answers with a remark as to “his allusion to an infidel’s book, which he should know nothing about!” There is no qualification whatsoever, although he knows nothing of the motives that might have led the brother to read such a book. He is not suggesting caution. His words are a statement that no motive could justify a Christian to read such a book. Others go farther. They refuse even to read the defense of those whom they know to be Christians, and who they themselves have charged with heresy. One gave his reason for not reading a reply to his own pamphlet as “those who read it, fall under the power of it!” Such Christianity is suited only for some paradise where evil carefully has been fenced out. Such ideas condemn every book that has been written in defense of Christianity, for such books suppose a knowledge of what is said against Christianity. Actually, such thoughts are as well suited to keeping in error as keeping in truth, or to keeping out truth as keeping out error. For such persons, the apostle’s command to “prove all things” either must be too lax, too dangerous, or it must be intended for some special safe class who are to be the custodians of others, but who, unfortunately, are not indicated by Scripture. These rules would, with slight alterations, allow every kind of heresy, while Christianity would become a mere hot house plant to which a breath of cold outside air would almost be fatal. God forbid that I should cause people to be careless as to how they expose themselves to the attacks of Satan, but carelessness is the very thing caused by such ideas of men for shutting Satan out. In proportion to how much we think we have shut Satan out, we shall be less on our guard. Where does the soldier stand most at ease? Not in the battlefield! Shall we prosper most by being ignorant, or “not ignorant of his (Satan’s) devices” (2Co 2:11)? The trouble everywhere is caused by light, loose, careless dealing with Scripture. Scripture is the pilgrim’s guidebook, the soldier’s manual, the fitting of the man of God for every good work. But, for Scripture to be all these things for us, we must be pilgrims, soldiers, men of God! There is no hope except in this. Further, Scripture, as interpreted by the Holy Spirit to the honest heart, is sufficient for all demands on it. Let us trust it and not be afraid of, or for it. The unreasoning cry of heresy has been used for years to terrorize those who, if any, should have been God’s freemen. They have been made afraid to look at the Word of God for themselves, apart from the guidance of some recognized interpreter. People have been cut off as heretics for putting forth that which, in a “believer knowing no more,” would not have excluded him from fellowship. Others have been put away because they wrote what they might have held privately or talked about here and there to others without such action following. To publish what they held, was to form a party by it, it was said, and a man became a heretic by this. I want you to see that this human view and treatment of heresy both hinders and limits the Holy Spirit and, therefore, stops progress in the knowledge of divine truth. The only safe thing becomes to reiterate the old truths in the old formula; or if there is development, it must be justified as a development of human standards, not fresh truth from God. Thus, the Christian gathering becomes a sect or heresy — a school of doctrine. The spring of living water is exchanged for the more or less stagnant, reused waters of the cistern, which may become in the end a marsh. Again, the Lord’s commendation to Philadelphia must be heard here. “You have kept My Word” implies, for all who will receive it, that they allow nothing or no one to rob them of their right and responsibility of knowing for themselves what Christ’s Word is. Paul’s “prove all things” applies to us all individually, and we cannot commit this proving into the hands of others! No assembly, whatever its Christian character, can be permitted to decide for us between heresy and Christian truth. “My sheep hear My voice” is too precious a privilege, too absolute a characteristic of God’s people, to permit it to be taken from us under any conditions! If I have any truth that I believe in my heart to be truth, God’s people have a right to claim it from me, and I have it in trust to give it to others. That done, it is for each one of them to decide whether they can receive it as truth; and here comes the opportunity for all the help that we can give each other by brotherly conference and free discussion, which these ready charges of heresy tend to make impracticable. If there is nothing being taught that subverts fundamental truth, there is nothing to hinder the freest and widest circulation of all that can be said about it. The more fully this is done, the sooner will that which is of God be sifted from any error and the honest person will find what God has in it for him. Exercise as to the Word will accomplish for us the more intelligent possession of what we had before, even if no fresh truth resulted from the sifting. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 15: 01.10. CHAPTER 10 - THE ASSEMBLY IN ITS PRACTICAL WORKING ======================================================================== Chapter 10 The Assembly in its Practical Working We will now consider the local assembly itself in its living operation as filling (in the Holy Spirit’s power) the place for which God designed it. It must fill this place to satisfy and be owned by God, and the ruined spiritual condition of the Church as a whole has not lowered His standard for it. He is gracious or who could stand before Him, but this does not imply that He tolerates even the least departure from His Word. If He did He would give up His holiness, truth and love. The Church has failed miserably, and this failure has changed the circumstances in which we are placed today. It has made our path more difficult and has deprived us of much of the help that we should have gained from one another. But this failure does not force anyone to be disobedient to anything that God has spoken, nor does it deprive us of either the wisdom or power to “stand perfect and complete in all the will of God” (Col 4:12). Difficulties only help us realize more of what He is for us: as Joshua and Caleb said of the giants that Israel would have to fight in possessing the promised land, “They shall be bread to us” (Num 14:9), for faith is strengthened by those demands on it that expose the weakness of unbelief. Thus, we are to look at the assembly in the character which the Word of God has given it, unhindered by any reasonings derived from the changed conditions of today. The assembly of which we are speaking is not the whole church of God, but the local assembly which in God’s thoughts, however, represents the whole Church in the locality, being those alone who can actually assemble — the practical Scriptural gathering together of the members of Christ, simply as such. If all the members of Christ were gathered together, we would see the entire Assembly as the body of Christ. Thus, each local assembly is the body of Christ in the place in which it is (that is, each assembly is the body of Christ in practical operation. If there are other Christians in the locality, they are part of the body of Christ, but they do not gather together on Scriptural ground, and thus, in practice, do not represent that wonderful body. Ed.) The assembly is a divinely-constructed organization* and the only organization that God ever owns as of Him — all-sufficient to give us all that can be rightly expected or desired. Let’s look first at the members of the body of Christ. They are spoken of individually in the same terms as the whole body is, because each individual is a picture of the whole body of Christ. The whole body is joined together and united to the Head by the Holy Spirit who indwells it all. The Holy Spirit likewise brings every member into a living and practical relationship with every other and with Christ. Indwelt by the Holy Spirit, “he who is joined to the Lord is one Spirit,” so that “your bodies are the members of Christ” (1Co 6:17; 1Co 6:15). The whole of each individual belongs to Christ, and there is no one and no part of anyone permitted to be worldly or self-controlled. Thus, not only is the white garment of practical righteousness to cover us completely, but the “cord of blue,” the heavenly color, is to be seen on the hem of it, just where it comes in contact with the earth (Num 15:38). The moral basis for all right fellowship with God and with one another is lacking unless we “purpose in our hearts” to live our whole lives — our every faculty of mind and body — for God. We must allow ourselves to be (spiritually) taken out of this world by being set apart to Himself, and then to be sent back into it again as His representatives (John 17:15-18). If we won’t do this, we do not and cannot fill our place in the assembly regardless of how much we physically take part in the meetings, because our place essentially is a spiritual one and can only be spiritually filled! Our Lord’s words, “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Mat 12:30) are true in particular matters as well as in a general way. If we are not with Him in any habit or practice, in that respect we are against Him and are in the miserable condition of being divided against ourselves. As a consequence we lose spiritual vigor and lack ability to make progress in God’s things or even to stand firm in Satan’s presence. Paul says that things that are “lawful” to him — not specifically unscriptural — are not all “expedient” (wise) and he immediately adds, regarding these things, “All things are lawful to me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1Co 6:12). Lawful things might develop a power or influence to which even Paul feared becoming captive. Now, the question of fellowship with one another begins here. Are we personally in true and whole-hearted fellowship with Christ, with no fence to keep Him from certain portions of our lives? Has obedience to Him no secret limitations? Do we divide between what is ours and His? Do we know that to have Him own everything that is ours, is the only way we can enjoy and find satisfying sweetness in those things? Only thus will our bodies, in practice, be the members of Christ. Then, our hands will be for His work, our feet for His errands, our lips for His communications and His praise. Our entire lives will express communion with Him. Whatever shortcomings we have to confess in actual attainment, nothing less than the above must be our honest desire and aim, or how can there be a walk with God? How can He agree to other terms than these? Would it be for His glory or our good if He did so? Think of what is implied in the expression “body of Christ” where the Holy Spirit links all together in harmonious subjection to the will of the Head and gives in each, a living unity with one another. This living unity plainly is the practical “unity of the Spirit” which Paul tells us to “endeavor to keep” (Eph 4:3). Paul doesn’t mean the unity of the body (which God keeps), but the unity of that which makes it in practice the body fitted to Christ, the Head. This is what should be seen in the assembly of God if it is fulfilling its proper character — a living, speaking, working unity of obedience inspired by devoted love. What a testimony to Him of even “two or three” gathered together in this spirit! It was this way at the beginning of the Church when “the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own” (Acts 4:32). This is the true spirit at all times, whatever may be the difference as to how it is expressed. Where the above is not true, men “seek their own [things, and] not the things of Jesus Christ” (Php 2:21). Various interests lead in various ways, the wisdom of the world comes in to secure these ways and the door is opened to every kind of departure. It is only the sense of what is ours in Christ, where all have all in common, and joy is increased by sharing with others, that keeps the heart from evil and produces much fruit for Him. Thus, we see again why Philadelphians are those who keep Christ’s Word. Communion only exists where the heart is held by the revelations of God’s grace and we are kept in communion by the fresh manna (spiritual food), gathered every day. The reading (Bible study) meeting thus is a great test of the state of an assembly, for it is there, if things are right, that the knowledge gathered during the week by the individual brethren is tested and made sure by discussion and comparison, which helps to make truth the realized possession of the soul. Here we may learn too, if there is the frankness of brotherly love, the individual needs for the truth so that the truth can be used for real edification (help, building up, strengthening). In these ways, we can test how completely we have got hold of the truth, while what has been learned by each is thrown into the common fund to enrich the whole. It would surprise even those who know the least, to know how much their questions, suggested by their own need, help the very people who answer them. This is one of the many ways in which the minister is ministered to. Thus, the Bible study meeting is never made needless by more detailed and connected teaching. In fact, such added teaching only creates a special need for the Bible study meeting so that the food laid before the whole may be individually digested. Indeed, “the sons of this world are wiser, in their generation, than the sons of light” (Luk 16:8). Someone who inherits a large worldly possession soon realizes the need to become acquainted with what he has so much personal interest in, but in the case of spiritual wealth, given us by God, how few of us earnestly lay hold of it. When, in the early 1800s, the Holy Spirit moved to recover His people to one another and to revive the almost lost idea of the Assembly of God, the Bible study meetings were a prominent sign of the awakened interest in His Word, and that God’s people were claiming for themselves their portion in it. No class of men, however gifted, educated or accredited, were allowed to stand between them and their possession. So, any decay in the Bible study meetings means the lessening of that eager enthusiasm for the truth and a lessened consciousness of the Holy Spirit as the One who gives the power needed to personally possess the truth. God never intended theology to be for a class of men called theologians. Rather, all treasures of His Word are for all His people. Nothing is hidden except from the careless and indifferent — those who willingly exchange their heavenly birthright for a serving of the world’s pottage. Teachers are only God’s pledge of His eagerness to have all to know His Word. He has not restricted the possession of spiritual knowledge to teachers. Teachers are to show others that, in the living fountain from which they drew, there is the living water for all, as free to others as for themselves. Teachers make God’s Word to stand out before the eyes of those who have not as yet found it where God put it for them. A motto of encouragement to those who have faith in a God who cannot lie, is, “Everyone who seeks, finds” (Mat 7:8). The success of teachers is shown by their ability to make others independent of them — to make the Church of God realize its ability for self-edification (self-help). The apostle Paul says that Christ has given gifts to men, “some, apostles; some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto (with the view towards) the work of ministry, unto the edification of the body of Christ, until we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect (complete) man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:11-13). The work of ministry is what all the saints are to be perfected unto — made completely skilled in God’s Word. Every believer is free to “covet earnestly the best gifts” (1Co 12:31) and is responsible to use all the ability that he has to enrich others. “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man for profit” (1Co 12:7). Although there are special evangelists, all are free and called on, each in his own measure, to evangelize. Although there are special teachers, all are free and responsible to communicate to others what God has given them of His truth. Love of each other and love of souls is to have liberty to be manifested and is to be encouraged everywhere. How blessed is an assembly in this condition, with every person realizing that the fullness of all spiritual knowledge is open to him (or her) to enjoy; that the best gifts are his to covet; and that he is, by the wonderful fact of his having the Holy Spirit, the ordained minister of Christ to the world and also the ordained servant and helper of his brethren! How intolerable is the thought of class restrictions to limit and hinder the grace of God to His people! Yet, we constantly tend to sink into it. The development of gift is hindered by class distinctions and this is a major reason why so few among us are going forth to labor in the ample fields and why the gatherings have so little strength and stability! We don’t need to talk about a laity to have one! ’Gift’ is unlikely to develop among God’s people if they sink down into careless, silent submission to others regarding their spiritual privileges. On the other hand, when spiritual life is strongest, we will be most conscious of our needs of one another. Spiritual feebleness always means a strong world element in our lives. The spiritual child of God can have no fellowship in the world’s occupations, aims and pleasures. There will be little spiritual help to one another when our occupation is with the world; our spiritual links will become theoretical, formal, sentimental. But where spiritual life is practical and earnest, its needs will be felt and the grace realized which has united us together. Wherever we find life in nature, it is in conflict with death; and the organization (order) that always accompanies life is its defense against death. Nor is organization a sacrifice of individuality, for every part of the body is distinct from the rest and has its own work and responsibility. Only by maintaining this individuality can the welfare of the whole be maintained. Likewise in the body of Christ, everyone has a place to fill; a place that no other can fill. Thus, every person is necessary! The Church of God is an organization — the body of Christ — the body on earth of an unseen Head in heaven. The body is always looked at as on earth, just as the Head is in heaven; and as governed by that Head, one with Him. Joined by the uniting Holy Spirit, the Church is God’s representative in the world, to be the expression of His mind, His will, His nature. Every individual also is this, but that is not enough. It has pleased God to link these individuals together. Thus, individual duty is not pleasing to God if one’s God-given place is not filled in the body. There is to be an “epistle of Christ” (one epistle, not epistles) which, as Paul tells the Corinthians, “you are” (2Co 3:3). Since we are livingly linked together in such a manner and for such a purpose, how necessary it is that, as gathered together, we constantly seek God’s mind to learn what He has for us to do as yoke-fellows together — you and I working together in His service. The value of organization for this, seems least appreciated by those who should know it best — by those who have had recovered to them the knowledge of God’s own perfect organization for His work (the Church) which demands the very utmost of our united energies! Organization is everywhere appreciated among Christian workers today. Nothing can be done without it. Organizations now are so abundant that they are becoming parasites on the bodies from which they sprang, and they often over-burden what they were designed to support. Thus, there are good reasons for the distrust that some of us have of them. These organizations are undisciplined and the destroyers of discipline. All distinctive faith is in danger of being lost in many organizations due to their loose associations with unconverted persons — Christians with the deniers of Christ, in an unequal yoke, forbidden by God under the severest penalties (2Co 6:14-18). Further, by their human rules, many of these organizations suppress the conscience and substitute the will of the majority, or of an ’official’ for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So, we have learned to link all this with the very thought of organization and thus tend to look on every suggestion of it with suspicion — as being, at best, unspiritual. But what then shall we do with the body of Christ, which is both a Scriptural and divine organization? Our common relationship to one another causes us to “consider one another to provoke (stir up) to love and to good works” (Heb 10:24); with which the apostle connects “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting (encouraging) one another” (Heb 10:25). Don’t such words imply that we should assemble together to consider both individual needs and the Lord’s work among us, in ways and times more than open meetings, Bible studies, and prayer meetings, as these exist among us, can unitedly supply? Isn’t fellowship with one another sadly limited if there is not fellowship in the Lord’s work among us and around us — if there is no gathering together to consider this? Such gatherings should be the rule, not the exception, and should be earnestly entered into as essential to our corporate duties and thus to our right spiritual health. In many denominations Christians come together to consider the Lord’s work, to express their interest in it and to identify themselves with it. Is it necessary that we, as two or three or more gathered to the Lord’s Name, are cut off from all gathering together for such purposes? I believe that wherever such a lack of gathering exists, it is a most serious lack. It tends to restrict our interest in one another and deprive us of much of the good that should come from the differences among us, which make mutual help so necessary. Further, the ministry of that help binds us together. Such lack of gathering together makes our Christian activities to be disconnected and feeble, and deprives us of many doors that would be found open to us; exposing us to the reproach of being, as a whole, not very useful. Why is it that we who have and can present the gospel as simply as others, even are capable of being attacked with such reproaches? Why have we been left so far behind in the evangelism of the world by others with much less light (truth), but zealous in their cooperation with one another for such purposes? Have we been too weighted down by the truth we have? If our truth is dead truth — head knowledge without the heart-felt practice backing up that knowledge — this probably is the answer, but not if it is living truth. Truth in its living power is weight as wings are to a bird. Had we gone in the same zeal, after the same people that others have sought, no ecclesiastical prejudice could have robbed us of the blessing. The hindrance has been something beside the truth or the position that we hold. There has developed among us the dangerous tendency to break up on slight occasion over non-fundamental matters, even though Philadelphia is a brotherhood. We often fail to cultivate that spirit of brotherly fellowship, of which the hand-to-hand occupation in the Lord’s work is certainly a very important part. We have left room for the development of gift and have been very thankful to see evangelists, teachers and others raised up among us, but we have lacked the seeking, by gathering together in the ways suggested above, to make the Lord’s work a matter of common responsibility and widest fellowship! Business meetings and brothers’ meetings will not fill the gap. We need something wide enough to take in all the Lord’s interests on earth, free enough to give everyone a place in it and practical enough to concern itself mainly with the places in which we live and in the spheres in which we daily move. We want something that constantly will remind us of our individual duties as the Lord’s workers; be suggestive, encouraging and helpful in our fulfillment of them; fit us more together in practice as the co-members of the body of Christ; make us realize His mind for us as a whole, and give us practical wisdom for the days in which we live. We want to be like the men of Issachar who came to Hebron to make David king, “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1Ch 12:32). We want something that will develop all the truth we have into practical expression for the help of all those around us. The Church of God plainly is an organization, but we have yet to use it for all the purposes intended by God for His organization — the organization that God has given the responsibility of representing Christ and of being the practical expression of His mind on earth. So, even if we are only two or three in each place, instead of thousands, while sadly acknowledging the broken condition of things, we are just as responsible to show what the Church of God should be — a living, united, working, cooperating membership, a body moving in unison with the mind of its unseen Head, in the energy of the Holy Spirit who formed and inspires it. No one suggests that since we all can read our Bibles at home, there is no need for our coming together for Bible study; or that, since we can pray at home, there is no need for prayer meetings in the assembly. Why, then, should the work meetings — the means for practical communion — be the only thing thought unnecessary? Yet, for the lack of such work meetings, the prayer meetings become vague and general because definite individual and corporate needs are not known. Service that is merely personal or shared only by a few, in which general fellowship is not sought, is not prayed for. Then our Bible studies lack the personal application, the freshness of interest that only is supplied by incidents of service, but which often are unknown except to individuals. Instead of a practical working unity, we often are only individuals, touching each other at a few points, but hidden from each other in most, except as personal friendships join us here and there. As a consequence, without the larger interests of the body of Christ to steady them, these friendships tend to form us into parties and in times of pressure, break us up into them! How little we “consider one another, to provoke (stir up) unto love and good works” (Heb 10:24). Exhortations often are pointless due to lack of knowledge. How little in general are we near enough to each other in our inner lives to be able to encourage or exhort! Yet as children of God and members of Christ, we are in a relationship one to another that is nearer and more abiding than any other can be! Thus, we need in everyday practice to draw nearer together as Christians. With the stress of the world on us, we need to take each other by the hand and strengthen each other in the things of God. In the presence of evil we need to show a strong, united front. In a world away from God, but over which His mercies linger, we need a more practical fellowship in the gospel and we need to encourage everyone to take an earnest part in preaching it. In all that concerns the Church of God, we must have something that will give us better opportunity to know that we are “members one of another.” As partakers of the mind of Christ, we need to give this more united, practical expression. Membership in the body of Christ automatically means service. Every part of a body is in necessary working relationship with the whole, and there is no independency. Each part needs and serves and is served by the whole. God has acted on this principle throughout nature and nowhere more fully than among men. God said, “it is not good that man should be alone” (Gen 2:18), so He made a helper for him — woman, the complement of himself. He united the weaker to the stronger so that by her weakness, his strength is better served. She is given to him to be ministered to, so that she may minister to him also, drawing him out of himself, developing his heart — a blessing that all he gives to her cannot repay. Similarly, society has been built up by men having different interests and jobs; and even the regions of the earth are helpful by the differences of their productions in binding together the nations of the earth. A city is the highest development of this principle among men; all must work together to make it function properly, and God has prepared for His people “a city that has foundations” (Heb 11:10) where all will function perfectly together, forever. Thus, ministry is both God’s law of nature and the expression of His nature, which is love. “Love seeks not her own”; “by love [we] serve one another.” Love is freedom, happiness, the opposite of all legality, the spirit of heaven, giving and reflecting blessing. That fullest description of love in 1Co 13:1-13 finds its proper home and means of expression in the body of Christ. Here, the necessity of all parts to one another is just what provides for and makes necessary the constant outgoing of love to one another which binds all together and greatly reduces the chance of unnecessary division. There are some small animal half-organisms that grow by division, but the higher the organism, the more its unity is enforced by the refusal of division! A part lost is not supplied again: the creature is maimed and goes mourning its loss, refusing substitution. Such is the body of Christ — the highest pattern of fitting together that can be: and if only two or three can, practically, be together, this does not free them from their obligation to all the members. Love abhors the thought of this as freedom to do as we please, to play loose with God’s Word. Rather, love holds fast the true local expression (the local assembly) of the greater thing (the whole Church) which has failed, yet love sees that this holding fast does not degenerate into mere sectarian display. True love looks out and beyond as partaking of the divine love towards all, not forgetting the tie that exists between all Christians. It looks out over the whole field of Christ’s interests and identifies itself in heart with all, seeking ever to widen the outlook and extend the sphere of practical sympathy. Thus, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings become more definite but larger in scope and more according to the sadly-forgotten apostolic rule, “for all men” (1Ti 2:1). If such a spirit moved us, we might see other divine movements among Christians elsewhere, even though, mixed in with that which is of God, there are elements too purely human and doctrines and practices too unscriptural to allow us to walk with them in practical fellowship. We also would learn that God has practical and profitable lessons for us from all around, if we were only humble enough to learn from all sorts of teachers, and wise enough to “take forth the precious from the vile” (Jer 15:19), the mandatory condition for our being “as God’s mouth.” We frequently would find things that would be a rebuke to us in what others said or wrote, and this would test us much. It would show if we proudly desired to believe that all spiritual wisdom was with us, and outside was only darkness. I do not mean to encourage people to run here and there which in general is only the expression of restlessness and lack of proper occupation with our own things. We are to keep our feet in the known path and not allow them in doubtful ones! The heart is to be enlarged, not the path, which always must be a narrow one — the one clearly outlined for us in Scripture. A wanderer is too little heedful of God’s path to be able to guide another into it. “Let him who names the Name of the Lord, depart from iniquity (unrighteousness)” (2Ti 2:19) should keep us from every doubtful thing, which may therefore be evil, as well as from known evil. It also will keep me from that in which I may see the working of the Holy Spirit, as long as it still is mixed up with things that I have to judge as contrary to His mind. I firmly believe that we scripturally gather together as worshipers and hearers of God’s Word, but we almost never have gatherings of the whole as workers under the Lord, our Head, to seek His mind for us, wherever, however expressed, in all the largeness that we must recognize His Mind to have. I believe that such meetings are necessary to maintain the full reality of true Christian fellowship with each other and with the Lord alike; and to help make the assemblies a living, intelligent representation, however feeble, of the body of Christ. This book has in no way fully covered all that the Lord has for us in the address to Philadelphia in Rev 3:1-22. But if the Lord is pleased to use what we have gleaned to exercise the consciences of His people as to what is surely a special word from Himself for the present day, the object of this book is attained. F. W. Grant. (edited) ======================================================================== CHAPTER 16: 02.0.1. ATONEMENT ======================================================================== Atonement: In Type, Prophecy, and Accomplishment. F. W. Grant. "A propitiation, through faith, by His blood, to show His righteousness." (Rom 3:25. R.V.) Loizeaux Brothers, 63 Fourth Avenue; Bible Truth Print, Fourth Avenue, New York. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 17: 02.0.2. TABLE OF CONTENTS ======================================================================== Table of Contents Chapter 1. The Need to be Met Chapter 2. The Last Adam and the New Creation Chapter 3. The Seed of the Woman Chapter 4. The Ark and the Altar Chapter 5. The Offering of Isaac Chapter 6. The Passover and the Sea Chapter 7. The Tabernacle-Service Chapter 8. The Burnt-Offering Chapter 9. The Peace-Offering Chapter 10. The Sin-Offering Chapter 11. The Trespass-Offering Chapter 12. The Two Birds Chapter 13. The Day of Atonement Chapter 14. The Red Heifer Chapter 15. Prophetic Testimony Chapter 16. The Testimony of the Psalms Chapter 17. Atonement in the New Testament. The Gospels Chapter 18. Romans and Galatians Chapter 19. Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Corinthians Chapter 20. Hebrews Chapter 21. The other Apostolic Writings Chapter 22. What Christ Suffered in Atonement Chapter 23. The Penalty in its Inner Meaning Chapter 24. Redemption and Atonement Chapter 25. Resurrection the Sign of Complete Atonement Chapter 26. Union and Identification with Christ Chapter 27. God Glorified and Glorifying Himself ======================================================================== CHAPTER 18: 02.01. CHAPTER 01 - THE NEED TO BE MET. ======================================================================== Chapter 01 The Need to be Met. The cross of Christ is the central fact in the history of man. To it all former ages pointed on; from it all future ones take shape and character. Eternity, no less than time, is ruled by it: Christ is the "Father of Eternity." (Isa 9:6, Heb.) The new creation owns Him as last Adam, of whom the failed first man was but the type and contrast. The wisdom, the grace, and the glory of God are displayed, for the ceaseless adoration of infinite hosts of free and gladsome worshipers, in this work and its results. The doctrine of atonement is thus the centre and heart of divine truth. Unsoundness here will be fatal to the character of all that we hold for truth, and in exact proportion to the measure of its unsoundness. Again, all fundamental error elsewhere will find, of necessity, its reflection and counterpart in some false view of atonement, if consistently carried out. Thank God, this is often not the case, because the heart is often sounder than the creed; but this, while admitted fully, scarcely affects, for a Christian, the seriousness of such a consideration. In taking up this subject for examination, we must remember the gravity of such a theme; one in which a mere critical spirit will be as much at fault as out of place; where we must be, not judges, but worshipers, yet thoroughly alive to the importance of testing by the Word of God every thing presented. The blessedness of a devout and believing contemplation of the work to which we owe our all will be at least proportionate to the gravity of error as to it; while our preservative from this will be found, not in neglect or slight treatment of so great and important a truth, but in deeper, more attentive and prayerful consideration. Here, too, we have to avoid, as elsewhere, the opposite dangers of an independent and a weakly dependent spirit. We dare not call any man master, for One is our Master, even Christ. On the other hand, and for that very reason, we dare not despise His teaching, even were it from the babe. There is need continually to remind ourselves of this, simple as it surely is. For while the multitudinous voices of Christendom rebuke our belief in the authority which they claim, we cannot doubt that the Spirit of truth has been communicating truth in proportion to the simplicity of the faith that trusted Him. We may listen to and gain by teachers just in the measure that we realize the apostle’s words, that we have an unction from the Holy One, and need not that any man teach us. Let us take up, then, the great subject before us, and see reverently what we may be able to learn from Scripture as to it, not refusing to consider along with this, as it may seem profitable, current views, not for controversy on a theme so sacred; testing for the gold and not the dross. The failure of others, where we may have to judge they fail, should surely only serve the purpose of making us cling more humbly, but not less confidently, to the Hand that alone can lead us safely. Just as the works of God need the Sustainer still, so does the word of revelation still need the Revealer. Before we come to consider the fact and truth of atonement, we have need, first of all, to consider the necessity that exists for it. That it was absolutely necessary, Scripture settles decisively for him that will listen to it. "For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so MUST also the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Nothing can be plainer, nothing more authoritative, than such an announcement from the lips of Him who came into the world to meet the need that He declares. Whatever is implied in that lifting up of the Son of Man, — the cross, most assuredly, — was necessary for man’s salvation: and that the cross was an atonement, or propitiation, for our sins, I need not pause to insist on now. But while the necessity of the cross is thus put far beyond dispute for all such as I am writing for at this time, it is still needful to inquire, What is the nature of that necessity. It is to our need that God reveals Himself, and as meeting it, while more than meeting it, that He has glorified Himself forever; and to know His grace, we must know the state to which it answers. It is thus that through repentance we come to faith in the gospel. Scripture alone gives the knowledge, in any adequate way, even of man’s condition; it is well if we do not resist God’s judgment when He has given it. Man is a fallen being: all have sinned; and all are "by nature children of wrath." In the order of statement, in that epistle which takes up most fully what we are, as prefatory to the unfolding of that salvation which is its theme, the first is insisted on first, and as if wholly independent of the other. Men excuse their sins by their nature, with how little truth their own consciences are witness; for what they excuse in themselves they condemn in another, and especially if it be done against themselves. God has taken care that within us we should carry a voice which sophistry can never completely silence, and which asserts our responsibility, spite of our natures, for every sin of our hearts or lives. In that day to which conscience ever points, "the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ," He "will render to every man according to [not his nature, but] his deeds." And for which of his deeds could he excuse himself with truth by the plea that he could not help it? Surely not for one. The free-will of which man boasts comes in here to testify fearfully against him. His nature, whatever its corruption, is not, in the sense in which he pleads, prohibitory of good or obligatory to evil. Conscience, anticipating the righteous judgment of God, refuses to admit the validity of such a plea. It is the intuitive conviction of every soul that sins, that for that sin it is justly liable to judgment. On this ground it is that the law brings in — every man for his own sins, — "all the world guilty before God." In all that part of Romans, from the first to the middle of the fifth chapter, in which this as to man is taken up, the apostle will raise no question as to his nature, — speaks as yet no word of Adam or the fall. Before he can bring it forward at all, it must be absolutely settled that as all have sinned, so "all have come short of the glory of God." That which for Israel the impassable wall of the holiest declared, is what is affirmed by the gospel as to all, without exception. It is upon this common basis of judgment lying upon all, that justification for the ungodly is proclaimed to all. The question of nature comes in in the second part of the epistle, in connection with the power for a new life. It is after man’s guilt, proved to be universal, is met, for all that believe, by the precious blood of Christ, and "being justified by faith, we have peace with God," our standing in grace, "and rejoice in hope of the glory of God," that the apostle goes on to compare and contrast the first Adam and his work with Him of whom he is the type: "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; . . . therefore as by the offense of one [or by one offense] toward all men to condemnation, so by one righteousness toward all men for justification of life. For as indeed by the disobedience of the one man the many have been constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the One the many will be constituted righteous." (I quote this from a version more literal than our common one, which is very faulty here.) Afterward, this corruption of constitution is fully dealt with, and the remedy for it shown; but of this it is not yet the place to speak. It is evident, however, that this increases the gravity of man’s condition immensely. The apostle, following the Lord’s own words to Nicodemus, calls this fallen nature of flesh, stamping it thus as the degradation of the spiritual being which God had created, hopeless naturally, as the Lord’s words imply: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." The apostle states it thus: "The mind of the flesh is enmity toward God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." With the many questions which spring out of this we are not now concerned; but such are the solemn declarations of Scripture, with which all the facts of observation and experience coincide. For man thus guilty and alienated from God, atonement is necessary ere there can be mercy. "Deliver him from going down into the pit" must have this as its justification: "I have found a ransom." The penalty upon sin is the necessary expression of His essential holiness. He can neither go on with sin nor ignore it; and this is a question not alone of His government, but of His nature also. To be a holy governor, He must be a holy God. Government would be simply impossible for God that did not represent aright His personal character. If, then, in His government He cannot let sin escape, it is because the holiness of His nature forbids such an escape. This we shall find to be of very great importance when we come to the consideration of what the atonement is; but it is important to realize from the outset. Law, what ever its place, can never be the whole matter; while yet its enactments must be in harmony with the deeper truth upon which it rests. "To men it is appointed once to die, but after this the judgment." This is the inspired statement as to what he naturally lies under. Both these things have to be considered in their character and meaning, for as to both of them many a mistake has been made. Death entered into the world by the sin of Adam. It is not necessary to take this as applying to the lower creatures. No express word of Scripture affirms this, and the whole web and woof of nature seems to contradict the thought. Life, without a miracle to prevent it, must be destroyed continually, apart from all question of carnivorous beasts or birds, by the mere tramp of our feet over the earth, in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the plants or fruits we consume. The herbivorous animals thus destroy life scarcely less than the carnivorous. Scripture, too, speaks of the "natural brute beasts" as "made to be taken and destroyed," and of "man being in honor and understanding not becoming like the beasts that perish." But unto the world — the human world, — by one man sin entered, and death by sin; "and so death passed upon all men [he speaks only of man], for that all have sinned." It is the stamp of God’s holy government upon sin; the outward mark of inward ruin. This death which came in through sin we must distinguish from the judgment after death, as the apostle distinguishes them in the text already quoted. This has not always been done, and yet not to do it is to make difficult what is simple, and to obscure not a little the perfection of the divine ways. The sentence upon Adam was not a final sentence, but one in which the mercy is evident amid all the severity of righteous judgment. Without the ministration of death, sad as has been the history of the world, it would have been much sadder; but upon this I do not now need to pause. The sentence on Adam is sufficiently clear from what is actually passed upon him after the transgression, and whose meaning no one can doubt: — "Until thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Of the second death this may be, and is, a type, and a warning: but no more. Again, to confound the penalty upon sin with sin itself would seem almost impossible did we not know that it had been really done. It is true that man’s sinful state is spoken of as death — a "death in trespasses and sins." But unless God could inflict sin as such, which is impossible, this would turn the penalty into a prophecy merely. The testimony of conscience should be enough in such a case; but the words of the sentence when actually given, as I have just now quoted them, should preclude the possibility of doubt. Yet here too it is a type — the outward manifestation of the state to which it answers; for as the body without the spirit corrupts into sensible abomination, so with man away from God. Death is judgment; to the natural man, how solemn an one! smiting him through the very centre of his sensitive being, and sending him forth from every thing he knows and values into a gloom surcharged with the foulness of corruption, and with the terrors of God, to which he goes forth naked and alone. Death is judgment, but not "the judgment." For this, the "resurrection of judgment" must have come in, — judgment claiming for this the body as well as the spirit — the whole man, in short. And here, that separation from God, chosen by the soul itself, becomes manifest in its true horror, and its definitive portion forever. This is the "outer darkness," when God the light of life is withdrawn forever. But not in every sense withdrawn. For the second death is not only darkness, though it is darkness. The second death is none the less the "lake of fire:" a figure indeed, but none the less fearful because a figure: "our God is a consuming fire." Worse than withdrawn, the light has become fire. For God cannot forget, cannot simply ignore: where sin is, there must be the testimony of His undying anger against it. Here, "according to the deeds done in the body," there is the searching, discriminating apportionment of absolute righteousness. Death then, and after death the judgment: this is man’s natural portion; these are the two things from which he needs to be delivered. For judgment he cannot abide; if he dream of the possibility of it, it is but a dream: "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified." This is what Scripture with one voice affirms. If it were but believed, how many wrong thoughts would it not set right! how many theological systems would it not utterly sweep away! This, then, is the portion of man as man: this is the burden that atonement has to lift from off him. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 19: 02.02. CHAPTER 02 - THE LAST ADAM AND THE NEW CREATION. ======================================================================== Chapter 02 The Last Adam and the New Creation. We are going to look at the truth of atonement in the way in which Scripture develops and puts it before us; beginning with the Old Testament and proceeding, in the regular order of its books as we have them, onward to the New; except that we shall necessarily take the light of the New Testament to enable us to read the Old Testament lessons aright, remembering that the "vail is done away in Christ." I choose this method, rather than what might seem the simpler one, of stating the doctrine after the manner of the creed or theological text-book, for many reasons. God’s method of teaching plainly has not been by the creed. He could surely have given one, not only better than any human could claim to be, but absolutely perfect, avoiding all the errors and all the incompleteness of the best of creeds, and giving what would be indeed a royal road to knowledge in divine things. It has pleased Him otherwise; and in this there must be wisdom worthy of Him, and care too for the real need of His people. God’s way has been to speak to us in a far different manner. He has given us truth in fragments, which at first sight seem even to have little orderly connection, — which gleam out upon us from history, psalm, and prophecy, as well as in more detached statement sometimes in an apostolical epistle. Even here we have seldom what the systematic theologian would call a treatise; certainly nothing at all resembling the articles of a confession of faith or of a creed. Understand me, I am not denying that such things have their place. Unfortunately they are valuable precisely when stripped of that in which to most lies all their value. As authoritative expositions of doctrine, they substitute human authority for divine; the confession, with all its admitted liability to error, in place of the unfailing, infallible Word, by which the Holy Spirit, the sure and only Guardian of the Church in the absence of Christ its Head, works in the hearts and consciences of men. Stripped of the false claim, and left as the witness of what individual faith has found in the inspired Word, they may be used of God as the voice of the living witness. However, to that Word, with all its perplexities of interpretation, as men speak, we must come for that which can alone give certainty to the soul; these very perplexities used of God to give needful exercise, to deepen the sense of dependence upon Him, and discipline us by the exercise. The truth given in this way, moreover, only to be learnt fragment by fragment, by constant re search into and occupation with the precious book in which the treasure lies, enforces its lessons by that needful frequent "putting in remembrance" of which an apostle speaks. We realize its many sides and internal relationships; we discern how little all our systems are, compared with the truth itself; that the completeness we desired was only narrowness. Finally, that God’s method of teaching is divine, as the truth taught is; His way to lead us out, at least into more apprehension of the infinity of that which, cramped into the human measure, necessarily becomes dwarfed and distorted by it. In the historical part of the Old Testament, the lessons given to us are mainly those pictured lessons which we call types. But before we come to the types of atonement proper, there is one we must consider, which, although not that, is in the deepest and most intimate relation to it, and the right or wrong conception of which will influence correspondingly our view of atonement itself. The apostle tells us, with regard to the first man, that Adam was "a figure of Him that was to come" (Rom 5:14); and in 1Co 15:45, he speaks of Christ as the "last Adam." He is again spoken of by the same apostle as the "First-born of every creature," or, "of all creation" (Col 1:15); and speaks of Himself, in the address to Laodicea, as the "beginning of the creation of God." (Rev 3:4.) So again, "If any one be in Christ, he is a new creature [or, "it is new creation"]: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2Co 5:17.); and this is insisted on as the governing principle of a Christian life; "for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation; and as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy." (Gal 6:15-16.) The fallen first man and the old creation are thus, according to God’s thought, replaced by the last Adam and a new creation. There is no restoration of the old; it is set aside, or becomes the material out of which the new creation is to be built up; and this last is God’s creation — what was in His mind from the beginning. So, when the Psalmist asks, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" the answer is, "Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor." This the apostle interprets for us in the epistle to the Hebrews, — "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor." This last Adam, true man as He surely is, is emphatically the "Second Man." "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is of heaven [so all the editors read it now]. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Here, as elsewhere, the type is the shadow only, and therefore in many things the contrast, of the antitype; and so precisely as to what is connected with each. Here is the great and fundamental mistake with the general mass of theological systems. They make the first man God’s real thought instead of the Second, and bring Christ in to restore the first creation; to gain what Adam should have gained or kept. Thus many now think of no more than earthly blessing for the saint, while those who are not able to resign their heavenly inheritance would make this Adam’s natural birthright also. The so-called evangelical creeds of christendom put Adam under the moral law to win heaven for himself and his posterity, and write "This do, and thou shalt live" over the gate of entrance. The Lord’s suffering in death, they say, puts away our sins; His obedience to the law is our title to heaven. But in this way, not only is the full blessedness of the Christian’s place unknown, but Christ’s work is necessarily however unintentionally degraded. To Adam in Eden God spoke nothing of heaven, nor ever connected going to it with the keeping of the law. "This do, and thou shalt live," He did say; never, "This do, and thou shalt go to heaven." God never proposed to the creature He had made to win by His obedience a higher place than He had put him in at first. To have proposed it would have been to have made man from the start what sin has so long made him — a worker for himself rather than for God. He who has said, "When ye have done all, say, We are unprofitable servants," could never have taught him any thing so perilously like a doctrine of human merit. Under law Adam was, as is evident; but not under the moral law, which an innocent being could not even have understood. The commandment to him was simply not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the terms, not "This do, and thou shalt live," but "Do this, and thou shalt die." He had not to seek a better place, but enjoy the place he had. Men may reason and speculate, but they cannot find one word of Scripture to justify the thought that unfallen Adam was what sin has made man now — a stranger, or what grace has made the saint — a pilgrim. He was made to abide, and his punishment not to abide, where God had put him. It is to man fallen, not innocent, that God speaks of heaven; and by grace, not law at all. It is the fruit of another’s work, who, not owing obedience for Himself, as a creature must, could give thus to what He undertook, a real and infinite merit. Christ’s work alone has opened heaven to man; the value of the work being according to the value of Him whose work it is. Apart from any question of the fall, the first and the last Adam are in this way contrasts: "the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit; "the first man is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is the Lord from heaven;" or rather, as the editors read it now, "the Second Man is of heaven." Here the first man, as a type, images however the Second, where God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. This is an essential difference between man and the beast below him: he has by the inspiration of God what the beast has not; and thus Elihu has the justification of his claim. That his "lips shall utter knowledge clearly" refers back to the original creation: "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." In the doctrine of Scripture elsewhere we find distinctly what the breath of the Almighty has given to man which distinguishes him from the beast. It is the "spirit of man which is in him," and by which alone he knows the things of a man. (1Co 2:11.) He has a spirit, as "God is spirit," and thus by creation, as Paul quotes from the Greek poet to show the general sense of man, declares, "We are God’s offspring."* {*See "Facts and Theories as to a Future State," or "Creation in Genesis and in Geology," for a full exposition of this.} And yet "the first man Adam was made a living soul," as this history in Genesis itself declares "Man became a living soul." In this he was what the beasts were. In this, Scripture anticipates all that is real in what the science of the day vaunts as its own discovery. Man is as the beast is, a being bound within the limits of sense-perception, through which all the stores of the knowledge upon which he so prides himself have to be painfully acquired. The spirit of man is in this way, by the necessity of his nature (I speak not of the fall), subjected to the soul. And the apostle connects this, in the passage before us, with the possession of a "natural body," as he does the "spiritual body" of the resurrection with the "image of the heavenly" last Adam. This "natural body" is rather, literally, a soul-body (the English language has no adjective for "soul"), — that is, a body fitted for the soul, as the spiritual body will be for the spirit. Hence it is that with the body the mind grows, and with it languishes and apparently decays; and hence in Scripture the title for one absent from the body is higher than for one in it. In the body, he is a "living soul;" absent from the body, he is a ghost, or spirit. From hence arises an important consideration. For while ever the Second Man, and as such "of heaven," it is plain that the Lord was pleased to be subject through His life here, as man, to the conditions of man. Ever "apart from sin," save as in grace bearing it upon the cross, the limitations springing from disease and decay He could not know, of course; but of His childhood we read expressly that He "grew in wisdom and in stature," — mind unfolding with the body as with men in general. How differently inspired Scripture speaks from what a mere human biographer would have written of the "Word made flesh"! But what such words decisively prove, in opposition to men’s thoughts about it, is that while Second Man from the beginning of His human life, as I have said, He ever was, He did not take the place of last Adam until His sacrificial work was finished and in His spiritual body He rose from the dead. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone," such are His own words; "but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." This explains the Lord’s significant action when after the resurrection He appears to His disciples and, breathing on them, says, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." For the first Adam had as a living soul been breathed into when quickened of God; the last Adam as a quickening spirit breathes into others. Not, of course, that it was quickening here: they had surely been already quickened; but now He puts them formally into the place of participants in a life now come through death, and to which justification attached as fruit of the death through which it had come. They are to be in a definite place of acceptance and peace with God, according to His words before He breathes on them — "Peace be unto you," twice spoken. "Justification of life" is thus assured to them, the doctrine of which the apostle develops in the fifth of Romans. The same chapter distinctly brings forward the first Adam as the "figure of Him that was to come." The contrast between the two does not affect the comparison: it is a comparison of contrasts. In the first Adam’s case, "through the offense of one the many have died," and "by one that sinned" "the judgment was by one to condemnation;" and "by the disobedience of the one the many have been constituted sinners." The point here is the bearing of the act of the one, the father of the race, upon the st ate of t he many, his children: corruption of nature, death, the present judgment, tending to final condemnation, have come to them in this way. So in the case of the Second Adam has His obedience resulted in blessing to those connected with Him. Only, "not as the offense is the free gift." God is not satisfied with a mere obliterating the effect of the first man’s sin, He will go far beyond that in His grace: "If through the offense of one the many have died, much more has the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded unto the many." If many offenses have been added by Adam’s posterity to the primal sin, "the free gift is of many offenses unto justification" "if by the offense of one death reigned by one, much more shall they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life by One, Jesus Christ." It is this "much more" of divine grace, which has been so forgotten, and which we must ever bear in mind. The value of the person of the Second Adam gives proportionate value to His work. The work itself, moreover, is such as none but He could possibly have accomplished. And the value of person and work together gives those in whose behalf it is accomplished a place of acceptance with God of which He Himself, gone into his presence, is the only measure. It is not now the time to speak at large of this, but it is essential to keep it in mind. Christ and the new creation must get their due place for our souls, or all will be confusion. The two verses which follow in Rom 5:1-21 we must carefully distinguish in their scope. Rom 5:18 contemplates "all men, Rom 5:19, the "many" who are connected with the one or the other of these two heads. Rom 5:1 gives us the tendency of Christ’s work; Rom 5:2, the actual result. It is as impossible to make the "all men" mean just those in effect saved, as it is to extend the "many" with whom Christ is connected into the whole human race. The tendency of the "one offense" was "toward all men to condemnation" (I do not quote the common version, which has here supplied words which the original has nothing of); the tendency or aspect of the "one righteousness," "toward all men to justification of life." On the other hand, in actual result, "as by the disobedience of the one man the many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of the One the many shall be constituted righteous." The result contemplates all those, obviously, of whatever age or dispensation, who obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ; and it should be as evident that the connection with Christ that is spoken of is with Him as the last Adam, that is, vital connection. The many being constituted righteous gives, I have no doubt, the fullness both of imputed and imparted righteousness. For as the life communicated by the last Adam is necessarily such as He Himself is, so also it carries with it the efficacy of the work accomplished — of the death through which the corn of wheat could, alone bring forth fruit. "The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom 6:23, Greek): justification is therefore "justification of life." These go together. How completely this connection harmonizes with the apostle’s argument in the next three chapters will be plain to those who are happily familiar with the doctrine there, — a doctrine which comes in as the answer to the practical question with which they begin: "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Upon this, however, I cannot enter here. We are only upon the threshold of the subject which is before us yet, and all that we have done is just to indicate certain connections of atonement, which will find their development as we take up, as we have now to take up, in its gradual unfolding from the beginning, the doctrine of atonement itself. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 20: 02.03. CHAPTER 03 - THE SEED OF THE WOMAN ======================================================================== Chapter 03 The Seed of the Woman. (Gen 3:15) Sin had no sooner come into the world than God announced atonement for it. If God took up man, become now a sinner, in the way of blessing, He must needs, in care for His own glory, as well as mercy even to man himself, declare the terms upon which alone He could bless. And although He did not and could not yet speak with the plainness or fullness of gospel-speech, yet He did speak in such a way as that, (in spite of six thousand years of wanderings further from the light,) the broken syllables echo yet in the traditions of Adam’s descendants, in witness to divine goodness, alas! against themselves. It is in the judgment denounced upon the serpent that we find the promise of the woman’s Seed; a promise indeed, as men have ever and rightly held it, though couched in such a form. To Adam as the head of fallen humanity it could not be directly given, for reasons which we have already seen; for in fact the first Adam and the old creation were not to be restored, but replaced by another. The woman also, with the man, was to share only in the fruits of Another’s victory, whom grace alone has brought down to the lowly place of the woman’s Seed. The announcement is therefore designedly given in the shape of judgment upon the serpent — judgment which is to be the victory of good over evil, the issue of a conflict now in full reality begun. In righteous retribution, through the woman’s Seed the destroyer of man should be destroyed; but this is connected with enmity divinely "put" between the tempter and the tempted, in all which God’s intervention in goodness for the recovery of the fallen is plainly to be seen. The victory of the woman’s Seed is a victory of divine goodness in behalf of man. This victory is not gained without suffering. The heel that bruises the serpent’s head will be itself bruised. The Conqueror must be the Sufferer. Moreover, the Conqueror is the woman’s Seed. We are apt to miss the force of this, just by our familiarity with it. Not yet had the mystery of human birth been accomplished upon earth. The lowliness of origin, the helpless weakness and ignorance of infancy, so long protracted beyond that of kindred bestial life around, — this, by which God would stain the pride of man, was that through which Adam and his wife had never passed. The Seed of the woman implied all this. With what astonishment we may well conceive Satan to have contemplated the childhood of the first-born of the human race; and to have thought of the word, whose certainty he could not doubt (for Satan, the father of lies, is no unbeliever), that the heel of One so born and nurtured was to be one day upon his own proud angelic head! Not strength was to conquer here then, but weakness known and realized weakness. Of that the promise spoke. And God, who needed not the help of creature-strength, had chosen to link Himself with weakness and with suffering to accomplish His purposes of righteousness and goodness. How and in what way to link Himself remained for future disclosures to make known. But that bruised heel, bruised in the act of victory on behalf of others, is not left without further revelation of its nature on the spot. For when Adam’s faith, bowing to the divine word, names the woman — her through whom death had entered, — Havvah (Eve) or "life;" then we read, "Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." Thus the shame and the fact of their nakedness were together put away. It would now have been unbelief for Adam to say, as with his fig-leaf apron he had still to say, that he was naked. God’s own hand had clothed him. No need for him to hide himself from His presence as before. The clothing His hand had given was not unfit to appear in before Him. But what gave it that fitness? Clearly something apart from suitability in the way of protection of a being naturally defenseless, and now exposed to the vicissitudes of a world disarranged by sin. The nakedness which Adam realized in the presence of God was moral rather than physical, the consciousness of the working of lusts at war in the members. The covering too, then, for God must have some moral significance, — must speak at least of that which would cover, not merely from a human, but from a divine standpoint; therefore put away sin really, for how else could it be "covered" from His sight? Now, in Scripture, "covering" is atonement — i.e., expiation, putting away of sin. To atone is caphar, to "cover" only in an intensive form, which is of striking significance and beauty. Atonement is covering of the completest kind. We have not the word yet in this first page of the history of the fallen creature, but we have surely what connects with it in a very intelligible way. For death had now come in through sin, and as judgment upon it. Death would remove the sinner from the place of blessing he had defiled, and thus far maintain and vindicate the holiness of God; but in judgment merely, not in blessing. Atone for his sin in any wise such death could not. Yet here is declared the fact that the death of another, innocent of that which brought it in, could furnish covering for the sinner according to God’s mind. Only the typal shadow yet was this: it was four thousand years too early for the true atonement to be made. Yet shadow it was: would not faith connect it, however dimly, with the bruised heel of the woman’s Seed? In this clothing God’s hand wrought, and not man’s. God wrought and God applied. Man’s first lesson, which it were well if after forty centuries he had really learnt, was, that he could do nothing but submit to the grace which had undertaken for him. The fig-leaf apron had summed up and exhausted his resources, and demonstrated only his helplessness. He had now to find that helplessness made only the occasion of learning the tender mercy of God. God wrought and God applied to these first sinners the covering for their nakedness. And so it has been ever since, and so will be, to the last sinner saved by grace. But the gospel at the gate of Eden is not finished yet. We must take in, plainly, what the next chapter gives, before we can realize how much already in Adam’s days God had, though necessarily as it were in parables, declared. Abel’s offering is that by which, as the apostle says, he, being dead, yet speaketh. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain; by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it he being dead yet speaketh." In him we are given to see, just at the threshold of the world’s history, the pronounced acceptance of a faith which brought, not its own performances, as Cain the labor of his own hands which sin had necessitated and stained, but the substitute of a stainless offering. The character of it shows clearly that sacrifice was an institution of God: "by faith Abel offered;" not therefore in will-worship. Nor could human wit have imagined as acceptable to God what, except for its inner meaning, could have had no possible suitability nor acceptance at His hands. The coats of skin, confessedly of His own design, give here indubitable evidence that the whole thought and counsel was of Him. Here again death, covers the sinner; but now in proportion to the clearness with which the sacrificial character of the covering comes out, so do we find God’s voice plainly giving its testimony to the righteousness of the offerer: "God testifying of his gifts." As with one of His ministers, in a day yet far distant, — but only with regard to bodily healing — the shadow of Christ, as here in sacrifice, is of power to heal the soul. Thus in the order of these two cases the manner and nature of appropriation are plainly seen. First, God appropriates the value of Christ’s work to the soul; for faith must have God’s act or deed to justify it as faith; and then it sets to its seal that God is true. It is not faith’s appropriation that makes it true, as some would deem. It is the receptive nature that holds fast merely what God has put already in its possession. To those who take shelter still under the atoning death of the great Victim, God attests its value on their behalf. It is for them to believe their blessedness on the word of One Who cannot lie, nor repent. Let us notice here, as ever henceforth, the victim is of the flock or herd, or what at least is not the object of pursuit or capture; which plainly would not harmonize with the fact of man’s lost condition, or with the voluntary offering of Him who freely came to do the will of God. The blood of no wild creature could flow in atonement for the soul of man. The precise commandment as to this comes indeed much later, but to it from the first both Abel’s and every other accepted sacrifice conform. Of blood no mention is made either here; of the fat there is: "And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof;" — the fat being that in which the good condition of the animal made itself apparent. Fat is always in Scripture the symbol of a prosperous condition, although, it may be, of such temporal prosperity as might result in an opposite state of soul. "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked," says the lawgiver in his last prophetic "song;" "thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness: then he forsook God that made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation." Connected with this is the Psalmist’s description of the wicked: "They are inclosed in their own fat; with their mouth they speak proudly." Then by an easy gradation of thought: "Their heart is as fat as grease." Where offered to God, fat is the symbol of that spiritual well-being which expresses itself, not in the energy of self-will, but of devotedness. Even in the sin-offering afterward, where burnt upon the ground, the fat is always therefore reserved for the altar; but of this elsewhere. The "firstling of the flock" again represents Him who is the "first-born among many brethren" by Him sanctified. "For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." The consecration of the first-born sanctifies the whole. What mind of man could have anticipated thus the thought and purpose of God as does Abel’s offering? In it the lesson of the coats of skin is developed into a doctrine of atonement henceforth to be the theme of prophecy and promise for four thousand years, till He should come in whom it should find its fulfillment, and all vail be removed. Until then, prophets themselves knew but little of what they prophesied. "The Spirit of Christ which was in them" spake deeper things than they could even follow, as the apostle testifies; though we must not imagine all was dark. That sacrifice, on the other hand, was of God’s appointment, not of human device, His words to Cain are full proof. — "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, a sin-offering coucheth at the door." So, I am persuaded, this ought to be read. "Sin" and "sin-offering" are the same word whether in Greek or Hebrew; but what would be the force of "if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door"? That the last expression refers to an animal seems plain: some interpreters take it figuratively, as if sin as a wild beast were in the act to spring. Too late, surely, when one has already sinned! Rather would it not be the provision of mercy for one in need of it — an offering not far to seek, but at the very door! and in what follows, the assurance of his retaining still the first-born’s place with regard to Abel — "Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him"? God thus, then, declares His appointment of sacrifice. And in this way the mystery of the suffering of the woman’s Seed finds its explanation in the necessity of atonement. The bruised heel of the Victor in man’s behalf enlarges and deepens into the death of a victim, slain for atonement. It is not really the serpent’s victory even thus far, though it may seem so: the serpent may bruise the heel, but only as the unwitting instrument of divine goodness in accomplishing man’s deliverance. The bruised heel is his own head bruised: the suffering is the victory of the Sufferer. But who is this, to whom death — and such a death! — is but the heel, the lowest part, bruised? What a thought of the majesty of His person is here! Already there is a gleam of the glory of Him whom after-prophecy, supplementing this, shall speak of as the virgin’s Son, Immanuel. But the question is only raised as yet, to which Isaiah gives this answer. We can see it is the fitting and necessary one. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 21: 02.04. CHAPTER 04 - THE ARK AND THE ALTAR ======================================================================== Chapter 04 The Ark and the Altar. (Gen 6:14-22; Gen 7:1-24; Gen 8:1-22.) We are no more than fairly entered upon our subject as yet and of all that we have learned hitherto the examination of other scriptures will confirm, extend, and render more precise our knowledge. We have seen the need of man, which atonement has to meet, to be fourfold: first, his actual sins secondly, corruption of nature thirdly, the penalty of death, proclaimed by God in Eden, and in which clearly all men share as well as the first sinner fourthly, the judgment after death. As to this last, so far as we have reached in Genesis, it is rather a dread undefined shadow than a thing plainly taught, an inference rather than an announcement. Correspondingly we find in atonement, so far as we have hitherto gone, the emphasis laid upon death as borne by a substitute, — a truly vicarious death, by which sin is "covered" or expiated before God, and the shame of man’s nakedness put away. But yet the one who obtains witness that he is righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and though dying in his substitute, dies himself, as all mankind but two have ever done. Why this? Surely because that while atonement is in behalf of sinners of Adam’s seed, its purpose is not to restore the first man or the old creation, but to bring those saved into the new. While, of course, as to power over the soul, death is "abolished:" "Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." That to which we now come will bring, and is designed to bring, this change from the old to the new creation vividly before us. The ark which Noah prepared to the saving of his house is a figure of Christ, as we surely know, and of Christ as One with whom we pass through the judgment of the world into that new scene where all abides in the value of the accepted sacrifice. "If any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." For faith anticipates that judgment yet to come, meets it in the cross, and passes through it, leaving it behind. The death of our Substitute is for us what death ever is — our passage out of the world. Sheltered and safe ourselves, we pass through it; our Ark alone breasting the flood, and lifted above it by its own inherent buoyancy; for the Holy One could go through death, but not be holden of it. By the might of His own perfection He rose into the sphere to which He belonged, carrying with Him the hopes and promise of the new creation. The gopher-wood, the material of the ark, I can say little of, but it speaks of death (the tree cut down), as that by which alone death could be met for us. The "pitch" is copher, near akin, as it would seem, to gopher, not bitumen. (or at least there is no proof of this), but, as would seem most probable, a resin from the gopher-wood itself; identical, too, with the word "atonement" in one of its forms.* Here, it seems to me, is the first hint we find in Scripture of something beyond death which is implied in and needed for atonement. Not the gopher-wood alone would have kept out the waters of judgment. Not death alone lay upon men, and for true substitution not death alone needed to be borne. It is indeed the wages of sin; but not, as some would have it, the full wages. So, if death be judgment, as for man it is, it is "after death the judgment;" which is not a repetition of the first death either, though it be the second: for the first death is not repeated. "It is appointed unto men ONCE to die, but after this the judgment." { *Translated "ransom," Exo 30:12; 1Sa 12:3, marg.; Job 33:24; Job 36:18; Psa 49:7; Pro 6:23; etc.; "satisfaction," Num 35:31-32.} The penalty borne by our Substitute, then, is something more than death. The copher must pitch the seams of the ark of salvation, that it may bring its freight of living souls in safely through the flood. Thus, and thus alone, is there perfect security, and the new scene is reached in peace. Salvation, as known and enjoyed here, if Scripture is to be at least our measure, does not stop short of this. Christ "gave Himself for our sins," says the apostle, "that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father." "Ye are not of the world," says the Saviour Himself, "even as I am not of the world." "If any man be in Christ," says the apostle again, "[kaine ktisis] it is new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." For if Christ was our Substitute only upon the cross, — and this is true, His identification with us does not and cannot cease there. We are in Him risen from the dead, and gone up to the glory of God. The manhood which He took up here He has taken in there. Nay, it is in resurrection, and only so, that He becomes "last Adam," as we have already seen, and as a "quickening Spirit," communicates that "more abundant life" of which He spoke, while yet on earth, to His disciples. (John 10:10.) As naturally we are children of the first man after his fall, and inherit from him its sorrowful results, even so as quickened of the last Adam, after the accomplishment of His work in our behalf, we are born into His status, and inherit the results in justification and acceptance with God, who "hath taken us into favor [echaritosen] in the Beloved." (Eph 1:6.) Already are we "seated together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." We are thus past death and judgment. The Ark has brought us through. The old world, as that with which we are connected, is for faith already gone. In Him we are brought into a place of which the new world just emerged from its baptism was but the shadow; and here again we find a fresh aspect of atonement, and fresh results of it, in the burnt-offering, the altar, and God’s covenant with creation. If we have read God’s words to Cain aright, Abel’s offering was doubtless also a sin-offering. The distinct mention of the fat, as a thing apart, may go to prove this; for in the sin-offering, as afterward detailed, the fat was dealt with separately from the animal itself. It was, so to speak, the burnt-offering side of the sin-offering: for as the various sacrifices were but various aspects of the one great sacrifice, so there was in each some link of connection with the others, in witness of their common theme. The development of these offerings as yet we do not find still, so far as developed, if they be types or divine pictures of the great reality, we look for harmony among them, and shall assuredly find it from the very first. And in the order of application, which is the order observed here, the sin-offering comes naturally before the burnt-offering, to which now we come in Noah, in significant connection with the new place in which he appears. For what is the burnt-offering? Literally, "the offering that ascends," or goes up to God. As we find here, it is what is sweet savor to Him; and though we shall find other offerings which are of sweet savor to God, as the meat and the peace-offering, yet is this the great and fundamental one. The term is inadequately given as "sweet savor:" it is properly, as in the margin, "savor of rest" or acquiescence, complacence. It thus unites with what is stated to be the purport of the burnt-offering, in a passage obscured by mistranslation in the common version. "He shall offer it of his own voluntary will" (Lev 1:3), should be rather, "He shall offer it for his acceptance:" and this is the key-note of the burnt-offering. In contrast with the sin-offering, which represents the solemn judgment of sin, it speaks of that perfect surrender of Christ to the will of God, tested and brought out by the cross, which brings out the supreme delight of the Father: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again." That is the measure of our acceptance with God. And to express this perfection in its manifold character it is that, we read, "Noah took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." The burnt-offering was thus very frequently multiplied in a way that the sin-offering was not, and could not be. One sin-offering was ample for the putting away of sin, while to express the perfection of our acceptance with God, the burnt-offering is multiplied many times. Thus compare especially, in the twenty-ninth of Numbers, the sacrifices of the seven days of the feast of tabernacles; or those in Hezekiah’s day (2Ch 29:1-36), or in Ezra’s (Ezr 8:35). The presence of the altar too, for the first time, is full of meaning; for the altar is not of little significance in connection with the sacrifice. Our Lord Himself declares that "the altar sanctifieth the gift." We read of none in the case of Abel’s offering, and in the fullest type of the Levitical sin-offering. (Lev 4:12; Lev 4:21.) But what could sanctify the Lord’s own gift? Certainly, nothing external. It was the perfection and dignity of His Person that gave value to His work, and the divine direction as to the altar afterward makes certain that it is Christ Himself who is before us in it. Thus fittingly from the sin-offering it is absent; for "He who knew no sin" being "made sin for us," the person is hidden, as it were, in what He represents, as the serpent of brass elsewhere conveys to us. On the contrary, in the type before us the altar necessarily finds its place. The dignity of His Person adds infinitely to the value of His work, and both together unite to lift us into the blessed place we have in Him. The ark and altar have thus a kindred meaning; and we find that atonement itself, necessarily getting its character from Him who makes it, does not restore man to his original place, but becomes the foundation and security of that new creation which the type here depicts, and with which God abides in unchangeable covenant. The bow in the cloud, the token of this covenant with all that go out of the ark, I have elsewhere dwelt upon. It is typically the token of how God has been glorified (that is, revealed) in the work of the cross; His holiness, love, and truth banding the darkness of the most terrible storm of judgment ever seen. The storm passes, and the bow too to sight is gone, but faith finds its glories permanently enshrined in the jewels upon the foundations of the heavenly city, the pledge of its eternity. God is vindicated, satisfied, at rest; and where He rests, all things must needs abide too at rest. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 22: 02.05. CHAPTER 05 - THE OFFERING OF ISAAC ======================================================================== Chapter 05 The Offering of Isaac. (Gen 22:1-24.) Therewere three men in Old Testament times with whom it pleased God specially to connect Himself. To Moses He declares Himself as "Jehovah, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," and adds, "This is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations." (Exo 3:15.) Christians accordingly have been accustomed to trace in Isaac some of the lineaments of the Son of God, the Saviour. In Jacob, whose divinely given name is Israel, we may find no less, I believe, the Spirit of God; not personally, but in His work in man. While Abraham, at least in the memorable scene before us, (but elsewhere too, assuredly,) presents to us the Father. In His connection with these three men, then, God had already, ages before Christianity, foreshadowed its precious revelations. In the history recorded in the twenty-second of Genesis, the apostle’s words to the Galatians at least give us the hint of Isaac’s presenting to us that greater Seed of Abraham, to whom God was in fact confirming His promise there. (Gal 3:17 should read, "to Christ.") And this is made clearer by what he states in Heb 11:19 that Abraham received his son back, "in a figure," from the dead. It is in Christ risen from the dead that all nations of the earth shall be blessed indeed. This view of Isaac all his history. confirms; but here is not the place to speak of it. Our purpose is to mark only what fresh features of atonement are given us in Isaac’s offering, looked at as a type. And here, the thing which we should first notice is, that here God Himself suggests a human offering. It has startled us all, I suppose, that He could do this; but we have only to connect it as a type with its antitype to how gracious, in fact, this announcement was. Isaac did not, and was never meant to, suffer; but Another, in due time, was to take this place, and find no release from it, as he did. How the reality of what sacrifice pointed to bursts almost through the vail of figure here! Was it thus indeed that, as the Lord says, Abraham rejoiced to see His day; and saw it, and was glad? The bruised heel of the woman’s Seed was in his mind assuredly. The Sufferer-Conqueror, acceptance by sacrifice, the blessing of all nations through his Seed, could but unite themselves with this suggested human offering, which was not Isaac, to give indeed a prospect full of joy, the deeper for its solemnity, to his believing heart. The true Sacrifice was to be a human one, then. Man for men was to suffer and die; yet to be Conqueror in man’s behalf over the serpent, — death only to Him the bruising of the heel. How this wrought in Abraham’s mind we seem to see in what we know by the apostle’s words was in it. A heel bruised is not fatal: death to the Conqueror here is not fatal. Isaac, the heir of the promises, must be offered up; and how then could these promises be fulfilled to him? In resurrection, answers faith, in Abraham’s soul. "And he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, that in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure." Only a figure, for Isaac does not really die: but if here is figured resurrection, it is the "Seed of the woman" surely (Abraham’s true Seed also) that is to rise again; and in resurrection all promises are secured and fulfilled. Thus the Ark of salvation passes through the water-floods into the new scene of covenanted blessing, and thus we find our promised rest. Is it strange to read, then, of Abraham and his immediate descendants, that "these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth"? But this offering of Isaac, seen in this manner, has a yet deeper significance. It is a father’s offering of his son, — yea, as the apostle says, (for Ishmael has no place here,) of "his only begotten son." Here we can no longer speak of what Abraham’s faith realized. For us, however, the type only becomes the clearer. If it is a man who offers himself, it is God who gives His only begotten Son. Isaac is here the example of perfect submission to the will of his father, — one with the will of God Himself. He but asks the question, as he bears the wood of the offering to the place of sacrifice, "Behold, here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?" Abraham answers, "My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering." And Isaac asks no more; but, in the vigor of his young manhood, silently surrenders himself, lamb-like, to be bound and placed upon the altar. The voluntary character of the offering is here apparent, beyond what its being of the flock or herd implies. But it is of the father that we think most. It is as Abraham’s trial that Scripture presents it: "it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham." Point by point, the severity of the trial is brought out. "Take now thy son, — thine only son, Isaac" (that is, "laughter," for "Sarah said, ’God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear it will laugh with me;’") — "whom thou lovest; — and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." He carries this three days in his breast, that it may be, not hasty impulse, but deliberate obedience. God knew His man; the man, too, knew his God. Promptly, "early in the morning," he starts, and in due time is there with unflagging steps, and faith in Him whom in his own body he has learned as "Quickener of the dead:" "I and the lad," he says to his young men, "will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." All the while that he spoke so bravely, what was the strain on the father’s heart? "Now I know," says He who understood it all, — "Now I know that thou fearest God; seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me." But how wonderful to realize all this trial of a father’s love in connection with a type of atonement! the pain and stress of it dwelt upon as if to make our human affections illustrate that amazing statement, that God "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." What a proof of infinite love is here! The Seed of a woman, the Victor in the conflict with the serpent, the willing Sacrifice for men’s sins, is the Son of God sent of the Father to fulfill His will, and declare at once His holiness and His love. It is God Himself who in the manhood He has taken has acquired capacity to suffer and to die for man. He whose righteousness requires has Himself in love provided the atonement; humbling Himself to human weakness, suffering, and death. And we are not only brought to God in the value of so great a work, but know Him to whom we are brought as told out in the unspeakable gift of His Beloved, His only begotten Son. Genesis thus, at the very beginning of Scripture, presents us with almost a full outline of the atoning work. Many are the important details yet to be filled in; but we have already certain fixed points which the fully developed doctrine will maintain and justify, not remove. Atonement is by substitution; and in death, not life. But death is the removal of the one who dies out of the sphere of his natural responsibility as a creature. Judgment is for the "deeds done in the body" only; if this also be borne substitutionally (and this is the "copher" of the ark: "atonement" which is something outside of and beyond death), then we are completely "covered;" sin completely removed from us before God. But the substitution is not only of one perfect in the creature’s place assumed, but infinitely more: it is the Eternal Son of the Father who, become man, makes this atonement. Hence the value of it is not to put us back into the old condition from which we fell, but to put us into a new condition altogether. The Second Man, risen from the dead, becomes the last Adam, Head of a new creation, fountain of life for His people in a new power and blessedness. Upon those, partakers of His eternal life, death (but no longer a penalty) may be in the meantime allowed to pass; only until the time of reconstruction, which shall make them fully what (as man) He is. This is man’s side of the atonement; but God is glorified in it, — His righteousness vindicated, His truth maintained, His love revealed. We are brought to God, know Him, and have our happy place as identified with the bright display of all He is. Good has indeed triumphed over evil, and it is the Seed of the woman who has bruised the serpent’s head. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 23: 02.06. CHAPTER 06 - THE PASSOVER AND THE SEA ======================================================================== Chapter 06 The Passover and the Sea. (Exo 12:14.) We now come to the types of redemption, the recognized theme of the book of Exodus. That it is related to atonement in the most intimate way is evident; for if atonement is by blood, so is redemption. They are nevertheless different thoughts; and their difference, as well as their relation to each other needs to be considered. Redemption implies purchase — price in some way paid, as the Greek words for it especially show;* although it is far removed from mere purchase, with which it is, in many minds, as in some creeds, confounded. Two things are implied beyond purchase: deliverance from alien possession, and that as an object of special interest to the redeemer. Even where the redemption is by power, as often in Scripture, it is implied that there is cost, if only of labor, effort, or peril incurred. We see at once that the first promise is a promise of redemption: the woman’s Seed the Redeemer; the redemption itself by power from the serpent; the bruised heel the personal cost incurred. Yet this bruised heel, as has been shown, is, in another aspect of it, atonement; and the word kopher, in Hebrew, stands for both. The atonement is the ransom — the price of redemption. {* Lutrosis and apolutrosis, and the verb lutroo, all from lutron, a ransom price; with exagorazo, to buy out.} The difference between the two thoughts is plainly this: that atonement has in view the divine righteousness; redemption, the divine pity and love: atonement has respect to guilt; redemption, to degradation and misery. But the two connect here, that in the provision of atonement is seen the love of the Redeemer; in the nature of the ransom, the righteousness of the Judge, become thus the Justifier. Atonement and ransom are two different aspects of the same blessed work. Thus it is evident why the epistle to the Romans, which dwells on the reality of atonement, has for its key-note the righteousness of God; while we are "justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." (Rom 3:24.) In the book of redemption, then, we would expect to find atonement a central figure, as indeed we do; and yet not to find so much its intrinsic character dwelt upon as its delivering power for those in whose behalf it is accomplished; — that is to say, its manward rather than its Godward aspect. And this is how, exactly, the passover and the deliverance at the Red Sea present it to us. We must wait for Leviticus to realize in the sanctuary with God its full character for Him. Peace and deliverance must be first known and enjoyed before we are competent, and "at leisure from ourselves," to enjoy the manifestation. Another thing that will help our apprehension of the types before us is to connect them with the epistle to the Romans, in which we find their real interpretation. Most evidently, the theme of Romans is the gospel salvation; and this also the types of Exodus show forth. In both, the deliverance is in two parts, or stages, — the first part having respect to the judgment of God; the second, to the bondage of one who reigns unto death. In the first, moreover, it is the blood that shelters; in the second, a passage through death (which the sea figures) by which we escape from the captivity in which we were enslaved. The detail is of surpassing interest; and though a tale often told, it will bear retelling. Our present object requires the main points at least to be brought out, as we shall find in it a material development of the doctrine of atonement, as far as concerns its application, to the need of the soul. We must remember, as we consider them, that these are types of experience, — of realization and attainment, as the salvation which the gospel brings is a known and enjoyed blessing, "the righteousness of God revealed to faith." The knowledge of shelter under the blood of the Lamb may long precede the knowledge of a new ground before God in Christ gone up from the dead to His place in the heavens. Blessed be God, the possession of the place does not depend upon the apprehension of it: it is ours before we can apprehend it to be ours. But let us remember, then, that we have here an order of apprehension which does not involve a corresponding order of possession. Taking, now, Romans to interpret to us Exodus, Egypt is the world of nature, in which our standing is "in the flesh," and in which sin reigns over us unto death, as Pharaoh over Israel. It is a condition not realized as bondage until God works in the soul, but then an increasingly bitter one. Then the "law of sin" becomes a "law of death" also, and the soul groans for deliverance: this deliverance God’s hand can alone accomplish. And God’s way is not as our way, nor His thought as our thought. Our way is, by the strength He gives, to deliver ourselves from the law of sin within us, and then to meet God, not as sinners, but as saints, and to find Him for us thus, accepting through Christ our imperfect obedience, and putting away our failures for His sake: God’s way is to deliver us Himself, not by our own efforts blest of Him, but, first, meeting us as sinners and justifying us as ungodly by Christ’s death for such. Israel remain, subject to their old master, and not the first step taken of a walk with God, until they have learned that the judgment of God under which they lie in common with the Egyptians themselves is over, and they are safe, — saved by the blood of the lamb. The first passover is kept in Egypt, their journey not yet begun; but they eat it with girded loins and shod feet and ready staves, for that night they are to begin to go out. They go out with judgment passed over and be hind them; for us the wrath to come anticipated by faith and met in the cross, as we have already seen illustrated in the eight saved in the ark from the judgment of the flood. Israel start, "justified" instrumentally "by faith" the faith by which they took refuge under the sheltered blood; "justified" effectively "by blood," which God saw, and passed over their houses. The blood declared the death inflicted upon the substitute: a penalty which in its very nature (as we have already seen) set the one for whom it was undergone outside the sphere of natural responsibility for evermore. Therefore says the apostle, "Much more, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." For the death threatened we here find plainly judicial; a death which, if it end not the existence of the one under it, (as with man it does not,) involves in the shadow of it all that after-state. Such indeed had death been in its real nature, apart from the mercy of God from the beginning; yet in fact the first death on earth had been that of one pronounced righteous — "righteous Abel." Here, and in the flood, it was a death impossible to be confounded with this, — a strictly penal death. And this taken, the shadow of it also is removed. This too the "blood" implies: blood shed, not in martyrdom, as Abel’s, but by direct command of God, in exaction of penalty. How surely, then, "being now justified by His blood" insures our being "saved from wrath through Him"! All is settled, completely, finally settled, according to the type here and the apostle’s argument, when we begin to start on our path with God. Settled forever Godward, but not yet are we outside the enemy’s jurisdiction. But his power is apparently broken, and God Himself is with us. From this point, and before the sea is reached, "the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: He took not away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people." This complete settlement is given to their apprehension in the feeding upon the lamb within the house. It is such an obvious type, that it needs no insisting on. Death here, as had been permitted, significantly, since the flood, becomes the food of of life. But it is marked in this case, that the lamb must be, "not sodden in water," (or rather, boiled) "but roast with fire." Nothing must intervene between the fire and its object; even as with Christ made sin no perfection of His blessed life, no excellency of His person, could modify the full wrath-bearing due to the place He took. And it is the apprehension of this that perfects peace. It was not a commuted penalty that the blessed Lord bore, as is so largely now believed, but "our sins" in their just due. Such was the righteousness of God as set forth in the cross; and that righteousness therefore now requires and proclaims the justification of the sinner who trusts in it. Thus we start, God for us and God with us, wholly and eternally, from the first moment of our start. Of such questions, then, the experience at the sea is no reopening. The question is there between Israel and the power that had enslaved them; and if God come in, as He does and must, it is to show Himself openly in their behalf in the accomplishment of their deliverance. And in the second part of Romans we find such a deliverance accomplished. The question here is no more Godward; it is, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The cause of this cry: "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." The deliverance itself: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath set me free from the law of sin and death." The ground of the deliverance: "Our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed [or rather, annulled], that henceforth we should not serve [be slaves to] sin." In all this we seem to have the Red-Sea passage before our eyes. Egypt, the territory of the flesh, is that within which the law of sin applies. The sea that shuts us in is death, the flesh’s limit: beyond it, (only let us remember that we have in this type, not simple fact, but realization of the fact,) we are "not in the flesh." Then, for deliverance, first, our own powerlessness must be realized, as with Israel, and in the seventh of Romans experience; then, that God’s way for us is not by arming us with strength for conflict. Moses’ rod is uplifted, and by the east wind (of sorrow) through the night (of the cross), the sea (of death) is smitten and divided from shore to shore. Thus we pass through death, untouched by it, are dead with Him — dead to sin, and, brought out the other side of death, are (consciously) in Christ what He is, and set free from the law of sin and death. All this has been more fully told elsewhere. It is retold now to show how the cross meets and gives power over the corruption of the old nature, while as having life in Christ we are possessors of a new. The cross is our Pharaoh’s overthrow, the condemnation of sin in the flesh, the end of all self-bettering, and our title to turn from self-occupation to occupy ourselves with Him in whom there is no condemnation, and to find that while "with open face we behold the glory of the Lord, we are changed into His image from glory to glory." This is the "law of the Spirit" that sets us free; and walking in the Spirit, we "shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." But the passage through the sea does not land us in Canaan, as the doctrine of Romans does not put us in the heavenly places. We must for this add Joshua to Exodus, and Ephesians to Romans. We thus find that the passage through the flood has been divided into two for us, each part expanded and amplified, that we may the better view it. Here we pass over much of this, for our object is one precious truth, central indeed in doctrine, as the fact in divine history. May its contemplation grave it upon our hearts so as to enable us to say with the apostle, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 24: 02.07. CHAPTER 07 - THE TABERNACLE-SERVICE ======================================================================== Chapter 07 The Tabernacle-Service. (Exo 25:1-40, Exo 26:1-37, Exo 27:1-21, Exo 28:1-43, Exo 29:1-46, Exo 30:1-38) The book of Exodus is divided manifestly into two parts, and that whether it be interpreted as type or letter. The first eighteen chapters treat thus of the deliverance of Israel from their old tyrant; the Test of the book, of their taking fully up the service of their Deliverer. In the typical view, to which the whole sacrificial system (with which we have now to do) essentially belongs, the first part gives us redemption from the slavery of sin; the second, redemption to God. The one is the complement of the other: the "service" of God is the only "perfect freedom." We shall have yet to inquire as to the relation of the law to atonement; in what I propose just now, we have nothing to do with law as such. Typically, it becomes the symbol of that divine government to which as redeemed we are at once freely and necessarily subject. This is too much forgotten in interpretations of the book, and nothing seen except strict law — the ministration of death and of condemnation, as then it must be. Typically, if the first part answer to the epistle to the Romans, the second answers (although much less completely) to the first epistle to the Corinthians. In it, the main feature is that habitation of God which Israel themselves are not but Christians are. This tabernacle and its services we have now to consider, so far as it develops new features of atonement, the central figure in all these types. The new features that the tabernacle-service presents to us are the mercy-seat, upon which the blood is presented to God; the priest who offers the sacrifice; with the full completion of the altar of burnt-offering. The mercy-seat, with the ark upon which it rests, is the throne of Him who has taken His place in the midst of His people. He is the God who dwelleth between the cherubim, and appears in the cloud upon the mercy-seat. Christ is this mercy-seat, as the apostle in Rom 3:25 declares; for the word "propitiation" there is the word so translated in Heb 9:5, and that by which the Septuagint constantly renders the capporeth of the Old Testament. This Hebrew word is a noun derived from that intensive form of caphar, which is used commonly in the sense of atonement. Atonement is plainly stated to be m made in the holiest on the day of atonement when alone the blood was actually brought in there and presented to God. And while shed actually for the sins of priest and people — the whole congregation of Israel, — it was declared to be made for the holy place itself, and for the whole "tabernacle of the congregation" (or "tent of meeting" rather, because there the people met with God). Afterward, atonement was made for the altar of burnt-offering by putting the same blood upon it. Thus the divine intercourse with men was sustained and justified. The sins of the people could not defile that upon which rested the precious blood of sacrifice. The capporeth, the seat of atonement, became indeed the mercy-seat, — the throne of righteousness a throne of grace. Toward the mercy-seat the faces of the cherubim, ever the symbols of judicial power, and thus connected with the throne, bent to behold the blood which proclaimed and satisfied the righteousness of God. All this in Israel was indeed but type and shadow: there was thus as yet no actual way of access into His presence. For us, the substance is come, and we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the vail — that is to say, His flesh." The apostle adds here the second thing which the tabernacle-service sets before us, — "A High-Priest over the house of God." (Heb 10:21.) The priest was the special minister of the tabernacle; the word in Hebrew signifying "minister." The apostle applies this in Heb 8:1 : "We have such a High-Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." The word used for "minister" here is leitourgos, one performing duties for the public good; and this completes the idea of the priest, as one serving in behalf of men in the sanctuary of God. Christ is thus "entered . . . into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." (Heb 9:24.) From Levi, third son of Israel, sprang both the Levite and the priest. This "third" speaks of resurrection, always connected with the third day* (Comp. Hos 6:2.). And so the sign of the true priest (Num 17:8.) was the dead rod blossoming and fruitful in the sanctuary. Levi’s own name also, "joined," is full of meaning: it is the Mediator, in whose person and work God and man are really joined, who becomes the Priest. {*In beautiful connection with the spiritual significance of numerals, far too little thought of; for 3 is the number which speaks of divine fullness — of the Trinity, and thus of divine manifestation; as it is only when this is reached that, in Father, Son, and Spirit, God is fully revealed. But resurrection is that also which reveals God, — a work proper to Himself alone. (See Rom 1:4.)} If then in the tabernacle God’s dwelling with man is foreshadowed, priest and mercy-seat are the necessary witnesses of how alone this can be. His work of sacrifice accomplished, He Himself carries in the token of it into heaven, the place henceforth of His priestly ministration. By Him we draw nigh to God: His acceptance, who is our representative there, the measure of our acceptance. The high-priest thus represented the people. "In the presence of God for us" He who once died for us ever lives. Access to God, no more afar off, but abiding with us, — access in the sanctuary of the heavens itself, and by One who represents us there: this is the new feature of the tabernacle-types as they speak to us today of the power and value of the blood of atonement. But the altar also gets its full place and character. Indeed, while we find frequent mention of it in the book of Genesis, we have no description at all until we come to the second part of Exodus. The word in the Hebrew simply means "a place of sacrifice." The first command as to its construction we find in Exo 20:24-26. This was to be the general construction which might have been adhered to, as some say, in the brazen altar, the frame-work of brass and wood being superimposed upon a substructure of earth. "The altar sanctifieth the gift." If, then, the sacrifice represent the work of the Lord Jesus, it could not be sanctified by any thing outside. The person of the Offerer alone could give value to His offering. The character of the altar brings out and develops this. The material, in Exo 20:1-26, is first of all, (and, as one might say, preferentially,) earth "An altar of earth shalt thou make unto Me." We have evidently the thought of that which is fruitful. All fruit both Scripture and man’s speech naturally call "fruits of the earth." But what is it that, in contrast with stone or sand, constitutes the fertility of earth? It is the readiness with which it suffers itself to be broken up into ever-finer particles; and to this its name in different languages seems to refer.* The spiritual application is readily made; and the yielding of the creature without resistance to the hand of God is that in which all real fruitfulness is found. In Him who gave Himself in manhood to know (in what other circumstances!) that path from which His creature had departed, Gethsemane and Calvary proved the perfection of His self-surrender. It was here the altar of earth symbolized Him: only one of many ways in which what was so precious to the Father is told out. "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life. . . . This commandment have I received of My Father." {*Parkhurst gives eretz, "earth," from ratz; "breaking in pieces, crumbling;" chthon, from Heb. kath, "to pound, beat in pieces;" the Latin, terra, from tero, "to wear away;" and the Eng. ground, from grind.} The altar of stone is of course a different, and in some respects a contrasted thought. Stone is of the material of rock, the type of unyielding strength, a thought that we shall find repeated in the brazen altar, and linked there as here with that in which the secret of it is discovered. The Son of Man is the Ancient of Days. The rejected "Stone" is the "Rock of Ages." It is this that again gives value to the cross, and makes Christ the power of God unto salvation. Everlasting arms are they that are thrown around men. The human Sufferer is a divine Saviour. It may seem to militate against this that Elijah builds his altar of twelve stones, expressly according to the number of the tribes of Israel; but this is no more against the interpretation I have given than it is against Matthew’s application of Hosea’s prophecy to Christ, that, according to the prophet himself, it is Israel, whom as a child God loved, and called His son out of Egypt. Whoever looks at Isa 49:3-6 will find how of necessity the place of the failed servant must be taken by One who cannot fail. Substitution may be as rightly stamped upon the altar as on the sacrifice; and this is surely the explanation here. So the stone of the altar must not be hewn stone, nor must there be steps up to it. It is the intervention of God, not work or device of man. His attempt at this would only expose his shame: by any effort or contrivance he cannot rise above his own level. God could come down, and He alone exalt. We come now to the brazen altar, where the brass covered a frame of shittim-wood, as in the ark, the table, and the altar of incense the gold covered it. In these, the two materials have been rightly held to speak of the two natures of our Lord: the shittim-wood, from a wilderness-tree, life conquering death, a growth not governed by its circumstances. Such was He who, growing up within the narrow circle of Judaism, ever spoke of Himself as "Son of man;" who, obedient to the law, breathed of divine grace; who was light shining out of darkness, life indeed, in the midst of death. The gold I cannot conceive simply as "divine righteousness;" for who can conceive all the display of it in the tabernacle furniture speaking of nothing else but that? It is obvious, and often remarked, that it was characteristic of the sanctuary itself; and the sanctuary was the place where God manifested Himself; we having to consider it as with the vail rent, and the "first" tabernacle merged thus in the holiest of all. Moreover, in the things themselves there was this common character.* If the shittim-wood also represent the humanity of the Lord, the gold must needs represent, one would say, His divine: that by virtue of which alone He could manifest God in full reality. This it would be too narrow to limit to "righteousness," while of course this is contained in it. It is rather "glory," as the apostle calls the golden cherubim of the mercy-seat "the cherubim of glory." (Heb 9:5.) {*"First, then, there are the things which are found in the Holy of holies and the holy place. The ark of the covenant, the table of the show-bread, and the candlestick with seven branches. This is what God had established for the manifestation of Himself within the house where His glory dwelt, where those who enter into His presence could have communion with Him." — (Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. Vol. 1, p. 72.)} In the altar of burnt-offering brass (or copper) replaces the gold, and for the same reason must surely represent the divine nature in our Lord, yet with an evident difference. It is not the type of divine manifestation, but of unchangeableness — endurance. It is constantly thus associated with iron, but which is a lower type, without the brightness and sheen of the copper. In the successive degradation of the Gentile empires, the gold fades into silver, and the copper into iron. "Thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass," Moses warns the people, "and the earth that is under thee shall be iron:" words that sufficiently illustrate both the similarity and the difference between these two things. Again, in the blessing of Asher, he says, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be." And the Lord even asks, in Jeremiah, "Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel [copper]?" In connection with the altar of burnt-offering, this significance of the brass is of easy application. It was no mere creature-strength that was in Him upon whom rested the accomplishment of all the divine counsels of grace through the cross. "I have laid help upon One that is mighty" may indeed be said of Him. But how wondrous this character of endurance in Him who learns obedience through the things that He suffers: to whom it can be said, (His strength weakened in the way, and His days shortened,) "Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands" (Psa 102:25)! Nay, the very power to stoop to such a place was the attribute of a nature necessarily divine. And what does the brazen grate "beneath," "in the midst of the altar," speak but the deep capacity for suffering here implied? True, as, to be His type, the bird of heaven must die in the vessel of earth (Lev 14:5), so He must in the verity of manhood acquire capacity. The capacity is not thus to be measured by a mere human standard: He was one blessed Person in whom Godhead and manhood met; and in the depths of His being, as the grate within the altar, the fire of the cross could and did burn in abysses of nameless suffering to which no other sorrow could be like. To attempt to fathom or define would be presumption. These, then, are features which the tabernacle-service adds to the idea of sacrifice. With this, we shall be prepared now better to come to that sanctuary-book, Leviticus, in which, in some sense finally, the whole heart of atonement is opened up to us. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 25: 02.08. CHAPTER 08 - THE BURNT-OFFERING ======================================================================== Chapter 08 The Burnt-Offering. (Lev 1:1-17.) The theme of Leviticus is sanctification. Exodus closes with the tabernacle set up andthe glory of the Lord filling the place of His habitation. Leviticus begins with the Lord speaking to Moses thence. His presence is in grace, but in holiness: "Holiness becometh Thine house, O Lord, forever." Holiness in grace is what sanctification implies. First of all, then, as we open the book, we find given by God Himself the full details of those sacrifices which are the various aspects of that one Sacrifice in the power of which we are sanctified, or set apart to God. There are five, divided into two classes very distinct in character, according as they are or are not "sweet-savor offerings." The term we have already had in connection with Noah’s sacrifice. The burnt-offering, meat-offering (so called), and peace-offering are all said to be "for a sweet savor unto the Lord." The sin and trespass-offerings (which are quite distinct from one another moreover), are not that, although expressly guarded from disparagement, as "most holy." (Lev 6:17) These last are indeed the special witnesses of divine holiness as against sin, while the former speaks more of the perfection of the offering on its own account. Judgment is God’s strange act; in the self-surrender of One come to do His will in an obedience reaching co and tested by the death of the cross, God can have fullest and most emphatic delight. It is evident that the burnt-offering has a very special place in the divinely appointed ritual of sacrifice. It not only comes first in order here, but in a certain sense is the basis of all the rest. The meat-offering is often spoken of as an appendage of it: "the burnt-offering and its meat-offering" (as Lev 23:13; Lev 23:18; Num 28:28; Num 28:31; Num 29:3; Num 29:6; Num 29:9, etc.). The peace-offering is burnt upon it (Lev 3:3.). The altar, again, is especially styled "The altar of burnt-offering" (Lev 4:7; Lev 4:10; Lev 4:18; Lev 4:25, etc.); and on it, night and morning, the "continual" burnt-offering was offered: God would keep ever before Himself what was so precious to Him. The very name of it speaks really of that: it is literally the "offering that ascends" — goes up to God. All the offerings did, of course; but of them all, this is the one that does: as of all the offerings consumed on the altar this is the only one that is entirely burnt, — the "whole burnt-offering." It is especially God’s side of sacrifice, as (of the sweet-savor offerings) the peace-offering was man’s side. Yet, on the other hand, it was the offering "for acceptance;" as that verse should read which we have in our common version as "He shall offer it of his own voluntary will." It should be, "He shall offer it for his acceptance." The measure of our acceptance is not simply that sin is put away it is all the preciousness to God of that perfect "obedience unto death" by which sin is put away. This by itself would show us that the peculiar acceptability of sacrifice to God is what the burnt-offering expresses. But this implies that voluntariness of character which, spite of the mistranslation already noticed, is clearly to be found in it. This attaches, indeed, to all the sweet-savor offerings, as it could not to the sin and trespass. But here the perfect self-surrender of Him who says, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God," is tested in the substitutionary victim-place. The offering is flayed and cut into [not pieces merely, but] its pieces: all is fully and orderly exposed. Then, head, fat, inwards, legs, the fire tries all, and sends all in sweet savor up to God. This testing by fire we must carefully distinguish from what is by some confounded with it — the judgment due to sin. It has thus been said that while every offering did not set forth death, every one (as the meat-offering, and the similar offering of fine flour, permitted to the extremely poor for a sin-offering,) did set forth that of judgment. Older expositors have inferred from it that the Lord suffered for our sins after death. The whole thought is entire misconception, which would introduce confusion into the meaning of all the offerings. Consistency would then surely require that even the burning of the incense should typify judgment also; but who would not perceive the incongruity? The meat-offering would also be true atonement. The sin-offering burnt outside the camp and upon the ground, the true figure of judgment borne, would be indistinguishable from the burnt-offering here. The distinction between the sweet-savor offerings and the rest, carefully made in these chapters, could not be sustained; and judgment of sin would be declared a sweet smell to God. Moreover, the answer by fire, as on God’s part the token of acceptance of the sacrifice, which we find again and again in the after-history, would connect strangely with the thought of judgment upon sin. In a word, if any thing is clear in these types almost, it is so that the altar-fire must have another meaning. Now, it is admitted that fire is the common figure of judgment; yet when it is said, "The fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is," we have another thought from that of wrath. "Our God is a consuming fire," — not, surely, of wrath to those who can truly say, "Our God," — but of holiness, yea, jealous holiness. It is this that implies of necessity His wrath against sin: it is no mere governmental display, but the result of His own nature — of what He in Himself is. But this holiness the Lord met indeed (as seen in all sacrifice) in the place of sin, and therefore of the wrath due to sin. All death all blood shed in this way therefore was in atonement. Of the burnt-offering it is especially said, it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him." And of all blood connected with the altar it is said, "I have given it upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." (Lev 17:11.) But while this is true of all sacrifice therefore, it is a very different thing to assert that judgment as distinguished from death is found in every offering, even where death was not and could not be. On the contrary, it may be maintained that death as the great public mark of divine judgment was what was kept prominently before the eves of men in a dispensation which appealed to sight and sense, as all did more or less until the Christian. But then the judgment in this was not the judgment after death, but only the shadow of it: it was not judgment as distinct from death, surely. The blood was the atonement, so the law said; not the altar-fire which consumed the victim. How different, the thought of wrath consuming its object, and of holiness exploring that which, exposed perfectly to its jealous searching, yielded nothing but sweet savor — "savor of rest"! Here the circumstances of the trial only enhance the perfection found. In human weakness and extremity, where divine power exposed, not sheltered, or sustained and capacitated for suffering, not rendered less; where upon One racked with bodily suffering fell the reproaches of those who in Him reproached God, — the taunts and mockings of heartless wickedness, taunting Him with His love; where the God whom He had known as none else, His all in the absolute dependence of a faith which realized human helplessness and necessity in all its terrors, in the utter loneliness and darkness from which all divine light had withdrawn: — there it was that the fire brought out nothing but sweet savor. Every part fully exposed and searched out, — "head, inwards, legs," — mind and heart; spirit, soul, and all the issues of these in word and work and way, — all furnished that for God which abides perpetually before Him in unchanged and infinite delight. "Accepted in the Beloved," this delight it is in which we too abide. Preceding the offering upon the altar was what was common to all these sacrifices — the laying of the offerer’s hand upon the victim, and the necessary death and sprinkling of the blood. All these must be considered in their relation to the whole. The "laying on of hands" we find in various connections both in the Old Testament and the New. It is given an important place in that summing up of the fundamental principles of Judaism, — the "word of the beginning of Christ"* (Heb 6:1, marg.) — from which the apostle exhorts the Hebrew converts to go on to "perfection" — the full thing which Christianity alone declared. The fundamental points or "foundation" of Judaism he declares to be such truths as "repentance from dead works, and faith toward God, a resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment." Four central and solemn truths these, but the real Christian "foundation," Christ come and dead and risen, is not among them. Consequently, as the apostle urges throughout the epistle, there was in Judaism no real "purging of the conscience from dead works," such as the blood of Christ gives, no perfecting of the worshiper for the presence of God, and no way of access into His presence. (Heb 9:1-28; Heb 10:1-39.) What then took the place of these for a believer, in the old dispensation now passed away? In view of resurrection and eternal judgment, what had he to assure his soul? The words I omitted just now from the statement of Jewish principles supply us with the answer. He had "a teaching of baptisms,** and of laying on of hands," — of those baptisms, namely, which in the ninth chapter (Heb 9:10) the apostle puts in contrast with that work of Christ of which they were indeed the shadow, and only the shadow. In place of Christian assurance in the knowledge of the one completed work of atonement, he had forgiveness of individual sins by sacrifices continually needing repetition. How immense the difference! Out of which, alas! the enemy of souls has cheated the mass of Christians, replacing the "perfection," which God has declared, by sacramental absolutions, or repeated applications of the blood of Christ, — the old Jewish doctrine in a Christian dress. {*Not, as in the text, "the principles of the doctrine of Christ," which surely we could not be called to "leave." **baptismon didaches, — "teaching," rather than "doctrine." The difference is, that "doctrine" would intimate that the explanation of the baptisms was given, which was not: Christianity alone gives the "doctrine," as the apostle does in Heb 9:1-28. Again, it is really "baptisms," as also in Heb 9:10, — not "washings," but ceremonial purifications, but not to be confounded either with Christian baptism, or even John’s, which are always baptismata, not baptismoi.} Here, then, as a central part of Judaism, the "laying on of hands" had its place. It was the designation* of the offering as the sacrificial substitute of him who offered it. Its importance lay in this, that it expressed thus the faith of the offerer for his own part. It said, "This is my offering." On the day of atonement, the high-priest in the same act said this for the people at large but in these, each for himself said it Faith must be this individual self-appropriating thing, although I do not mean by that what many would take from it, and what is taught by many. {*The actual solemn appointment. The transference of sin was implied in these cases, just because it was a substitutionary victim that was marked out; but no transfer of any kind was necessarily shown in the act itself. I cannot enter upon the question of its meaning in the New Testament, which would lead me too far from what is before us. But I believe it every where expresses the same thing.} When, in the vision of Zechariah the prophet, the high-priest Joshua, as the representative of guilty Israel, stood in filthy garments before the angel of the Lord, "He answered and spake unto those that stood before Him, saying, ’Take away his filthy garments from him.’" But that was not enough." And unto him He said, ’Behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee.’" (Zec 3:4.) How beautiful this direct assurance from God’s own lips! translated, too, out of the language of type and figure into the plainest possible words, that it may be fully understood. Just so in every case for solid peace must there be this direct assurance to the soul. It is God who appropriates the work of Christ to us: not, indeed, in spoken words now, but in written ones. But when, then, does the Word of God thus appropriate Christ to us? This very scene may give the answer, It is when we repent. Should I not rather say, "When we believe"? That would be quite true, of course. Surely it is true that he that believeth on Christ hath everlasting life. Yet there are those (and not a few) who stumble here, and say, "O yes, if I were sure that I believed!" And objectors urge, "Your faith that believers have eternal life Scripture justifies, but where is the word to say that you are a believer? This is your own thought merely, and you may be mistaken." So I drop right down upon this: "Christ died for sinners." That surely is Scripture, and you will not say, I am not a sinner, or that I have not Scripture for that! Here, then, I have solid ground under my feet; here the everlasting arms hold me fast. And this is repentance, when I take home to myself the sentence of God upon myself, and thus join the company of lost ones, whom (in contrast with those "just persons who need no repentance") the Shepherd goes after till He finds and saves. Search as you will, you will find no other representative of the "sinner that repenteth" but the "sheep that was lost." (Luk 15:1-32.) To such lost ones, "clothed in filthy garments," the Lord says still, even by the mouth of Zechariah, "1 have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee." Our appropriation here is but the apprehension of what He has done. But if I urge "Christ died for sinners" in my own behalf, I have, as it were, my hands upon the head of the victim; and thus it is that my acceptance is declared to me. People confound this sometimes with what Isaiah says, — "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" but the hand of the offerer could not by any possibility be Jehovah’s hand. And I can, however long ago the precious Sacrifice has been offered, by faith consent to it as offered for me. Without this there can be no acceptance, no salvation. It is here that the position of the one who denies atonement is so unspeakably solemn. The death of the victim follows at the offerer’s hands: priestly work has not yet begun. "And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord." It is thus emphasized that the death of Christ was our act;* not as being morally one with those who slew Him, (although that is surely true, and most important in its place,) but by our sin necessitating His death on account of it: "the Son of Man must be lifted up." It is "before the Lord," as showing that the necessity on the other side was a divine one, proceeding from the holiness of the divine nature. {*I cannot see that the offerer here represents Christ, and therefore as laying down His own life. It seems an unsuited act to represent this. The offerer when laying on his hands on the victim just before cannot represent Him, moreover; nor where he offers for his acceptance."} Thus the "blood that maketh atonement for the soul" is now provided. "And the priests, Aaron’s sons, shall bring the blood, and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is by the door of the tent of meeting." This sprinkling of the blood is in testimony of the work accomplished, and for the eye of God, as much as that passover-blood of which He declared, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." If the blood it is that maketh atonement for the soul, that blood is of necessity presented to God, as the atonement was made to Him. It is not here put upon the person, and we have not yet got to consider that; but wherever put, the blood is for God. And indeed it is the assurance of that which gives it power, as the apostle says in Hebrews, to "purge the conscience from dead works to serve [or "worship"] the living God." Thus "the heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience." (Heb 9:14; Heb 10:22.) It is faith’s apprehension of the efficacy of that perfect work. After the blood-sprinkling comes the flaying of the offering, the skin of which, as we learn afterward (Lev 7:8), belongs to the priest that offers it. Christ is evidently the One typified by this sacrificing priest, and so we learn whose hand it is bestows that by which the shame of our nakedness is forever put away. It is the skin of the burnt-offering, not the sin-offering. It is not true that Christ’s death merely puts away our sins: it furnishes (though not alone, as we may see hereafter,) the "best robe" for the Father’s house. "Raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father," the place which as man He takes is the divine estimate of that "obedience unto death" of which He says, "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because 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 I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father." (John 10:17-18.) This is the true burnt-offering aspect of the cross — the full sweet savor. But the place He takes as man He takes for men. This gives us the measure of our acceptance in the Beloved, by which our nakedness is indeed covered, and its shame removed. The burnt-offering having been flayed, is divided into its parts; all exposed to the light of heaven, then to the altar-flame. The word for burning even is not the word for ordinary burning, but for fuming as with incense: all goes up, not as the smoke of judgment, but as pure sweet savor. It remains but to speak of the grades of the burnt-offering, and with this of the different animals that are used. Of these the bullock, the highest, without doubt is the type of the laborer for God (1Co 9:9-10.): Christ was the perfect Servant, the character in which Isa 53:1-12 especially presented Him. The sheep speaks of meek surrender to the divine will, a more negative thought in some sense; yet it is the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Here too it is the male sheep, which gives the more positive character of devotedness, as appears in the "ram of consecration," in the eighth chapter. The goat is the type of the Sin-bearer as such, as our Lord’s classification of sheep and goats would surely intimate. Hence it is the sin-offering for the ruler and common Israelite as well as for the whole nation on the day of atonement. The turtle-dove and pigeon, birds of heaven both, naturally represent the Lord as come from thence. The type is brought out in great distinctness where in the cleansing of the leper the bird offered dies in a vessel of earth over running (living) water: a precious figure of that humanity full of the Spirit in which a Divine Being gained capacity to suffer. The dove is the bird of love and sorrow: most suited associations of thought with a heavenly stranger whom love to God and man has brought into a world of sin. The pigeon — the rock-pigeon, with its nest (like the coney) there, — is as suited a thought of One come down to a strange path of faith. All these are blessed types of our Lord in various perfections. They are connected with higher or lower grades of offering, not as in themselves of necessity conveying higher or lower thoughts. The lowest grade here is that of the birds, surely not the lowest thought of Christ’s person, — rather the contrary. The reason is one which can be easily understood. Does not the very glory of His Godhead prevent many realizing the perfection of His manhood? Do not many bring in the thought of the "bird," as it were, without the "vessel of earth" in which alone it could die? And the changes in the ritual here are quite accordant with this. The bird is not divided to the same extent as the bullock or the sheep: the internal perfection is not in the same way seen. There is little blood, too, for the altar; and there is no skin for the priest.* Is it not the necessary result where the Lord’s manhood is dimly realized? Thank God that this is still a sweet-savor offering to Him! What He finds in Christ is not measured by what we find, nor our acceptance by our apprehension of it. And these lower grades bring out our thoughts. Still we lose by their poverty. May He graciously bring His beloved people, even here, more to the knowledge of His own. {*The feathers are not rejected, as in our version: the margin is better.} ======================================================================== CHAPTER 26: 02.09. CHAPTER 09 - THE PEACE-OFFERING. ======================================================================== Chapter 09 The Peace-Offering. As the burnt-offering gives especially the divine side of the work of Christ, so the peace- offering dwells rather upon its effects with regard to men. This must not be taken in too absolute a way as respects either. The burnt-offering is for man, of course, and in atonement; and the skin removed undoubtedly carries us back to the coats of skins which clothed our first parents, as we have already seen. On the other hand, in the peace-offering, who could forget the Father’s joy in that which brings the prodigal to the Father’s table? And this is what the peace-offering presents to us. Still this "peace" is what the offering effects for man with God. It is rather an effect of the work which is contemplated than a new aspect of the work itself. For this reason we have necessarily, in connection with our present subject, less to do with it. The main peculiarities connect with the necessary distinction of destination of the offering, of which only the fat is burnt upon the altar, while the rest of the animal belongs either to the priest or to the offerer himself, — the only sacrifice in which the offerer does partake. In the lower grades of the sin-offering the priest has his part; the offerer no where but in this. Here, then, the peace-offering fulfills its name, and finds most evidently its distinctive character. The peace-offering may be of the herd or flock, male or female, bullock or sheep or goat. Birds are omitted, with a manifest propriety, which confirms fully the meaning ascribed to them. "The bread from heaven," as the Lord says in the gospel, is what "the Son of Man shall give you." If we speak of communion, which we have seen to be the point here, it must be the Son of Man, sealed of the Father, that must be the basis of it. True, if He were not God over all blessed forever, all the preciousness would be lost for us. Nevertheless it is in His manhood that we apprehend Him doing that work which alone brings us to God. Even in the burnt-offering we see that the bird, though a higher thought, comes in necessarily as a lower grade. Here it disappears. It is in the joy brought out of sorrow that I find what establishes my soul in peace with God. It is the value of His manhood’s work in which I draw near, although none but such as He was could have had power to lay down His life and again to take it. In the peace-offering and sin-offering alone is the female permitted, — in the latter indeed enjoined, although only in the lower grades. It seems clear that it gives thus the character of comparative feebleness or passiveness to the offering, but it is not clear that that is all we are to gather from it. We have seen that the lower grades of sacrifice represent in general thoughts true in their place, but here misplaced. Yet in Numbers xix, the female is commanded where there is no other grade at all. Here, it is surely impossible that mere feebleness can be intended. Passiveness may indeed have its suited place with reference to the sin-offering, but here, and in the peace-offering also, the type of the sheep seems by itself to represent this; and in the sin-offering, the sheep is expressly to be a female too. Taking all these together, I have little doubt that those are right who believe the female to be the type of fruitfulness, which in connection with the thought of passiveness or quiet subjection to suffering seems here not out of place, but eminently in place. Is it not true, as there are in man and woman characters which complete each other, and give, as thus seen together, perfection to the divine idea of man, so in our Lord, as the perfection of all human excellency, the male and female characters find both their place? Jehovah’s Servant, in the accomplishment of those counsels of love and wisdom which were laid upon Him, giving up His life in meek surrender, even to that cross in which the full due of sin was His to meet and put away for us forever: — these things seem fitly to unite here to give the complete character to the peace-offering. They may seem to connect with other offerings, as the goat especially with the sin-offering, but they seem all rightly to meet and give character to this central sacrifice, where in a common joy Blesser and blessed, Saviour and saved, God and man, stand. Thus we find here no grades really, as in the burnt-offering we have found, and in the sin-offering shall much more find them. Here, the details of the sacrifice, whether for cattle, or sheep, or goat, seem almost absolutely the same. The details are such as we have already sought to trace the significance of. The animal is presented to Jehovah, designated as the substitute of him who offers it, killed, and the blood sprinkled on the altar round about. Then all the fat is put upon the altar, upon the burnt-offering, which is on the wood that is on the fire; and it is emphatically pronounced a sweet-savor offering. That which I have emphasized is very precious. Our communion is founded upon nothing less than the full acceptance of the beloved Son of God, — acceptance in all the perfection which we have already seen the burnt-offering expresses. This gives the measure of communion as God intends it the measure of our apprehension is quite another thing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 27: 02.10. CHAPTER 10 - THE SIN-OFFERING ======================================================================== Chapter 10 The Sin-Offering. (Lev 4:1-35, Lev 5:1-13) We now come to a class of offerings distinguished broadly from those classed as "sweet-savor," by the fact of their being in no wise voluntary, but the specific requirement for actual sin. The burnt-offering and peace-offering both clearly recognized, of course, the condition of men as sinners. Apart from this, they had indeed no meaning. But in no case are these offered for specific acts of sin. In their case we find, "If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord" in those now before us, "If a soul shall sin, he shall bring his offering." The sin and trespass-offerings both speak of the judgment of sin, that judgment which is indeed no sweet savor to God, but His "strange work," not the delight of His love, but the necessity of His holiness. The sin-offering deals with sin in view of the divine nature; the trespass-offering, in view of the divine government. The words "sin" and "trespass" well convey this difference, the thought of restitution having a prominent place in the trespass-offering, as the sin-offering alone exhibits that necessary separation of God from sin which is at once the necessity of His nature, and its most awful punishment. Yet it is striking that this, the most essential and characteristic feature, is only in fact found here in the sin-offering for the priest and for the congregation of Israel. In these cases alone do we read of the victim being burned without the camp, not upon the altar, the consecrated place, but in the outside place of the leper and unclean. It is to this the apostle refers in the last chapter of Hebrews, where he points out the absolute necessity of the Lord’s taking such a place as is typified here in order to any true atonement: "For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high-priest for sin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate." It is a striking thing indeed that, of all the various sacrifices offered by the law, no blood but that of a sacrifice such as this should have power to penetrate into the sanctuary at all. The burnt-offering spoke of that which to God was precious beyond all else, but the blood was simply sprinkled round about upon the altar: the peace-offering spoke, according to its name, of peace made with God, and communion established between God and man, but here also the blood was only sprinkled on the altar round about nay, there were various forms of the sin-offering itself where the effect was plainly stated to be to "make atonement for his sin" who brought it, but where, the body of the beast not being burned without the camp, the blood at the most anointed the horns of the altar of burnt-offering. Only in two cases, as I have already said, among the seven that are specified here, is that done in which alone lies the essence of true atonement. This shows clearly in what manner we are to regard these other forms, namely, as lower grades, or less complete views of what only in its full completeness could satisfy God. In the lowest, indeed, they are plainly said to be provisions for the poverty of the offerer: "if he be not able to bring a lamb," — "if he be not able to bring two turtledoves." In the case of the ruler, and in the first case of "one of the common people" — both, of course, on the footing of the Israelite simply, — it is or should be clear that they neither of them represent the place or the knowledge of the Christian; yet they are most instructive to us as enabling us to see just what is and what is not dependent upon clearness of knowledge upon a theme so all-important as is this. However, it will be all no doubt plainer as we look at the details of the type before us. The first case, then, is that of the "anointed priest," clearly the high-priest, he who represents the whole people before God, the well-known figure of Christ Himself. Typically, this seems a departure from the usual order, for the offerer in other cases seems not to represent Christ, and this change must have a meaning. Naturally, we think of the day of atonement, where Aaron and his sons are distinguished in their offering from the people of Israel, and where we as Christians are represented in Aaron’s house. In the offering of Lev 4:1-35, the high-priest stands alone; but the next offering, parallel in every particular to this one, is for the "whole congregation of Israel," — those manifestly whom the high-priest represents: in the application must we not say, the Church? It is evident that this gives us two classes on essentially different footing, — those for whom the sanctuary is opened, and those who while accepted are outside worshipers. But why, then, is Christ here first of all by Him self, and the people apart, and not rather, as in the day of atonement, the high-priest and his house, or Christ and His people together? It seems to me to bring out representation more clearly, but especially, as I think, makes way for a comparison with the two next offerings, where the ruler and one of the common people take the place of the priest and congregation, and the character of the whole is lowered. The literal application supposes the sin of the high-priest himself, and his place as such secured, his incense altar anointed with the blood of the sin-offering. As a type, it is Christ confessing the sin of His people, and the place which through His offering He takes before God, He takes for them, and they in Him. Thus for the people the blood in the same way is sprinkled before the nail, and anoints the golden altar of incense. It is here only that we find, as already stated, the burning of the victim without the camp, upon the ground also and not upon the altar. It is thus Christ made sin for us — not seen in the perfection of His person as in the burnt-offering, but identified with those for whom He had undertaken. No where but in this outside place could He reach the objects of His grace to bring them up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay which they were hopelessly ingulfed, and in which alone His feet could find footing. How important, then, to have a right apprehension of this essential feature of His wondrous work! Yet there are those among evangelical Christians so called who see no difference between the Lord’s sufferings in life and those in His death, — between Gethsemane with its bloody sweat and the blood of the cross! They see not the contrast between a time of which He yet says, "I am not alone, for My Father is with Me" and that of His cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The three hours’ darkness while He hangs upon the tree is almost universally misinterpreted as the sympathy of Nature with her Head and Lord, whereas it is the manifest expression of the withdrawal of Him who is light, and finds, therefore, its true interpretation in that cry of forsaken sorrow. We come, then, here for the first time to the full and undeniable type of wrath borne, and needed to be borne in order to atonement. The copher of the ark had hinted, as we have seen, at such necessity but it only hinted. Now, the truth was plainly set forth. Every sacrifice had shown, what is announced as a principle a little later, that, as the apostle says, "without shedding of blood is no remission." But here we see what blood alone could meet the atonement of righteousness upon. the sinner. Not death merely, but death and after this the judgment, is man’s doom. The full reality of sacrifice, of which each separate sacrifice was but a fragment, must meet both parts of this. The cross as death and as curse did this. But how beautiful to see even in the sin-offering the type preserved of that inward perfection which was necessarily and ever God’s delight and the basis of all the acceptability of it. Only He could be "made sin for us" who Himself "knew no sin." Accordingly the fat here, as in the case of the peace-offering, is put upon the altar, and in the case of one of the common people it is even said to be for a sweet savor. While this is not said with regard to the first two cases, the word used for the burning on the altar is the ordinary one for that, different from that employed for the burning of the victim on the ground outside the camp. Wrath endured, the due of sin in its full measure reached, God can open the sanctuary, and give a place in His presence where in the complete security of the seven-times-sprinkled blood we can stand in unquestioned nearness, and the heart pour itself out in praise, the blood anointing the incense altar. For us the vail is rent, as we know, but as we do not find in the type before us: we have boldness to enter into the holiest itself. Thus far the divine thought, the perfection of the offering. In the next two cases the whole character of it is lowered. We have now the ruler and one of the common people taking the place of the high-priest and congregation in the former two; the burning outside the camp is no longer found; and the blood of course does not enter the sanctuary at all, but is first put upon the horns of the altar of burnt-offering, and then poured out at the bottom of the altar. All this speaks evidently of a lower grade. Whatever may be the difference of the offerer, and although this might account for the blood not being brought into the holy place, the apostle’s words link these rather with the body of the victim not being burned without the camp; and of the absence of this who can find a reason thus? For the least as for the greatest atonement must be the same. It is clear, therefore, that we have in this only the sign of the commencement of a descending scale of offerings, in which we find the poverty and confusion of man’s thoughts allowed to have their place, in order that on the one hand we may realize the consequence of falling short in the apprehension of divine grace, while on the other we learn that that grace will still manifest itself as such, and that God’s actual acceptance of us is not measured, after all, by our apprehension of it, but by His own estimate of the value of the work of His beloved Son. The goat here still speaks of substitution, of Christ in the sinner’s place, for the Lord’s own use of it, as contrasted with the sheep in the picture in Mat 25:1-46, assures us fully of this. But while seen as a substitute thus, what substitution implies and necessitates is not seen. The sin is none the less forgiven, but the offerer remains an outside worshiper merely. Christ is for him a "ruler" in the heavens, not a representative proper, as the priest is. He remains, as people say, "at the foot of the cross;" does not see that through the work of the cross Christ has entered heaven, and taken a place before God in which he as a believer stands. This is, alas! where the mass of so-called evangelical systems leave their adherents, — the Jewish place, clearly, for the standing of one of the common people of Israel is not even a type of ourselves. We are, as the apostle tells us, "a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." We therefore are brought nigh, and belong to the sanctuary as did Aaron’s house, with the unspeakable difference here also of the vail being rent: "Therefore," says another apostle, "having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, His flesh; and having a High-Priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith." For the goat a lamb might be offered, and here we see again how a type higher in itself may give from its connection a lower because a less congruous thought. The latter speaks, as we know, of the personal perfection of Christ, but here it displaces the goat, so that the thought of real substitution is fading away: the ritual of the offering is otherwise the same. In the next cases, however, the ritual itself is changed; for now we find first the trespass-offering (which is nearest to the sin-offering), and then the burnt, and finally even the meat-offering introduced. The inability of the offerer is now, moreover, more distinctly recognized. It is plain, therefore, that the mention of the trespass-offering in this place does not imply, as some have imagined, that there is no essential difference between it and the sin-offering, or else it would prove the same for the others mentioned. There is a very marked and unmistakable difference. It is distinctly "his trespass-offering for his sin which he hath sinned . . . for a sin-offering." Even as a trespass-offering it has not its full character: it is a "lamb, or a kid of the goats," not a ram. I do not doubt that here we have the case of those who look at atonement as a mere provision of divine government instead of a necessity of the divine nature. It is one truth substituted for another, the less deep for the deeper; but of all this we shall have a more fitting place to speak. The substitution of the burnt-offering, or its introduction rather into the ritual of the sin-offering, is remarkable, as it is distinctly a provision for poverty: "if his hand cannot reach to the sufficiency of a lamb;" and, moreover, the sin is called a "trespass," while here, again, the two turtle-doves or two young pigeons speak of what is highest in itself, lowest because of its incongruity, in fact the lowest type of the burnt-offering, as we have seen; for a sin-offering most incongruous of all. Lastly, if he be not able to attain to this, even a meat-offering of fine flour is permitted, and here, although no blood at all is shed, it is distinctly offered and accepted as a sin-offering, and his sin is forgiven him just as before. How clearly and beautifully does the grace of God shine out in all this! If it be Christ trusted in in view of sin, God knows the nature and sufficiency of His blessed work, and reckons the value of that work to the offerer, unknown though to him it be. It is a point which if seen aright will deliver us from much narrowness, and comfort us with the largeness of the grace of God. It is evident to me that sin in the nature as much as in the act is dealt with in the sin-offering. We must not be misled as to this by the consideration that it is only for actual sins that it is offered. The fruit manifests the tree, and it is in this sacrifice alone that we find the judgment of God taking effect upon the whole victim. The burnt-offering, although wholly burnt, does not in this give the type of wrath or condemnation, as we have seen, but the very opposite. The very word for the burning is different; it is sweet savor and nothing else. Here, on the contrary, judgment has its full course. This complete judgment of nature and practice alike is absolutely necessary, in order that the blood of propitiation may be able to enter the sanctuary. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 28: 02.11. THE TRESPASS-OFFERING. ======================================================================== Chapter 11 The Trespass-Offering. The trespass-offering is for sin looked at as injury, and in view of the government of God, as the sin-offering contemplates it in its intrinsic character as abhorrent to His nature. Thus restitution — "amends for the harm that he hath done" — is so prominent a feature in the trespass-offering, the ram of which is itself valued, and becomes part of the repayment. The governmental view or the atonement, which so many in the present day contend for, while it is thus justified as a partial view, falls entirely short in its estimate of it when taken as the whole. It is not in government merely that God hides His face from sin. The darkness and the cry of desertion of the cross express more than governmental atonement. Indeed, to the mass of writers upon the subject these are features whose significance is of little import. In the punishment of the wicked finally, few or many stripes express the governmental award of the "great white throne;" but the "utter darkness," the necessary separation of God from what is abhorrent to His nature, is not merely governmental, but the necessary portion alike of all. Hence that offering burnt in the outer place alone had power to penetrate into the sanctuary, the abode of divine light, and when really offered, to rend the wail and bring us into the light of the divine presence. Hence, as we have seen, the sin-offering for the high-priest and congregation is the only one which we can regard as the true sin-offering. All others were but partial and defective forms. The trespass-offering, as far as its ritual is concerned, has little to distinguish it from these lower grades of the sin-offering. There is no laying on of hands, so far as we read, and the blood is not put upon the horns of the altar, but simply sprinkled on it round about. The fat alone is burnt upon the altar; the rest eaten by the priests. The ram is the victim here alone appointed, although elsewhere for the leper (Lev 14:1-57) and the Nazarite (Num 6:1-27) a lamb was to be offered. The ram was evidently the fuller type, — the female sheep and lamb giving the character of meek submission, the male sheep more of energy in devotedness; in the coverings of the tabernacle the ram-skins were dyed red, to show that devotedness even to death which characterized the Lord. The great thought impressed upon us in the trespass-offering is that of restitution — amends for the harm done. This has to be estimated by the priest in shekels of silver after the shekel of the sanctuary. The estimation was to be a divine one, the priest giving the divine judgment; while the restitution-money was to be also the sanctuary shekel. But even this was not enough; the fifth part more was still to be added; for. God would have an overplus of good result from evil, not mere making up to where things were before. That would not be worthy of Him. How could He have suffered sin at all, merely to show His power in vanquishing it and no more? Such victory would be little better than defeat. And yet this is what the mass of Christians perhaps suppose. Christ is to bring us back, they think, to the point from which Adam wandered, or which he ought to have reached but failed. But this is a deep degradation of Christ’s blessed work. On the contrary, it is a second Man and a new creation which the word proclaims, of which the old is but the mere figure, and to which it gives place. The "fifth part more," heartily believed, would do away with much error and replace it with much precious and needed truth. Christ has restored that which He took not away; but it is after the divine and not the human fashion. As the trespass-offering is here looked at in connection with trespasses against God or against man, so the cross has brought to God an infinite glory overpassing all the dishonor done to Him by the fall of the creature, and to man a wealth of blessing such as Eden never knew. For the detail of this we must go to the New Testament. The trespass-offering itself says nothing even in type, only indicates an over-recompense, the nature of which it does not further declare. But we, thank God, can declare it. "Now," says the Lord, speaking of what He was soon to suffer, — "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him." (John 13:31-32.) This surely is the key of all that the offering implies. The glory of God accomplished by One who has become Son of Man’ for this purpose; this answered in glory by God, an answer in which the objects of His grace are made to share: how far beyond the mere putting away of sin and its results is thus indicated! Goodness, holiness, righteousness in God maintained and manifested as no where else; mercy and grace declared how wondrously! For men, in result, not an earthly paradise again restored, but heaven opened; not innocence, but the image of God in righteousness and holiness of truth; not Adam-life, but Christ as Life eternal; not part with merely sinless men, but part with Christ in glory. For "not as the offense even so is the free gift; . . . . for if through one man’s offense death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ." Thus in both ways through our Trespass-Offering is the fifth part more made good. And now, having completed, briefly enough, our survey of these Levitical sacrifices, let us look back at them for a moment in what was in fact, as we see in the law of the leper, the order of application. This was not a simple reversal of the order in which these chapters give them however, for while the trespass-offering preceded in this way all the rest, and the sin-offering always, for an obvious reason, the sweet-savor offerings, on the contrary the burnt-offering invariably preceded the rest of these; the meat-offering following next, and connected with it often as if its proper appendage, "the burnt-offering and its meat-offering" (Lev 23:13; Lev 23:18; Num 8:8; Num 15:24; Num 29:3; Num 29:9, etc.) the peace-offering closing the whole. When, however, the peace-offering alone was offered, the meat-offering became its adjunct, and was prescribed in a scale proportionate to the value of this, as it was in the case of the burnt-offering itself (Num 15:1-14). First, then, we have the offerings which settled the whole question of sin as against the offerer, and then those for acceptance, or a sweet savor. Not only the burnt-offering was for the "acceptance" of him who brought it, but the peace-offering also (Lev 19:5; Lev 22:25). This is not said directly of the meat-offering, but it is of the sheaf of first-fruits (Lev 23:11), with which, however, a burnt-offering was offered. The difference of course results from the meat-offering being no real sacrifice, although it might be offered, as we have seen, even for a sin-offering, where the extreme poverty of the offerer permitted nothing more. The meat-offering spoke of Christ, but in the perfection of His. holy life, not as a vicarious Substitute for sinners. The perfection of His life could not, it is plain, atone for sin, nor be in itself the acceptance of a sinner; yet it could not be omitted either from God’s estimate of the work of His beloved Son. Hence, as it makes necessary part of that accomplished righteousness in the value of which He has entered into His presence and as man sat down there, so in its value also we stand before God. The place of the meat-offering in connection with the burnt-offering speaks clearly here. Finally, the peace-offering closing all is witness to us that God would have our communion with Himself find its measure and character from the apprehension of this place of acceptance and what has procured it for us: in Christ; as Christ; justified and sanctified in His precious name. When we compare this place with the feebleness of our apprehension of it, we have cause indeed for the deepest humiliation before God; but what reason for encouragement also in this grace that continually beckons us forward to enjoy our portion according to the fullness of it as the word of God’s grace so constantly presents it before our eyes, and in the power of the Spirit of Christ given to us, without limit, save as, alas! unbelief on our part may impose a limit! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 29: 02.12. CHAPTER 12 - THE TWO BIRDS. (LEV_14:1-7; LEV_14:49-53.) ======================================================================== Chapter 12 The Two Birds. (Lev 14:1-7; Lev 14:49-53.) For our purpose, it would be evidently a diversion to take up the various applications of the sacrifices which we find in the book of Leviticus or elsewhere; but where we find variation in the sacrifice itself, we may expect a development of new features in that one great offering which all these foreshadow. Such variation we have in that which is enjoined for the cleansing of a leprosy which was already healed; and if we passed it over, we should manifestly miss designed instruction as to the work of atonement. Here, "two birds, alive and clean," are to be taken, one only of which is to be killed, and this in a remarkable way, namely, "in an earthen vessel, over running [literally, living] water." "As for the living bird," it is added, he [the priest] shall take it and the cedar-wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the living water; and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field." In the cleansing of the leprous house, the same thing precisely is enjoined. We have already, in the burnt-offering and sin-offering both, become familiar with the type of the bird. In the case before us there are, however, some notable differences from these, which all tend to show that here we have the type in its fullest character, — the most typical of all its forms. Thus it is neither dove nor pigeon nor any particular species that is prescribed, but simply two "birds." It is the bird as such, irrespective of specific qualities, — "the bird of heaven," according to the constant phraseology of Scripture,* a being not of earth. Its dying in a vessel of earth, by its plainly designed contrast, only brings out the more this character, and is interpreted for us by the apostle’s application of the figure (2Co 4:7) so as to render mistake impossible. {*In our common version, most generally given as "the fowl of the air."} Again, while the bird-type, in the sin-offering plainly, and in the burnt-offering no less really, is as a misplaced higher thought, in fact a lower one, — here, on the other hand, it is the manifestly divine one, remarkable as being defined neither as sin-, nor burnt-, nor any other offering, but standing by itself, (in this first part of cleansing which restores the leper to the camp,) as if representing all. It is a complementary thought, if I may so say, which while not entering into the idea of sacrifice as such, and therefore not found in these distinctive aspects of Christ’s blessed work, must yet have its place in order to any just conception of what has been done. The bird, then, represents the Lord as a heavenly Being, acquiring capacity to suffer and die in that manhood which He had taken, and which is symbolized by the earthen vessel; the living water here as ever type of that Eternal Spirit through whom He offered Himself without spot to God. It is striking that the figure does not, as we might at first imagine it would, represent the breaking of the vessel, while the bird itself escapes unhurt, but on the contrary the death of the bird itself; and Scripture is always and divinely perfect: such apparent slips are not in fact blemishes, not even the necessary failure of all possible figures, but things that call for the deepest and most reverential observation. For it is one blessed Person, in whom Godhead and manhood unite forever, who has been among us, learned obedience in the path which He has marked out for us through the world, suffered the due of our sins, and gone out from us by the gate of death, risen and returned to the Father. We lose ourselves easily in this depth of glory and abasement, where the abasement too is glory; but no Christian can give up the blessed truth because of his ignorance of explanation. In ourselves we have such inexplicable mysteries, not on that account doubted, as where every nerve-pang that thrills the body is felt really not by the body, but by its (as reason would say) untouched spiritual inhabitant. Here it is not needful to explain, to accept the lesson: He who came upon earth to do the Father’s will has taken as the means of His doing it that "prepared body" which was the instrument by which He accomplished it. Thus, rightly, according to the figure, the bird of heaven it is that dies in the earthen vessel. This stooping is the unparalleled marvel and power of the weakness in which He was crucified. We must not take the glory that was His to deny or lessen that weakness, but accept it as adding to it the wonder of such humiliation. How beautifully is this preserved in that one hundred and second psalm, in which, if any where, we have just this type! "Hear My prayer, O Lord, and let My cry come unto Thee. . . . For My days are consumed as a smoke. . . . I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled My drink with weeping; because of Thine indignation and wrath, for Thou hast lifted Me up and cast Me down. My days are like a shadow that declineth. . . . He weakened My strength in the way; He shortened My days: I said, ’O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days; Thy years are throughout all generations!’" Who then is this that speaks? who is this who suffers under the wrath of God, and that to death; whose days cut off contrast so with the divine eternity? How does this psalm proceed? and what is the astonishing answer to this lowly prayer? "Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture Thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end!" If He go down into death, then, He must needs show Himself master of it. Resurrection must vindicate Him as the Lord of all: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Accordingly in the type before us it is of resurrection that the second bird speaks. Let loose into the open field, he carries back to the heavens to which he belongs the blood which is the witness of accomplished redemption. The second bird represents the unextinguished, unextinguishable life of the first which has come through death, taking it captive, and making it subservient to the purposes of divine goodness, which, by the blood shed in atonement, cleanses us from the defilement of spiritual leprosy. Here, for the first time, in connection with the legal sacrifices, we have the type of resurrection as necessary to the application to us of the great Sacrifice itself. "He was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification." (Rom 4:25.) In Isaac, long since indeed, we saw one received back in a figure from the dead, but there the results were personal to himself: there was no application of blood, no announcement of justification by resurrection. These are important features, which this type of the birds for the first time adds to the picture of atonement. And thus it is throughout Heaven’s ministry of love: not so much the Son of Man necessarily lifted up as on the other hand, so far as such types could reach, that God has given His only begotten Son. It is divine love that has been at charges to bring such ready and effectual help to human outcasts. It is to the degraded and polluted leper that the purity of heaven descends. How precious this contrast! In truth man’s case was hopeless to any other than divine resources. If it is God that justifieth," who but He could righteously justify those expressly designated as "ungodly"? This justification of ungodly ones who are con tent to trust themselves as such in the hands of Christ has been once for all pronounced in the raising from the dead of Him who for our sins went into death. Abraham needed a special word in his day from God, and that availed for himself alone. For the rest, the apostle distinguishes between the "passing over of sins that had been before" the cross, and the justification at the present time of him that believeth in Jesus.* Under this public justification by resurrection, announcing the acceptance of that which actually justifies, — the blood of the cross, — we come individually as soon as we believe, and need no individual declaration. {*See the Revised Version of Rom 3:25-26.} ======================================================================== CHAPTER 30: 02.13. CHAPTER 13 - THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. ======================================================================== Chapter 13 The Day of Atonement. The day of atonement was that upon which the efficacy of every sacrifice in Israel depended. On that day alone was the holiest entered and the blood of atonement put upon the mercy-seat before God "once a year." This alone sanctified for them the tabernacle and all its appointments, with the altar itself. It is of the day of atonement that the epistle to the Hebrews mainly treats, interpreting and applying its lessons for our use, though not without a side-reference to Israel themselves, when in a future day they shall find in Christ the meaning of all their shadows. It will be of profit, before we begin to consider it in detail, to see the nature of this double application, or its dispensational character, as the apostle and the book of Leviticus together present it to us. In the twenty-third chapter of this book it finds its place among Israel’s holy seasons, — not feasts, for feast it is not, but a day in which they were to rest, not in joy but in sorrow of spirit, afflicting their souls. In the order of these, the passover, first-fruits, and Pentecost (or feast of weeks) begin the year then there is a long pause till the seventh month, and in this the rest are found: on the first day the blowing of trumpets, on the tenth the day of atonement, and on the fifteenth begins the feast of tabernacles. These seasons fall therefore into two divisions, of which the first has special reference to the Church, the second to Israel. This last begins with the blowing of trumpets, which, as the gathering of the congregation, speaks of the reassembling of Israel; then the day of atonement speaks of their repentance and taking refuge under the work of Christ; while the feast of tabernacles is the anticipation of their millennial blessing. Upon all that does not concern our present purpose we of course do not enter here, but it is evident thus that the primary reference of the day of atonement is to the last days and Israel’s apprehension of the work of Christ when "they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son," and "in that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness." This gives its full meaning to the fact that in the day of atonement it is after the high-priest has come out of the sanctuary that he confesses the sins of the people on the head of the scape-goat and sends it away by the hand of a fit person into the wilderness. This is the application to the people of the work of Christ long before accomplished, and the apostle, in the epistle to the Hebrews, teaches us our part to be in connection with His going into the sanctuary, not His coming out. For us, the Holy Ghost is come out, to give us the knowledge of what is done in our behalf, adding for us two things which in the type before us find no expression: the first, the session of our High-Priest at the right hand of God; the second, that for us the vail is rent, and by faith we enter into the sanctuary itself. The day of atonement thus, while having peculiar significance in relation to the people of Israel in a future day, covers nevertheless the whole present period; and we are led to ask, Is this application made by the apostle to us as Christians to be found in the Old Testament type itself? And to this we are able to answer undoubtedly in the affirmative. The first offering, — for the priestly house, — is entirely distinct from that for the people; and it is Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, who teaches us to recognize our representatives in these (1Pe 2:5). We shall find how much the apprehension of this distinction tends to make clear the doctrine of atonement itself. The failure of the people had caused the forfeiture of the place conditionally promised them as "a kingdom of priests," and given Aaron and his sons their special priesthood. The failure of the priests themselves had now shut them also out of the inner sanctuary. But all this only served to bring out the condition of man as man, and his need of the Mediator of whom on this occasion Aaron was but the type. He could only in fact draw nigh thus once a year, not in his garments of glory and beauty, but in simple linen garments, and with sacrifices for himself and all the people. Typically, these linen vestments have a glory of their own not excelled by any other. They represent the personal righteousness which, tested as it was by the fiery trial of the cross, and the unbending requirements of divine holiness, alone insured the acceptance of His work and His deliverance out of the awful place which He took for men. Crying "unto Him who was able to save Him out of death," He "was heard for His piety." (Heb 5:7, Gr.) It was God’s "Holy One" who "could not see corruption." And this perfection of His it was by which as High-Priest of our profession He entered the sanctuary. But in this respect therefore He was the total opposite of the Jewish high-priest, who, as one taken from among men, and so, like others, himself compassed with infirmity, by reason hereof comes with the blood of others in atonement for his own sills. He, on the other hand, "holy, harmless, undefiled," enters the heavens with His own blood as atonement for the sins of His people. The type in Aaron is necessarily thus deficient because but a type. It must of necessity bear witness to its own deficiency, and thus point forward to Him who should yet fulfill it. The deficiency itself is thus not an imperfection merely; it is rather a perfection: not meaningless, but full of meaning. And it is important to see this. Before, however, Aaron carries in the blood of the sacrifice into the most holy place, there must be another witness to the preciousness of Christ personally. "He shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before Jehovah, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the wail, and he shall put the incense upon the fire before Jehovah, that a cloud of the incense may cover the mercy-seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not." The witness of the high-priest’s garment is here confirmed. If that might seem in question because of his personal need of cleansing by blood, here was an unmistakable witness. It is not sacrifice; it must not be confounded with it. It is the proclamation of the value of Christ Himself before there is the testimony to the value of His work with God. Here the fire of God’s holiness tests all, — how has it tested Him! — only to bring out the fragrance of "sweet incense." This covers the mercy-seat, that in safety and in peace the priest may sprinkle it with the blood of atonement. The sacrifices are two, as we have seen; one for the priestly house, the other for the people. Both are sin-offerings; for, as we have seen, and as Heb 13:1-25 explicitly declares, only the blood of those beasts burnt outside the camp could be brought into the sanctuary. Here we find however a remarkable difference in the animals offered, the more remarkable when we contrast it with the regulations of Lev 4:1-35. There, for the congregation, as well as for the high-priest, the offering was the bullock. Here, for the high-priest it is still that, but the offering for the people is the evidently much lower one of the goat: and this will be found in the most beautiful way to confirm the interpretation already given of that chapter. There it will be remembered that we took the high-priest and congregation as figuring Christ and the Church. It is thus that the blood for the congregation is brought into the holy place to anoint the incense-altar: it is a priestly congregation that is thus figured; and this the Church is.* But the goat is for the ruler and the common person, which we have seen to give Israel’s standing and here the blood anoints only the altar of burnt-offering, not entering the tabernacle at all. {*The distinction in this respect cannot be maintained if in Lev 16:18 the "altar" is the golden altar of incense, for in this case the blood of the goat for Israel would also be put upon it; but this is not so, and the expression "before Jehovah" is inadequate to prove it. How often, and even in this chapter, is this connected with "at the door of meeting" (as Lev 16:7). On the other hand Lev 16:17 shows the work completed for the sanctuary, and then Aaron "goes out" to the altar, which in Lev 16:20, Lev 16:33, is named apart from the sanctuary and tent of meeting altogether. It seems to me that the Wood on and before the mercy-seat accomplishes all the rest.} Now how striking it is to find that on the day of atonement the bullock is for the priestly house, — the Church, — while the goat is again for Israel. If we look deeper, we shall see how suitable this is. The bullock speaks of service the goat, merely of the place of sin being taken. In the case of the last, if sin be removed, that is all; but the bullock speaks of service to God, the glorifying Him in the place thus taken; and "if God be glorified in Him, He will also glorify Him in Himself:" this opens the sanctuary to His people He is not only their Substitute upon the cross, but their Representative in glory. Thus in the millennium Israel, though accepted, will have place on the earth, not in heaven; and so, though in greater nearness in the new earth, while the Church has hers with her Lord according to His promise* (John 14:3). {*Of course it is not meant to confine this to the Church.} The bullock is first slain, and its blood brought into the sanctuary, and sprinkled once upon the mercy-seat and seven times before it. Once is enough for God; the sevenfold sprinkling is the witness of perfect acceptance before the throne. The goat being then killed, its blood is then carried in and sprinkled after exactly the same manner. And so, it is said, "he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins; and so shall he do for the tent of meeting that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness." "And he shall make atonement for himself, and for his household, and for all the congregation of Israel." Then follows the reconciliation of the altar, and then the ordinance of the scape-goat. We must look at this, and get the general features of the whole thus before us, before we look at the doctrine of atonement as expressed in it. For the priesthood, there is but one sin-offering, — the bullock; for the people, there are two goats which together form but one sin-offering. Lots are cast upon the two goats; one, the Lord’s lot, becomes the sacrifice; the other, when the work of atonement within the sanctuary is finished, has the sins of the people confessed and put upon its head, and bears them away to the wilderness — to an uninhabited land. It is plainly the actual removal of the people’s sins, and manifestly refers to the yet future history of the people as we have already seen it, when "they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced," at His second coming, and be cleansed from their sins. We have to look at these things to see what light they give us as to propitiation and substitution, or the God ward and man-ward sides of atonement for sin. In general, the Lord’s lot is said to illustrate propitiation; the scape-goat, substitution; but we must inquire how far this is true, and their connection with each other. Propitiation I have called the Godward side of atonement, using the latter word in the larger sense in which we generally use it now; but in our common English Bibles no distinction of the kind appears. Atonement in the Old Testament, we may rather say, is the equivalent of propitiation in the New, which replaces it.* It has been urged that we never find God as the object of propitiation, but only "sins," and that thus the thought is rather "expiation" than propitiation. It is thus only more completely the counterpart of the Hebrew caphar, of which the same thing is equally true. {*"Atonement" and "reconciliation" in Rom 5:11 and Heb 2:17 ought, as is well known, to exchange places and this is the only place in the New Testament in which the former word occurs. In the passage in Hebrews the word used Is elsewhere translated "propitiation."} Yet it is also true that the Greek word used in the New Testament (hilaskomai) is one which, in its common use in that language, undeniably has the force of appeasing, and is even used once in the gospel of Luke in the passive form in this way, — our Lord putting these words in the mouth of the publican, standing afar off and smiting on his breast, and saying, "God, be merciful" — (hilastheti) "be appeased," "propitiated" — "to me a sinner" (Luk 13:13). As put into the mouth of such an one, its force doctrinally must not be urged too much; and elsewhere the fact is as stated above. We surely, however, cannot avoid (nor would we) the meaning of propitiation as thus introduced into the thought of expiation itself. Divine love indeed never needed to be forgotten in the heart of God toward us; it was there from eternity, and the cross, where God gave His only begotten Son, is the expression of it; but it is the expression also of demands of righteousness which required satisfaction in order to its showing forth: and this is what we mean by propitiation; it is the propitiation of otherwise withstanding righteousness, which now is turned to be on our side fully as God’s love is. Propitiation is thus really the divine side of atonement; and he who accepts truly the one can make no difficulty as to the other: the expiation is the propitiation. Now let us look at this as exemplified in "the Lord’s lot," "Jehovah’s lot," on the day of atonement. First, let us realize what "Jehovah’s lot" implies. It is not "God’s lot" simply, although Jehovah is of course God, but God in relation to His people, God in the title by which He redeems them, as the third of Exodus fully assures us. The goat which is Jehovah’s lot is the sacrifice by which He maintains in righteousness this relationship, as we see by what is stated. It is thus His dwelling-place and all the means of approach to Him alone can remain among them. But this involves of necessity atonement for the sins of the people among whom He thus abides, and so it is distinctly stated: "And he shall make an atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the tent of meeting, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation." The goat which is the Lord’s lot, moreover, as explicitly speaks of substitution as it does of propitiation. The goat (the type of the sinner,) is the very thing which does speak of that: no figure could more precisely convey the thought. Propitiation it proclaims to be by substitution, and for the people therefore for whom the substitution is, and for no other. Let us mark these things, for they are of great importance, if we would see clearly the relation between these thoughts. If substitution is for a certain people, then propitiation is for that same people only; if propitiation has a universal aspect, then substitution must have the same. On the other hand, the scape-goat does not represent atonement, but only its effects. The true rendering of Lev 16:10 should be, "To make atonement for it, to let it go for a scape-goat into the wilderness." The common version, with most others, reads in exactly the opposite way, — "to make atonement with it," which is what is certainly not done. It is the goat that is Jehovah’s lot that makes atonement for the other, and this shows conclusively what "Jehovah’s lot" implies. The living goat is in this way identified with it, so that it is said, "Two kids of the goats for a sin-offering;" but its blood is not shed, its life is not given up, and this the next chapter of Leviticus shows to be absolutely necessary: "it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul." To find any aspect of atonement itself we must look to the first goat alone. Propitiation, then, is inferred here, and not in fact presented; and substitution is brought out clearly in its effects, as removing sin; while in the Lord’s lot substitution is presented however none the less; as where, if not in the sin-offering, may we expect to find it? In fact, for Israel when the Lord comes, they will need the special application to them of an offering long before offered, when the day of grace might seem entirely passed. For the priests, who represent the Church, there is no scape-goat. Substitution for them is found simply and entirely in the bullock of the sin-offering. It must, of course, be found there in what exactly answers to Jehovah’s lot among the goats; and the apostle, in Heb 10:1-39, applies the principle of the scape-goat to Christians in the Lord’s words by Jeremiah (the words of the new covenant): "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." And this is as far as the effects of substitution (as seen in the scape-goat) seem to reach. This, then, cannot avail to separate substitution from being essentially implied in the "Lord’s lot," — in the propitiatory offering. Propitiation, I repeat, then, is by substitution, and in no other way, and for the people alone for whom the substitution is. This may seem, to many, to narrow its application in an unscriptural way, or to widen that of substitution in a way just as unscriptural. In reality, it does neither; while it clears up many obscurities, and meets some tendencies to serious error. But let us examine Scripture. Propitiation is evidently for no select number merely. It is for "the whole world," as 1Jn 2:2 explicitly teaches. "And He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Here "the sins of" are in italics in our common version, showing that in the Greek there are no words exactly representing them: it is contended therefore by some that they should be omitted, and that this preserves an important difference; while the propitiation is for the sins of Christians, — so removing them, — it is only for the world, — their sins not being removed. And some have a similar objection, while owning that Christ died for all men, to saying that He died for the sins of all. Now, assuredly, it is not true that the sins of all men are removed by the death of the Lord; and if that were meant by saying that He died for them, the use of such language in Scripture (for it is used) would involve the deepest perplexity. Some moreover have rashly put forth this as the gospel, that Christ has borne the sins of all, and that now men are called to believe this for themselves, being condemned only for their unbelief of it. But this is utterly false, for in the day of judgment we are assured that men shall be judged "according to their works," not merely for their unbelief; and Scripture no where says that Christ has borne the sins of all men. Faith can say in believers, "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" but it is true of believers only. Yet propitiation is for the sins of the whole world, and the passage in 1Jn 2:1-29 is conclusive as to this. The words which are sought to be omitted are necessarily implied; for what else does "not for ours only" do but imply them? Had it said, "not for us only," it would have been entirely different; but "not for ours only" necessarily infers, then for the sins of others also. Moreover, when the apostle is reminding the Corinthians of the gospel which he had preached to them, he says it was "that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures" (1Co 15:3). But he could not preach as gospel that Christ died for other people’s sins: "ours" is there plainly general, as in the epistle of John it is distinctive. But if propitiation has this general aspect, and propitiation be by substitution, can substitution be general also? and if so, in what way? For this we must look deeper, for even the word in question is not in Scripture, although the thought is, and we cannot therefore have a simple text to appeal to, as in the other case we have. What then is meant by substitution? It is One taking the place of others, so that they for whom He stands shall be delivered from all that in which He stands for them. The cross is thus the complete taking of death and judgment for those whom there He represents, so that for them salvation is absolutely insured. This is the substitution which the sacrifices speak of to us, and we have again and again considered it. A substitution in death and judgment can mean nothing less than the necessary salvation of those for whom it is made. It is clear, then, we cannot speak of the world in this connection. A substitute for the world the Lord could not be, or universalism would be the simple necessity, and there could be no judgment for a single soul. But this is terrible error, and not the truth in any wise; and error which is now deceiving thousands. What have we on the other hand? "Substitution," is the thought of many, "for the elect." This is, of course, limited atonement. It is not possible to make it unite really with propitiation in any real sense for the world. You may say it is sufficient for the whole world. In itself it may be of value enough, but available it is not. Could one coming upon this warrant plead the value of that which in its design was absolutely for a limited number, of which he was not one, — Christ being really the Representative of so many millions and no others? If you say they will not come, it may be very true they will not; but you cannot say the work is done for all, if it be not so; and the blood of propitiation is the blood of substitution — of an offering offered for so many. Another consequence follows. This offering has been offered, accepted, and Christ’s resurrection is the justification of all for whom He died. Our sins were on Him, and were put away — when? Eighteen hundred years ago! But how then could we ever have been accounted sinners? How is justification by faith possible, — that is, justification when we believe? These are not imaginary difficulties or results; they are actual and operative. And they are the effect — as so much error is — of misplaced truth. Election is a truth of Scripture; but election is not, in Scripture, brought in to limit the provision made in atonement, — a provision really made and sufficient for all the world. On the other hand, Christ is not a substitute for the world, for substitution implies the actual bearing and bearing away of the sins of those who are represented in the Substitute, and the sins of the world are not so borne away. He is the Substitute of His people, but a people not numerically limited to just so many, but embracing all who respond to the invitations of His grace, though it were indeed the world for multitude. Thus even in Israel, though the offering of the day of atonement was for the people of Israel alone, even here the door of circumcision was kept ever open, by which the stranger might take his place at the redemption-feast, and be as "one born in the land." And circumcision was, as we know, "the seal of righteousness by faith." How precious this open door of divine grace, through all the darkness of the legal economy! Thus we have an intimation of how the actual Substitute for the sins of His people may be (in language suggested by another) the available Substitute for the sins of all. Only as come in among the number of His people can we say, "The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all;" for if justification be by the resurrection of the Substitute, as it truly is, it is none the less by faith we are justified; only as believing does it become our own. With this the doctrine of the last Adam is in fullest accord, as the fifth of Romans represents it. For the principle is that of representation, the one for the many, and the connection between the one and the many a life-connection; yet is there in the last Adam’s work an aspect toward all: "Therefore, as by the one offense toward all men to condemnation, even so by one righteousness toward all men unto justification of life." The family position and blessedness are open to all that will; but on the other hand, "as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous." Propitiation is, then, by substitution, and only so; yet the substitution itself is not for a fixed number before-determined, but for a people to whom men can be freely invited to join themselves, because of the infinite value of the work accomplished, and of the infinite grace which that work expresses. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 31: 02.14. CHAPTER 14 - THE RED HEIFER ======================================================================== Chapter 14 The Red Heifer. (Num 19:1-22.) The book of Numbers gives us the history of the wilderness, the testing of the people by the trials and difficulties to which they are exposed, their failure as so tested, and the triumphant grace of Him whose love and whose resources for His people cannot fail, and whose word is pledged to bring them through. The ordinance of the red heifer gives us the effects of atonement, not in forgiveness, but in the purification of the people from uncleanness, and this in a special form, which had its peculiar significance in relation to the wilderness. For the wilderness is, of course, the world as the place of our pilgrimage, — a place where every thing about us echoes the divine voice, "Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted." The seal of its condition in this respect is death, in which the life universally forfeited is removed and man given up wholly to the corruption, which has already been inwardly his state. Death marks the world as a wilderness before God, and for him therefore who has the mind of God; it is a scene of death out of which we have escaped as dead with Christ, and partakers of eternal life in Him beyond it, and separation from which is an absolute necessity to real holiness. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep one’s self unspotted from the world." (Jas 1:27.) The remedy for defilement is here typically put before us. It is not in a new sacrifice, nor in the shedding of that blood without which is no remission. It is in the application of that which speaks of a sacrifice once for all completed, of wrath exhausted and gone, the ashes alone remaining to testify of the complete consumption of the victim. In this way the red heifer, in opposition to the many sacrifices constantly being offered, represents alone among legal ordinances the abiding efficacy of that which has been offered "once for all." The victim is here a female, — a type of which I have already spoken. It is passivity, subjection, will-lessness, which we may see in the Lord in Gethsemane, whose "cup" was in fact drunk afterward upon the cross; a red heifer, as the ram-skins of the tabernacle were dyed red, to show how far this will-less obedience in Him went. "Without spot or blemish:" — with neither defect nor deformity; and "upon which never came yoke," — not simply sin’s, but any, for a yoke is an instrument to enforce subjection, which in Him could not be. At the same time when He was saying, "Not My will, but Thine, be done," He might have had twelve legions of angels and gone to the Father, but would not: His was the perfection of a will-less will. And how suited all this to express the perfection of the obedience unto death, by which our disobedience was met and removed, and which is to be fruitful in us as well as for us, in separating us from the lawlessness and lusts which characterize us as fallen creatures! The heifer is brought forth without the camp and slain, like any sin-offering, even the blood being burned, except what is used in the sevenfold sprinkling before the tent of meeting, where the people went to meet with God. And into the midst of the burning of the heifer were cast cedar-wood and hyssop — types of all nature, from the highest to the lowest (1Ki 4:33), and scarlet — of the glory of the world: "if any man be in Christ, it is new creation," and by the cross is severed his connection with the old. A man that was clean then gathered up the ashes of the heifer, and they were laid up in a clean place outside the camp, to be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel, for a water of separation, a purification for sin. A person defiled with the dead remained unclean for seven days; on the third day and on the seventh he was to be sprinkled with it, — running water being put to it in a vessel, — and on the seventh day at even he should be clean. The sprinkling on the third day was all-important: "if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean." The reference to death as the stamp upon the old creation makes all this clear. The third day is the resurrection day, deliverance from death; the eighth, — first day of the new week, — speaks of new creation. One cleansed by the evening of the seventh day was brought in fact to the eighth: only by deliverance from the old creation could he be really clean; but into this resurrection, the resurrection of Christ, is the necessary introduction: therefore the insisting upon the third day. Only in the power of resurrection could death become a means of purification for the soul. We cannot be in any true sense dead to the world except in the power of a life which is ours beyond it. But thus resurrection is not the revival of the old, but that which links us with the new creation. This is the united teaching of this third and seventh-day sprinklings. The power of the Holy Ghost (the running, or "living," water) applies to the soul the death of the cross,.that death in which for us the old world ended under judgment, to set us free from all the seductive power of things through which we pass, — free for the enjoyment of what is ours outside it. The world is but the place of the empty cross, and He who once filled it is now entered for us into the Father’s house, our Forerunner. This is purification of heart for him who realizes it; power for true self-judgment, and deliverance from the corruption that is in the world through lust. This is "water-washing by the word." The sacrifice is not again offered, nor the blood afresh sprinkled for him who is thus to be cleansed. Neither acceptance nor relationship are here in question, although just as "without holiness, no man shall see the Lord," so "he that purifieth not himself shall be cut off from Israel." The lesson as far as atonement is concerned seems just this dependence of purification on it. The water as well as the blood comes out of the side of a dead Christ, with whom we too are dead. How shall we that are dead live any longer in that to which we are dead? We have now completed the types of atonement; before our glance at the Old Testament doctrine is complete, we have still to consider the prophets and the psalms. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 32: 02.15. CHAPTER 15 - PROPHETIC TESTIMONY ======================================================================== Chapter 15 Prophetic Testimony. (Isa 6:1-13 and Isa 52:13-15, Isa 53:1-12) The testimony of the prophetic books, distinctively so called, is full and constant to the person and glory of Christ: the announcement of His sufferings and atoning work on the other hand infrequent, and of the latter scarcely to be found, except in one passage of one book, — the fifty-third of Isaiah. Here, indeed, it is full and explicit; but we must not expect the wondrous reality to break often through its vail of type and figure while that dispensation of shadows lasted. The sacrificial system, at which we have been looking, was of course all through in existence; and Isaiah it is who is prepared for his mission, as peculiarly, and even by his very name,* the prophet of salvation, by what is in effect a sacrificial anointing. This is indeed remarkable in its character, and as the prophetic seal upon the Mosaic testimony. {* Jeshaia, the "salvation of Jehovah."} "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, ’Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.’ And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that spake, and the house was filled with smoke." The holiness of God was necessary wrath in a fallen world; and in such a presence, what is man, whoever he be? "Then said I, ’Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.’" But if this be the necessary confession, how blessed the grace which is, in equal necessity, the divine response! "Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, ’Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is cleansed.’" This touching of the "lips with sacred fire," how often has it been the subject of an allusion which has missed the whole point of what is here. It is quite true that it is a prophet whose lips are touched, and that his call (whether to the prophetic office itself or to some special mission) follows directly after; but the touch is nevertheless not. that of inspiration, and the fire does not energize here, but "cleanse." And striking it is to find such an instrument employed in such a way. The live coal would seem more the symbol of divine wrath against, than of mercy for a sinner; nay, it does undoubtedly speak of that very character in God which the seraphim had celebrated, and which made His presence so insupportable to a guilty conscience. How could such a God give sentence in favor of one confessedly a sinner? It is easy enough out of His presence to imagine this, — easy enough to say that mercy becomes Him as well as righteousness; certainly, if He be (as He must be) merciful, no one was ever afraid of His loving mercy. But He must be righteous in His mercy: righteousness must guarantee and condition all its acts; nay, justification (if this be possible,) must be the act of righteousness, and of righteousness alone. And this it is that produces terror at the thought of His presence. How blessed is it, then, to see in this live coal, the very figure of that implacable righteousness in God which must be, here actually that which, applied to a man’s sin-stained lips, cleanses and not consumes them! "Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged." But why? and how? The answer is most easy and most precious. It is a coal from off the altar which the seraph applies. It is a coal which has been consuming the sacrifice for sin: the type of a holiness which, while it remains of necessity ever the same, has found its complete satisfaction in that which has put away sin for every sinner convicted and confessed. Righteousness, because it is that, can only for such proclaim that "thine iniquity is taken away, thy sin is purged." This indeed opens the prophet’s lips to speak for God: "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ’Whom shall I send? and who will go for Us?’ Then said I, ’Here am I; send me.’" It is no wonder that he who in this (as the apostle tells us) "saw [Christ’s] glory, and spake of Him" should be the instrument to declare His blessed work with a clearness which is no where else to be found outside of the New Testament. This we must look at now, although for our purpose it will be only a few statements that we shall consider. The prophecy begins with Isa 52:13, and goes down to the end of the fifty-third chapter. All the typical vail is dropped, and we see One manifestly in a sacrificial place for men, — a sin-bearer. The details of the death by which He would be cut off from among men are minutely given, as well as the perfection of character and life which fitted Him for an offering. He is, moreover, Jehovah’s servant in all this, fulfilling His gracious purposes of blessing, and exalted by Him to glory unequaled as His sorrow. Let us take this first, which to Him was first. It is as Jehovah’s servant that the prophecy begins with Him. The wisdom with which He acts, the glory resulting, hinge upon this. God is glorified in Him; and being glorified in Him, glorifies Him in Himself. In the depths of that terrible agony to which He stooped, in the heights of supreme glory to which He is lifted, He is still and ever the steadfast servant of Jehovah’s will. It pleased Jehovah to bruise Him: Jehovah path laid on Him the iniquity of us all; Jehovah’s purpose prospers in His hand; He is "Jehovah’s arm" of power for the deliverance and blessing of His people. How indeed like a track of light through the darkness of this apostate world is such a course! This is the bullock of the burnt-sacrifice, offered indeed for us, but "without spot, to God." In the world despised and rejected, that was the necessary effect of what was His true glory. In His humiliation, carnal eyes discerned but weakness; to God, He was the "tender plant" of perfect dependent manhood; but therefore not formed by circumstances — not growing out of them, as far as they were concerned with His resources in Himself, a root out of a dry ground, life conquering death, but in strangership necessarily unknown and misconceived by those who, not being Wisdom’s children, justified her not. Yet not apart from men, to whose wants and sorrows, in no mere patronage, but as one bearing them in His own soul, He ministered; a death of shame and agony, to Him the necessary price of relieving even the least of the consequences of sin, — that death which those unconscious of their need took but as the decisive token of His own rejection. In fact it was but the antitype of those vicarious sacrifices which for centuries had been prophesying day by day in Israel, "He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." Chastisement was it truly, still for our purification, corrective discipline for us whose peace it made, — "the chastisement of our peace;" for "with His stripes we are healed." "The iniquity of us all Jehovah has made to meet on Him." Under the pressure — what? Only the full proof of absolute perfection: no violence (the sin of power), no deceit (the sin of weakness); taken away by oppression with the form of judgment, stricken for the sin of others, not even a word but in meek surrender to the full weight of woe, which transformed with agony His whole frame and features. Nor was this therefore merely bodily agony: His soul was made an offering for trespass, travailed with men’s salvation, and was poured out unto death; He numbered with the transgressors, bearing the sin of many, making intercession for the transgressors. Already we are following the track of the white-robed priest into the sanctuary. In truth, that entrance could not long be delayed. Even in death, the appointed grave with the wicked is changed into the rich man’s tomb. Life follows — length of eternal days, and the portion of a conqueror. But it is Jehovah’s purpose prospers in His hand: a seed is given Him among sprinkled nations, fruit of the travail of His soul, by His knowledge turned to righteousness. Such, in brief, is Isaiah’s vision of Christ; but the Conqueror-Sufferer here depicted is without difficulty recognized as the One of whom the prophet has before spoken in terms which are full of the deepest significance. He is the "Child born," the "Son given," whose "name is called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace" (Isa 9:6). Weakness and omnipotence are here united; and in Him we find the Founder of that eternal state in which the purposes of divine wisdom being fully accomplished, divine love can rest without possibility of any after-conflict. The work which we have here been contemplating is that in which the foundation of this is laid. Jehovah’s wondrous Servant is Himself Jehovah; and in Him God meets man in the embrace of reconciliation and of love eternal. This is surely the gospel of the Old Testament, but we must remember here the caution of the apostle of the circumcision as to the real intelligence of even those who wrote of such infinite glories: "Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Which things the angels desire to look into." (1Pe 1:10-12.) ======================================================================== CHAPTER 33: 02.16. CHAPTER 16 - THE TESTIMONY OF THE PSALMS. ======================================================================== Chapter 16 The Testimony of the Psalms. In the Psalms we have some of the most wonderful unfoldings of the cross in its inner meaning that Scripture furnishes. It is striking that whereas in the gospel narratives themselves it is mostly the external sufferings of the Lord which occupy us, in the Psalms the divine Sufferer utters freely His heart out. The one cry of abandonment which does indeed expose its mystery, and which Matthew and Mark record, finds its full interpretation only in that twenty-second psalm, the language of which it borrows, and to which it thus guides our thoughts. And here we find, under a vail, if we may so say, the vail removed. As the priests, able to enter within the tabernacle, could behold the glories of it, so we whom faith brings within, can listen to the very heart of Christ outpoured, and see earth’s failed foundations laid afresh and for eternity by One standing where no other could stand but He. Typically given, according to the Old Testament character, unbelief may doubt or deny the revelation. It is to faith that God reveals Himself; Christ, dumb before His accusers, displays to His disciples His true glory. There are five psalms which we shall briefly look at in connection with our subject, and which give us different aspects of the cross. Three of these — Psa 20:1-9, Psa 22:1-31, and Psa 40:1-17 are in the first book; Psa 69:1-36 is in the second; the Psa 102:1-28 in the fifth book. I have elsewhere shown the way in which these five books of the Psalms identify themselves respectively with the five books of Moses. Here it will be seen how the Genesis-book, the book, as we may say, of the divine counsels, maintains its character in the way in which it opens up to us the work of Christ: in the twentieth psalm, as victory over evil; in the twenty-second, as meeting the requirement of the divine nature as against sin; in the fortieth, of that which, like the sweet-savor offerings, shows the infinite moral perfection which delights in God, and in which He delights. The twentieth psalm begins then, where the story of grace began in Eden, with the announcement of the cross as victory over the enemy. The way in which it is introduced is perfect as all else. The first book (Psa 1:1-6, Psa 2:1-12, Psa 3:1-8, Psa 4:1-8, Psa 5:1-12, Psa 6:1-10, Psa 7:1-17, Psa 8:1-9, Psa 9:1-20, Psa 10:1-18, Psa 11:1-7, Psa 12:1-8, Psa 13:1-6, Psa 14:1-7, Psa 15:1-5, Psa 16:1-11, Psa 17:1-15, Psa 18:1-50, Psa 19:1-14, Psa 20:1-9, Psa 21:1-13, Psa 22:1-31, Psa 23:1-6, Psa 24:1-10, Psa 25:1-22, Psa 26:1-12, Psa 27:1-14, Psa 28:1-9, Psa 29:1-11, Psa 30:1-12, Psa 31:1-24, Psa 32:1-11, Psa 33:1-22, Psa 34:1-22, Psa 35:1-28, Psa 36:1-12, Psa 37:1-40, Psa 38:1-22, Psa 39:1-13, Psa 40:1-17, Psa 41:1-13) divides into three parts; in the first of which we find, as connected with the sufferings and deliverance of His people, Christ rejected (Psa 2:1-12) and glorified (Psa 8:1-9). His people are always here Israel, and in the second part (Psa 9:1-20, Psa 10:1-18, Psa 11:1-7, Psa 12:1-8, Psa 13:1-6, Psa 14:1-7, Psa 15:1-5), their sufferings in the last-day crisis, out of which they are finally delivered, are detailed. In this second part Christ is not found. In the third (Psa 16:1-11, Psa 17:1-15, Psa 18:1-50, Psa 19:1-14, Psa 20:1-9, Psa 21:1-13, Psa 22:1-31, Psa 23:1-6, Psa 24:1-10, Psa 25:1-22, Psa 26:1-12, Psa 27:1-14, Psa 28:1-9, Psa 29:1-11, Psa 30:1-12, Psa 31:1-24, Psa 32:1-11, Psa 33:1-22, Psa 34:1-22, Psa 35:1-28, Psa 36:1-12, Psa 37:1-40, Psa 38:1-22, Psa 39:1-13, Psa 40:1-17, Psa 41:1-13), we have Him in a new character which, penetrating to the heart of the subject, explains and perfects the whole counsel of God. He is seen amongst the people in the lowly grace of perfect manhood, for God, for man, redeemer from misery as and because from sin. The sixteenth psalm thus shows Him in the place of dependence and trial, God His one portion and sufficiency in that path that passes through death itself into the joy of His immediate presence: the path of life through death, for us henceforth open. Thus Psa 17:1-15 shows how He can now associate others with Himself; giving the righteous through the only righteous One their ground of appeal to God. While Psa 18:1-50 speaks of His victory over all His enemies, a victory which involves others with whom He is pleased to associate Himself. The next three psalms show, on the part of His people, the faith which attaches them to Him. In Psa 19:1-14, first of all, setting its seal to God’s other testimonies of creation and the law, but to rest only with full satisfaction and delight (in the two following psalms) in Him who is alone their kinsman-redeemer. While Psa 22:1-31 completes the picture by adding to the knowledge of redemption by power that of redemption by purchase, "not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." Psa 20:1-9 is in other respects a remarkable one, but, as far as we have now to do with it, is of very simple character. The anointed (or Messiah), king of Israel, is seen in distress and difficulty in the presence of his enemies (compare Psa 21:8; Psa 21:11). It is conflict on account of others; and the name of the God of Jacob — i.e., of grace toward sinners, is appealed to in his behalf. From the sanctuary in Israel, and out of Zion, seat of electing love, the help is to come. It is connected with the establishment and triumph of the people plainly, and Messiah’s offerings and burnt sacrifice secure this. Hence, in his deliverance they rejoice aloud, and in the name of this God set up their banners. Jehovah, their covenant-God, saves, and to the king also (to Messiah Himself) they call. The next psalm enlarges upon this deliverance and victory. Psa 22:11-31 now unfolds the reality of the sacrifice upon which all is based. It is the well-known psalm of atonement, so solemn and so dear to the Christian heart. It is the sin-offering, — the requirement, as I have elsewhere said, of the divine nature. The forsaking of God is the necessary result of the holy One being made sin. This is what is throughout put in contrast with all other sufferings. All felt as they are, and no indifference to any, — the bodily anguish, the shame, the heartless wickedness of the assailants, — yet the one agony which outweighs all the rest is this forsaking of God. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? far from helping Me, from the words of My roaring? O My God, I cry in the day-time, and Thou nearest not, and in the night-season, and am not silent!" "Be not far from Me, for trouble is near; for there is none to help." "But be not Thou far from Me, O Lord: O My strength, haste Thee to help Me!" This forsaking is also carefully distinguished from any thing that a righteous man ever suffered. "Our fathers trusted in Thee; they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them: they looked unto Thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man." Yet a long line of martyrs witness to us that, as to deliverance simply from the hands of enemies, multitudes have cried and not been delivered, the sufferings through which they passed only proving that they were not forsaken, but on the contrary maintained and enabled for whatever they passed through by a power manifesting itself thus the more. How many before and since have proved Paul’s experience, "Persecuted, but not forsaken"! None of these patient sufferers, precious and acceptable as their patience was to God, touched even the border of the darkness of the cross, — when the cry of the holy One found no response. What to Him that desertion was, He Himself alone could know. "Thou art He that took Me out of the womb; Thou didst make me hope even upon My mother’s breasts; I was cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art My God even from My mother’s belly." To us, born in sin and shapen in iniquity, to whom estrangement from God is the natural condition, and who, even when by grace redeemed, can so readily slip out of communion with God, how little is it possible to realize the agony of this condition! With us, too, when out of communion, it implies a state which prevents realization. The spiritual sense is blunted, the spiritual affections are not in play; and if even in this state sorrows and troubles surprise us which make us feel vainly after Him, the consequences of the terrible loss are sure to overshadow and obscure the spiritual loss itself; while at the most the darkness that can envelop one who has ever known God is the darkness of a clouded sun compared with a night of total absence in the case of Him who was made sin for us. Alone in human weakness, with every element of bitterness in the dreadful cup which was His to drink, — He could ask, as none among men beside could, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" yet proclaim at the same time the holiness of Him who had forsaken Him. "But Thou art holy: dwelling amid the praises of Israel." Is not here, in fact, the reason of this forsaking, that the holy One would dwell amid the praises of a redeemed people? That worship could never be but for the cross. He must be in the outside place of darkness, that we might be, children of light, in the light with God. The consequence is, that after He has been brought into the dust of death, and is heard from the horns of the unicorns, the blessing that flows out answers in perfect contrast to the suffering endured. The Son of God, as the fruit of His own abandonment, communicates to now-acknowledged "brethren" the Father’s name. He who was in that unique, solitary place, praises in the midst of the congregation which He gathers, and whose praise He leads. Yea, "the meek shall eat and be satisfied: they that fear the Lord shall praise Him:" the heart of the redeemed shall taste the joy of eternal life (Psa 26:1-12). To the ends of the earth, and to perpetual generations, the wave of blessing spreads, — joy out of sorrow, praise out of desertion, light out of darkness, life out of death; the subjection of adoring worshipers to a Saviour-God, and His righteousness declared in the accomplishment of this great salvation. Thus ends the wondrous Psa 22:1-31, of which atonement in its central feature — He who knew no sin made sin — is the theme throughout. Any full exposition is not here within our scope. But it is the foundation of all true blessing to understand it; its words will give the deep tones to our praise forever. A number of psalms follow which give us, in very various character, the exercises and experiences which find their answer in, or are the fruit of, this blessed work. At the close of the book are two psalms which give, by way of conclusion, as it were, the moral of the whole. The heart of Christ is shown in its innermost depths, His life in its one principle, in the fortieth psalm. In the forty-first the heart of man is seen in relation to Him who has come into the place of poverty and reproach for men — into a humiliation so low that unbelief can misconceive and discredit His true glory. Psa 40:1-17 is significant in its very number, which is that of perfect probation; and here again we find the Lord in those sufferings which were the trial of His perfection, and which brought out the sweet savor of His blessed sacrifice, here put in contrast with all other sacrifices. In Psa 22:1-31 we have seen the Lord taking the sinner’s place, that God might dwell among the praises of His redeemed; here we see what was in His heart Godward who did so. It is the perfect Man, with ears which never needed the anointing of blood to consecrate them to God; who, marked out in the book of. God’s counsels from the beginning, now comes forth simply, as none else, to do the will of God; His law within His heart. "By which will," says the apostle, "we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." This perfect devotedness He manifested there where, in the sharpest and most terrible contrast to it, He cries, "Mine iniquities have taken hold upon Me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more in number than the hairs of My head; therefore My heart faileth Me." Yet, says He, "I waited patiently for the Lord;" even in the "miry clay" of that "pit of destruction." Plainly this is the psalm of burnt-offering, though the sacrifice represented take the place of all the other offerings. Indeed it is quite in character that it should be so. The burnt-offering was the "continual burnt-offering," as that which was emphatically a sweet savor to God. The sin-offering is what the necessity of man craves and obtains; so with the trespass, and so with the peace-offering; but the burnt-offering, as it goes wholly up to God, expresses that which is the object of His unceasing delight. Thus, when no other sacrifice was there at all, the burnt-offering kept its place upon the altar, which from it, indeed, received its name; for this blessed work it is in which the moral glory of His person (which is what the altar speaks of) shines out most fully. Here, accordingly, it is not the outside place that His cry expresses, but the "iniquities" which, as taking them upon Him, He could call "Mine" this was the miry clay of the pit into which He who came to do God’s will had descended. This, therefore, is the character of suffering most suited to display, as a dark background, that personal glory. Unbelief might indeed take such confession to justify its rejection of the holy One, while faith, adoring, finds in it its eternal blessing. And this is the key to the psalm which follows this. The Testimony of the Psalms. — Continued. The next psalm of atonement we find in the last section of the second book. And here, whatever difficulty of interpretation may attach to it otherwise, there is nothing to dim the assurance that Psa 69:1-36 gives us the trespass-offering. The very word for sins — "My sins are not hid from Thee" should be rather "trespasses." While the restitution character of the trespass-offering comes out with unmistakable plainness in the fourth verse, — "Then I restored that which I took not away." In the words of Psa 69:11 we may discern with little more difficulty the ram of the trespass-offering. The difficulties of the psalm belong rather to its exposition, which I am not attempting here. With this brief notice, therefore, we may pass on to the final psalm. This is Psa 102:1-28, whose place in connection with the book to which it belongs is full of interest. The fourth book speaks, as the fourth book of Moses does, of the world as the scene of man’s strangership through sin. Its first psalm, the ninetieth, shows him thus; his link with eternal blessedness snapped with his link with God. It is a strain of the wilderness, a lament over that generation of men who because of their unbelief died there, and who thus could be used as a fit exemplification of the general condition. The Lord, man’s dwelling-place, has been forgotten. He who brought man from the dust bids him return to it. Sin and God’s righteous anger explain this terrible anomaly. "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance; for all our days are passed away in Thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told." The psalm concludes with a prayer: "Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants;" but no ground is given for such repentance till we come to the following psalm. And here we have, not the first man, but the second; and in plain contrast to the first. Man has forgotten the name of his God: how clearly this comes out in Moses’ question at the bush! — "And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say unto me, ’What is His name? what shall I say?’" (Exo 3:3.) But this lost name of God is the key to man’s condition. It reveals him as a wanderer (how far!) from the Father’s house, "without God in the world;" without, therefore, a hiding-place from the forces of nature now in league for his destruction! How wonderful that "a Man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest," a Man, but the "Second Man"! It is He who, abiding in the secret place of the Most High, shall lodge under the shadow of the Almighty; He who in the path of faith takes Jehovah for His refuge and fortress, His God, in whom He trusts. Here is One who, at least for Himself, can claim fully the divine protection an unfailing, perfect Man. But how does this avail for men? God’s name revealed is "Jehovah;" and "Jehovah" is "the God of redemption" — the name under which He intervened to redeem His people of old. Redemption, too, by power is seen in the following psalms. Jehovah’s throne is established upon earth; the wicked are destroyed; the righteous flourish. The earth also is set upon a permanent ground of blessing — "The world also is established, that it cannot be moved." Jehovah comes (Psa 96:1-13, Psa 97:1-12, Psa 98:1-9, Psa 99:1-9, Psa 100:1-5) to His restored creation; which claps its hands, rejoicing in His presence. This closes the first half of the book, but the fullness of the blessing is not yet told out, nor the ground of it. This, redemption not by power but by purchase, and at the hands of the Kinsman-Redeemer, can alone disclose. In Psa 101:1-8 we find accordingly once more the Second Man, into whose hands now the earth is put, King of Israel evidently, but with another name and a wider title soon to be declared. For in the hundred and second psalm, not only Zion’s time of blessing is come, but for the earth also to be blessed, "when the peoples are gathered together, and the kings also, to serve the Lord." But all this blessing waits upon One who in the meanwhile is seen, not only in human weakness, but under the wrath of God. Alone in the presence of His enemies, His heart smitten and withered like grass; and why? "Because of Thine indignation and wrath; for Thou hast lifted Me up and cast Me down." But how then is the blessing to come, if Israel’s King, the Second Man, upon whom all depends, is cut off under the wrath of God? "He weakened My strength in the way; He shortened My days. I said, ’O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days: Thy years are throughout all generations.’" What, then, is the answer to this prayer? It is the amazing declaration as to this humbled One: — "Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands: they shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end." Thus Creator and Redeemer are the same wondrous Person: Jehovah, whose throne is set up upon earth, is that very Second Man into whose hands the restored earth is given; and this, and the blessings resulting from it, the hundred and third and hundred and fourth psalms celebrate. This weakness of man is the power and grace of God for man’s salvation. God’s name is indeed decisively declared, and man finds his happy hiding-place in God Himself, never to be a wanderer again. How fit a conclusion to the picture of atonement which the Psalms, and indeed the whole of the Old Testament, present! May our joyful adoration grow in equal pace with our apprehension of them. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 34: 02.17. CHAPTER 17 - ATONEMENT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. THE GOSPELS. ======================================================================== Chapter 17 Atonement in the New Testament. The Gospels. We now come to the New Testament. We have already carried its doctrine with us in the interpretation of the Old; for our object has been, not to trace the gradual unfolding of the truth from age to age, but to get as completely as possible for our souls that truth, as Scripture, now complete, as a whole presents it to us. Thus we have already anticipated much of what would otherwise now come before us. Yet we shall find, if the Lord only open our eyes to it, abundance of what is of unfailing interest for us, and that the substance here goes beyond all the shadows of the past. In the Gospels, however, the doctrine of atonement is but little developed. We have instead the unspeakably precious work which wrought it. The Acts also, while devoted to the history of the effects of its accomplishment, speaks little directly of the atonement itself. It is not till we come to Paul’s writings that we find this fully entered into, and its results for us declared. He is the one raised up to give us the full gospel message, as well as the truth of the Church, of both of which he is in a special sense the "minister" (Col 1:23; Col 1:25). The gospel of John, however, more than all the rest together, does dwell upon the meaning of the cross; and here it is mostly the Lord Himself who declares it to us. John’s is, in a fuller sense than the others, the Christian gospel; and in it, we may say, we enter into that holiest of which they see but the vail rent at the end; while for John, the glory typified by that of the tabernacle of old shines out all through.* It is necessary, then, to show how this is possible, man at the same time being fully shown out for what he is by the light in which he stands. Before we speak of this, we must take up, however, the "synoptic" gospels, and briefly examine their testimony. {* John 1:14, where "dwelt" should be, as in the margin of the Revised Version, "tabernacled:" it is a plain reference to the glory of old.} Their direct teaching is scanty indeed. The Lord’s own declaration that "the Son of Man . . . . came to give His life a ransom for many," and that His blood was "shed for many," is given in all; Luke indeed changing this last into "shed for you," and Matthew adding, "for the remission of sins." The doctrine of atonement is quite plain here, however little enlarged on. Luke gives us beside how, after His resurrection, He appears to the two on the way to Emmaus, and reproves them for their unbelief of all that the prophets had spoken, adding, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Afterward, to the eleven He says, "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name, beginning at Jerusalem." When we look more deeply at the work presented in these three gospels, we find in them respectively, as I have elsewhere shown, the features of the trespass, sin, and peace-offerings respectively. The trespass-offering unites with Matthew’s gospel of the kingdom as being the governmental aspect of atonement — the reparation for injury rather than judgment for sin; yet this in its Godward side reaches of necessity to the vindication of the holiness of His nature, so that Matthew and Mark alike give the forsaking of God. But while the three gospels show the rending of the nail, and the holiest opened, Matthew alone shows the meeting of death for us, the graves giving up their dead for death is governmental infliction, and so belongs to Matthew’s theme. So, evidently, does that view of the cross which is found in the two parables of the kingdom, the treasure and the pearl, where the work is looked at as a governmental exchange — a purchase: "went and sold all that He had and bought it." Mark, while it has the forsaking of God also, — the characteristic features of the sin-offering, — omits these governmental features. It is the Son of God in the glory of His voluntary humiliation, obedient even unto death, glorifying God at His own personal cost, — as the bullock is the highest grade of the sin-offering, — but therefore glorified of God in consequence, so that He ascends to the right hand of God (Mark 16:19). But His humiliation is most absolute. He does not, as in Matthew, "dismiss His spirit" (Mat 27:50, Gr.), as One that had power to retain it, but, in true sin-offering character, "expires" (Mark 15:37, Gr.). Even in His cry upon the cross there is a note of difference which is significant. He says, not "Eli," — literally, although it be a name of God, "My Strength," — but "Eloi," "My God."* {*In the twenty-second psalm it is "Eli," not "Eloi," but I think it clear that the latter, in this connection, is the deeper word.} So the results of the cross are characteristically different in Mark from Matthew. It is not a commission given to disciple into the kingdom, but to preach the gospel, with power over the enemy and over the consequences of sin accompanying the simple believing in this precious word. In Luke, the peace-offering character is everywhere plain, as it is in the cross most manifestly. It needs scarcely comment. The Lord’s cry is "Father;" and He openly assures a dying thief of a place with Him in paradise. But further exposition would belong rather to a sketch of the gospels than of the doctrine of atonement, and it has been given elsewhere. The gospel of John introduces a subject in the Old Testament unrevealed, — eternal life. Personally, the Lord was this, and among men the light of men. But this only disclosed the truth of their condition. The world and the Jews in this light were only part of the world, — lay in a darkness which no light merely could reach, for it was the darkness of death but a spiritual death of sin which not even life alone could reach. Guilt must also be met. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone," are our Lord’s words. Life must spring for man out of an atoning death. The water of cleansing and the blood of expiation must come out of the side of a dead Christ. The Spirit thus bears record that "God has given to us eternal life." The first word as to atonement in the gospel of John is in the Baptist’s testimony: "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." This is the broad general view of Christ’s work and its effect. By and by, a "new" earth — not another earth, but the earth made new as to its condition, — will be eternally the abode of righteousness (2Pe 3:13). To us, how wonderful a condition for this world, which for nearly six thousand years has been the abode of sin, to be the abode of everlasting righteousness! What will have accomplished this? The precious sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Every inhabitant of that new earth will be one redeemed by the blood of Christ, and secured eternally by its value. Sin will be completely banished. Its memory only will remain, to give full melody to the praises of the saints. But who is this Lamb of God? "This is He," says the Baptist, "of whom I said, ’After me cometh a Man which is preferred before me, for He was before me.’" After in time as a man, yet the One inhabiting eternity! It is God Himself who is at the cost of redemption, and that when not power merely could redeem, but only blood! Therefore a man, incarnate, to be in meek surrender of Himself a Lamb slain. This is what is of moral value to fill the earth with righteousness, and to lift to heaven also those made members of Christ by the baptism of the Holy Ghost (John 1:33). In the next case, the need of man has just been fully exposed in the Lord’s words to Nicodemus. He must be born again, as Ezekiel had already witnessed; although not able to declare the full truth and magnitude of this work of God in man. But One was come from heaven to declare it, Son of Man on earth, yet still in heaven. Nor only to declare it, but to make this work possible for "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." The imperative necessity of atonement is here affirmed. The Son of Man must be lifted up, and faith in Him be the way of everlasting life. The type of the brazen serpent shows in what character "lifted up;" for Moses’ serpent clearly represented that by which the people in the wilderness were perishing. At bottom, for them as for men in general this was sin, the poison of the old serpent, which has corrupted the nature of every one born of flesh. For this, "made sin," Christ was "lifted up," — offered to God a sacrifice, — that men might have, by faith in Him thus offered, not a restoration of mere natural life, but one spiritual and eternal. But again we are assured of who it is effects the sacrifice. Not only it must be One who as Son of Man could be lifted up, but "God so loved the world, that He, gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." It is not only the Son of Man, lifted up to God, but the Son of God in the full reality of this, the eternal Son, the only begotten, sent down, God’s gift, from God. Thus eternal life is ours who believe. The character, privileges, and accompaniments of which are detailed for us in the chapters that follow. The sixth chapter shows it to us as a life enjoyed in dependence, lived by faith, maintained by the meat given by the Son of Man — moat which endures to everlasting life, as long as the life itself does. But this meat is the bread from heaven, and the bread is His flesh, which He gives for the life of the world. But this involves His death, blood-shedding; so that "except ye have eaten the flesh of the Son of Man, and drank His blood, ye have no life in you; he that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life, — abideth in Me and I in him. As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he that eateth Me, he also shall live because of Me." (John 6:53, John 6:54, John 6:56-57) We must notice a difference here which neither the revised nor the common version makes apparent. The first expression — "have eaten," "have drunk," — speaks of once partaking, the others of continuous. The once having eaten and drunk insures eternal life, but it is maintained as a practical life of faith by continuous eating and drinking. It is a life dependent though eternal, and what communicates it sustains it also. John 10:1-42 presents the Lord as the Shepherd of the sheep, giving His life for them, in perfect freedom, and yet as fulfilling the commandment of the Father. He is thus able to give a reason for the Father’s love (John 10:17), and they are saved, have eternal life, and can never perish, nor any pluck them out of His hand. In the twelfth chapter, again, He compares His death to that of a corn of wheat which dies to produce fruit; but I pass on to consider the character of the closing chapters. Here, what is a feature every where, is just this voluntariness of self-surrender which the tenth chapter has declared. No one takes His life from Him: the men sent to take Him fall to the ground before Him, and while giving Himself up, secures the safety of His followers by an authoritative word. To Pilate, He declares His kingdom founded on the truth, and which every true soul would recognize; while the authority of the governor over Him existed but by divine permission for a special purpose. Upon the cross, there is no darkness and no weakness. He declares His thirst, to fulfill one final scripture, then announces the perfect accomplishment of His work, and delivers up His own spirit to the Father. The soldiers’ errand doubly fulfills the prescient word of God, who on the one hand guards the body of His holy One from mutilation, while on the other giving to man the threefold witness of completed atonement. All this speaks of the offering for acceptance (Lev 1:3-4, R.V.), the voluntary burnt-offering. To this the account of the resurrection answers also perfectly. Relationship established, the corn of wheat having died to bring forth fruit, the Lord owns His "brethren," ascending to His and (thus) their Father, His and their God. He assures them of peace, the fruit of His work (John 20:19-20); of their new-creation place in connection with Himself, last Adam (John 1:21; comp. Gen 2:7; 1Co 15:45), and of their qualification therefore to "receive the Holy Ghost." All this is the testimony of perfect acceptance in the value of His completed work. The Acts, while speaking throughout of the fruits of atonement, give little of the doctrine of the work itself. We may therefore pass it over. I am aware of no new aspect in which it is presented to us in it. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 35: 02.18. CHAPTER 18 - ROMANS AND GALATIANS. ======================================================================== Chapter 18 Romans and Galatians. There are four of the epistles of Paul which introduce us by successive steps to the height of Christian position. They are those to the Romans, Galatians, Colossians, and Ephesians. As our position before God is in the value of Christ’s work for Him, we shall necessarily find in these epistles the exposition fully of the doctrine of atonement. In fact, a concordance is enough to show that only in Corinthians and Hebrews beside, of Paul’s fourteen epistles, is the blood of Christ spoken of, and only in Philippians additionally is the cross. Hebrews, indeed, speaks more of the blood of Christ than any other book of the New Testament. Its doctrine we shall hope to consider at another time, however. Of the four epistles I have mentioned, Romans and Galatians are most nearly connected together, and Colossians and Ephesians. The negative side of deliverance by the death of Christ is the topic of the former; the positive side of what we are brought into as identified with Him in life, that of the latter; although Colossians unites the "dead" and "buried with Christ" of Romans to the "quickened" and "raised up with Christ" of Ephesians. Romans and Galatians differ mainly in this, that while Romans through the ministry of Christ’s work establishes the soul in peace, and delivers it from the power of sin, Galatians takes up the moral principles of Judaism and Christianity as a Warning to those made free by grace, not to entangle themselves again with the yoke of bondage. In pursuance of this end, Galatians takes one important step beyond Romans, although clearly involved in the doctrine of the latter. Romans says we are dead with Christ to sin and the law; Galatians adds that we are crucified to the world, and a new creation. The doctrinal part of Romans is found in the first eleven chapters: the part with which we have to do here is the first eight, and these divide into two portions at the end of Rom 5:11. Up to this, we have the doctrine of the blood of Christ as justifying us from our sins. Beyond it, we have the doctrine of the death of Christ as meeting the question of our nature. Yet the blood is the token of death, and as this alone, has meaning. The difference is mainly in this, that the blood is looked at here as what is offered to God; the death, as what applies to us. It is, in fact, the death of our Substitute which is offered to God in the blood of propitiation. We look Godward to see the effect for us as to peace; we look at the sacrifice to realize the power and fullness of what has satisfied Him. The two are bound together in the most indissoluble way. To him for whom the blood of Christ avails, the death of Christ at the same time applies; while the order of apprehension is undoubtedly that in which the epistle treats of these. The first question with the soul is, Is all settled forever Godward? The next is, If this be so, how is the evil in me looked at by God? Much else connects itself with this, but our theme here is the atonement, and to this I confine myself at this time. In accordance with what has just been stated, we find in Rom 3:23 Christ first of all spoken of as a "propitiatory," or "mercy-seat,"* "through faith in His blood." Access to God is the point, with ability to stand before Him. "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" – the glory that abode upon the mercy-seat, but from which all in Israel were shut out. This language of the old types is as simple as it is profound in its significance for us. The ark with its mercy-seat was the throne of Him who dwelt between the cherubim, of whom it was said, Justice and judgment are the foundation of Thy throne," but at the same time "mercy and truth go before Thy face." (Psa 89:14.) How then could the reconciliation of these toward man be accomplished? Only by the precious blood typified by that toward which the faces of the cherubim looked, the value of which the rent vail has witnessed, and through which the "righteousness of God" is now "toward all," the sanctuary of His presence is become the place of refuge for the sinner. By the sentence of His righteousness we are justified according to His grace, a sentence publicly given in the resurrection of Jesus our Lord from the dead, "who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification." {* hilasterion, the regular word for "mercy-seat" in the Septuagint; not hilasmos, "propitiation," as 1Jn 2:2.} "Much more, then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." This is of course His life as risen for us, as He says Himself, "Because I live, ye shall live also." This leads on to the second part of Romans, where our death with Him and our life in Him are dwelt upon. And as the first part has given us the blood of the sin-offering, — blood which alone could enter the sanctuary, — so the second gives us the burning of the victim upon the ground, the passing away in judgment of all that we were as sinners before God. "God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." Thus we have a new place and standing in Christ wholly, the old relationship to sin and law being done away. Propitiation and substitution characterize thus these two parts of Romans respectively. The connection shows us clearly what we have before looked at, that it is by substitution that propitiation is effected. The propitiation is indeed marked as for all, though of course effectual only for those who believe. The door is open for all into the shelter provided, but he who enters finds in the substitution of Another in his place the only possible shelter. Upon all this it does not need now to dwell, as this has been done elsewhere, and we may now pass on to look briefly at the epistle to the Galatians. Galatians, as to the doctrine of atonement, adds but little to Romans. The apostle, opposing the introduction of the law among Christians, insists strongly upon his own authority as one raised up of God, in His grace, out of the midst of Judaism, the incarnation of Jewish zeal against the Church, called to be an apostle of the revelation of Christ which he had independently received. He was an apostle, neither from men nor through man, and had got nothing even from other apostles who were such before him, and who had been constrained to recognize the grace that had been given to him. Peter, moreover, at Antioch, had been openly rebuked by him for giving way to the legal spirit which he was now opposing; and here he repeats the doctrine of Romans which he had then maintained, that not only we are "justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law," but also that "I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God; I am crucified with Christ." Afterward, he goes on to show more particularly the purpose of the law, and, as illustrating this, the manner in which God had given it, with its character as shown by all this. The promise to Abraham had been made four hundred and thirty years before the law, in which God had declared that the blessing for all nations should be through his Seed — Christ, and on the principle of faith. But law is not faith; its principle is that of works, righteousness through these, but therefore for man only curse for every one who was upon that principle; and that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles God had to remove this curse of the law out of the way, Christ taking it when hanging upon the tree, for the law had said, "Cursed is every one that hangeth upon a tree." Two things need a brief notice here. First, that (as should be obvious, but to some is not,) the hanging upon the tree is not itself the curse, but only marks the one upon whom the curse falls. The curse itself is no external thing, but a deep reality in the soul of him that bears it. This was the wrath upon sin which Christ bare for us, the forsaking of God, which, had it not been borne, assuredly no blessing could have been for any. Secondly, therefore, it was not for Jews alone, or those under law, that the curse of the law was borne. The words of the apostle are surely plain here: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, . . . that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." Clearly he says that blessing could not have been for Gentiles had Christ not borne the curse of the law, and this is, as simple as possible, as soon as we see what essentially the curse is. It is not the question whether Gentiles were under the law. It is quite true that God never put them there; and the apostle, in the passage before us, distinguishes those redeemed from its curse from the Gentiles of whom he speaks. But the law was only the trial of man as man, and Israel’s condemnation by it was, "that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." (Rom 3:19.) It is to miss fatally the point of the law not to see in it this universal reference. "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." The condemnation of the Jew is the condemnation of the law’s curse, only the emphasizing of the doom of all. And had not this been met and set aside, the blessed message of grace could have no more reached the Gentile than the Jew himself. This is the very purpose of the law, for which it was "added" to the promise before given, not as a condition for it to be saddled with, but to bring out the need of the grace which the promise implies. "It was added for the sake of transgression" (v. 19, Gr.); not to hinder but to produce it, ("for where no law is there is no transgression,") to turn sin into the positive breach of law, and thus to bring out its character, and bring men under condemnation for it. But it was added also for a certain time, — " till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made." But if God were thus testing man, it was by "elements of the world" (Gal 4:3), necessarily bondage only to the believer, and the cross is that by which we are "crucified to the world" (Gal 6:14). For "in Christ Jesus, neither is circumcision any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation" (Gal 6:15). And Christ "died for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father." (Gal 1:4). It is evident that Galatians takes up and completes the doctrine of Romans by adding that of deliverance out of the world to that from sin and law, as well as our place in new creation, involved already in the truth of the first Adam being the figure of Him that was to come, in whom we are. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 36: 02.19. CHAPTER 19 - COLOSSIANS, EPHESIANS, 2 CORINTHIANS. ======================================================================== Chapter 19 Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Corinthians. The epistle to the Colossians has for its key-note Col 2:9-10 — "In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him." It is the fullness of Christ for the Christian. The first chapter gives us the first part of this, which it anticipates: "For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him." The second and third chapters show our completeness in Him: His death for us delivering us from our natural portion His resurrection bringing us into our portion now with God. In Col 1:1-29, the work of atonement is represented as for the reconciliation of heaven and earth, as well as having accomplished the reconciliation of all believers: "And having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, — by Him, I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven. And you, that were some time alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight." This doctrine of reconciliation is important as showing how far the need and value of the cross extend. In Romans already there is the statement that "when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" but here it extends much more widely, and has to do, not merely with persons even, but with things — all things, both in heaven and in earth. There are no persons in heaven to be brought back by the work of Christ, "for verily He taketh not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold" (Heb 2:16, Gr.). It is not, therefore, of persons that the apostle is speaking here, but of the frame-work of things put out of joint, as it were, through sin, as far as sin has reached, and which the work of Christ was needed to set right. In this application of reconciliation two things are plain: first, that it is not merely a moral effect on man that is intended by it, (although this moral effect there is, and it is a great truth too;) and secondly, that it was in the nature of God Himself that the deepest need of atonement lay. Going on to Ephesians, we find the apostle speaking of "the redemption of the purchased possession" (Eph 1:14); and in Heb 9:12, saying, "It was necessary, therefore, that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly, things themselves with better sacrifices than these." Here, the heavenly things, then, are spoken of as purchased, purified, reconciled, redeemed. In whose eyes were they, then, impure? Clearly, in His to whom alone all true sacrifice was ever offered. It was the nature of God which required atonement, His holiness that needed satisfaction in it. In a deeper sense than probably Eliphaz knew could it be said, "The heavens are not clean in His sight" (Job 15:15). The work of Christ enables Him to lay hold upon all that with which sin has been connected, and restore to more than all its pristine beauty and excellency. How unspeakable is the value of that work which not only does this, but actually glorifies Him in filling the heavenly places with those redeemed from the fall, and made the very "righteousness of God in Christ." As for Christians, they are already reconciled through the work of Christ: "You . . . hath He reconciled." It is done, although not yet are all the fruits reaped of this. Already are we before God in Christ, "accepted in the Beloved," waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body, to put us in our place every way, in the very image of the heavenly. Reconciliation on our part necessarily includes the change from enmity, the natural state, to love, as here and in Romans both: "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" "You, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled." The moral effect is what is needed as to us. The power of the display. of the love which has so wonderfully met our whole necessity brings our hearts back to God. Love wins love: "we love Him because He first loved us." Hence, for this effect, the freeness and fullness of the gospel are essential. "Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him most? ’I suppose that he to whom he forgave most.’ ’Thou hast rightly judged.’" Question of the love that calls forth my love is fatal to this effect. I must be delivered from the necessity of seeking my own things, in order to live, not unto myself, but unto Him who died for me and rose again. This, the apostle tells us, was the secret of his life, such as we know it was: "The life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." Reconciliation was needed thus on our part, and in order that it might be, the death of Christ must meet the demand of divine righteousness; but on this very account it is never said in Scripture, as it is so often in human creeds, that God is reconciled by the work of Christ. He had not changed, but we. God had never enmity to the work of His hands, however fallen away from Him. He had not, then, to be reconciled; and so, even where the reconciliation is of things, not persons, it is still these that are said to be reconciled, as we have seen. As to man, reconciliation is pressed upon him on the ground of Christ’s work: "We pray, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God; for He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." The second part of Colossians gives, as I have said, the effect of the work of Christ for us, bringing in His resurrection and life beyond death as giving us our new place in the efficacy of it with God. We have "dead with Christ," "buried with Christ," almost exactly as in the second part of Romans, our death being called here "the circumcision of Christ," or Christian circumcision. While the "alive in Christ" of Romans is here carried back to its commencement in our being "quickened together with Christ." Our life in Him is thus seen, from its first moment, to be the result of atonement. The blotting out of legal ordinances, which were contrary to us, and the spoiling of principalities and powers, are connected also with His work. Risen with Him, we are in spirit to be outside the scene we are passing through, — to "seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." Ephesians, as is well known, carries us one step beyond this. We are not only risen, but ascended, "made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Here, "with" can no longer be said, as is evident. We are not actually, but as yet only represented, there: it is "the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places." This is individual, of course. And though, as in Colossians, "we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace," yet the meeting our responsibility in grace is not the special subject of Ephesians, but the new creation which we are made in Christ, and this in its heavenly character the epistle sets before us. It is not within our scope just now to enter upon this. In connection with it, the effect of the cross is spoken of as breaking down the middle wall of partition between both Jew and Gentile, both man and God. This middle wall of partition is the law, which the apostle calls, therefore, by a strong figure, the "enmity," and its abolition, our peace and reconciliation: "Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man, making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby." There is nothing here but what is simple enough, and needs no comment. Nor does Ephesians present us with any further development of the doctrine of atonement. The texts we have had before us naturally connect themselves with one already quoted in connection with them, but to which we must give now more particular attention. It is 2Co 5:21. The whole passage runs thus: "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us, we pray in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Notice, first, there is no statement here of the world having been reconciled. It is of the attitude which God took in Christ come into the world, of which the apostle is speaking. What Christ was doing when here, he says, we are doing as His representatives, "in His stead," now He is no longer here. But that attitude is of beseeching men to be reconciled, — not telling them they are. In this way God was not imputing their trespasses to them, inviting them to draw nigh to Him, not forbidding access. Now this same liberty of access is proclaimed, but the ground of it is an already accomplished work: "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." The main feature of atonement is here very clearly given; and the force is made plainer by the contrast of words and thought. In the same sense was Christ made sin for us as that in which we are made righteousness; and as the sin was the sin of man, so the righteousness is the righteousness of God. Moreover, as it was not in Himself that He was made sin, for He knew none; so not in ourselves are we made divine righteousness, but in Him. The antithesis in all this no one can doubt to be designed; and it makes evident the meaning of the whole. Christ who knew no sin was identified with it upon the cross; we as the fruit of His work, in our place in Him, are identified with the righteousness of God. In Him dying upon the tree is seen the sin of man; but the righteousness of God is seen, wonderful to say, in sinners being accepted in the Beloved. But you may say, Is not the righteousness of God seen also in the cross? Surely it is; and so the third of Romans states: "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness;" but in what respect? "That He might be righteous, justifying" — pronouncing righteous — "him which believeth in Jesus." That we might be in Him, it was necessary that He should be made sin for us; the righteousness of God no less could satisfy. That we are in Him declares therefore the cross God’s method of salvation affirms that righteousness, now our shelter and defense, "the righteousness of God over all them that believe." With this, then, we are identified forever: forever we shall display it, as we shall "the exceeding riches of His grace." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 37: 02.20. CHAPTER 20 - HEBREWS. ======================================================================== Chapter 20 Hebrews. The epistle to the Hebrews gives, as the epistle to the Galatians does, the contrast between Judaism and Christianity, but in a different way. Galatians is written to Gentiles, to deliver them from the law as a "yoke of bondage" to which they were being subjected by Jewish teachers; it dwells, therefore, upon the character of the law as the elements of the world, a world to which as Christians we are crucified, — upon its curse, from which Christ’s work had to deliver: upon the moral, therefore, not ceremonial part. Hebrews, on the other hand, is written to the Jews themselves, though of course believing ones, and takes up the ceremonial part, that in which faith ever found its refuge when oppressed with the sense of guilt, to show that here also Judaism necessarily failed, witnessing, as it was designed to witness, to that which was the substance of its shadows, now come, and by which its place was irrevocably taken. Among these typical ceremonies, those which had to do with cleansing have in this way a special place; and thus the question of sacrifices — above all, of Israel’s great day of atonement — comes to be a prominent topic in the epistle. There are thus two apparently contradictory aspects of these legal types, but which are in fact in perfect accord with one another: on the one hand, their typical likeness to the things they represent; on the other, their entire unlikeness as to real efficacy. "The law, having a shadow of good things to come," was "not the perfect image." This appears in the very beginning of the epistle, in which the day of atonement is evidently in view, when it is said of Christ that "when He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens." The Jewish high-priest put indeed the blood of atonement upon the mercy-seat once a year; but so far from sitting down there, he was not again permitted to enter throughout the year. For him, as for all the people, the face of God was hid, — clear proof that he had not purged the sins of any, in truth, as before Him. Judaism means God hidden and inaccessible: Christianity, sins purged and man brought nigh. After dwelling upon the glory of Him who could effect this, as contrasted with angels, through whose ministration the law was given, in the second chapter the apostle shows us the Son of God become Son of Man, and tasting death for every man, with the purpose of bringing many sons unto glory. He who sanctifieth and those who are sanctified are all of One, on which account He is not ashamed to call them brethren. The children which God hath given Him being "partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself took part of the same, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, — that is, the devil; . . . . for on the seed of Abraham He layeth hold. Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High-Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." All through, once more, the day of atonement is plainly in view, upon which this passage becomes therefore a most instructive comment. "Propitiation" — which no one doubts to be the proper word, instead of "reconciliation," in ver. 17, — is here said to be expressly for the sins of the people; and the true people of Christ are interpreted to be the "seed of Abraham," clearly embracing all and only those whom as children given to Him He is not ashamed to call His brethren. With these there is a double link of connection. The sanctified and the Sanctifier are all of one, so that He is not ashamed to call them brethren. And then, because they are partakers of flesh and blood, He Himself also takes part of the same; this is on account of propitiation needed, although, as we know, He does not take manhood temporarily, but eternally. Thus, while it is true that the Lord tasted death for every man, yet it is for His people He makes propitiation; of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold. It is the kinsman-redeemer of Lev 25:1-55. In Heb 5:1-14 we are given to see the "holy linen coat" with which the high-priest enters the sanctuary. This always speaks of practical righteousness, and the truth correspondent to it we find in Heb 5:7-9 : "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save Him out of [not "from"] death, and was heard for His piety; though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience through the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him, called of God a High-Priest after the order of Melchisedek." Thus the perfection of His obedience is that by which the Lord is delivered out of death: it is God’s "Holy One" who cannot "see corruption." Raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, He is "saluted," as the word means, "as High-Priest," and enters the sanctuary. It is still the day of atonement that is before us, although with the added truth as to the order of His priesthood, which is not of Aaron, but Melchisedek. In Heb 9:1-28, the apostle takes up, with unmistakable plainness, the same type: "But Christ being come, a High-Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands that is to say, not of this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption; . . . . for Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; . . . Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and to them that look for Him shall He appear without sin" that is, apart from it, having no more to offer for it, — "unto salvation." Our place as Christians, then, is found between the entering in of the high-priest into the sanctuary and his coming out again, when Israel’s sins will be removed, as ceremonially they were by the typical scapegoat: for us, in the meanwhile, the result of our great High-Priest’s entrance into the heavens is known by the Holy Ghost come down. We know that, having by Himself purged our sins, He is set down at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, — that He has obtained eternal redemption for us. "By one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." Thus our conscience is at rest, and we have ourselves present "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the vail — that is to say, His flesh." Our privilege — nay, our responsibility is to "draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith." Finally, the day of atonement is that to which the principle of the last chapter most fully applies, the bringing into the holy place the blood of those beasts whose bodies were burnt without the camp. The complete judgment of sin must needs be before heaven can open to the worshiper. The judgment of the world is found in this, and the setting aside of the "camp" of Judaism. The Christian position is founded upon that which is the condemnation of the world, and is therefore outside it, as it is inside the vail, as brought to God. In all this, it is evident that Christians answer to the priestly house, as we saw when going through the type in question. For these, the bullock is provided for a sin-offering; yet in the seventeenth verse of the tenth chapter the principle of the scape-goat is applied to them: "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." In these various references we shall find, if we compare them, the full type of Israel’s great day unfolded to us, while that is added which none of the types of Judaism could convey. Upon this I do not think it needful to dwell further at present. The epistle to the Hebrews gives us the most connected, detailed teaching as to atonement which we shall find in the New Testament, and with it we may almost close our notice of the Scripture-passages; we have then, if the Lord permit, to see how far we can put together the various features which have been presented to us of this so wondrous work. It is the theme of an eternal song, which here on earth already it is ours to sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 38: 02.21. CHAPTER 21 - THE OTHER APOSTOLIC WRITINGS. ======================================================================== Chapter 21 The other Apostolic Writings. There are but three other books which require now some attention before we close our consideration of Scripture-texts. They are the first epistles of Peter and John, and the book of Revelation. We must not expect to find here the full development or application of atonement which Paul had especially in his commission to make known. The truth of it is every-where insisted on, however, in due connection with the peculiar theme of each book. The theme of Peter’s epistle is the path through the world of those who, as partakers of the heavenly calling, are strangers and pilgrims in it. Addressed to the believers among the Jews of the dispersion, he brings out the contrast between their Jewish hopes and those to which they had been now begotten by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Already they had received the salvation of their souls, being redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and born again of the incorruptible Word, and were a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. As children of God, they were the subjects of His holy government, under the discipline. of a sorrow which He made fruitful, passing through a world through which Christ had passed, adverse to His as to Him. To do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently was their lot, having Him for their example, and the glory into which He had already entered their eternal rest. It is not strange, therefore, that it is the "sufferings of Christ" upon which the apostle insists; that He suffered for sins, and that we must suffer, not for these, but for righteousness or for His name’s sake (1Pe 2:19-21); that He "suffered in the flesh," — His only connection with sin being in suffering on account of it; we must arm ourselves therefore with the same mind (1Pe 4:1). But the sacrificial character and efficacy of His work are fully maintained, for "Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God," and "Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree," — the practical end of this being enforced, "that ye being dead unto sins, should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye were healed" (1Pe 2:24). And thus we are "redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold," (alluding to Israel’s atonement-money,) "but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot" (1Pe 1:18-19). Salvation, and begetting to a living hope, are therefore connected with the resurrection of Christ from the dead (1Pe 3:21; 1Pe 1:3). This is so similar to the first part of Romans that it is scarcely necessary to enter into it more here. It gives us only a part of it however, the application being plainly to the practical walk, as that in Romans is mainly to the setting free the conscience before God. The second epistle of Peter has but one word, which we may notice as we pass on: the false teachers, who privily bring in damnable heresies among Christians, deny the "Lord that bought them." Thus the plain difference between redemption and purchase is made clear. The Lord has title to the world and all in it (comp. Mat 13:44) by the cross, but we may buy what we have no personal interest in. Redemption speaks of heart-interest in the object, and of release, deliverance. The first epistle of John gives us the characters of eternal life in the believer as now manifested in the power of the Spirit which is in us as Christians. He dwells, therefore, more upon the Godward side of the work of Christ — propitiation for our sins (1Jn 2:2; 1Jn 4:10), from which, therefore, we are cleansed by the propitiating blood (1Jn 1:7). It is thus that divine love is declared toward us; and this love is perfected with us, giving us boldness in the day of judgment, in the assurance that even now, in this world, we are as Christ is (1Jn 4:17). This falls short of Paul’s doctrine, not as to the perfection in which we stand, but only in not bringing us into the heavenly places, or that of being risen with Christ. Its application is to the entire freedom of the conscience by propitiation through a substitute, whose acceptance is therefore ours. In the last chapter we have another beautiful testimony to the necessity and perfection of the work of Christ. He came, not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit also bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. This, without any question, refers to the blood and water that followed the soldier’s spear, and of which John by the Spirit bare record (John 19:34-35). What, then, is the purport of the record? That out of a dead Christ — His work accomplished — expiation and purification flow together for us. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Thus, as soon as He has died, — as soon as the judgment due has been borne, purification and expiation are found for men, in Him who has borne the judgment. But, says the apostle, "this is the record, that God has given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." In "eternal life" he sums up, as it were, these two things. For "life" is the opposite of judgment, and implies that it is passed. (Comp. John 5:24; John 5:29, where "condemnation" and "damnation" are the same word — "judgment.") While the full extent of man’s need as to purification is declared. Life in a new source alone meets it. But God’s grace abounds over all man’s need. This life is eternal life, and in His Son, — a divine spring which guarantees the perfection of what flows from it. In the book of Revelation, finally, the name the Lord bears every where through it shows how central as to all God’s ways is the work of atonement. The book of His counsels finds none with title to open it save One who, coming forward in the character of Judah’s Lion, is seen, in that which gives Him title, as the Lamb slain. He is therefore at once the object of worship by the elders as the Author of redemption: "For Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation" (Rev 5:6; Rev 5:9). The book of life is accordingly "the book of life of the Lamb slain" (Rev 13:8; Rev 21:27) and the being written in this book is the only possible escape from the judgment of the second death (Rev 20:15). Thus the saints overcome the accuser by the blood of the Lamb (Rev 12:11); their robes are washed and made white in His blood (Rev 7:14); and this it is that gives "right to the tree of life" and to enter in by the gates into the heavenly city (Rev 22:14, R.V.). The throne, moreover, is the "throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev 22:1; Rev 22:3); and "the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of" the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:22); and the glory of God doth lighten it, while the Lamb is the lamp thereof (Rev 21:23). Fittingly, thus, does Scripture close its testimony to the atonement and Him who made it. We will not try to define the meaning of these glorious sayings. They shine by their own light. May our attitude be that than which a creature can know no higher: that of the elders in the presence of their Redeemer — of worshipers. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 39: 02.22. CHAPTER 22 - WHAT CHRIST SUFFERED IN ATONEMENT. ======================================================================== Chapter 22 What Christ Suffered in Atonement. We have finished our brief review of the direct Scripture-texts. It remains to look at the doctrine as a whole which they declare. And here, while my purpose is in no wise controversy, it is hardly possible, and I think not desirable, to forget the different views obtaining among professing Christians. They differ, in fact, widely: for as atonement is the very heart of divine truth, so it sympathizes with every part of it; and there can be no material deviation from the doctrine of Scripture without its being accompanied by a correspondingly defective or distorted view of this central one. I do not propose to give examples now, although we shall find many, no doubt, before we reach the close of these papers. The simplest course seems to be to take up the doctrine as the Word presents it to us, and then compare it point by point, so far as may seem to be profitable, with other views. That there was a deep necessity for atonement the Lord Himself declares: "The Son of Man must be lifted up." No debate as to this can be admitted therefore. It is a thing to be received by faith alone. And this necessity has its ground in the divine nature, as the truth of reconciliation, as we have seen, most strongly declares. "Things in heaven and things in earth" needed thus to be reconciled. Universalism goes wrong entirely here, in substituting persons for things: but the fallen angels are expressly stated to be not those for whom Christ’s work was wrought: "He taketh not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold" (Heb 2:16, marg.). But of things in the heavens it is said, "It was necessary that the patterns of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these" (Heb 9:12). It was in God’s sight therefore, as Eliphaz says, the heavens were not clean, and that on account, of course, of the sin of the angels. God’s nature therefore His holiness — demanded the atonement, and thus only could even the heavens be reconciled. How much more, then, as to fallen man! As plainly it is declared in these very scriptures by what alone atonement could be made. "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb 9:22). This is only the echo, somewhat emphasized, of the statement of the law itself (Lev 17:11): "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul." Clearly it is death therefore — a sacrificial death — by which atonement is effected. The shedding of blood means, not merely death, but a violent death; and only such, and that of a designated victim, could provide the altar with what availed before God. No suffering in life could at all take the place of this, or be included in it: these two things are wholly different. As it was death that had come in upon man through sin, so it is death alone by which his condition is met and deliverance found for him. For those under death, death the penalty must be endured. It is plain, then, at once that God’s way of atonement is not by any mere "substitute for penalty," as many say, but by the endurance of the penalty itself. But this is much more manifest when we consider what is involved in death as the due of sin. For, as the mark upon a fallen creature, it is the sign of a changed relationship with God the Creator; and, if it be not the end of all, it is (except mercy interpose,) the definitive introduction to a state of judgment which must abide as long- as that which provoked it abides. From this we must distinguish indeed the judgment of the great white throne, when every thing is made fully manifest, and the unsaved "dead are judged according to their works" (Rev 20:12). This is at a time when death is ended and over, although ended for these only by a "resurrection of judgment" (John 5:29, Gk.). But in the meanwhile, the Lord’s picture of the rich man, not in "hell" yet, as our ordinary version gives it, but in hades, with brethren yet alive upon the earth, assures us of torment already endured there in the flame of God’s wrath (Luk 16:1-31). To this distinction we shall have yet to return: it is sufficient to draw attention to it here. Death, then, (for the unsaved) introduces into a fixed state of judgment: fixed because the sinful condition which calls it forth is fixed. And of this, death itself is the sign; for it is the removal of the fallen creature out of the place for which he was created, as unfit to remain there. Death therefore itself preaches of a penalty beyond itself. Was this, then, part of the penalty upon man which atonement was to meet and remove for the saved? If so, it is necessarily a much heavier part. And if God’s way of atonement be not by a "substitute for penalty" but by the endurance of the actual penalty itself, then the cross must be the bearing of wrath as well as death, and this must be emphasized correspondingly in Scripture. And this is in fact the case. At first sight, indeed, it is not apparent; nay, the appearance is all the other way. "Blood," "death," as we have seen, are insisted on; and as the one need exclusively, we might at first conclude. And the general belief of Christians has been full and clear as to Christ’s dying for our sins, much vaguer or less certain as to wrath-bearing. But there is a reason for this character of Scripture-testimony. Death is, as is plain, the plain mark which God has attached to sin, and His wisdom is apparent in it. It brings the sense of judgment home to the hearts and consciences of carnal men, incapable of receiving any more spiritual appeal. God deals in it with men without faith, too blind to see the things unseen naturally, too far away to know the misery of distance. Hence the great public testimony dwells on that which all can feel. Who knows not the awful feeling of that which wrenches from our grasp, and in the most unexpected times and ways, the objects of our dearest affections, and sends us out at last from all the scene and things with which we are acquainted out, alone, out of the world, naked as we came into it, but now conscious of our nakedness, and with our conscience preaching of the things beyond? Hence all through the law, as I have elsewhere dwelt upon,* it is death that is taken up, reasoned of, pressed home upon men. Even the text used almost universally in another sense than that intended, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," speaks not explicitly of the second death, but of the first, but of thus dying in one’s sins indeed, and the future under the dread shadow of this. But upon this it needs not to enter here. {*"Facts and Theories as to a Future State," chap. 23: "The Ministry of Death."} The sacrifices necessarily bear a similar testimony. The death thus pressed on men as the penalty of sin is that which the atoning victim bears, and bears away its sting. This is not all, but it is what is prominent; and even when we come to the New Testament, the style of testimony remains, although it is now in speech from which all obscurity is removed. The plain facts, external and manifest to all, are most insisted on, that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1Co 15:3-4). Faith, with a more earnest look, discovers more. The death of the cross, was it no more than other death? That, the contemplation of which wrung the Lord’s soul with agony, was it physical suffering merely, or a martyr’s lot? The forsaking of God, which He deprecated yet endured, was it simply the being left in the hands of His enemies, or a deeper reality? These questions admit but of one answer. The death of the cross had its inner significance, not in being the punishment of a slave or of a criminal, though both of these it was, but a death of curse according to the law; and there was in this a design of God in our behalf. "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 upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Gal 3:13-14). Surely it is a great mistake which some have made, to suppose that this curse from God is exhausted in the mere fact of the hanging on a tree. This is only the outward sign of it in fact, the reality consisting in the attitude of God toward Him who hung there. Nor, if this be the reality, could it be imagined that this should have significance only for Israel, as those only under the law. In fact, the Gentiles are directly stated here to be partakers of the blessing flowing from this marvelous humiliation of our Lord. Here, nothing else than wrath-bearing can fulfill the meaning — terrible as it is — of being "made a curse." Nor could physical suffering, nor persecution of enemies, have forced from Him the bloody sweat of Gethsemane, or been the cup He pleaded not to drink. Many a martyr, strengthened by divine grace, has drunk such a cup, if that were all. And the forsaking of God, the very words of the blessed Sufferer guide us to that twenty-second psalm, in which prophetically it is all explained; the depths of His heart are told out here into the anointed ear of faith, and we find indeed that which is the one exception in all God’s ways with the righteous. "Our fathers trusted in Thee; they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them; they cried unto Thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not forsaken: but I am a worm, and no man!" Then all the long agony is described by One with no callousness, keenly alive and sensitive to it all; while yet from it all He turns to Him on whom from the womb He had been cast, to deprecate the one sorrow far beyond all others: "Be not far from Me!" — "But be not Thou far from Me, O Lord! Oh, my Strength! haste Thee to help Me!" There is no question that can justly arise as to whose are these words. David certainly himself had no experiences such as these. The bones out of joint, the piercing of hands and feet, the parting of His garments and casting lots upon His vesture, and then the blessing flowing out even to the ends of the earth when finally He is heard, — all this assures us beyond the possibility of doubt as to who really speaks. If we turn to the types we see in the sin-offering, in the victim burned without the camp, and upon the ground without an altar, — figures of which we have already seen the meaning — the shadow of all this; while at the cross itself the three hours of darkness was its answering shadow. God, who is Light, had withdrawn; but the result is for us a rent nail, darkness forever removed, and God in the light for us forever. In Hebrews, finally, we have the emphatic assurance that only the blood of those victims burnt without the camp was brought into the sanctuary — that is, fully into the presence of God — for sin; and that Jesus, therefore, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate: yet another significant token of the same solemn truth. Thus the penalty upon men is fully borne. It is not a substitute for a penalty that is found in all this, but the actual penalty itself endured. True substitution on the Lord’s part is seen, as everywhere witnessed in fact throughout the Word: the iniquity of all His people so laid upon Him that He can say, as in the fortieth psalm He does say, "Mine iniquities." Standing thus as representing them, a true sin-bearer, God’s face is hidden from Him. As in the hundred and second psalm, which is again His voice, where He cries out, "Because of Thine indignation and wrath, because Thou hast taken Me up and cast Me down." It is on the cross, and on the cross alone, that He bears sin, as the apostle says, "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (1Pe 2:24). It has been attempted to prove that this should be rendered "carried our sins up to the tree," and the new version gives this as an alternative in the margin. This has been fully investigated by another:* and I do not propose to enter upon it. Every translation that I am aware of gives at least the preference to the common version; and the doctrine of Scripture admits of no other construction. Contrast the Lord’s words in Psa 22:1-31, "Thou hearest not," with those at the grave of Lazarus, "I knew that Thou hearest Me always" (John 11:42); or, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" with those elsewhere, "And He that sent Me is with Me: the Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always the things that please Him" (John 8:29). Who cannot see here the infinite difference? If hearing and not hearing, forsaking and not forsaking, are but the same thing, or can consist together, then words have no longer any meaning. The cross is thus distinguished from all the Lord’s sufferings beside as the place where "He was made sin for us who knew no sin," and He who "is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and that cannot look at sin," turned away His face from the Sin-bearer. {*"The Bearing of 1Pe 2:24." (J. N. Darby; in Vol. 8 of his Collected Writings.)} The distinction between "offering" and "offering up" in connection with the sacrifices is here of importance. These are different words in the original, and different thoughts. The latter is the same as the word "bare" in the passage in Peter, and it is found similarly in Heb 9:28 : "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" where indeed both words are found. It occurs again in Heb 7:27, twice: "Who needeth not daily, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s; for this He did once, when He offered up Himself." It is found again, Heb 13:15 "By Him let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually;" in Jas 2:22, "When he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar;" and again in 1Pe 2:5, "To offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." The second word, in much the most common use, speaks simply of "presenting," and is thus applied to "gifts" as well as "sacrifices." It is the common word for "offering" as simple presentation, while the former one is that used for offering in the fire upon the, altar. Now in the passover we find that the lamb was to be killed the fourteenth day of the month at even, having been kept up first four days, being taken on the tenth day. In these typical ordinances all was significant, the numbers as all else; and they will be found in full accordance with what we find as to the Lord. His life on earth divides into three parts also: thirty years in private, (the Lamb not taken;) between three and four years of public ministry, (the Lamb taken, but not slain;) and then the suffering of the cross. The ten days mark the first period as that of His own personal responsibility as man. It is for this reason we have but the very briefest notice of Him in all that time. At the close, he comes forth from His retirement to take up the work for which He had come into the world. He is baptized of John in Jordan, the river of death, to fulfill all righteousness, Himself the only One upon whom death had absolutely no claim. There the Spirit of God seals Him in testimony to His perfection as man, while the Father’s voice bears public witness to Him as His beloved Son. He has thus offered Himself for the sacrifice, and the Baptist owns Him as the "Lamb of God" (John 1:29; John 1:36.) But the "four days" are yet to run before He is offered up; and this number speaks of "proving," now not in private capacity, but in His fitness for the blessed work He has undertaken to perform. Accordingly this time begins with the temptation in the wilderness, and the whole course of it is of what He calls afterward His "temptations" (Luk 22:28). But all demands upon Him are only the means of displaying His glorious perfections. It is this which abides for us now in those four gospels which have stamped upon our hearts the image of a Saviour. But in them we find therefore, not One under the judgment of God upon sin, (how dark a cloud would that be over so bright a picture!) but One speaking the Father’s words, doing the Father’s works, in communion with and manifesting the Father. Finally, in the garden He delivers Himself up, and is led as a lamb to the slaughter; on the cross iniquities are laid upon Him, and this is marked by the supernatural darkness so misinterpreted by the mass of Christians. Before and after this we hear Him saying, "Father" in it He says but "My God." Out of it He comes to fulfill what still remains by giving up His spirit to the Father; and dying with the declaration of the complete accomplishment of His work, the blood and water, in answer to the soldier’s spear, show expiation and purification to be now both provided — man’s need to be fully met. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 40: 02.23. CHAPTER 23 - THE PENALTY IN ITS INNER MEANING. ======================================================================== Chapter 23 The Penalty in its Inner Meaning. But we have now to look more particularly at the penalty which the Lord endured for us. Penalty we have seen it was, and true substitution; Christ dying, not upon occasion merely of our sins, but bearing them in His own body on the tree — our iniquities laid upon Him, so that He calls them "Mine." No words could express more plainly a real substitution. We have seen too that in the penalty upon man there were two parts, separable at least, if not in fact separated: the wrath of God upon sin, and death — not the second, but what came in at the beginning through sin; and that both parts He endured. Death has its power in this, that it is the removal of the sin-ruined creature out of the place for which he was created. "Sin has reigned in death," as the expression is in Rom 5:21. It is man’s destruction by the judgment of God, as being already self-destroyed. But the death he dies is not the death of Sadducean materialism, but one in which the sinner abides under the judgment to which it has consigned him. It is a condition of darkness — outer darkness — for God has finally and forever withdrawn Himself. It is torment in the flame of necessary anger against sin. These are the elements of a judgment which will not be altered in character, when in the resurrection of judgment the dead stand before the great white throne to receive the discriminate awards of the day of manifestation. Unspeakably solemn is it to consider that the holy and beloved Son of God, Himself knowing no sin, yet as "made sin for us," entered into that awful darkness, and was tried by the fire of God’s wrath against it. So indeed it was. He was the Substitute under our penalty, and endured the penalty. Ours it was of course, not His; but He endured it, and endured it as the necessity of holiness, to set His people free. But there is a point here it is important to guard, and which, guarded, will go far to preserve us from some excesses which people have gone into with regard to substitution. We must not confound the Lord’s standing in our place to take for us our dreadful due, with any calculation, essentially lowering as it is to the very righteousness which it is meant to uphold, of so much suffering for so much sin. In the day of final award it is indeed said that "the dead" are "judged out of the things which are written in the books, according to their works" (Rev 20:13), and this it is, no doubt, that has been carried back as a principle to the day of atonement. It has been argued that if our iniquities were laid upon Him, — if He bare our sins in His body, then these must all have been counted up and weighed, and He must have suffered so much for each one. In this case it is plain we have just so many sins absolutely provided for, and no others. It is a limited atonement of the most rigid kind, and of which it would be impossible to use the language of the apostle, "A propitiation, not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1Jn 2:2). For if the sins of the whole world had been after this manner provided for, no one could be lost, or judged again for what in Him had received its judgment. And this is very far from the truth of Scripture. A propitiation for the sins of the world means nothing less than such a provision made for them that if the whole world turned to God through Christ, it would find in Him a complete Saviour. But if sins needed thus to be individually taken into account and settled, this would not be true; if they had been thus settled, they could not in any case come up in the day of judgment; and this is what some hold — that men will be judged for nothing but for the refusal of grace in Christ: but this is entirely hopeless to prove from Scripture, which declares they shall be "judged according to their works," and that "every one shall receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad" (2Co 5:10). And, as the Preacher says, "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." "A propitiation for the sins of the whole world" does not, then, mean such an individual settlement of sins, nor is this needed in order for salvation. Can it, then, be needed for "our sins" any more than for the sins of the whole world? or can we make propitiation in the one case have a meaning which it has not in the other? This is surely impossible to suppose in the Word of God. Its faithfulness refuses absolutely all chameleon colors. The sufficiency of atonement for the whole world we must absolutely receive, or give up Scripture. It will not suffer us to say that this is an elect world, for the "whole world" is not elect; and here, the "ours" distinguishes believers from this world, not includes them in it. Propitiation, then, (or atonement — it is the same word,) is for all; and it is the same thing for all: not as actually availing, of course, but as fully available. It has no limit to its value within the limits of the human race. Of how that which is available for all avails for any, and how far it avails, I propose to consider in another chapter. Here, I go no farther than this, that the Lord standing in the place of men took the very penalty under which they were, — died, and was made a curse: the value of which must be measured by the infinite value of Him who did this, and the perfection of an obedience so beyond all price. We are not, therefore, called upon to measure what is measureless, or to conceive of so many sins, or those of so many sinners, weighed out to be atoned for by a particular amount of suffering. Such a commercial idea (as it has been rightly called) of the Lord’s wondrous work is an essential degradation of it, — not a high, but a low estimate of the requirements of absolute holiness which were to be met thereby. It is not that God must have so much suffering for so much sin, but that His holiness necessitates displeasure proportioned to the evil which awakes it. So even in the final judgment. The deeds done in the body become the manifestation* of the person upon whom the judgment of God rests correspondingly, but forever rests; not because, as people have wrongly conceived, the sin itself is necessarily worthy of eternal punishment, but because the sinner remains eternally with the character which his life manifests. {*"We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ" is the true rendering of 2Co 5:10.} The error is therefore plain of making the atonement consist in the endurance of so much agony, as if God could measure out that to the holy Sufferer; whereas, beyond all our conception as was the agony endured, the reality and efficacy of atonement lay in the solemn seal thus put upon the divine estimate of sin, when God’s own beloved Son stooped Himself to endure its dreadful penalty. That He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree," and that God "laid upon Him the iniquity of us all," — these and such like passages which declare a real imputation of our sins to Christ remain in all their solemn yet precious meaning for us. It was for these sins of ours He suffered, and this suffering of His is that which alone removes them from us, and removes them entirely: how perfectly, we shall see more as we proceed. He was the true Sin-bearer, — our Substitute under penalty, as we have seen. He could not have been this had not our sins been laid on Him; but I turn from this, which will come up before us again, to look at another question in connection with the penalty itself. In what we have been considering lately, it will be noted that of necessity it would seem it is rather wrath-bearing than death we have been dwelling on; and it may be asked, If all this be true, what part exactly in the penalty has death, then? If wrath could be exhausted by the Lord before dying, — if He could emerge from the darkness into the light, and in peace say once more "Father" before he died, what need, then, even of dying? Was death for Him the wages of sin which He had taken? And it is undeniable that there has been a tendency two ways, according as one class of texts or the other has been dwelt upon, to make all atonement consist in wrath-bearing, or — far more commonly — all consist in dying. Yet both are plainly unscriptural, as we have sufficiently seen. What we want is to realize the relation of these two parts to each other — to find the due place of each in the Lord’s blessed work. We have been looking at the meaning of wrath-bearing of late; and it does raise the necessary question, Why, then, His death? Granting, as we must, the necessity of it according to Scripture, yet why this necessity? The answer is plain only in the realization of a truth which has been overlooked, conspicuous as it is, by the mass of those who have occupied themselves with the interpretation of Scripture: Me setting aside of the failed first man and the old creation, to bring in blessing under another head and on another and higher plane altogether. As already said, the solemnity of death lies in this, that it is the removal of man as failed out of the scene of his failure — the solemn sentence upon him as unfitted for the place for which he was created. The lower creatures, indeed, have never sinned, — are incapable of it, — yet they die; and men plead, therefore, that death is natural. But they cannot persuade themselves, whose whole nature cries out against it. The scriptural account is, "The wages of sin is death;" and thus, "man, being in honor, abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish" (Psa 49:12). Yes, the beasts do perish. Intended for nothing but a temporary purpose, they enjoy life while it lasts, without a sorrow for the past or a fear for the future, But man is not a beast: he is the offspring of God, meant to know and enjoy communion with Him forever; and his being leveled to the beasts is the sign of a moral, a spiritual ruin, in which he has forgotten God, and leveled himself to them. He, like them, passes away and is not found; his place knows him no more forever. But not like them, for he has "thoughts" that perish with him, unfulfilled plans and purposes, affections which cling to what they cannot hold, a dread upon his soul which presages a hereafter such as the beast dreads not and desires not, because it has not: "The dust returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit returns to God that gave it." Such is death for man; and being such, it is the wages of sin. Man in it, as the creature which God made for Adam’s paradise, perishes forever, — is set entirely aside. Nor do I forget resurrection when I say so. Resurrection does not restore him to this. Job’s words are absolutely true here, without bringing in the God-dishonoring thought of annihilation in any wise: "As the cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more: he shall return no more to his house; neither shall his place know him any more." God’s grace may give him another and a better thing, but it does not reverse the first judgment. And thus it is that when the Lord takes death for man He takes it as affirming God’s sentence upon man, by which the old creation is set aside forever. Let this be well observed, that whereas the wrath of God upon sin, in being undergone by Christ, is removed (the effect of atonement is removal), it is not so with a sentence by which the first man is set aside: if the Lord take this, it must be, not to bring him back, but to affirm his setting aside. The effect of wrath-bearing is to put away wrath; but the effect of the Lord’s dying is that with His death the old creation is confirmed as passing away — is set aside fully, not restored. This is the direct force of 2Co 5:14-17, not well given in our common version: "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then all died [or, have died]; and for all He died, that they Which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again. Wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." This is an important passage, and needs attentive consideration. It is a positive statement of the meaning of Christ’s death as dying for all, — these "all" being expressly shown not to be limited to "those who live," who are distinguished from them as a class in the latter part of the fourteenth verse. It is directly affirmed, then, of all, that if Christ died for them, all died. Our common version has it, "then were all dead," making it a spiritual state; but the Greek will not admit of this, and the sense also is quite different. The point is as to what Christ’s death proves men to have been under as sentence, not in as state; for He came under our sentence as sinners, but not into our state of sin. He died, then, for all; and so all have died. Before God, the world is judged and passed; as the Lord Himself said of the cross, "Now is the judgment of this world" (John 12:31). It is not a judgment executed, of course none could suppose that; but it is a judgment pronounced; and a judgment pronounced is with God as it were executed, so sure and irreversible is it. If Christ, then, died for all, all died. Sentence is not taken away by this, but affirmed. And this meaning is clearly proved by what follows in Corinthians — "wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh." This is the simple and necessary result (for faith, not for sight): if all have died, they are in the flesh no longer; we walk amid a world where men are either alive in Christ or but as it were dead men. But not only so: "yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." Even Christ has not taken up again the life which He laid down. He has not returned (that is,) to His former state upon earth. That is over; and the Christ we know is One who is in resurrection in the glory of God. An immeasurably higher condition, you say. Surely it is; but the former one is passed away, and passed away in that which affirmed God’s sentence upon it. Where, then, are we who live? In Christ; and "if any man be in Christ, it is new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Thus the sense of the passage is plain and perspicuous. And the meaning of the Lord’s taking of death is very clearly set forth. Atonement does not restore the old Adam condition, but affirms its judgment and setting aside. For those saved by it, the darkness of distance from God who is light is passed with the darkness upon the cross. It is thus the gospel of Luke, which gives especially the effects of the work of Christ for the conscience, connects them: "And it was about the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened, and the vail of the temple was rent in the midst." The vail meant darkness, as that in which God dwelled for man; its rending means that "God is in the light" (1Jn 1:7). But with His death the apostle Matthew takes especial care to connect what in fact did not occur till after His resurrection: "And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." The answer to His death is resurrection; not the recommencement of the old Adam life, which is finally and forever set aside. Thus those alive in Christ are dead with Him also, and as it is specifically stated, "dead to sin," dead to law," "dead to the elements of the world" — to all that makes it up, — and "not in the flesh." But to that we must return hereafter: our present subject closes here. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 41: 02.24. CHAPTER 24 - REDEMPTION AND ATONEMENT. ======================================================================== Chapter 24 Redemption and Atonement. We now come to look at the efficacy of atonement — that is to say, its connection with redemption. For redemption is not, in Scripture, what it is for many, a thing accomplished for the whole world. No passage which hints at this even can be produced from the Word. Redemption was, for Israel, the breaking of Pharaoh’s yoke. The redemption of our body is accomplished in resurrection (Rom 8:23). "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace" (Eph 1:7). Such statements sufficiently show us that redemption is an accomplished deliverance, — that it involves, not a salvable state, but a salvation, which the world as a whole never knows. And redemption is "through His blood" shed in atonement: it is that in which the proper efficacy of atonement is declared. "Not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, . . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1Pe 1:18-19). A difficulty which has divided Christians comes in here. If redemption is by atonement, and atonement — the "propitiation" of 1Jn 2:2, — is for the whole world, how is it that in fact all are not redeemed? The answer to which is given by some that atonement is only conditionally efficacious, and this is plainly the only possible one if such texts as that just cited are accepted in their natural sense. The alternative is only to explain, as all strict Calvinists do, the "world," as simply the elect among Jews and Gentiles. But this is not what "the whole world" means. What would the very persons who urge this think, if when the same apostle in the same epistle says, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness," a similar limitation were maintained? "We" and "the whole world" are no more contrasted in the one case than "ours" and "of the whole world" are in the other. Or again when Paul declares that "whatsoever the law saith it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth might be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God," if it were contended that this meant any thing less than all men, who would admit it? Take 1Ti 2:1-6 as another statement. Prayer is enjoined for all men, for God our Saviour "will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth; 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." Here, the "all men" must be consistently interpreted throughout. So the gospel which Paul preached to the Corinthians was that "Christ died for our sins" (1Co 15:3), as the doctrine of his second epistle is that "He died for all" (1Co 15:14). Only on this ground, indeed, could the gospel be sent out, as it confessedly is, to "every creature," or could it be spoken of as "the grace of God which bringeth salvation to all" (Tit 2:11). Only a provision actually made for all could fulfill the fair meaning of such texts as these; and we may not bring into them any doctrine of election, to limit them. They are the testimony of the desire of God’s heart for all. They are the assurance that if men die unsaved, the responsibility of their ruin is with themselves alone. They are the encouragement to implicit confidence in a love that welcomes, and has title to welcome, all who come by Christ to God. But while these texts seem very clear, and the sufficiency and applicability of the atonement are in words allowed by some who contest even the meaning of them, there are others which to many occasion difficulty in regard to a "propitiation for the sins of the whole world." These are the texts which speak of substitution in the strict sense. Substitution is not found as a term in Scripture, but the fact of it is abundantly found. Every victim whose blood was shed in atonement for the sin of him who offered it was a real substitute for the offerer. It has been objected that the word for "substitution" does not occur in connection with the Levitical sacrifices or the Lord’s work; but that the "Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for [anti — instead of] many" is said in both Matthew and Mark, while in 1Ti 2:6 we have the word antilutron — a ransom-price. But, as I have said, the doctrine is there where the term is not. If the Lord were "made a curse for us," how could this be but as representing us? If He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree," what else was this but substitution? And there is much of similar language elsewhere, as we shall see. In fact, the difficulty of which I have spoken arises from the way in which it is every-where pressed that our Lord’s work for us was of true substitutionary character. For while, in a certain sense, the Lord might be said to be a ransom in place of all, it is evident that where faith is not and while it is not the ransom is as if it were not. And there are. expressions thus as to the sacrifice which to faith and only faith could apply. Take one from Isa 53:1-12 : "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Here, faith speaks, and the words are surely not true of any other than believers. But then comes the difficulty: was there, then, when Christ died, some special work needed and undergone for the sins of believers? The same question might be asked, perhaps even more pointedly, with regard to 1Pe 2:24 : "Who Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree." For this "bearing" surely speaks of the removal of them from before God’s sight. Would it be possible, then, to say of the world that He bare their sins in His body on the tree? Surely not, or they would most certainly be saved. He could not have borne their sins and they yet have to bear them. A strict and proper substitution assuredly necessitates the removal of responsibility from the one for whom the substitute assumes it. It results, therefore, that a substitute for the world the Lord was not. And the language of Scripture is everywhere in accord with this. It does speak of propitiation for the sins of the whole world: it does not speak of their sins being "laid on" or "borne" by Christ. These two things have been confounded on the one hand, and made into a doctrine of limited atonement, or of substitution for all. On the other, where the distinction has been noticed, it has been taken to imply that on the cross there was a work for all and a special work for the elect beside — a double atonement, as it were; that it was a propitiation for all, a substitution for the elect. In other words, the Arminian atonement and the Calvinistic atonement are both considered true, and to be found together in the work of Christ. But this leads to much confusion and misreading of Scripture, much manifest opposition to it. It has led some to speak of salvation as a thing wrought out eighteen hundred years ago, — not simply the blessed work which saves, but actual salvation. Faith serves as a telescope to see what existed before we saw it, and what it had nothing to do therefore with producing. The sins of believers were thus dealt with and removed before they were committed, and people find peace by faith, but are not justified by it. All this is in complete opposition to the Word; yet it is a just consequence of the doctrine of a substitution for the elect, and their sins borne when the Lord Jesus died. Yet He did bear their sins upon the tree, and Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of us all. "Ours"? Whose, then? and how does this differ from the doctrine just repudiated? The answer is very simple. These words are the language of faith, of believers; and of believers as such only is it true. He bare the sins of believers on the tree, and this is equivalent to what we have been saying — that the efficacy of atonement is conditional. It is conditioned upon faith, and His bearing the sins of believers is a complete negative of universalism in all its phases. Only their sins are borne, although the atonement is for the sins of the whole world; and the duty and responsibility of faith are therefore to be pressed on every creature. The sins of believers were really borne eighteen hundred years ago; but only when men become believers are their sins borne, therefore. The very man who today believes, and whose sins were borne eighteen hundred years ago, not only could not say yesterday that his sins were borne, but they were really not borne yesterday, although the work was done eighteen hundred years ago. But it was done for believers, and only today is he a believer. The work of atonement only now has its proper efficacy for him: he is justified by faith. All this is perfectly simple. It is transparently so, indeed. What has clouded and disfigured it? On the one hand, the importing into it the doctrine of election, which is never done in Scripture; on the other, the thought that our iniquity being laid upon the Lord meant the putting away of so much sin for so much suffering, — so many actual sins of just so many persons being provided for, and no other. But this would make propitiation for the world impossible, and destroy, as we have seen, if consistently followed out, justification by faith. The simple meaning of the texts appealed to involves no such difficulty. The Lord Jesus, then, was the Substitute for believers, and thus made propitiation for the sins of the world, its efficacy being conditioned upon faith. He stood as the Representative of a class, not a fixed number of individuals, — of a people to whom men are invited and besought to join themselves, the value of the atonement being more than sufficient and available for all who come. The responsibility of coming really rests, where Scrip-always places it, upon men themselves. Now, if it be asked, What is the issue of this invitation? Do any become of the number of His people really except in virtue of a divine work wrought sovereignly in their souls? it is true, none do so. "To as many as received Him, to them gave He right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13). Such is the decisive statement of Scripture. Men are born again to be children of God; and the new birth is not of man’s will: the moment we speak of it, we speak of that which assures us that man’s will is wholly adverse. For to be born again is never a thing put upon man as what he is responsible for: it is, in its very nature, outside of this. And "Ye must be born again" is the distinct affirmation that on the ground of responsibility all is over. "How often would I . . .! and ye would not," is the Lord’s lament over Israel; and it is true of man in nature every where. Terrible it is to realize it, but it is true. Man is bidden to repent and believe the gospel. There is no lack of abundant evidence. It is the condemnation, that "light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." They refuse the evidence that convicts them, and refuse the grace that would save them. "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." That he needs to be born again shows that God must work sovereignly, or the whole world perish. So it is quickening from the dead and new creation. These terms all witness to the utter ruin of man, as they do to the omnipotent grace of God in conversion. These terms speak all of a new life conferred, and with this life the condition required in order to efficacious atonement is accomplished; there is "justification of life" (Rom 5:18) justification attaching to the life possessed. The last Adam is made a quickening Spirit (1Co 15:45), after having gone down to death and come up out of it; and the life He gives brings those who receive it into a new creation, of which He is the Representative-Head. To these He is Kinsman-Redeemer, according to the type (Lev 25:48). The new relationship is their security and entrance into full blessing, to which His work is now their absolute title. It is here that election does come in; not to limit the provision, nor to restrict in any wise the grace that bids and welcomes all, but to secure the blessing of those who otherwise would refuse and forfeit it as the rest do. The grace to all is not narrowed by the "grace upon grace" to many. The universal offer means and is based on a universal provision, and a provision of exactly the same character for all alike, in which God testifies that He hath "no pleasure in the death of him that dieth," but "will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." It may be asked, as it has been asked, Of what avail is a provision for all which saves not one additional to the elect number? The answer which Scripture would give is, "What if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith [or faithfulness] of God without effect? God forbid." The salvation of men is from God; the damnation of men is from themselves. This all the pleadings, warnings, offers of God affirm. And grace refused is still grace, and to be proclaimed to His praise. The last Adam is thus the Representative-Head of His people, as in His atoning work He was their Substitute before God. "Upon the seed of Abraham" — that is, believers, — "He layeth hold." This affirms the work to be for all, conditionally upon faith; and for believers unconditionally. "The righteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all; and upon" — or "over," rather, as a shield or sheltering roof, — "all them that believe." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 42: 02.25. CHAPTER 25 - RESURRECTION THE SIGN OF COMPLETE ATONEMENT. ======================================================================== Chapter 25 Resurrection the Sign of Complete Atonement. For the great mass of Christians, the resurrection of Christ has dropped out of the place in reference to atonement which it finds in Scripture. The resurrection side of the gospel has dropped out. Yet God has been graciously reviving the truth of it in many hearts. Let us seek to get hold of what is wrapped up for us in the joyful tidings of Christ risen from the dead. "If Christ be not risen," says the apostle to the Corinthians, "ye are yet in your sins." The resurrection was the full, open acceptance of the work which alone could put them away. It was God manifesting Himself on the side of those for whom the work was now accomplished. Hence faith rests in "Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;" and it is added, in explanation of this, "who was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification" (Rom 4:24-25). "Resurrection from the dead" has always this character of acceptance of the one raised up, and must not be confounded with the simple fact of resurrection in itself. When the Lord, at the Mount of Transfiguration, "charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen until the Son of Man were risen from the dead," the disciples "kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean" (Mark 9:9-10). Familiar as they were with the general truth that the dead should rise, this rising from the dead — not from the state of the dead, but from among the dead themselves, a special resurrection which would leave the rest unchanged, — was to them a new and unknown thing. "I know that he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day," Martha’s words as to her brother, was the expression of the faith of every orthodox Jew of that day. Alas! even yet, the general faith of Christendom goes no further. But the Lord, in arguing with the Sadducees, speaks of a special class, "those who should be accounted worthy to attain that world and the resurrection from the dead," as "the children of God, being the children of the resurrection" (Luk 20:35-36). The resurrection from the dead approves as accepted of God all that participate in it. Thus is it pre-eminently, then, with the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It is the triumphant demonstration, in the face of His enemies, of God for Him whom they had crucified and slain. "What sign showest Thou," said the Jews once to Him, "seeing that Thou doest these things?" and the Lord answers, "’Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ . . . . He spake of the temple of His body" (John 2:19; John 2:21). All through His ministry among men indeed the signs of the Father’s approval and delight were openly given. The works which He did in His Father’s name bore witness to Him. The Father’s voice and the descending Spirit had borne witness also. But these were personal to Himself alone. Now, having completed His work on behalf of others, His resurrection becomes the seal of the acceptance of what was done in their behalf. It is the testimony still of the approval of His own personal perfection, but as standing in a place altogether apart from what was His due personally, and where the holiness of God tested Him as the fire of the altar the sacrifice upon it. In result, all the sweet savor of the sacrifice was brought out by it. So of the Lord, as had long ago been declared by another prophetically personating Him, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [or "hades"], neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption." It was as the Holy One He could not see it. "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save Him out of death," — not, as in the common version, "from death," — "and was heard in that He feared," or as in the margin, "for His piety" (Heb 5:7). It was this upon which all depended, what under the most perfect, most bitter trial, was found in Him. The white linen garments of the high-priest, the type of spotless righteousness wrought out, were the only ones, as we have elsewhere seen, in which he could enter the most holy place. Nothing else but such righteousness could bring Him in there, the representative of a people accepted in Him. The declaration of this acceptance waited not, indeed, for resurrection. His testimony before He dies is that the atoning work is "finished" (John 19:30). He had no sooner died than the rent vail declared it. And the threefold witness of the Spirit, water, and blood answered at once the thrust of the soldier’s spear (John 19:34-35; 1Jn 5:8). Already the record is, that "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son" (1Jn 5:11). It is only in continuance of these testimonies that by the glory of the Father He is raised from among the dead, and then in due season "by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb 9:12). Blessed it is to see the promptitude of this utterance of the heart of God as to that which is in His sight of such infinite value. At once the rent vail attests that the "merciful and faithful High-Priest" has made "propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb 2:17). The typical blood must wait until the high-priest himself has entered the sanctuary; but not so the antitypical. The vail could not have been rent had not the mercy-seat been already sprinkled. The typical blood was but the blood of bulls and goats, and required human hands to carry it in; the antitypical needed none such to present it to the omniscient eye of Him to whom it was offered. The difference is one of those suited necessary contrasts between figure and reality, of which there are so many, and which constitute one of the gravest admonitions to caution in the application of the figures. That it is the high-priest who makes "atonement in the holy place" (Lev 16:17), and of whom the apostle speaks in the interpretation, Heb 2:10, is indeed a difficulty with those who having learned from Scripture that "if He were on earth, He should not be a priest" (Heb 8:4) suppose therefore that at the cross He was not. The mistake is natural, but the Word of God meets the difficulty for us in the words of the Saviour as to this, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth." At the cross He was no more "on earth," and this is no strain of an expression: He had in fact done with earth, was passing from it, His place among men gone. And here, of necessity, His priesthood began; else was there no priestly offering up at all, for assuredly it was not in resurrection that the altar-fire consumed the victim; and the ministry of the altar was exclusively the priest’s work. Thus, surely, it is clear how it was our High-Priest who as such made atonement, as it is also clear by the rent vail and the resurrection itself that before resurrection the blood was sprinkled on the heavenly mercy-seat. Resurrection followed on the third day to set the Second Man in His Last-Adam place. It is plain how 1Co 15:1-58 connects this place with the "spiritual body" of the resurrection. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." The first Adam is plainly himself a living soul with a natural body, the word "natural" being here the adjective of the word "soul" itself, a body fitted for the soul, as we may say. The last Adam is the pattern of those of His heavenly race, as the first was of his earthy race. Only they are not yet in the image of the heavenly, (as they shall be,) though they are heavenly; and the Lord too is not merely a living spirit, but, according to His own necessary pre-eminence, a life-giving spirit. This is so beautifully pictured in the scene in the twentieth of John, where as God breathed into Adam at the first, He breathes now upon His disciples, that I do not doubt it to be the meaning there. He has taken and is representing to us His last-Adam place. But this I do not dwell on further here. He rises, then, with a spiritual body, does not assume it afterward, as some have thought. The wounds in His hands and side, which some have brought forward to prove the opposite, do as little prove it as Zec 12:10 or Zec 13:6 would prove it of a day yet future. Return to His former condition before the cross we have seen He could not. His death means the acceptance of the solemn sentence by which man as first created had been set aside out of his place. Restore this He does not; while He can and does bring in for His people what is infinitely better. He rises, then, the Representative of His people in their new place of unchanging blessing, in the likeness to which they are to be conformed. He is raised again for the justification of all believers. For these His death has absolutely atoned, for these acceptance is complete and unconditional; while individually every one comes into it by faith, — is justified by faith. Here is the one condition upon which Scripture uniformly insists, in regard to propitiation no less than substitution: for, be it that He is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, this is not unconditionally; He is a "propitiation by faith in His blood," as the common version, or "a propitiation through faith by His blood," as the Revised Version better renders it. The door is indeed open to all the world, but those who enter enter by faith; and only thus is the propitiation really theirs. The resurrection of Christ is therefore God coming out openly for His people, and Christ risen is the measure of their acceptance. His is theirs. He is accepted for them; they are accepted in Him. Substitution ends with the cross, for our place in which He stood ends there; but representation does not end with the cross, but the place He takes in resurrection He brings us into. We are dead with Him is the language of Scripture; we are risen also with Him: we are "accepted" — "taken into favor;" "graced," if we may use the literal word, — "in the Beloved." His place is ours; only we must remember that when we say this, we limit it strictly to that of which we are speaking — His place in resurrection. There are glories, it need hardly be said, that are entirely His own, — not only divine glories, but as man also. We speak simply now of a place of acceptance as manifested in resurrection from the dead; not even as yet of the opened heavens: for when we go so far, we have to remember that not all accepted ones go even to heaven. There will be by and by a new earth also, in which dwelleth righteousness. But so far as we have reached, we speak of what is the common portion of saints of all ages, heavenly and earthly alike. In this sense, then, we say His death is ours, His resurrection is ours, His acceptance is ours: we are accepted and find our place in Him; we are identified with Him. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 43: 02.26. CHAPTER 26 - UNION AND IDENTIFICATION WITH CHRIST. ======================================================================== Chapter 26 Union and Identification with Christ. At this point it becomes necessary to consider the nature of union with Christ, and to distinguish it from what has been confounded with it, though very different, — identification with Him. Scripture, indeed, which speaks of being joined or united to Christ, does not use the latter term; but the equivalent is abundantly given in the New Testament in the expression with which our last chapter closed — "in Christ." This is taken by most Christians as the very term for union. We must look, therefore, the more carefully into the matter. Identification may also, and will, be in certain respects the result of union. Husband and wife become thus "one flesh;" "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit (1Co 6:17). Here is, no doubt the origin of the confusion; but it is none the less such. We may speak of identification where there could not be union. We are identified with Christ in His death, not united to Him in it; identified in nature with Him, not united to His nature; identified with Him as our Representative before God, not united with Him as such. These things are not in fact for us the result of union. "If any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation," says the apostle (2Co 5:17). That is what "in Christ" means — a new creation. At new birth there is dropped into the soul the seed of divine, eternal life. It is not, as so many think, merely a moral change which is effected; but just as that which is born of the flesh is flesh, so that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Those so horn are truly partakers of His nature, and thus not simply adopted but real children of God. Christ is their life, the new "Adam" of a new creation; but in which He is Creator as well as Head, as we have seen.* {*It is important to see clearly the exact force of this term "creation," as Scripture uses it. In Gen 1:1-31, in the divine work, we have the creation of heaven and earth, of the living soul (the animal), and of man. All else is said to be made, and not created. The creation of heaven and earth speaks, of course, of their first origination; but in the case of the beast the soul, in that of the man the spirit, are the successive additions, which justify the term "creation" as applied to them. The beast has a soul (Gen 1:30), but not a spirit. Man has not only a soul, but a spirit also (1Th 5:23), by virtue of which alone he has the knowledge of a man (1Co 2:11), and is the offspring of God (Acts 17:28; Heb 12:9). Yet the beast and the man are said to be "created," and not the soul and spirit only. So the child of God, by this new spiritual life communicated at new birth, becomes "a new creation."} But union is never said to be by or in new creation, but accomplished in a very different way. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit;" and the context shows that it is of marriage the apostle is speaking: "For two, saith He, shall be one flesh; but he that is united to the Lord is one spirit." Such a figure is not and could not be applied to new creation. The Creator is not united to the creature, nor the parent to the child; but the head is united to the body, the husband to the wife, and the apostle in Eph 5:25-33 applies both these as illustrative of the Church’s relationship to Christ. A man’s wife is his own flesh, his body: and "no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ the Church; for we are members of His body." To be of the last Adam’s race and to be members of Christ are in Scripture perfectly distinct things, though in the minds of many there is sad confusion again as to this. Many belong and will yet belong to the new creation who never belong to the body of Christ at all. We are baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ (1Co 12:13); and that baptism began only at Pentecost (Acts 1:5; Mat 3:11); while the Church will be complete at the coming of Christ, before the thousand years begin of the earth’s blessing. But to pursue this would lead us too far from our present subject. It is enough to say that those baptized at Pentecost into the body of Christ were already before this born again and a new creation. And if these things were thus distinct in them, they must be as much so in all others. "In Christ" is not, then, union; it is identification by virtue of that new life which is received when we are born again, and which connects us with the last Adam our Representative Head. This identification is twofold: first, in the new, divine nature received, so that it can be said, "For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren" (Heb 2:11); while secondly, we are identified with Him in the work He has accomplished for us as our Representative. The identification with Him in nature is what is needed to constitute true representation: — "Behold I and the children which God hath given Me; forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part in the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, and deliver those who all their lifetime, through fear of death, were subject to bondage; for verily He taketh not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold" (Heb 2:13-16). We have seen how this death of Christ for His people — because all are truly welcome to become His people becomes a propitiation for the whole world. A true basis for representation is found in this true brotherhood between the Lord and His own, without narrowing the limits of an atonement for all. But thus too the various views of ritualists and others based upon the Lord’s supposed union with all men in His assumption of the common humanity are completely set aside. Without contending further as to the Scripture thought of "union," it is not a common humanity which establishes relationship between the Lord and the whole race of men. It is by what is in men the new nature, not the old, that they become His "brethren." And the new life that they thus receive is, as His own words testify, a life which is the fruit of His death alone: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." This He says of His own death and its results. But for His death, His perfect, spotless manhood could have availed nothing for us. Our link is with Him the other side of death, a death by which the first man and the old creation are set aside forever. Identification and union are both for us with Him risen from the dead. It is for want of understanding this that the force of the apostle’s words in Rom 5:10 is so little seen: "If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved through His life." "Who was delivered for our offenses," he says in the fourth chapter, "and raised again for our justification." Thus it is His risen life that is salvation for us; not simply because "He ever liveth to make intercession for us," but because that life is the new beginning of every thing for us. The death and resurrection of Christ are thus the pillars of the gospel: His death the knife to cut the fatal link of connection with the old fallen head; His resurrection the power that lifts us into the new place of acceptance and the eternal joy. Dead with Christ, we are dead to sin (Rom 6:11), to the law (Rom 7:4), and to the elements of the world, and are no longer alive in it (Col 2:20). We are not of the world, even as Christ is not (John 17:16). From this it results that "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision," — neither the Jewish nor the Gentile footing, — "but new creation." And here is the practical rule of Christianity; "and as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy" (Gal 6:15-16). How important, then, in every way is this resurrection side of the gospel! Alike for full deliverance and for a true Christian walk it must be known. Except as dead with Christ, I have no title to reckon myself dead to sin: for this is not feeling or finding, not experience at all, but faith; and faith which not only sees that Christ has borne my sins, but that He has stood for me, in my stead, so that His death has removed me and all the evil of my evil nature forever out of the sight of God, to give me my true self now in Christ in His presence. I am delivered from legal self-occupation, the enemy of all true holiness, and enabled for occupation with Christ, the true secret of holiness and of power. "We all with open face beholding the glory of the Lord are changed into His image, from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit." The imprint of this glory it is by which we become the letter of commendation of Christ read and known of all men; a letter written, not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but on fleshy tables of the heart (2Co 3:18; 2Co 3:3). Upon all this I must not here dwell; and it has been dwelt upon at length by many. But it shows how in every detail of it the doctrine of atonement connects with all Christian experience and practice together. May its rich and blessed fruits he found in us as in him who said, "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 44: 02.27. CHAPTER 27 - GOD GLORIFIED AND GLORIFYING HIMSELF. ======================================================================== Chapter 27 God Glorified and Glorifying Himself. We have seen the work of atonement as a work needed by man, applicable and applied to him for his complete justification and deliverance. And this involves, as we have seen, God’s satisfaction with the blessed work done on man’s behalf, of which the rent vail and the resurrection are the prompt witnesses on His part. But we have reserved to this place, as the fittest for it, the full divine side of the cross, so far as we can utter it. In our review of Scripture, it has necessarily often occupied us; but in this sketch of the doctrine — now very near conclusion, — it needs to be afresh considered and put in connection with it. It is indeed, and must be, the crowning glory of the whole. We begin, naturally and necessarily, with that which meets our need as sinners, and yet even so that need is never rightly met until we have seen, not merely our sins put away, but whose hand it is that does this. Nor must we stop here even with Christ for us. It must be "God for us." "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Quite true, if we have come to Christ we have come to the Father; if we know Christ we know the Father: and so our Lord replies to Philip’s words which we have just quoted. But we need to understand this. It is no long road to travel, from the Son to the Father. The Father is perfectly and only revealed in the Son. Yet many stop short of this for long; using Christ’s work more as a shelter from God than a way to God: like Israel on that night in Egypt when God says, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you;" but how different from the Psalmist’s deeper utterance — "Thou art my hiding-place." To be hidden from God, or hidden in God which is our faith’s experience, reader? It is evident that in these two thoughts God is in contrasted characters: to pass from one to the other involves a revelation. And as Philip’s words truly say, nothing but this last suffices the heart. God has made it for Himself: nothing but Himself will satisfy it. It is true "the Son of Man must be lifted up" here is a necessity. Yes, but "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son:" here is God Himself revealed. It is the cross in each case that is contemplated, but how differently! And it is this divine side of the cross that is now to occupy us. God glorifies Himself in revealing Himself. He shines out. Clouds and darkness no more encompass Him. He is in the light, and in Him is no darkness at all. And we, blessed be His name! are in the light. The darkness is passing, if not wholly passed. The true light already shines. Through the rent wail of the flesh of Jesus the divine glory shines. It is of His cross our precious Redeemer says, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God be glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will straightway glorify Him." These words may well serve as the text of all we have to say. "Now is the Son of Man glorified." No ray of glory shone upon Him: all was deepest darkness, profoundest humiliation; yet in the cross the Son of Man was glorified. Well might He say to Peter, "Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now." Who but Himself could have gone down into the abyss where was no standing, to lay again the misplaced foundations of the earth? Who but He could have borne the awful trial of the fire of divine holiness, searching out all the inward parts, and in that place have been but a sweet savor to an absolutely holy God? Who but He could have assumed those sins of ours which He calls in the prophetic psalms "My sins," and risen up again, not merely in the might of a divine person, but in the power of a thoroughly human righteousness? Yes, verily, "the Son of Man was glorified;" but more — "God is glorified in Him." There are two ways in which we may look at this. First: God was glorified by the perfect obedience of One who owed no obedience, as He had done no wrong. He restored what He took not away. He confessed fully a sin He had Himself to measure in infinite suffering and alone. He confessed and proclaimed a righteousness and holiness in God to which He surrendered Himself, vindicating it against Himself when God forsook Him as the bearer of sin. And He presented to God a perfect humanity, fully tried and beyond question, in which the fall was retrieved, and God’s thought in man’s creation brought out and cleared from the dishonor the first man had cast upon it. And goodness triumphed in weakness over evil; the bruised foot of the woman’s seed trod down the serpent’s head. But secondly: when we think of the mystery of His person, it is God Himself who has taken — truly taken — this earthen vessel of a pure and true humanity, that He might give to Himself the atonement for man’s sin. It is God who has coveted and gained capacity for weakness, suffering, and death itself, that He might demonstrate eternal holiness, and yet manifest everlasting love to men. It is God who has "devised means that His banished should not be expelled from Him." And it is God who has cleared up all the darkness of this world by this great joy found at the bottom of a cup of awful agony; who has brought out of the eater meat, out of the strong sweetness, out of death and the grave eternal life! It is this revelation of God in the cross that is its moral power. In all that He does, the Son of God is doing the Father’s will, keeping the Father’s commandments, making known the Father’s name. The gospel is the "gospel of God" — His good news, — in which "glory to God in the highest" coalesces with "peace on earth, delight in men." And so it is "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." Every way it becomes true, "when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." This is that moral power of the cross which some would make the whole matter, but which can only be when found in a true atonement for our sins. Mere exhibition would be theatrical, not real, and could not do the work designed in it. A real need really met, a just debt paid at personal cost, guilt measured only and removed by such a sacrifice, — this alone can lay hold upon the heart so as to be of abiding control over it. And this does control: "O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds." But the moral effect of the cross, the power of the display of divine glory in it, is not to be measured merely by what it accomplishes among men. Scripture has shown to us; clearly if not in its full extent, a sphere which is far more extensive than that of redemption. Into the "sufferings of Christ and the glories which should follow," says the apostle Peter, "the angels desire to look." And while by it the Redeemer, "gone up on high," has "led captivity captive," and "having spoiled principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it," on the other hand, "God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love ’I wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." And more precisely the same apostle speaks of God’s "intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God." (Eph 2:4-7; Eph 3:10.) Not to us only, nor only for our sakes, is the glory of God revealed! Would He hide from others the glorious face which has shone upon us? On the contrary, if "the Lamb" be "the light of" the heavenly city of the redeemed, the light of the city itself is "like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;" for He that sits upon the throne is "like a jasper and a sardine stone," and the city has the glory of God (Rev 4:3; Rev 21:11). "Unto Him," says the apostle, "be glory in the Church, in Christ Jesus, through all generations of the age of ages" (Eph 3:21). God, then, being glorified in Christ, glorifies Him in Himself, giving Him a name above every name. "By His own blood He enters in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb 9:12). Not simply as the divine Person that He always was does He enter there, but now as the One who has by Himself purged sins He sits down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb 1:3). He is Head over all things, Head of all principality and power, Head to the Church which is His body (Col 1:18; Col 2:10; Eph 1:22). His request is fulfilled: "Father, glorify Thy Son," and the end in which His heart rests He names, "that Thy Son also may glorify Thee" (John 17:2). The end and object of all is the glory of God. It is perfectly, divinely true, that "God hath ordained for His own glory whatsoever comes to pass." In order to guard this from all possibility of mistake, we have only to remember who is this God, and what the glory that He seeks. It is He who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, — of Him in whom divine love came seeking not her own, among us as "One that serveth." It is He who, sufficient to Himself, can receive no real accession of glory from His creatures, but from whom" Love," as He is "Light," — cometh down every good and every perfect gift, in whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning. Of His own alone can His creatures give to Him. The glory of such an one is found in the display of His own goodness, righteousness, holiness, truth; in manifesting Himself as in Christ He has manifested Himself and will forever. The glory of this God is what of necessity all things must serve, — adversaries and evil as well as all else. He has ordained it; His power will insure it; and when all apparent clouds and obstructions are removed, then shall He rest — "rest in His love" forever, although eternity only will suffice for the apprehension of the revelation. "God shall be all in all" gives in six words the ineffable result. Christ, then, is the One in whom God has revealed and glorified Himself — glorified by revealing Himself. Upon Him all the ages wait: "all things were created by Him and for Him." He is the "Father of eternity:" Head of the Church His body; last Adam of a new creation. And in this eternal purpose of God we have our place, therefore, and how blessed an one! — "chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love" (Eph 1:4). "That in the ages to come He might show forth the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" — "God, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ; and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." The cross of Christ was an absolute necessity for the salvation of men; but it is more, — it is an absolute necessity for the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose to show forth the exceeding riches of His grace. In it already has been accomplished that which is the wonder and joy of heaven, the fullest song on the lips of her adoring worshipers. But the grace in this must have full expression — the fullest. He who has become a man for our salvation cannot give up again the manhood He has assumed. Service is the fruit of love. He has taken the place of service, and will keep it: the love is not temporary, but eternal, in His heart; the expression of it should be as eternal as the love. And if He come down to this place, and as man lead the praises of His people, men must be in the nearest place to Him; that it may be, not merely compassion seen in Him, but love; and love, free, unearned, divine, the exceeding riches of the grace of God. Thus, too, the cross is honored, exalted, lifted up before the eyes of all the universe. That He died; for what He died; how gloriously the work has been achieved. While the arms that thus are thrown around men encircle all: for it is God in Christ who has done this, and who is this, — God, the God and Father of all. There are various circles and ranks among the redeemed in glory. There are earthly and heavenly, and differences too among these. This of course implies no difference in justification, in the atonement made alike for all. A common salvation has been taken generally to mean a common place for every one of the saved; and the special place and privileges of the body of Christ have been assumed to belong to all of these. But Scripture is as plain as need be that this is not so. There will be, of those whose names are written in heaven, a church of first-born ones, as there will be a company of "spirits of just men made perfect" — a suited designation of Old Testament saints (Heb 12:23). There will be a new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness, as there is an "inheritance reserved in heaven" for believers now (1Pe 1:4; 2Pe 3:13). I cannot dwell upon this here, and yet if it is not seen, there must be real and great confusion. But all in these different places are blood-washed ones alike: the same sacrifice has been made for all; His name under whom Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely will be, for them as for us, "The Lord our Righteousness" (Jer 23:6). Yet Israel’s promises are earthly, and not heavenly. We see, then, that to have "Christ made unto us righteousness" involves no necessary place in heaven. And yet the cross is the sufficient justification of whatever place can be given to a creature; and it has pleased God to take out of the Gentiles a people for His name, to make known the value of the cross and show forth the exceeding riches of His grace. In Christ we are already seated in the heavenly places, and where He is is to be our place forever. This we know; and it is part of the blessed plan in which God in Christ shall be fully made known, to the deepest joy and adoration of His creatures. We are reminded here of the unequal offerings of the day of atonement, — the bullock for the priesthood, and the two goats for the nation of Israel. They are types of the same sacrifice, but in different aspects; and the priesthood clearly represent the heavenly family, as the holy place to which they belong represents the heavenly places themselves. We have considered this already, however, in its place. And now we may close this brief and imperfect sketch of an all-important subject by reminding our readers of the way in which the Lamb — the atoning victim — fills the eye all through the book of Revelation. Not only by the blood of the Lamb the saints’ robes are washed and the victors overcome; not only is it the Lamb that the redeemed celebrate, while the wicked dread His wrath; but He is the opener of the seven-sealed book, the interpreter of the divine counsels; His is the book of life, and the first-fruits from the earth, and the bride the Lamb’s wife; the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of the city; the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light; while the river of the water of life flows eternally from the throne of God and of the Lamb. "Soon shall our eyes behold Thee, With rapture, face to face One half hath not been told me Of all Thy power and grace. Thy beauty, Lord, and glory, The wonders of Thy love Shall be the endless story Of all Thy saints above." F. W. Grant. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 45: 03.0.1. CHRISTIAN HOLINESS. ======================================================================== Christian Holiness. F. W. Grant. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 46: 03.0.2. TABLE OF CONTENTS ======================================================================== Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1. — Antinomianism : where is it? Chapter 2. — Holiness Rooted in a True Atonement Chapter 3. — Justification and Acceptance in Christ Chapter 4. — Is There Such a Thing as Being Born Again? Chapter 5. — Christian Security and its Moral Results Chapter 6. — Sin in the Believer Chapter 7. — God’s History of His People Chapter 8. — The Moral Application for the Christian ======================================================================== CHAPTER 47: 03.0.3. INTRODUCTION. ======================================================================== Introduction. The immediate occasion of the following pages has been a recent attack upon "the theology of the so-called Plymouth Brethren" by a professor of didactic theology in Boston University, in which what many beside the present writer regard as some of the most precious doctrines of the Word of God are stigmatized as antinomianism. This will account for whatever controversial character may he found in them; a thing scarcely to be regretted if it serve, as it does undoubtedly serve, to bring out and emphasize the fundamental questions, as well as to exhibit the strength of the arguments on either side. Truth will only suffer if there should be found in this a spirit of acrimony or a contention for the mastery rather than the truth: both which, alas are apt to be engendered by controversy. This, if it should be found in me, I shall not beg my reader to excuse. Holiness is not a theme to be discussed in a manner so essentially unholy. I do not think Dr. Steele will deny my competence to speak in behalf of the doctrines he incriminates. If he has studied them, as he tells us, for ten years (p. 100), I have done so for twenty-five; and while he has done this from an outside (if not a hostile) stand-point, I have known them from inside, estimating them by internal experience (a very different thing), and bringing them daily to the test of the Word of God. I speak of this the rather, because I do not propose to bring forward in general the testimony of men, but to appeal to the Word itself throughout, while yet I shall have again and again to disclaim Dr. Steele’s representation of the views he has attacked, of which I must say he has still very partial knowledge. If he dispute my own, I am ready to meet him on that ground also. In the meanwhile, I am sure that those who are acquainted with the writings of those referred to will confirm my presentation of them. It is Dr. Steele who should have proved that the views he attacks are really the views of representative writers among the "so-called Plymouth Brethren." He has certainly not done so with any thing like the care that might be expected in so grave a question. With the exception of a quotation or two from Mackintosh’s "Notes," and one from the "Eight Lectures on Prophecy," he has given little or nothing with which one can properly credit "Mr. Darby and his school" (p. 86). Some of his quotations are without clue to the writer; others are from the large number of (supposed) "sympathizers" (p. 30), as to whom nothing is given to show how far their sympathy extends, or that the doctrine presented in them is really that of those they "sympathize" with. Dr. Steele speaks of Mr. Darby as "their leading mind" and the head of the school. He has studied their writings for ten years, knows of course that Mr. Darby’s own fill thirty-seven volumes of near six hundred pages each, and it would be reasonable to expect that he would quote largely from these. So far as I know, there is not one quotation. Dr. Steele’s "Darbyism" somehow leaves out Darby! And this is all the more strange, because he brings forward six times what that "venerable Christian scholar" said to the writer (pp.18, 60, 131, 158, 181), which of course we have no means of verifying; but not one line or sentence from his written books! But Mr. McDonald, in the preface, has quoted Mr. Darby: "Any thing which looks like church prosperity is, with Plymouth Brethren, a delusion. ’The year-books of Christianity,’ says Mr. Darby, ’are the year-books of hell.’" (p. 15.) Yet even this is given without a clue to whence it is derived. I have taken some trouble to find it, but as yet without success. Mr. McDonald may be surprised, however, to learn that it is from a Romish historian (I think, Baronius), and not from Mr. Darby at all; although it is used by him somewhere to show the state of the professing church. This is not an extreme specimen of that kind of mis-representation of which the book before us has many instances. Intentional misrepresentations I do not mean, but the effect is the same for readers of such things. Take one example from Dr. Steele himself as proof: — "At my request, Mr. Darby gave an exposition of Mat 25:31-46. What pitiable makeshifts to explain away this most solemn and awful passage in holy Scripture. ’It was not a final and universal judgment, but a review of the Gentile nations. Individuals are not here judged, but nations other than the Jews.’" (p. 185.) This is all put within quotation-marks, as if it were the very words used on this occasion. In fact, it is only Dr. Steele’s impression of what was meant, and a very false one. Take the written statement of the Synopsis (vol. 3. p. 164), as evidence: "It is the judgement of the living, so far at least as regards the nations — a judgment as final as that of the dead." And if any one will turn to his tract upon eternal punishment, he will find this very passage argued upon in proof of it. "Eternal life and eternal or everlasting punishment answer to one another, and mean the same in either case. The punishment of the wicked, then, is said to be of equal duration with the life of the blessed." This settles the question conclusively as to whether in Mr. Darby’s thought individuals or nations (as such) are before us in this text. Inasmuch as it is with him a final judgment to eternal life or eternal punishment, there can be no question that it is of individuals. "All the nations" means simply "all the Gentiles," as he affirms. It is a strange excess of prejudice that can cause gross misconceptions such as these. And then with thirty-seven volumes that lie open to criticism, to prefer to give judgment upon private conversations! Assuredly no honest mind will accept Dr. Steele’s account in defiance of published statements such as these. I am sorry to say that it is not only in such ways that Dr. Steele shows the spirit that can animate one who "is not ashamed to confess with tongue and type and telegraph and telephone" that he believes in "a genuine CHRISTIAN PERFECTION." (p. 25.) Not only are sentiments imputed to the objects of his attack which they refuse and abhor, but immoral practices also. They are stigmatized as Antinomians, who believe that the sins of Christians are not real sins (p. 89), that the efficacy of faith is concentrated into a single act of assent to a past fact (p. 50), who are indifferent to inward and outward holiness (p. 101), concealing the offensive features of their doctrine with Jesuitical cunning (p.130), and so on. Perhaps the title of Dr. Steele’s book should have prepared us for such charges. It would have served his purpose better to have proved them; especially as somehow these people "insist on deadness to the world, and entire devotion to God"! (p. 55.) But we are sanctified only by the truth: if, then, the doctrines in question are not truth, we must concede they do not sanctify. Our business at this time is wholly with the doctrines. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 48: 03.01. CHAPTER 01 - ANTINOMIANISM : WHERE IS IT? ======================================================================== Chapter 01 Antinomianism : where is it? Mr. Fletcher’s definition of antinomianism is a curious illustration of the value attaching to names of this kind in such controversies. Luther invented the term to designate the views of Agricola, who denied the use of the law to produce conviction and repentance, as well as sanctification. Mr. Fletcher’s statement would condemn Luther himself, and it was intended to include the chiefs of the Calvinistic evangelical party of his day. Dr. Hodge says ("Outlines of Theology," p. 404), "Antinomianism] has often been ignorantly or maliciously charged upon Calvinism as a necessary inference by Arminians," — such as Mr. Fletcher and Dr. Steele; and he retorts the charge upon them thus: "It is evident that all systems of perfectionism, which teach (as the Pelagian and Oberlin theories,) that men’s ability to obey is the measure of their responsibility, or (as the papal and Arminian theories,) that God for Christ’s sake has graciously reduced His demand from absolute moral perfection to faith and evangelical obedience, are essentially Antinomian." (p. 526.) Thus it seems the Plymouth Brethren have companions under the same imputation with themselves. As I have said, Mr. Fletcher’s definition was admittedly not made for them, but for such men as Hervey, Toplady, Romaine, Whitefield, and others, — men with whom it would be an honour to be condemned, but whom Dr. Steele seems anxious to associate with those who "decry that evangelical legality (!) which all true Christians are in love with — a cleaving to Christ by that kind of faith which works righteousness"! And, reader, you are, according to the definition, an Antinomian, unless you expect to be justified before God by your own personal obedience, and not by the obedience of Christ, in the great day of final account. (pp. 31, 32.) That is the test of antinomianism for Mr. Fletcher. — Dr. Steele, in summing it up, however, adds new features, which are some of them indeed part of the creed of hyper-Calvinism, while some of them probably no one would own in the present day, and none but a fanatic could ever hold. Let Dr. S. produce, if he can, from the thirty-seven volumes of the "leader" of the school, or from the numerous writings of C. H. M., or Wm. Kelly, — wide enough scope, if this be the Plymouth doctrine, — the least intimation that "my faith is simply a waking up to the fact that I have always been saved or that "a believer is not bound to mourn for sin, because it was pardoned before it was committed, and pardoned sin is no sin;" or that "by God’s laying our iniquities upon Christ, He became as completely sinful as I;" or that "no sin can do a believer any ultimate harm;" or that "the conditions of the new covenant, repentance, faith, and obedience, are not on our side, but on Christ’s side, who repented, believed, and obeyed in such a way as to relieve us from these unpleasant acts." (pp. 35, 36.) After ten years of patient inquiry, an accuser cannot be guiltless in putting out such things in a book professedly against the Plymouth Brethren without guarding his readers against attributing them to them as they would do necessarily otherwise. It is true Dr. S. has not directly charged them with them; but this is the creed of an Antinomian, and they are Antinomians. The argument is too simple and necessary not to be made, and he must know it would be. We now have a historical sketch of antinomianism, which is of no special importance for our purpose. It only needs to remind the reader again that the doctrines attributed to one and another in it are not to be supposed transferable to that class of people in whom we are told it has been in these days "revived." They are responsible for their own views, but for nothing more. And the association with Dr. Crisp and others only can avail to stir up feeling and create prejudice before the real cause is taken up. Dr. Hodge states as to Crisp, that he denied the inferences put upon his doctrine ("Outlines of Theology," p. 404), and certainly it is hard to believe that he actually wrote or said, "Sins are but scarecrows and bugbears to frighten ignorant children, but men of understanding see they are counterfeit things’ (p. 141). If he did say this, it is altogether needless to bring him up from merited oblivion. It is strange, however, that whereas Agricola, Tobias Crisp, and such like come conspicuously to the front, as do "John Wesley, the apostle of experimental godliness and of Christian perfection," and "the seraphic John Fletcher," we are not once told with whom these contended in their day, or with what. On the whole, we are well pleased with Wesley’s definition of antinomianism. According to its root idea ("against law,") the only scriptural definition must be "the doctrine which makes void the law through faith." (p. 38.) We have, then, to find the real Antinomian to take the New Testament doctrine of the law, and inquire who makes void the law? who refuses to take it for whatever purpose God has given it? who perverts it to any other use? who takes off the edge of its requirement? Searching along these lines, we can scarcely fail to find the Antinomian in the only proper sense. What, then, is the office of the law according to Scripture? It is (1), to give the "knowledge of sin" (Rom 3:20), not only by putting it into account, — reckoning it up as the items of a bill (Rom 5:13), and making it exceeding sinful, as breach of plain command (Rom 7:13), but also by detecting it in the heart in the shape of lust (Rom 7:7) and giving it power by the very prohibition (Rom 7:8-9). (2) Although ready to justify the doer of it (Rom 2:3), yet requiring complete obedience (Jas 2:1-26, Gal 3:10), and finding none (Gal 3:10), it only condemns and curses and never justifies — (Rom 3:19; Rom 4:15; Gal 2:16; Gal 2:21; Gal 3:11; Gal 5:4). (3) Its principle is not faith (Gal 3:12), and it cannot be added to or dis-annul the promise of grace, which 430 years before had declared the way of blessing for all the earth (Gal 3:17-18); being given for a certain time and purpose till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made (Gal 3:19). (4) For those under it in the day of judgment, there can be therefore no escape (Rom 2:12; Rom 4:11). (5) As to holiness, sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not under it, but under grace (Rom 6:4); it is the strength of sin (1Co 15:56), even to those delighting in it (Rom 7:22); in order to live to God and serve Him, we are delivered from and dead to it by the cross (Rom 7:6-7; Gal 2:1-21 : is), and dead, that we might belong to Christ, and so bring forth fruit to God (Rom 7:4): we cannot have the law and Christ, as a woman cannot have two husbands at the same time (Rom 7:1-3). The "righteousness of the law" is thus, and only thus, fulfilled (Rom 8:4). This is the Scripture-doctrine of the law, and to the whole of it the so-called Plymouth Brethren fully, and with a free heart, subscribe. It will be difficult, therefore, to prove them Antinomians. As for their "rule of life," it is most certainly true that they do not believe it to be the law, but to result from their place in Christ, a new creation. This is what the epistle to the Galatians explicitly teaches: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature (ktisis, creation). And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy" (Gal 6:15-16). Thus the exhortation is, "As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk ye in Him" (Col 2:6). Or, as the apostle John says, "He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked" (1Jn 2:6). This manifestly includes the "righteousness" — all the practical, moral excellence — "of the law," as the greater includes the less. Or, if Dr. Steele will say it does not, he will no doubt let us know it. But, in fact, Dr. Steele evidently does not speak the whole truth about the objects of his attacks. He only permits you to see partially, and then through coloured glasses. I am not aware that once throughout his book he speaks of the "rule" which the Plymouth Brethren acknowledge. Yet their writings abound with exhortations as to it, and he has studied them for ten years! Why this utter silence, when he can permit himself to say of the "consistent Antinomian," and they are such for him, "He thinks that the Son of God magnified the law that we might vilify it; that He made it honourable that we might make it contemptible; that He came to fulfill it that we might be discharged from fulfilling it, according to our capacity" (p. 34). On his own part, it is only simple truth to say, nothing that can vilify is omitted; nothing that could brighten the picture is allowed to be seen. But the antinomianism is here, that we "affirm that our evangelical or new-covenant righteousness is in Christ and not in ourselves," and that we are not under the law — modified to make it practicable (here is Dr. Steele’s own real antinomianism) as a rule of judgment. For the opposite view, he quotes Baxter (Aphor. Prop. 14-17,) — "Though Christ performed the conditions of the law (of Paradisaical innocence), and made satisfaction for our non-performance, YET WE OURSELVES MUST PERFORM THE CONDITIONS OF THE GOSPEL. These (last) two propositions seem to me so clear, that I wonder that any able divines should deny them. Methinks they should be articles of our creed, and a point of children’s catechisms. To affirm that our evangelical or new-covenant righteousness is in Christ and not in ourselves, or performed by Christ and not by ourselves, is such a monstrous piece of Antinomian doctrine as no man who knows the nature and difference of the covenants can possibly entertain." (pp. 92, 93.) So we must give up "His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." (Jer 23:6.) We must give up that Christ "of God is made unto us wisdom, and RIGHTEOUSNESS, and sanctification, and redemption." (1Co 1:20.) To affirm that our righteousness is in Christ and not in ourselves is but a monstrous piece of antinomianism! Do Wesleyan Methodists indeed hold this? Let them speak out if they do not, and disown this attempt to take from the Lord of glory one of His "many crowns"! For our part, the name of Richard Baxter affixed to this bold heresy will be of no avail to make it truth, nor weigh the lightest feather-weight against the NAME we are thus called to renounce. Be it so, we are Antinomians for it, then Antinomians we will be, and one of our proudest titles it will be forever. Do we believe, then, that we have not to "perform the conditions of the gospel"? If this means that Christ repents and believes for us so that we need not, away with the utter absurdity, and saddle it where it belongs! If Dr. Steele can find a sentence or hint to this effect in any of the writers with whom he has been ten years familiar, then we give up the man to the scorn and condemnation of all sane, moral men. But neither repentance, nor faith, nor both together, are the righteousness in which a believer stands before God. Faith is but that in which we rest in Another, — the hand with which we lay hold upon Him. Repentance is the acceptance of the divine sentence upon ourselves which leaves us hopeless except in that other. Thus they are both included in true conversion, and never found separate. As conversion is a spiritual turning round, so if the back is turned on self, the face is turned to Christ, and vice versa. These are, if you will, conditions of the gospel, although sovereign grace alone brings about in any the fulfillment of them, but their fulfillment leaves us just as much Christ as righteousness***, — the only righteousness in which we are accepted. Dr. Steele’s comment upon Baxter contains the full endorsement of these errors, with others of his own: — "Thus speaks this pious, practical, well-balanced dissenter against the fatal errors arising from confounding the Adamic law with the law of Christ, the first demanding of a perfect man a faultless life, the other requiring an imperfect man, inheriting damaged intellectual and moral powers, to render perfect, that is, pure love to God his heavenly Father through Christ his adorable Saviour, with the assistance of regenerating and sanctifying grace." (p. 93.) There are here about as many mistakes as lines, and they are serious ones. Where does he find this Adamic law demanding of a perfect man a faultless life? From Genesis to Revelation there is not even a hint of it. "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." This, as I understand it, was the law to Adam. Was there a lex non scripta***, different from this? Where have you it, Dr. Steele? But there is small danger of confounding this with the law of Christ, methinks. Theology perhaps may affirm what Dr. S. maintains; but theology has fallen on evil days: we have learned nullius Jurare in verba magistri***, save of our "One Master," Jesus Christ. Now for this "law of Christ" cited, once more to the statute book, Dr. Steele! We know that the apostle says to the Galatians who "desired to be under the law," but were biting and devouring one another, "Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." (Gal 6:2). And we concede fully that the will of Christ is law to the Christian. We believe fully that we are "inlawed," as it has been literally expressed, "to Christ." (1Co 9:21.) But all this fails to show that peculiar character of law which our reviewer insists on, that immoral law (as it would surely be) that lets off easily a man of damaged moral powers, and allows him to proclaim aloud "with tongue and type and telegraph and telephone" his "genuine CHRISTIAN PERFECTION." Oh, sir, if this be all, you should, methinks, take your way more humbly into heaven; and if this is the righteousness in which you hope to stand accepted before God, allow us to thank Him that for you and us He has provided a better, — even in Him whom you, alas! refuse as that. This is fairly and fully the very antinomianism with which Dr. Hodge, not without cause we see, charges the school of perfectionists to which our author belongs. And notice, that while he contrasts his strict Adamic ***with his relaxed law, which we will not call the law of Christ, the only law which God gave to man, what is called such in Old Testament and New, contrasted as such with the gospel and its grace, that law on which the apostle in Christian times insists as of unbending holy requirement, — this law escapes somewhere into the darkness, evaporates, and is lost. With Dr. Steele, thus, there is no right standard of holiness; the Christian is let off easier than the Jew while there is no true "salvation of God" at all. God puts man in a salvable state, that is all; his final salvation is of himself, with God’s assistance. As for peace, upon this system none ought to have it, and, indeed, Dr. S. does not say any one ought. "The removal of the wholesome safeguard found in the fear of being morally shipwrecked and cast away, must tend to looseness of living in not a few cases. It is possible that a few might suffer no detriment from embracing such a theory, but they would be exceptions." (p. 96.) And this is for people in whom no "sin in the flesh" remains, — in whom spirit and soul and body are entirely sanctified. So that along the easy road of the relaxed law the perfect Christian requires to be driven with a scourge of this kind! And these are they — for the absurdity cannot be left incomplete in this strange and incongruous mixture of contradictory things, — in whom perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment! In fine***, we have neither peace, nor salvation, nor law, nor grace, and certainly not holiness. Such is the really Antinomian law-gospel of Dr. Steele. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 49: 03.02. CHAPTER 02 - HOLINESS ROOTED IN A TRUE ATONEMENT. ======================================================================== Chapter 02 Holiness Rooted in a True Atonement. The questions that are now to occupy us I prefer to take in their real sequence rather than as presented by Dr. Steele. The doctrine of atonement is fundamental to that of holiness, as he evidently admits. We begin, then, with atonement. And here we have a right to complain that, instead of taking the "Plymouth view," as given by a "Plymouth" writer, he takes a representative from the large group of supposed "sympathizers," for all whose statements we are held responsible. How would Dr. S. treat us if we were to take our views of Wesleyan Methodism, not from Wesley or Fletcher or any acknowledged authorities, but, let us say, from Oberlin Presbyterianism instead? Yet this last is in very evident "sympathy" with it. Why should our author, after ten years’ study, prefer to take his own views from Dr. Bishop rather than from Mr. Darby, the head of the school? It is plain what would suggest itself to most; but we would rather leave the question for himself to answer. Why will he not accept our own statements of doctrines with which he charges us? Surely it is not a righteous course. Moreover, what Dr. S. charges upon us as "Plymouth" doctrine is no more that than it is of all the many who hold a true satisfaction for sin, — a true substitutionary work in the cross of Christ. As elsewhere also, he often charges us with what we do not hold at all. He quite expects to have his word taken for proof, if there be no other. Yet he is not consistent. On p. 40 he says, — "Theologians who state the doctrine of the atonement with proper safeguards, are careful to limit its vicarious efficacy to the passive obedience of the Son of God, His sufferings and death. His active obedience constitutes no part of His substitutional work. The germ of antinomianism is found in the inclusion of the latter in the atonement!" Now it is notorious that the "Plymouth" doctrine is completely cleared by this, and no germ of antinomianism can be found in it! For the people in question, it is well known, hold precisely that the Lord’s sufferings and death were vicarious, but not His life, and they do not include the latter in atonement! But they are not allowed to escape so easily. On p. 121, the charge is quite a different one. Here he says, — "The basis of the doctrine of imputed holiness is that theory of the atonement which represents that Christ Jesus, the sinless Son of God, in whom He was well pleased, was literally identified with sin so as to be ’wholly chargeable therewith, that we might be identified and wholly charged with righteousness.’ This quotation is from Dr. Geo. S. Bishop, who proceeds to say, ’The atonement which we preach is one of absolute exchange, that Christ took our place literally — that God regarded and treated Christ as the sinner, and that He regards and treats the believing sinner as Christ. From the moment we believe, God looks upon us as if we were Christ. . . . We then are saved, straight through eternity, by what the Son of God has done in our place. . . . Other considerations have nothing to do with it. It matters nothing what we have been, what we are, or what we shall be. From the moment we believe on Christ, we are forever, in God’s sight, AS Christ. Of course, it is involved in this that men are saved, not by preparing first, — that is, by repenting and praying, and reading the Bible, and then trusting Christ; nor the converse of this — by trusting Christ first, and then preparing something — repentance, reformation, good works, — which God will accept; but that sinners are saved, irrespective of what they are — how they feel — what they have done — what they hope to do — by trusting on Christ only; that the instant Christ is seen and rested on, the soul’s eternity, by God’s free promise, and regardless of all character and works, is fixed.’ (pp. 121, 122.) Now, as I have said, Dr. Steele has not the least right to demand that I should defend all this, any more than he, as a representative of Wesleyan Methodism, could be forced to defend all that Dr. Mahan or Mr. Finney might say for Christian perfection." Nor do I at all maintain that Dr. Bishop has guarded his words from abuse, as they might easily he guarded. Dr. Steele, on the other hand, has, after his usual manner, told us nothing as to whence he has derived this passage, or we might have found the necessary guarding in close proximity to what he has quoted. Again, I say, I am not concerned to defend it. Dr. Bishop would very likely refuse for himself with perfect justice to be held as representing the views of Plymouth Brethren in the matter. For the sake of truth, however, and to meet fairly all issues, I am not going to shelter myself from Dr. Steele’s attack thus, but to state freely for myself how much I hold of this, and why I hold it. I prefer, however, to let Dr. S. state his objections, as he does at length, and to examine them one by one, as he states them. We shall thus have all before us whereon to found a judgment. "1. Repentance is not necessary to saving faith." This I have, in fact, already answered. There is no true faith without repentance, no true repentance apart from faith. God has, in His perfect wisdom, provided for this. It would indeed be impardonable to represent God as if He were careless about repentance; and I am sure that Dr. Bishop would earnestly disclaim the thought. But nevertheless, what atones for sin, expiates it, purges sin from the soul, is not at all repentance, — nay, not even faith, but the precious blood of Christ. And the essence of repentance itself is that real rejection of the filthy rags of our own righteousness, no less than of our sins. Thus the eye of the convicted sinner is to be fixed, not upon his own repentance, as if that were any thing, but wholly and altogether upon Christ. And this is what is absolutely necessary to make repentance itself real and availing. Dr. S. will thus see that I contend fully for the necessity of repentance, and I can only trust that here, as often, his own heart is sounder than his creed. Fix a sinner’s eye upon his repentance, as if that were to be a make-weight in the scale of his acceptance, you will find, if he be real, that he will never he free from the torturing doubt, "Have I sufficiently repented ?" On the other hand, let him flee from all the vain refuges of his own performances to Christ as Saviour, here is the best evidence of a satisfactory repentance. Christ, not repentance, is the Saviour, not a half not a whole one. What does not wash away my sin can never save; and a blessed thing it is to be enabled to turn a poor convicted one away from self in every shape — repentance, faith, or any thing else, to the blood of Jesus. "It is not thy tears of repentance, or prayers, But the blood that atones for the soul On Him, then, who shed it, thou mayest at once Thy weight of iniquities roll.’’ Does not Dr. S. believe this? In spite of his words, I must believe it of him. Otherwise what becomes of that initial justification which the "seraphic Fletcher" preached, but to which he was not indeed, any more than our author, always true, — " by faith without works"? Good works, as the fruit of saving faith, and proof of its genuineness, have no place in this scheme of salvation, and are distinctly repudiated; and well they may be, since by the first act of faith, as a bare intellectual, impenitent apprehension that God punished His Son for our past, present, and future sins, ’the soul’s eternal salvation, regardless of character and conduct, is FIXED.’ ’What we shall be matters nothing, since we have a through ticket for heaven. St. James is an impertinence in this scheme of salvation, and his epistle may well be called ’straw’!" Here is, indeed, the most serious objection to Mr. Bishop’s language, while I am sure he would refuse the interpretation which I must say is here quite naturally put upon it. But the truth is, that He who fixes the salvation of the soul, fixes in this way no less its moral condition also: "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Eph 2:1-22.) Blessed it is to know that a poor lost sinner coming to a living Saviour finds a salvation secured for him which is internal as well as external, from the power of sin as well as from guilt and from wrath. Will Dr. Steele say this is unworthy of Him? or that it is impossible to Him? And if it be possible, is it not most worthy? would he not be delighted to find it true? Dr. S. can put his hand upon no writings of "Plymouth Brethren," that I am aware of, that consider the epistle of James as a "strawy" epistle, or depreciate good works as the fruit and test of saving faith. They are surely both, but that does not for a moment make the works to be saving. Nor does it imply that we are to rest upon the works. "Lord, when saw we Thee a hungered and fed Thee?" is a distinct repudiation of good works in this respect on the part of the righteous, exceedingly significant for Dr. Steele, since we know he accepts the "sheep" here as Christians in the day of judgment. Peace is through the work and word of Christ, and will never be found in any other way; while, if "sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace," we are right to press this as fully against laxity on the one side as on legality on the other. Again, we do not account that saving faith is "a bare, intellectual, impenitent (!) apprehension" at all. And I boldly challenge Dr. S. to prove we do, not by fragmentary quotations from nameless writers, but by honest proof from accepted leaders among us. Yet again and again he asserts something similar to this. We all believe that a fruitless faith is no faith, and the best proof that Dr. S. has NOT found faith to be defined as a mere intellectual assent in our writings is that he has not produced it. The writings are easily to be found. They are in honest black and white, and know not how to prevaricate or deal falsely in the matter. The charge on Dr. Steele’s part is a rash and unworthy charge, and nothing else. We go on to his third objection: — 3. That God regarded and treated Christ as a sinner, in other words, that He actually punished His Son because He was guilty of our sins." This language, again, I repudiate with all my heart. God did not "regard" His Son as a sinner. He regarded and treated Him as the Substitute for sinners. Nor was Christ "guilty of our sins," or punished because "guilty" of them. "Guilt" — at least in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word, — is not transferable, but penalty may be. "The chastisement of our sins was upon Him," says the prophet; "God hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all." We alone were the guilty ones; the punishment was of our sins, but it was punishment. What avails it to quote Martin Luther against us, or an ex-president of the Y.M.C.A.? Dr. Steele’s title-page says, "The Theology of the Plymouth Brethren Examined and Refuted." Luther, we had thought, at least, dated some centuries before. Some Calvinistic text-books use very much the language Dr. S. condemns. With what fairness could this be called the theology of Plymouth Brethren if even some of these may have used it? And this their accuser never undertakes to prove! But his own theology is much more erroneous: — "We indignantly repudiate the monstrous idea that Jesus on the cross was a sinner overwhelmed with the bolts of the of Father’s personal wrath. What we do affirm is that His suffering and death were in no sense a punishment, but a substitute for punishment, answering the same end, the conservation of God’s moral government and the vindication of His holy character while He pardons penitent believers." (p. 124.) This is what is called the "governmental theory" of atonement. It is indeed a theory, nothing else; and a theory against which Scripture is decisive. The one text which Dr. Steele cites and seeks to explain — 2Co 5:21 : "He was made sin for us who knew no sin," — is not only not the one argument, but not even the most conclusive one. Yet, even here, if he would look a little below the surface, he might see that, granting the word "sin" to stand in this place for "sin-offering" (which the analogy of the Hebrew may be held to justify), there must yet be a reason for so significant a fact as that the same word stands for both these very different things. Why should this be, but because that which is made sin becomes thus the sin-offering. And if we look at the type in the Old Testament, what means this, that in the highest grade of it we see the beast so offered carried without the camp and burnt upon the ground without an altar? It is the thing, as the apostle in Heb 13:1-25 remarks, that makes the blood of the victim able to penetrate into the sanctuary, — that is, really to sanctify the offerer. "Without the camp" was the place outside of all that was owned of God; and without an altar, shows that that which sanctifieth the gift is absent; the victim is in the awful place of sin upon which a pure God cannot look. This, at the cross, the darkness shows, — the withdrawal of light, and "God is light;" while the Lord’s voice out of it interprets for us, — "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ?" Beside, however the word in 2Co 5:21 may by itself be capable of the rendering "a sin-offering," yet if we look but a little further we shall see clearly why the Revisers did not so put it here. It is that "sin" is contrasted with "righteousness," as well as connected with the same word, "sin," following: "He was made sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made God’s righteousness in Him."Thus Dr. Steele has by no means justified the proposed rendering, nor if he had, has he got rid of the idea that is plainly to be found in the passage before us. "Common sense exegesis" is here at fault, as it often is, for what it means often is but a superficial, off-hand view, without the need of true spirituality or careful study of the Word; and such, I grieve to say, is often the character of Dr. Steele’s interpretations. But apart from this passage, what does Dr. Steele think of the passage in the prophecy already adduced, — "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him"? or of this: "The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all"? Or of this from Gal 3:10 : "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"? Or this from Peter (1Pe 2:24): "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree"? Was not the curse on sin the punishment of sin? And this special curse, — so unaccountable in itself — that "he that hangeth upon a tree is accursed of God ": how can we view it, save as typically designed to mark out this one "death of the cross," which for those who realized the glory of the Sufferer would seem to be impossible to bear this character? But Dr. Steele openly rejects the teaching of Scripture. His fourth objection is, — 4. We have insuperable philosophical and ethical difficulties in the way of receiving the statement that the guilt of the race was transferred to Christ. Character is personal, and cannot be transferred. Sin is not an entity, a substance which can be separated from the sinner and transferred to another and be made an attribute of his character by such a transfer. Sin is the act or state of a sinner, as thought is the act or state of a thinker. Neither can have an essential existence separate from their personal subject, any more than any attribute can exist separate from its substance." (p. 126.) Much of this is mere misconception. The guilt of the race was not transferred to Christ. Could it have been, all men would be necessarily saved. Nor was guilt transferred, but penalty, as I have before said. Sins were laid upon Him, borne by Him, — transferred to Him therefore: so the Word (and we have quoted it) directly says. But they were laid upon, borne by Him, as a burden, — i.e., in their penalty. Sin was not made an "attribute of His character;" who ever supposed it but Dr. Steele? Thus his fifth objection we may for the most part pass over as already answered, and we shall leave Dr. Bishop to defend himself as to what is replied to him. Our author contends, however, that "while it is true that Jesus is our substitute, He is our substitute truly and strictly only in suffering, not in punishment. Sin cannot be punished and pardoned also. This would be a moral contradiction. . . . Sin was not punished on the cross. Calvary was the scene of wondrous mercy and love, not of wrath and penalty." (pp. 128, 129.) Yet Scripture says, none the less, "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him." Delitzsch says of the word emphasized, "We have rendered ’musar’ ’punishment,’ and there was no other word in the language for this idea. . . . David, when he prayed that God might not punish him in His anger and hot displeasure (Psa 6:2), could not find a more suitable expression for punishment, regarded as the execution of judgment." (Isaiah, vol. 2, p. 318.) Think of any one saying of the dread cross of our Redeemer, "Calvary was not the scene of wrath and penalty"! But "sin cannot be punished and pardoned also: this would be a moral contradiction." Not in the least! If the person who sinned were punished, this would be: but he to whom the due of sin is remitted is pardoned, though the due of his sin has been paid. For He who paid is He who remits. If it were otherwise, and the due were not paid, there might be pardon, there could not be justification. Justification is only possible in one of two ways: either by the proving of innocence, which on our part is impossible, or by the proof that the punishment of sin has been borne. This is our case: we are "justified through Christ’s blood." (Rom 5:9.) Justification and pardon are in the same way opposed to one another, as are punishment and pardon: contrasted, indeed, in thought, but not contradictory in fact, in God’s wonderful plan of salvation. All this, on Dr. Steele’s part, is ignorance of plain Scripture. His closing sentence we shall have to look at further on. I only say that the "imputed holiness" with which he there charges us, we repudiate as much as he does. One last objection remains 6. A limited atonement is the inevitable outcome of the doctrine that sin was punished on the cross. Whose sin? If it be answered, That of the whole human race, then universalism emerges, for God cannot in justice punish sin twice. It must be, then, that the sins of the elect only were punished. Hence, at the bottom, this system rests on the tenet of a particular, in distinction from a universal, atonement." (p. 130.) And the writer goes on to inveigh against the "Jesuitical cunning" of those he is attacking in not confessing their Calvinistic tendencies, closing with a report of a conversation with Mr. Darby, in which he answers a question upon election, in the frankest and most outspoken way possible! But the truth is, the Plymouth Brethren in general do not believe in "limited atonement" in the sense in which this is usually understood. They accept Christ’s being a propitiation for the whole world, in the ordinary acceptation of "world;" and in ten years of study our author should have discovered this. Nay, in another place he does give us some inkling of the truth. "They make a distinction," he says, "between the death of Christ for all, and the blood of Christ shed only for those who are through faith sprinkled and cleansed thereby. By this means God saves believers, and presents an ’aspect of mercy’ toward all mankind." (p. 59.) Dr. S. will allow me to put this in my own way, without meaning to pledge all my brethren to acceptance of it. I do not believe in what he calls "the old and exploded commercial theory — so much suffering by Christ equals so much suffering by the sinners saved by Christ." (p. 59.) I believe that Christ paid the penalty of sin, not an "equivalent" penalty merely, as even those who believe in a true "satisfaction" are mostly content to say. No, it was the PENALTY ITSELF upon men — death and judgment, the full wrath of God. True, He could not be holden of it. The Holy One of God could not remain under that which for the glory of God He had taken. He was "heard for His piety," "raised from the dead by the glory of the Father." But though necessarily and in righteousness delivered from it, He went into it, bore sin in its dread penalty, vindicated God’s holiness as against it by submitting to its real due, glorified Him fully so. The value of this obedience unto death is infinite. It is not a quantum of suffering — so much for so much sin; but God glorifies in a true Substitute drinking actually the sinner’s cup; not Himself one, but a substitute. For whom then a substitute? For the world as such? No: that would be universalism. For the elect as such, a definite number of people marked by this election? Again, no: that would be a strictly limited atonement, which would give no basis for a universal offer of salvation, and would not allow of Christ a "propitiation for the sins of the whole world." These are the two alternatives of Dr. Steele: is there no other possible? There is, and it completely answers all demands. It is here: "Upon the seed of Abraham He taketh hold. Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." (Heb 2:16) It is for His people, for the seed of Abraham, for believers, the atonement is made, — a satisfaction available for all the world upon condition of faith; actually such for all believers. It is an atonement unlimited in value and availability for all men; limited only by the unbelief that slights or rejects it. This must be to Arminians at least a very intelligible thought. It answers, as I have said, all demands, and removes all difficulties. Thus only when one believes does he cross from the place of condemnation into that of acceptance with God, and find sin really removed. "My faith" is NOT "a waking up to the fact that I have always been saved" (p. 35), as Dr. S. represents it for me, but a faith by means of which I am actually justified; although that which is the ground of justification is the blood of Christ simply and solely. And it was not God’s laying the sins of believers upon Him that did or could remove mine UNTIL I was a believer. I grant this is opposed to the "commercial view" of atonement — so much suffering for so much sin, which Dr. Steele would insist on my defending. This would require just a definite number of foreseen and exactly appreciated sins to be laid on Christ, — mine, and no other’s — in order to ***my salvation; and then it might be justly argued, I was justified before I was born. Scripture refuses this, and I refuse it. Yet as a believer I can say that my sins were really laid upon Him, and that He put them away from me by the sacrifice of Himself. Upon a subject so central and fundamental as atonement I desire to be very plain, and I trust Dr. S. will find these statements free from the Jesuitical cunning which he so freely imputes. Is this the love that thinketh no evil? Is it not unworthy of himself? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 50: 03.03. CHAPTER 03 - JUSTIFICATION AND ACCEPTANCE IN CHRIST. ======================================================================== Chapter 03 Justification and Acceptance in Christ. We are now to look at the question of justification, and to see what is the righteousness in which the believer stands before God from the moment of his being such. Here again it will be found how far from accurate are Dr. Steele’s representations of the views he has been so long (vainly, it would seem) studying. Thus he says, — "The idea of justification is not that it is a present act taking place in the mind of God in favour of the penitent believer, but it is a past, completed, wholesale transaction on Calvary ages ago." (p. 60.) This, understood in the way I have already stated it, would not be so bad; but the trouble is that Dr. S. applies it evidently in such a way as to make it clash with present justification by faith, as if we did not hold the latter. I confess the connection between the two things has not always been clearly put or conceived by writers among us. But the fact is, that, instead of the two things being contradictory, the one naturally and necessarily proceeds from the other. We may put it as a syllogism, thus: — The blood shed on Calvary was the justification of every true believer. A man becomes today a true believer; He is now, therefore (and not before), justified through faith. And this shows, as plainly as possible, the different sense in which faith justifies and the blood of Christ justifies. My justification by faith is only my entrance by faith into the sphere in which justification by blood applies to me. It is not as if my faith were a meritorious somewhat added to the work of atonement. The work remains in its own peerless transcendency, while faith is the way I come into the provision made for me, — made for all the world as well as for me. Election does not touch the fullness of the provision. It secures that (spite of man’s rejection of it naturally), ***there shall be fruit of Christ’s work. As believers, then, we are justified by the blood of Christ, — by what was done more than eighteen centuries ago on Calvary. "Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree." Did He not? Was not the bearing of them accomplished then? Moreover, as "He was delivered for our offences," so "He was raised for our justification. (Rom 4:25.) His resurrection is the public act of God on our behalf: the testimony that the burden is gone, the sin removed, the debt cancelled. Justification for believers is not an act merely "in the mind of God," but a sentence openly given on our behalf. "If Christ be not risen, — ye are yet in your sins." (1Co 15:17.) Faith, then, has the work of Christ and the Word of God to rest upon; and this it needs to be faith. Frames and feelings apart from this are absolutely untrustworthy. The work of the Spirit is to take of the things that are Christ’s and show them to us. (John 16:14). Apart from this, what we may regard as an "impression from the Holy Ghost" (p. 105) may be only a delusion. It is not, as Dr. Steele puts it, that feelings are to be scouted, but to be tested and certified. It is certain that Scripture says that we are justified by faith, never by feelings. "To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." (Rom 4:5.) This is the Scripture*** method of assurance. Joy and peace come in believing (Rom 15:13), and it remains for Dr. S. to prove that they come rightly in any other way. From Scripture he has not attempted to do so, and I believe he will hardly attempt it. It will be time enough, at any rate, then to listen. This justification by the blood of a substitute, how far does it go? Is it from sins past, present, and to come? (p. 34.) Is it, as some would define it, simply the pardon of past sins? The latter is founded upon a wrong view of Rom 3:25-26; where the "I say" of the translators, not found in the original, confounds two distinct and contrasted things; "the passing over of the sins done aforetime" (R.V.) — of believers up to the cross; — and, now that God’s righteousness is fully shown forth in it, the justification of him that believeth in Jesus. On the other hand, it is freely admitted that Scripture never speaks of a justification from future sins; and that for very obvious reasons. It does not speak as if there were to be future sins for a believer, — certainly not as if they were tolerated or of little account. It would be the language of license, not of divine holiness, and I refuse and condemn it altogether. But yet Scripture does not leave the future doubtful, or the standing of the believer uncertain for a moment. First, justification by the blood of One standing in our place before God, — our Substitute, — means His death counted to be our death. We have thus died with Him: and though we live, it is in Him we live. The force of these expressions we shall have shortly to examine, but it will be seen at once how they carry out and complete the thought of justification by death meaning Christ’s death ***our death. If, then, in God’s sight in the death of Christ we died, let us consider that death is the limit of man’s natural responsibility. In the day of judgment itself men are only judged for the "deeds done in the body." There is no such thought, save in theology sometimes, of any sins in the disembodied state, or in hell, to be accounted for. Thus, if we have died, we have passed beyond the limit of accountability as sinners: our responsibility as saints is another matter. Justification by the blood of Christ is thus complete and eternal. No wonder, then, that the apostle declares, "Much more, then, being now justified by His blood, we shall he saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall he saved through His life." (Rom 5:9-10.) Here the completeness of the justification in the present settles triumphantly the question of the future, and the life of the Lord in heaven, — " Because I live, ye shall live also" (John 14:19), — is the abundant guarantee of the continuance of the reconciliation by His death. In Him we live, and this is eternal life. Dr. Steele mixes up this question of standing with another, — that of "imputed holiness." The last, I refuse most fully and earnestly. It is nonsense, and worse; only Dr. S. must prove that Plymouth Brethren hold it. Of this at another time; but standing and acceptance are very different from it, and Dr. S. has apparently confounded them together. He says, "The phrase "in Christ’’ is perpetually quoted as a proof-text to sustain the doctrine of imputed holiness, an attribute of Jesus Christ regarded by God as belonging to Christians, even when they are unholy in character and wicked in conduct. The theory is, that Jesus Christ is standing today in the presence of the Father as a specimen and representative of glorified humanity, and that faith in Him so intimately unites us with Him, that all His personal excellencies become ours in such a sense as to excuse us if we lack them"! (p. 151.) This abominable doctrine, if it be true that Plymouth Brethren hold it, should have been proved against them by decisive quotations, and fastened as a mill-stone round their neck to sink them forever with Great Babylon itself under the reprobation of all decent persons. Dr. S. need not then have written a book of 266 pages to expose their views. Yet, strange to say, this most necessary thing he has neglected to do. Mr. McDonald has, indeed, tried to remedy the deficiency, and given us an extract, from whom, he knows best himself. (p. 19.) I simply desire him to give the name, and let us know where he belongs. Meanwhile, those who make these charges without proof expose themselves to reprobation only. No man has a right to fling such charges broadcast without fullest evidence of where they belong. I speak of what I know when I say that imputed holiness is not a doctrine of Plymouth Brethren. Holiness is state, not standing, and Dr. S. is witness that they keep these separate. They never say that people may be "in Christ" either,*** without being new creatures, or God’s children without God’s image, or born of the Spirit without the fruit of the Spirit. That "there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus" they quote for what it says, not to prove any thing of this sort. And let me tell Dr. Steele, if, alas! he does not know it, that if God’s eye could be turned from Christ for us, to accept or reject us for what He saw in us, not one of all of us could stand in His holy presence for a moment. Take the standard — that we walk as Christ walked, and, let him say, if at his best (not worst) he dare face the eye of God in this manner. "In Christ" is not "used to prove an actual incorporation into His person," — at least by those intelligent as to it. Nor is "an actual incorporation into His person" an intelligent expression. We are by the Spirit baptized into His body, — not His actual glorified person, but His mystical body, as we are accustomed to say. This is union, which "in Christ" does not express, but identification. Dr. S. is therefore in a wrong contention, while it is plain the phrase means for him as little as possible. It meant much for him who said "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus," however; it involved the whole fact of justification. But think of one who can quickly paraphrase, "But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," thus he is quoting Meyer: "But truly it is God’s work that ye are Christians, and so partakers of the greatest divine blessings, that none of you should in any way boast himself save only in God"! That Christ is made these things to those "in Him," drops thus out of the account. If Dr. Steele had looked a little further into Romans, he might have found that the expression here points out Christ as our spiritual head, as "in Adam" speaks of our natural one. By life and birth we come to be in Adam; by spiritual life and new birth we come to be in Christ. As in Adam we inherit corruption and condemnation only; in Christ we come into possession of a new nature and a righteous standing, — "justification of life." (Rom 5:18) The expression, then, is a simple one, and full of blessing for us. Its meaning can never be decided by Scripture handled in the fragmentary way in which our author handles it. God’s Word may thus mean almost any thing or nothing, according to our taste. It does not mould us, but our thoughts mould it. Dr. Steele’s treatment of it is as little reverent as may be. Take a text Dr. S. is venturous enough to quote; it may surely stand for a scriptural definition; "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2Co 5:1-21) Here, first, any one in Christ is a new creature: by a new birth he belongs to that creation which replaces the old one. But then also "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Will Dr. S. say this is true of every one born again as such? In Christ, it is true of him indeed, for in Christ — identified with Him, — his standing is perfect, absolutely so. In Christ, — represented by Him, — God’s holy eye itself can find nothing but perfection. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 51: 03.04. CHAPTER 04 - IS THERE SUCH A THING AS BEING BORN AGAIN? ======================================================================== Chapter 04 Is There Such a Thing as Being Born Again? We are now arrived at the question of holiness, — a question which divides, however, into a number of others. Before we can consider the motives to it which the Word of God supplies, — for we are all agreed that it must be a free and voluntary disposition of heart acted on by these, — we must consider who and what the man is to whom they are addressed. What is it to be a child of God? and who is a child of God? Dr. Steele gives us an answer from his favourite Mr. Fletcher, which, for its evaporation into nothing of blessed Christian truth, is scarcely to be exceeded by any thing we have met in the whole range of theology. It is a special invention to meet a special difficulty with the Arminian creed, which converts and reconverts any number of times that may be needed to save its free-will theory from shipwreck. What do you think, child of God, if such I am addressing, — what do you think that this precious term implies? Relationship? Any real affinity, such as, in nature, your being your father’s child suggests? Well, then, you are mistaken: it is just an orientalism, a figure of speech. Had you learnt Hebrew in your youth, you would have been better instructed. "But I thought I was born again? People are not born again to be children of the devil, are they?" Ah, you are uninstructed! "Born again"! Why, you should remember what a mistake "honest Nicodemus" made about it. Are you carnal enough to think of any thing real in it? It is all the oriental mode of speech, dear friend: a figure, just a figure! "They ask, ’Can a man be a child of God today and a child of the devil tomorrow?’ . . . The question would be easily answered, if, setting aside the oriental mode of speech, they simply asked, ’May one who has ’ceased to do evil’ and learned to do well today, cease to do well and learn to do evil tomorrow? . . . If the dying thief, the Philippian jailer, and multitudes of Jews in one day went over from the sons of folly to the sons of wisdom, where is the absurdity of saying, they could measure the same way back again in one day, and draw back in the horrid womb of sin as early as Satan drew back into rebellion," etc., etc., etc.? (p. 135.) Yes, why not even ten times a day? It is all very easy to the imagination, if — let our author still pardon the doubt; — if new birth be only a figure of speech, and man is converted by his own will simply, or the Holy Ghost’s work be just like a friend’s words in the ear, and nothing more! So it must be for Dr. Steele. He simply makes nothing of it. "Common sense exegesis" does not too narrowly scan texts, nor are God’s ways so unlike human ways, it seems, for this to be any great objection! But we have Dr. Steele’s exposition, with the help of some of his favored exegetes, of the doctrine of new birth as found in the crucial passage (John 3:1-36): — "Two natures coexisting in the believer, in his best possible earthly state, is proved by John 3:6, which is amended to read thus: ’That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and remains flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’ This is quoted to prove that the single nature is untouched in the new birth, while an entirely new nature, or rather new creature, is created and associated therewith." (p. 114.) His own exposition is found in his objections 1. That John uses the term ’flesh’ in the Pauline sense, which, as Meyer says, is strange to him, while Cremer, in his ’Biblico-Theological Lexicon,’ quotes this passage as an instance of John’s use of sarx, ’flesh,’ to signify merely that which ’mediates and brings about man’s connection with nature.’ He finds six shades of meaning to this important word, the last only embracing the idea of sin. He excludes from this meaning all passages in the four gospels in which the word occurs." Bold it may seem to take up again what Cremer and Meyer have thus settled for us. No need to give their reasons, even! Yet, spite of the temerity of the undertaking, we are going to look at the passage for ourselves. Let us, however, now go on with the objections: 2. It is assumed that such writers as Weiss and Julius Muller are in error when they say that the meaning of Jesus is, ’the corporeal birth only produces the corporeal sensual part.’" (p. 115.) Dr. S. and his commentators seem to forget one thing essential to all exposition of a text, — the context. The question raised here is, Why cannot a man enter the kingdom of God without being born again? It is no answer to say, "The corporeal birth only produces the corporeal sensual part." What, in fact, do these words mean? That the human spirit is not the product of natural generation? That has nothing to do with the matter; for then it would mean that the work of the Spirit was needed to produce the higher part, and the Lord would be talking throughout of natural birth, not of being born again. It is plain that man as he is cannot go into the kingdom of God; he may have spirit and soul and body, as every natural man has, yet he must be born again. ’That which is born of the flesh must be, then, the whole man; and the whole natural man — spirit and soul and body — is only ’flesh.’ This is not, therefore, "what mediates and brings about man’s connection with nature," as Cremer says; it is the proof that he is a fallen being. Spirit and soul and body are all only characterized by their lowest part; and that is, the fallen, the sinful state: men must be born again. Let us hear the next objection. 3. There is a confounding of birth with creation out of nothing. ’For, as generation,’ says Dr. Whedon, ’is a modification of substance or being, imparting to it a new principle of life, conforming it, as living being, to the likeness of the generator, so regeneration is a modification of the human spirit by the Holy Spirit, conforming the temper of the human to the holy.’" But Scripture calls new birth a creation, Dr. Steele. "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." (Eph 2:1-22 : l0.) A natural birth must not be confounded with a supernatural. A supernatural birth means for man human nature raised to a higher plane, even to the likeness of the Generator, as Dr. Whedon well says; thus "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." This is, as Dr. Steele quite truly says, not the creation of a new man put into the believer, but the impartation of life to one before dead in trespasses and sins. I grant to him that this language about the new man is a mistake often made, but which many of the Plymouth Brethren have a good while since protested against. A new life and a new man are different thoughts. But a new life means a new nature. In this way, however, it would be plainly wrong to speak of a change taking place in the old nature. It might give place to it: how far it does so we must prove, not assert; and to say that "soul, body, and spirit" are "born again by the endowment of spiritual life" (pp. i i6,)*** is to go beyond Scripture. "If Christ is in you," says the apostle, "the body is dead because of sin." (Rom 8:10.) This is too plain a text to admit of controversy. The question of the two natures I reserve for the present. But this new life given of God is not merely a moral change, — a ceasing to do evil and learning to do well. It is a real new element of being in the believer, though it may be impossible to define; and no wonder, for natural life is impossible to define. By it we are actually, not putatively, the children of God, — really born of Him: "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:13.) Change there is as the result of it, — real, moral, permanent. "Born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever" (1Pe 1:23). "Whosoever is born of God does not practice sin, for His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." (1Jn 3:9.) This is not stated of a special class among Christians, as it is often applied — a class who have attained a perfection which others have not, but of all that are born of God. And it announces as clearly as can be the permanence of the change which new birth produces. It is impossible for the child of God to go back into the condition from whence he has been delivered. His seed remaineth in him. The life which he has received is "eternal life." But what is eternal life? Alas, that among Christians the question should yet need to be asked, and that the answer should be received by many with controversy, instead of joy and worship. "God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." (1Jn 5:11; John 1:1-51.) It is the "divine nature" of which we are made partakers (2Pe 1:1-21), which in Him displayed itself in undimmed brightness amid the moral darkness of the world, a darkness which comprehended not the light. In us, it is indeed dimmed in manifestation; yet we have it, — already have it, — have "passed out of death into life." (John 5:24, R. V) It is eternal life, because in Him it never had beginning; and having it, though dependently, "in Him," its possession constitutes us really "children of God." Thus we see why, in the one born of God, His seed remaineth. There is no condition here as Dr. Steele would have it, nor do we "see at a glance," or see at all, in the Greek, as he declares, the conditions of continuance or perseverance, where the Lord says, "He that heareth My words, and believeth . . hath everlasting life." The Greek, if we are to be precise, simply says, "He that is hearing and believing hath." It is not, therefore, that "if these conditions are fulfilled, the new life inspired by the first act of evangelical faith becomes everlasting" (p. 132.) It is not so said, nor does this give the true meaning of everlasting life at all. "This is the commonsense view," perhaps, — the loose, careless view, as these words so often mean. The truth of eternal life is gone, or rather, never was in the author’s mind. New birth, there is none. Moral suasion by the Holy Ghost upon the natural man, this is all the divine work in it. It is plain to see how in this way it is as easy to turn one way as to turn the other way, for a saint to become a sinner as for a sinner to become a saint. Nay, it should be easier, for gravitation is only too natural. The descent to hell is easy. And thus where these views are entertained, after every "revival" you will find a numerous host of backsliders; people who are scarce ever taught to doubt the truth of their conversion, though their goodness was like the early dew: who think they have known all there is in "religion," though for them it did as little as possible. But if they want it, it can be obtained again where they got it before; and they must be more careful that they keep it. Not so, Dr. Steele: new birth is indeed a "creation." It takes the power of Omnipotence to accomplish this wondrous work. And into God’s new creation no new curse shall ever enter: there shall be no more return to night and chaos. Are not these the terms of the new covenant: "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people; . . for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 52: 03.05. CHAPTER 05 - CHRISTIAN SECURITY AND ITS MORAL RESULTS. ======================================================================== Chapter 05 Christian Security and its Moral Results. "Salvation!" "Saved!" O blessed, peace-inspiring words to him who knows the reality of them! What do they mean? Do they leave still the doubt that after all by that from which we are saved we may still be overtaken, overcome, and perish? Then, for pity’s sake, and in the interests of truth itself, let us not use the words, — let us not inspire a hope which may be so mistaken! But Scripture, which uses the words, is not responsible for the doubt, preaches not the uncertainty. Its "hope" is not one which possibly may make ashamed; therefore there is patience in it: "If we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." We can wait with patience just because it is sure. "He is faithful who promised." Yes, He is faithful, but we? Well, when we came, helpless and hopeless, to Him, was it not just part of our intense misery that we could not trust in ourselves? Had He not to teach us that faith’s object was not ourselves, but Himself? that every particle of self-trust was only robbing Him by so much of His due? But are we now as Christians to go back to that principle from which we were delivered? Not so! "This is the right gospel frame of obedience: so to work as if we were only to be saved by our own merits; and withal so to rest on the merits of Christ as if we had never wrought any thing." (p. 142.) Yes; but if indeed we had never wrought any thing, would we be entitled to "rest in Christ"? Ah, that would be perilously near to antinomianism, would it not? For we are to be justified at last by works altogether, are we not? How then rest in Christ as if we had done nothing? Nay, is not fear — fear lest we should perhaps be lost — a wholesome and needed motive to work? Is it not the check that the Arminian has to deter him from sin, that he "is told that the holiest saint on earth may fall from grace and drop into hell"? And do you not say that "human nature at its best estate can never be safely released from the salutary restraint of fear"? (p. 86.) How then can we rest in Christ as if we were not doing what if we did not, we should assuredly "drop into hell"? I see you confess it is "a difficult thing" to unite these things together. (p. 142.) And I note too that you say elsewhere, "Nor are true believers, who have received the Spirit of adoption, under the law as the impulse to service. They are not spurred on to activity by the threatened penalties of God’s law. Love to the Law-giver has taken the place of the fear of the law as a motive. This is specially true of those advanced believers out of whom perfect love has cast out all servile, tormenting fear." Yet you add, "Before emerging into this experience, there is a blending of fear and love as motives to service. But the law is put into the heart of the full believer, and its fulfillment is spontaneous and free." (p. 108.) Why do you say, "Into the heart of the full believer"? Is not that one of the promises of the new covenant? Is it not true in principle of all those, therefore, of whom God says at the same time, "And I will be their God, and they shall be My people" and again, "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more"? Why, then, do you insert this "full" believer? Is it on the warrant of Scripture, or of experience? But how is it, then, that "human nature at its best estate can never be safely released from the salutary restraint of fear"? And how can you say of the greater number even of believers, they are "not spurred on by the threatened penalties of God’s law"? and "they are not under the law as an impulse to service"? Yet it seems that they are exposed to these penalties, or the possibility of them; that they are (most of them) under the fear of these, that it is a salutary thing and that they need the spur! Truly it is a difficult thing to unite these things together. I do not forget that you tell us that "we are freed from the law as a ground of justification. Our ground of justification is the blood of Christ shed for us." This we might rejoice in if you had not before defined this that "all mankind are, by the atonement, forever freed from the necessity of pleading that we have perfectly kept the law in order to acceptance with God." (p. 108.) And you have given us elsewhere the "evangelical form in which it was defined by His adorable Son, "Thou shalt love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." (p. 41.) Thus, it seems, Christ’s work has put us under the milder condition of only loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves. This you call "the evangelic form." The Lord justifies us, then, by His blood (correct me, if I should misunderstand you), and puts us under this milder law — the law of Christ, to be judged by; and you say that in the day of judgment we shall "be judged by works only" (p. 29), so that the blood of Christ shed for us will not be the ground of justification then. This is "salvation," as you say, "not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition."(p.45.) Now if this be so, there are some serious questions, which a good many beside myself would probably like to have answered. (1) Is it to be shown that we have obeyed this law perfectly? (2) If so, for how long? — from the time of our justification? or how much later? (3) If not perfectly, how far perfectly? where shall the all-important line be drawn? (4) If the day of judgment is to decide where we are, for whom is it to decide it? Not for God; that cannot be. For ourselves? then can we be sure before it comes? or is it decided before it is decided? Surely a thing of such solemn moment should not be left with so much haze upon it. Nor can you say that Scripture has left it in this condition. Scripture, blessed be God! is as plain as possible. It is theology only that is responsible for it all. We know, then, how far our freedom from the law as a ground of justification goes. It certainly does not go far enough to entitle any one to rest wholly in Christ in view of eternity. Faith in Dr. Steele is, I doubt not, better than his creed, but it is the creed we are speaking of. After all, the great thing is, What says Scripture? And here we are in another atmosphere, and under clear and luminous skies. "He that heareth My words, and believeth on Him that sent Me," saith the Lord, "hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life." (John 5:1-47) It will not do to say, even with Alford (p. 88), "comes not into (krisis) separation, the damnatory part of the judgment." Krisis is the common word for "judgment," as every one who knows Greek knows. Dean Alford is interpreting, not translating; and even his interpretation does not avail. For "separation" in this sense would apply to the whole judgment-work, not necessarily to any damnatory part. But we are not left to argument. How are the dead saints raised? The apostle answers: "So also is the resurrection of the dead: it is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." (1Co 15:42-44.) Now it is beyond controversy, that he is speaking here simply of the resurrection of the saints. How are they raised? I ask. In incorruption, power, and glory, are they not? And "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, . . the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" — the living (1Co 15:52). When shall this be? "Every man in his own order," adds the apostle, "Christ the first-fruits; afterward, they that are Christ’s, at His coming" (1Co 15:23). And again: "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (go before) them which are asleep; for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (1Th 4:15-17.) Thus "them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him," and "when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory." (Col 3:3.) It is plain, then, not from the interpretation of a single text, but from the plainly given character and "order" of the resurrection, that the saints, dead or living when Christ comes, are caught up in one glorious company to meet Him in the air; and when He appears for the judgment of the world, they appear with Him. Thus, before judgment can possibly take place, all is decided. Into judgment personally they do not come. Yet we shall all give an account to God, all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, and receive for the things done in the body. But it should be already plain that the separative judgment of the sheep and goats cannot have to do with us. And think of Paul, John, and others waiting to be picked out in this way from unbelievers! Is Dr. Steele really waiting for this? I do not think so. Why then a judgment to decide which does not decide? No: all is decided here. Here men are lost or saved, and he that believeth on Christ shall not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life. And that life is eternal life: "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of My hand." (John 10:28.) Those who would put conditions or exceptions into such texts as these should mark that they belong to a class into which these never are put. There is many an "if" in Scripture: when professing Christians as such are addressed, they are often tested in order to prevent the fatal deceit which men may practice on themselves; but never are those singled out and pronounced upon as having eternal life, or salvation, or justification, or being born again, or children of God, or any thing analogous to these, put under conditions, as if it were doubtful how they would turn out. This is surely noteworthy, and should go far itself to establish the truth. If Scripture makes no doubt, should we? But we can say much more than this. In every way, from every side, we are thronged with assurances as to the safety of the saint.. . . . . If justified, or reconciled, much more shall he be saved. If he has eternal life, he shall never perish. If born of incorruptible seed, his seed remaineth in him. Whom He calls He justifies, and whom He justifies He glorifies. If the apostle speaks of apostasy, better things accompany salvation. If a man draw back, we are not of them that draw back. Neither things present nor to come can separate from God’s love in Christ. Conversely: — He that loveth not his brother is in darkness even until now. They who go out from us are proved by the fact not to have been of us. Because the plant has no root, it withers away. He that sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him. I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity. What avails it to interpolate certain texts with conditions, when this is the web and woof of Scripture? What profit indeed in limiting the wonderful grace of God which pledges itself in Christ to the poor and helpless, beggared in self-assurance. "I will NEVER leave thee, nor forsake thee." Blessed, blessed grace! without it, who that knows himself could have peace a moment? Sad would it be, then, to find that the more this grace abounds, the more man will abuse it. It is not so the apostle speaks. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace." (Rom 6:14.) The real knowledge of grace it is that is the spring of holiness, as the "strength of sin," on the other hand, "is the law." No doubt there are those who, secretly or openly, would make God’s precious grace a cover for licentiousness. No doubt also there are many who, through lack of knowledge of deliverance, find to their sorrow the law of sin authoritative, to the blighting of their practical life and testimony for God. Yet all true Christian experience agrees with, if it is not needed to confirm, the apostle’s testimony. We must not slight grace because men have little learned or abused it. We must not supplement it with legal conditions in order to make it effectual. We must hold it more simply and learn it better. Grace cannot assimilate with legal conditions. It is their essential opposite. "If it be of grace, then it is no more work; otherwise grace is no more grace." (Rom 11:6.) No relaxation or modification of law can make it assimilate with it. As to moral content, the law is holy, just, and good. As a principle of fruitfulness, it is a necessary, fully announced failure. The Christian is dead to and delivered from it, not that he may be justified merely, but that he may bring forth fruit to God. Baptize it as you may, you cannot make it Christian. Relax it, you have spoilt it as law without making it gospel. Call it, without warrant, the "law of Christ," your apparent scripturalness will not hinder the necessary result of an adoption of what is not of Him. "The law is not of faith; but the man that doeth them shall live in them." (Gal 3:12.) Now the gospel most surely requires obedience to it, and Christ’s commandments admit no relaxation and lack no authority. But commandments and obedience do not constitute law in its essential principle, its absolute contrast with grace. And grace is the one power for holiness, the only thing that can deliver from the dominion of sin. A moral law supposes a sinner as the one to whom it is given, and it works by the influence of fear, its authority being maintained by penalties. It requires: it does not enable for the requirement. The fulfillment of the law is the thing impossible to the law. This is what the apostle insists on in Rom 8:1-4, which Dr. Steele so little understands, that to him it makes no difference whether you find "who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit" appended to the first verse or the fourth! (p. 153.) If the words be found, what matter the connection in which they are found? Certainly no matter, if Scripture be a collection of fragments without relation to one another. If a relative clause even does not depend upon its antecedent, then indeed it is no matter. But if sentences acquire any meaning from their relation to one another, then it does surely make a difference whether our walk as Christians be introduced into the question of "no condemnation" or into the statement of how grace enables us for what is impossible to the law. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." The law says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," and the conscience approves this; but though it say, Do this, or thou shalt die, the terrible alternative can never prevail to set my affections on Him from whom they have wandered. "We love Him because He first loved us" (1Jn 4:19) is the Christian experience of grace as certified by an apostle, fulfilling in us the righteousness of the law. Sin in the flesh is condemned for us in that cross of Christ on which He died to redeem us, and thus we find deliverance from the condemnation and the power of it together. Now if this be the principle of Christian fruitfulness, we must adhere to it consistently. The effect will not be found except as we allow that to act which will produce the effect. It will not do to mingle grace and law, — that is, to cancel the grace by an inconsistent addition to it, — and then declaim against grace as if it were itself unholy. It is thus, in fact, with a large number of those who professedly accept it. On the other hand we must of course distinguish grace from laxity — from the result of an indifferent and careless spirit which may use the language to cover its laxity. "The law is not of faith," and faith is the character and power of the child of God as such. It is the working principle, so that the faith which has not works is dead, — it is not true faith at all. With all our heart we accept and emphasize this teaching of the apostle. With all our heart we reject Dr. Steele’s assertion for us, that "its efficacy is concentrated into a single act of assent to a past fact." (p. 101.) Such statements scattered through his book, proved by fragmentary sentences no one knows from whence, are a dishonour to the one who makes them. Our author who claims so much for law should heed the law. If a witness is put upon the stand in any court of justice worthy to be called one, he is first asked his name, and where he belongs. Dr. Steele seems to care nothing, and to argue that his readers will care nothing for these things, without which his book is, however, a mere string of unsupported assertions, and will be rated by an upright mind as that. On the contrary, faith is the character of the new nature, necessarily continuous as such, and the working principle in every one who has it. Nor does it only "grasp past and finished acts" (p. 59), but cleaves first of all to a living Saviour. "For you are all the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:26.) Instead of setting aside faith in the way charged, I would press it as of all importance in the question before us. It would be a sad and terrible thing to be told that faith might justify and yet not purify. We have read our Bibles at least enough to know that the heart is purified by faith (Acts 15:9), and we believe and thank God that it is so. But "the law is not of faith:" it does not appeal to or recognize it. Its principle, fear, tormenting fear, is not in love: "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment." (1Jn 4:18.) Our author uses often enough this text no doubt: has he apprehended its significance in this respect? Does he remember, not only that faith it is that worketh, but that "faith worketh by love"? (Gal 5:6.) How is it, then, that this works, where he upholds as the Arminian check upon sin, the knowledge that "the holiest saint on earth may fall from grace, and drop into hell"? Is it not already one fallen from grace who can think and speak so? Is this the grace which does not allow the dominion of sin? Is the fear that hath torment banished by it? Does it not rather make it a thing impossible to be banished by the holiest saint on earth? Nay, is it not openly contended that "human nature in its best estate can never be safely released from the salutary restraint of fear"? Is this the doctrine of Scripture, or an open break with it? Talk no more, then, of fruitless faith, while you boast of a "perfect love" fruitless as any Antinomian faith could be! and while you set aside faith as fruitless, to take up terror to do its work instead. O sir, your theology halts where it should walk upright; and your holiness of the whip will never reach, nor come in sight of a "GENUINE CHRISTIAN PERFECTION." With all my soul, I turn from the perfection you present to me, to realize, if I may, that rest of faith which God’s Word calls me to, and find a yoke for which "the joy of the Lord," not the terrors of hell, can be "strength." If, then, these are the divine principles of holiness, — if faith it is that worketh, and worketh by love, and a perfect love is to cast out fear, then the gospel of eternal security is also the gospel of holiness. We are set free from self-care to care for Christ and serve Him. The things are wide as heaven and earth asunder. The more you work for salvation, the more you work for self: is it not so? a sad and foolish work, breaking the Sabbath which God has ordained, and for which He has provided. Please Him you cannot, while you set aside the efficacy of that one peerless work which secures all for the believer. "The life which I live in the flesh," says one of old, "I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal 2:20-21.) ======================================================================== CHAPTER 53: 03.06. CHAPTER 06 - SIN IN THE BELIEVER. ======================================================================== Chapter 06 Sin in the Believer. We are come now to the discussion of one of the most sorrowful of topics. That, spite of grace, sin should be in the believer; that, spite of perfect power over it provided, (for in the Spirit of God dwelling in us there must be perfect power,) sin should prevail, so far as it must be acknowledged it does, over the mass at least; that for absolutely sinless perfection in any, few will contend, — this is surely a dark and difficult problem to solve, — a sad and humbling fact to contemplate. Dr. Steele’s confession, that "human nature in its best estate can never be safely released from the salutary restraint of fear," is surely as humbling as any. While his doctrine of perfection is one that only adds difficulty to the problem, instead of throwing light upon it. "He is confident that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus does now ’make us free from the law of sin and death,’ although it does not, this side of the grave, deliver us from errors, ignorances, and such innocent infirmities as St. Paul gloried in without detriment to his saintly character." (p.25.) Again : "If he will confess his lost condition, God is faithful and just, not only to forgive, but also to cleanse from all sin ’actual and original’" (Bengel) (p. 24). Original sin is thought to mean the corruption of nature as born of fallen parents; so that Dr. S. admits in these cleansed ones "no defiling taint of depravity, no bent toward acts of sin." Yet he cannot "be safely released from the salutary restraint of fear"! Perfect and free from everything but errors, ignorances, and infirmities a saint may glory in, and yet —! The passage referred to in 1Jn 1:1-10 cannot by any possibility be made to apply merely to a certain class of "advanced Christians." If one confessing his lost condition is cleansed by God from all sin, actual and original, then it is surely plain that every Christian must be so cleansed*** for where one who has never confessed his lost condition? If, however, every Christian is not thus cleansed (and Dr. S. cannot but allow this), then, as God cannot be unfaithful, it is perfectly plain that cleansing from all sin cannot go as far as this. But this does not necessitate that "judicial clearance or justification" must be in that case understood." (p. 106.) It is plain from 1Jn 1:7, which is parallel to 1Jn 1:9, that cleansing by blood is meant, and this is not, that I am aware, ever applied to inward sanctification, — holiness. This latter is by the Spirit, and the truth, "washing of water by the Word." (Eph 5:26.) Cleansing by blood is not justification either, but its effect, "the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience." (Heb 10:22.) "How shall not the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God" (Heb 9:14)? But Dr. Steele would still urge that "this involves St. John in the Romish doctrine of good works as a condition of justification — ’If ye walk in the light’. This is certainly a course of good works prescribed as a condition of cleansing." (p. 106) But this is not so, it is not how we walk, but where. "That which doth make manifest is light." (Eph 5:13.) And "God is light" (1Jn 1:5) — said only a few verses before. It is of a soul before God, brought to conviction in His presence, that the apostle is speaking. Here sins are brought out only to be removed; and that, in fact, as charged against us, and so for the conscience also. As for 2Co 7:1, God’s cleansing and our "cleansing ourselves" are somewhat different. But the first is not justification, as I have said. This is the place also to say that "it is of the utmost importance that we accurately distinguish between sin in the flesh and sin on the conscience" (p. 82), and that where the apostle says, "There is no more conscience of sins," he does not mean "no more consciousness of sins." "Conscience," says Dr. S., "is nothing more than consciousness when the question of right or wrong is before the mind." (p. 81.) As usual, he has not a thought of looking at the context. "For the law," says the apostle, "having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the corners thereto perfect: for then would they not have ceased to be offered? because the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins." (Heb 10:1-2.) Now here it should be plain that it is all a question, not of the commission of sins, but of the efficacy of the Jewish sacrifices to purge or perfect the conscience as to them. For Dr. S., it should be a most convincing lesson. Why should not the sacrifices have been offered year by year? Not designed, of course, to put away again the old sins, but those of the year since the last, why should they not? Because the conscience could never be perfected after that method. One year’s sins would hardly be put away before another’s would begin to accumulate. Sin would be always thus, not merely in their consciousness, but on their conscience. But that could never be the divine thought. No, the worshippers once divinely purged would have complete settlement and perfect rest; they would have had no more conscience of sins. Consciousness of sins, no doubt, is the work of conscience; but conscience of sins means not to be at rest because of them. A perfected conscience should be, according to Dr. Steele, a conscience made fully alive and sensitive to right and wrong; a perfected conscience, for the apostle, means a conscience completely at peace through the blood of atonement. As for sin in the flesh and sin on the conscience, it is hard to see how any one could confound them although we might not all agree — as I could not, — to use the passage in John cited in proof of the distinction. I must not be expected to defend this use of it therefore. We have in fact discussed sin on the conscience, and looked at the divine way in which it is met. Sin in the flesh is our present theme. It is of course sin in the nature; and Dr. Steele must allow that Gal 5:17 is at least a convincing proof that in many Christians it is thus yet found. The Galatians were backsliders, he contends; in them, the flesh might lust against the Spirit. It does not, I suppose we are to infer, in him. But has he observed that where the apostle enjoins "Walk in the Spirit," he does not say, and you shall not have the flesh, but "you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh:" a very poor result for a modern perfectionist! Moreover, the fact of the conflict is stated in direct sequence to this: "for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." Thus it seems surely to follow that those lusts of the flesh might indeed be there, though they walked in the Spirit. In Romans also, if the apostle does say, "The law of the Spirit hath freed me from the law of sin and death," that is another thing from the presence of sin in the flesh. Moreover, he definitely states, as we have seen, "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin." By and by, but not in the present life, "He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal body." (Rom 8:10-11.) Not till we are raised or changed, then, shall the body partake of the new life which the Spirit has received. As a consequence of this, the apostle exhorts, "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh; for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die, but if ye, through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." So again in the twelfth chapter: "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice," — sacrifice in life, and not in death, — "holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." And again in Col 3:1-25 : "Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth, — fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry." It is plain from these passages, — 1. That the body and the flesh are connected, though not confounded. Indeed it is evident that the "flesh" as a name for the old nature is derived from the body. 2 That the new life received in new birth has yet not been communicated to the body, nor will be till our final change comes. 3. That however sin is not of course to be conceived of as if it were a material thing, nor the body, as if it were unconnected with the soul, which is ever in Scripture the seat of its lusts and appetites. 4. That never in this life can sin be extirpated from the person, so as that the body shall not be "dead because of sin," to be rendered up therefore a sacrifice, not to be treated as a living thing, but a passive instrument by which under the control of the Spirit of God, He may be glorified. I have no thought that this goes to the bottom of the question or covers the whole ground. I merely give what is enough to show that the perfection which Dr. Steele imagines is not the scriptural one. And he himself conclusively shows this when he cannot allow that these perfect ones, in whom "no bent toward the acts of sin" is conceived to remain, can be safely freed from the "salutary restraint" — restraint upon what? — of fear as to their ultimate salvation! All the terms in which this sinless perfection is described are taken from passages in which, not a special class, but all the children of God are spoken of, who yet are confessedly not in the condition which they are supposed to picture: a conclusive proof of how imaginary the condition is. While, to accommodate the experience to the condition supposed, "lusts of the flesh" are constantly, by perfectionists, ascribed to Satan, and spoken of as temptations when they should be judged as sin. The standard is always and necessarily lowered: for who that admits that "he that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked" would dare to prate of a perfect fulfillment of this obligation?These are marks of essential antinomianism in all who profess a perfection such as Dr. Steele so loudly trumpets forth. Yet it does not follow that because sin in the flesh is admitted, it is at all admitted that there is the least apology to be made for sin ruling over any. We should surely realize a "law of the Spirit" which set us "free from the law of sin and death." There is no doubt that the strength of perfectionism lies in the revolt of the conscience from the thought which makes the experience of the seventh of Romans the proper and inevitable Christian state. A loyal adherence to Scripture will not consist with the maintenance of either of these positions. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 54: 03.07. CHAPTER 07 - GOD'S HISTORY OF HIS PEOPLE. ======================================================================== Chapter 07 God’s History of His People. There are thus two natures in the Christian. There is in all a "flesh" which "lusteth against the Spirit." The experience which does not conform to this is a delusive experience. It is thus undoubtedly true that in this respect "the believer’s state can never correspond with his standing." (p. 16.) His state would have indeed to be perfect to be just what his standing is. His standing is in Christ, and therefore as Christ. To quote "As He is, so are we in this world" (1Jn 4:17) as Dr. Steele does (p.68) — to show the actual state, is monstrous, even though he is not by any means alone in it. The apostle connects it with "boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world"! Think of Dr. Steele finding boldness for that time in the assurance that he is morally perfectly like Christ. Such utterances require, not argument, but rebuke. So he "translates into the Plymouth idiom" John Wesley’s very moderate and scriptural caution, "Let none ever presume to rest in any supposed testimony of the Spirit which is separate from the fruit of it," thus: — "Let none ever presume to rest in any supposed standing in Christ, while his actual state of character is not RADIANT WITH ALL THE EXCELLENCIES OF CHRIST." (p. 87.) It is hard to realize the state of those who can thus speak. But "not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth." The testimony of most Christians would be very far from this, that they were "radiant with all the excellencies of Christ," and the testimony of Scripture as to them is assuredly very different. I would like to ask our author what proportion of Christians, if he look the centuries fairly in the face, he can suppose to have realized the experience he contends for, or to have held the doctrine which matches the experience. He may plead that the latter is the reason of the former. But account for it as he may, it is certain that a very small proportion has had either the one or the other. While this negatives the application of all the passages he cites, it is in itself a thing worthy of examination. As we look back along the ages, from the beginning to the present time, what is the reflection we should naturally make upon them? I shall perhaps be considered a pessimist if I say that, with a certain number of stars shining out all the more brightly on account of it, the impression is one of darkness, not of brightness, — not even growing into that. And I am not now speaking of the world as that, but of the professing people of God themselves. In the Old Testament, the stars are seldom in galaxies. The generation before the flood came under judgment in a manner which testified of almost universal departure. Thence on to Abraham, the history of the family of saved ones is almost a blank, where it is not worse. Babel and idolatry are its most conspicuous features. Abraham and Melchisedek are then twin lights, though not seen equally. Lot is but Abraham’s designed contrast. Isaac, bright in his early years, falls into decrepitude. Jacob’s life at its latter end is bright, but his many days are in his own estimation "few and evil." Joseph stands out once more in contrast with his brethren. We turn the page, and Israel has become a people; but in bondage less to Egypt’s monarch than to Egypt’s gods, and not knowing their deliverer. In the wilderness, two persons wholly follow the Lord their God; the rest of the generation are cut off in it. In the land, Joshua’s life ends with a noble appeal to a halting people. The Judges give us, in the deliverers themselves, the failure of the choicest. Samuel is a pillar upright amid ruins. David’s history is one of trial and of triumph, then of a terrible fall and its bitter consequences. Solomon lapses into idolatry, the fruit of a heart given to strange women. Then a divided kingdom, struggling against itself, on to a fall delayed only by God’s long-suffering. In Judah there are pious kings generally with some marked defect specially pointed out for us. Asa seeks not the Lord, but the physicians. Jehoshaphat leagues with the guilty house of Ahab. Uzziah invades the high-priest’s office. Hezekiah even fails in the matter of the king of Babylon. Josiah is one bright exception. Then the end comes. In Israel it had come long before, though here are seen the great figures of two mighty prophets who might have availed, if any could, to avert destruction. But even Elijah knows not of God’s seven thousand hidden ones, and Elisha with many disciples has no successor. Need we speak of the feeble remnant of Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s times? Malachi sums up against them. Save for the increasing light of prophecy, the day of Old Testament glory ends in darkness and sorrow. But this is under the law? It is four thousand years of the world’s history. What seems its one lesson as to man in his best estate? Is it not that he is vanity? Since then, near two thousand years of Christianity have passed. The sixteenth century was signalized in God’s mercy by a Reformation. The eastern Church for her sins had been almost engulphed in the floods of Mohammedanism. The western had passed through her dark ages, never darker than when the spiritual power had the most unquestioned supremacy. Since Protestantism, Germany, Switzerland, England, have passed through phases of rationalism and infidelity which would we could say were ended. And now we hear of a downgrade among the most orthodox, which, as it comes to light, appears "ten times more widely spread than" at first it was known to be. And of another large orthodox body in England we hear that scarcely a minister is sound as to eternal punishment. Dr. Steele can speak, no doubt, of many counter-balancing things, and the wide evangelization going on may make those hopeful who can forget the centuries that are past. Scripture, for those who are able to read, declares the end from the beginning, and a Laodicea to follow the revivals of Philadelphia. But in all this it may be said, we judge from our own stand-points, and we judge very differently. Be it so, and let us turn back, not forward, and look at incontestable facts as to the primitive Church itself. We shall gain in exactness here by taking the epistles chronologically, although they embrace but a history — apart from those of the apostle John, — of about fifteen years (A.D. 54-68.) Small time, it will be thought, for declension. The Revelation epistles are considered to come twenty-eight years after this (A.D. 95-96.) John’s own epistles may come a short time before this. Of Jude’s we have no date. The epistles to the Thessalonians claim the first place. They were converts of somewhat over a year’s standing, and their faith was being spoken of through the world around. In his first epistle he exhorts and charges them, supplies them with an important doctrine for their comfort; but has no rebuke. The second epistle, written the same year, speaks even of their faith growing exceedingly, yet there were some walking disorderly, and he directs them as to these. What he has to say as to the state of things, however, is already solemn. Before the day of the Lord an apostasy is to come, and the mystery of iniquity is already working among Christians, with a present hindrance, indeed, which when removed, the man of sin will be revealed, and strong delusion carry away those who had not really received the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. The Corinthian epistles stand next in order. The character of the first is well known. In from three to five years from their conversion, a spirit of division had begun among them, the product of worldliness; along with this, the toleration of evil such as was not named among the Gentiles, going to law with one another, sitting at meat in idol’s temples, drunk at the Lord’s table, and a denial, on the part of some, of the resurrection of the dead. In the second epistle, Paul is comforted with the effect of the first, yet with a joy not unmixed. He is afraid that if he came he should not find them such as he would, and he would have to bewail many who had "not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they had committed." In the same year, it is supposed, the epistle to the Galatians was written. Among them, legality was at work, introduced by Judaizing teachers. They seemed already (in some six years) removed from him that called them into the grace of Christ unto a different gospel. He was afraid lest he had bestowed on them labour in vain. The rapture of their conversion was gone, and a legal spirit was engendering pride, censoriousness, and strife with one another. A year after follows the epistle to the Romans — a doctrinal treatise in the main; but their faith, in the world’s capital, is reported throughout the whole world. We find no reproof; but he has to warn them of those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine they had learned, and bid them avoid them. Four years pass, and the apostle is now a prisoner at Rome. Thence he writes to the Ephesian church as faithful in Christ Jesus. To the Colossians also, praising their faith and love. Finally, to the Philippians, no less faithful; but he had grievous things now to say of those at Rome. He hopes to send them Timothy, for he has none beside who will naturally care for their state, but "all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ," and "many walk of whom he had told them before, and now tells them even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ."Somewhat later, it is thought, the epistle to the Hebrews was written. It was hard to utter the things he had to say, seeing they were dull of hearing, and had need to be taught over again the first principles of Christianity. Some had already apostatized (Heb 6:6, R.V.). Others were forsaking the Christian assemblies. They were to look diligently, lest any one lacked the grace of God, and not to be carried about with divers and strange doctrines. The pastoral epistles come latest, and here it is easy to see the decline which has set in. In the first epistle to Timothy we find that he had been left at Ephesus to charge some not to teach another doctrine. Some had set up for teachers of the law. Hymenaeus and Philetus had made shipwreck of the faith. Others had gone astray through love of money. He warns him finally of apostasy in the latter times. Titus is full of warnings as to the connection between truth and godliness. The Cretans, among whom he is, are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies, and must be sharply rebuked. Finally, the second epistle to Timothy closes the Pauline series, — brightly, for he knows his God, and is now going to Him, but with a solemn survey of things around, and a still more solemn outlook for the future. All they which are in Asia have turned away from him; the faith of some is being overthrown, and there are vessels of dishonor from which one is to purge himself. Already there were resisters of the truth, men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. Demas had forsaken him; at his first defence no man stood with him. As to the future, evil men and seducers would grow worse and worse, and the time would come when sound doctrine would no more be received, they would turn away their ears from the truth and turn to fables. In the last days perilous times would come; men being "self-lovers, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy lovers of pleasures more than of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." Such being the times of the apostle Paul, we can expect no difference when we open the other epistles. We may be therefore briefer. James and Peter both address themselves to the circumcision. And in James we find in the Christian assembly the poor man made to give place to the rich, even though he might be an unbeliever; and the insisting upon the works that are the fruit of faith is an indication of the tendency to mere orthodoxy. Similarly speak the blessing and cursing from the same mouth, the evil speaking, the friendship of the world, the boasting of the morrow. The first epistle of Peter, written to the dispersion, gives a favourable picture of the Christian character. The second contemplates the inroads of evil, false teachers with damnable heresies and covetous hearts, turning back into the world those that had escaped from its pollutions; scoffers, walking in their own lusts, saying, "Where is the promise of His coming?" and unlearned and unstable men wresting the Scripture to their own destruction. The epistle of Jude, coming apparently shortly after this, carries it further. Here the men of the second epistle of Peter are already crept into the Christian ranks, and their course is traced to full apostasy, and judgment at the coming of the Lord. John’s epistles come a good while later. There are now many antichrists, by which we know it is the last time. He marks them out for rejection. Finally, in the assembly a Diotrephes receives not the apostle’s word, nor the brethren, and forbiddeth those who would, and casteth them out of the church. One glance more before the New Testament closes, and here we find the Lord Himself among the seven candlesticks, God’s light-bearers for the world, judging them. His voice it is we hear, and seven times we are solemnly and emphatically called to hear it.Seven actually existing assemblies, representative of the state of the Church then ere the last apostle leaves it, and the voice of inspiration is silent. A sevenfold successive unfolding of the Church’s history, as many believe it, until Christ gathers His people to Himself. First, Ephesus, now, alas! declined from its first love. Then Smyrna, under the twofold, the open and secret, assault of Satan. Next Pergamos, dwelling where Satan’s throne is, with its Balaam-teachers and Nicolaitanes. Then Thyatira, under the rule of the false prophetess Jezebel. Fifthly, Sardis, with a name to live, but dead. Philadelphia, with still a little strength, and cautioned to hold fast. And last, lukewarm Laodicea, with Christ outside ready to spue it out of His mouth. Make of it what you may, here is the closing picture, the last view of the Church on earth left with us. Does it give the impression of an overcomer, though there are overcomers? Of triumph? or, alas! of failure and defeat? And what is this story of man from the beginning? of man even when God’s way of grace has been revealed? of the people of God at all times? Does it not seem one of the deepest mysteries of His ways that He should be (if we may say so,) content to have so little apparent result, on the earth-side at least, of all His wondrous works among the sons of men? Does it not seem as if ever the lesson was to be, "Cease ye from man"? Does it not seem as if we might still say of it, in the sense Dr. Steele objects to, "I have seen an end of all perfection"? Is this condemnation and setting aside of man really a lesson of holiness that it is so enforced? It would surely seem to be so. God’s lessons are all holy lessons. Let us take up the Word once more and see. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 55: 03.08. CHAPTER 08 - THE MORAL APPLICATION FOR THE CHRISTIAN. ======================================================================== Chapter 08 The Moral Application for the Christian. Therefore let no man glory in men," says the apostle (1Co 3:21); and he says it of such men as "Paul or Apollos or Cephas." And of himself he says, "To me it is a very small matter to be judged of you, or of man’s judgment; yea, I judge not mine own self: for I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified, but He that judgeth me is the Lord." (1Co 4:3-4.) How simply and decidedly has Paul accepted, as we may say, the lesson of this long, sad history! How he disclaims the very ability to form even a really trustworthy estimate of himself! Not in the least to set aside the necessity of self-judgment: "Herein," says he, "do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men." (Acts 24:16.) But having done all, — searching and finding nothing whereof to accuse himself, instead of pronouncing as to his condition, he refers that to Christ’s judgment, and not his own. And to this all Scripture seems, as if with one voice, to call us. On the one hand, it puts before us a perfect standard, the very highest, — to walk as He walked. When also it speaks of a Christian according to the divine thought, it draws a perfect exemplar, — no blots, nor defects. For a copy, it would not do: we should copy faithfully the defects: and this is what Dr. Steele has forgotten, easily and conclusively proved by this, that the picture is of the Christian as such, — not of a certain class. Then, on the other hand, if you look at the actual men and women, it seems as if your attention were to be specially called to their imperfections, and worse than imperfections. Scripture biographers differ from human ones so in this respect that it has been the subject of common remark. So with the dealing of the Spirit of God with us individually. Do we dream that He is going to exhibit us to our own eyes "radiant with all the excellencies of Christ"? It would indeed be perilous: "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness" (Eze 28:17), it was said of old. "Lest, being lifted up with pride," says the apostle, "he fall into the condemnation of the devil." (1Ti 3:6.) No; there is one place indeed in which we may contemplate ourselves without danger, but that is in Christ: the very thing which Dr. Steele so refuses. "I knew a man in Christ," says the apostle again: . . . of such an one will I glory; but in myself I will NOT glory, save in mine infirmities." (2Co 12:2-3.) Holiness God seeks and requires from us, and He means it be real — imparted, not imputed. But God’s way of it is still by faith, and in Christ for us in this sense, that it is as "we all with open face behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory." (2Co 3:18.) It is just while we have our eyes thus upon and are occupied with Christ that this effect is found. It is just because all legal effort means occupation with ourselves that it avails nothing to produce the holiness it requires. This is the true lesson of Rom 7:4. To find deliverance from this experience, and power for a right walk, the "law of the Spirit," — or, as I would suggest it may be more clearly read, "the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus," is what sets us "free from the law of sin and death." For this deliverance, we must know that in the cross God has not only put away our sins, but has put us away in all that we were and are as sinners; and this is what is meant by our old man being "crucified with Christ." It is not true for inward experience, for sense, or feeling. It is true for faith alone. And as "Christ died unto sin once, and in that He liveth, liveth unto God," so are we told, not feel or find, but "reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus." It is thus we are set free from the necessity of self-occupation, and given ability to turn away entirely to Him whom God has made to us not only "righteousness," but "sanctification" also. It is faith realizing this that says, in words so misapprehended by Dr. Steele, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." (Gal 2:20.) We shall now take Dr. Steele’s objections to all this as he conceives it, and his own very meagre statement of his own views, as they lie, scattered with very little order through his book. We shall thus have the main points in controversy fully before us, and with this, so far as holiness is concerned, our task will be at an end. We must go back to the doctrine of the two natures first; — he says, reporting the views he is condemning, — "In regeneration, the new man is created in the believer, and the old man remains with all his powers unchanged" same as the new man, nor of course the old nature synonymous with the old man. Nature and person are essentially different. Scripture does not state that the old man exists side by side with the new in the believer, but that we have put off the old man and put on the new. The old man is myself as I look back upon myself — a sinner in my sins. The new man is what I am now in Christ Jesus. It is manifest that these two things could not exist together. This leads us to what must be our next quotation. "The doctrine of the two natures is not completely stated till the fact is brought out that neither is regarded as responsible for the acts of the other. For they are conceived of as persons. If the flesh of the believer behaves badly, that is none of the believer’s business.’’ This is an inference, and not at all the doctrine of those Dr. Steele is reviewing. It gains plausibility from that confusion of nature and person which I entirely refuse. Accountability belongs to a person, not a nature. It is not the flesh that sins, but the man; and if a believer does so, he comes under the divine government as liable for it. "The time is come," says the apostle Peter, "that judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous be with difficulty saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?" (1Pe 4:17-18.) ’’And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here with fear; forasmuch as ye know that ye are not redeemed with corruptible things, as with silver and gold, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ." (1Pe 1:17-19) "For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." (1Co 11:31-32.) Thus it is not true that there is not accountability, but it is to a Father’s holy government, and any needed chastening is itself the fruit of grace. As to the distinctness of the two natures, it should be plain that they must be distinct and opposed. The good is from God, — His nature and His gift. He could not be or communicate a half-evil thing. Life, it is true, we cannot define; how much less a life which is spiritual: but it is life we receive, and eternal life. Moreover, we are absolutely assured that "the mind of the flesh," — not, as in our version, "the carnal mind" — "is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." (Rom 8:7.) Flesh cannot be changed into spirit, nor spirit into flesh: they are opposed ever and only. This may be difficult to understand psychologically. But as far as experience goes, Dr. Steele will not deny it to be the experience of most Christians. Even supposing it not to be his, and that he has never known it, this would have to be accounted for as an anomaly on his side. It will be seen, therefore, that I do not adopt the "favorite method of exegesis of 1Jn 3:9," which, our author says, "is, to substitute ’whatsoever’ for ’whosoever,’ and to say, ’That part of our nature which is born of God doth not commit sin,’ the unregenerate part will continue to sin." And as to the illustration which follows, he should have informed us whether it is his own putting into words the thoughts of others, or from what nameless writer he derives it, or why he cannot give the name. It is "whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin," and applies, therefore, to all the children of God. It is their character, not that they are always (alas!) consistent with themselves. The questions which follow (pp. 65-68) are all therefore set aside by this, where they have not been answered. We turn to the passage which shows us God’s way of power in this condition. "Says McIntosh, ’It is no part of the work of the Spirit to improve human nature,’ — that seems to be past praying for, — but to make a brand-new man to dwell in the same body with the old man till physical death luckily comes and kills the old Adam, who had successfully defied all power in heaven and earth to crucify him. Henceforth the new man has the entire possession of the disembodied soul. How different this from the holiness bearing its heavenly fruit this side of the grave. The only scripture cited for this doctrine of death-sanctification is Rom 6:7 — ’He that is dead is free from sin.’ This evidently means (see Rom 6:6), He who has died unto sin is freed, or justified (R.V.), from sin" (pp. 60, 61). I must not question Dr. Steele’s uprightness. I can only, therefore, say that his incapacity for even understanding what he is opposing is indeed phenomenal. I never, that I can remember, heard the text in question quoted for "death-sanctification" in the sense in which he speaks of it. Nor does he appeal to any particular writer, but says it is so. The writings of the "Brethren" in general are to be, I suppose, the proof. Then I say, it is simply, and without any qualification, an untruth. Let Dr. S. meet the challenge, and show proof. But it is a little too gross to say that we do not believe in "a holiness bearing its heavenly fruit this side of the grave"! If nothing less than "freedom from all sin, original and actual," be holiness, then the charge is true; but no more true of us than of the mass of Christians. But will even our author contend for this? The fact is, that the use of Rom 6:7 is in the interest of present holiness, and always for this end. The application of it Dr. S. makes is true as such, that "he who has died to sin is justified from sin;" but his thought about this is another matter. He supposes that to have died to sin is to have ceased from it practically and altogether, whether actual or original. "He finds St. Paul’s inspired unfoldings of the gospel-germs dropped by Christ to be the exact fulfillment and realization of these predictions, when the apostle asserts that ’our old man is crucified with Him’ — that is, in the same manner, and with as deadly effect — that the body of sin might be destroyed’ — ’put out of existence’ (Meyer); so that every advanced believer may truthfully assert, ’It is no longer I that live’" (p. 25). Thus, then, it is only "the advanced believer" who can be "justified from sin"! Is that true, Dr. Steele? There is, then, in this case, no such thing as the justification of the ungodly! Or is this another thing from justification before God? or is it a second justification of the believer, not the first? I know that it is maintained by Mr. Fletcher that the sinner is justified by faith without works, but the Christian is justified by faith and works, and by and by in the day of judgment to be justified by works without faith! But even Mr. Fletcher hardly maintains that a Christian can only be justified by absolute freedom from sin. If it be indeed so, then it must be the case that every one who is first justified by faith without works must be immediately cleansed from all sin, actual and original, and his justification thereafter must depend upon his maintaining this condition. But a consequence of this will be that instead of its being an "advanced Christian" who can speak as our author, every Christian who is not perfect must have fallen from perfection; and, in the same act, fallen from justification. There can be no justified Christians but these perfect ones! And those so fallen must begin again as sinners, and be justified afresh! Justified how often also must the mass of Christians be! One would think, upon this plan, as often as you shake a friend’s hand in the street you would have to ask, Do you belong to Christ today? and that Methodist pastors must find it their chief labour to bring back souls to justification! As for the rest of Christians, — the imperfect ones, — there are none. It ought to be earnestly protested against as a delusion that there can be such! I should not impute such consequences to Dr. Steele except that they seem necessarily to result from his view of 1Jn 1:7, which we have considered. But if this is not his thought of justification from sin, he should surely tell us what it is. Can it mean simply that you cannot charge with sin a man who is practically dead to it, — if it refer to the past, this is not true: former sins might still be charged; if it refer to the present, it is a mere truism. Think of the apostle solemnly telling you that a man who had no sin could not be (properly) charged with any! So that we are tired of finding meanings for Dr. Steele: very unnecessary work, no doubt; only he seems to want to be (and to suppose that he is) intelligible. It remains that if "justified from sin" cannot be taken in the way he takes it, the door is open for an interpretation that will stand the test of intelligibility and of Scripture. The truth is, that "he that has died is justified from sin" is simply an appeal to fact. Death cancels all possible indictments. He who has died is passed beyond them. The death to which he applies this is our death to sin. How, then, are we dead to sin? The fundamental basis of all the reasoning here is in the latter part of the fifth chapter, — the doctrine of the two heads. Adam, the head of the old creation, is the figure of Christ, the Head of new creation. Our relation to the first Adam is by life, a life actually communicated from him, and by which corruption of nature becomes ours, and death the stamp upon a fallen being. Our relation to Christ is by life also, real and holy in its nature, as we have seen, — a life eternal, upon which death can never pass. But this would not be enough if it were all. There must be also complete atonement for sin, and justification. Death is the removal of the fallen creature from the place for which he was originally created, the sign of divine displeasure, by which the old creation comes to an end in judgment. Christ’s death for us on the cross glorifies God in this setting aside of the old creation; not, therefore, to restore it, but to separate us from it, as those who have their part in new creation with Himself. For those, then, who have life in Christ, that they are "dead with Christ" has the very deepest meaning. It speaks, not of an inward change, but of a change of relation. It is that in which our relation to the old creation is judicially ended. In this sense, as a question of liability on this ground, we have died to sin, and to have died to sin is to be justified from it. This, then, is the fact for every child of God; but it is a fact, not to be felt or experienced, but reckoned; not for sense or of attainment, but a basis-fact for faith. "In that Christ died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. So," as the word is better, reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Rom 6:10-11, R.V.). Immediately there follows, "Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body." Not, let it not be, but Let it not reign: a very meagre result if we were actually and experimentally dead to it. But this is to be the moral result: "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed" — or rather, spite of Meyer, — "annulled," made to be as though it were not, — "that henceforth we should not be slaves to sin" (Rom 6:6, Gk.). The power is in this, that we are thus freed from all need of self-occupation. By the cross, for faith, our old self is set entirely aside; not that we may be occupied even with a new self in its place, but with Christ, in whom we live, and who, as this is practically realized, lives in us. This is the true meaning of what Dr. Steele quotes: "I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." (Gal 2:19-20.) It is certain, therefore, that Dr. Steele is again under misconception when he represents us as saying that "those scriptures in which the old man is to be crucified, mortified, or killed are all understood to imply a life-long torture on the cross, — a killing that continues through scores of years" (p. 62). Not merely do the Plymouth Brethren never speak of a life-long torture, but, with Scripture, they absolutely never speak of the old man as to be killed at all. "Our old man was crucified," and we reckon ourselves, not dying, but dead. The seventh of Romans shows the working of this practically, in contrast with legal effort and self-occupation. Deliverance is by turning from it all to Christ, in whom we are, that beholding His glory we may be changed into His image. "To me, to live is Christ" is necessary holiness; "To me, to live is holiness" leaves out Christ. On my side, to sum up: — I object to the system Dr. Steele advocates, first, because its relaxed law for men of "damaged moral powers" is really and manifestly Antinomian. Secondly, because in it righteousness in Christ is repudiated, and our own obedience to this law as a "rule of judgment" is substituted for it. Thirdly, because Christ’s work, according to it, merely puts man in a salvable condition — does not save him. Fourthly, because the penalty of sin is not really borne, and God, therefore, as inflicting it, not really glorified. Fifthly, because new birth is made merely a work of moral suasion, to be undone as easily as it was done. Sixthly, because fear, which would have torment, is made an essential means of holiness, and perfect rest in Christ is made impossible. Seventhly, because, to maintain perfection in the flesh the standard of walk is lowered, and sin in the believer is palliated or denied. These are grave charges. They have been sufficiently substantiated by his own words, and I have, I trust, faithfully and fully examined these. It is for our readers now to judge by Scripture, and in the presence of God, where the truth is. The question of practical holiness is one of the greatest importance, and connects itself, as we have seen, with the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. It is the outcome of these when wrought by the Spirit of God into the life. Well may it be, then, a test of any creed, how it provides for this. As such, we may not shrink from it, although able to make no such pretensions as Dr. Steele makes for himself. We dare not say that in us the flesh does not lust against the Spirit. We dare not claim to walk up to our standard, Christ’s own perfect walk. We are unfeignedly thankful to find thus in the cross that which has set aside for us the need of a self-occupation which we have found fruitless in the accomplishment of deliverance from the law of sin; and in Christ risen from the dead, an absolute acceptance and an object for the heart which we are persuaded ***are the only power for holiness practicable to man, Occupation of heart with One who has passed into the heavens is deliverance from self, from the world, from sin. In Him there we have an eternal satisfying portion, which frees from the corruption which is in the world through lust. But we are feeble and dependent, and all Scripture unites in pressing this upon us; our wisdom is, to know how truly so. Weakness is not discouragement when a God of infinite resources and unfailing power bids us take hold upon His strength. And this gives Him also His place and glory: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," becomes thus indeed a blessed reality. For this He would remove all tormenting fear out of our hearts, that He Himself may be trusted fully, and dwell fully in them. Faith worketh, not by fear, but by love. Chastening itself is from a Father’s hand, and a token of sonship: "What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?" Thus we may indeed need to be recalled to ourselves and to Him. But "work of faith, labour of love, patience of hope," these are the three tokens of our "election of God." Imperfectly I have expressed all this, I am sure; but Dr. Steele has attacked as the theology of brethren what is truth, and vital truth. What the "brethren" hold may be in itself quite unimportant — save indeed to themselves. What is the truth on the great themes we have been discussing is of the greatest importance. May the Lord guide His people in judgment! Of "brethren" themselves I have designedly said nothing. Those who are interested in this can easily have their desire satisfied. Only I would say that they should be judged by their own statements, and not otherwise. Upon the matter of prophecy also I do not enter. It is a wide subject, there are plenty of helps to be obtained, and the attention of Christians is being largely, thank God, directed to it. F. W. Grant. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 56: 04.01. FACTS AND THEORIES AS TO A FUTURE STATE ======================================================================== Facts and Theories as to a Future State by F W Grant ======================================================================== CHAPTER 57: 04.02. TABLE OF CONTENTS ======================================================================== Table of Contents Preface to Second Edition Introduction. - Forms of Denial of Eternal Punishment PART 1. - MAN AS HE IS I. - Is the Body All? II. - Man a Triune Being III. - The Spirit of God IV. - The Spirit of Man V. - The Soul VI. - Functions and Relationships of Soul and Spirit VII. - Soul and Self VIII. - The Fall IX. - Man’s Relationship to God PART II - DEATH AND THE INTERMEDIATE STATE X. - Death XI. - Consciousness after Death. XlI. - Consciousness after Death. - 2 XIII. - Objections from the Old Testament XIV. - Sheol, Hades, and Paradise PART III - THE ETERNAL ISSUES XV. - The Authority and Use of Scripture XVI. - Immortality: Is it Conditional? XVII. - Eternal Life: What is it? XVIII. - The First Sentence XIX. - Destruction and its Kindred Terms. - The Old Testament XX. - The New-Testament Terms XXI. - A Further Survey of the Scripture Terms XXII. - The Provisional Character of Death XXIII. - The Ministry of Death XXIV. - The Purification and Blessing of the Earth XXV. - Old-Testament Shadows XXVI. - The Ages of Eternity. - The Question Stated XXVII. - The New-Testament Solution of the Question XXVIII. - The New Testament Scriptures as to the Judgment of the World XXIX. - The Resurrection of Judgment XXX. - Judgment: When and What? XXXI. - The Doom of Satan XXXII. - Gehenna XXXIII. - The Apocalyptic Visions. - 1 XXXIV . - The Apocalyptic Visions. - 2 XXXV. - The Apocalyptic Visions. - 3 XXXVI. - "Everlasting Punishment” in Matt. XXV XXXVII. - “The Gospel of Hope XXXVIII. - Annihilist - Restorationism. - Mr. Dunn’s Theory XXXIX. - “The Restitution of all Things.” - Mr. Jukes XL. - “The Restitution of All Things.” - Canon Farrar XLI. - Mr. Birks’ View XLII. - The Ethical Question XLIII. - Last Words with Annihilationists XLIV. - Last Words with Restorationists APPENDIX. - ANNIHILATIONISM 1. - Edward White : “Life in Christ.” 2. - J. H. Pettingell: "The Theological Trilemma" 3. - W. R. Hart: “Eternal Purpose 4. - Seventh-Day Adventism ANNIHILO-RESTORATIONISM 5. - L. C. Baker: "The Fire of God’s Anger" 6 - C. T. Russell: "Overcomers" THE ANDOVER THEOLOGY The Incarnation Atonement Eschatology SWEDENBORGIANISM A Note on Swedenborgianism ======================================================================== CHAPTER 58: 04.03. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1889.) ======================================================================== PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1889.) A NEW edition being called for, I have sought to make it as complete as possible; and the book having been stereotyped, the new matter has been put in the shape of an appendix. This has had its advantage, however, in allowing some systems of unbelief which have only lately obtained prominence, and have received, so far as I am aware, little or no examination, to be more thoroughly investigated - a thing demanded by the fact of their doctrines being disseminated over the face of the country with a zeal worthy of a better cause. May the Lord grant in mercy that the answers furnished to these, though still brief, may be used of Him to preserve some from the flood of error, ever rising higher. The testimony to this is decisive. The fact can surprise no one who is intelligent as to the Scripture-witness to the apostasy of the last days. Mr. Spurgeon’s "Down-grade" papers in The Sword and Trowel are well known, and his withdrawal from the Baptist Union gives emphasis to his statements as to the decline of orthodoxy upon the subject of eternal punishment along with other fundamental truths. Seven years before, a lecture by Mr. Edward White traces the spread of the doctrine of Conditional Immortality over the world, and names as its adherents many of the most noted writers and thinkers in all the Protestant denominations. Among these appears the name of Dr. Joseph Parker, of the City Temple, London, who shortly after Mr. Spurgeon’s letters, announced in Boston that "not one leading Congregational minister in England, as far as he knew, preached now the eternal retribution of sin in the world to come, but rather a gospel of hope." While quite recently Dr. Hannay, secretary of the Congregational Union, is reported as saying that "in England, the doctrine of Eternal Torment was practically dead, the doctrine of Conditional Immortality stationary, and perhaps declining, while that theory of the future life known as the ‘larger hope’ was being widely accepted." This must be taken, of course, with qualification. That such statements can be made, however, shows but too well the drift. If here in America the same things cannot be yet said, the tendency is still in the same direction. There is need, and urgent need, for that which meets it. No argument known to me, of the least importance, has been omitted from the present volume; while a full index of texts and another of subjects will give any one who consults its pages the means of ready reference to the whole contents. To the Lord’s grace and blessing it is now commended. THE present work is the development of one published some years ago, and now out of print, but which took up only a portion of the subject here considered, and at much less length. The rapid spread of the views in question, their variety and their importance, render a prolonged and patient examination of them absolutely necessary. The question has become one of the leading questions of the day, and nothing short of an extended appeal to Scripture will satisfy the need of those entangled by the error, or of those who may be in danger of becoming entangled. For others also, quite outside of these, the careful examination of Scripture upon a subject of such deep interest will be found very far from unprofitable. Truth as a whole is so connected in its various parts, that we cannot apprehend any one of these more fully, without this leading us to a fuller apprehension of many other points in which kindred truths touch this. While the perfection and profundity of the word of God will more and more be realized as its ability is proved to satisfy the real need of the soul and meet the natural thoughts and questions of the mind. Scripture thus proved will be its own best evidence as a Divine revelation. No doubt there is abundance of external witness to its truth; but the surest of all is its own direct testimony to man’s heart and conscience. Without Scripture he is an enigma which his own wit cannot explain: he knows not from whence he came or whither he is going; he knows neither himself nor God. With Scripture, "light is come into the world;" and what makes all things manifest needs not, although it everywhere finds, a testimony outside itself. Truth speaks for itself -"commends itself to every man’s conscience in time sight of God"- although the true it is who alone will hear it. In the following pages, then, the doctrine of Scripture is what is first examined, not merely negatively an answer sought to certain views. The statement of the truth is the only proper answer to the error. This the writer has sought everywhere to keep in mind, while yet endeavouring to meet whatever has been advanced on the other side as fully as possible. Especial attention has naturally been given to certain writers who are most prominently identified with the theory of annihilation on the one hand, or of universal salvation in its various modifications upon the other; and they are allowed to speak for the most part in their own words, and at sufficient length to ensure that there shall be no doubt or mistake as to the views they hold. Among these, Mr. Constable has challenged criticism of his arguments, and to him I have naturally sought the more fully to reply. To the arguments of Mr. Roberts also, the present leader of the Christadelphian body, who has printed an extended examination of my original volume, "Life and Immortality," I have necessarily devoted considerable space. May the Lord in His pity and love to souls, for whom He has died, be pleased to use these pages for the blessing of many, and to His own glory! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 59: 04.04. INTRODUCTION ======================================================================== INTRODUCTION FORMS OF THE DENIAL OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IN entering upon a subject like the present, it will be desirable in the first place to get as clear a view as possible of what is involved, the questions it is proposed to answer. The denial of eternal punishment has two main forms, that of annihilationism, or, as some prefer to call it now, "conditional immortality," and that of the final restoration and salvation of all men. Of these two there are again several modifications, and even (contradictory of one another as they may seem) amalgamations. Each of these we must briefly notice. I. Annihilationism is at the present moment very widely spread, and there are perhaps few Christians who have not in some shape or other already met with it. It is a dish dressed up by skilful hands to suit very different tastes. From Dr. Leask and the various writers in the "Rainbow" to the editor and contributors to the Christadelphian; from Mr. Morris, late of Philadelphia, to Miles Grant and the Adventists of various grades, it is found in association with very distinct and very opposite systems of doctrine, from Trinitarianism down to the lowest depths of Socinian and materialistic infidelity. But, on this very account, it will be well to look at it, not only in itself but in its associations, To lead the minds of those who, meeting it in more decent form, may be in danger from its plausible sophistries, to apprehend what it naturally connects itself with and prepares the way for; and, moreover, to arouse the minds of Christians in general to a sense of the practical bearing and results of an evil which is spreading rapidly, and lifting up its head in unlooked for places. This may be my justification, if I should lead my readers into the examination of points which for the Christian may be deemed unnecessary, and speak too of things which rightly shock his sensibilities as such. Moreover, I do it because upon any point whatever, where Scripture is appealed to, it is due to those whose minds might be injuriously affected by the mere seeming to decline such an appeal. My desire is, God helping me, to meet the honest, need of minds unexercised in the subtleties presented to them, too often with a skill which, alas, shows in whose hands these poor annihilationists are unwitting instruments. And if, in so doing, the very foundations of our faith should have to be examined (and they can sustain no harm by it), it may at least (I repeat) serve to convince my readers of what is brought in question by a false system, which is helping to ripen fast the predicted evil of the later days. To come now to the point in hand. We have a number of steps to take before we reach the lowest level of so-called Christadelphianism. Materialism is indeed its inevitable tendency; yet a large number of those now holding it are by no means materialists, as Edw. White, Heard, Maude, Morris, Dobney, etc. On the other hand, Mr. Constable is the leader of a very pronounced materialistic section of this school (which we may call the Trinitarian school of annihilationism), and with whom, though differing in many ways, General Goodwyn finds his place. The "Adventist" school, on the other hand, with some exceptions, are not only materialistic but anti-Trinitarian also: to these belong Hudson, Hastings* and Miles Grant. Christadelphianism is all this and more, a system in which no element of real Christianity remains behind. They have rightly, therefore, given up the name of Christian. *Messrs. Hudson and Hastings are to some extent exceptions. The psychological question is that upon which these writers differ most among themselves. Some believe in a true trichotomy of body, soul and spirit, as Mr. Heard; some are dichotomists, believing the spirit to be superadded in the case of the regenerate, as Morris of Philadelphia; most are, as already said, materialists wholly.. I shall notice briefly the main distinctions on these points. 1. And first as to the spirit of man. Mr. Heard in his "Tripartite Nature of Man" maintains its substantive existence in all men, as that which implies "God-consciousness," which the brute has not. In the unconverted it is deadened and inert, but quickened by the Spirit of God when we are born again. With him, as to the latter part of this, Mr. White agrees, although he can speak of "the royal qualities of spirit, whatever they may be" (!) in a queen bee, "which incite or enable her to take the lead in migrations or swarmings" (!!) so that for him it, can scarcely imply what it does for Mr. Heard, and its possession or not by man would seem to be of very small account.* He allows it to be, however, in him "of a superior order, as ‘the candle of the Lord; he has more wisdom than the beasts of the field; nevertheless he. shares spirit with all animated natures."† Mr. Morris, on the other hand, believes that the new nature communicated in regeneration is alone "spirit" in the proper sense. The word is used as to the unregenerate only for the "motions and emotions of the soul." In Ecc 12:7 thinks ruach should rather be "breath," or if not, "it may be used to signify the motion of the soul in passing away and passing into the custody of God!"‡ Passing downwards towards the naked materialism in which this doctrine ends, we find General Goodwyn also maintaining the addition of the spirit to man in regeneration only.§ *Life in Christ, p. 18. †P. 94. ‡What. is Man? pp. 18, 19. §In his. "Holokleria." Mr. Constable’s doctrine, gravitating evidently towards "Christadelphianism," is that the "spirit" (ruach or neshamah) in man is the Spirit of God, yet it is identified by him also with the "breath of life;" the cause of animation to the body.* God withdraws this at death, and the man breaks up and dissolves away. This view Mr. Warleigh (whom Mr. White styles "an able and resolute thinker") has adopted, differing only in this - that in the case of Christian believers, the Spirit, which he describes as the Spirit of God, becomes according to him a distinct individual spirit of thee man separable from the soul; and he thinks that this "Spirit," with all the attributes of an individual mind, survives in paradise till the resurrection, when it rejoins soul and body at the Lord’s coming.† Not many degrees below this comes the materialism of a certain class of Adventists, who may be fitly represented by the editor of the "World’s Crisis," Miles Grant, of Boston, Mass. He denies that the spirit is other than the breath in man, and that it is "the thinking accountable part, or that it ever did or ever will think."‡ And this leads him to the denial of the personality of the Spirit of God also. He says :§ "The word spirit is used to denote an influence proceeding from a being. Hence we read of the Comforter or Holy Spirit, that ‘it proceedeth from the Father.’ In mesmeric operations there is a spirit proceeding from the operator to his subject, by means of which he controls him. All men and animals exert this influence more or less." All Adventist annihilationists are not as gross as this. Messrs. Hudson and Hastings, for instance, are not materialists to this extent evidently, although in the same boat with those that are. Messrs. Ellis and Read, in a book which has gone through at least six editions, on the other hand, are as out-spoken as Miles Grant. They lay down these propositions : (*In his treatise on Hades." †Quoted from "Life in Christ," p. 208, n. ‡Spirit in Man, pp. 31, 32 §Ib. p. 1. ?Bible vs. Tradition, pp. 13, 84-87. ) "First, we shall prove from the Bible the corporeal being and mortality of the soul, and the nature of the spirit of man, which spirit, not being a .living entity, is neither mortal nor immortal. "Ruach (spirit, is derived from ruah, ‘to blow,’ and nesme,* to breathe’ (I) primarily signifies ‘wind, air, breath’; but it is sometimes used to signify a principle, having some relation to electricity, diffused through universal space, a principle that stimulates the organs of men and animals into activity, and which is used by the animals themselves to control their voluntary Motions . . . This principle, being the principle of life in all creatures, is in the hands of God and controlled by Him, hence in Him we live and move and have our being; and God is the God of the spirits of all flesh; when God taketh away His Spirit and His breath - 1: e., God’s spirit and God’s breath - then man returneth to his earth and his thoughts perish." From this it. is scarcely a step down to Christadelphianism, the system of the late Dr. Thomas and his followers. Their views have been little, if at all, noticed by any who have taken in hand to reply to annihilationist doctrine;† yet there is reason to believe they are spreading, not only in the United States, but also in Britain, where indeed, their first originator had birth. The system is acknowledged in the title page of a book that lies before me, by Mr. Roberts of Birmingham, England, their present leader, to be "opposed to the doctrines of all the names and denominations of Christendom" They adopt professedly an Old Testament basis, and deny almost all that is distinctive in the New: the deity of the Son, the personality of the Spirit., a personal devil, and the heavenly portion of the saints. To quote from Mr. Roberts’ book,‡ they believe that "the Father is eternal and underived, the Son has his origin in the creative fiat of the Almighty as Adam had; the Holy Ghost is the focalization of His will power, by means of His ‘free Spirit,’ which fills heaven and earth." They believe in "a Lamb of God, guileless from his paternity, and yet inheriting the human sin-nature of his mother." But, being free from actual sin, "He could meet all the claims of God’s law upon that nature, and yet triumph over its operation by a resurrection from the dead." God "raised Him from the dead to a glorious existence, even to equality with Himself." "And now life is deposited in Him for our acceptance, on condition of our allying ourselves to Him, yea, on condition of our entry into Him." "Baptism in water is the ceremony by which believing men and women are united with Christ, and constituted heirs of the life everlasting, which He, as one of us, has purchased." (*There is evidently a lapse here. They mean neshamah is from nesme as they put. it. †Mr. Clemance has put forth a reply, but from the standpoint of semi-Universalism. ‡Twelve Lectures, pp. 130, 140, 145. ) In this, its suited home, annihilation flourishes. "Spirit" is, according to Dr. Thomas, an element of the atmosphere, existing ordinarily combined with nitrogen and oxygen. "These three together, the nitrogen, oxygen, and electricity, constitute the breath and spirit of lives of all God’s living souls"* Mr. Roberts asks: - "What is that which is not matter? It will not do to say ‘spirit,’ if we are to take our notions of spirit from the Bible, for the Spirit came upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost like a mighty rushing wind, and made the place shake, showing it† to be capable of mechanical momentum, and therefore as much on the list of material forces as light, heat and electricity. Coming upon Samson, it energized his muscles to the snapping of ropes like thread; and, inhaled by the nostrils of man and beast, it gives physical life."‡ The questions as to the spirit are, therefore, its being or not an actual living entity in man; its functions; and, connected with this, the personality of the Spirit of God. 2. As to the soul there is still considerable variety of doctrine. Messrs. White, Heard, Morris, Maude and others believe very much according to common orthodoxy of the soul and of its survival too. Mr. Hudson also* admits its immateriality, although he supposes it to be "dependent on embodiment for the purposes of active existence." Mr. Dobney recognizes the probability of the soul being in nature distinct from the body, but denies "a purely disembodied condition."† (*Elpis Israel, p. 30. †Or the place? ‡Twelve Lectures, p. 31 ) Ordinarily, for common materialism, the soul is the animal "life," as with Mr. Constable‡ down to Miles Grant.§ It is a view which has the merit of simplicity at least, and a partial foundation in Scripture also; but in this application, as in so many others, a mere partial truth may he an absolute falsehood. 3. General Goodwyn differs from this, and his view seems peculiarly his own. The soul for him is "that combination of parts of the inner man, which is the seat of the mind and affections, and, having the breath of life, gives action to the outer members of the body." That is, the soul is apparently the lungs and heart and their connections! A fourth and a final view (very near akin to Goodwyn’s) is common to Messrs. Ellis and Read, and the Christadelphians alike. With these soul and body are one. "A living soul with Dr. Thomas is "a living, natural or animal body¶ "The word soul," says Roberts, "simply means a breathing creature." "That which it describes is spoken of as capable of hunger (Pro 19:15); of being satisfied with food (Lam 1:1-19); of touching a material object (Lev 5:2.) of going into the grave (Job 33:22-28); of coming out of it (Psa 30:3), etc. It is never spoken of as an immaterial, immortal, thinking entity. . . It is not only represented as capable of death, but as naturally liable to it," etc.** The questions as to the soul are sufficiently plain in these quotations. ( *Debt and Grace, p. 250. †Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment, pp. 93, 141. ‡Hades. §The Soul. #Truth and Tradition. ¶Elpis Israel, p. 21 **Twelve Lectures pp. 39 40. ) 3. As to the future state of the wicked, these writers have the merit of almost complete harmony. The wicked are to be "burnt up," to be "extinct," "destroyed utterly" in this sense of it, "blotted out of existence," etc. The whole vocabulary of Scripture terms they appeal to as affirming this. "Eternal life" is eternal existence, and this alone the righteous have. "Immortality" is conditional to those that seek for it by patient continuance in well-doing. The rest, with the devil (for those that believe in one) will finally - it may be after protracted torment in the lake of fire - perish and come to an end. Evil will be extinguished, and suffering be over forever; the whole universe left free from its incubus, and the restitution of all things be at length effected. These writers differ as to certain points, however. Some affirm the resurrection of all men; some even deny it as to any of the wicked: but these must be excepted of course from the number of those just spoken of. This denial of any real retribution seems spreading, and from a writer among annihilationists themselves has come forth a book against it. The followers of Thomas believe in a partial resurrection from which infants, idiots, and the heathen are excluded; and new birth for them is entry into the resurrection state. Other differences scarcely require to be put forth in an introduction. We must now turn to the opposite views of those who believe in or hope for universal salvation. II The Restorationist views are more uniform, and will require a much briefer notice here. Those who hold them are divided into two main schools of thought. The first is that of the large Universalist denomination, almost identified with the Unitarian denial of Christ and of atonement. With these we shall have little to do as far as the Scriptural inquiry is concerned, as they have virtually given up Scripture, wherever it would interfere at least with entire freedom of thought. The ethical question is the question of main interest and concern with them, and there we may have to do with them. The second school is mainly a German importation, where it can boast the names of Bengel and Neander, of Tholuck and Olshausen. Through Maurice and others it has grown into notoriety in England, and Dr. Farrar’s well-known sermons in Westminster Abbey, now published under the title of "Eternal Hope," have put them before the masses in a way to attract almost universal attention. His book has little in it that is original, however, being in large part a reproduction of one by Mr. Cox, of Nottingham, in which the three words "damnation," "hell" and "everlasting" are challenged as mistranslations in the same way as they are by Canon Farrar. A third, book, from which Mr. Cox himself confessedly got much, is that of Mr. Jukes, more broadly heterodox than either, even to denying in the Swedenborgian manner the resurrection of the dead.* Atonement is also set aside by his work on restitution; an unsaved man in Gehenna becomes his own sin-offering,† and rises up to God, while as to every one saved, he is saved by present death and judgment,‡ not Christ’s bearing these for him. These statements Messrs. Cox and Farrar do not indeed reproduce, but the thought of atonement is not in their books,§ and it is fair to infer that it is not in their minds. Saintly souls for Dr. F. their saintliness secures; but for sinners, nay the poor in spirit, praying, striving, agonizing to get nearer to the light, there may be no remedy but æonian fire.# True, it is the fire of God’s love, though in Gehenna, but Christ did not die that they might have that. ( *Mr. White is my authority for this (Life in Christ. p. 380). †Restitution of all Things, p. 127. ‡See pp. 72-74. §Comp Salvator Mundi, pp. 156-158. And again, 169: "The historical Cross of Christ is simply a disclosure within the bounds of time and space of the eternal passion of the unchangeable God; it is simply the supreme manifestation of that redeeming love which always suffers in our sufferings, and is forever at work for our salvation from them." See "Eternal Hope," p. 86, etc. These three books, "Eternal Hope," "Salvator Mundi,"* "The Restitution of All Things," may be fairly taken as representative of this rising school. Of these Canon Farrar will not allow himself to be classed as a Universalist.† Two or three difficult passages stand in his way, although these may only "represent the ignorance of a dark age," so that he may still indulge a "hope" for all. It is a hope that may make ashamed, no doubt; but he can at least indulge it. When Scripture is so elastic, there are few hopes we cannot.) The principal texts urged by writers of this school have to do with the doctrine of the "restitution of all things," which is a Scripture phrase, clipped‡ to look broader, and represent a theory of the restitution of the universe. They urge God’s being the Saviour of all, and His will that all men should be saved. Eternal fire is not really eternal, and is purgatorial, not penal nor simply retributive. The phrases for eternity are mostly reduplicative expressions, as "ages" or "ages of ages," and which speak of periods however long, yet finite, and in which, according to Messrs. Jukes and Cox, redemptive processes are continually going on. They all unite of course in opposing the doctrine of a fixed state after death, and find in the everlasting mercy of God a hope, if not quite definite, of all receiving mercy. III There is a third school of opinion upon these points, which is in its main thought a revival of the views of certain rabbins, and which unites the ideas of annihilation and restoration. The founder is a Mr. Henry Dunn, and he is finding followers among former leaders of pure annihilationism. Mr. Blain, at eighty years of age, has recalled his "Death not Life," to replace it by another entitled "Hope for our Race," in which he advocates Mr. Dunn’s theory. From it I learn that Mr. Dobney has also given in his adhesion, and that Mr. Hudson accepted these views before his death. Mr. Storrs also, writer of the "Six Sermons," is at present advocating them in a paper entitled "The Bible Examiner." (* I have quoted little directly from Mr. Cox’s book, its arguments being really met in meeting those of Mr. Jukes, his master, or of Canon Farrar, his disciple, both better known. †Mr. Clemance also refuses the term. ‡In Acts 3:21, it is literally "all things of which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets." This is not the universe at all. See chapter 25: of this book. ) Mr. Dunn advocates (quite rightly) the pre-millennial coming of the Lord, but wrongly connects this with a general resurrection; after which Christ will be again presented to the wicked by the elect church, and then received by almost all. For those remaining obstinate there is the lake of fire and annihilation. A recent tract, now being circulated in the United States, modifies this statement by confining the number of those evangelized to those who had not heard the gospel in their former life on earth, and adds the conjecture (startlingly suggestive in view of Mat 24:26) that Christ may already be upon earth now, and only be waiting the moment to manifest Himself to His people. IV In conclusion I need only allude to Mr. Birks’ view, which I have examined at some length in a separate chapter. He does not deny eternal punishment, but he does reduce it to the minimum; and his views have found an expositor and popular poet in the author of "Yesterday, Today. and Forever," as the Restorationists have found theirs in the present poet laureate. Thus serious, and thus multiform, are the questions raised. They cannot be for many really met without patient, protracted examination of the whole subject from the standpoint of Scripture; which, if it be God’s word, is finally authoritative; if it be something less than this we are at sea and in darkness, without rudder and without compass. Blessed be God, amid the multitude of conflicting statements, one assurance may be the stay and comfort our souls: "He that will do God’s will, shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 60: 04.05. PART 1. - MAN AS HE IS ======================================================================== PART 1. - MAN AS HE IS ======================================================================== CHAPTER 61: 04.06. CHAPTER I - IS THE BODY ALL? ======================================================================== CHAPTER I - IS THE BODY ALL? In the language of absolute materialism the body is the whole man. It may need breath or "spirit” (in the Thomasite sense) to make it capable of fulfilling its functions, but in materialistic language, thought, reason, mind, are properties pertaining to "brain in human form." Dr. Thomas gravely adduces Rom 8:6, where he translates the "thinking of the flesh," as an irrefragable proof that the "flesh is the thinking substance," 1: e., the brain; which, in another place, he adds, the apostle "terms the fleshy tablet of the heart."(!)* I only quote this now as evidencing how thoroughly with them the body is all.† The man, they say, was such before the breath of life was breathed into him. "Dust thou art" expresses what be is in his whole being. Says Mr. Constable, "God formed man of the dust of the ground. Here we have the figure as it lay lifeless and thoughtless; and yet this figure was man. We cannot dispute this, for God tells us so Himself. It was man, before he could think; or feel, or Breathe."‡ To this being of course the inspiration of the breath of life gives life. "Soul" with Mr. Constable, as with most of similar views, is "life"; with Dr. Thomas and his party it is sometimes that, sometimes the breathing frame; ie., of course the body. Spirit is either the breath of life itself, or a principle contained in it, a kind of vitalizing energy. The man himself is the body - the dust that lies in the grave. Spirit and soul "may again be disassociated from man; man may return to his old condition ere he had them at all, and the dead body they have left is then the man, the person, the self"§ "Where," is Mr. Blain’s emphatic challenge, "where does the book of nature or the book of God tell what soul or man is made of, except in the earth-wide and heaven-broad declaration, ‘Dust thou art’?"# (*"Elpis Israel," p. 80. †Roberts objects that it is not defined whether a living body is meant or not. "If so," he says, "we admit the charge of holding that the living body is the whole man, and are wondering what objection Mr. Grant himself can have to this view; for, even with his immortal Soul theory, he cannot avoid regarding the living body as the whole man, since the living body contains (!) that which his theory teaches him to regard as the principal part of man."So that, if the house contains the man, the man and the house are all one with Mr. Roberts! Even this is not quite the full statement, as witness Mr. Constable’s language further on. But Mr. R. may put in " living" if he please: a living body is still not the spirit nor the soul. ‡Hades, p. 2. §Ib., p. 5. #Death not Life, 12th ed., p. 42. ) Confidence so assured ought to be well founded. The answer is easy, that they are only quoting one side of Scripture, with their eyes shut to all that is inconsistent with their theory. Mr. Constable, for instance, thus represents and characterizes "the current opinion of Christendom." "Man is with them a soul, which may or may not inhabit the body, but which, whether inhabiting the body or not inhabiting it, is the true and proper man. This opinion we believe to be the very foundation stone of an amazing amount of false doctrine. This false philosophy regarding human nature has tainted the theology of centuries."* (*Hades, p. 4.) Now, how is it possible that Mr. Constable has never seen that this "current opinion of Christendom," which he is opposing, is the statement of Scripture, no less than is his own? that, if there are on the one side passages such as those he quotes, which seem to make the body all, there are many on the other side that would equally seem to make the body nothing? Thus we read: "The life that I now live in the flesh" (Gal 2:20); "If I live in the flesh "(Php 1:22); "Whilst we are at home in the body" (2Co 5:6); "Willing rather to be absent from the body" (2Co 5:8); "Whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell" (2Co 12:3); "As being yourselves also in the body" (Heb 13:3); "In my flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:26); "Knowing that I must put off this my tabernacle" (2Pe 1:14). Now I ask Mr. Constable, is not here the very language he objects to, the foundation stone (as being Scripture) not of error but of truth? I accept his view that such expressions are indeed the fundamental opposite of his opinions. On the materialistic supposition the language used in these passages never could have arisen. It is not a question of the interpretation of any special text, but of the use of words .which contradict at the outset the whole materialistic philosophy. Men have sought to evade it by interpreting phrase "in the body" to mean "in this body," as if it were in contrast with the glorious body of the resurrection. But the fact that they have to change the expression, in order make it suit them, is a clear evidence that it does not suit them as it is. For in the resurrection man will still be "in the body," though it be raised glorious as it will: and in point of fact, it is to the resurrection body that in the passage just quoted Job refers: "In my flesh shall I see God." They may perhaps quote against this, that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;" but it will not avail them; for the Lord’s own expression as to His own body in resurrection is, that He had "flesh and bones,"* though not "flesh and blood," and it is the combination of the two of which the text cited speaks.† And the Lord was raised from the dead, the "first fruits" and pattern of our resurrection from the beginning, not raised and changed afterwards, even as they that sleep in Him are "raised‡ in glory." There is no escape from the plain speaking of the passage in Job, that to that which is "raised in glory" he refers. And this alone is positive proof that "in the flesh" or "in the body" does not, as a phrase, speak of a present corruptible body in contrast with an incorruptible one.(*Luk 24:39. † 1Co 15:50. ‡ 1Co 15:43) And there are other texts which would still stand in the way of their establishment of this position, if the passage in Job were gone. For when the apostle says of his vision of the third heaven, that he could not tell whether he was "in the body or out of the body," no words are needed to assure us that here there was no question of the resurrection body. For it was not when he was up in the third heaven, that he did not know if he were "out of the body;" had it been so, there might have been some kind of doubt as to whether he might not have fancied, in the entrancement of the vision, that the resurrection had already come. But his words are precise and prohibit absolutely such a supposition. He could not, at the time he wrote, question whether he had been clothed with the resurrection body, and again lost it on his return to earth. Yet here "in the body" and "out of the body" are just as much in contrast as "at home in the body" and "absent from the body" in 2Co 5:6-8. And as "out of the body" cannot in this case mean "in the resurrection state," so "in the body" cannot mean, as they would make it, "in this corruptible state."* ( *To all this Mr. Roberts demurs upon the warrant, as he represents it, of Rom 7:1, 2Co 1:8, and a list of passages of the class already adduced by Messrs. Constable and Blain. He takes "my flesh" in the first passage to mean "my body," and argues thereupon that Paul calls his "flesh" himself, and moreover attributes sin to it, and not to his soul! He does not see that in Rom 7:25 the apostle opposes the mind" to the" flesh," and identifies himself with the former in opposition to the latter. If, as with Mr. Roberts, the" mind " is only the working of the flesh, no such distinction is possible. The apostle’s words are thus conclusively against him. ) Hopeless indeed would be man’s condition if the flesh and the body were but one, and "they that are in the body could not please God" (see Rom 8:8); and strange enough what the apostle affirms of Christians, that they are "not in the flesh." The whole use of the language here is foreign to materialistic speech. As to the Scripture doctrine of the flesh we shall have to speak of it hereafter. As to 2Co 1:8, we may easily admit that Paul identifies himself with the body there, without in the least invalidating the testimony of the texts which use an opposite style. Nor does Paul " look here to resurrection for hope," but to the God of resurrection, and gets present deliverance. On the other hand, the belief in the immortality of the mind does not in the least set aside the hope of resurrection. As we may by and by see, it secures it. As to Mr. R.’s list of texts, no Christian has any difficulty with them At all. But think of quoting "my DECEASE" (2Pe 1:15), literally, my exodus" or "departure," to support a materialistic purpose! Think of supposing "I was unknown by face," or "whatever a man soweth, that shall us reap," or "avenged the blood of His SERVANTS," with all the emphasis that italics and small capitals can give, will connect immortal soulists by their bare citation! He then comes to the passages which he has to meet. In Gal 2:20, he takes the apostle as expressing present existence in contrast with the life that "is to come." But that is not the question. Why such an expression as "in the flesh" at all, if he were nought but flesh? "Absence from the body," again, cannot be resurrection by any possibility whatever. So as to Job, how else could Job see God, in Mr. R.’s way of thinking, except indeed, as he says in another case, he dreamed of Him? And that will scarce do here. How decisive these passages really are against him Mr. R. shows by styling them "the inevitable ‘FICTIONS’ of mortal speech." But why inevitable? Could not materialism indeed dispense with them? And why "fictions," after all they convey his meaning? Roberts suggests that "without the body" means that the things were seen as in a dream." But how is even a dream "without the body," as he phrases it? The apostle puts it still more forcibly, "out of the body." Nor has he any doubt of being actually caught away to Paradise, a place that for Mr. Roberts has no present existence; it is the renewed earth, in his belief. Did Mr. Roberts ever (with his theory of thinking flesh, moreover) even dream without the body, and then awake, and be ignorant ever after, whether or not he had been carried bodily to a place which he knew had no existence? The terms then abide in all their simplicity, full of the meaning which from their simplicity they possess. Nay, if the comments of Annihilationists were just, their force would be little affected. For, be it in contrast with a resurrection body or not (as certainly in these last places it is not), still the man himself is looked at as "IN the body;" not the soul is in it, or the spirit is in it merely, but the MAN. That which lies in the body (and that is the force of the expression in 2Co 5:6)* is the man. So much so that the body is looked at as the "tabernacle" (2Pe 1:14), which the man "puts off." ( *The word used means "to live at or in a place" (Liddell and Scott). Mr. Roberts’ comment is: "All that constitutes our individuality" [what is this according to him’?] "dwells in the body of our humiliation; but the destiny of the saint is to have this corruptible clothed upon with a subduing energy, that will change it from flesh and blood nature into spirit nature." In no place is it said that we are clothed with an "energy"; but Mr. R. wanted something to clothe, and he could hardly clothe one body with another body. ) We have not yet inquired who or what the inhabitant of the body is. Be it spirit or soul, or both together, the phraseology of Scripture in these texts asserts that the body has such an inhabitant. And this language it is that Mr. Constable accuses (under another name, no doubt) as being "the very foundation stone" of the doctrine he opposes. Scripture, then, he is witness to himself; lays thus the foundation of the immortality of the soul. Paul sees visions, and has so little thought that the body is all, that he does not know whether he was in it or not, at the time he saw them. Plainly, therefore, he supposes he might be a conscious, intelligent witness of unutterable things while "out of the body." We are prepared, then, to answer Mr. Blain’s confident inquiry, if at least we may take for granted that that which Paul thought might be "out of the body" is not "dust." If it be, it is at any rate dust which is not the body, and which can exist consciously in separation from it. The question is thus a long way toward settlement. If it be still asked, What about the texts which, on their side, Annihilationists lay stress upon? Is not "dust thou art" Scripture? And is it not equally written that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground"? and that "devout men carried Stephen" - not his body merely - "to his burial"? I answer, it is just as plain that in these texts man is identified with his body, as he is in the former ones with his spirit or his soul. It would be wrong to argue exclusively from either class of passages: as wrong to say man is all soul, upon the authority of one, as to say he is all body, upon the authority of the other. This last is the vitiating error of Mr. Constable’s whole argument. Neither body, nor soul, nor spirit is the man exclusively, but "spirit and soul and body" (1Th 5:23) make up the man; insomuch that he may be, and is, identified with either, according to the line of thought which is in the mind of the speaker; his identification with the body, which man sees and touches, being in general the language of sense, while faith identifies him with the unseen "spirit."* Our poor Annihilationists see and confess what sense recognizes, and are blind to the other. It is a sad evidence of their condition. (*Mr. Roberts’ attempts to answer this are strange enough, and need a very long examination. He asserts that faith is nothing but "belief of promise," and has to do only with the future! So that one could not "by faith understand that the worlds were made," or "believe that God is"! ) That he will have it that the spirit is recognized by sense, as much as the body, because "spirit" is sometimes used for "anger" in Scripture, and it does not require faith to note that a man is angry! As the spirit with Mr. R. is electricity, it is rather a wonder he did not propose to insulate a person, and demonstrate his "spirit" still more satisfactorily. Then he thinks that "faith cometh by [the sense of] hearing" helps his case; but how, he does not make clear, as it is no question of how it comes at all. Mr. R. surely must allow that the human spirit (in our view of it at least) is a thing unseen, and faith is the "evidence of things unseen." This is the ground of the statement he objects to. Of the Lord Jesus Himself; I read in the account of His burial, "there laid they Jesus," and that Joseph "took Him down, and wrapped Him in the linen, and laid Him in the sepulchre" (John 19:42; Mark 15:46). Is this, therefore, conclusive that the Lord was "all body," as similar words about Stephen would seem to be to some, that he was? Take some of Mr. Constable’s emphatic statements, which he does not hesitate to apply* to the Lord Himself. He contends that the common opinion leads to "the absurdity of supposing that death has converted one person into two. In life there was but one Abraham, in death there are two! . . . . In life there was but one Christ; during the three days of His death there were two!. . . One Christ was in Joseph’s tomb; another Christ was preaching to spirits in prison, or otherwise busily occupied"! Which of these Christs is the true one for him he does not leave doubtful. The "Bible persists in calling the body when dead the man. It says that Abraham and Jacob and David . . . are in the grave, and it never says that they are in heaven, or anywhere else but in the grave." Of necessity, then, this must be the conclusion: If spirit is but the impersonal breath of life, and soul but the life resultant, then, when these had departed, there was nothing of Christ but what was laid in the grave. It may be said, of course, that the words apply only to the humanity of the Lord, and not to His divinity. This argument for Mr. Constable will not hold. The Lord, Divine and human, was in life but one person. Death could not divide the one Person into two! The Person, Mr. Constable says, is the body that lay in the tomb: Deity, soul and spirit go for nothing. The Lord was in the grave and nowhere else! Dare Mr. Constable abide by his own conclusions? ( *Hades, p.7. ) All have not formulated the doctrine as completely. His logical consistency has carried him where, we may hope, many will hesitate to follow. But as to the consistency there can be no question. Just as simply and as surely as "David" or "Stephen" is said to denote the whole personality of David or of Stephen, so (after the same mode of interpretation) must "Christ" and "the Lord" denote the whole personality of Christ. Now, let me ask, was there a true and personal Christ who survived death, or not? If so, "the Lord," in the whole force of that expression, did not lie in Joseph’s tomb; the words are only an example of the language of sense which applies to the material part we see and touch, and we are manifestly precluded from carrying them further. Now, if the Lord lay in the grave, and yet the higher part did not lie there, so (plainly) might David, or Stephen, or Moses, lie in the grave, and yet have another and higher part of them which did not lie there. Thomasism, with its fearless self-consistency in error, and shameless denial of the glory of His Person, does not shrink from the extreme result. The One who, walking on earth, could yet say, "The Son of man who is in heaven," they are strangers to. But I would ask even them, if their horrible thoughts were true, how He who had "power to lay down his life," had (after having laid it down) "power to take it again." If the dead are nothing, and know nothing, as they teach, how could a dead body have power to take its life back? (John 10:18).* How could He say "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up ? He spake of the temple of His body."† Here it is scarcely possible even to equivocate. For it was one who spake of His own body, who said He would raise it up. They cannot say it was the Father speaking of "His own body," and therefore their constant manœuvre fails them here. If Jesus, then, raised up His own body, there must have been One not buried in that tomb of Joseph, One surviving death, to raise it up. Death is not, then, extinction, for Jesus truly "died." That "the Lord lay" in Joseph’s tomb is truth, but not the whole truth. Insisted on as such, it becomes fatal and soul-destroying error. ( *Roberts contends that here "the word translated ‘power’ carries with it not so much the idea of physical power as power in the sense of authority." It is true the word is "power delegated, authority." It adds to the thought of power, that of right. It is the word used in Mat 10:1; Mark 2:10; Mark 3:15; Mark 6:7; Luk 4:32; Luk 10:19; Luk 12:5; John 19:10, etc., in all which it is quite impossible to exclude the idea of competency to perform whatever there was authority for. You could not clothe a mere corpse with "authority." It would be mockery. And, therefore, the word must be "take" and not "receive." †John 2:19-22. ) The language of Scripture, then (as Mr. Constable is witness), lays the foundation stone of the soul’s immortality in its assertion that the man dwells in the body, and this is not denied by its speaking elsewhere as if the body were the man. From its own point of view, each of these things is true. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 62: 04.07. CHAPTER II - MAN A TRIUNE BEING ======================================================================== CHAPTER II - MAN A TRIUNE BEING WE are now prepared for the question, What is this part of man which dwells in the body? Or, What is the physical constitution of man as defined by the Scriptures? The answer from 1Th 5:23, is, that he is "spirit and soul and body" "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God that your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." The prayer is, manifestly, for the sanctification of the whole man to God, and to emphasize it, as it were. it is, that man is divided into his three constituent parts, and the sanctification of the whole man is interpreted to be the preservation blameless before God of "spirit, soul and body." Of course this is denied on the part of those who hold that the body is the whole man; but it is also denied by many others who are far enough from holding their views. It is a point therefore, which must be seriously weighed, and satisfactorily as possible decided, before we are entitled to take is as a settled thing. The objections of Annihilationists need not detain us very long, as few indeed seem to have looked at the text in question. The comment of Ellis and Read upon it is a remarkable specimen of their style of reasoning, as well as (apparently) of how little they are themselves convinced by it. "This cannot mean," they say, "that man has two ghosts. Perhaps it may mean your disposition, and life, and person, the whole compound nature of man, for spirit sometimes means person."* I should think, as they have evidently translated "spirit" as "disposition" already, that according to their interpretation, body ought to mean "person," and also, that it would be in far better accordance with their views. But they can scarcely expect others to be satisfied with what evidently fails to satisfy themselves, for they add, in defiance of all criticism: "And 1Th 5:23 may also have been a. little amended by some officious copyist"! (p. 21). But even so, they are not yet satisfied, and, having in the meanwhile forgotten that "spirit" means person, they further add: "And the spiritual nature, be it remembered, does not naturally belong to man, but is superinduced as a subsequent and peculiar development in the cases of those who have submitted themselves to Christ" (p. 22). ( *Bible vs. Tradition, p.21.) Mr. Roberts, disavowing "the uncertain and contradictory statements" of Ellis and Read, tries to paraphrase the three words in the text by "body," "life" and "mind." In this statement of his, "life" and "mind" answer, respectively, to soul and spirit. But that they are not equivalents, according to his view, is evident. We have but too lately been listening to his theories of thinking flesh, to be able to accept his identification of the mind with the spirit. Truly, as these may be identified, his views do not identify them. His own words in this connection are: "Thought is a power developed by brain organization, and consists of impressions made upon that delicate organ through the medium of the senses, and afterwards classified and arranged by a function pertaining in different degrees to brain in human form, known as reason." Plainly, then with him, mind is only a power inherent in the flesh, though spirit be needed to give vitality to the brain, just as it would be for the muscles. It is "the flesh that thinks," as he quotes with approbation further on. So, also, is "life" with him not the equivalent of "soul." Of course he often has to interpret it so, but he is inconsistent with himself in doing this. "Soul," again, is for Dr. Thomas and himself but "body" and the body cannot be the life of the body. Soul is the body’s life, and, therefore, in a secondary sense, is used for it in Scripture. In Dr. Thomas’ theory, no basis is left for the secondary meaning. The life is with him simply the result of the ruach or breath of life upon the body. It is not a third constituent that could be set side by side with the body and the spirit. There is then no "combination of body, soul and spirit as constituting the whole man" in Mr. Roberts’ system, anxious as be is to be apostolic in doctrine, and have it appear so. Combination of body and spirit for him make the living soul, and the combination of these two cannot become a third principle along with these. There is no third constituent this way, and even one of these is only "an element of the atmosphere."* These are the three things, then, that the apostle prays may be sanctified or preserved blameless, the body, the breath of life, and the vitality produced by it!† It is plain then that Thomasism and the apostolic statement do not agree. ( *Elpis Israel, p. 30 †"In this sense," says Mr. R., " we stand as stoutly as Mr. Grant by 1Th 5:23.;" awhile afterwards adds, "Mr. Grant is guilty of creating as a scientific analysis of human nature the fervent HYPERBOLIC of an apostolic benediction"! Why stand stoutly by a mere exaggerated expression? ) With the last sentence quoted from Ellis and Read Mr. Morris is in near agreement. He also interprets "spirit" here of a new and spiritual nature. Of John 3:6 he says, "‘That which is born of the flesh’ is a child, constituted of soul and body; but ‘that which is born of the Spirit’ is a new and spiritual constituent of personal being. He who is born of the Spirit is constituted of a spirit and soul and body.’ "* ( *What is Man. p. 57.) I shall be obliged to reserve to another chapter the consideration of what "spirit" is, and whether his proposition, that it is never applied to man as such "in a substantive sense," is warranted by Scripture usage. That the new nature of the children of God is "spirit," according to our Lord’s words, is what none can with appearance of truth deny; but. upon the face of what he says himself, his explanation of the text in this way is thoroughly inconsistent and untrue. For the "flesh," he says, in the words of the Lord, John 3:6, is "the whole natural man, and the entire offspring of the natural man, soul and body" (p. 37). The apostle then puts down this soul and body, of which nothing good can come, side by side with the new and spiritual nature, which (still according to Mr. Morris’ citation of Gal 5:17; Gal 5:22-25) it lusts against, and is contrary to, - praying that they may be sanctified together! If this be his deliberate doctrine I cannot tell. It is the doctrine of his follower, Mr. Graff,* who has only carried out his views to their necessary conclusion. Whether or no, I would refer him to Rom 8:6-8 for his answer, that "the mind of the flesh† is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed CAN BE," and that is why "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Even the one who in the, seventh chapter could say, "with the mind I myself serve the law of God," had to add, "but with the flesh the law of sin," and if soul and body have this character, poor hope would there be of their being "preserved blameless to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!" ( *In "Graybeard’s Lay Sermons." ‡In the margin "minding" ). The grossness of this mistake lies in its materialism. Even Mr. Morris, little as he would like to be identified with this, cannot see in the "flesh" anything less material than the body, although perhaps in connection with the soul, which he allows to be in it. All is referred to man’s physical constitution, but with this glaring inconsistency with Scripture, that, whereas the word of God condemns the flesh, with its utter evil, to hopeless destruction, Mr. Morris’ doctrine puts the old nature along side of the new, to be sanctified. Now, in the text as to which I have been speaking, 1Th 5:23, it is plain by the terms "soul" and "body," which are used, that the physical constitution of man is spoken of: and it must be equally plain that "spirit," therefore, also refers to his physical constitution. The very pains which Ellis and Read have taken in their interpretation to blot out all thought of the body in the passage, is a proof of it. It would have been an incongruous jumble, indeed, to have said "disposition, and life, and body;" and they felt it. Body in Scripture in such a sentence requires "soul" as its natural antithesis. "Body and life" make no sense, for the sanctification of the body and its vitality (which life here must mean) is scarcely such. And if, according to Dr. Thomas, it is the "flesh that thinks," and the brain is the fleshy tablet of the heart, let the body be sanctified, and all is done. And it will not avail to say that the body needs spirit and soul to make it capable of sanctification, for that still leaves it true that the body is the only part that can be sanctified, and there would be no sense in talking of the sanctification of the mere agency in giving it life. But still - and this is the only question we need further ask at present - may not the "spirit" here refer to the new and spiritual nature, which, confessedly, the child of God has? I answer that, as far as this passage is concerned, the fact that the apostle prays for the sanctification of the spirit, is proof positive that the new nature is not meant.* For the Scripture doctrine is that, inasmuch as "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit," "whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." I am well aware that I touch here upon ground not familiar to many a Christian; nor can I do more than touch upon it either. I would only say that the one born of God is here looked at simply in his character as so born. The flesh is not seen, being, indeed, in the believer, but as a foreign thing: "Sin that dwelleth in me" (Rom 7:17), in that sense, not myself. The new nature owns no brotherhood with it. As born of God the believer does not sin - cannot. The new nature thus, as proceeding from God, is altogether according to God. He could not communicate a half-evil thing: "that which is born of the spirit is spirit " - partakes, 1: e., of the nature of Him from whom it came. Mr. Morris himself says of it most truly: "All the moral qualities of it answer to the moral perfections of God." If so, sin cannot come from it, because it is of God; and, as born of God, we cannot sin. Therefore you cannot talk of sanctifying it. It is of God: therefore already wholly good. (*The new nature is "spirit" but never called "the spirit." ) And " spirit" is not here the "motion of the soul, as Mr. Morris elsewhere strangely defines it, for the soul is mentioned apart, and there would be no sense in speaking of the sanctifying of the soul and of its motions. Sanctify it, and its motions will be sanctified. We return then with confidence to our first conclusion: "Spirit and soul and body" are the man. The ample confirmation of this by every part of Scripture will come out as we now take up in detail these constituent parts. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 63: 04.08. CHAPTER III THE SPIRIT OF GOD ======================================================================== CHAPTER III THE SPIRIT OF GOD THE word which stands for "spirit" in the Old Testament is (ruach), in the New Testament, (pneuma). They are words precisely of the same significance. Both are derived from words which mean "to breathe,"* and in their primary sense therefore signify "breath," or what is a kindred thought, air in motion, "wind." From this as the type of viewless activity, its meaning of" spirit" most evidently and easily derived. The comparison between the two is what the Lord makes in John 3:8, where like same word pneuma is both "wind" and "spirit": "the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or wither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Here manifestly the thought is of invisible activity beyond control; the effects are manifest, the power which produces them unseen and uncontrollable. In the formation of language, where that which can be conceived of only gets its name from that which is recognized by the senses, what more simple than that pneuma, originally breath or wind, should give its name to the power that, omnipresent in its activity acts unseen and uncontrolled? Hence "God is Spirit,"† the third Person of the Trinity, whom Scripture represents as the immediate mover, both in creation and in new creation, is preeminently the "Spirit of God." ( *The verb is not used in the Old Testament, except in the Hiphil a causative form; and in this form it signifies "to smell." How this is really the same as to "cause to breathe" is plain on a moment’s consideration Pneuma occurs seven times in the New Testament, in every place to represent the blowing of wind. †In the "Personal Recollections" of Charlotte Elizabeth occurs a well known and touching illustration of the connection of thought. A poor dumb boy, in whom she was interested, and whom she had been seeking to impress with the fact of the being of God, told her that he had been looking everywhere for God, but could not find Him. "There was ‘God, NO’!" She took up a pair of bellows, and blew a puff at his hand, which was red with cold on a winter’s day. He showed signs of displeasure, told her it made his hands cold, while she, looking at the pipe of the bellows, told him she could see nothing, "there was ‘wind, no’!" " He opened his eyes very wide, stared at me, and panted a deep crimson suffused his whole face, and a soul, a real soul, shone in his strangely altered countenance, while he triumphantly repeated. God like wind! God like wind!’ " ) To all this, indeed, on behalf of materialism, Mr. Roberts has made sundry objections, the answer to which need not detain us long. He tells us: "A substantive derived from a verb draws its meaning from the act expressed by the verb. Ruach is ruach, because it is the thing ruached so to speak, and not because the act of ruaching is invisible." But that has to do with the primary meaning of words only, and not with the secondary, of which alone we are speaking. "Breath" is the thing breathed, no doubt, but if I speak of "a breath of air," I do not speak of anything breathed. I apply the word "breath" in a secondary sense, to something which in some way it resembles. This secondary sense has nothing to. do with the derivation of the word at all, as a "breath of air" is not a thing breathed forth, but only compared to that which is. John 3:8 shows us, for pneuma, the real ground of comparison between its primary and secondary meanings: an illustration which Mr. Roberts silently passes by, in order that he may be able to speak of this view of the matter as an "opinion having no deeper foundation than the ingenuity of those who have given birth to the speculation." Meanwhile, he himself puts forth what is really that, that "the power which gives life was itself in the first instance spirited (breathed forth) from the Eternal Source of life and light." To this, moreover, we answer by bringing forward the passage which Mr. R. rightly foresees will be against him - " "God is a Spirit."* Who breathed forth, then, this Spirit which God is? Was God Himself an emanation from something else? Mr. R. anticipates this objection, and tries to provide for it by telling us that "spirit" "comes by association with subsequent manifestation, to stand in its New Testament use as the synonym of the Divine nature; but this by association merely, and not by philological derivation." But how, then, is he so sure that there is "philological derivation" in the former case? This is evidently a second conjecture, to uphold the previous one, and as baseless as the former. For, with so-called Christadelphianism, as is well known, the theory is, that while "spirit" is a thing "spirited forth" from God, out of this spirit all things were made. How strange and contradictory to take, then, what is, so to speak, the raw material of all creation, and to confound with that God’s very nature - creation and Creator being so identified as one! *John 4:24. Materialism has thus not shrunk from assailing, along with the Godhead of the Son, the Personality of the Holy Ghost. And this is not confined even to the followers of Dr. Thomas. The interpretation of "spirit" adopted by Ellis and Read, borrowed, it would seem, by or from the former, tends directly the same way. Miles Grant, as we have seen, makes it a mere influence. But Dr. Thomas it is who has formulated the doctrine, as before seen. According to him, the Spirit of God is electricity, or, combined with nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, which Job calls the "breath of God." According to Mr. Roberts, his follower, it is proved by the shaking of the house on the day of Pentecost, and the energizing of Samson’s muscles, when it came on him, to belong as much on the list of material forces as light, heat or electricity. The doctrine is developed in full in his fifth lecture that God is a material being, surrounded by a kind of electrical atmosphere, so dazzling and consuming in His immediate presence, as to be called "light unapproachable," but which, attenuated by degrees, is the material out of which He creates all things, and by which He becomes cognizant of everything, and executes His purpose in the whole domain of the universe. This is the ruach, the principle of life in the nostrils of all flesh, which the foolish animals "use all up" in the mere process of existence, but which wiser man can use to move tables, read unopened letters, and even (when in a high state of nervous susceptibility) to perceive distant facts and occurrences! " When concentrated under the Almighty’s will," it "becomes holy spirit, as distinct from spirit in its free, spontaneous form;" in which way apostles received it, but "it is given to none in the present day." In "evolving a new man" in people, "the Spirit has no participation except in the shape of the written word. The present days are barren days, as regards the Spirit’s direct operations"* *Twelve Lectures, pp. 110-125. All this is but the legitimate fruit of materialistic teaching. It is essential to its self-consistency that the Personality of the Spirit of God be denied. Once get rid of Him as a Person, put Him upon the list of material forces - let it be electricity or anything else you please - and plainly you have at once reduced the spirit of man also to something just as unintelligent, and as well suited to the purpose they desire to accomplish. The statement I have given from Mr. Roberts’ book may not seem to need reply, nor anything but its simple utterance, to condemn it sufficiently. Nevertheless I shall answer it; for in these days of wide-spread infidelity, God alone knows in what unlooked-for places the answer may be needed. Nor does the gross folly which marks it all hinder its reception. Man has no wisdom apart from the word of truth, and, once astray from that, the apostolic declaration is fulfilled, "professing to be wise, they became fools." How like, too, to what is now occupying us, that which he goes on to say ! - "and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into AN IMAGE MADE LIKE TO CORRUPTIBLE MAN!" (Rom 1:22-23). Scripture disowns this system in all its parts. In Scripture the Spirit of God is a Person, divine and intelligent in the things of God. Just as, "what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him, even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God"* (1Co 2:11). ( *Mr. Roberts objects against this: - "There is a parallel: 1. Man, and the spirit of man; 2. God, and the Spirit of God. Now, does Mr. Grant mean to contend that the spirit of man is one person, knowing the things of man another person? Surely not. Yet this is what his view would require if he is right, in maintaining that the Spirit of God is one person, knowing the things of God, another person." ) Mr. Grant’s view requires nothing of the sort. The " things of man" are just human things, as "the things of God" are divine things. It is not a question of another person in either case. But if the Spirit of God knows divine things, then He is conscious and intelligent; and so is the spirit of man in human things. And I know not what argues personality more than consciousness and intelligence. Does Mr. Roberts? Of course this infers the personality of the spirit of man, and this is obnoxious to him but the passage before us does plainly intimate that the essence of personality in man is in his spirit. This is a very important point, which will come up again in its own place. This is as different from Mr. Grant’s "influence" or Mr. Roberts’ "medium," through which the Deity receives impressions (much as the human ear sound through the atmosphere), but itself as unconscious as the atmosphere - of which, indeed, according to Thomas, it forms part - as can well be conceived. "The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (ver. 10). Not God searches by the Spirit, as Mr. R. would have it, but the Spirit itself searches and knows. Moreover, again, "He who searcheth the hearts" 1: e., God, "knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit," which, living and active, "ITSELF maketh intercession for us according to God" (Rom 8:26-27). If this is not the announcement of an intelligent Person, words cannot convey the idea of one. Yet Mr. Roberts will have it that it is all what he is fond of calling "the inevitable fictions of human speech." Of the passages from Corinthians he says: "This describes the apostolic experience of the Spirit," which, "to THEIR SENSATIONS, as we may say, was separately from themselves an Enlightener, Penetrator,: Comforter, Witness, and therefore described in language that reads as if these functions were personally separate from the Father"* *Man Mortal, p. 29. So then it does read as if the Spirit of God were a person! The truth is, after all, too strong for the theory. But then this is merely a description, according to the human sensation! Is it true, then, that to their human sensations the Spirit of God was not only separate from themselves, but from the Father also? How did the "sensation" differ from what it would have been had the Father spoken apart from this? Could they not help describing it by misleading words? Mr. Roberts himself can and does describe it differently. Why not the apostles? The words do read as if the Spirit of God were a Person, our adversaries themselves being judges; and they speak not merely of inspired knowledge, but of the competency of the Spirit to reveal. And then is further added (1Co 2:12), "Now we have received the Spirit" - this Spirit so competent in knowledge - "that we might know." Their knowledge is distinguished from the Spirit’s knowledge; and the doctrine is complete that theirs proceeds from their reception of One, who had it in His own power to impart His to them. The argument that the Spirit of God is in the nostrils, and so a mere principle of life in all living, because Job 27:3, in the common version, speaks so, I can only say is worthy of men who, when they choose, can quote Greek and Hebrew abundantly, but who are pleased to ignore in this case the fact that one of the commonest renderings of ruach is breath; and that the expression refers to Gen 2:7, where the word for "breath of life" is a word which is never applied to the Spirit of God at all. And, moreover, so far is Scripture from asserting that the Spirit of God is in all men, that it speaks of Christians expressly as those "who have received the Spirit which is of God." The proof is indeed abundant and decisive as to this, which is alone (spite of Mr. Roberts’ protest) subversive of their whole theory. For it is no work of the Spirit that is in question, as he would make it, but the reception of the Spirit Himself Nor was (as he affirms) the teaching of the Spirit ever called the Spirit. The Lord’s words indeed were "spirit," but not the Spirit of God; and "the Spirit is truth" surely, characteristically, just as is the Lord Jesus (John 14:6); but in neither case does that destroy personality. All the way through Scripture we find language which defies accommodation to this lowest depth of materialism. If I begin with Genesis (Gen 41:38)* I find Joseph spoken of as a "man in whom [distinctively] the Spirit of God is." In Jude 1:19, some, even of professing Christians are described as "sensual, having not the Spirit." So I find in Gal 4:6, that "because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father!" [Was this merely " truth" that God sent into their hearts? and were they sons before they had received it?] And again, "Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you;" and then it is added, "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His" (Rom 8:9). Solemn utterance, indeed, for men who have to confess that they have no "Holy Spirit": for only by the Holy Ghost given to us is "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts" (Rom 5:5); and "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom 14:17). If that be withdrawn, there is no more "communion of the Holy Ghost" (2Co 13:14); no more "sealing" to the day of redemption (Eph 4:30); no more "renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Tit 3:5). Sad work indeed, if this he true! and barren days indeed! But what an account for men to give of themselves, that they have no communion, no renewing, no sealing, no peace, no joy, no love of God in their hearts! They have pronounced their condemnation with their own lips, when they say that the only Spirit of God they know is one subject to men’s wills, and " used up " by animals "in the mere process of existence." ( *Roberts allows this, and yet thinks it "looks as much like a manœuvre as possible," and spends a full page in proving (what no one will deny), that the ruach Eloah of Job, and the nishmath chayim of Genesis are doctrinally identical." How is it he does not see that this is the very thing which Mr. Grant (as he thinks, so dogmatically) asserts? The real question is, can the "breath of God in the nostrils," which Job speaks of, be the same as that Spirit of God, who (to quote the same book) made man (Job 33:4)? To assert this because it is the same word ruach in each case, is equivalent to asserting that in John 3:8, because the same word pneuma is used for " wind" and "spirit," therefore to be born of the Spirit is to be born of the wind! ) He goes on: "But Mr. Grant is mistaken if he supposes that this verse in Job is the only support to the doctrine that the Spirit of God is the means of universal life. The statements quoted four or five sentences back (Psa 36:9; Acts 17:25; Job 12:10) indirectly (and if so very indirectly) show the same thing. In addition, we have to consider passages as these: ‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?’ (Psa 139:7). What conclusion can we come to from this, but that the universal presence of God, who personally dwells in heaven, is the universal Spirit, invisible power or energy radiated from the Father, and therefore called Spirit, or that which is breathed? Again, ‘the Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life’ (Job 33:7). Again, ‘Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created (Psa 104:30). Hence, ‘in Him (by the Spirit) we live, and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). Hence, ‘if He gather to Himself His Spirit (ruach) and His breath (nishmath) ALL FLESH shall perish together, and man shall turn again to his dust, (Job 34:14)." Here we have the strength of Mr. Roberts’ doctrine. How plain it is also and that he goes to Scripture, as so many do, just to find support for it. What an inference, that if one cannot go from the Spirit, and then from the presence of God, that therefore "Spirit" and "presence" must be just the same thing! and, moreover, this must be an energy breathed from the Father. The trouble with Mr. Roberts is that he is so absolute a materialist, that with him even God Himself must be material, and there must either be a material presence or such. To others than himself it will appear that Mr. R. had better give us the grounds of such a conclusion from Scripture, rather than suppose them. Similarly we all believe that the Spirit of God has made us, and the breath of the Almighty given us life. Does that prove that the Spirit of God is only breath ? And if so, how? Again, in what way does God send forth His Spirit when He creates, according to Mr. R.? To us it looks very much like the doctrine of a living, personal agent, in which we believe. So as to Acts 17:28, the materialism is all his own. In the last passage, allowing his reading of it (which some accept), God’s Spirit need not., surely be impersonal, because the maintainer of life in all created existences, nor is it identified with the spirit of man. This is, then, the total result of the appeal to Scripture as to this so weighty a point to be established, and in face of Scriptures, which (it is owned) do read as if the Spirit of God were a distinct person in the Godhead. With Mr. Roberts the Spirit is the material of creation; in Scripture the Creator, as indeed he owns: thoughts which are contradictory of each other, as long as Creator and creature are distinct in more than name. Yet Mr. Roberts allows that this (impersonal!) Spirit "was a teacher, more particularly in the apostolic era, when it was bestowed on all who believed the word, enabling them to work miracles, speak with tongues, understand mysteries, according as the Spirit WILLED"! How strange an impersonality is this, creating, teaching, searching, willing, hearing, knowing, and yet not a person! Of course this language must be understood as mere, strangely contradictory, human speech. Scripture seems to say this. We must believe it to mean something that it never even seems to say! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 64: 04.09. CHAPTER IV THE SPIRIT OF MAN ======================================================================== CHAPTER IV THE SPIRIT OF MAN THE second application of the word "spirit" is to angelic beings, and that whether "holy" or "unclean." The application of the word in this way is again denied by Thomasism as to the latter class, but this is scarcely the place to examine what they say on this head. It will suffice for our present purpose that there are spirits whose existence as separate personalities cannot be denied. And if this be so, there is no reason, at least beforehand, why man’s spirit also should not be an individuality, a real and living entity, though in him united to a body which is of dust.* *Roberts asserts that the angels are "visible, glorious, incorruptible, corporeal beings," man’s spirit being the opposite of all this. But (1) The simple question is as to the existence of individual "spirits" which is acknowledged. Difference of condition cannot alter the argument from this. (2.) The visibility of the human spirit seems much on a par with that of angels. Neither is ordinarily seen (compare 2Ki 6:17). Both have been. (3.) How man’s spirit is "decaying," Mr. R. must explain. (4.) Corporeality is not proved for angels by examples in which God (as in Gen 18:32 :), or angel appeared as men. This is not manifestation of angelic natures, but the assumption of human form by these. There may be mystery in this, no doubt. We soon touch the bounds of our knowledge, that is all. And this is the third application of the word to which we must now devote particular attention. A cloud of dust is here endeavoured to be raised by the assertion of the wonderful variety of meanings given to the word. Yet, if we take the language of our common English version as a guide, and refer to the passages in which it relates to man, we find, as the translation of the Old Testament Hebrew word, but five words used: "breath," "spirit," "anger," "courage," "mind." And of the New Testament Greek word corresponding to it nothing but "ghost" or "spirit" (which everybody knows to be intended for the same thing) and once " life," wrongly, in Rev 13:15, where it ought to be rather "breath." This looks more like uniformity in the matter, and a common idea running throughout, than some would wish to have us suppose. Of course I do not mean to deny that there are various secondary applications of the word "spirit" itself. This concerns us the less because there is no doubt of the primary meaning of the English word. But surely the greater the variety of meaning, the more needful to look for the key (which must be somewhere), the possession of which will enable us to find harmony in these various uses of the word instead of discord. The fact is, that the only key to this hidden harmony is in an application of the word which these writers almost to a man reject, viz., to a real intelligent entity* in the compound nature of man, of all men as such, "the spirit of man, is in him" placed at the head of; as well as in connection with, his other constituent parts by the apostle, where he speaks to the Thessalonians of the sanctification of their "whole spirit and soul and body." Let us take up the proofs of this, examining them carefully as the importance of the subject demands, and submit the separate points to be examined, one by one, to the test which Annihilationists themselves appeal to - the judgment of the inspired word. *Roberts tries to show this cannot be the key by inserting "intelligent entity" in place of "spirit" in such passages as 1Ki 8:5,"There was no more intelligent entity in her," etc. This may do to cause a laugh, but it is in fact mere childish absurdity. There would be no secondary meanings at all, if the primary one could be inserted instead of them. How the key above mentioned does "fit the lock all round," will be seen afterward, 1Ki 6:1-38 : That Mr. Roberts’ key does not may be easily seen by the meanings assigned to "spirit" in various connections by himself and his leader, Dr. Thomas. In p. 23 of "Man Mortal," he defines it as "mind"; p. 30, "breath of life"; p. 54, "abstract "energy": p. 66 "life"; p. 67, "conscience"; while Dr. Thomas says that the "spirits in prison" (1Pe 3:1-22 :) means "bodies." On the other hand, the body is thus, for Dr. Thomas, body, and soul, and spirit. Now it is but quoting Scripture to speak of the "spirit of man which is in him" (1Co 2:11), and of the "spirits of men" (Heb 12:23). And observe, before we pass on, one fact here. Scripture says "the spirit of man." It does not say " the spirit" but "the spirits of men." Annihilationists tell us (or many of them) that "spirit" is a universal principle of life, lent to man indeed in common with the beast, but forming no real part of himself, like the air he breathes, and in which Dr. Thomas says it is contained. Now, if this be so, we might as well talk about the breaths of men as of their spirits Yet every one would perceive the incongruity of the former expression. We say "the breath of men," just because it is one common breath they all breathe, but it is NOT one common spirit they all have, and therefore we speak of their "spirits," because each has his own, and it is a separate entity in each one.* *This is with Mr. Roberts another of those "inevitable fictions" in which he so largely deals. The spirits of men are with him not separate entities, but only "inevitably conceived" of as such. "Just as there is primarily but one life, the self-existing life of the Eternal Father, and yet we talk of the lives of the creatures He has brought into being"! Is it then only "inevitably conceived" that the lives of His creatures are separate from His own? Are they not actually separate existences? Again he says," As reasonable would it be for Mr. Grant to say that because we have separate ‘fleshes,’ therefore it is not one common flesh we all have." Does not Mr. R. confound flesh and body somewhat? Have we separate "fleshes"? The argument and the English are alike new. Separate bodies we have, and not one common body. One common flesh we have, and therefore not separate fleshes. Mr. Constable’s identification of it with the "breath of life" is therefore not possible. His view is only in point of fact Thomasism on a somewhat higher plane, as he makes the breath of life and the Spirit of God also identical, quoting the very same passages for it as we have already considered with reference to Mr. Roberts. He adduces also Bishop Horsley’s opinion, that no one "who compares Gen 2:7 and Ecc 12:7, can doubt that the ‘breath of life’ which God ‘breathes into the nostrils’ of man in the Book of Genesis is the very same thing with the ‘spirit which God gave’ in the Book of Ecclesiastes." To which it is enough to answer that we doubt. Neither Horsley nor himself give any proof of this from the passages in question, and the subject will come up hereafter. But in the next place Mr. Constable avails himself of "Hebrew parallelism" to the full extent that Mr. Roberts does. "All the while my breath is in me, and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils,* he thinks conclusive. It may be doubtless for those who know no personal Spirit of God; and it seems as if Mr. Constable had got as low as this. The answer has been already given, and to it we need only now refer. Similarly Job 34:14 has been considered; but how he can quote "his spirit and his breath" to show that the two are one is hard to understand. The contrary would seem self-evident. *Job 27:3. Hebrew parallelism is again made to do duty in interpreting Isa 42:5; Isa 57:16. Mr. Constable would have it that Parallelism consists in merely using synonymous expressions in the "parallel" sentences. This is a false and unworthy conception of it, which would reduce it to mere tautology. It is not so, as every verse in which it is used bears witness. How unworthy a repetition would it be to make Isaiah say, as Mr. C. would: "He that giveth breath to the people upon it, and breath (spirit) to them that walk therein."* Yet these are proofs, he considers, that establish the identity of the breath of life with the Spirit. *I reserve the quotation of Isa 57:16, until we come to consider the word found there - neshama. Now Scripture speaks of the spirit of man being not only, as we have seen, a separate entity in each individual, which the breath of life is not, but (as the breath of life clearly is not) a thing formed within him (Zec 12:1): "The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel, saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him." Thus, along with the formation of the heavens and the earth, as of equal importance with these (the body being moreover passed over in the matter) there is put by the inspired writer this formation of the spirit of man. And this is the complete upsetting of the materialistic theory. The spirit of man is formed within him. It is a separate entity then in each individual man, not (like the breath of life) a common principle shared by all.* *Roberts admits indeed here "a common spirit distributed according to the will of the Creator, and formed into the spirits of men." But he has rendered this impossible in his view of things, by telling us that the very existence of separate spirits is only "inevitably conceived," but not a real thing. Does he mean to tell us that God "formed" the "common spirit" he speaks of into the "inevitable conception "of a distinct thing? This constant use of language which is merely fictitious marks his argument throughout. What is it but the deception of one by whom he is himself, alas, duped, and in whose hands he is the unhappy instrument in deceiving others? Moreover the possession of a spirit by the beast is not asserted in Scripture, except in one passage by the writer of Ecclesiastes (Ecc 3:19-21): "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath (ruach); so that a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast, for all is vanity. All go unto one place: all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?" This passage has been seized upon by materialists of course, and is constantly put forth as the stronghold of their doctrine. They quote Ecc 3:19 triumphantly. "Words cannot be stronger than this," says Mr. Constable. "The preacher tells us not only that man and beast both have spirit, but that the spirit of both is one and the same. He is here evidently comparing them, in what they had of the highest kind, and nothing could be higher than the possession of that spirit which the Psalms and other Scriptures tell us was indeed nothing less than the Spirit of God Himself. Yet in this he tells us that ‘man hath no pre-eminence above a beast.’ "* *Hades, p. 19. This is bold enough indeed: Mr. Constable has the merit of speaking out his thoughts. In his very highest attribute, it seems then, man has no pre-eminence above a beast. Mind, conscience, responsibility, moral qualities, either he has not, or the beast has, or else these are, after all, inferior things, "not of the highest kind." "Man being in honour and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish," says the Psalmist Mr. Constable adds that he has no pre-eminence over them anyhow, and as for "beasts that perish," why, one and all perish alike: when the breath leaves them they but lie down in the dust, being alike but dust. The argument proves too much, and so proves nothing. If Mr. Constable had but weighed the verse before, which he omits, he might have found reason to question his conclusion. The whole passage is what, Solomon tells us, he "said in his heart" at a certain time (Ecc 3:18). It is not divine revelation, but human doubt: the questioning of man’s mind when speculating upon the mystery of existence: "who knoweth the spirit of man"? etc. It is the language of a man who had "given his heart to search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven;" who had "said in his heart" (Ecc 2:1), "Go to now, I will prove thee with, mirth," and who had "sought in his heart to give himself to wine," and "to lay hold on folly, that he might see what was that. good for the sons of men, which they should do under heaven all the days of their life" (ver. 8). This is no Spirit taught man. In no such path does the Spirit of God lead; and the result is that, searching out by human wisdom, the grave into which all go is an impenetrable mystery: men die as the beast dies, they have one breath, one ruach, they go to the dust alike; as to what is beyond, no mere human knowledge can penetrate it: who knoweth the ruach of man that goeth upward, or the ruach of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? That word, ruach, with its various meaning of breath or spirit, suits well the doubtful questioning of the passage. But this is the uncertainty of mere human knowledge.. The Spirit of God could not. doubt or question. It is by the Spirit, surely, that we are given this history of human searching after wisdom and after good; but the lesson is, that by human searching he could attain neither the one nor the other. Listen to Solomon’s own exposition of this as he comes out into the light: "As thou KNOWEST NOT what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all" (Ecc 11:5). But he has something to say now about his former thoughts: for he says finally and conclusively, that the spirit of man does not "go downward to the earth": "Then shalt the dust return to the earth as it was, but the spirit shall return to God who gave it." The objection is raised as to this by Mr. Roberts, that it ignores the fact of Solomon’s God-given wisdom. But it is just the point of Ecclesiastes to show how the wisdom of the wisest failed here, as in the book of Job the perfection of human goodness. The perfect man has to own his vileness before God, and the wisest men the incompetence of mere human wisdom. For Solomon’s wisdom was self-evidently of that kind which fitted him for the kingly office which he filled, and for which he sought it (2Ch 1:9-10). It is compared with that of other kings, and with the wisdom of the East, and of Egypt, though it surpassed all these. He was the naturalist of his day; his proverbs a storehouse of practical wisdom for the path on earth. But he is not the sweet psalmist of Israel, and his numerous songs are mostly forgotten. The Song of Songs is an allegory, and he was evidently in it the unconscious singer of spiritual things of which he knew but little. Who could compare him with David for spiritual insight? And who but must lament his manifest departure from the path in which his father walked? that departure which, if it be admitted (as it must be) spite of Solomon’s wisdom, so simply accounts for the book of Ecclesiastes being not the record of a path in which the Spirit of God LED, however much He might make the one who walked there the preacher of the vanity of a world which he had ransacked in vain for satisfaction. Now, beside this manifestly exceptional passage in Ecclesiastes, there are none that assert or imply the beast’s possession of a spirit. The passages quoted from elsewhere by Mr. Constable are plainly inadequate. The "breath of life" in Gen 6:17 is not the spirit, as a comparison with Gen 7:22 may show. Nor is it in Psa 104:29. He contends, indeed, that if ruach in Psa 104:29 is translated "breath" it must be equally so in Psa 104:30 : "Thou sendest forth Thy breath (ruach) they are created." But here the "sending forth" necessitates the other rendering. Were it breath, however, in both places, how would it. prove Mr. Constables point? God forms the spirit in man: He does not form the breath of life in him.* *Gen 7:22 (marg.), quoted by Annihilationists as proving "spirit" to belong to beasts, is a mere mistake. The same phrase is found in 2Sa 22:16, and is there translated "The blast of the breath," where again it is referred to the nostrils: "the blast of the breath of his nostrils. It is the action of the breath upon the nostrils, so strongly marked in states of excitement and fear, which is strikingly referred to in the passage in Genesis: " All in whose nostrils was the breathing of the breath of life . . . died." As for Num 16:22, it refers, from the context, to man simply as e. g. Mat 24:22, "Except those days should be shortened no flesh should be saved"; (Gen 6:12), "All flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth"; (Psa 65:2), " Thou that hearest prayer, to Thee shall all flesh come," etc. I return, then, with confidence to my former position that, so far from the spirit of man being a principle of life held in common with the beast, the Spirit of God NEVER asserts the beast’s possession of it. There is complete and absolute silence as to such a thing. And the silence of Scripture is authoritative against the materialistic assumption. For their whole theory as to this they are indebted to the endeavour to "search out by wisdom" (apart from the Spirit, which they deny) the works of God. And I need hardly say, that before these few Scripture facts, Mr. Morris’ theory of the spirit in man, that it is the new nature in the believer, or the "motions and emotions of the soul" in men at large - equally breaks down. Zec 12:1 will not bend to either supposition. It speaks definitely of the spirit of man, not of the believer, and says God formed it, not surely the motions or emotions of the soul! Beside which, to this "spirit of man, which is in him," the apostle (in 1Co 2:1-16) refers all human knowledge: "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man, which is in him.?" Could we say, the "motions" or "emotions" of the soul know? According to Mr. Constable the beast must "know the things of a man" (and he wiser than man, who does not know the things of a beast); for he has the same spirit, and NO pre-eminence over a beast as to that! My object, so far, has been but to establish the doctrine of the distinct existence of the spirit as a separate entity in man. The various uses of the word, and the relationship of the spirit to the soul, will come up more naturally after we have examined in a similar manner the Scripture doctrine of the soul itself. NOTE - A claim is sometimes set up for n’shamah as being the representative of the spirit of man proper rather than ruach. It is the word used in Gen 2:7 for "breath of life," also in Gen 7:22 and 2Sa 22:16, referred to in the last note. it is really, as there implied, the ruach in action, and may be in that way referred to ruach in either sense of "breath" or "spirit." It is never the strict equivalent of ruach; certainly never of a higher character. The Spirit of God is never n’shamah. It is rather the "breathing," "inspiration," "blast," as in Gen 2:7; 2Sa 22:16; Job 4:9; Job 32:8; Job 33:4; Job 37:10; Psa 18:15; Isa 30:33. As to man, it is expressive of his being a breathing creature, as in Deu 20:16; Jos 10:40; Jos 11:11; Jos 11:14; 1Ki 15:29; Psa 150:6; and should be translated similarly, and not, by souls" in a passage referred to by Mr. Constable, Isa 57:16. It should be "breathing" or "breath ‘ in Gen 7:22; 1Ki 17:17; Job 26:4; Job 27:3; Job 34:14; Isa 2:22; Isa 42:5; Dan 5:23; Dan 10:17. There is but one passage beside these in Scripture, and this seems the only undoubted reference to the action of the higher ruach, or real spirit of man: here our version translates it "spirit," yet that it is expressive of the action, rather than the being of the spirit, we may see in the passage itself, Pro 20:27. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 65: 04.10. CHAPTER V THE SOUL ======================================================================== CHAPTER V THE SOUL THE Hebrew word for "soul" is (nephesh), the equivalent of which in Greek is (psuche). A fact significant enough in view of what has already come before us when speaking of the word for spirit, is that both nephesh and psuche are, equally with ruach and pneuma, derived from words which signify "to breathe." The same idea of viewless activity enters into them. Even Dr. Thomas tells us that nephesh is from the verb to breathe, although with the characteristic dishonesty which marks all that he says upon the subject, he gives its primary meaning as "creature." "Nephesh," he says, "signifies creature, also life, soul, or breathing frame, from the verb to breathe." "To return then to the philology of our subject, I remark that by a metonomy, or figure of speech whereby the container is put for the, thing contained, and vice versa, nephesh, breathing-frame put for neshemet ruach chayim, which, when in motion the frame respires. Hence nephesh signifies life also breath and soul."?* One would think, from the admitted derivation of the word from the verb to breathe, that the metonomy, if such there be, would be all the other way, and that the primary meaning would be "breath," and so life or soul. In point of fact, nephesh is only once suggested as breath in the margin of Job 11:20, and without necessity, and for "life" only as the principle or source of life - a meaning easily derived from the soul being strictly that source of life to the body. So that "soul" (in the common acceptation of the word) is properly the primary Scriptural meaning, and the other meanings are derived from it. *Elpis Israel, pp. 27-29. Dr. T., on the other hand, stoutly contends that soul and body are one. "Now if it be asked, what do the Scriptures define a living soul to be? The answer is, a living natural, or animal body."* But I would ask Dr. Thomas or any other who takes the position, if he could understand such an expression as "everything wherein there was a living body?" You find in Gen 1:30, "everything wherein there was a living soul." Now if the soul be in the body, it cannot be the body, and the fact that it is called a "living" soul precludes the possibility of translating it "life," as materialists love to do. A "living life" would make no sense;† a "living breath" would be no better; and the passage shuts us up to the necessity of allowing that something is alive within the "breathing-frame" which Dr. Thomas speaks of; so that the soul and it are distinct from each other. Ibid., p. 27. *Miles Grant does not see the difference between "living a life" and a "life living." "We often hear the expression, ‘We should live a life of virtue’; so, in the passages under consideration, it would be correct to say, ‘and my life shall live’ " (The Soul, p. 18). This is a notable specimen of discernment or the want of it.. If I can talk of "giving a gift," I can therefore talk of a gift giving; and if I can speak of thinking a thought, I can equally speak of a thought thinking! Dr. Thomas thinks he has Scripture for his identification of soul and body. Let him speak for himself. "Writing about body the apostle says, ‘There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.* But he does not content himself with simply declaring this truth; he goes further, and proves it by quoting the words of Moses, saying, ‘For it is written, the first man Adam was made into a living soul,’ and then adds, ‘the last Adam into a Spirit giving life.’ . . The proof of the apostle’s proposition, that there is a natural body as distinct from a spiritual body lies in the testimony that Adam was made into a living soul, showing that he considered a natural or animal body and a living soul as one and the same thing. If he did not, then there was no, proof in the quotation of what he had affirmed."† *1Co 15:44. †Elpis Israel, p. 28. Dr. Thomas had here to misquote Scripture in order to get his argument, such as it is even then. The apostle does: not say "for," but "and." He is not proving his statement. by the passage produced. Why should he undertake to prove that Adam had a natural body? He is showing, rather, how the difference between the first and last Adams, these heads of the human race, naturally or spiritually, illustrates the difference between the natural and the spiritual states, and confirms there being such a difference between what, we are now and what we shall be. "Paul quotes the declaration of Moses," says Mr. Roberts, "to prove the existence of the natural body" This writer has told us that the spirit of man is very easily seen; now he wants proof of the existence of the body!* *His treatment of all this in "Man Mortal" needs little notice, save to illustrate the hopeless difficulty of his position. He invokes Dr. T.’s metonomy to account for Gen 1:30, but wisely refrains from applying it to the case in hand. I have already shown that no meaning given by them to soul will account. for it: living body, living creature, living life, living breath - none of them will do here. The metonomy cannot sustain so great a burden. He admits that there may be "something alive" in the body, as you may call the red heat of a fire "something alive" within the coal! This is his "inevitable fiction," of course again, and it does, indeed, with him seem " inevitable." To all his blunders as to my meaning, I must refer my readers to my book itself for a reply. Mr. R. often seems to have written his comments before he was fairly possessed of the meaning of what he writes about. Now, note that it is even of "the beast of the earth," and from that down to every creeping thing of which this is said. It is not said that the beast has a spirit; it is said that it has a soul. So much so, that all the lower animals are called "souls," just as much as men are. This is to be observed, for it is in itself an answer to the materialistic theories of organization of the most complete kind. It cuts off at once all those arguments as to the faculties of the brutes, their display of attachment, etc., which men ground so much upon. Scripture leads us to account for these, not by reason of their organization, but their possession of a "living soul," as even in man, while it refers the understanding of all human things (1Co 2:11) to the spirit which only man possesses - his sensual faculties,* appetites, nay, his affections, etc., are ascribed to the "living soul" - a soul so distinct from the life of the body, that they that " kill the body" cannot "kill the soul" (Mat 10:28). *For a very good account from the side of science of the difference between man and brute, I would refer to Mivart’s "Lessons from Nature," chap. 7: (Appleton & Co.) Mr. Constable will perceive, therefore, that we are one with him as to the fact that man and beast are alike possessed of living souls. We do not disguise the truth as to this, but contend for it. When he proceeds from this to infer that "the simple and proper meaning of the Hebrew word nephesh, when applied to the lower creatures, is life animal life,"† he goes beyond the record. Gen 1:30 applies expressly to the lower creatures, and how can we say, "everything wherein there is a living life"? The only other meaning be ascribes to it, when applied to man, is "person" (p. 36), and "wherein there is a living person" will scarcely do either. †Hades, p. 34. Gen. Goodwyn has still another definition: "The soul, as distinguished from the mere body or soul-tabernacle, may he considered as that combination of parts of the inner man, which is the seat of the mind and affections, and having the breath of life gives action to the outer members of the body. When the spirit, the animating principle, is withdrawn, the man, soul and body, ceases to exist, dies." His Scripture for this seems to be Gen 2:7, "where Adam is said to have become a living soul. His inner organs received life, or breath of existence and action."* *Truth and Tradition. Thus the inner organs of the body seem with him to be the soul, the outer only, the soul-tabernacle or body. It would be well to attempt something in the way of proof of so startling a proposition as that the lungs and other parts not defined are not the body! "In the body," "out of the body," "absent from the body," "putting off the tabernacle," would certainly have a new significance in this way. But I think it scarcely needful to pursue this further. Man has, then, a living soul; nay, he is one. How he became so Gen 2:7 informs us: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Now, upon the most cursory glance at this, it is evident that something more took place in man’s creation than in the creation of the brute. It is plain that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and that He did not into the brute’s. Roberts, indeed, contends that Psa 104:25-30 supplies what is omitted in Genesis. He obtains this by means of the old confusion between God’s Spirit and the breath of life. Nor does any one deny that "God giveth unto all life and breath and all things." The question is why was the gift given in this especial way to man alone? "No matter," says Mr. R., "if they all have it." But the point is, did God come in in this special way to give merely the same gift after all? The language is phenomenal, as Old Testament language largely is, and that makes one only the more to ask, is this breathing of God not a form of expression pointing to the communication of something from Himself and more akin to Himself, than is implied in water or earth simply producing? Surely it is so. For although what is communicated may not be yet fully shown - and it is quite the character of an initial revelation, that it should not be - it is plain that man has a link here with God Himself which the beast has not. And this is not by a higher bodily organization. His body has been before perfected. It is by the way he receives life. Now, if the breath of life alone were communicated (and every beast has it as much), there is no real difference answering to this difference of communication: the phenomenal language has no corresponding meaning. But thus it is that man - only dust before - becomes a living soul. And that purports that he is now characterized; as we have seen before in the beast, by something now living within that man who was just now but dust. He is a living soul; not by the completion of his bodily organization, but by the addition of a new constituent of being. He is now not a mere body, nor a body instinct even with the breath of life: he is become a "living soul."* *Mr. Morris’ gloss that nephesh chayah means a "vigorous soul" will be repudiated by any scholar. In a secondary sense (chayah) is used for revival and recovery, but its simple ordinary established meaning is "living." It is in contrast with(hayah), "to be," as the being of a stone, for instance, is distinct from the life of an animal. Still, why is man called a living soul, a title which is his in common with all the animate creation, rather than a "living spirit," which would distinguish him from them? The answer would seem to be that the point of contrast is not with the lower animals, but with the class of God’s creatures to which as a moral being man belongs. The angels are spirits, never souls. The distinction between them and man, "made a little lower than the angels," is thus that man is a soul. That which links him with the inferior creatures, is that which distinguishes him from pure "spirits," such as angels are.* *Because he has this in common with the beasts, Mr. R. must not include that it is inferred that man’s soul is just what the beast’s is. If "all flesh is not the same flesh" even, why need all souls be the same . And if God speaks of His "soul," condescending as He does to our familiar human speech, He is never called a soul as He is a spirit. The fact here manifest, that the soul is thus put for the whole man himself as what characterizes him, or gives him his place among God’s rational creatures, serves to explain many passages which would otherwise present difficulty. We have in our ordinary language similar uses of the word "soul," which certainly have not grown up from a materialistic idea of it. Thus we talk of "so many souls on board a ship," "every soul was lost," and no one is deceived by it. There are, however, other renderings of the word nephesh, and other uses of soul, which we shall look at in their place. As usual, the deniers of the Scripture doctrine make a great display of various meanings given to the word. Says Miles Grant,* "Nephesh, the word rendered soul, is translated in forty-four different ways in the common English Bible. We now propose to give all these variations, and quote the texts that contain them." *The Soul, what is it? p. 20. Now I would say that nothing is more common than various renderings of the same word in our ordinary translation. Good as it is, and in most cases giving the sense with sufficient accuracy, it often varies from literal exactness. With all this variation there is far less difference than would at first sight appear. Mr. Grant himself reduces these meanings essentially to four, "creature, person, life and desire." "Soul," of course, disappears out of this catalogue, although it is the translation of nephesh 475 times out of 752. And we are, therefore, to translate Gen 1:30, "everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is a living creature," or "wherein there is a living person," or "wherein there is a living life," or "wherein there is a living desire." Choose which you will, reader, so that you give no currency to the supposition of an immaterial soul in man! Mr. Grant has very ingeniously given in his book all the variations from the ordinary meaning of the word nephesh but he has only given select specimens of passages which retain that meaning. I will supply the deficiency, and present him and my readers with a few of those omitted passages: Gen 42:21 : When we saw the anguish of his soul. Num 21:4 : The soul of the people was much discouraged Deu 11:18 : Ye shall lay up these my words in your soul. 1Sa 18:1 : The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. 1Sa 30:6 : The soul of all the people was grieved. 2Sa 5:8 : The blind that are hated of sam soul. Job 14:22 : The soul within him shall mourn. Job 23:13 : What his soul desireth, even that he doeth. Psa 13:2 : How long shall I take counsel in my soul. Psa 106:15 : He sent leanness into their soul. Psa 107:26 : Their soul is melted because of trouble. Psa 119:20 : My soul breaketh for the longing it hath. Isa 10:18 : And shall consume from the soul even to the flesh. Isa 53:11 : The travail of his soul. Mic 6:7 : The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul. Now, in these examples, the soul is distinguished from both body and flesh. It longs, it grieves, it hates, it loves. It is indeed a living thing, as Gen 1:30 declares. Take, again, the New Testament equivalent of nephesh - psuche: Mat 10:28 : Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul. Mat 11:29 : Ye shall find rest unto your so. Mat 12:18 : In whom my soul is well pleased. Mat 26:38 : My soul is exceeding sorrowful Luk 1:46 : My soul doth magnify the Lord. John 12:27 : Now is my soul troubled. Acts 2:27 : Thou will not leave my soul in hell (hades). Acts 14:22 : Confirming the souls of the disciples. How impossible would it be to translate with Mr. Constable "life" or " person" in these passages; or "body" or life" with Dr. Thomas and his followers; or "inner organs" with Goodwyn; or "creature, person, life or desire" with Miles Grant! Take, for instance, the very first example, and try upon it any or all of these various renderings. Is it not plain that not one of them will make even the smallest sense? Mr. Constable has indeed done his best to defend his position, but he owns that be takes the expression in its "less obvious sense," and one to which he is compelled, as he thinks, by "the general doctrine [of Scripture] upon this subject." The latter assertion is surely incorrect, and a little examination will show us that the sense he gives it is not merely the "less obvious," but impossible. He allows that if soul here be life, "man can and does destroy" it. But he argues "it is a momentary death: what he has for the time extinguished is reserved by God to shine through all eternity: it is not therefore, in God’s eye or mind, lost, destroyed or perished." This will not answer, however. For it is plain that the Lord contrasts killing the body here with destruction of body and soul in hell. Now man can only kill even the body for a season: he cannot prevent the resurrection even of that. What he can do as to the body he can do just as much (or as little) to the life, and therefore there would be no ground for the distinction between the one and the other which the passage manifestly makes. The Lord says, man can kill the body, not the soul. Mr. Constable says he can kill the soul (or life) also, but only for awhile; and that is equally true of the body. According to Mr. C. it should have been "Fear not them which kill neither body nor life." This is not a "less obvious," but an impossible sense. But again, how could one even talk of "killing the life" much more of "killing the body and the life"? What is killing the body but destroying its life? I must plead ignorance as to killing the body and the life being different things at all. Nay, further, since "killing" is already "taking life," I must confess I fail to see how you can talk of taking the life of life or "killing life." Thus, then, without the need of considering the passages with which he has sought to prop up his argument (passages which will be examined, however, in another place) we may safely assure ourselves that the Lord speaks of a true soul in man which man cannot kill even for a moment. They can, for a moment, the body, but God will raise it up. Not even for a moment can they kill the soul. The dilemma has been attempted to be avoided in another way. Says Miles Grant: "We think it does not mean this present soul or life, for the reason that the destruction threatened is not in this life, but in the world to come. Man can and does take this life." Therefore "soul" has to be rendered the "life to come." But this it never means: the life to come, or life eternal, is zoe never psuche. So much so that Goodwyn says: "Wherever the word psuche is found it is in direct contrast with zoe, and used to express the natural life or soul capable of being destroyed, put to death, or perishing." This is, of course, as to the latter part of it, merely his own view, and in flat denial of the passage before us; for how, if it be the natural life, merely, can man, who kills the body, not kill it? But the "life to come" it is not. Psuche, in a secondary sense, is "life," because the soul is (in effect) life to the body. This natural life man does and can take; so that psuche here must be (spite of the protest of materialism) that which lies back of the life itself - the veritable soul, which out of man’s reach altogether. Roberts attempts an argument, however, from John 12:25 : "The man losing his life in this world for Christ’s sake is said to save it. When? When the Son of man comes (Mat 16:25-27). If he is to save his psuche then, surely it is now a psuche or life to come." Now the Lord’s words are that "be that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." How could a man keep his life to come unto life to come! It is his present life he in some way* keeps, not merely for ever, but to life eternal. By and by we shall look more closely into what "life eternal" is, end shall then find it is not mere eternal existence, but far more. His human life will enter this new condition. But that shows the distinction between the two, and that it is this human life the Lord speaks of in the passage. As I have said, Scripture expresses these two things by different terms: it is always eternal zoe, never psuche; and Mr. Roberts cannot deny it.. *In what way will be better considered further on. But to give up here is to give up all as to the soul’s immortality, and it is no wonder, therefore, they hesitate. The doctrine they denounce finds in this verse as literal expression as need be. If it be Platonic, Scripture is then Platonic; or rather, Plato is thus far Scriptural. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 66: 04.11. CHAPTER VI FUNCTIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS OF SOUL AND SPIRIT ======================================================================== CHAPTER VI FUNCTIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS OF SOUL AND SPIRIT WITH these facts before us, the way is prepared for us to see a new and beautiful harmony in the Scripture teaching as to soul and spirit. That these are quite distinct from one another, though so nearly related, the word of God bears abundant witness. "Your whole spirit and soul and body," and "piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit," are passages sufficiently plain. But the question naturally arises, How, then, are they distinguished, and what are their relationships to one another? In the answer to this which the inspired writings furnish, we find also the fullest confirmation of the fact of the existence of these two separate* entities in the compound nature of man. *Not separate or separable in Mr. Roberts’ sense, as if ever disjoined from one another. "Spirit and soul and body," which I have taken as the key to the discovery of man’s nature, gives us, I believe, very clearly the order of relationship. The soul is here the connecting link between the spirit and the body. The spirit is the higher part. Hence, although it be true that "the body without the spirit is dead" (Jas 2:26), yet the spirit is never looked at as the life of the body. The word for "life," as we have seen, is psuche or nephesh, in its secondary or derived meaning. And to soul or spirit, not merely the moral qualities, but also the senses, and the emotional and intellectual faculties are ascribed. Striking fact for materialists, the brain (to which they ascribe everything) is not so much as once mentioned from Genesis to Revelation. Nor has the head; which contains the brain, any mental or moral faculties ascribed to it. "Visions of the head" are mentioned (Dan 4:10, etc.), plainly because the eyes are in it. But no mental or moral qualities, no faculties beside, are ever attributed to it. I do not say this as doubting the result of men’s researches in this respect. But, as fully allowing that the brain is the instrument of the intellect, it makes only the more striking the way in which the Spirit of God goes back of the mere fleshy organ to that of which it is merely the organ. Still more so, because feelings and faculties are attributed figuratively to the heart, the belly, the bowels, the kidneys (reins), the womb, and the flesh in general, but never to the head. Look at the remarks of Roberts* before cited, and see how the wisdom of God meets the insane folly of would-be philosophers. He who foreknow all these self-sufficient speculations, has poured contempt upon them by utter silence; while, except the figurative language alluded to, all the faculties of man are attributed to what their science of course cannot detect, the unseen soul or spirit. They may correct the Word indeed, and they are bold enough to do so, by their more perfect knowledge; but there stands the fact, let them meet it how they can. *He reminds me that the eye sees, and the ear hears, and the flesh is pained, which does not perceptibly affect the argument. That he should further appeal to 1Ch 12:32, Job 32:8, and Pro 30:2, as attributing "understanding to the whole mechanism of man as made of dust," is hopelessly unintelligible, except as he might hope that no one would read for himself the texts in question. But moreover in proclaiming these attributes or functions of the spirit and the soul, there is no looseness of language, much less confusion. The mental faculties, emotions, sensual appetites, etc., are ascribed to soul or to spirit with the utmost exactness and the most unvarying harmony. It is to this point that I would call most earnest and special attention. We shall find in every case that intelligence and judgment belong to the spirit; the affections, desires, appetites, etc., to the soul. I place before my readers the passages, or all the varieties of them, upon which the judgment may be formed. And first, with regard to spirit (ruach or pneuma) Gen 41:8 : (Pharaoh’s) spirit was troubled. Jdg 8:3 Their spirit was abated towards him. Psa 106:33 : They provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly. Pro 14:29 : He that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly. Isa 29:24 : They that erred in spirit shall come to understanding. Eze 1:21 The spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. Mark 8:12 : He sighed deeply in his spirit. Acts 17:16 : His spirit was stirred within him. 1Co 2:1-16; 1Co 2:11 What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him. Rendered in our version, "mind": Pro 29:11 : A fool uttereth all his mind. Eze 11:5 : I know the things that come into your mind. Eze 20:32 : That which cometh into your mind. Dan 5:20 : His mind hardened in pride. "Understanding": Isa 11:4. "Courage": Jos 2:11. Now here it will require no lengthened examination to see that the spirit is presented in Scripture as the seat of the mind or understanding, as we have just seen it to be sometimes even translated. The passage from 1Co 2:11, is indeed the most positive assertion of it that can well be: "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?" Here the spirit of man in the man is that part of him to which all intelligence is referred. Hence we may know what to think of the knowledge or honesty displayed in such a statement as the following from one of Miles Grant’s writings: "In all the 400 passages in the Old, and the 385 in the New Testament, where these words occur, we do not find one that teaches that when this spirit or breath is in man, it is the thinking, accountable part, or that it ever did or ever will think. Why is the Bible wholly silent on this point? Why are we not taught somewhere that the ruach or pneuma is the real man ?"* Mr. Grant of course adopts the usual confusion of the breath of life with the spirit of man, and I do not mean to assert by any means, that the breath of life is the "real man." But to his latter question I do most positively and distinctly answer that the Bible does teach that the spirit of man is the conscious thinking part, and that his not seeing it is only due to his own blindness, not to its not being there. It says most definitely and distinctly, that the "man" which knows the "things of a man" is "the spirit of man, which is IN him." There is no escape from its plain speaking. It speaks so plainly indeed that Mr. Grant has seen it best to ignore its testimony in his pamphlet just referred to; and it is his silence that is to be remarked, and not the silence of the Scriptures. *Spirit in Man, pp. 31, 32. This "spirit of man," then, cannot be with Mr. Grant either an "influence" or "a state of feeling," or the "atmosphere or breath of life." It cannot be Mr. Morris’ new nature (or else all unconverted men are born idiots), or "motions and emotions of the soul." No, it is simply what the words declare, a conscious intelligent existence in the man, and that to which all his intelligence of human things is due. "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the SPIRIT Of MAN which is IN him ?" Passages which also identify the spirit as the seat of the mind or understanding, I have already quoted. It needs not to examine them here, except to show how other uses of the word are derived from this one. Thus, in Jos 2:11; Jos 5:1, it is used for "courage," the connection of which with "presence of mind" is familiar to all. And in Jdg 8:3, it is used for "anger," which is again the judgment of the mind, true or false, upon what presents itself to it as evil. Another use of the word, which also we have in English, for the prevailing temper or disposition, as "a meek and quiet spirit," a "spirit of pride," etc., seems derived from the fact of the spirit being in man the higher part, and the rightful governor of the man - what, in short, characterizes him. Now let us gather, in a similar way, some passages as to the soul, and the difference will be at once apparent. Thus it is the seat of the affections: Gen 34:8 : The soul of my son longeth for your daughter. 1Sa 18:1 : The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. Psa 42:1 : So panteth my soul after thee, 0 God. Psa 63:1 0 God, my soul thirsteth for Thee. Psa 84:2 : My soul longeth for the courts of the Lord. Psa 119:20 : My soul breaketh for the longing it hath. Song of Solomon 1:7 : 0 Thou whom my soul loveth. Isa 26:9 : With my soul have I desired thee in the night. Luk 2:35 : A sword shall pierce through thine own soul. Heb 10:38 : My soul shall have no pleasure in him. As it loves, so it hates: Lev 26:15 : If your soul abhor my judgments. 2Sa 5:8 : The blind, that are hated of David’s soul. Zec 11:8 : My soul loathed them. It Compassionates: Jdg 10:16 : His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel. Job 30:25 : Was not my soul grieved for the poor? Eze 24:21 : What your soul pitieth shall fall by the sword. It is the seat of lusts: Job 23:13 : What his soul desireth, even that he doeth. Psa 10:3 : The wicked boasteth of his soul’s desire. 1Pe 2:11 : Fleshly lusts which war against the soul. Of the appetites, even, of the body: Psa 107:18 : Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat. Pro 19:15 : An idle soul shall suffer hunger. Pro 25:25 : As cold waters to a thirsty soul. Pro 27:7 : The full soul loatheth a honeycomb. Isa 29:8 : His soul hath appetite. Lam 1:11 : Meat to relieve the soul. Luk 12:19 : Soul. . take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. So its derived meanings are: "Appetite": Pro 23:2, Ecc 6:7. "Pleasure": Deu 23:24, Psa 105:22, Jer 34:16. "Desire": Jer 44:14, Mic 7:3, Hab 2:5. "Mind," in the sense of will or intention, not of the understanding: 1Sa 2:35, 2Ki 9:15. A slight examination of these passages will serve to demonstrate the truth of my former assertion as to the soul’s place and functions. It is here seen plainly as the link between the spirit and the body: that which is indeed the life of the latter. The sense of "life" so often given to it in Scripture is plainly a meaning derived from this very fact. In all this the difference between soul and spirit is preserved in the most marked way, and the most thorough consistency maintained everywhere throughout the Bible. Still objection has been taken to this statement. Mr. Roberts has even ventured the assertion that, on the contrary, "spirit" and "soul" are "used interchangeably in the most indiscriminate manner." He instances Luk 1:46-47 : "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." But he does not tell us how this shows their indiscriminate use. "My soul doth magnify" may well express how fully its longings are satisfied; while "my spirit hath rejoiced" only shows that there is a joy of the mind also. And so there is: and both thus testify the complete way in which the knowledge of a Saviour-God meets both, and unites man’s whole being in praise. There is so little opposition here to the view above given, that it alone gives fulness and definiteness to what in Mr. Roberts’ hands becomes a poor and unmeaning tautology. He goes on: "But the fact can be shown from the very passages which Mr. Grant has quoted: for instance, out of nine quoted to show that the spirit is the seat of the mind or understanding as contrasted with the soul as the seat of hate, love, lust, appetite, etc., six have to do with emotion, such as anger, fear," etc. . . . "A not very close examination shows them to teach that the spirit, in addition to understanding, has to do with trouble, anger, provocation, hastiness, sorrow and excitement, and is, therefore, not the higher entity of Mr. Grant’s theory, having only to do with the exercise of reason." But Mr. Roberts plainly does not apprehend the theory. He shows it by inferring from it "two surviving personalities, when the body has mouldered to dust." Spirit, soul and body are during life but one "personality," and certainly death does not make more than one. At death the body drops, for the time being, out of this tri-unity. Spirit and soul, on the other hand, are never sundered. In life or in death the mysterious links of connection are preserved, and if (in Mr. R.’s wording of it), the spirit is the thinker, and the soul the feeler, these are not independent of each other, - two personalities, but one. The knowledge of the spirit becomes the portion of the soul; the affections of the soul the possession of the spirit. This interdependence may find illustration in one of the texts quoted above, and which Mr. R. lays hold of as against the view: - "He sighed deeply in his spirit." Now "sighing" is a bodily, not a mental phenomenon at all. The language does not more confound soul and spirit than it does body and spirit, if rigidly (and unnaturally) construed. But it was mental trouble that produced the sigh, his spirit discerning the moral character of the expressed desire to see a sign from heaven. Pharaoh’s spirit was in like manner troubled: in his case because he could not interpret his dream. In these cases, suppose the spirit was mind, why could we not speak of trouble of mind? In each case, the mind or spirit which discerns the things of a man is rightly named as the seat of the trouble. The soul in Pharaoh’s case, soul and body in the Lord’s, might be invoked; but the expressions are perfectly appropriate, and the distinction between soul and spirit gives them a real significance, which for materialism does not exist. So I have shown above how the spirit is connected with "anger" (as in Jdg 8:3). Psa 106:33, and Pro 14:29 are really to be classed with this, as is evident; and Acts 17:6 is nearly related and easily intelligible. But let me ask Mr. Roberts, has he found "hate, love, lust, appetite," in Scripture ascribed to the spirit? It is plain he has not, or we should have heard of it. Does not this look then, as if the "theory" had some foundation in fact? As to the soul, Mr. R. asserts that the quotations - "Show as a whole, that the ‘soul’ of the Bible has as much to do with higher actions of the mind as the spirit: Thus Psa 42:1; Psa 63:1; Psa 84:2; in all these, which are the first three quotations, it is David’s soul that aspires after divine things, and therefore that apprehends knowledge. But this point is more obvious in some passages which of course he has not quoted. Thus Pro 19:2, ‘that the soul be without knowledge is not good’; Psa 139:14, ‘That my soul KNOWETH right well;" Pro 2:10, ‘when knowledge is pleasant to thy SOUL’; Pro 24:14, ‘So shall the knowledge of wisdom be to thy soul.’" That is Mr. Robert’s disproof of the whole argument. It is easy to show here again that it is illusive and imaginary and that the view in question gives alone real distinctness of meaning to the texts. For, as to the first three quotations how impossible would it be to say, "So panteth my mind after Thee," "my mind thirsteth," "my mind longeth." Certainly it has never been contended that the soul has not to do with divine things, any more than we could assert this of the heart, which we may take as in some sort its figurative synonym. On the contrary, it is the importance of their getting into the heart, and not being in the mind only, that is the key to the other texts so obscure to Mr. Roberts. The knowledge of wisdom must be thus sweet to the soul, in order to profit. If the mind acquire it. yet the heart enjoys it; and this is the explanation of the last two quotations. So we can well understand how "that the soul be without knowledge is not good": for the affections must be guided and governed by the understanding. Finally, that the soul (or heart) should appreciate God’s "marvellous works," is thus not out of keeping: it is rightly not merely my mind knoweth, but my heart does. The view of the soul above given is not inconsistent with such texts as these, but on the contrary brings out their beauty. Mr. Roberts’ objections are not merely superficial and powerless, but his weapons are easily turned against himself. Nor only this, but he is grossly inconsistent with his own statements. For when he interprets the apostle’s spirit and soul and body," he paraphrases it, as we have seen (p.30) by "body, life and mind." Here, in express contrast with the soul, he identifies the "spirit" with the "mind." I believe, indeed, it is inconsistent with his system, and have said so, but that does not alter the fact that here he is in manifest contradiction to himself. I repeat, then, without fear of successful opposition, that while the spirit is in Scripture identified with the mind, the soul is the seat of the affections, right or wrong, of love, hate, lusts, and even of the appetites of the body. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 67: 04.12. CHAPTER VII SOUL AND SELF ======================================================================== CHAPTER VII SOUL AND SELF WE may now proceed still further in proof of the distinct meaning and harmonious use of these words in Scripture; each added harmony discovered being of course new proof of the reality of man’s spiritual being, and of the complete Scriptural recognition of the fact. We have seen the intimate alliance of soul and body, the very appetites (as we speak) of the body being ascribed to the soul. This makes it little wonder that "soul" and "life" should be so far identified as to be expressed even by the same word. What ground have we from Scripture, indeed, for speaking of any "vital principle" apart from the soul? It seems plain that there is no such thing; and that "life" is but the permeation of the body with the soul. The soul is the life while it abides in connection with the body. The life is (so to speak) the PHENOMENAL soul. It is no wonder, then, if these two meanings should easily in Scripture run into one another, and be both covered by the same Greek or Hebrew word. That they do so is seen in a passage which Mr. Constable has very strangely himself brought forward to show the influence of "Platonism" in moulding the common translation of our Bible. He would have the word psuche, which stands for soul and life in Luk 12:19-23, uniformly rendered "life" all through. To most readers this will surely appear impossible and absurd. Fancy a man represented as apostrophizing his life thus: "Life, thou hast much goods, etc., . . . take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry"! Yet, on the other hand, who can avoid the connection with the moral of this very story, "Take no thought for your life"? Instead, then, of manifesting the Platonism of the translators, it does show how near akin in Scripture, although impossible to be confounded, soul and life are. Nor only this. The word for "natural body" - the body we now inhabit - is a word taken from this word psuche (its adjective, psuchic), one for which we have no equivalent in English, but which speaks of the body in its present state, as related in a special way to soul rather than spirit, for it is contrasted with the "spiritual" body of the resurrection (1Co 15:44). This leads to a third use of the word "soul" in Scripture, which has been already glanced at, but which it will be of use now to consider more at length. As pervading and vitalizing the body, the soul, it is evident, connects itself with the practical life which we live in the flesh in a special way. We have seen that man’s distinctive title, as compared with the rest of moral beings, is that he is a "soul". It is, accordingly, the word used for the "person," the "self," while thus in the body. It is, indeed, the only true word in Hebrew for either,* while in the New Testament psuche is used correspondingly in several places. It is thus the emphatic I or he. "My soul" is but myself: the soul of a person is but the person himself *"Person" is the translation of six other words in our version, but of these, three are but words for "man" (’Adam, ’ish, ’enosh), and would be better given so. Ba’al is used but once (Pro 24:8). Panim, only in the phrase "accepting persons," lit. "faces." Methim again but once. For "self" we find, beside nephesh, only once " ar" Ecc 2:3. Even in our own language, where, certainly, it is not materialism which has induced such a mode of speech, we speak of "souls" in a manner which should convict us, with such as Mr. Constable, of ourselves disbelieving the immortality of the soul. We speak of so many "souls" being on board a ship, nay, of these "souls" perishing in the waters. Think how impossible for those who believe in an immortal soul, to speak of souls perishing in the waters! It is, perhaps, impossible to justify such language to Mr. Constable, and yet we do believe in the immortality of the soul in spite of that. Somehow to us, as to the writers of Scripture, the man who dwells in this "natural" body, is pre-eminently a "soul." "Soul" characterizes him, while in the flesh at least, in some sense beyond spirit or body. The body he possesses is a soul-body; the life he lives a soul-life; the man himself is a "living soul." Can we explain this identification, while yet the body is what is most evident to the senses, and the spirit the higher and intellectual part, and which really separates man from the beast? I believe we can very intelligibly explain it. For, as to the body, what is it apart from that which animates and connects it with the scene around, nay, which holds even together its very component parts in one organic whole? It is the soul with which we have practically to do; our intercourse is of soul with soul; when the soul is gone, the body is but the relic of what we once knew. And even as to the spirit, its connection with the outer world is also by the soul. The aperture of knowledge is by the senses. The word we have before seen, in 1Co 15:1-58 :, to be translated "natural," is twice elsewhere translated "sensual" (Jas 3:15, Jude 1:19), and is really "psychic," from psuche, soul. The soul is thus really the life here, the man himself as part of this creation. Soul, life, self, are so near akin to one another as almost to merge in one; but the key to the harmony is in no wise the materialistic conception but the reverse. And this is confirmed in a remarkable way by the use of Scripture, which, when speaking of the disembodied state, identifies man with his spirit rather than with his soul. Not that what kills the body kills the soul. This, as we have seen, the Word emphatically denies. But yet if the present life be emphatically the soul-life - the living man the living soul - death is the end of this form of existence. The soul though not extinct in death, may well be said, according to the true phrase in Lev 24:17-18, to be "smitten" by it. And, while in death the "soul departs" from the body (Gen 35:18), and in the case of one raised from death "comes into" it again (1Ki 17:21), man in the disembodied state simply is constantly and consistently a spirit, not a soul, with two exceptions only which limit this in a way which serves to show only more convincingly the reality of the distinction we are making. The two exceptions are Acts 2:27 (which is only the quotation of Psa 16:10), and Rev 6:9. Both of these evidently refer to death and the connection with the body. The souls under the altar are the "souls of them that were slain for the word of God," - "smitten" souls which cry for vengeance. While "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell" (or hades) no less is connected with the thought of the partner-body from which it had been sundered, but which is not allowed to see "corruption" in the tomb. Ordinarily, the. common language of the day, which speaks of departed spirits, and of ghosts (which is but the Saxon equivalent of the same word), is based upon the older and scriptural usage. A "spirit," as in Acts 23:8-9, was the common term for one passed into the unseen state. The Pharisees confessed their belief in "spirits," carefully distinguished from "angels," and in opposition to Sadduccan infidelity. So the disciples thought the risen Lord a "spirit," and the Lord answers them, "a spirit hath not flesh and bones. So the departed saints are "spirits of just men" (Heb 12:28), while the unrighteous on the other hand are "spirits in prison" (1Pe 3:19). So "the spirit departs to God that gave it" (Ecc 12:7); and the Lord commends His Spirit to the Father (Luk 23:46), Stephen to Him who has the keys of death and hades (Acts 7:59). Again the "spiritual" body of the resurrection argues the new condition upon which the saint enters then. "Flesh and blood" - two combined - "cannot inherit the kingdom of God " (1Co 15:50). We are anticipating here what may seem rather to belong to a future stage of our inquiry, but it seemed needful in order that we might have a full view of the Scripture teaching as to what man is. There is surely a consistency in all this which is the consistency of truth itself. We shall pursue this further in the next chapter. In the meanwhile we may take up the objections of Mr. Constable to that view of "soul" which we have been maintaining here. Thus he complains of the various translation which in our common version is given to the word. He argues that the translators, "despite their Platonic views, are compelled to give ‘animal life,’ as a true and proper sense for that word, which they generally translate by a term which they suppose to mean something infinitely higher in meaning than ‘animal life.’ Just as if a word can have for its primary sense two meanings wholly different from each other!" Where our translators have given this rendering of animal life I cannot find. Mr. Constable’s object in introducing "animal" into it is plain, however. It is to let us know that soul-life (if I may use the expression) is common to the lower animals along with man, and to let us infer that it can be no higher a thing in us than in the "beasts which perish." This is to decide the question of the soul’s immortality by sleight of hand. The inference is not a just one. If all flesh," as the apostle argues, "is not the same flesh," how much less need all souls be the same? Why not say of all "life "even as much, except that its folly would be too transparent? Therefore the additional word dropped in, the responsibility to be assumed by the translators, while Mr. Constable is its author! I have shown also that "soul" is really the primary meaning of both the Greek and Hebrew words in Scripture and yet how closely connected the secondary meaning of "life" is. The two are certainly in nowise "contradictory," however little it is possible to confound them either. Mr. C. may urge, indeed, that thus our translators, and we after them, vary the translation as we please, in order to escape from the difficulties attendant upon an honest construction of it. He does adduce Mat 16:25-26, and Luk 12:19-28, as examples where psuche stands for life and soul, and where he claims it must at least be uniformly rendered. But we have already seen that as to the latter passage it is clearly impossible. Did any one ever address such an impersonality as his "life," and bid it "take its ease," etc.? Yet this is the rendering Mr. Constable demands! The same uniformity of rendering would in other places give still more manifest absurdity, as in John 3:8, already noticed, where "wind" and "spirit" are the same word. The rule he would apply is in short not without many an exception, these exceptions being determined by the connection in which the word is found. In Mat 16:25-26, Alford and others, who are sufficiently orthodox, render the last verse as Mr. C. would do, without the least idea of its being "forbidden by their theory." My own view is that which the parallel passage in Luk 9:25 seems evidently to show to be the true one, that "soul" is here, as so often in the Old Testament, the synonym of self. "His soul" in Mat 16:26 is interpreted by the passage in Luke to be "himself." The doctrine the Lord propounds is that a man must take his choice of this world or the next. He must be as a man of the world lost here or lost hereafter; but I do not see how it could be better expressed in English than it is in the way that Mr. Constable demurs to, albeit it requires the double rendering of psuche by life and soul, a rendering which would be only inadmissible, if it required a meaning for the word which was not thoroughly established elsewhere. Mr. Constable has produced some passages to show that the soul is mortal, and although it may seem anticipating, yet as the subject has been already somewhat before us, it will be well to consider them here. And first as to the Old Testament, he brings forward Lev 24:17-18, "literally translated" - "he that killeth the soul of a man. . . . the soul of a beast," expressions similar to which abound, he says, in the Hebrew Scriptures. With these he joins Joshua’s destruction of "all the souls" in the cities of Canaan (!) and the phrases "my soul shall live " (Gen 12:13), and "let my soul die" (Num 23:10). He urges also Job’s soul choosing death (Job 7:15), and Elihu’s words (Job 33:22): "his soul draweth near to the grave." Also that "in Psa 33:1-22, we are expressly told that the souls even of God’s people are exposed to death; and in another psalm (Psa 78:50), that the soul is not "spared from death"; while the final end of the wicked in hell. . . . is described as the death of the sinful soul (Eze 18:20). Again as to the New Testament, he contends that Mark 3:4 should read, "to save a soul or to kill it," and so Luk 9:54-56, Acts 15:26, Rom 11:3. He urges Rev 16:3, "every living soul died in the sea; " and adds, "Once more John tells us that all souls, whether of the righteous or the wicked, after death continue without life until the resurrection. In Rev 20:4, he tells us that in the prophetic vision of the future with which he was favoured, he saw ‘the souls of them that were beheaded’ in a living state. He goes on in Rev 20:5 to speak of other souls. He tells us that these latter did not live again till after a certain period. Hence we gather of the former that they had been raised to life, 1: e., had been without life, in a condition of death, till the resurrection." Mr. Constable’s own canon of interpretation is simple enough, "that the word psuche has evidently, when spoken of as a constituent part of human nature, one uniform meaning." This, he says, is "life." So that in the last quotation the apostle John tells us, "I saw the lives of them that were beheaded," etc.," and they," the lives, " lived." He saw these lives, to use Mr. C.’s language, "in a living state." So in Rev 16:3, "every living life," - the word "living" makes things still plainer, Mr. C. thinks - " died in the sea.-" So Job spoke of his life choosing death, Elihu of its going to the grave, Abraham of his life living, and Balaam of its dying; while he that killed the life of a man was to be put to death, etc. This is all ordinary and quite intelligible English to Mr. Constable, and which ought to commend itself to his readers without even the necessity of a word to make it plain! How is it that he does not see the impossibility of such renderings, and on the other hand that there is a legitimate use of soul in English, which explains in good measure the difficulty he seems to have? Why should he have more difficulty, for instance, in understanding Joshua’s destroying "all the souls" in Canaan, or every "living soul" dying in the sea, than if it had been a newspaper paragraph as to a shipwreck, and "not a soul saved"? Would this suggest to him, as similar language in Scripture seems to do, how wrong our thoughts are about the "salvation" of "souls"? There is a childish simplicity in such remarks, which would provoke a smile if the subject were not too grave. In Mark 3:4, Mr. Constable would even force the translation into "save a soul or to kill it," actually introducing the "it" where there is none, to bring in the killing of a soul in the most striking way! Why it should not be "life" there, he can only argue upon his principle of uniformity of meaning, which we have already practically tested and found wanting. The "souls of those beheaded" in Rev 20:1-15 :, presents but little more difficulty, for the reviving of these souls is expressly called a "resurrection." It is therefore but an instance of the use of soul of a man for the man himself, which I have already referred to. This completes the list of New Testament passages. The first from the Old Testament (Lev 24:17-18) I have. already referred to. The expression here and elsewhere, as Gen 37:21, Deu 19:6; Deu 19:11; Deu 22:26, Jer 40:11, is invariably "smiting the soul," and we have seen its force. The verb is not the true word for killing, nor would there be sense in speaking of killing the life of a person, because "killing" by itself means "taking life," and taking the life of the life would be an insufferable expression. It is scarcely needful again to speak of Joshua. "My soul shall live," "let my soul die," "to deliver their soul from death," "He spared not their soul from death." "the soul that sinneth, it shall die," are all similar expressions to those we have noticed in Revelation.* Nor does Eze 18:27 speak of punishment in hell, although commonly taken in that way, but of Divine government in the world. *Examples will be found without any difficulty in the Old Testament. See for instance Lev 11: 48, Jos 23:11, Est 4:13; Est 9:31, Job 18:4; Job 32:2, Psa 105:18, Isa 5:14; Isa 46:2, Jer 3:11. Again, Job’s soul choosing death presents no difficulty: how it should show that it dies, much more becomes extinct, Mr. Constable should explain. In Job 33:22, were the common rendering correct, the vivid poetry would scarcely require so narrow an interpretation. But shachath is not the "grave" : it is the "pit," as in Job 33:18, Job 33:25, Job 33:28, Job 33:30,* the abyss, darker and more dread than the grave. *Or "corruption," not necessarily of the body merely but "pit" is more usual, and the true meaning here. This then is his whole argument. At the very best superficial, it is in many cases inconsistent and self-destructive in the extreme. His failure is not from want of will nor of mental ability: it is the failure of error to overthrow truth, and, thank God, whatever the advocate, fail it must. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 68: 04.13. CHAPTER VIII THE FALL ======================================================================== CHAPTER VIII THE FALL THERE remain yet some things to point out before the harmony of Scripture doctrine as to spirit and soul is properly before us. Types indeed of the difference and relationship between these two essential parts of man’s being are to be found, I doubt not, in the human race at large. Man and woman, in their characteristic differences, seem to present very much the peculiar features of spirit and soul the one predominant in mental activity, the other in emotional; the woman formed for the man, and each the complement of the other, made for mutual support and relationship. The analogy may be traced further than this, however, and grows in significance as we contemplate it. The man was seduced through the woman, his judgment not astray, but led captive by his affections. "Adam was not deceived," says the apostle (1Ti 2:14), "but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." "The serpent beguiled me," says the woman. "The woman gave me of the tree" (not beguiled me), says Adam. Thus, as the man was led by the woman and fell by her, so was he, it is plain, led by the affections of the soul, and with the soul the spirit fell. It is always so. To use the language of the day, though not of Scripture - the head is seduced by the heart. "How can ye believe," asks the Lord himself, "who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour which cometh from God only?" And again - "that they all might be damned, which believed not the truth, but" [mark the reason] "had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2Th 2:12). And so again, when there is real turning to God, "with the heart," not the head, "man believeth unto righteousness" Rom 10:10). Thus, though the spirit be as much astray as the soul, it is through the soul, as well as with it, it is seduced and is fallen. And the word of God, in its own perfect and wonderful way, ever keeps in mind the distinction. It proclaims the fact that in fallen man the spirit has yielded its supremacy to the soul, and that the "natural" man is "sensual" or soul-led (1Co 2:14). In the believer, and especially in the blameless state of such, the spirit again recovers its supremacy. "Spirit and soul and body" are again in the divine order . Nor are these by any means solitary expressions. The same thing is expressed in various ways in the language of Scripture. Thus the will, in the now natural-state, is identified or connected with the soul. This is translated three times "will" in our common version (Psa 27:12; Psa 41:2, Eze 16:27). "Let her go whither she will," is (in Deu 21:14) "let her go to her soul." "Aha, so would we have it" (Psa 35:25), is "aha, our soul!" And the expression, "binding the soul with a bond," 1:e., with a vow, repeated ten times in Numb. 30:, shows how intimately will and soul are connected together. Thus it is even so that "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" characterize the world for God, and man, alas! is but the creature of fleshly impulse - "sensual," if " not having the Spirit" (Jude 1:19). On the other hand, that the spirit should have supremacy, and so give the will (I say not, in independence of the soul, but as enlightening and guiding it), is evident from the chief place it gets. Indeed the old nature has its synonym of "flesh," from the opposite tendency of being guided by the soul, which is so nearly connected with the body. But into this it is not my province now to enter. Still I would point out how, in perfect. accordance with all this, as thus sin is in a special sense "the sin of the soul" (Mic 6:7), so atonement is said to be made, in the same way, "for the soul." The expression is three times found (Exo 30:15, Lev 17:11, Num 31:50). And I speak of it to show the blessed harmony of Scripture on this as on every other point. Moreover, as for the soul atonement is needed, so by it atonement was made. "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied" (Isa 53:10-11). So complete, so uniform, is the testimony of the Word. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 69: 04.14. CHAPTER IX MAN'S RELATIONSHIP TO GOD ======================================================================== CHAPTER IX MAN’S RELATIONSHIP TO GOD ONE last consideration before we close this section. It is very plain that, as distinguished from the beasts, man is in Scripture recognized as in a place of relationship with God; and this by creation, not redemption merely. Adam, as the work of God’s hands, is in some sort, as the genealogy in Luke bears witness, “the son of God.”* The apostle confirms it by quoting from the heathen poet, "we are also His offspring "† (Acts 17:28). Now, although sin has so far destroyed the meaning of this as to make it an unavailing plea in the lips of carnal and ungodly men, yet the basis of relationship exists in spite of the fall, as these and other words assure us. And this is a relationship which plainly no beast could have. Its very nature denies it; and this is a distinction of the very greatest importance evidently. *Luk 3:38 : where it is futile to object, as some do, that " the son" is not in the original. That it must be understood is plain from its being equally left out all through after the first time, and evidently merely to avoid repetition. Its occurrence in the first instance (Luk 3:23) is a perfect guide to the ellipse afterwards, and people might as well question " Seth" being the "(the son) of Adam," as "Adam" being here" (the son) of God." †Which Mr. Morris would translate "His product," a sense the word never bears. Man is fitted for acquaintance and intercourse with God, and in this shows himself; and in this I may say alone, a moral and accountable being. He may "not understand," and so he may become like the beasts that perish, but he is not one. In his manifest degradation even he is a witness of his nobler origin, for a beast cannot degrade itself And with all this perilous capacity for evil, nay, with all the actuality of evil itself; he has the witness in himself of relationship to the Infinite and Eternal, which, in spite of himself, warns him of his responsibility, and links him by his hopes or by his fears, or both, with that life beyond death, in which, notwithstanding the seeming protest of all his senses, he almost universally believes. In thus asserting with the inspired historian, and with the apostle, man’s distinct place in nature as a "son of God," I do not at all forget the Lord’s words to those who made this very thing their plea. When they had put forth their claim, "We be not born of fornication: we have one Father, even God," I perfectly remember that His answer is, "If God were your Father, ye would love me, . . . ye are of your father the devil" (John 8:42; John 8:44). But this language is in no wise contradictory of the other, as of course it could not be. For the Lord says the same as to their being Abraham’s children, and that certainly they were by natural generation however little morally such. It is of their moral condition then He is speaking. The devil was not their father physically of course. The Lord’s words then do not touch the question of their being physically God’s offspring, as the apostle asserts. But we are not only said to be the offspring of God, it is precisely pointed out that. He is the Father (in contrast with the flesh) of our spirits. "Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh, who corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live ?" (Heb 12:9.) Who can deny with any appearance of success.: that we have here the development, by an inspired writer, of what the creation of man, as given in Gen 2:1-25 :, implies? We have seen the bodily frame formed of the dust of the ground, and though God wrought in a special way to fashion it, as He did not with the beast, yet He does not claim to be the Father of our flesh. But we have seen also that man became a "living soul," not in that way, nor as brought forth of the earth at all, but by the inbreathing of God into him. This is not said of the beast; and, phenomenal as the language is, it is only therefore the more, instead of the less, significant. If God did not want to convey to us an idea of what would be literally expressed by it, He must have intended to convey the thought of some corresponding spiritual reality. And what can this be, but that the spiritual part which animates and controls the bodily organism is something from Himself and akin to Himself in a way that the body is not? Here then the apostle develops this thought. He is not the Father, though the Creator, of our flesh. It is not the bare fact of our creaturehood that constitutes us His children. The beasts are His creatures also, but are not this. He is the Father of our spirits, not our flesh; nay, not merely of our spirits, but of spirits, - of all this class of beings. Creatures though these are, they are yet in a relationship to Him that no lower creatures can be. Thus we see why the angels are "Sons of God" (Job 1:6; Job 38:7). as "spirits; " and man too, he is a " spirit" and a son." Note too how careful the language is. Man has a living soul and is one: and this too by the inbreathing of God. Yet is God not said to be the Father of his soul but of his spirit. How this harmonizes with the spirit being the distinct speciality of man alone in all this lower world! Had it said, "Father of souls," or had the beast, as men contend, a spirit, God would have been represented as Father of the beasts of the field. But the language is precise, as all Scripture is, and in harmony with Scripture and with nature. But this is not the whole of what the Word states. As He is the Father, so is He "the God of the spirits of all flesh" (Num 16:22, Num 27:16); "all flesh" being of course here what it is in many other places "all men," but characterized by what in him is only his lowest part. So we find (Gen 6:12) that before the flood "all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth," and in Luk 3:6, "all flesh shall see the salvation of God:" of course in either case all mankind, and only these. In this expression then, "the God of the spirits of all flesh," we see again God in relationship with the spirit of man. The beast has no God that can be called his God; and man, forgetting God and living to himself, becomes a beast. The outward presentation of this you may find in Nebuchadnezzar finding his portion with the beasts (Dan 4:1-37 :); the moral of it is in Psa 49:1-20 :, "Man being in honour and understanding not is like the beasts that perish." Their perishing is the fruit of there being no proper link with God, such as man has. Thus then we have in a very striking way, and as confirming all that has gone before, man’s link with God to be his spirit, - relationship, moral character, responsibility, and even his perpetuity of being, all bound up with this. Let us now gather up the Scripture statements upon the subject we hare been examining: - 1. The body is not the whole man, for he is often said to be in it or absent from it, clothed with it or unclothed. Thus for faith the body is the clothing of the man, and his "tabernacle," which supposes an inhabitant. Paul has a vision of unutterable things, and does not know whether he was in the body or out of the body at the time he saw them. 2. In the language of sense man is identified with the body; for faith, with what dwells in it. The Lord lay in Joseph’s tomb, yet confessedly His divine nature did not lie there. 3. Man is spirit and soul and body. 4. Spirit is not an universal principle floating in the atmosphere, but a separate entity in every individual, "spirit of man," "spirits of men." It was formed within him by the Lord, and all his knowledge is ascribed to it This spirit the beast has not. 5. The soul is not the body, but in the body. Beasts have and are living souls, and man is called a soul to distinguish him from the rest of intelligent creatures, who are called "spirits." The soul is the link also between the spirit and the body, the life of the latter while in connection with it; the seat of affection, nay, of appetite, lusts, etc. 6. It thus characterizes the man himself, so as to be identified with him, soul and person being used as the same thing, while in the intermediate disembodied state the general term for him is that he is a spirit. 7. Again the soul is that through which man was seduced and fell, and which characterizes the natural man as led by it. It is thus specially connected in Scripture with will and lust, with sin and with atonement. 8. By the possession of a spirit distinguishing him from beast man is in relationship with God, the Father and God of spirits, and is a moral, responsible being, made for eternity in contrast with the "beasts that perish." "To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 70: 04.15. PART II - DEATH AND THE INTERMEDIATE STATE ======================================================================== PART II - DEATH AND THE INTERMEDIATE STATE ======================================================================== CHAPTER 71: 04.16. CHAPTER X DEATH ======================================================================== CHAPTER X DEATH WE have already got a long way towards the settlement of the question as to what death is according to Scripture. I say according to Scripture, for it is remarkable how little the class of writers we are speaking of make it really a question to be settled by Scripture at all. They generally assume that we know all about it, that the word speaks for itself, and that our experience of it should settle the matter. So Mr. Roberts speaks : - "The popular theory will not allow that a dead man is really dead. . . It is incorrect in orthodox language to say that the man is dead. . . In reality therefore, the word ‘death,’ as popularly used, has lost its original meaning." And thus he defines for us what death is. "In order to understand death, we must have a definite conception of life. Of this we do know something, since it is a matter of positive experience. All we have to do is to bring our know ledge to bear, but this is what the majority of people have great difficulty in doing. Their minds are so occupied with established theories, that they are blind to facts under their immediate cognizance. Throwing metaphysics aside, what is life as known experimentally? It is the aggregate result of certain organic processes. Respiration, circulation of the blood, digestion, etc., combine to generate and sustain vitality, and to impart activity to the various faculties of which we are composed. (!) Apart from this busy organism life is unmanifested, whether as regards man or beast."* *Twelve Lectures. The "experience" itself is more than questionable. Most people would imagine that instead of "organic processes" generating life, life itself was necessary in order to the organic processes. Mr. Roberts has somewhat misread the facts here, and his definition of life consequently fails. Physiologists do not believe it to be quite so simple a matter. "No rigid definition of life appears to be at present possible," says a late writer; but again, - "we are compelled to come to the conclusion that life is truly the cause and not the consequence of organization."† Much less then is it the consequence of "organic processes." †Manual of Zoology, by Prof. Nicholson, pp. 4, 5. 2d ed. (Amer. ) 1872 But our business is not with physiology but with Scripture. Mr. Roberts plainly has no need of it in this matter. Only take for granted that the body is the whole man, and you need no revelation to tell you what death is. As regards the body death is plainly the cessation of all practical existence. And if the body be the whole man, the dust that lies in the tomb, death is for him of course the extinction of being. "Apart from this busy organism life is unmanifested": that is all we need say. Revelation there is no need of: we have only to apply the knowledge we already have. Mr. Constable’s argument as to death is mainly founded upon the views of human nature which we have already examined, and upon those of Hades, which we hope shortly to examine. But he has a chapter upon death itself; of which it only needs to give a brief outline, as explanatory of the final argument with which he closes it. His propositions are - that "death, which God inflicted upon the human race for Adam’s sin, was a great calamity for all who should endure it," that this death has passed upon all men without one exception, and "not part of it, but all of it" upon every one alike (if it did not, God’s word would fail, and we have no security for anything); that nothing was said about the duration of the death threatened, that being left open for God to show His grace: "death might continue in some or in all, for a short time, or a longer time, or forever:" that death began for Adam from the very day he disobeyed, and reigns over believers and unbelievers alike till the day of resurrection. His argument closes thus: "If death reigns until the period of resurrection, and if death during this period is exactly the same thing to the just and to the unjust, it follows beyond any question that both just and unjust are then wholly and altogether dead. For no one contends that during this period the just are in a condition of misery; neither does any one contend that the unjust are in a condition of bliss: but that condition which is neither one of bliss or of misery must be a condition of death or non-existence. This is the one condition that can be common to the redeemed and the lost."* *Hades. p. 79. Mr. Constable’s logic and his memory have surely failed him here. Think of the rashness and flippancy of assertion which would pledge the whole truth of God upon the position that all men must die, and have died, exactly according to the threatening to Adam, in the very face of the fact that neither Enoch nor Elijah died, and that those alive at Christ’s coming never will! "We shall not all sleep," says the apostle. So God’s truthfulness is gone for Mr. Constable! I need not answer this, I am sure. That not even atonement could righteously set aside the exaction of the penalty from even one of those subject to it, shows how little there is meaning in atonement for his soul. But his argument fails signally and entirely upon quite another ground than this. For why should non-existence be "the one condition" upon which death should be the same to just and unjust? Granted they are dead alike. No one denies it. On the supposition that death is the sundering of the link between soul and body (and so it is), why cannot just and unjust alike be in this condition without the question of happiness or misery being raised by it at all? His argument is laborious non-entity. To state it is to expose it. Yet it furnishes Mr. Constable with all the justification he has for the triumph over orthodoxy which fills the next chapter. I do not purpose following him in it, because we have to do with Scripture simply here. I would say, however, that, while every expression of those he quotes from cannot be justified, yet after all they are more in the spirit of Christianity than are his own. For with them "Christ has abolished death," -for him, it would seem, not. For just and unjust alike, alike for Jew or Christian, under law or under gospel, as to what death is itself there is no difference. There is no "willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord"; no "desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better." Of course such texts are owned to be in Scripture, whatever explanation they may be susceptible of; but the spirit of them is not in his heart. For him death is still an enemy, a curse, a penalty which no atonement has effaced or lessened "Death is after all the king of terrors." says Mr. Constable: has he never read of One who came 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"? We have already seen reason to believe that death is not extinction; that the living soul in man is not extinct, when ceases to be any longer life to the body. We cannot therefore argue from the effect of death upon the body, as to what it is upon the spirit or the soul. We have seen that the word of God does on the one side use the popular language the language of sense, and identify man with his body. This is seen in the class of texts of which Annihilationists are so fond. The man is the flesh and blood we see and touch. A dead body is a dead man. We all speak so, unconscious wholly of being exposed to the charge of materialism for doing so. Our daily speech in this way might convict us in the profounder wisdom of another generation, of disbelieving equally with Annihilationists themselves, in the existence of an immortal soul. Yet we really do believe it in spite of that, and even the attacks of Annihilationists have not, as yet at any rate, made us a whit more cautious. We quote even "Dust thou art," and believe it, and yet do not believe that we are all dust. And we find on the other side, and use as freely, a number of texts which Annihilationism cannot teach us how to use, which speak of man being "in the body," " in the flesh," "at home in the body," "absent from the body," "out of" it, and yet believe that the body is the man too, in spite of that. Let us now fairly put the question apart from any partial answer it may have gotten in this way: Is the Scripture teaching of death extinction - is it "ceasing to exist," or, as they delight to quote from Job 10:19, to "be as though we had not been"? You put seed into the ground, and, in the Scripture language, "it is not quickened except it die" (1Co 15:36). Does the living germ become extinct in order to bring forth the harvest? Are the "organic processes" extinguished in it? Where would the harvest be if they were? Yet this is in Scripture twice over spoken of as "death." And, if you reflect a little, the analogy to the death of man is nearer than it seems. There is that of the seed which is cast off as refuse, and decays. The germ within "puts off its tabernacle," but, so far from becoming extinguished in the process, springs up into the plant thereon. Is there no lesson in that, no type, no analogy commending the use of the strong word "death" in this case? Would it ever have occurred to Mr. Roberts or to any of his brethren, that "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and DIE, it abideth alone, but if it DIE, it bringeth forth much fruit"? Does the grain of wheat become extinct in order to bring forth fruit? They have never (at least, that I can find) attempted to illustrate their doctrine by it, that death is the cessation of existence, the extinction of organic processes.* *Mr. Roberts has tried to answer this. He asks, "Where is the living germ, when the harvest is brought forth? Can Mr. Grant find it?" Most certainly; for the stalk of corn is but the development of that very germ. His account of the matter is curious enough. With him "the vegetating process is an "invasion" of the vitality of the grain, which destroys it; a parasitic life, in short, from which the sprouting comes! And in this way he finds it a "distinct and striking illustration of" death being extinction. Upon his view of it no doubt it is so. But then it is rather a new theory, that the living germ is killed by the vegetating process! The death of man is spoken of; moreover, in language which is not doubtful. I have fully admitted already, and without hesitation, that there are a large class of passages which (identifying man with his body) speak in the ordinary popular phraseology about it. Passages too there are, which will be examined in the sequel, which may present difficulty in harmonizing them with the language of other parts. But, on the other hand, the clear full light of the New Testament affords us, in many simple and intelligible statements, abundant satisfaction as to what death is. Some of these I shall now proceed to examine, together with the arguments of the class of writers to whom I am replying. 1. As we have seen, the apostle Peter styles death the "Putting off of his tabernacle" (2Pe 1:14). The language of Paul is similar, and if comment be needed, may supply it: "if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved" (2Co 5:1). The language of Annihilationists upon these expressions shows their perplexity. Mr. Ham says on the latter passage, "Man, the one compound being, is compared to an ‘earthly house’ or ‘tabernacle,’ which will be dissolved." Similarly Mr. Constable, " We doubt very much if he speaks here only of the body. We think he speaks of our entire present being, which is not body only, but body animated by soul. Of this entire being death is the dissolution." This is plainly incorrect. The apostle distinguishes between the tabernacle and the one who dwells in it: "for we which are IN this tabernacle," he says a little further on. The tabernacle was to be dissolved, not the inhabitant; and the man is identified with the latter rather than the former. 2. Another expression for death in the same passage (2Co 5:4) is "being unclothed": "not that we would be unclothed." Even Dr. Field, materialist as he is, speaks here of "a disembodied state." Mr. Dobney on the contrary maintains that "Scripture recognizes no perfectly disembodied state." I ask, if there be not something to be disembodied, how can you use the expression at all? Can one talk of "disembodied breath" or "disembodied life?" The putting off of clothing, if that is a figure of disembodiment, as it is, is simple enough, but only when we recognize a part, and that the higher part, of man, to be something that is not the body, but is in it, as the living soul is. Mr. Roberts indeed talks, as is common with him when in a difficulty, of the "inevitable fictions of speech." "The exigencies of mortal speech," he says, "require us to speak of the person as an entity separate from all that composes him, and when figure is added, as in this case, the effect is greatly heightened, and a theory like Mr. Grant’s receives apparent countenance." Would it not have been wisdom to have inquired why the use of the figure should so greatly heighten the effect, as he admits it does, and whether the countenance it gives is not more than merely "apparent"? Surely the use of a figure for a mere abstract personality, and a figure which makes the abstraction decidedly the higher thing, - nay, which goes so far as to speak of the "abstraction" as "putting off" that which is the reality, or being "unclothed" with it, - is somewhat overbold. But what difficulty will not the wit and will of man combined surmount? Mr. Constable, in his comment on the passage, simply refers this expression to the "hades state." With this we are content, and shall soon inquire what is that state. But plainly here death is not cessation of existence, whatever (which for the present I leave open) becomes of soul or spirit afterwards. 3. In the text in 2 Peter (2Pe 1:15) before referred to, death is called "decease," literally exodus, "departure": "After my departure." Now here the man departs; where, is not the question yet. The man, departs. He leaves the earthly house of this tabernacle. Say, if you please, and if you can gather it from the Bible, that after dying he becomes extinct or unconscious. That you must prove, if you can, from elsewhere. Death is not it: does not infer or imply it. It is my "departure." 4. And to this agrees the expression used again in 2Co 5:1-21 : (2Co 5:8), "absent from the body." People contend, I know (and it is their only hope), that this does not refer to death at all. Mr. Dobney thus attempts to paraphrase it by "absent from this body," "this gross corporeal investiture" (investiture of what?). Mr. Ham with absence "from our natural body," "our present mortal and corruptible nature." Ellis and Read speak in the same way of the "body" here denoting a "state of corruption and mortality," "this corruptible body or nature." Roberts says, "What absence from the body was it that Paul desired? Not disembodiment for he says verse 4 of the same chapter, ‘Not that we would be unclothed.’ " Constable seems on the other hand to allow that "absence from the body" applies to the death state while he will not allow that "presence with the Lord" similarly applies to it, but to resurrection, the two being brought in this way together because between it and dying there is nothing but a blank. "This" [the resurrection state], he says, "we have no doubt, is the ‘presence with the Lord’ which Paul here speaks of, and not the intermediate state, as Calvin and others dream. For Paul had just expressed himself that this unclothed condition was not his desire or wish. He could not, with any consistency with his just uttered declaration, say that he should view it with a good satisfaction." Yet the "willing rather" must, according to Mr. Constable’s own view of it, include the intermediate state, if only as the way to the other, "willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." Is not that "desire" for the unclothed state! And that these two things he desires are not successive, but contemporaneous conditions, is manifest also. For, when he says, "whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord," these states, he must admit, go together how then can it be doubted that the two things he desires, being the opposite of these conditions, go together also? Mr. Roberts and others therefore with better judgment concede this; but then they have the quite as hopeless task to achieve, of making "absent from the body" also mean resurrection. They all coincide in opposing the apostle’s "not that we would be unclothed" to the simple and natural interpretation of his desire to be absent from the body, as if the two were contradictory. But this is by no means the case. He does say that what he groaned for was, not to be unclothed, but clothed upon. He groaned for resurrection, true, and the unclothed state was not in itself what he or any man desired. Still, knowing that to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord, he was after all "willing rather" to be absent. Death had no terror for him, but the reverse. To make "absent from the body" apply just to the time when the body will have its fulness of bliss, is only to make incomprehensible what is very simple.* "In the body" never has the meaning they attribute to it, and that they have to add words to make it suit their thoughts, is a plain proof that their thoughts are foreign to Scripture. *Roberts substitutes "animal body" for "body" in the above sentence, and then with great naiveté remarks, that "Mr. Grant himself would not acknowledge the sentence, thus deprived of its piquancy: yet this is the form which embodies the facts." So that the language by the apostle does not, as he admits, "embody (his) facts." And when the apostle, speaking of his vision of the third heavens, says he cannot tell whether at that time he was in the body or out of the body," we have the exact expression in a way which no wonder they shrink from as they do. Paul could not imagine he had possibly had his glorious body when caught up there, and lost it afterwards Yet he supposes he might have been conscious of unutterable things when "out of the body." If so, why may not one (as this chapter teaches) be "absent from the body and yet present with the Lord"? I shall have again to speak of this, when we come to consider the question of consciousness in the disembodied state. It is sufficient for us here that such a state exists, if words have meaning. Death is that disembodiment, the putting off the tabernacle of the body, being unclothed departing, and being absent from it. Moreover, we have already seen that Mat 10:28 asserts that the death of the body is not the death of the soul. Our Lord bids us "fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Mr. Hudson allows that this teaches that death is not the extinction of the soul, nor involves it. Mr. Dobney follows on the same side. Mr. Ham wavers, admitting that it is implied "that the soul is distinct from the body," but at the same time suggesting that "soul" here may be merely "life." Ellis and Read interpret it to mean that" wicked men can only destroy the present being of the righteous, and that God could raise them up again." Miles Grant interprets "killing the soul" to mean "taking the life to come." Similarly Roberts makes "soul" to be "a life in relation to those who are Christ’s, which cannot be touched by mortal man, however they may treat the body, and the poor mortal life belonging to it.* While others say, that "the dead in Adam are not destroyed," because "in consequence of the provision made in Christ for the resurrection of every human being from the Adamic death, those who can kill the body (take this life), only suspend our being till the resurrection," * He now states that psuche here means "the abstract power of life, which is in the hands of God," but there is nothing at all about this in the passage. He further brings in Mat 16:25, "He that loves his life for my sake" to show that psuche there cannot be immortal soul, in which we agree. I have before considered the passage. But the text before us will not bend to any of these criticisms. If soul be life merely, those who kill the body destroy it. Such a phrase moreover as "killing life" does not, and could not, exist at all, as I have before said: because "killing" is in itself "taking life," and you could not speak of taking the life of the life. "Life to come," or the believer’s life, psuche does not mean; another word, zoe, is invariably used for it. And the contrast between suspension of life for the present and utter destruction of it is not what the passage makes, but between a killing which affects the body only, and the destruction which will overtake both body and soul in hell. I am only repeating here what I have said before, and what Mr. Hudson, destructionist as he is, has said before me. Proof is conclusive, that when man dies his soul is not touched by it. If it is conscious is another thing, and presently to be examined. And what destruction of body and soul in hell is, I do not inquire yet. Suffice it just now, that when we put off the body at death, the soul still lives.† †Mr. Edw. White, in his "Life in Christ" (p. 96), while agreeing this, considers it the result of redemption only, and quotes in proof 1Co 15:17-19 : "If Christ be not raised . . . they also which have fallen asleep in Christ have gone to nothing"; for thus he explains the term in the following verse: ‘If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.’ I deny that it means "gone to nothing." "Are perished" as in the A. V., is the proper rendering, and does not refer to material destruction, any more than "if in this life only" does. To die with a false hope is to perish, but not in the annihilation sense. For the meaning of this word, see chaps. 20:, 21: ======================================================================== CHAPTER 72: 04.17. CHAPTER XI CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH . . . 1 ======================================================================== CHAPTER XI CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH . . . 1 THE question of consciousness may now be taken up. Of course every proof of it is proof also of existence. But many who allow that the soul exists after death, will not allow that it is conscious. Thus Mr. Hudson regards "the soul as an entity not destroyed by the death of the body, however dependent it may be upon embodiment for the purposes of active existence." So with others, whom I need not here quote. The thing contended for is what is unknown to (while professedly based on) Scripture - "the sleep of the soul." But you never find in Scripture the soul sleeping. The man sleeps, but always as identified with the body. It is a mode of speech found in later Greek, outside the New Testament. It is never the soul that is in question. So Mat 27:52, "many bodies of the saints which slept arose." Again John 11:11, "our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep," - 1:e. by raising the dead. So Stephen fell asleep, and devout men carried him to burial - 1:e. his body. So "David fell asleep and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption." Again in 1Co 7:39, "if her husband be dead (asleep) she is at liberty to be married to whom she will." There it is no question of soul or spirit. Again, 1Co 11:30, "many sleep": he is thinking of it as chastening, not the joy of presence with the Lord, which the soul had. Again, 1Co 15:6, "some are fallen asleep," - fallen out of the rank of ‘witnesses. 1Co 15:18, "then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." 1Co 15:20 : "Christ is risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that slept." There again the resurrection of the body is in question. So always, if death be looked at as chastening, sorrowed over as we do over the breathless corpse, if it be simple history of the outward fact, or if resurrection be in question, it is here that we find the phrase which people have blundered over, perfectly simple, intelligible and beautiful, as we gaze upon the inanimate form, and brush away our tears at the thought, "our brother shall rise again". Mr. Constable, as usual with him, contends for the identification of man with his body, and absolutely ignores the Scriptures which identify man with his soul or spirit. He can therefore from his point of view say: "If people will say, it is only the body that sleeps, then they must allow that the body by itself, is man. If they say that man has both body and soul, and that these united constitute man, then they must allow that both body and soul sleep." On the same principle we must affirm that when Paul was caught up to the third heavens, inasmuch as it was the man, Paul, who was caught up, and man is body, soul and spirit, therefore that about which he was ignorant was whether he, body, soul and spirit, had been "out of the body" or not: Mr. Constable chooses to ignore, it seems, this whole class of texts. No wonder, then, if he lose his balance and fall into error. It is not only his, it is common to materialists of every class. We have before considered this, however, and need not repeat again what has been said in our very first chapter. Mr. Constable’s argument as to 1Th 4:13 goes beyond the question of the application of the figure. He argues that the apostle here virtually denies the commonly held doctrine of the intermediate state. "If those he wrote to mourned for separation, if Paul comforted them with the prospect of reunion, if he pointed to the resurrection as the consoling prospect when their longed-for reunion would be accomplished, then by every fair inference he did not believe or teach that there would be any reunion before the resurrection." If the premises were true the inference might be a fair one. But the grief of the Thessalonians was not the mere personal grief of separation, amid the apostle’s comfort for them is not the mere prospect of reunion. It is, that "we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (or precede) them which are asleep; for . . . the dead in Christ shall rise first." The thought of the Thessalonian saints was this, that if Christ were to come, as they believed He soon might, the dead in Christ would be shut out of the joy of welcoming and being with Him then by the fact of their death. The apostle assures them the living would have no precedence over the dead in this respect: the dead in Christ would be raised even before the change of the living, and together they would be caught up to meet the Lord and be with Him. Thus the intermediate state was not at all in question. How could it be for those ALIVE till the coming of the Lord? How could living people be united with dead ones in an intermediate state? Abundance of inspired testimony there is that death is not for the soul, a state of unconsciousness. The passages are well known, and need only to be cleared from the objections which have been raised to their apparently very simple meaning. The conceptions of the Pharisees upon this point are acknowledged on all hands, and the familiar story of Lazarus and the rich man in the 16th of Luke is confessedly in full accordance with them; yet they would forbid us to believe this to be anything more than accommodation to the superstitions of those whom the Lord addressed. Mr. Roberts indeed very naturally suggests that "it may be asked, Why did Christ parabolically employ a belief that was fictitious, and thus give it His apparent sanction?" To which he answers, that He "was not using it with any reference to itself (!) but for the purpose of introducing a dead man’s testimony. . . . This did not involve his sanction of the theory, any more than he approved of slavery by introducing it into his parable of the ungrateful debtor. . . It may be urged that it was unlike Christ to perpetuate delusion, and withhold the truth on such an important question as that involved in the parable used. To this the reply will be found in the following (Mat 13:10-11)." That is, that "to them it was not given to know the mysteries of kingdom of heaven," and that therefore He spoke in parables, because "seeing they saw not, and hearing they did not understand." But Mr. Roberts will permit me to say, that he has entirely failed to justify the thing he pleads for. For the reason last given is a reason for the Lord speaking in parables indeed, but not for His making parables (as he admits) "perpetuate delusion." The introducing slavery into a parable was only introducing what, under certain restrictions, the Mosaic law permitted; and if it had not been so, the bare introduction of a custom that obtained as not sanctioning it, while the introduction of what had no existence, save as superstition, would tend, as he owns, to "perpetuate" it. This is a difference which upsets all his conclusions. But then, he asks," Are we to make a parable paramount, and throw away plain testimony? Are we to twist and violate what is clear to make it agree with what we think is meant by what is admittedly obscure?" Indeed this is the common refuge of writers of this class. Mr. Dobney, it is true, seems to admit all we claim about it. He cannot really, since he contends that "Scripture recognizes no perfectly disembodied state." He probably applies it therefore to the final state. But his words are: "Our Lord shows an ungodly man in a state of wretchedness after death. How long it would last is not intimated. It is true there was no hope for him. He could not buoy himself up with the prospect of restoration to enjoyment. But whether that torment should endure forever, or would ultimately destroy him, the parable does not intimate. It teaches a terrible and hopeless state for the wicked after death, and that is all." Edwin Burnham also seems to admit the doctrine of conscious existence after death. Speaking of eternal punishment he says, "So far as this question is concerned, man may be conscious or unconscious in death until the final judgment. Therefore the parable of the rich man and Lazarus proves nothing to the point of eternal torment, for that parable refers to some transaction BEFORE the judgment." But then he adds, "The same may be said of all those scriptures which to some SEEM to teach that the dead are in a conscious state." For the rest, all seem to agree with Mr. Hastings: "Of course the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is not reckoned as teaching the doctrine; for all laws of criticism forbid that parables be made use of to teach doctrines." Unfortunately for those, however, who speak thus, they themselves are forced to admit that, parable or not, it is founded upon" what Mr. Roberts calls "a theoretic fact," 1: e., the belief of the Pharisees. That the object of it, moreover, is really to lift the veil from the other world will be plain if we consider the connection with the rest of the chapter. For the Lord had been speaking in the first part of it of man as an unfaithful steward under sentence of dismissal, but with the goods of his Divine Master yet in his hand. He had thereupon exhorted them: "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." Thereupon the Pharisees, who were covetous, derided Him, and to them He preaches this (parable, if you please) to show how what was highly esteemed among men was abomination in the sight of God. The point is here: "Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things," and now "thou art tormented." No crime is charged but this, his failure as to the unrighteous mammon. He could not serve God and mammon. He had served mammon and not God. And, while the beggar he had neglected was borne from his gate into Abraham’s bosom, he was tormented. How this addressed itself to covetous Pharisees is easily seen. And the state described is of a man immediately after death, in torment, before the resurrection and the judgment, with brethren still on earth to be preached to. You may call it parable, if you will. The state of the dead is the very thing it is designed to enforce; and this representation of it is acknowledged to be based on Pharisaic sentiments. It is singular, however, how the terms used by our Lord are quarrelled with. If literally construed, Mr. Roberts urges,* "it upsets the belief it is quoted to prove, and substitutes the tradition of the Pharisees, which Jesus was parabolically using. If a literal narrative, it clashes with the popular theory of the death state in the following particulars. We read, /ver. 21, that the beggar died; and WAS CARRIED - not his immaterial soul, but he, his bodily self - by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell, where he had been buried (hell, hades and grave being synonymous) he lifted up his eyes," etc. He also tells us that "immaterial souls" could easily have got over the great gulf fixed; and that if the popular view were correct, a spirit might have been sent to the live brethren without one needing to rise from the dead. *Twelve Lectures This is, no doubt, said in serious earnest, although it may not seem so. But it is a specimen of the blinding delusion under which these men lie. Think of a man telling us, that it was the tradition of the Pharisees, that men were carried bodily after death into Abraham’s bosom; that hades or hell and the grave were synonymous! and that men were tormented in the grave! If this parable teaches literally the traditions of the Pharisees, this is what he says it teaches. But I pursue this no further than to ask where the parable states that the beggar’s "bodily self" was carried into Abraham’s bosom? Of course, if there is no other self than a bodily one, all is plain. But that is as little the doctrine of the Bible as it was of the Pharisees. As to hades, and what it is, we may see shortly: But would it not be rather foolish, even in a parable, to put it that "in the grave he lifted up his eyes, being in torment"? To such straits are men reduced who refuse the Scripture doctrine of the soul’s consciousness after death. We may well thank God for making it so plain. Figurative, no doubt, the language is. "Abraham’s bosom" is not literal, any more than the gulf over which souls cannot pass. Nor do we contend for souls absent from the body having eyes or tongues or fingers. Mr. Roberts asks in view of this; how, if we "feel at liberty to admit the non-actuality of these things spoken of as apparently real," can we be "so sure about the reality of the other parts that apparently favour (our) theory of the death state?" I answer: first, because it is addressed to Pharisees and founded (as Mr. R. himself acknowledges) on their belief, which the Lord thus takes up and adopts without a word of protest, without one hint of its being the gross and heathenish delusion Mr. R. would have it. Secondly, because figures, as it would seem, must necessarily be used in speaking of a state so far removed from anything of which we have experience That is, words, phrases, and ideas, borrowed from things around us must be taken and adapted to these unseen things. Thirdly, if the object were only to represent a final award in resurrection no reason can be given for not picturing that award directly, as is done elsewhere instead of representing it under the figure of a fabulous death state. The perfectness of the representation would surely suffer so unnatural a proceeding. The figures are not difficult at least to read intelligently, for one who is as to this point of doctrine a Pharisee, as we shall see Paul the apostle was, and as we may confess ourselves without shame to be. And thus are conveyed to us thoughts that it seems in no other way could we have so vividly presented. The meaning is only so clear, that those who oppose it are driven to the wildest expedients to escape from its plain speaking. Thus Dr. Leask transcends even Mr. Roberts in grotesque effrontery. He says* as to Lazarus’ being carried into Abraham’s bosom: "Fact it cannot be. Otherwise you have the extraordinary thought of angels carrying a dead man, a loathsome corpse, to the bosom of Abraham"!! Shall we add the still more extraordinary thought of this "loathsome corpse" being "comforted" in this strange resting place! and of the rich man wanting to send it to his five brethren, etc. But, says Dr. L., "this parable is unequalled for the vividness of its imagery"! And he adds, after the usual fashion: "The word translated ‘hell’ here is hades, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew sheol and of the English grave," etc. Vivid imagery indeed! *The Rich Man and Lazarus. Again, "Surely sober and serious thought must convince any one, that the conversation between the rich man and Abraham must be parabolic, for Abraham himself was dead. (!) If Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are consciously alive, our Lord’s argument to convince the Sadducees of resurrection loses its point. God is not the God of the dead but of the living: therefore these honoured saints shall rise from the dead some day; that is the argument, and it is irresistible." Dr. Leask has scarcely read the passage attentively enough, or he would have seen that if God said at the bush, "I AM the God of Abraham," and He is not the God of the dead, Abraham must have been in some sense living then; or it would have been "I was Abraham’s God, while he lived, and I will be, when he lives again." There is one other argument the doctor gives, which has somewhat more in it: that "neither rewards nor punishments are given till after judgment," which Mr. Constable has enlarged somewhat more upon, and therefore I leave it to look at it with him. These then are Dr. Leask’s reasons for turning aside the application of this parable from the death state altogether, and applying it to the setting aside of Israel and the bringing in of the Gentiles by the gospel. This, to convict "covetous" Pharisees of their liability to be excluded from " everlasting habitations"! General Goodwyn* attempts to show that the Lord in his parabolic teachings did "adopt some of the prevalent [false] conceptions, and proved by the unerring wisdom of His mode of treatment, their fictitious origin and constitution. He adduces the first four parables of the kingdom of heaven in Mat 13:1-58 : in proof of this position. But he neither does, nor can, show that the Lord incorporated any prevalent errors with His teaching there or anywhere else. The Lord gives us on the contrary what is simple and recognizable truth as to the form the kingdom should assume in the period of His absence. For the kingdom exists now, and the condition of it of which He speaks exists also. The "popular ideas" Gen. Goodwyn seems to refer to are but misapprehensions of these very parables, and not errors He adopts in anywise. Let him put his finger if he can upon one error the Lord teaches there or elsewhere. *Truth and Tradition. Now here, if the consciousness of the dead is error, the Lord does teach it, and without the least warning of its being such. The two inconsistencies the General thinks to be in the parable are not there: viz., either the "final condition of punishment " being "before the day of judgment," or people being "in the body." Very strangely does he add: "Thus were these traditional and palpably erroneous views woven into the Divine discourse, serving the purpose of exposing the conceit of mere human theology"! Were these things "traditional"? Certainly not, at least, the thought of being in the body after death; or can he produce the tradition? Granting they were "traditional" and also "palpably erroneous," if their error were not palpable in the tradition themselves, how could the Lord’s adopting them make them become so? Surely the reasoning is as pitiable as much of what we have elsewhere had upon the same side. But he still goes on: "This parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a supplement to that at the beginning of the chapter, of the rich man and his steward, both being designed to enforce the piercing truth, that ‘that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God,’ ver. 15, the connecting link between the two. In regard to the first parable, human craft had instituted the idea that a welcome to the ‘everlasting habitations’ was to be secured by means of the friendship of ‘unrighteous mammon,’ or worldly riches; palpably in opposition to the principle of ver. 15; but by mentioning the incident of the unjust steward, the Lord showed that, though man might commend his act, it is divinely deemed unrighteous still." And this is exposition of Scripture! "He placed the rich man in the flame, and the beggar in Abraham’s bosom, thereby proving that a position in the kingdom of heaven could not be purchased by ‘unrighteous mammon.’ " Doubtless it could not; but was it not just his not having made himself friends of the unrighteous mammon that placed the rich man in the flame? Who can deny or doubt it? And who can suppose that solemn exhortation, "I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness," with the questions following: "If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches," etc., to be the adoption of error? If General Goodwyn cannot reconcile this with the gospel, he is ignorant of the blessed fact, that the gospel in no wise sets aside the eternal principles of right and wrong, but reaffirms them all. True, riches will not purchase heaven, nor could aught save the Redeemer’s blessed work. True, eternal life is God’s gift, not man’s purchase or his work. Yet shall "they that have done good come forth unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation" That "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works," is the connecting truth that puts all in its place and explains all. I need not then repeat what I have said already as to the scope of these parables, nor follow the argument further with General Goodwyn. We shall only finally examine Mr. Constable’s treatment of this subject in his volume on Hades, already so largely quoted. He, too, asserts that "in the words of Christ, hades is identified with the grave, and the dead in hades are represented as alive and speaking." This we reserve for future consideration He begins the argument with a significant statement that, if this parable "could be truly shown to teach their [the non-extinction] views, the only effect would be that of establishing a contradiction between one part of Scripture and an other, or of affording reason to think that this parable of Lazarus despite the authority of manuscripts, formed no part of the original Gospel of St. Luke." (1) He begins by asserting, what I shall not question at all, that this story is a parable. He contends that on this account "the entire tale may be fictitious." But, while talking as usual freely of Platonism he ignores the fact so fully allowed by others, and so impossible to be denied, that it adopts (and, the argument is, sanctions) the belief of the Pharisees. This plainly puts it on ground different altogether from those Mr. C. appeals to, wherein "the trees engage in political discourse," etc. Even this sort of representation we never find the Lord using in His parables, that I am aware But certainly He never adopted the superstitions He condemned, nor made the traditions of men the basis of His own authoritative teaching. This plain distinction Mr. Constable seems never to have thought of, and of course has not noticed it. In reality it takes the ground from underneath his feet. Not only is the argument quite unanswerable, that the Lord could not have employed falsehood as the vehicle of truth (and without even a hint as to its being false), but that also the very moral of the tale is this, "And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." This is the rich man’s condemnation: his riches were his accusers now, and not his friends. He had received his good things, taken his portion in a world that passeth away. Now he was tormented. And observe how precisely the language accords with this: it is "when ye fail" - that is, of course, die; not when you are raised as Mr. Constable must read it; no, but that "WHEN YE FAIL, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." The precise doctrine is there, given in plain words and not parable at all, and illustrating and confirming the parable. We might leave Mr. Constable’s argument here, but there is one other point, insisted on already both by Leask and Goodwyn., to which we must reply before we close. Mr. Constable supposes - "that Christ, for the purpose of his parable, antedates it. What will really happen to such men as Dives and Lazarus when they are raised up at the resurrection, he supposes to happen to them in Hades before the resurrection; and he consequently supposes them to be alive in this Hades state, and capable of feeling, speech, etc. . . In His explanation of parable upon parable He has Himself explained that it is not until the ‘time of the harvest,’ until ‘the end of the world’ or age, that His people are gathered into His barn and shine as the sun, while the wicked are sent as tares to the burning. Over and over He has told us that Gehenna, and not Hades, is the place of torment. . . . We are therefore not merely justified, but absolutely required by Scripture to hold that our Lord in this parable antedates it in time, a liberty which the nature and character of parabolical discourse fully entitled Him to do." Now the passage we have just quoted from the chapter before us, and manifestly connected with the parable in question, affirms the opposite of this: "that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations." This shows that at death we are received, and that there is no antedating. Doubtless it is after the judgment of works, and therefore after resurrection, that the exact recompense is given, the exact measure of punishment is meted out. But in the meanwhile the spirits of the lost are "spirits in prison" (1Pe 3:19), with no uncertainty as to their being lost, any more than he who, "absent from the body," is "present with the Lord," is uncertain of his own salvation. Even now are we privileged to know the latter if really ours (1Jn 5:13). And " the angels who sinned" referred to by the apostle Peter; though "reserved unto judgment" are yet "delivered into chains of darkness," while waiting for it (2Pe 2:4). Similarly the "host of the high ones" and "the kings of the earth" "shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison," after a whole millennium "to be visited" and judged. (See Isa 24:21-23, and compare Rev 19:19-21, Rev 20:1-3, etc.) Then it is a false application Mr. Constable makes of the parables of the tares and wheat. For these "tares" are men alive, "in the field," the world, when the Lord comes, and not dead men at all, So exactly with the "wheat." The Lord is speaking of the clearing of the field in the day of harvest, and not at all of resurrection even. Nay more, the very parable itself is decisive against his whole argument. For the tares gathered and cast in the fire are so dealt with when the Lord appears, before the millennium, and therefore a thousand years before the resurrection and judgment of the wicked at the great white throne. Let any one compare Rev 19:20 :, and see if it be not so. Again the Lord does say that there is torment in Gehenna; but he does not say, that in Hades there is none. The Scripture Mr. Constable refers to conclusively against him. The plain and simple impression which any one would receive from the first bearing of the parable, becomes only the more indisputably correct, the more we examine it. There is the harmony and consistency of truth in it, and this the arguments of its opposers only the more bring out. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 73: 04.18. CHAPTER XII CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH . . . 2 ======================================================================== CHAPTER XII CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH . . . 2 WE have seen then the Lord affirming the doctrine of the Pharisees as to conscious existence in happiness or misery in the intermediate state. We shall now pass on to a passage which shows how far the disciples of the Lord had imbibed the Pharisaic, or let us rather say, the Scripture doctrine, with which the Pharisaic was identical. For we read that when, after His resurrection, they were gathered together, "Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, ’Peace be unto you’. But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And He said unto them, ’Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have’" (Luk 24:36-39). Now, here it is plain they recognized the form of the Lord, for in none of the appearances to them do we find anything spectral to make them think otherwise it was a spirit they saw. Mary Magdalene had supposed Him the gardener. The two on the way to Emmaus just before had taken Him for an ordinary man. Moreover, they had just come among the other disciples, and found them "saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon." Then, while they were giving their own account, "Jesus Himself stood in the midst." It was this sudden appearance, the door being shut, that staggered them. They did not doubt who it was, nor, had they doubted, would handling Him have given them that knowledge. The Lord does not need to name Himself nor do it. He does not say, "It is I Jesus," but "it is I, myself;" using that common language which I have spoken of; the language of sense, which identifies man with his body: "HANDLE ME and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." Thus, it was not a question of its being Jesus or another, but as to its being Jesus in the body or as a spirit only. This the Lord’s answer shows. The objections of Ham and Storrs are thus clearly set aside, for they make the question one of (to use the language of the former) "the existence of other beings, who are called spirits." But this is not the question, but whether it was He Himself in bodily presence, or as a spirit. The whole circumstances and the Lord’s words assure us of this. Upon the authority of "some ancient MSS. of Luke," Roberts would substitute "phantasma" for pneuma in Luk 24:37, and then, without any authority, make pneuma mean phantasma in Luk 24:39 having thus converted "spirit" into "phantom," he would make the whole a question of "reality or of spectral illusion." But Mr. R. can find no such meaning for "pneuma" in the New Testament or in the Greek language anywhere, as "phantom" or "spectral illusion," and he must know he cannot. Hence his anxiety to import "phantasma" into Luk 24:37, a reading unanimously rejected by every editor of the Greek that I am acquainted with, and disproved by the fact of its being unquestionably pneuma in Luk 24:39 : for if their thought had been that it was a mere illusion that they saw the Lord would not have answered it by saying, "a spirit," etc. It was not with them then a question of illusion or reality, but of bodily or spiritual presence. Mr. R. objects that the Lord says, "It is I myself," and that His spirit, according to the common belief, would have been Himself. But all depends upon the point of view. To those who had had Him as the living man among them, the mere visit of His departed spirit would not have been "Himself" for it is no question of metaphysical accuracy, but of heart, to which the Lord responds. They saw Him, did not believe that it could be a living man come among them in that mysterious way, therefore thought they saw a spirit; to which He answers by bidding them prove that He had flesh and bones. Thus it was not what would have been the evidence of the triumph of death over Him, but what their hearts would call Himself But here then it is very plain that the disciples of the Lord were as to this point Pharisees, or Platonists, if you will. And it is as plain that, instead of checking their thoughts as superstitious fancies, He appeals instead to the bodilessness of a "spirit," and his own flesh and bones. Nor is there "parable" to justify (as they say elsewhere) the employment of fictitious speech. The favourite arguments fall here like broken arrows from the panoply of truth. How common a use of the word "spirit" this is, we may see by the inspired statement of the Jewish views in Acts 23:8 : "For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both." There again the word "spirit" is taken as ordinarily applying (as our word "ghost," which is equivalent, does now) to the spirits of men apart from the body. Angels are given as another class. And the context confirms this: for Paul being called in question about the resurrection of Jesus, had declared himself a Pharisee, a believer in resurrection; and hereupon the council was divided, "and there arose a great cry; and the scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man, but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God." Against this passage Mr. Storrs’ criticism on Luk 24:39 falls pointless. "Angels are spirits," says he, "but have not a body of flesh and bones." But in these two last quoted passages, and as identified with the Pharisees’ belief (the nature of which all admit), angels are named as a separate class of beings from these spirits spoken of, - "if a spirit or an angel." In a Pharisee’s mouth even our opponents allow the meaning of such words. And with their belief Paul links himself. For having declared himself a Pharisee, and called in question as to one point of a Pharisee’s belief, the resurrection of the dead, it is added as showing the points in which their faith coincided with the Christian’s: "for the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection neither angel NOR SPIRIT; but the Pharisees confess both." The language of the inspired writer here shows his own consent with this doctrine: "the Pharisees confess (or acknowledge) both. When I speak of "acknowledging" a thing, I plainly suppose it true, what is acknowledged. And thus in these matters the Pharisaic and the Christian faith are one.* *Roberts says, "We prefer to let Mr. Grant have the full benefit of this. His inference that Luke endorses their opinion is too unsubstantial to call for serious argumentation" Be it so. but many will judge differently, and of the motive also for declining argument. Paul’s "I am a Pharisee," he passes over entirely. If I take the light this gives me, how plain and simple it makes such passages as the Lord’s words to the dying thief, for instance: "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Or Stephen’s prayer in the midst of the stones of his enemies: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."* Or "the Spirit shall return to God that gave it." Or yet again, the passage that speaks (Heb 12:23) of the "spirits of just men made perfect," as Heb 11:40 shows, by resurrection, which we all get together. The Lord’s saying to the thief will come up in another connection.† Meanwhile I turn to some other passages. *Would it be believed that in the "Bible vs. Tradition" it is asserted the "grammar of the text charges the saying, Lord Jesus receive my spirit, upon the wicked Jews, and afterwards records what Stephen said and did" (2d ed., p. 98). This is from people who appeal not only to Greek and Hebrew but to Syriac, and what not; and yet they assert what any schoolboy in Greek could contradict. For the words translated "calling upon and saying" are in the singular number, and could not possibly apply to the Jews, or to any but Stephen himself. Campbell ("Age of Gospel Light," p. 44) concurs with this: "Now it seems it was the same they that ran upon him, and calling upon God. . . But it may be asked, why the Jews should say, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit? Only by mocking the confidence of Stephen in the Saviour." In the 6th ed. of Ellis and Read’s book just referred to ("Bible vs. Tradition," p 99) they give another version of the passage, equally remarkable for learning: speaking of the word translated "receive," they say, "Dexia means the right, cheir, hand, being understood; metaphysically it means assistance, aid, strength courage, and is equal to endurance." here a common Greek word, dexai, rightly translated receive (a verb), is mistaken for the adjective dexia, "right (hand)." Whether the wickedness surpasses the folly of this, or the folly the wickedness, I leave others to decide. But these are Annihilationist leaders. †Roberts’ comment upon the answer to the thief is therefore reserved to this. His remarks as to Stephen need but little notice, he thinks that Stephen’s prayer means that "if God did not, so to speak, treasure his spirit or life for him, his death would be final as the beasts that perish." Here it is more convenient for him to say "life," than "breath of life," and to add one more new interpretation of "spirit" to those that have gone before. This "spirit," he has, told us elsewhere, is an "abstract" "energy, which is the basis of our life " (p. 54). And God is to treasure up this abstract energy for Stephen! "Spirits of just men," on the other hand, means neither "life" nor "energy," but, "consciences." (Mr. Roberts takes credit to himself that his meaning of spirit is a key that "fits the lock all round.") So "we are come to. . . the consciences of just men made perfect," - notice the connection, "to Mount Zion, and to the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, and to God the judge of all, and to the consciences of just men made perfect!" The whole speaks to us of that future, which is yet so immediate for faith, in which both the church of the first-born finds its completeness, and the "just men" of old obtain their long looked-for "promises." "They without us shall not be made perfect." For us and for them this shall be attained in the resurrection day; and there is no anomaly according to our view (a view Mr. R. so poorly understands) in a human spirit being "perfected" by getting back again the body, for partnership with which it was of old created and ordained. In Php 1:21-24 occurs a statement which has naturally had an important plan in the controversy upon this subject. It reads as follows in our version, which is sufficiently correct: - "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour [an idiomatic expression meaning ‘worth my while’], yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." The passage is simple enough, and would scarcely seem to need any explanation. But for the sake of distinctly reviewing the objections made, I shall divide it into its parts, and look at each part separately. (1.) In the first place, to the apostle, the object of his life was Christ, and to die was gain. This is the plain meaning. Nevertheless it is denied. "Do you ask," say Ellis and Read, "how then it would be gain to Paul to die? Paul does not say it would be gain to him. Fill up the ellipsis according to grammatical laws: ‘For me to live will be gain to the cause of Christ, for Christ will at all events be magnified in my body, whether by my life or by my death. And for me to die is gain to the cause of Christ, for Christ will be magnified in my body, whether I die or live.’ If you insist that it would be gain to Paul to die, we reply, He does not say so, and if it would be gain to him personally, then he would not be in perplexity which to choose."* Mr. Hudson speaks similarly, though more cautiously. So also Dr. Field. *Bible vs. Tradition, pp. 139, 140. But the interpretation is not admissible. For the word (for to me) standing at the commencement of the sentence is necessarily related to both clauses of it: "to me to live is Christ, and (to me) to die is gain." Nor does he say, to me to live is gain to the cause of Christ" at all, but to me to live is Christ, Christ is the object of my life. And when he comes to speak of death being gain, he never says, "to the cause of Christ" at all, but "(to me) to die is gain." I need not comment upon the remark that "if it would be gain to him personally, he would not be in perplexity which to choose." Of that people must judge for themselves; and of the knowledge of Christian spirit which it shows. The apostle goes on to say: (2.) "Yet what I shall choose I wet not, for I am in a strait betwixt two." Is it not plain that it was in spite of death being gain to him, that he was in a strait betwixt choosing death or life; not because, as Ellis and Read say, "they were equally indifferent to him," - that would be a strange way of being in a strait betwixt two equally indifferent things - but because it was a question of choosing his own interest or that of the saints, as he goes on to tell us. But the authors quoted have another version of it. "But there was a third thing that Paul possessed an earnest desire for; but this third thing was obviously not either of the former two indifferent ones, and therefore must be distinct from dying and going immediately to Christ; for dying or death was one of the things that he did not deem so greatly preferable to life as to decide his choice. But again, this third thing was ‘far better.’ Better than what? Better than life, better than death; therefore death could not be the thing desired." This is remarkable reasoning certainly. The apostle says, "I am in a strait betwixt two": that means, say these writers, "they were equally indifferent to him"! "I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart," says the apostle. "Which is a third thing," says Messrs. Ellis and Read, "as he was indifferent to the former two"! Nevertheless I am persuaded any candid mind will perceive that the apostle is only revealing the cause of his perplexity between the two, when he says, "having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless" - here is the perplexity - "to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." So that although death would be his gain, and he knew it, the strait was between his own gain and other people’s gain. And he was not indifferent to either, but desiring this and desiring that, and did not know which to choose. There was no third thing at all. His having a desire to depart and be with Christ was just his strait on the one side. and his abiding in the flesh being more needful for them, was just his difficulty on the other. And thus "departing and being with Christ" is fixed to mean his dying; just as his "abiding in the flesh "is fixed to mean his living. (3.) But here a great tumult is raised, and much knowledge of Greek is endeavored to be shown in letting us know that the word does not mean "to depart" at all. So Messrs. Hudson, Roberts, Ellis and Read, would all have it, "having a desire for THE RETURNING and being with Christ," supposing it to refer to Christ’s returning. The latter writers go on even to suppose that it was better for the Philippians that Christ should not come, and that so Paul should abide in the flesh. However, it is at least a little unfortunate for their theory, that the substantive "analusis" derived from the verb "analu" is used by Paul in 2Ti 4:6, undoubtedly for his death: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my DEPARTURE is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course," etc. If it be departure there, and death, why cannot it be so where, as we have seen, the context fixes it down to apply to death? And it is true that it sometimes means "return," but not so often as "depart," so that an Annihilationist alone could tell us why it should be so translated here. The reason being only in the exigencies of a theory, which must bend Scripture to its need, or be convicted of open opposition to it. Mr. Roberts is now willing, however, to accept the ordinary rendering. He says, "This understanding of Paul’s words would not be affected by the acceptance of the common version for to die and be with Christ are instantly consequential incidents to the consciousness of the man who dies." But that is not quite all we have to consider. Is it just the same to the consciousness of the man that lives? Would a fiction of this kind render attractive in the eyes of such a one as Paul, does Mr. Roberts think, what in reality would be "to depart into forgetfulness, and be with Christ when he woke up"? The "gain" of death would be forgetfulness: "better by far" than present fellowship with Christ, and joy in God, and magnifying Christ by service such as his! Mr. Constable is of one mind with Roberts in this last view of the passage. "To depart," he says, "means doubtless to die, and to be with Christ means doubtless the glorified state at resurrection. They are spoken of here as closely connected, as in fact synchronal, from that doctrine of the sleep of the intermediate state which Paul so often taught. [?] To depart from life and die would be, he knew, to be followed at once by the trumpet calling him to arise and be with his Lord; for time would in the actual interval, however long, between dying and rising, be annihilated for him who slept." How strangely it sounds to hear the different reports of that land of forgetfulness, which these writers give us at different times. Who would think that this was Job’s place of darkness and disorder which his soul contemplated with so little desire! Yet Job too knew that his Redeemer lived, and expected to see Him stand in the latter day upon the earth. If the quiet oblivion of sleep alone was between him and that day, why not more of Paul’s spirit as to it? The light had somehow shone into that place of gloom for Paul. Nonentity merely would have been the same for each, and not light nor darkness, but nonentity! Mr. Constable has not the solution of this enigma plainly. However, I have answered him before and independently. But he adds - "that the opinion that during the state of death believers are ‘with Christ’ in a state of life, involves a contradiction to one of the fundamental doctrines of Scripture. If they are then with Christ, and see Him as He now is, St. John tells us expressly that such a sight would change them into the likeness of Christ. It would hence follow that they would now possess the fullest glory that they could ever look for and obtain. The popular view that believers during the state of death are with Christ and see Him, involves in fact the denial of the resurrection as taught by Paul, or teaches what he condemned as heresy, that the resurrection is past already." Now, without raising any debate as to the interpretation of 1Jn 3:2, it is plain Mr. Constable confounds two different things in this, viz., moral and physical likeness. Does he really mean to say that seeing Christ in the intermediate state would bring the body out of the grave and glorify it? So it would seem. We however believe that resurrection waits for the word of Christ to effect, and that there can be no "perfection" for the saint, short of body, soul and spirit being united in blessing. Nay, it may well be, that we must put on this "image of the heavenly" in order even in the full sense to see Christ as He is. All this consists perfectly with the thought of being with Christ in the meanwhile in such a way as to awaken the desire of the living saint in the fullest way. On the other hand nonentity for the saint can call forth no such desire, save on the supposition of an utter wretchedness in the present life such as Paul knew nothing of; it is clear. Mr. Constable shows this fully in what he has written elsewhere. "To one capable of the vast grasping thought of immortality death is indeed a thing of terror . . . death is after all the king of terrors." And he is speaking of Christians here. Yet when he comes to argue about Paul’s words, this king of terrors becomes more attractive even than companionship with Christ on earth. Nonentity is a sweet forgetfulness which only hastens the day of glory! Which is the true statement I must leave Mr. Constable to say. Where speaks the man, and where the controversialist - I will not try to decide. But he is certainly self-contradicted - hopelessly so. I shall not again do more than refer to 2Co 5:1-21 : Its "at home in the body" and "absent from the Lord"- its "absent from the body and present with the Lord" - speak manifestly the same language as that we have just been considering. Those who tell us that in the resurrection state we shall not be "at home -in the body," and that we are "absent from the body" when it has been raised in glory or changed into the likeness of Christ’s glorious body, may well be left as hopeless of conviction. Mr. Constable’s arguments are the same as those we have already reviewed. I pass on to just one more Scripture in this connection, which gives us in full reality the thing of which we have been in search, - not in parable but in the historical fact, - a man absent from the body, - a spirit conscious of unutterable things, - a bright transient gleam from the unseen, - Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Lord. It is no dream, for eyes, that closed in sleep behold it not, awakened to behold it. (Luk 9:32): "But Peter and they that were with Him were heavy with sleep: and when they were awake they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with him." This proves also that it was no mere vision, even waking. The thing was there before they beheld it: "Moses and Elias talking with Jesus." Thus it was a real thing, apart from all spectators.* And how simply described, "two men which were Moses and Elias." One of these a man caught up in glory centuries before, and one still longer "departed," and his body buried, yet still a "man," neither extinct nor asleep, but in activity of thought and of enjoyment. Not raised from the dead either, as some would have it, because Jesus was himself the "first-fruits," and the "first-begotten of the dead." For it is no question here of simple restoration to the earthly life just quitted, as with Lazarus and others, whom the Lord had so restored. It is a man in the blessedness of another sphere, to enjoy which he must have been raised (if raised at all) spiritual and incorruptible. But of this resurrection the Lord Himself was the beginning, as Scripture asserts. Moses could not have been thus the first-born then. Apart from the body therefore he was, yet associate with one who had never passed through death, and though not in the likeness of Christ’s glorious body,† yet appearing "in glory", let men make of it what they will; entering moreover into the "bright cloud" (as Peter calls it afterwards, "the excellent glory "), the Shechinah of the Divine Presence.‡ *Roberts, in his comment upon this, falsifies the whole argument, asserting that what is relied on to prove this no mere vision is simply the fact of their being awake when they saw it; and of course evading the real point. †This is strangely taken by Mr. Roberts to be said of Elias, and here again he argues upon a mere misconception. The "first-begotten of the dead," applied, to the Lord Jesus, will not allow his interpretation of the first-fruits. It distinctly asserts that He was the first raised in the full meaning of resurrection. Enoch and Elias were not begotten from the dead at all. ‡"They (the disciples) feared, as those" - Moses and Elias." entered into the cloud." I confess I do not understand how it can be plainer that we are here permitted to gaze upon one departed, and to realize as far as we can how a departed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob still "live unto Him," who, as the Lord tells us, " is not the God of the dead but of the living." We thus see how to Him they live who to men are dead. We learn to distinguish between the language of sense and the language of faith. We learn how really there is a departing and being with Christ which is, compared with life on earth, far better. No argument that Annihilationists can bring against this passage will avail for a moment. Their arguments have in fact been already disposed of; as they either suppose on the one hand that Moses was raised from the dead, which Scripture elsewhere confutes (Col 1:18, 1Co 15:23, Rev 1:5), or that it was only a "vision" or appearance, which the passage itself confutes* I may leave here then the question (though there be other texts) of the consciousness of the separate state, with the full conviction of its complete, manifest and divine answer. *"Tell the vision to no man " is somewhat urged, but the word is merely something seen, and raises no question of reality. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 74: 04.19. CHAPTER XIII OBJECTIONS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT ======================================================================== CHAPTER XIII OBJECTIONS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT I NOW proceed to consider the objections which are made to the views I have expressed, grounded upon the supposed plain teaching of many passages of Scripture. It is a point worthy of attention, however, at the outset, that these passages are, with few and slight exceptions, all found in the Old Testament, and especially in three books which lie near together in the middle of it (united really, I doubt not, in many respects) Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes. To show this I mention from Mr. Roberts’ book all the texts upon which he relies to maintain his views of death and the intermediate state. From pp. 40-50 of his "Twelve Lectures" (4th ed) I find thus quoted Job 33:22-28; Psa 30:3; Psa 22:29; Psa 89:48; Psa 78:50; Eze 18:4; Jas 4:14; Psa 144:3-4; Psa 103:14; Psa 103:16; Gen 2:7; Gen 3:19; Gen 18:27; Rom 7:18; Jas 1:10; Job 14:12; Ecc 3:18-20; Gen 25:8; Gen 35:29; Gen 49:33; Gen 1:26; Deu 34:5-6; Jos 24:29; 1Sa 25:1; 1Ki 2:1-2; 1Ki 2:10; Acts 2:29; Acts 2:34; 1Ki 11:43; Heb 11:13; John 6:11; John 6:14; John 1:1-51 These. 4: 13; Ecc 9:10; Job 3:13-19; Job 10:18; Psa 88:5; Psa 88:10; Psa 88:12; Psa 115:17; Psa 39:5; Psa 39:12-13; Psa 146:2; Ecc 9:5-6; Psa 146:3-4; Psa 6:5; Isa 38:18-19. He then proceeds to cite the passages commonly urged against his views as fellows: Luk 23:43; Luk 16:19-31; Acts 7:59; 2Co 5:8; Php 1:23; Mat 17:3; Mat 22:32; Mat 18:10; Pro 12:28 : Mat 10:28. Thus, for his own. views, out of over fifty passages produced, nine belong to the New Testament and forty-seven to the Old. While out of the passages which he thinks might be adduced as against his views (though scanty in number), nine out of ten are from the New Testament. But the disproportion is greater even than this, when the real value to the writer of the texts quoted is kept in view. Thus even Mr. Roberts can make but little of Jas 1:9-10 : "As the flower of the grass he shall pass away;" or of Jas 4:14 : "What is your life? It is even a vapour." The other passages are, that in Paul (i. e., in his flesh) dwelt no good thing; as to David, that he was dead and buried, and not ascended into the heavens; that Abraham and others died in faith, not having received the promises; that Lazarus was sleeping, or in plain language, dead; and finally, that those that sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him. Really does it not seem a question between the Old Testament and the New? It is not that; but still there is a tale that these quotations tell, the moral of which will be found in 2Ti 1:10; where the apostle tells us, that Christ "has abolished death, and brought life and incorruption (not immortality) to light by the GOSPEL." That means that these writers are groping for light amid the shadows of a dispensation where was yet upon this subject comparative darkness. They look at death as it existed before Christ had for the believer abolished it. They look at life there where as yet it had not been "brought to light." No wonder if they stumble in the darkness they have chosen. Roberts represents the "logic" of the application of this passage to this question to be: "Life and incorruptibility are brought to light by the gospel; therefore don’t go to the Old Testament for light on death and corruptibility." It is very strange that he should think he needs light on the latter point, for that "death is death" seems to him an axiom that settles all. Nay, "life" also, and what it is, "a matter of positive experience." It is the "aggregate result of certain organic processes," he tells us. He only goes to Scripture to confirm this, which after all we should have known without. But the abolition of death is clearly connected with the bringing life to light by the gospel, and it is clear that the Old Testament statements must in some way correspond to this. Mr. Roberts indeed would have it that the gospel simply makes known "the way of life." But Scripture is more accurate than he supposes it to be, and less plastic than it really seems as if he would like to have it. If "life" is brought to light by the gospel, as in any and every sense it is, how could death even be known fully in the Old Testament? Take Paul and Job, as I have before said, and compare their utterances as to death, - is there no difference? is there no light come for Paul into that land of gloom and darkness which Job contemplates? Surely there is. And this is the story Mr. Roberts’ citations tell. Another passage furnishes us with a further point about that old economy he needs to know: that by the hanging of the veil before the holy places, "the Holy Ghost this signified, that the way into the holiest was not yet manifested, while the first, tabernacle was yet standing" (Heb 9:8). Mr. Roberts wants to know why the annihilationists should have their attention drawn to this. "It is the very thing," he asserts, "that proves their case. Mr. Grant contends that Abraham, Moses, and thousands beside them went into the holiest (that is, the heavenly state) as soon as they died; ‘WHILE THE FIRST TABERNACLE WAS YET STANDING.’ The ‘poor annihilationists,’ on the contrary, accept the declaration that the way was not yet manifested while the old economy existed, and that, as Jesus said, ‘No man had ascended into heaven.’ " But the fact of Abraham and other saints going to heaven after death, does not imply that the way there was made manifest in the Old Testament, 1: e., of course to men before they died. Nor do the Lord’s words which he quotes (John 3:13) at all imply even that Enoch and Elias had not "ascended into heaven." Plainly they had, and therefore Mr. R.’s interpretation of them is convicted of untruth. But the Lord is speaking, as the context decisively shows, of available witnesses of "heavenly things." It was no question of Enoch and Elias, who were not there to tell what they might know, still less of the condition of the departed dead, but of there being no other accessible witness of heavenly things, except Himself, the Son of Man, and yet "subsisting in heaven." "If I have told you of earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man [evidently, none here to give witness] hath ascended up to heaven, save He who came down from heaven, even the Son of Man who is in heaven." To make this clash with Enoch and Elias having gone there is surely a mere straining; of the words, and just as much so to infer from it the condition of the righteous dead. Doubtless Mr. Roberts would reinforce this untenable position by a quotation which those with him often dwell upon, to the effect that "David is not ascended into the heavens."* That too is freely granted. It is what the Lord says of Himself when risen, and yet He had been in Paradise with the pardoned thief. This will come up again in the next chapter, but I may say here, that the departure of the spirit to God is never reckoned "ascension." We may inquire why shortly, but the fact may suffice for the present. *Acts 2: 84 The passage in Hebrews does not then "recoil with singular force against" the orthodox "position." It in no wise teaches that the saints of the Old Testament did not go to heaven after death, but that there was no revelation yet of their going there, no promise of it yet to living men. It simply means that the dispensation dealt with earthly and not heavenly promises. Thus if the faith of a Job carried him on to a day on which that Redeemer who he knew lived, should be seen by his eyes, it is to His standing upon the earth in the latter day he looks. If Sheol,* the land of darkness, lay between, certainly for him that was not heaven. Nor can Mr. Roberts find such a thought. He does not indeed look for it, I well know. The "heavenly promises" are for him promises merely of a "heavenly state," as he might say, on earth. This is again the darkness of the former dispensation imported into the full light of the Christian one. I cannot discuss it here, nor, happily, need I for the mass of those who may read this. *The Old Testament word for hades, the unseen world. See next chapter. But such then as Job’s was the Old Testament hope.* Outside the present scene there was little light, death a deep, dark "shadow," well-nigh impenetrable, resurrection and restoration to a scene of earthly blessedness the tangible, plain thing. Scattered hints there were, indeed, of other things. Enoch had of old gone to God, and not seen death. Elijah in a later day had followed him. A little gleam of light had broken in there. But still that was not the revelation of the heavenly places and a portion there for those who believed. Nor was death abolished, or life and incorruption brought to light. *Some difficulty will be found perhaps in reconciling Heb 11:13-16 with this. I fully admit that this passage shows that individuals had hope beyond the proper Old Testament revelation. How they got this we hope yet to inquire. But that certainly no revelation of it is given in the Old Testament itself, I can only once again very simply affirm. Let my readers search and see, Still they were not annihilationists, as Pharisaism, which the people followed, shows. Something they did know: and with all their darkness were wiser than those who have now turned from the light which has come, back into it. This even necromancy witnessed. Heathenish as of course it was, yet its practice testifies to the belief which lay at the foundation of it. And the bringing up of Samuel* is an Old Testament confirmation of that belief too strong for any cavils of questioners to set aside. *1Sa 28:1-25 : True, indeed, the departed spirit of a saint was not at the mercy of a witch to summon into presence. And the appearance of the prophet threw the woman herself into astonishment; but so God permitted Saul to get his answer of doom. The language of the historian should be plain to any one who believes in the full inspiration of Scripture that the woman saw Samuel, and that Samuel spoke to Saul. Mr. Roberts may raise questions which our inability to answer would not show were valid as arguments against the inspired words. But it as he suggests, the nature of the apparition was that it was "the spectral impression of Samuel in the woman’s brain reflected from that of Saul," how did this "spectral impression" speak to Saul? Mr. Roberts would answer evidently "through the woman"; but not so says Scripture. It is his own invention, as the spectral impression is. Moreover his difficulty as to Samuel appearing in his clothes, as that of others, that he is seen as an old man, we may answer by saying that we know too little of spiritual appearances even to apprehend them as difficulties. Nor does it seem one that Saul himself should not have seen the spirit of Samuel, any more than that Elisha’s servant did not see the horses and chariots of fire around Dothan (2Ki 6:17). How many similar questions might Mr. R. ask about these, and find, or give, as little answer! Then as to the "bringing up," which Mr. R. considers should be, according to our views, rather "bringing down," this is his mistake, and we shall look at it in the next chapter. While "tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with means merely in the death state, or in sheol, as a Hebrew might have expressed it. I only dwell upon this to show that all was not dark, even here, as to immortality. People may talk, as some do, of resurrection but there is none, and the thought of it would only complicate the difficulties of the case. Without further preface I turn to the passages which they adduce as decisive of the point we are upon, that the dead are non-existent or at least unconscious till the resurrection. We naturally begin with Genesis, but here the passages produced have been already examined, save Gen 18:27; Gen 25:8, Gen 35:29Gen 49:33; Gen 50:26. The reader may refer to these (except the first) for himself, as they are the mere chronicle of the deaths of the patriarchs, "sober and literal," as we quite believe, and as is the fashion of Scripture generally, and with "no heaven-going rhapsody," as Mr. Roberts tells us. There could hardly be, as I have already shown. Deu 34:5-6; Jos 24:29; 1Sa 25:1; 1Ki 2:1-2; 1Ki 2:10; 1Ki 11:43, all come under the same category. It is sufficient for Mr. R. that he finds a text in which it is said such a person "died," to find a proof text in it for extinction; and if it should add, that he was "buried," then all dispute about the matter should be ended forever. For it seems none but materialists ever speak of people dying or being buried, or if so Mr. Roberts has not heard of it. Abraham’s lowly confession, "‘who am but dust and ashes" (Gen 17:27), which he takes to imply the lowest materialism, may perhaps be left to speak for itself. Of course that spirit of man, which sometimes Mr. Roberts reckons part of him, sometimes the highest part, is here none whatever, or else it too is "dust." He joins with this Paul’s "in me, that is in my flesh," equally to imply that Paul was nothing but flesh. On the further expression in the same chapter, "with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin," he does not comment. Outside of Job and its kindred books two passages remain. One is Eze 18:4 : "the soul that sinneth it shall die." Here, as I have before noticed, the soul is put for the personality of man. "The soul that sins shall die." Not a son for a father’s sins, or a father for a son’s, but every one for his own. This use of the word does not, as Mr. R. imagines, conflict with its proper force when used, as it has been proved Scripture does use it, for the immortal part of man. The other uses are all secondary to and founded on this, of which I have at large spoken. The other passage is Isa 38:18-19. It introduces us to that class of texts to which belong the quotations from Job, Psalms and Ecclesiastes, and we may therefore look at it with these. These three books belong to a portion of the Old Testament very distinct in its character from all the rest. While the historical books are, as a whole, the language of the divine historian, and the books of the prophets are still more directly the words of Jehovah Himself, addressed through the prophet to the people, that section of the Scripture which comprises Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, is eminently man’s voice. Of course I do not mean that they are less fully inspired on that account. Every word, I doubt not, is penned for us by the Holy Ghost Himself, so that we have nothing but what is profitable and needed. Still, if we find, as in Job for instance we do find, even Satan speaking, we do not any the more adopt his sayings as the expression of divine truth. They are carefully registered for us with a divine purpose. But we do not say "it is written" of Job, that if God put forth His hand and touch all that he hath, he will curse Him to His face. That was what Satan said, although it is written. So in like manner, when the Lord says to Job’s friends, "Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, like my servant Job," it is plain we cannot indiscriminately adopt their sayings, as divine truth either. And when we come to Job’s own sayings, spite of the commendation so far expressed, we find that he, too, in his words, had "justified himself rather than God" (ch. 32: 2). So that neither can we adopt without reservation his words either. I have noticed elsewhere something equivalent as to the book of Ecclesiastes, where we have the experience of a man who had ransacked the world in vain for happiness, and the things he "said in his heart" while he was pursuing that vain and weary course. We know what was Solomon’s career spite of his wisdom, and this seems undoubtedly to be his own conclusion upon it, under the teaching of the Spirit of God, now become the "preacher" of the vanity of the world he so well knew. Would it yet be believed, that this man’s "sayings," penned by himself for our instruction in the word of God, have been taken by materialists as the sayings of divine truth, to settle it that men are "beasts," that "a man has NO preeminence above a beast"? The Psalms indeed are of a different character. They are much more really prophetic in character, nay, in one sense, fully so. Still their prophecy has the peculiarity, in which they resemble the others, of its being the projection of human thoughts and feelings upon the page, which, under the control of the Spirit of God, become the foreshadows of another day and scene. Thus David muses upon his own sufferings until his thoughts find vent in words, which guided of God become full of a deeper meaning than any application to David could exhaust - prophetic utterances of Another, more than royal, Sufferer. But that is very different from direct revelation. It leaves the utterer to speak of things as from his own point of view he sees them, even while giving them this deeper significance. Mr. Roberts has surely somewhat mistaken what is said on this head, when he asserts that it makes these books "in fact of no greater value than a newspaper report." On the contrary it makes them of the very greatest value. Is it not this, that all the difficult problems as to the world and himself also, problems which man’s heart ponders only thoroughly to lose its way in, should be allowed once for all to find expression in the presence of God, where alone they can find their perfect answer? Man’s voice permitted to utter itself thus, - its questions, doubts, objections, reasonings - before One not uninterested, who condescends to take the place of listener, and does not decide a case before he hears it: is not this worthy of God to give us? is this of no more value than a newspaper report? I speak for myself only when I say, that to me it is of the profoundest interest, and of the deepest value. This applies of course mainly to the books before us, Job, Ecclesiastes, and (in much smaller measure) to the Psalms. Now, as to the facts alleged by Mr. R. against it. The quotation of Job 5:13, with seven other "allusions " to the book, in the New Testament, he gives in proof of Job as a whole being God’s voice. Let us look at these latter first. They are as follows Job 1:21, referred to in 1Ti 6:7. (?) Job 1:21-22, Job 13:1-7, referred to in Jas 5:11. Job 12:14, referred to in Rev 3:7 (?.) Job 34:14, referred to in Rom 2:11; Eph 6:9; Col 3:25. Job 41:11, referred to in Rom 11:35. Of these references it will be seen that Jas 5:11 merely speaks of Job’s patience and the end of the Lord. 1Ti 6:17 and Rev 3:7 are very doubtful as allusions at all; Rom 11:35 refers to God’s answer to Job, which of course no one questions as His voice; while the three passages in Rom 2:11, Eph 6:9 and Col 3:25 may allude to what Elihu says of God’s not accepting persons, but are the expression of so simple a truth, that it scarcely needs to consider them even an allusion. But Elihu himself moreover is not one of the three friends convicted of falsehood by Jehovah, but one who is used to give Job his answer, after they and he both have left off speaking. It remains then that in all the New Testament there is one more or less doubtful reference to Job’s own words, and this one quotation of the words of Eliphaz, in 1Co 3:19 : "He taketh the wise in their own craftiness." Of this Mr. Roberts says: "The speaker is Eliphaz, whose interpretation of God’s dealings with Job was condemned. His abstract principles were right, though his application of them in Job’s case was wrong." But this is not true. God’s own words make the express distinction between Job and his three friends, that, whereas Job had spoken OF HIM the thing that was right, they had not done so. All of them, Job included, had erred in the interpretation of God’s dealings, if that were all; and on that account, first Elihu becomes interpreter for Him, and then God Himself speaks. But Job had spoken rightly of God; and his friends had not. Yet Eliphaz for all that could say many a true thing, truth that doubtless he had learnt of God, and could utter as from Him; and one such saying the Holy Ghost gives us certified through the mouth of Paul. This could not certify the things which the same Eliphaz had spoken which were not right. Even Mr. Roberts allows "there is not the same direct recognition of Ecclesiastes." He thinks that "a remark of Paul’s in 1Ti 6:7 looks like a quotation of Ecc 5:15." It may refer to it, but it is one of those self-evident, however solemn, truths, that need no inspired authority to assure us of them. The passage has already been made to serve as a reference to Job, and in Bagster’s list is again referred, though doubtingly, to Psa 49:17. Roberts adds, "Nevertheless the book stands on its own foundation, as the product of a man to whom God gave wisdom," etc. The inspiration of the book is not at all in question, but its character and purpose. The matter of Solomon’s wisdom has been already discussed. As to the Psalms, they are undoubtedly divine, but that is not the question. While inspired fully, their utterance, as already said, is so far like the rest, that the point of view is that of a man upon earth, the horizon earthly, the thoughts and feelings in accordance with this. Granted, fully granted, that the divine is in the human everywhere, it is none the less man’s song or man’s sorrow, human utterance out of a human heart, with only exceptional direct sayings of God. Proverbs again is most evidently human, however-perfect and divine in its authority, as it surely is. Mr. Roberts quotes Heb 12:5 against this, halving the passage cited from .Pro 3:11-12, by leaving out Pro 3:6. He can thus apply the passage as if the apostle meant by merely quoting, "My son, despise not," to show that God in that exhortation is "speaking unto us as unto children," and therefore that Proverbs was directly God’s voice. The very form of the exhortation should have taught him better, for it is not "my son, despise not my chastening," but the "chastening of .the Lord"; and the apostle’s proof that Scripture in that exhortation speaks to us as unto sons is that "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."* The real argument is concealed in the verse which he, for whatever reason, pleases to ignore. *In Proverbs, "even as a father the son in whom he delighteth." The quotation, in Hebrews is from the Septuagint. All the weight of what Job says is found in the following expressions: that, had he died from the womb, he would then have been lying still and quiet, he would have slept and been at rest, as an hidden untimely birth, there where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest (Job 3:13-17); that he would have been as though he had not been, in a 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 (Job 10:18-22); and that in death man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep (Job 14:12). Now, as I have said, I am not concerned to prove the harmony of all Job’s utterances with the actual revelations of Scripture as to the intermediate state. He might have been mistaken, and that in no way touch the question before us, or the perfect inspiration of the record in which his words are found. They are given as Job’s words, that is all. As the utterance of a saint of those old days, they contain, no doubt, the assurance of the dimness and uncertainty which then prevailed. Contrasted with Paul’s language they show us death not yet abolished, "darkness" not yet dispelled by light. Yet the words cannot be fairly pressed into the service of materialism. Take the very strongest expression "I should have been as though I had not been," with relation to the world and its sorrows, of which he was speaking, it was simple truth. So as to oppression: "there the servant is free from his master." He might have died under the lash, but dying, death set him free. "There the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." But, you say. although that may be as regards earthly troubles, yet if there were misery of another kind awaiting man after death, could he talk so complacently of the "weary being at rest?" Well, but to all that made Job weary, the grave would be rest. And for aught else, Job was a saint of God after all, and had confidence in God. He was not meditating upon the portion of the wicked, but what his own would be; and though in death a "land of darkness" stretched before him into which his eye could little penetrate, he had something of the Psalmist’s confidence in One who would be with him there. The sorrows of the wicked are not at all before him, but for himself the end of all present sorrows. Mr. Roberts may say, "There (in the grave) the weary are at rest," but Job does not say "in the grave"; and he may think it "obvious" that he means "righteous and wicked without distinction." I can only say to myself it is very far from obvious. He was surely thinking of his own sorrows, and as to the "wicked," what he says is, they "cease from troubling." Mr. R. would give righteous and wicked alike rest in nonentity in the grave. But is this "rest"? Who rests? Can a thing that is not, rest? I think not, if words have meaning. Moreover, Job 10:21, and Job 16:22 prove positively that it is in the track indicated Job’s thoughts are running. If otherwise, then when he says that in dying he "goes whence he shall not return," he simply denies all resurrection. But he is thinking of a return to the scene before him. It is not an abstract statement, but one very simply referring to the scene of mingled joy and sorrow, in the midst of which he then was. And so Scripture often speaks. "Enoch was not." Is that extinction? No, "he was translated, that he should not see death." As to the world "he was not," but as to God he was, for "God took him."* Just as with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who really died. To men they died; to God they lived: "For He is not the God of the dead but of the Living, for all live unto Him" (Luk 20:38). People may say, that that means" in the purpose of God," but then if they had ceased to be, He could NOT be their God, the relationship between God and His creature must end with the being of the creature. That is simply and evidently the Lord’s meaning. If to Him they are dead, they are no longer His creatures, nor He their God. The relationship is broken. *Gen 5:24; Heb 11:5. "Infants that never saw light," spite of Mr. R.’s protest, are beings that have begun to live, and his argument from Job’s reference to these has no foundation. Besides, that is not the point. It is nonentity as to the present scene, not absolute nonentity, he speaks of. The statement that Enoch "was not" he supposes to be a Hebrew ellipsis: a rather vague but scholarly looking expression to cover a difficulty with. Will Mr. R. define and illustrate it? But Paul has told us that Enoch" was not found," and he thinks that will explain and fill up the ellipsis. We need have no objection to the explanation, as it is substantially our own. From the human point of view, Enoch "was not"; therefore, of course was not found; yet even in the apostle’s words you must mentally supply "on earth," as we must conclude that he was found, I suppose, in heaven. That is, we must still keep the objectionable limitation, which Mr. R. refuses, and the apostle’s language only confirms us in it the more. It is strange, therefore, that when we turn to David’s words,"while I have any being," and "before I go hence, and be no more," and explain them. by the exactly parallel expression, Enoch was not, that Mr. R. should tells us, "The fallacy of this we have already pointed out," when he has actually confirmed the truth of it. For if "Enoch was not" means, he was not found on earth, why should not the psalmist’s "be no more" mean similarly "no more found on earth"? Job’s words, then, are no contradiction of what we have seen elsewhere to be the revealed truth as to those departed. To weariness such as his a place of "rest," indeed, was the unseen world; but "rest" is not extinction; and if it were a "land of darkness" also, darkness and nonentity are absolutely contradictory thoughts. The words of Elihu (Job 33:22-28) have been already explained, and to them I need not return. I turn now to Ecclesiastes. And here all that they urge has been already virtually, and, except one passage, actually answered. That one passage is found, Ecc 9:5-6 : "For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward, for the memory of them is forgotten; also their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun." Further on (Ecc 9:10) in continuation: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave (sheol) whither thou goest." Now this is a very plain example of that way of speaking, looking at things from a mere human stand-point, which I have before remarked upon. The writer’s point of view is most evident. Nor was he capable, at the time he had these thoughts, of any other. As to the dead actually, he "knew not anything," for he knew not whether the spirit of man went upward or not. This we have seen. He was not, therefore, capable of looking at anything, save from his standpoint in the world. Otherwise clearly he could not have said, "Neither have they any more a reward." That would deny all resurrection and life to come, if taken absolutely. But he was looking at the scene around, out of which men departed, and left no sign behind to indicate that they had been; their memory was forgotten; their love, hatred, envy, which had once made them conspicuous actors in the scene, had vanished; and, in relation to it, they knew nothing, their wisdom and knowledge had departed too. This does not mean, as Roberts suggests, that they "lost their memories," or that they became fools; but they knew nothing of things taking place after their departure,* nor could their wisdom or knowledge appear in it any more. The closing sentence shows clearly to what the former part applies: "Neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun." *Comp. Job 14:21. Therefore the moral is, Be busy now; work ceases in the grave; wisdom for this busy scene there is none there; no heart that deviseth; no planning head. All true in its way. But this was man’s musings, not divine revelation of the state of the dead at all, nor given as such. Had you asked this man what he knew of that, he would have said, as he did say, Who knows ?* "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward?" He saw the dust laid in the tomb, and that was all he knew. The rest was conjecture, nothing more. *"This," says Mr. Roberts, "is one of Mr. Grant’s (we will not say deliberate but) staring [? startling] perversions of fact. Solomon did not say, who knows, in reference to the state of the dead, but in reference to the spirit of man in its living operation." This, it must be confessed, is "startling." Let my readers look at the whole passage, Job 3:18-22, and decide. But that was only part of the preacher’s utterances, the musings of his heart while vainly seeking to "search out by wisdom all things that are done under heaven" (Job 1:13). But the time came when he had to own his inability to do so. To quote once more his lowly confession (Job 11:5): "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit,* nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all." *Here the connection of the "way of the spirit" with the growth of the bones in the womb, confirms the application of the former expression to the human spirit. It is the double mystery of generation that is referred to, still as ever unfathomable to man’s science. We know not how the spirit nor even the flesh of man comes into being. And death is necessarily a mystery, as life is. Simple, but most important confession! on the dark side of which all the passages are found upon which materialists rely; while on the other one pregnant sentence at least is read, which, to do justice to the Old Testament preacher, we should look at a little closer than we have done: - "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return to God who gave it." As we have seen, men seek to explain the "spirit" here to be merely the "breath," as they do that which the Lord upon the cross commended to His Father, and Stephen to the Lord Himself. Few simple minds will accept that conclusion. They will scarcely see the sense of the return of the breath to God, whereas, if it be indeed the spirit, such a statement becomes of the greatest possible importance. It is what lifts the veil from the life of "vanity," and interprets its true significance. It is the answer to the doubtful questioning of the former chapter. Having come to the end of human wisdom in the matter, "the way of the spirit" is here revealed. It "returns to God who gave it." And thus there is complete harmony with that "conclusion of the whole matter," which the closing verses invite us to "hear." "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Now if that be the conclusion of the whole matter, does it look as if the matter from which he drew the conclusion ended merely with the blank and silence of the grave? Rather, does it not conclusively show, that that return of the dust to the earth "as it was," is only what brings the spirit, - not "as it was," but with the character acquired in its earthly tabernacle, - into the presence of the God who gave it!(?) Nor does this involve, as Mr. Roberts thinks, that the "judgment of every work is going on every day as fast as people die." But we have seen that, while the judgment of every work does not come before resurrection, yet it is when we "fail," that either we are "received into everlasting habitations," or to the prison-house in which already the soul has the premonition of its doom, as the rich man his in hades. Ecclesiastes has no word of resurrection. Death, the stamp of vanity upon everything, is what is dealt with, and that which all men’s reasoning can so little avail to penetrate or understand, faith makes known in its true character as the recall of the spirit into His presence, without which it is but a valueless cipher, and with which it becomes almost infinite in value. I now pass on to consider the testimony of the Psalms. Some passages adduced by Mr. Roberts I may be content with quoting. That "man is like to vanity; his days as a shadow that passeth away" (Psa 144:4), and that "as for man, his days are as grass" (Psa 103:15). Statements like these, which depict the brevity of man’s life on earth, are not quite new or unknown to believers in the soul’s immortality. And that it is a solemn and unnatural thing for God’s creatures to be thus "subject to vanity," quite irrespective of what comes after death, is a thing for such as Mr. R. to consider. He thinks that, if man’s existence be forever, such words as these lose force. But it is far from being really so. For the point is, the wreck and ruin of the first creation by death coming in at all. This is what gives solemnity to the brevity of his earthly history. The other passages are mostly of similar character to those that we have already looked at. That is, they speak of man as connected with the world through which he passes. Thus, "while I live, will I praise the Lord; I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being" (Psa 146:2); "before I go hence, and be no more" (Psa 39:13) are expressions no stronger than we have seen to be used of one who was translated that he should not see death. Enoch "was not," yet even annihilationism has not yet taught that he literally ceased to be. To be consistent. they should do so. Or again, take Psa 146:3-4 : "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help: for his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, and in that very day his thoughts perish." Is it not plain here, that, so far as the context leads, his "thoughts" that perish are the plans and purposes in which he who was to be benefited by them had been made to hope, and which the death of his patron might in a moment frustrate and cut off? Again, there is a somewhat different class of passages, as Psa 6:5 : "For in death there is no remembrance of Thee; in the grave (sheol) who shall give thanks?" And again, (Psa 115:17), "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence." Or again, that passage in Isaiah (Psa 38:18-19): "For the grave (sheol) cannot praise Thee, death cannot celebrate Thee, they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth; the living, the living, he shall praise Thee as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known Thy truth." This may take a little deeper looking into: but only because we are so little accustomed to realize the point of view from which the pious Israelite beheld these things. That "congregation of the righteous" in which sinners should not stand, which the first psalm gives us, was what he looked for. A day, as we say, millennial, - a scene in which righteousness shall reign, and the earth be filled with the knowledge of .the Lord as the waters cover the sea, this is what his faith anticipated; what ours does; but his, much more exclusively, for his knowledge of heavenly timings was very dim.* To swell that great hallelujah chorus, such as the last five psalms give it us, and in a scene such as they prophetically anticipate, that were a godly Israelite’s ambition. To celebrate His praises upon earth, to train up children for the service of His sanctuary, to go up to that temple where the glory of Jehovah visibly dwelt, this was with him connected with every thought of Jehovah’s praise. You see it in that last quotation from Isaiah: "the father to the children shall make known Thy truth." Death would cut short that declaration, and make those praises cease. Death could not in that sense celebrate. "Who should give Him thanks in the grave?" Nay, the living, the living, alone could do it. *"According to Mr. Grant’s thesis," says Roberts, "the knowledge of the Spirit of God is ‘very dim.’ " This is neither truth nor candor. Any one can see that it is not a question of the knowledge of the Spirit of God at all, but of that of those through whom He was pleased to speak. Plainly the full revelation of Christianity had not come. Death had not been abolished, nor life and incorruption brought to light. Such knowledge must have been "dim." Still, if dim, there is nothing untrue in their language; nor do we "treat the Psalms as the private breathings of a pious Israelite," or "refuse David as a prophet," or "deny his testimony." Beside which, inasmuch as length of days was one of the blessings of the law, to be cut off in the midst of one’s days, as Hezekiah was threatened, argued with a Jew divine wrath. And this manifestly adds its gloom to the first and last passages. While Psa 115:1-18 is prophetic of a future day when the earth will be purified by a judgment which will destroy sinners out of it, and these, I have little doubt, are referred to in them. But the Old Testament contains brighter and more assuring passages than these, and with one of these we may close this chapter: "The righteous perisheth and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous are taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness" (Isa 57:1-2). Now as nonentity is "rest," it may be "peace," too, to Mr. Roberts. For we have seen the "king of terrors" sometimes putting on very attractive forms. But those who cannot quite give up Scripture language as unmeaning, nor put bitter for sweet or darkness for light, will be unable to accept such a conclusion. As well might the "second death" itself be everlasting peace. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 75: 04.20. CHAPTER XIV SHEOL, HADES AND PARADISE ======================================================================== CHAPTER XIV SHEOL, HADES AND PARADISE WE are now to consider what is indeed but a secondary point, but one which will help to give completeness to this sketch of the scripture doctrine of the soul’s immortality. The word "hades" (hell, Auth. vers.) is found, as we have already seen, in the story of Lazarus and the rich man. The representative of the word in the Old Testament is sheol. "Paradise" is found in the Lord’s reply to the dying thief, and in 2Co 12:1-21 :, where Paul tells us he knew a man in Christ caught up into Paradise. The interpretation of these words by the materialistic section of annihilationist writers is pretty uniform. Hades, they say (and of course sheol), is the grave.* Paradise, for most, the place of blessing on the restored earth; necessarily, therefore, having nothing to do with an intermediate state, nor existing at present, for a man to be caught up into. Mr. Constable and others, no doubt, dissent from this in favour of its being a place in heaven, in this more Scriptural than those they hail as co-workers in this cause. *Mr. Constable does not contend for this absolutely, but still hades for him has to do with the body, as we shall see. To begin with sheol. It is a word apparently derived from shaal, "to ask," and is generally supposed to derive its meaning from the insatiate way in which death continually "demands" its victims. Some have, however, suggested, what seems at least as probable, that it is derived rather from the "questioning" as to the dead, as in Job 14:10 : "man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" Sheol is acknowledged to be the equivalent of hades, and its significance seems, from the only probable derivation, to be the "unseen," - the invisible world, as people sometimes say. It applies undoubtedly in ordinary Greek to the region of departed spirits, an application with which the Pharisaic use coincides, as the treatise ascribed to Josephus bears witness, whether it be his or not: and to this the Biblical use in Luke xvi (even to the term "Abraham’s bosom") exactly corresponds. Now we have seen that not only was it impossible for the Lord to adopt without remark a mere superstitious and pagan notion, but that Paul also professed himself a Pharisee on kindred points. From this persuasion no denunciation of heathenism or of Pharisaism is of any force to turn us. Neither the one nor the other was all untrue, and Pharisaism was at least more orthodox than the Sadduceisrn to which in many points the annihilationist belief conforms. That "hades" should have a wider application than this, is no wonder from what we here seen to be its meaning. But although it might be used in other connections figuratively, in relation to man it has one very uniform sense. That sense is never the grave, as they allege, although the imagery of the grave may very naturally be applied to it. It is nevertheless demonstrably distinct and stands in the same relation to the soul as the grave to the body. The common coupling together of "death and hades" illustrates this, for in such a conjunction as "death and hades delivered up the dead that were in them" (Rev 20:13), death naturally stands connected with the lifeless corpse, as hades (the unseen) does with the soul or spirit. So similarly the quotation as to the Lord in Acts 2:27, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades," refers to the soul, as "neither wilt Thou suffer Thy holy One to see corruption" does to the body: and the apostle Peter distinguishes them accordingly in his interpretation: "his soul was not left in hades, neither his flesh did see corruption." This accounts for eight out of the eleven passages in which hades is found in the New Testament. That in Mat 16:1-28 : presents no difficulty. It is borrowed very likely from Isa 38:10, where the "gates of the grave" should be rather "the gates of sheol." The two remaining passages are really one: "Thou, Capernaum, shall be brought down to hades." Here the word is used tropically. The use of sheol, though similar, is somewhat more obscure. This results from the character of the Old Testament, which has been noted and accounted for. It is quite natural that materialists should use it for their purposes, as they do, although after all with very poor success. Psa 16:10 we have seen quoted and applied by the apostle. Jacob speaks of going down to sheol to his son Joseph;* and this has singularly little force, if a going down to nonentity. If we compare David’s words of his child similarly, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me,"† this is greatly strengthened. *Gen. xxxvxii †2Sa 12:28 Then we have such expressions as the "depths of sheol" (Pro 9:18), "the lowest sheol" (Psa 86:13, Deu 32:22), - in the last passage God’s wrath being said to burn to it, - "though they dig into sheol" (Amo 9:2), which show that the grave cannot be the whole matter there. So even in sheol (Psa 139:8) there is no escape from the presence of God: "if I make my bed in sheol, behold, Thou art there!" Can that be nonentity? Surely we may be excused then from following very closely the dissertations of those who have learnedly endeavoured to prove that sheol is the abode of dead sheep, of men’s bones, and of weapons of war! For the first statement there is one passage produced, Psa 49:14 : "Like sheep they are laid in sheol;" as Delitzsch expresses it, "they are made to lie down in sheol, like sheep in a fold." This one comparison of the wicked lying down in sheol like a flock of sheep, Mr. Constable thinks sufficient to show, "to the astonishment and disgust of our Platonic divines and thinkers, that beasts go on death to hades"! In the same way, Psa 141:7, "Our bones are scattered at the mouth of sheol," is made to assure us that "the bones of the dead are consigned in death to hades!" The psalmist plainly says they are outside.* *"Their souls below, their bones above," as Delitzsch well says. By others the imagery of Eze 32:27 is pleaded to show that people go down to sheol with their weapons of war, and their swords laid under their heads! Nay, if Jacob speaks of bringing his grey hairs down in sorrow to sheol, we are bound to believe that sheol is the abode of grey hairs also! So Korah and his company go down alive into sheol, the earth swallowing them up alive; and this is proof conclusive that men’s bodies go to hades! We have only to remember the vagueness of a term like "the unseen," to see how little we have here the formal doctrine they would draw from it. Time fails us to pursue these phantoms, and yet of such sort is the reasoning found in the most elaborate performances of leaders of this school. Mr. Constable’s two chapters or Hades in his treatise bearing that name, are the weakest and most inconclusive in it. And he seems in measure conscious of it by his anxiety to import into them all his prior arguments as to the nature of man, personality, death, etc., arguments that we have already sufficiently considered. We on the other hand may more reasonably believe that the consciousness of the intermediate state has been fully and independently established by the texts we have examined And while, if soul is body, hades must of course be some equivalent of the grave, and if it be mere "animal life," hades may be extinction, if on the other hand the soul be a living entity separate from the mere bodily organism; there can be no question that it is not the first; there need be none, that it is not the other. But we have yet an argument or two of Mr. Constable’s to consider. Thus he complains that we make hades "a land of life" by making it the receptacle of men’s souls after death. I can only say, we do not ordinarily judge it to be so. In this sense I mean, that although it be true that the spirits of the dead are living, they are nevertheless the spirits of the dead; and we necessarily and rightly speak of hades as the abode of the dead. To us they are the dead: though not extinct; and to God they live. It is not a fact that we find any difficulty in a use of language which perplexes Mr. Constable. It is writers of his class who having invented a new language for us would fain persuade us it is what we have been ignorantly using all along. The only thing that might be judged a real difficulty as to hades we shall consider after we have briefly looked at the third term, " Paradise." The greatest importance that the word has in this connection is from our Lord’s use of it in His reply to the dying thief: "Verily I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." The common method of dealing with this text is by altering the punctuation. They would have us read the words, "Verily I say unto thee today: thou shalt be with me in Paradise." That is, "today, this day of my humiliation, I say to thee." But the order of the words in the sentence is all against them. With the emphasis they give it, "today" should precede the verb. As compare in the Greek, Mat 16:3; Mark 14:30; Luk 19:5; Luk 19:9; Acts 13:33; Heb 3:7; Heb 3:15. But, beside this, the Lord is answering a prayer in which a time wherein the thief sought to be remembered was expressed. He had said, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom." The Lord says virtually, "You shall not wait for that: to-day you shall be with Me." This is the simple, intelligible reason for the specification of time: "Today," not when I come merely, "shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Seeing this, others would render "in that day," or (as for instance Mr. Constable) more exactly," this day," but meaning, "the day of which you have spoken." Mr. Constable believes we cannot dispute his right to translate it thus, and he quotes Parkhurst and Schleusner to that effect. We have no quarrel with the lexicographers on this point,*.but must contend nevertheless that their witness is insufficient.. For while the word may well be rendered "this day," it cannot be as referring to a day not present when the word is spoken. In this way it is the exact equivalent of our word" today," which we know is incapable of such use. Let Mr. Constable produce, if he can, the passage which would bear this construction.† *Although Liddell and Scott, as high authorities, demur to ? or ? at the beginning of the word having anything to do with the article and for a very satisfactory reason, that "the word is Homeric, and therefore prior to the usage of the article." They only give the meaning "to-day," to which Dawson’s Lexicon adds, "this very day." †Dr. Thomas’ reading is perhaps the strangest, and I mention it only as a proof of the perplexity into which writers of this class are thrown by the passage. "‘Today’ is a Scripture term, and must be explained by the Scripture use of it. In the Sacred Writings, then, the term is used to express a period of over 2,000 years. This use of it occurs in David, as it is written, ‘Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, lest ye enter not into my rest.’ The apostle, commenting on this passage about 1,000 years after it was written, says, "Exhort one another while it is called today.’. . . Thus it was called today when David wrote, and today when Paul commented on it. . . . This today is however limited both to Jew and Gentile; and in defining this limitation Paul tells us, that today means ‘after so long a time.’ If then we substitute the apostle’s definition for the word ‘today’ in Christ’s reply to the thief, it will read thus: ‘Verily I say to thee, after so long a time thou shalt be with me in Paradise’ " (Elpis Israel, pp. 51, 55). But he is evidently afraid that will not answer, and so is careful to give other interpretations of the passage, even though contradictory of this. Mr. C. seems evidently not easy himself about this conclusion. He vacillates between this construction, and his strange idea of "synchronism." He thinks it may well be after all that "today" might really mean so, because "to the sleeper in death’s arms there is no time," and having expired before the end of that Jewish day, "the last half-hour [of it] the penitent thief will spend with his King in His kingdom, for it is there he takes up the thread of time once more." That is, "today" may mean two thousand years hence or so, if only you can get the "sleeper in death’s arms" to sleep quietly enough to be unconscious of the interval! Mr. Roberts agrees with the former of these two assertions, that "today" means "this day " - the day of Christ’s coming. And he is one of a class of writers who urge that Paradise is in the new earth, and therefore not yet in existence, which of course would dispose of the passage effectually as far as applies to any teaching concerning an intermediate state. Mr. Constable too urges that we falsify the Scripture teaching as to Paradise. I shall therefore briefly state what it furnishes about it. "Paradise" is an Eastern word for a "park" or" pleasure-grounds." The Hebrew, pardes is only used, Neh 2:8; Ecc 2:5; Song of Solomon 4:13. It is there translated once "forest," twice "orchard." It is not used for the garden of Eden in Hebrew, but there it is the ordinary word, qan , for "garden." The Septuagint translation, however, gives here (paradise), which is uniformly the word it uses for the Garden of Eden, or of God, except in one place where the usual word for garden is used. From the Septuagint use of the word the New Testament use is doubtless derived. It does not follow, however, that it will have exactly the same application. Rather, we shall find, the Old Testament word becomes in it, as commonly such words do, transfigured into a higher meaning. The Old Testament type becomes the New Testament antitype: the "shadow of good things to come" emerges into the substantive reality. It is used but three times: - Luk 23:43. - "To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise." 2Co 12:4. - "How that he was caught up into Paradise." Rev 2:7. - "The tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." In the last of these passages the mention of the tree of life connects itself plainly with the after account of the heavenly Jerusalem, which is therefore at least not the new earth, however related to it it may be. Nor does this in the least deny the earthly promises produced by Roberts. Each have their place, but those he quotes are distinctly those belonging to Israel nationally, as the apostle of the Gentiles tells us (Rom 9:3). Our blessings are "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph 1:3); and of these the earthly ones are but the shadow. Mr. Roberts calls this an unproved assertion. It is, however, as definitely certain as can be, and without understanding it there can be no proper understanding of the promises at all. We shall devote a chapter to this point hereafter, and therefore may leave it now. The second passage speaks of paradise as existing, now, for Paul was caught away into it, - I have no wish to retain the "up" if Mr. Roberts objects, - and whether in the body or out of it he could not tell, even at the time he wrote. Manifestly, if he supposed he could be caught away bodily into it, he supposed it to be an existing place, and the plea that it was a vision will not answer. The "visions" doubtless refer to what he saw there. To this Roberts answers that Paul might have supposed Paradise "made actually existent for the occasion of his inspection." The restored earth actually existent for Paul to see. It is a trite remark that faith is never so credulous as unbelief. Mr. Constable insists that this Paradise could he no part of hades, and that people are forced thus to suppose that two Paradises! I agree with him that it is one and the same Paradise throughout. And the difficulty which he supposes is only the fruit of people studying rabbinical theology more than Scripture. Hades, as is acknowledged, is but the "unseen," and never defines precise locality. It is the attempt to make it definite which has confused peoples minds, that is all. But hades is in the "heart of the earth," says Mr. Constable. How does he know? Why, the earth swallowed up Korah and his company, and they "went down alive into sheol" That is his proof. May we not equally say that hades is the belly of a whale, because Jonah says that he cried "out of the belly of sheol"? Thus it is not so easy perhaps to decide the question of locality. The necessarily vague thought of the "unseen" refuses such limitation. True, its imagery was naturally borrowed, before the fuller revelation had been given, from that grave with which it necessarily was associated in the mind, and thus you have it pictured as "beneath," souls going down to it or coming up from it. There is moreover a real truth in this conception, in its being a descent from man’s position, a degradation from his natural place on earth. The New Testament removes for the saint the veil of the unseen. He departs to be with Christ, and Christ is not in the heart of the earth. The very name of hades for the believer almost disappears, and thus it is most beautifully at the Cross of Christ that the veil begins to lift decidedly. "With me in Paradise" may well be in contrast with Old Testament utterances. Alas, that men should refuse the consolation, the brightness of the new revelation, and seek to retain the darkness, for faith passed away. In a kindred way is to be explained the saying of the Lord after His resurrection, that he was "not yet ascended to His Father." Mr. Constable with others holds that that is inconsistent with the thought of His having been in Paradise in the intermediate state. But "ascension" is another thing from the departure of the spirit to God. It is connected with the victory over death, not the submission to it. David is not ascended, while his body remains in the grave. And for the Lord how easy to see the unspeakable difference! The departure of the spirit was the witness all had been stooped to, death in its full reality undergone; ascension was the witness of that work accepted, and man as man brought into the new place with God. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 76: 04.21. PART III - THE ETERNAL ISSUES ======================================================================== PART III - THE ETERNAL ISSUES ======================================================================== CHAPTER 77: 04.22. CHAPTER XV THE AUTHORITY AND USE OF SCRIPTURE ======================================================================== CHAPTER XV THE AUTHORITY AND USE OF SCRIPTURE HITHERTO we have been considering the arguments of only a section, although a large and important section, of those whose views we are examining. We are now to look at the final issues of life or death eternal. And here there are two classes of objectors to the common views: those commonly called "annihilationists" on the one side, but who prefer for their views the designation of "conditional immortality"; and those who on the other side advocate the doctrine of the possible or actual salvation of all men, after whatever ages it may be of purificatory suffering. Of necessity our examination of these opposing statements will lead us in very different directions: they unite only in maintaining the doctrine to which is generally given the Scripture title of the "restitution of all things," and in certain ethical arguments against the ordinary views. The stronghold of the first class of writers they believe to be in the texts which speak of immortality, and of eternal life as the portion of the saved, and of death and destruction in various forms of expression as that of the unsaved. The stronghold of the latter, so far as they take Scripture as their ground of argument, is found, as they believe, in the texts which speak of the reconciliation of all things, and in the expressions for "eternal" being not really equivalent to "everlasting." As, however, we desire to take up not merely the arguments of those who differ from us, but to show the Scriptural view from Scripture itself; and as the full bearing of its statements needs to be considered, and not mere selected and isolated texts, the consideration of these will necessarily render it the only satisfactory course to meet the various arguments from whatever source as incidental to the examination of the Scripture doctrine itself. This only I believe will suffice him for whom Scripture has its due place and authority, as what alone can decide in a matter of this kind. The truth will thus be continually before us, and our souls be kept in the presence of Him who has given it rather than in the presence of human thoughts and questionings, which can be but this after all. I do not shrink from the ethical inquiry. But for this we must have first of all the distinct statement of the doctrine before us, and then also Scripture itself must test the ethics as all else. It will be worth while then in the first place to consider the authority of Scripture in this subject of so immense importance to us, and which involves not only our views of the eternal destiny of men, but of the character of God Himself. And the question of its authority embraces another, of what is authoritative - is it the text, the "letter" of the word, if you will, or is it what some call the "Scriptures of God in their broad outlines" in contrast to this? To which of these is the appeal to be? Are we after all only likely more to lose our way by any minute examination of the words of Revelation? Is the danger in too close a scrutiny or too little? For it has been asserted by a recent, but very well-known writer* that, because "we are in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit" - "our guide is the Scriptures of God in their broad outlines; the revelation of God in its glorious unity; - the books of God in their eternal simplicity, read by the illumination of that Spirit of Christ which dwelleth in us, except we be reprobates. Our guide is not, and never shall be what the Scriptures call ‘the letter that killeth;’ - the tyrannous realism of ambiguous metaphors, the asserted infallibility of isolated words." It is true he tells is he is "quite content that texts should decide" this, question; but then it is only "if except as an anachronism, we mean nothing when we say, ‘I believe in the holy Ghost’; if we prefer our sleepy shibboleths and dead traditions to the living promise ‘I will dwell in them and walk in them,’ " so that at that rate we shall consult them at manifest disadvantage, and with little hope it should seem of any satisfactory result. *Canon Farrar: Sermons on "Eternal Hope," Serm. 3. There is some little difficulty in meeting objections which from their nature tend to deprive us of the very authority by which alone we can decide them. For if we should remind Canon Farrar that the apostle tells us that the things he spoke were not in "the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," and that it seems strange to make the Holy Ghost to be in conflict with His own "words" he might answer us that we were doing now the very thing he objected to, and settling the matter by an appeal to isolated "texts." The only encouragement to such an appeal seems to be in this, that he himself so appeals. He himself believes in the promise, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them," and cannot include this among the "sleepy shibboleths and dead traditions" of which he speaks. Moreover he believes at least that "the letter killeth." Therefore, it should seem that we might examine his own proof texts, and see how far, if indeed he base it upon these, they justify his position. Now it is the same apostle who vouches for his very "words" being taught him by the Holy Ghost, who tells us that "the letter killeth"; and if we would not have that in the worst sense an isolated text, a phrase wrenched from its context and applied haphazard as we please, we must inquire a little what its context is. We shall find the words then in his second epistle to the church at Corinth (iii. 6); and with the verse preceding it runs thus: - "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves but our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." If we look back to the verses going before, we shall find that he has been contrasting the writing on "tables of stone" with the writing of the Spirit of the living God "in fleshy tables of the heart." If we go on to the verses following, we shall find him speaking of the former as "the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones," given to the children of Israel by Moses, and of the latter again, in contrast, as "the ministration of the Spirit." And in the next verse again he styles the one "the ministration of condemnation," the other "the ministration of righteousness." We need not follow him further. Upon the face of this then, the apostle in "the letter" that "killeth" is speaking of the "ministration of death," and that as what was written upon the "tables of stone," the law and nothing else. It is this that he is contrasting with the "new testament," or gospel, as "the ministration of righteousness" and life by the Spirit. The law, the letter, killed: was designed by its manifestation of what God required from man to give him the sentence of death in himself. "When the commandment came," says the apostle, speaking of its proved effect, "sin revived, and I died" (Rom 7:9). The gospel on the other hand "ministered righteousness" - provided, not required it, and so was life to souls, not death. In the one "the letter" of a mere commandment "killed." In the other the power of the Spirit wrought, giving life. Paul was a minister of the "New Testament," not the Old, "not of letter, but of Spirit." But then, I fear me, Canon Farrar cannot be acquitted of the grossest violation of his own precept. He Is in reality using "isolated words," words isolated from their context and applied to establish principles with which they have not the remotest connection. He uses them to put in opposition the words which the Holy Ghost taught and the Holy Ghost who taught them; and to substitute for adherence to the inspired text a sort of mystic, living guidance, which renounces the Scriptures as having any mere verbal accuracy to be adhered to - "the asserted infallibility of isolated words" - and replaces this with "the Scriptures of God in their broad outlines," not to be too narrowly defined; "the revelation of God in its glorious unity," untroubled by the discordance of "isolated texts"; practically, anything that we may please to call the teaching of the Spirit and the word, not to be critically tested even by that word by which the Spirit teaches. On the other hand, we have been taught that "hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error," not by any assurance of our own hearts, as having the fulfilment of the promise, "I will dwell in them and walk in them," - true and blessed as that promise is, - but as "hearing" or not hearing" the men inspired of God to give us Scripture (1Jn 4:6). We have learnt by the conduct of the Bereans to "search the Scriptures daily" whether these things are so. And from the apostle of the Gentiles that the "very words" he gives us, isolated or not, are words taught of the Holy Ghost Himself. Canon Farrar does indeed allow us to "decide by texts alone," but it is only if we prefer "sleepy shibboleths and dead traditions" to the living guidance of the Spirit Himself. Is the word of God a "dead tradition"? I will gladly believe rather that he cannot mean this. But then his words do wrong to his meaning, and we have no guide in the latter. I quote from the appendix to his book another statement of his views, possibly more calm and deliberate than that from the sermon in the body of it: "I care but little in any controversy for the stress laid upon one or two isolated and dubious texts out of the sacred literature of fifteen hundred years. They may be torn from their context; they may be distorted; they may be misinterpreted; they may be irrelevant; they may be misunderstood; they may - as the prophets and the apostles, and our blessed Lord Himself distinctly intimated - they may reflect the ignorance of a dark age, or the fragment of an imperfect revelation; they may be a bare concession to imperfection or a low stepping-stone to progress. What the Bible teaches as a whole; what the Bibles also teach as a whole - for History and Conscience, and Nature and Experience, these too are sacred books, that, and that only, is the immutable law of God." Thus it is very plain what Dr. Farrar means by refusing the "infallibility of isolated words." For him there are many Bibles, all fallible alike, and he himself is of these fallible Bibles the only apparently infallible interpreter. History is such a Bible, written where and how, out of all the contradictory tomes to which every day is giving fresh birth, he does not say. Conscience is another, though it teach men to bow down to stocks or stones, or snakes and crocodiles; conscience, which made Saul kill God’s saints to do Him service. Nature is still another, with, perchance, a Huxley or a Darwin as its chronicler and expounder. Experience, which proved to the Jews of Jeremiah’s day, that while they burnt incense to the queen of heaven, they "had plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil." All these are Bibles, upon whose imperfect and contradictory utterances the mind of man is to sit in judgment - to decide what it can receive and what reject; and the blessed word of God is to take its place among these, and man is to say which of its utterances is the "reflection of the ignorance of a dark age," and which "a bare concession to imperfection," and which "a low stepping-stone to progress." We may thank Dr. Farrar for his candor. It is certainly well to know what Scripture is for him, and how far "texts" are likely to decide the matter in question. Where he finds that prophets and apostles, nay, the Lord Himself; sanction his view of the matter, it would be hard to say. There is certainly abundance of proof of the very opposite, and in the mouth of one who professes such unbounded confidence in the "illumination of the Spirit of Christ," it seems a strange assertion that thus the Spirit of truth must have taught error, or at least have used such feeble and imperfect means of communicating truth, that He could not prevent its being mixed up with error. We refuse this teaching altogether. We on the authority of Scripture itself believe that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof; for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2Ti 3:16-17). We believe in a really divine revelation given to us by One who cannot lie, and who does not for bread give us a stone, nor put darkness for light, or light for darkness. We would obediently "search "these Scriptures, conscious indeed of our own weakness and ignorance in doing so, hut sincerely trusting Him, who assures us that "he that will do God’s will shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God" (John 7:17). Dr. Farrar speaks of "the tyrannous realism of ambiguous metaphors," of course, the metaphors of Scripture. And it is an objection which we have met before, and shall meet at every step as we now proceed, that the texts that are used in this controversy are largely of this nature. Now the ambiguity of the metaphors can only be tested by the examination of the passages in question: the fact of their being largely metaphorical admits of no doubt. Mr. Minton puts this triumphantly in his published "Way Everlasting." "Suppose," says he to the person he is addressing, "we agreed to waive everything on either side, of a purely figurative character, whether parables, metaphors or visions, together with passages admitted to be of doubtful meaning on other ground than that connected with the issue between us, and to abide by the plain prose statements that form the staple of Scripture testimony on the subject - where would you be? Simply nowhere. You would be out of court." Mr. Minton’s triumph is hardly so well assured; yet doubtless he has some apparent reason for what he says. The pictorial representations if I may so say, of the eternal state are those naturally in which we find the most vivid images of eternal judgment; and these are precisely the passages which he and such as he have most difficulty in reconciling with their various theories. The book of Revelation especially, the prophetic panorama of things to come, gives them especial trouble. The eternal torment spoken of there Mr. Minton candidly confesses his inability to explain in any way quite satisfactory to his own mind.* But the "highly figurative" character of these visions is the constant plea, and they can refuse upon this ground what they cannot explain. To maintain the authority of texts like these, is just to assert that "tyrannous realism of ambiguous metaphors" against which Canon Farrar utters his protest. Yet the book has, as few have, its inspired title, and that title is "the Revelation of Jesus Christ." It is as if the complaints of obscurity and ambiguity had already reached the Divine ears from out the unborn future, and He had provided for them with the assurance of its being a revelation, a true unfolding of "things to come to pass." I would ask them to mark this, that it is here they find their greatest difficulty, in what Christ calls His "Revelation."† *Way Everlasting, 4th ed., p. 60. †For Mr. Dobney these are the "hieroglyphs of Patmos." Mr. Cox would exclude from the decision of this question not only "Revelation," but the parables of the Lord, and all the Old Testament (Salvator Mundi, ch. 2:). The figurative character is confessed, but it is only what is found wherever eternal things are pictured to us. There seems no other way of their being set before us indeed, than by figures taken from the things around; and we may be sure that He who speaks to us in them has taken not the most obscure and doubtful way to show them to us. "We see through a glass, darkly," says the apostle. The last phrase is literally "in an enigma" (1Co 13:12, marg.). Thus it is the Scripture way to use enigmas to describe what otherwise it may well be impossible for a man to utter (2Co 12:4). Yet though it was of old the complaint as to the prophets that they "spake parables" (Eze 20:49), it is nevertheless expected of disciples at least, that they should understand them. "Know ye not this parable?" asked the Lord once of the twelve, "and how then will ye know all parables?" (Mark 4:13). Surely our shame it is to be akin to those who seeing do not perceive, and hearing do not understand. The Lord does not trifle with us, does not invite us to see what He forbids us to understand.* And there we must pause for the present. The visions themselves will come before us at another time. *As to the doubtfulness of the interpretation of the parables, Mr. Cox asks of Mat 13:33, and Luk 15:4 : "Would it not be quite easy to interpret these weighty and emphatic phrases as signifying that the whole mass of mankind is to be leavened and quickened by the truth of Christ, and that the great Bishop of our souls will never cease from his quest of any poor lost sinner until he find him and restore him to the fold?" No doubt it is "easy," if we assume the meaning of symbols as we please, and this has been largely done; but the "three measures of meal" refer to the meat-offering with which no leaven was to be mixed (Lev 2:11), and cannot mean " the whole mass of mankind," any more than the "leaven" can ever be interpreted as good according to Scripture usage (Comp. Mat 16:6; Mat 16:11-12; Mark 8:15; 1Co 5:6-8; Gal 5:9). Again, the "lost" sheep is the "sinner that repenteth," and Christ does find all such. As to the prodigal figuring the return of a soul from hell (the far country) it is unworthy trifling, which stamps the character of the man who uses it. Think of a sinner going away from God to enjoy himself in hell! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 78: 04.23. CHAPTER XVI IMMORTALITY: IS IT CONDITIONAL? ======================================================================== CHAPTER XVI IMMORTALITY: IS IT CONDITIONAL? THE course we shall pursue in our examination is briefly this: first, we shall seek out the meaning and use of the terms which are employed in Scripture in relation to this subject; then we shall look at the prophetic outline of the future, so far as may be needed to connect and apply the various passages; next, we shall try and fill in this scheme with the passages which bear upon the successive events which it marks out; and finally, give some attention to the ethical questions. We shall begin with immortality and eternal life, two questions, which for annihilationists are only one; and, however discordant up to this time may have been their statements, we shall find them in almost perfect agreement now. Says Mr. Morris: - "The Son of God came to give life, even eternal life; and if it be asked, ‘Who will live forever?’ the answer of the Lord and Giver of life, who is also the Bread of life, is in these words; ‘He that eateth of this bread shall live forever.’ And it is most irreverent and evil for any man to say, that in the vocabulary of the Son of God the word ‘life’ does not mean life; and that the words ‘eternal life’ do not mean eternal life, and that the words ‘shall live forever’ do not mean shall live forever. And yet, in their ecclesiastical teaching, certain men are hurried into this kind of irreverence and evil by reason of their having adopted the false doctrine of the innate and essential immortality of ‘the earthly’ race."* *What is Man" p 48. And at the other end of annihilationism, the follower of Dr. Thomas, Mr. Roberts of Birmingham, after quoting various passages which speak of eternal life, writes (Twelve Lectures, p. 82): "Now, if immortality be the natural attribute of every son of Adam from the very moment he breathes, what can be the meaning of testimonies like these, which, one and all, speak of immortality as a future contingency, a thing to be sought for, a reward, a thing to be given, a thing brought to light through the gospel etc? There is an utter incongruity in such language, if immortality be a natural and present possession. How can you promise a man that which is already his own? The divine promise is, that God will award eternal life to those who seek for glory, honour and immortality; and this is the strongest proof that human nature is utterly destitute of it at present." Immortality and eternal life are here confounded. And it does not make it better that Mr. Roberts quotes apparent Scripture to justify the confusion. He may shelter himself under the fact that he is not alone in it.* He is not; but that will not make him less responsible for deception, even unwittingly practised.† *Messrs Dobney, Hastings, Ham, Moncrieff, Z. Campbell, Minton, Goodwyn and Constable, all agree with him. No doubt, others also. †He takes no notice of it even in his review of my book, after its being plainly pointed out to him. But this is no unaccustomed thing with him. The true Scriptural statement is this: - In the New Testament the true word for immortality, athanasia, occurs but three times: 1Co 15:53-54, "this mortal must put on immortality" "when. . . . this mortal shall have put on immortality,.." and once of God it is asserted (1Ti 6:16), that He "only hath immortality." The adjective "immortal’s does not even occur. There is indeed another word, aphtharsia, twice translated in our version "immortality" and that is the word Mr. Roberts with others has caught at as showing man’s seeking it; but its proper meaning is "incorruption," and so it is mostly translated I cite all the passages: - Rom 2:7 : - "glory, honour and immortality." 1Co 15:42 : - "it is raised in incorruption." 1Co 15:50 : - "neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." 1Co 15:53 : - "must put on incorruption." 1Co 15:54 : - "shall have put on incorruption." Eph 6:24 : - "love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." 2Ti 1:10 : - " brought life and immortality to light by the gospel." Tit 2:7 : - "incorruptness, gravity, sincerity." Its adjective, aphthartos, "incorruptible," is used seven times, and applied to God (Rom 1:23, 1Ti 1:17); the crown of the righteous (1Co 9:25); our inheritance (1Pe 1:4); the word of God (1Pe 1:23); and once figuratively, "that which is not corruptible" (1Pe 3:4). It is only once in our version (1Ti 1:17) rendered "immortal," but with no more reason than in other places. Furthermore its opposite, phthartos, corruptible," is six times found, and always so rendered: Rom 1:1-32; 1Co 9:25; 1Co 15:53-54; 1Pe 1:18; 1Pe 1:23. The difference between these words comes out in 1Co 15:1-58 :, in which they are all to be found. Speaking of the dead body of the saint (1Co 15:42-50) the apostle uses the word "corruptible" and "corruption." It was not mortal, but dead. Then, speaking of the resurrection of those " that are Christ’s at His coming" (1Co 15:23), he brings in also the change of the living saints which would accompany it: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed;" "the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we (the living) shall be changed; for this corruptible (applying to the dead saints) must put on incorruption, and this mortal (applying to the living) must put on immortality." Thus there is evident distinction in the use of these words in Scripture; and when it is said (Rom 2:7) that God will render "to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption, eternal life," it is not at all the same as seeking for immortality, but the blessed, incorruptible state in which resurrection or the "change" will put the saints at the coming of Christ. .And it applies only to the saints, as the whole description in 1Co 15:42-50 does. The wicked are not those of whom it is said, "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power." Such words are applicable alone to the bloom and beauty of the " resurrection of life." Quite true that the saints, alive but mortal when Christ comes, will then get "immortality." The liability and tendency to death will in their case be of course removed. But that word is the expression of a different fact from that which is pointed out in the case of those who have died. All will alike of course possess incorruption, putting on alike the image of the heavenly; but the fact noticed as to the living is that they shall not sleep at all, "mortality" in their case being "swallowed up of life." For of course mortality is our condition down here. "Immortality" is not "our natural and present condition." Immortality is eathlessness, and who among the people Mr. Roberts is opposing asserts that we do not die? It is a poor quibble that. The soul does not die; nor the spirit; but man does surely. The question is as to what death is, not whether men are subject to it. Of course with Mr. R. it is cessation of existence, but then that is not what we mean by death. We mean the dust returning to the earth as it was, while the spirit returns to God who gave it. Under the same word we are in reality speaking of different things. General Goodwyn has indeed another application of the words in this chapter: - "1Co 15:50 applies the word ‘corruption’ to flesh and blood, the entire natural man; 1Co 15:52 applies the word ‘incorruptible’ to dead bodies ‘raised.’ In 1Co 15:53, therefore, the word ‘incorruption’ evidently applies to the body, and consequently ‘immortality’ to the soul, but only in resurrection, ‘when body and soul are reunited. The apostle Peter, in contrasting the source of the children of God with the natural birth of the Adam race, says that the former are ‘born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible.’ The truth, therefore, remains that the latter are born of ‘corruptible seed’; and the apostle Paul gives further force to this expression when he says, ‘We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not that we would be unclothed’ - uncovered with a body - ‘but clothed upon, that MORTALITY might be swallowed up of LIFE.’ Here is a distinct assertion that the personality - apart or not from the body - is ‘mortal’ (2Co 5:4)." If boldness would carry the day the field were won. As it is we are not convinced. We dispute the fact of "flesh and blood" being the "entire natural man"; we agree that "incorruption" everywhere applies to the body. We deny the "consequence" that mortality or immortality refers to the soul. It refers to the bodies of the living when Christ comes, as corruption and incorruption to the bodies of the dead. Let any one compare 1Th 4:15-17, where the same event is spoken of and where the dead in Christ, and "we" who are alive and remain are similarly contrasted. The "we shall be changed" is contrasted in 1Co 15:52, with the dead being "raised incorruptible," and so similarly in the next verse, "this corruptible" applies to the dead, "this mortal" to the living: both expressions to the body, the "mortal flesh" (2Co 4:11). Again, in the passage from 1Pe 1:23, the "incorruptible seed" is the "word of God, which by the gospel is preached unto you." What has that to do with the physical constitution of man? And if we are born, as I have no wish to deny, of "corruptible seed," how does that show that such a term applies to the physical constitution of the soul or spirit? Nay, he has himself just now applied "corruptible" to the condition of the body, and "mortal" in contrast with this to the state of the soul. Neither assumption can bear the least examination. The quotation from 2Co 5:4 is, however, still more recklessly misapplied. Where is the "assertion that the personality, apart from the body, is mortal"? It is Gen. Goodwyn’s own, not the apostle’s. He has distinctly stated that he groaned, not to be unclothed, but clothed upon. Now this is the very change of the living we have before been looking at. Paul, the living but mortal man, longed not to be unclothed - to be apart from the body - but, in opposition to that, to be clothed upon, that mortality, his present condition, might be swallowed up of life. How could the "personality," apart from the body, be according to Gen. Goodwyn, "mortal" any more? Would he call a dead body mortal? And for him, apart from the body, the soul is as strictly dead as is the body itself Mr. Roberts makes an effort to show that immortality and incorruption are interchangeable terms; and we will allow him to state how in his own words: "The first (athanasia) tells us that the life of the age is deathless. In entering it we are told that this mortal shall put on immortality. By this we know the truth declared by Christ, that ‘They who are accounted worthy of the age. . . cannot die any more’ (Luk 20:36). But how is it that life is thus made endless to those that were before but mortal? The second word (aphtharsia) answers it: ‘This corruptible must put on incorruption’ (1Co 15:53). Men are mortal - liable to death - because their natures are corruptible; they decay. But make them incorruptible, and endlessness of life is the necessary consequence. Hence to seek for incorruption is equivalent to seeking for deathlessness or immortality." Mr. Roberts’ physiological knowledge is as defective as his knowledge of Scripture. I have already pointed out that his theory of life being the result of organization is the very reverse at least of what the acutest physiologists of the day assert. Prof. Huxley, well known to be as stout a materialist as he is undeniably an unbeliever, admits over and over again that life is the cause of organization, and not organization the cause of life. (Introd. to Classification of Animals.) I have before quoted from another of the same school. It is almost the universally accepted doctrine now. Mr. R.’s present assertion is but the logical outgrowth of his former one. If life be the result of organization, doubtless immortality will be that of incorruption. But as the former statement needs to be reversed, so will the latter require to be. Incorruption will be based rather upon immortality, but even so is not (as it would appear) its necessary result. We must bear in mind that we are speaking here of what is almost outside the sphere of mere human knowledge, and where a verse or two of Scripture is all the Biblical material to draw from either. But all that we do know is against the view Mr. Roberts advocates. That "immortality" as a term is applied in Scripture only to the righteous is not of striking force when we remember that it is only applied to them in two consecutive verses (1Co 15:53-54), one of which is but really the repetition of the other. But, say these writers (quoting 1Ti 6:16), "God only hath immortality." What then? Why, it is argued, "the soul can’t have it." Let them go a little farther, and the result will be apparent. The angels then cannot either. Does death then reign throughout the ranks of created, sinless beings? That will not of course be contended for; but it is involved necessarily in the argument; and must follow, or the argument be given up. No, says Mr. Roberts, for the angels "are God to us; for they are of His nature, and come only on His errands". . . "they are of the divine nature they are ‘spirit.’ " And so is man’s spirit "spirit," and we have seen that, if angels be "Sons of God" on that account, just so are men also "His offspring." Whatever therefore this proves as to angels, it proves also for the spirit of man. That the angels represent God to us, as coming on His errands, proves nothing nor disproves. The Scripture sense of the passage does indeed make it apply to angels, and to all created beings. It is the essential difference between the Creator and all His works, that He alone by Himself subsists. "By Him," on the other hand, "all things subsist." "He upholdeth all things by the word of His power." Thus we by no means maintain what Mr. Morris calls, and rightly calls, "the false doctrine of the innate and essential immortality of the earthly race." So far from that we contend that the race is mortal, and that immortality innate and essential belongs to no creature, fallen or unfallen. It is the assurance of this that this passage in Timothy gives. In that sense, as possessing it in Himself God alone hath it, and in Him "we live, and move, and have our being." "By Him all things subsist." But this no more proves that the soul dies, than that angels die. Dependent derived immortality it may have equally with them, and in that sense its immortality is affirmed; for they that kill the body cannot kill the soul. Eternal life, which they confound with immortality, is a wholly different thing; and this we shall now proceed to show. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 79: 04.24. CHAPTER XVII ETERNAL LIFE: WHAT IS IT? ======================================================================== CHAPTER XVII ETERNAL LIFE: WHAT IS IT? IT will be remembered that the word used in the New Testament for the life that the righteous enter upon as their eternal condition is always the same word. It is not psuche but zoe. It ought not to be needful to insist upon this again. Gen. Goodwyn, as we have seen, fully admits it, and tries to make capital of it in his own peculiar way. As however Mr. Roberts has made, in his review of my former book, one final effort to overthrow this position, We shall again listen to his own words about it. He says:- "Just as we speak of the present life under different words, such as life, existence, being, so the future life is variously designated according to the relation in which it is considered It is either psuche, soul (Matt. xvi 25); zoe, life (Mark 10:30); or heemeis, we [!!] (1Th 4:17), as the line of thought demands; but the hope, in all cases is absolutely one and the same. The saving of the psuche (Heb 10:39), is the obtaining of eternal zoe, (Mat 19:29), by the ‘us’ of Paul’s discourse (2Co 4:14)." I feel as if apology were due to my readers for quoting this or answering. Still as I suppose it seems satisfactory to himself, there may be others also who need the answer. It may be a short one, when the "we" who obtain eternal life are stated to be the life that "we" obtain. But at least, you may say, "the saving of the psuche is the obtaining of eternal zoe," is it not? I should suppose that proved that they were different. For certainly it would not consist with Scripture to speak of "the saving of the zoe" or of the "obtaining of eternal psuche." In Scripture phrase a saved man "keeps his psuche unto everlasting zoe," and these things are never confounded or reversed. Eternal life is never psuche. Mr. Roberts would gladly produce the passage to prove it, if it could be found. Let it be remembered then that we are speaking of this one word zoe, when we inquire into the meaning of "everlasting life." And first, what then is "life"? What do we ordinarily mean by it? Mr. Constable raises the same question, and answers it: and he now shall tell what he believes it means. He says (Duration and Nat. of Fut. Punishment): - "If we were only to ask what was its primary sense, we should have no difficulty. All allow existence to be its primary signification. We will hereafter show that the primary sense of this term is the only one admissible; but here we will not further insist on it. We will here only ask if there was one universal sense attached to this term; so that while there might be to a greater or less extent a variety of senses attached to it in one place or another, still as accepted by all mankind speaking the Grecian tongue, it had only one sense which was every where accepted as a true sense, and by some accepted as the only sense. Here, too, we are able to come to a certain conclusion. That sense of ‘existence,’ which is undoubtedly the primary sense, is as undoubtedly a sense accepted by every Grecian speaker as a true sense, and by very many Grecian speakers accepted as its only sense. Our opponents themselves cannot and do not attempt to deny this, ‘The unenlightened heathen,’ says Mattison, ‘understood the terms life and death as implying simple existence or nonexistence.’ And Mr. Constable argues therefore that so it must have been understood, and meant to be understood, by the people to whom the gospel was addressed, or if not, the different sense attached to it would have required to be explained to them; and "of such explanation we do not find a trace. Where we do find an inspired writer defining the meaning of ‘life’ he defines it exactly as a heathen would do: ‘What is your life?’ saith the apostle James. ‘It is even,’ he replies, ‘a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.’ Life, with St. James, himself a Jew, meant but. what it meant with a heathen, existence." Mr. Constable is one who, beyond most of his school, claims for himself critical and precise accuracy, and he challenges answer to his arguments. I have therefore so often chosen him as the exponent of the views of his own class of writers. But we have had already many a proof of his in competency as a reasoner. It may be the result of the unhappy system he has taken up, which seems to cloud the intellect, as it certainly enfeebles spiritual perception. Let us examine his statement however. And here in the first place, it is a little disappointing to turn to the table which he gives us further on in his book, of the meanings of the Greek words which bear upon this question, and to look in vain for this universal meaning attaching to zoe! His vocabulary is from Liddell and Scott, "allowed to be an authority of the highest order," as he truly says. And moreover, he says, he appends to the words "every meaning attached to them in the ordinary Greek language." After giving it, he says, "we will thank our readers to look carefully at the foregoing table." We have done so, and find as the result: - "(zoe), 1. a living or property, 2. life as opposed to death, zao (zao), 1. to live (spoken of animal life); 2. to be in full life and strength." This is certainly remarkable. Mr. Constable’s primary, universal sense of zoe is not found in a table furnished by himself, and certified to contain "every meaning attached to it in the ordinary Greek language." But this is not all. Nor can we acquit Mr. Constable of the gravest charge that can be brought against a controversial writer, a lending himself to deception of the worst kind. The primary meaning he gives might indeed awaken suspicion by its strange appearance. Not only is "life, as opposed to death," the secondary meaning, NOT the primary, in his own table; but that primary meaning looks strangely also; "a living or property." What kind of property? and why "living" instead of "life"? I turn to Liddell and Scott for explanation, and I find as follows: - " a living, 1:e., means of life, goods, property; 2. Att. life, opp. to death." "A living, 1: e., MEANS OF life, goods, property": that is the primary meaning. Secondarily, and in the Attic dialect, one of the FIVE dialects of Greek, it means "life, as opposed to death." How different is the whole statement of the case from that which he has given us. And here I am arguing nothing myself; I am but giving his own authority. Where is "existence" as the universal meaning of zoe? It is not found as a meaning at all, even in his own vocabulary! And even the meaning of life as opposed to death is neither the primary meaning, nor the universal, but only in the Attic dialect, one division of the Greek tongue out of five. To use no language unnecessarily harsh in the matter, Mr. Constable has mis-stated a very simple matter of fact. But it is the New Testament use of the term with which we are concerned, and we do not purpose carrying the examination further. For my own part, in the case of a common New Testament word, I am convinced that a Greek concordance (that is, the examination of the word itself as it occurs in Scripture) is of more value to the Bible student than the best dictionary that ever was. The word zoe occurs 134 times in the New Testament. It is in one place rendered "lifetime" (Luk 16:25); in every other case it is rendered, as it only could be rendered, "life." And Mr. Constable may raise the question, if he please, are not existence and life but the same thing? I answer, the question occupying so intently the minds of many in the present day, would have no meaning if it were so. We have already quoted Prof. Nicholson to the effect that "no rigid definition of life appears to be at present possible." I believe from the Scripture point of view indeed something approaching a definition may be possible, but certainly not in the crude way which annihilationists press with the most extraordinary confidence. "Eternal life," says Mr. Roberts, is in the first place life in its primary sense of being." Is that the primary sense? Can nothing "be," but what "lives"? It is not even the sense at all, any more than is existence. Goodwyn contradicts both; he says : - "I am now prepared to add that life does not in Scripture, nor anywhere else, invariably mean mere existence; but is inseparable from a condition or character developed by the action of the mind." If life is existence "inseparable" from a certain "character," then it can never be "mere existence". and so far at least the definition is correct. Let us examine it a little further. Life manifests itself by action: it is the energy that works the whole machinery, so to speak, of the being in which it dwells. But we may also, and in fact do more frequently speak of it as the motion of the machinery itself. The latter is life phenomenal, what it is as subject to our inspection, a matter of’ actual observation and knowledge. The former is life potential, the power behind the movement and unseen. But then we also speak of life in a still larger way as comprehending the course of this active existence; life as furnishing the individual history. And as connected with this, although distinct, we speak of life as differentiated by its surroundings: English life, American life, and even without an adjective at all, of a young man entering upon life, life in the pregnant sense, implying its full tale of hopes and joys, and cares and sorrows. In the sphere of merely natural things of which alone we are as yet speaking, the life potential, according to Scripture, is the soul, or psuche. 2. The phenomenal, physical, animal life induced by the presence of the soul in the body, is also psuche. 3. The historical life is on the other hand always zoe.* And - 4. Zoe, too, is life in the pregnant sense, implying all that it introduces to. The first two meanings are connected together and covered by the one word, psuche, as the last two are on the other hand connected, and covered by the one word, zoe. Of psuche enough has been said already. Zoe used with reference to the natural life† occurs but thirteen times in the New Testament. I give all these occurrences that we may have the subject as fully as possible before us. 1. Life in the historical sense:- Luk 1:75 : "all the days of our life." Luk 16:25 : "thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." Acts 8:33 : "his life is taken from the earth." Acts 7:25 : "he giveth to all life and breath and all things." Rom 8:38 : "neither death nor life shall separate us." 1Co 3:22 : "all things are yours, whether life or death." 1Co 15:19 : "if in this life only we have hope in Christ." Php 1:20 : "whether by life or death." 1Ti 4:8 : "having promise of the life that now is." Heb 7:3 : "neither beginning of days, nor end of life." Jas 4:14 : "for what is your life? it is even a vapor." 2. In the pregnant sense; only twice, but distinct:- Luk 12:15 : "a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of things." 1Pe 3:10 : "ho that will love life, and see good days." *I leave out of consideration one word, which, although it figures largely in ordinary Greek, occurs but five times in the New Testament in the sense of "life," and here always as a synonym of zoe in the historical sense. Its use lies outside of our present inquiry. The five passages are Luk 8:14, 1Ti 2:2; 2Ti 2:4; 1Pe 4:3; 1Jn 2:16. †It is strange that Goodwyn should say (Truth and Tradition, p. 18): "In every instance where zoe is used it is applied to the eternity of God, of the Lord Jesus, and of believers in Him." This is but one of the many careless statements to be found in these writers. So far then we have been speaking of natural life only. I have been thus particular in speaking of it, because the natural sense is of course the primary, and furnishes the basis of the spiritual sense. We shall find, if I mistake not, by carrying these definitions with us, that they will assist us greatly in the apprehension of what Scripture calls "eternal life," which as a term is used in a precisely similar way, a way which the crude conception of Messrs Constable and Roberts can in no wise harmonize, much less explain. If life then is not mere "existence" "eternal life" is still less, if possible merely "eternal existence" It is a life begun here and now in those who are nevertheless as mortal as ever, a consideration which at once sets such an explanation of it entirely aside. The wicked who have it not exist "just as much as those who have it, while they do not in this sense "live" at all. Let us examine this closely, for it is the key of the whole position. Eternal life" in Scripture is always, as before said, zoe, never psuche It is presented however in the same four aspects as the natural life. Here the potential life, the soul of this spiritual existence, is Christ Himself. The phenomenal life, the result of His relationship to us, is that which begins with our new and spiritual birth. The historical life is our individual course on earth as children of God. And finally we enter upon life, embark on it in the full and pregnant sense, when we "go into" it in the fast hastening day of the Saviour’s coming. We must look at it in each of these different applications. 1. Apart from the illustration, not even Mr. Constable would probably deny the first sense, although he must needs be far from seeing its depth of blessed meaning. Scripture is full of it; but it will suffice to quote but a few passages. Thus the apostle speaks of Him who in the beginning was with God, and was God, that "in Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). In his first epistle similarly, that "the life was manifested; and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,, (1Jn 1:2). So the record is, "that God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son; he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1Jn 5:11-12). Now here to begin with, let me ask, is it eternal existence that was manifested in Christ, and was the light of men? But again, and furthermore, - 2. Not only has "he that hath the Son of God" got life, but he has got it as a present possession and an abiding one. He has no mere pledge and promise of it. It is as possessing it that he is in the spiritual sense a child of God and born of God. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life" (John 3:36). "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my words, and believeth on Him that sent me HATH everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but IS passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). Is this only "the promise and the pledge"? Nay; for - "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have no life IN you; whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood HATH eternal life" (John 6:53-54). And again, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer Hath eternal life ABIDING IN HIM" (1Jn 3:14-15). Thus eternal life is "in," and "abideth in" the believer he has no mere pledge and promise of it; it is begun in him already. Listen, and the Lord Himself will define it yet more simply: for - "THIS IS life eternal, that they might know," or better, "that they know,"* "Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3). *For it is a well known peculiarity of John’s to use hina for hoti "in order that" for "that." Here it is characterized for us, and we know (if we know anything) the life it speaks of. It began in us when faith began. It began with our new birth. It is not then eternal existence, for still we die. It is not existence but a new and blessed energy of good; an activity of holy affections of which Christ now known as Saviour is the spring and soul. This is eternal life, if Scripture is to be believed. The definitions of annihilationists fail hopelessly, therefore, here. Eternal life is not immortality; it is not eternal existence, as they allege. It is the life which we have as spiritually quickened from the dead. 3. The outward historical life necessarily blends with the outward natural life so that they cannot be really separated. The life of’ the saint and the life of the man are here but one. For this reason no Scripture can be produced under this head, which might not be fairly challenged. 4. But the pregnant sense is, as we might expect, in fullest use of all; for our life points ever forward to the time when we shall have it in all that it implies. And even as we have said, the Young man "enters upon life," when he enters upon its full activities free from the necessary restraints of immaturity, so we too shall "enter into life," albeit we have it now within us. And who that feels the workings of the life within most fully, but must look forward, too, most simply to that future, and say to himself; without a thought of denying what he has already, that his life is there? Thus "ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life" (Rom 6:22); "in the world to come eternal life" (Mark 10:30); "in hope of eternal life " (Tit 1:2); "shall inherit everlasting life" (Mat 19:29), and similar expressions, in no wise interfere with the fact asserted quite as plainly, if not as frequently that we have eternal life abiding in us now. These are only the various modes of speech which as we have seen we use with regard to the natural life itself. Yet these expressions are all that the writers who hold what they call the doctrine of "conditional immortality" can urge against the view that life eternal is what is begun in us in new birth already. Mr. Constable calls this sense of life the "figurative" sense. But it is no more figurative than is the necessary result of using words pertaining to what is natural and applying them to what is spiritual. And this we have always to do if we speak of the spiritual at all. Eternal life belongs not to the sphere of the natural. It is what was manifested in Christ down here, and is ours now in present possession - spiritual not natural life. Hence we use the term as it in must be used; and Mr. Constable cannot use it in his fashion without falsifying Scripture to do so. He does thus falsify it, when he says, "Scripture represents eternal life as a gift not yet enjoyed by the children of God." He falsifies it when he says that, "while there are no doubt many Scriptures, which describe the believer as now having everlasting life, we are EXPRESSLY TOLD elsewhere that this consists in having God’s pledge and promise of that everlasting life; but not its actual possession and enjoyment." This is bold mis-statement. Where is it "expressly told"? Mr. Constable cannot find it. He can find that we are promised it and go into it. He can find that we have it now. He cannot find that the latter only means the former. Hence, his premises being unsound, his conclusions must be. Eternal life is not eternal existence simply, but something far beyond it, and the wicked, not possessing eternal life, are not thereby proved to lose existence. There is only one clause of this argument remaining to detain us for a moment. The words of the apostle (Col 3:3) are quoted in his own behalf by Mr. Roberts: "Your life is hid with Christ in God." And so General Goodwin: "Eternity of living dates from the resurrection (John 6:40; John 6:53-54) and is at present ‘hid with Christ in God.’ Nevertheless the child of God ‘hath ‘it now, howbeit it is in safe custody," etc. This is the way in which these men read Scripture! Where is it said that "eternity of living" is hid with Christ in God? It is said "your life is." And where is there a word about its being in "in safe custody"? It is William Cowper, I believe, who sings, "Your life is hid with Christ in God, Beyond the reach of harm." But then that is not Scripture. The Scripture use and purport of the text which Mr. Goodwyn quotes is far otherwise. "Ye are dead" says the apostle," and your life is hid with Christ in God; when Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." The passage belongs to the first class of texts pointed out, in which our life is identified with its origin. Christ is this life. He is hid in God, and the world sees Him not until the day of His appearing. Our life then is in character. a hidden one, we shall not appear till we appear with Him. A life which draws its character from Him who is the soul of it cannot be known by a world which has rejected the Son of God and found no glory in the Lord of glory. With Him then we are dead. Our life is a hidden one, for Christ is hidden. But it is hidden in God and so but waits for the time in which it will shine fully out. Christ is to appear; and then we shall. This has nothing to do with the question of security, or with eternity of living. It is Christ who is hidden, and who is our life. Our life, therefore, is hid with Him. But that is no denial of its being in us here, but implies the very contrary. It is our possession of it that gives us this character and Christ being the soul of it, "the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not" (1Jn 3:1). Eternal life is not then mere eternity of living, nor does it date only from the resurrection It dates for us from that quickening by the Spirit which every child of God has known; and manifests itself’; though the world (and alas, others) have no eyes for it, in every throb and movement of the soul Godward; while we wait yet to enjoy its fulness - "In the world to come- eternal life." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 80: 04.25. CHAPTER XVIII THE FIRST SENTENCE ======================================================================== CHAPTER XVIII THE FIRST SENTENCE As I have said, I do not refuse to consider the moral aspects of the present question. But just now we are occupied with what must necessarily precede all such considerations. The facts must be before us before there can be any proper appreciation of them. We are searching for the facts of the case, and any preliminary moral reasoning would be out of place would hinder and not help our investigation. The question of penalty stirs all the feelings of our heart, and there are two things, often forgotten, which should lead us to question how far we can safely allow their influence. The first is, that we are judging in our own cause. The second, that the sin which has entailed the penalty has enfeebled necessarily the power of true judgment. The heart of man is not only "desperately wicked": it is deceitful too. Will it be any more likely to judge righteous judgment because the cause it pronounces upon is its own? Is the sinner’s estimate of sin and its desert so likely to be right? Is there no self-interest in the way, no pride that would forbid to stoop so low as to the truth? Ah, the heart of man! that question of the All-seeing is the judgment of its trustworthiness: "Who can know it?" Yet there is One who knows. Can I trust Him and has He spoken in such a way that I can assuredly know what He has said? He has. I can. You might stir my poor human feelings, no doubt, and make me murmur at the judgment He has given: - I am quite capable of that. But I look at the Cross, where for man His own Son hung, and I cannot persuade myself I have a more tender heart than He. No: His judgment is not an enemy’s, nor the impassive estimate of One indifferent. He has given His Son. And though His judgments may be a great deep, and I may be little able to follow out His governmental ways, I have what is better, for I know Himself. Thus you and I, reader, are to listen to His words; not with hearts callous to human suffering, but subject to Him. The deep, dark shadow of the Cross, whereon for us the Son of God hung and died, prepares us for a view of sin and its results deep and dark enough in shadow. But we know the heart we cling to through the gloom; and the sheep, here as ever, know the Shepherd’s voice. We are now to look at the solemn question of penalty. Mr. Constable does but follow in the track of others, when he takes us back to the sentence upon Adam to find in it the key to the whole matter. We shall examine what he says attentively. "Death," he remarks "was the penalty which God originally pronounced against human sin. All that God purposed to inflict upon Adam and his posterity in case of transgression is included in that word ‘death.’ ‘In the day* that thou eatest. thou shalt die.’ It is of the utmost consequence then that we should understand what God meant by death; nor is there the smallest difficulty in doing if we will only attend to what reason and justice require, and what Scripture expressly declares. Its meaning then we contend to be, when it is thus attached to sin as its penalty, the loss of life or existence. One of the first principles of justice requires that parties threatened with a penalty for transgression should have the fullest opportunity of understanding what the penalty is. God accordingly speaks to Adam of death as a thing whose nature Adam knew. Now Adam knew very well what death was in one sense, and in one sense only. He knew it to be the law of the lower creatures, and to consist in the loss of their being and existence. He knew nothing of any other senses of death, such as ‘death in sin’ or ‘death to sin,’ for in his innocence he did not know what sin was at all. Still less did he understand by death an eternal existence in agony. He had one clear, well understood sense for death, the loss of life and being." *Edw. White maintains (Life in Christ, p. 118) that the execution of this was not carried out, but the sentence was delayed by mercy. This is a mistake "In the day "does not require so rigid a construction. Comp. 2Sa 22:1, Psa 95:8, Ecc 12:3, Isa 14:3; Isa 30:26, Jer 7:22, Eze 20:5, and especially Eze 33:12. Again he says "As soon as Adam transgressed God came to him, and repeated to him in other words the penalty he had just incurred. It was ‘dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.’ God’s definition of the death inflicted for the first transgression is frequently repeated in the later Scriptures. Paul tells us that it is the death which all men actually undergo, whether they are among the saved or the lost; and therefore an eternal existence in pain can be no part of its meaning (Rom 5:12; Rom 5:14; Rom 5:17; 1Co 15:22). Such too was the death which Christ endured - the very same penalty to its full extent to which man was exposed ; and therefore spiritual death or an eternal life in misery, can form no part whatsoever of its meaning. . . . God said nothing in the first instance of transgression as to whether this death would be temporal or eternal, but what the death was He fully explained both by word and by example. He gave life to the race of man, and He would withdraw that life if man sinned." I have thus quoted Mr. Constable in full in order to bring the subject properly before us. If it had only been for the sake of answering him much less would have sufficed. But we are seeking to bring out the Scripture doctrine and not merely to refute certain errors; and this is an important point to be clear upon in order to a full and satisfactory view of the great subject before us. Yet in aiming to be thus clear we must enter into a field of many controversies, not yet by any means extinct, and are almost sure to awaken feelings, which may prejudice the point of main concern, for many minds. Still we must not shrink from what seems needful, and Scripture is no more uncertain here than elsewhere. As to Mr. Constable’s main point, it is not hard to see that he makes immense assumptions, and that upon these his argument in its entirety rests. Let us grant for the meanwhile, at any rate, that it is of ordinary death the prohibition speaks. How can he prove what Adam knew about it? Suppose it true he must have known what the penalty was, how can he show that Adam learned it from seeing death around; how can he show that there had been any death to see in Eden? If death had been there, how can he harmonize this with the "creature being made subject to vanity," as Rom 8:19-28 shows, through man’s sin, and waiting man’s deliverance as its own? Supposing it true that Eden before the fall had been profaned by death and corruption, how does he know that Adam would have argued that death would be to him as absolute nonentity? Everywhere through the world we find that man has nursed an instinct of a contrary sort in the face of such death ever before his eyes. Why should he think that he who had had wisdom given him to name all the beasts and distinguish them from himself should have been less wise? Or haply does he think this a mark of degradation; or what else? Again, if man were to have instruction about death, why should not God instruct him? If we must needs assume, what other assumption has more probability? In the face of all this, Mr. Constable’s argument. for extinction loses all probability. When contrasted with the reality of what death is, according to the Scriptures we have examined, it is manifestly entirely inadmissible. But it will be profitable to inquire more fully just what was the punishment of death denounced on Adam, and how far it has affected his posterity. And the simplest method we can take in doing so seems to be, without any doubtful argument as to the words of the prohibition, to ask ourselves, what Scripture elsewhere states as to the consequences of the first sin. Now evidently the fullest statement we have as to its effect on Adam’s posterity is that which is given us by the apostle Paul in the fifth chapter of his epistle to the saints at Rome (Rom 5:12-21). And here there are three things of which he speaks First, "sin entered into the world," and "many became sinners ": this is the depravation of nature, which is the sad heirloom of succeeding generations. Secondly, "death by sin, and so death passed upon all": this is corporeal death, the death he could point to as undeniably "reigning from Adam to Moses" even, the time before the law. Thirdly, "judgment was by one to condemnation," - "upon all men to condemnation." This is what death, following upon sin, proclaimed. It was the sign that nature was tainted in her whole course, that the God who had made man, and could not otherwise repent, now "turned him to destruction." Of these three things the first clearly is the cause of the judgment pronounced, and not the judgment itself. Of the two latter, the first is the infliction, and the second is involved in it, and shows its character. Death is the infliction, but not as an arbitrary thing proceeding from the mere will of the Creator, but the mark of changed relationship to Him which the fall had produced. Death then (what we ordinarily call that) was the sentence, and that alone; but it involved necessarily a change in moral relationship between the Creator and the creature, distance between man and God, which His love and pity might yet find means of bridging over, - which was not yet final therefore, but which was there. Now, I apprehend, the difficulty found in reading aright the sentence, "Thou shalt surely die," proceeds from the seeking a final sentence in what was not intended, yet as final. God had of course His plan of mercy already in His mind, and was not yet giving an eternal sentence. Had He left man to himself indeed, no self-recovery on man’s part being possible, it would have been, no doubt, practically eternal. But He had no design of leaving him to himself. As we know, this sentence, under which the whole race lies, is not the close, but the beginning of our history; and we shall keep, I believe, most closely within the limits of revelation, by interpreting the sentence following the sin of Adam as in no way involving the eternal issues, but as strictly provisional with a view to the intended mercy. This relieves at once from the difficulty as to the penalty involved. It makes all clear and consistent; and is in the highest degree important in reading aright the eternal penalty itself. This in no way interferes with the first death being the type and shadow of the second, while it harmonizes with the fact that when the second death comes the first death will entirely pass away. It harmonizes also with the statement of Scripture everywhere, that that second death will be consequent upon a future judgment, in which men will be judged, not at all for Adam’s sin, but "according to their works" It harmonizes also with what we shall find to be the fact hereafter, that the Old Testament revelation has no direct announcement of the second death at all. In a word, it will be found to clear the way for the after-question in many and most important respects, while it is a view of the matter, which from Scripture itself it seems impossible to contravene. It must be admitted, however, to lie athwart two of Mr. Constable’s assumptions very directly. The first of these is that ALL that God purposed to inflict upon Adam and posterity in case of transgression is included in that word ‘death’ " in the original sentence. The original sentence may be a shadow of the final one, as I have said, but that is all, and not enough for his argument. His statement itself is a mere assumption, which it is sufficient therefore to deny. The second is. "that parties threatened with a penalty for transgression should have the fullest opportunity of understanding what the penalty is." Now the penalty here is for eating of the tree. Did that define to Adam’s posterity, who never sinned this way at all, nor could do so, what the penalty of their sin would be? Plainly, as to legal enactment, "from Adam to Moses" there was none. And thus not one of them could be punished; certainly not raised up to endure the agony of the lake of fire, of which no experience, no instinct, no revelation, could give them the merest hint! But Mr. Constable’s assumption will not endure the moral test, any more than it will the test of Scripture. Is sin a thing in itself worthy of punishment, or only when committed in full view of its consequences? We must of course grant that that full view involves heavier responsibility. But do I only sin when I know exactly what I shall lose by it? That is an immoral argument, which infers so. Nor is it consistent with what even nature itself teaches. For he who sins against the laws of nature so-called (which are after all divine laws), as a general thing knows little of the consequences of what he does; yet disease and death follow none the less surely. Thus easily are Mr. Constable’s theories refuted. And while we do not force into the first sentence anything that the words will not without strain admit, while we do not, we trust, add one iota to the "whole libraries of confused jargon and hopeless nonsense," which he tells us have been written upon this subject, - while we deny as much as he that the death spoken of is death in sin, or death to sin, or even eternal torment, - we maintain none the less, that while certainly death is death, it is not extinction. It would be the most attractive course, perhaps, from this point to follow out the Old Testament revelation as to the future state; but before we can do this, we must look still further at the lexicography of the subject that we may understand the meaning of the terms which are used with reference to it, before we look at it as a whole. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 81: 04.26. CHAPTER XIX DESTRUCTION, AND ITS KINDRED TERMS. - THE OLD TESTAMENT ======================================================================== CHAPTER XIX DESTRUCTION, AND ITS KINDRED TERMS. - THE OLD TESTAMENT WE shall still mainly follow Mr. Constable, because he is the one appealed to by his colleagues as the principal authority on the subject, and because he certainly claims to give very distinctly the whole vocabulary of words relating to it. Indeed, I may say the main part of his argument depends upon this. But his strength and his weakness lie very near together, as we may shortly see. He gives us first the Old Testament phrases, and foremost of these the passages which speak of death, as Psa 7:13; Pro 8:36; Pro 11:4; Eze 3:18; Eze 18:4; Eze 33:8. I do not as yet take up their application: this will come afterwards; we are only at the vocabulary now. He adds to these two (Eze 3:18; Eze 13:22) which give loss of life as the equivalent of death. No one would deny this, of course; the question is, is death extinction? We have seen over and over again that it is not, and Mr. Constable admits that if this were proved it would "militate gravely" against its being so when applied to future punishment. These are his words (Hades, Eze 7:17): - "And here we would particularly warn the upholders of the scriptural truth of life and immortality only in Christ, to beware how by explaining away the natural force of the many Scriptures which teach that the soul dies in the first death, they greatly weaken their own argument when they come to insist that the second death means the true and real extinction of the entire man. Scripture speaks of it simply as death. If the first death is consistent with man’s in fact not dying, but continuing to live in regard to his most important part, whose survival again may be supposed to imply the restoration of the body to life, it seems plain that the common idea of the first death MILITATES GRAVELY against our view of what is intended by the second." This witness is true, and it is all I need say here. The meaning of the passages we shall examine by and by. He next crowds together a number of passages of very different applications which he makes to describe the "end of the ungodly": - " The destruction of the transgressors and sinners shall be together" (Isa 1:28) - which applies to the purification of Zion in the last days; "prepare them for the day of slaughter" (Jer 12:3) - which is also judgment in the land; "the slain of the Lord shall be many," and "they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have sinned" (Isa 66:16; Isa 66:24) - God’s destruction of Israel’s enemies and others; "God shall destroy them" (Psa 28:5); "they shall be consumed" (Psa 37:20); "they shall be cut of" (Psa 37:38); "they shall be rooted out of the land of the living" (Isa 52:5) - misquoted. and referring to "Doeg, the Edomite"; "blotted out of the book of life" (Psa 69:28); and "they are not" (Job 27:19) : - not one of these can be shown to apply to the final judgment of the wicked. Let Mr. Constable prove this if he can. But "for the sake of greater plainness" he takes up the separate Hebrew words; and here the full amount of his concession as to death becomes apparent. All these words are applied to death. If death therefore does not mean extinction, plainly its synonyms need not. Thus, then, the foundation being removed, Mr. Constable’s edifice falls to the ground. Thus we have first, abad, to perish: and here presents itself from Isa 57:1-21 :, a text already spoken of. "The righteous perisheth," and yet "enters into peace"; "the good man is perished out of the earth." It is the word also applied to a "lost" sheep (Psa 119:176; Jer 1:6; Eze 34:4; Eze 34:16). But we can little trust Mr. Constable’s statements: the next word, haras, he says, is "another word in frequent use for future punishment." There is one passage which he may possibly have thought applied, but which has no necessary reference to another state at all, and that is Psa 28:5 : "Because they regard not the works of the Lord, neither the operation of His hands, He shall destroy [or overthrow] them, and not build them up." The third word tzarnath, is the word used in Psa 119:139, "my zeal hath consumed me"; and in Psa 88:16, "thy terrors have cut me off." It would be impossible to show it to refer to final judgment at all. The fourth, shamad, Mr. Constable says, "is significant of utter extinction," so that it must be the most forcible of all these terms. Yet we find it used to predict the curse upon Israel under the penalty of which as a nation they still are, and which is not "utter extinction," as the very passage shows. "Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the Lord bring upon thee, till thou be DESTROYED. And ye shall be left few in number," etc., 1: e., not utterly extinct at all (Deu 28:61-62). In the 30th chapter it is added further, "And it shall come to pass when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing AND the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shall call them to mind . . . and shalt return unto the Lord thy God . . . that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity," etc. (Deu 30:1-3). Here is national repentance and restoration predicted, after what Mr. Constable calls "utter extinction." Here is in fact the place in all Scripture where the word is used most constantly. It is found in Deu 28:20, Deu 28:24, Deu 28:45, Deu 28:48, Deu 28:51, Deu 28:61, translated "destroy" and in Deu 28:63 "bring to nought": and yet the very prophecy shows that there is no "utter extinction" at all the matter. It is also used repeatedly of "death," which is not that. The fifth word is karath, in Niphal, which Job (Job 14:7) uses to say, in the face of Mr. Constable, that "there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down," 1: e., of course, "hope of a tree after it is extinct," as we saw of Israel before. It is used also (Dan 9:26) of Messiah being cut off: and let Mr. Constable say what this means. It is used of death continually, and this is indeed the almost constant use, although it does not always, as we see, mean as much as that; for a dead tree never sprouts. Finally, the sixth word, nathatz, is used once in the psalm which according to its title, speaks of Doeg (Psa 52:5):"God shall likewise destroy thee forever: he shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling-place (lit, tent), and root thee out of the land of the living." It is death by the judgment of God that is indicated, and the meaning is better given in the margin, "beat thee down." I have grave complaint to make of the way Mr. Constable uses all these words. He is content to say loosely of them that they are "applied to future punishment." He brings forward no proofs, he supposes you will take his word for it of course. He never attempts to show that they apply to the judgment after death at all. Temporal judgments are mixed up with eternal. No exceptional uses of the words are taken notice of at all, no contrary arguments that might be alleged, or anything of the kind. The consequence is that while claiming precise accuracy, he is as loose and inaccurate as well may be. Let Mr. Constable point out, few or many, the passages he relies upon to prove his point. Let him bring forward the convincing arguments which assure him that it is indeed "eternal judgment," that they speak of. Let him meet the arguments upon the other side. Let him show that the words which speak of the destruction of material things apply in the same sense to immaterial things. Let him do this, and he will at least have brought his argument into some tangible shape, and one which the gravity of the subject demands. Until he does so we shall have cause to suspect an argument which requires the assumption of materialism for its support, and which treats the overthrow of a man and of a wall, as if it was undeniable there was no difference between the two. We shall give Mr. Constable’s summing up of the Old Testament testimony as he understands it. We have given his whole reasoning, and therefore may safely appeal to our readers if he has taken the first step towards showing what he asserts. "By every unambiguous term," he says, "it has pointed out the punishment of the wicked as consisting, not in life, but in the loss of life; not in their continuance in that organized form which constitutes man, but in its dissolution; resolution into its original parts, its becoming as though it had never been called into existence While the redeemed are to know a life which knows no end, the lost are to be reduced to a death which knows of no awaking forever and ever. Such is the testimony of God in the Old Testament. If Christian divines refuse to accept it because Plato, and before him Egyptian priests, taught a doctrine of the soul’s essential immortality, let them see to it. We prefer the word of God to the logic of Plato and of Egypt." And so do we. Nor have we appealed to either, or to aught but the word of God all through. And moreover we have faithfully and minutely examined Mr. Constable’s arguments throughout and tested them by that word, and have found them wanting. The keystone of his whole argument, as we have said, is its materialism, and he has himself virtually admitted it. If death is not extinction, as it is not, - if the soul is immortal (though not independently but by the will of its Creator), as it is, - then Mr. Constable’s argument is wholly, irretrievably, hopelessly gone forever. But we must follow him into the New Testament. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 82: 04.27. CHAPTER XX THE NEW TESTAMENT TERMS ======================================================================== CHAPTER XX THE NEW TESTAMENT TERMS HE begins, of course, with the word so decisive, one way or other, to his cause - with "death." He quotes a number of the passages in which this is applied to the punishment of the wicked,* without the smallest effort to show that its terms ‘death’ or ‘to die’ have any new sense placed on them. *John 6:50; John 8:51; John 11:26; Rom 6:21-23; Rom 8:13; 2Co 2:16; Jas 1:15; Jas 5:20; Rev 20:14. Now if this be so, and we bear with us the remembrance of what death (in the ordinary sense of it) is, and that it never means nor implies the extinction of being, we shall have to consider all the texts he can bring forward of this kind as against, and not for, his view of the extinction of the wicked. No more than the seed is extinct, when, sown in the ground it is preparing the harvest - no more than man is extinct when the spirit returns to God who gave it - no more, if I am to accept the necessary conclusion from such use of words, no more will the wicked become extinct when eternal death becomes their awful portion. I grant, of course, the body might become extinct upon this view of the matter, but not the spirit or the soul. Even so there is no escape from God into the blank of nonentity. Alas for him who thinks that there is such! But we cannot avail ourselves of this argument; for this reason, that, there is an express statement, that death as applied to the final punishment of the wicked is not mere ordinary death. In Rev 20:14, the "second death" is explained to be "the lake of fire." The editors of the Greek Testament, without exception, read the passage: "This is the second death, the lake of fire." And to this the first death delivers up its prisoners This is at the end of all when the heavens and earth flee away before the face of Him who sits upon the throne of judgment (Rev 20:2). It is when finally, all enemies being put under His feet, the Son shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father; and then "death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed" But so far from the second death being then destroyed, it is then that its reign begins, to endure (whatever that may mean) "for the ages of ages." The first death, then, gives place to the second. They are not the same. The "second death" is the lake of fire. Will even Mr. Constable assert that this is only extinction? Second extinction it cannot be, for there has been none before, and moreover extinction would be deliverance from it. Extinction by it would be as rapid, according to the usual arguments as by any other process whatever. How long would it take for life to be extinct or flesh and blood to be consumed by a literal fire of brimstone? Would it consist with "torment for the ages of ages"? Yet that must at least be the distinctive feature of the lake of fire. What then does this "second death "imply? It must be torment AND extinction? But these are contradictory terms. "Life or death," says a writer, "is the theme of the Bible, not life or torment" Yet here torment, and that for ages of ages, must be admitted to be the distinguishing .feature of the second death! Thus death must in this case mean torment; at least that must be part of what it means; for the lake of fire undeniably means torment. It cannot mean irresistible power of extinction, for any ordinary fire make quicker work; flesh and blood even can resist it for ages, and so (as all natural comparison is out of question) why not forever? No; it means protracted torment extraordinary, unnaturally, supernaturally protracted torment; if it can mean this and extinction too, then extinction itself may mean protracted existence and its end alike. Thus at least "death" here, as applied to the future punishment of the wicked, is not, cannot be, and is expressly stated not to be, used in its ordinary sense. I shall not pursue the matter further here because the fitting place to inquire its precise meaning will be found when we come to look at the intensely solemn and important passages referred to. This we hope to do in the fullest way hereafter, and do not wish to anticipate it here. Mr. Constable goes on to the passages which speak of "eternal life" as the portion of the righteous alone. This we fully believe, and have looked at already. His quotation of Mat 10:29 has also been met, and needs only to be referred to briefly again. It runs: "he that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Psuche is the word used here in both cases, and, as I have before said, the parallel place in Luk 9:25 shows that "his soul" is just the equivalent of "himself." And this we have seen to be very common phraseology in Scripture. The finding and losing (the same word as elsewhere given "destroying") the soul in the present world are reversed in the world to come. The finding becomes losing, the losing finding there. He who makes himself the object of his life, loses himself and is cast away. He who sacrifices self and its interests for Christ’s sake is really preserving all for the world to come. The idiomatic expression is impossible perhaps to put into English without a periphrasis; but the meaning is intelligible enough. And the actual laying down of life in martyrdom is not necessary at all to the application. Can none but those who actually die a martyr’s death live eternally? The making it a question of literal death or life would affirm so. It is not "life" then, that properly translates or interprets the verse. Mr. Constable now turns aside for a moment to Moses’ wish to be "blotted out of God’s book" (Exo 32:32). He thinks that "we cannot suppose that he could even for a moment have wished throughout eternity for a life of pain and moral corruption" and so we must infer he wanted "the utter cessation of life" instead But it is a little too much to decide a question of this moment by our supposition one way or another of what Moses must have wished for at a moment of intense and excited feeling. Granted he did not wish for "moral corruption" at all, much less for eternity, he might have accepted the thought of punishment instead of the people without a question of this. To force his words into perfect and calm consistency - to reason out the feelings of a moment when intense emotion had over-mastered reason - is to pervert and not to interpret. We have heard Mr. Minton’s complaint of the use of figurative Scriptures, by which certainly God means us nevertheless to learn something on the subject, whatever it may be. Yet here Mr. Constable would take Moses’ wish at a moment of unreasoning excitement, follow it out to all its necessary consequences and decide the question in his own favour by a simple suggestion that he could not have meant to accept these consequences! To which we need only answer, suppose he could not, what then? Is it so strange a thing in times of much less intensity of feeling for consequences the most obvious to be wholly forgotten and ignored? We pass on to consider other terms used for eternal punishment. The first of these is apoleia "destruction." Mr. Constable says, "There is not in the Greek language a word more strongly significant of the utter loss of existence. ‘Its Proper meaning’ says Schleusner in his lexicon, ‘is the destruction of anything so that it ceases to exist.’". he then quotes Peter’s words to Simon Magus, "Thy money perish with thee" literally "thy money go with thyself to destruction," and adds, "Here we see Peter’s sense of destruction. It had the same meaning when applied to a man as it had when applied to metal: disorganization and wasting away until it should disappear, was the idea which Peter attached to it in both cases alike." His next argument is still more extraordinary. Quoting Acts 25:16, he remarks: "Festus here tells Agrippa that it was not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to death (literally, to destruction) before the accused had an opportunity of defending himself. Festus here calls the destruction of man his death;" - Mr. Constable means, of course, that he calls a man’s death his destruction, - "and as Festus, DOUBTLESS, with almost every man of his station at that time, ridiculed the very idea of any future life after this, he could only have intended by the destruction of a man the putting him out of all existence. LUKE BY USING ACCEPTS THE TERM IN THE SENSE OF FESTUS, and we have thus in the usage of two of the inspired writers of the New Testament, Peter and Luke, the sense of destruction established as putting out of existence." If this argument were in the first edition of Mr. Constable’s book, it is rather extraordinary that the book has survived to a fourth. Such reasoning would seem only possible to such mental hallucination as would preclude all serious controversy. Out of the simple fact that Luke chronicles Festus’ words in which he uses for "death" the word "destruction," Mr. Constable draws the amazing conclusions: - First, that because Festus was a Roman governor, be "doubtless" shared the scepticism of his day. Secondly, that in using the word "destruction" in this Case, Festus’ (supposed) views gave the word a peculiar significance. Thirdly, that Luke must have known the scepticism that was in Festus’ mind. And - Fourthly, that by recording his words Luke meant to signify his adhesion to this scepticism which was behind them. I can only say, that this is logical insanity, and that upon these principles all reasoning becomes impossible. This very Luke elsewhere, as we have seen, in stating the well known Pharisaic views as to "angel and spirit," tells us that they "confess" both. "Confess" is his own word and surely implies that he believed that to be the truth which they were confessing. Yet Mr. Roberts considers that even too worthless an argument to reply to. What would he say to Mr. Constable’s? And here is Luke against Luke! Rather here is Mr. Constable’s censure of the unhappy race of historians, who it seems are condemned to endorse every falsehood that they tell us another utters! On the other hand it is not to be wondered at if from our point of view we should consider this application of "destruction" to death, as the overthrow of the very thing it is sought to establish by it. Not alone do we find it in the lips of ‘Festus. The verb apollumi is used in this way over and over again (Mat 2:13; Mat 8:25; Mat 12:14; Mat 21:41; Mat 22:7; Mat 26:52; Mat 27:20; Mark 3:6; Mark 9:22; Mark 11:18; Luk 11:51; Luk 13:33; Luk 15:17; Luk 17:27; Luk 17:29; Luk 19:47; John 10:10; John 18:14; 1Co 10:9), and translated by the words "destroy" and "perish." In all these cases utter extinction is not its meaning. In his interpretation of the apostle’s words to Simon Magus, Mr. Constable again manifests his incompetence as a reasoner. How "thy money be to destruction with thee" shows that the destruction of the piece of metal must be just of the same sort as the destruction of the man, it would be hard for him to show, while it is very easy to assert it. If the man were only a piece of metal like the money the reasoning might hold good, and something like this is really the basis of his argument. He is a consistent materialist all through and a material destruction for man is all he can according to his principles believe in. But even as to material things the force of the word is not by any means what Mr. Constable would make out. When the new wine bursts the skins and the bottles are marred (Mark 2: 32) the same word is used to express this. Now the bursting of a skin-bottle is by no means its "disorganization and wasting away till it should disappear," as he tries to make out must be as to the coin. It is not even the first step to such wasting away. This would equally go on were the bottles whole. Mr. Roberts urges that the bottles are destroyed as bottles; but that is my argument, not his. The bottles are destroyed for the purpose to which they were originally destined, and so is man whether as the subject of the first death or of the second. In either case he is set aside from the place for which he was originally created, in the first death temporarily, in the second eternally. But the bottles exist, though "destroyed": they do not cease to be; and so neither does man. This is the Biblical force of destruction. But again, apollumi is used in the sense of "losing" (Luk 15:4, etc.). The "lost" sheep of the house of Israel (Mat 15:24), the "lost" sheep, "lost" piece of money, "lost" son, of Luk 15:1-32 : are all examples of this use of the word. Also Mat 10:6; Mat 18:11; Luk 19:10; 2Co 4:3. Mr. Roberts here contends that "in the case of an article lost, POSSESSION is destroyed for the time being." These gentlemen are sometimes wonderfully easily satisfied. So a man in prison for a week may be said to be destroyed, because, as R. remarks, "SOMETHING is destroyed," and it is no matter whether it be the man himself or anything else, - his liberty, for instance!! But upon this ground it would be hard to maintain the doctrine he so zealously advocates. Mr. Constable winds up his discussion of these two words with a characteristic challenge, and a re-affirmation of the words of Dr. Weymouth, whom he calls "one of the best Greek scholars of the day," and who says, "My mind fails to conceive a grosser misinterpretation of language than when the five or six strongest words which the Greek tongue possesses, signifying ‘destroy’ or ‘destruction,’ are explained to mean maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence. To translate black as white is nothing to this." But it is Dr. Weymouth who in this misinterprets, and it does not take first-rate scholarship to see it. For where does he find any one who interprets the words in question by anything else than "destroy " and "destruction"? I never saw or heard of one who violated language in the way he complains of. The words are found just as he would have them in the common version of the Bible which is in all our hands, - a version made too by people of the very views which he assails. Let him tell us who the people are who propose to change them. The fact is, this is not what Dr. Weymouth means, and the parade of Greek scholarship is thrown away. Dr. Weymouth must mean that we take the English words, - which thank God, brings the question into a shape intelligible to very many more than can claim to be scholars, - that we take the English Words "destroy" and "destruction" (for it must be allowed we leave them in our Bibles) as meaning maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence." Even in this he is exceedingly inaccurate. I can answer at least for myself I never understood these words in any such sense. When just now we were speaking of the bottles being "destroyed," surely no one understood that their "destruction" meant their "maintaining existence" at all. They might exist: true; but their destruction was not their existence, nor ever understood to be so. It was their being set aside as useless for the purpose of their existence and in a similar way, only remembering the unspeakable difference between an inanimate thing, and a morally accountable being such as man, do we understand the destruction of the wicked. Mr. Constable adds: "Even the leading modern advocate of the Augustinian view, who all but closed his literary labours in the defence of this wretched cause, looking in blank dismay at these words of doom can only say of them, ‘They do not invariably mean annihilation.’ We on the contrary assert that such is in the New Testament, as used of the wicked, their invariable sense; they are there ever connected with death." And that proves precisely the opposite, while it proves also how Mr. Constable’s annihilationism and his materialism stand or fall together. I make no pretension to more than ordinary scholarship, but I dare maintain against all or any, that the words in question NEVER in themselves mean annihilation at all. Let the proof be only from Scripture, and let any that will prove it. We must pass on now to other words. The next he takes up is aphanizo . It is once used as applied to unbelievers (Acts 13:41), "Behold, ye despisers! and wonder, and perish," and once to the "vanishing away" of life (Jas 4:14). The latter is its true signification in both places, although it has other meanings. Mr. Constable quotes from Josephus two passages, in which the word is used, once for the annihilation of the sluggish and cowardly at death: "a subterranean night dissolves them to nothing"; and once in describing the doctrines of the Sadducees, "that souls perish with their bodies"; and he adds: "That which the Sadducees taught would happen to all men at the first death the apostle tells us will be to unbelievers the sad result of the second death: they will rise from their graves and see what they have rejected, will marvel at their folly and will vanish out of existence." But almost all this latter is pure invention: there is nothing in the text about the second death, about rising from the graves, or even of passing out of existence in his sense of it. And this is quite unquestionable, because it is a simple adoption of the language of the Septuagint translation of Hab 1:5, where Mr. Constable’s idea of it suits neither text nor context. It is there added as an appendage to "wonder marvellously" as if to complete the sense, "wonder marvellously and vanish." .The apostle puts it, "wonder and vanish," thus still more plainly making the last words give emphasis to the former by the substitution for "marvellously" of "vanish." We have next four words, intimately united together, phtheiro, phthora, diaphtheiro and kataphtheiro. In the New Testament the first and second are uniformly translated "corrupt" and "corruption," except 1Co 3:17, where we find, correctly enough, "defile" and "destroy," and 2Pe 2:12, "made to be taken and destroyed" The third is found six times: Luk 12:23, "where no moth corrupteth"; 1Ti 6:5, "men of corrupt minds"; 2 Cor 4: 52: "though our outward man perish"; "; Rev 8:9, "the ships were destroyed"; and Rev 11:18, "shouldst destroy them which destroy the earth." The fourth is only found, 2Ti 3:8, "men of corrupt minds," and 2Pe 2:12. "shall utterly perish in their own corruption." The meanings are sufficiently well given in these passages. Of the third of these words Mr. Constable says, "The sense of the word as signifying wasting away to utter destruction, is constantly found in the New Testament." Now the word is found altogether six times in five passages, as we have seen, and Mr. Constable is able to bring forward two not very clear or certain instances of this "constant" use: the first, "no moth corrupteth". The second, "though our outward man perish." But it is upon 2Pe 2:12 that he naturally lays most emphasis: "Speaking of the ungodly, Peter says, ‘These, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed shall utterly perish in their own corruption’ Here the same Greek word is used of the end of beasts, and the end of the ungodly. We know what is the end of beasts taken and destroyed: even such, Peter declares will be the end of the ungodly in the future life: they shall perish there as beasts perish here." This argument has more appearance of truth in it, than we have yet had from Mr. Constable. It is however merely fallacious The true comparison necessitates no such inference. For the point is really just what we have before glanced at, man’s loss of the place for which he was originally created and for which his natural constitution fitted him. From this place he perishes, utterly perishes, and is destroyed: he "loses himself and is cast away." This is the natural thing for a "brute beast, made to be taken and destroyed," - to fill a place temporarily, not perpetually. Man, made for eternal occupation of the position assigned to him, perishes like the beast when he forfeits forever and loses this. The comparison with the beast is here sufficiently obvious without its involving the physical extinction which Mr. Constable’s materialism would alone suggest. Two other words, - exolothreuo and olethros - are "properly and primarily significant," says Mr. Constable, "of utter extermination by death. They are applied in the New Testament to the punishment of sinners hereafter: ‘Every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people’; the ‘wicked shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord’ (1Th 5:3; 2Th 1:9; 1Ti 6:9)." The first of these words occurs but once (Acts 3:23); the second is four times used, - three times applied to the destruction of the ungodly. Exolothreuo is given by Liddell and Scott as "to destroy utterly." Olethros is given as "ruin, destruction, death." A last word, not given by Mr. Constable, is katargeo, to make void, of no effect, to nullify. It is the word translated "destroy" in 1Co 6:13; 1Co 15:26; 2Th 2:8; Heb 2:14; "come to nought" in 1Co 2:6; "abolish" in 2Ti 1:10. The effect of this inquiry as to Greek is to bring us back to the English, better satisfied than ever to abide by its decision. We have found no cause to quarrel with Dr. Weymouth when he tells us that the Greek words in question mean "destroy" and "destruction." As this is how they are translated in our common version, we may have confidence in it. The question is after all one of simple understanding of some common English words. It takes no uncommon education to arrive at a satisfactory settlement of the question raised. It is worth while to have gone through the Greek to have discovered this. Our readers will go with us with the more assurance and intelligence, that we may adhere in this to our common English version. Meanwhile, we shall close this chapter with a remark or two on Paul’s wish that he were "accursed from Christ for his brethren" - which Mr. Constable brings forward as "an exact parallel to the prayer of Moses already referred to." Not questioning this, our remarks as to that prayer of Moses apply here with equal force. I also agree with him that "an eternal life of blasphemy and moral corruption" was not in Paul’s thought, nor implied in the word used, anathema." It is punishment he was wishing to bear, not "blasphemy and moral corruption." Nor does Paul say, "I could wish;" as if it were a deliberate thing but "I was wishing" - an impetuous wish at a certain time when brooding over Israel’s terrible condition. To frame a doctrine out of, or support one by, the expression of a moment’s fervid emotion is to strain Scripture, not interpret it. But Mr. Constable thinks that his is the only view consistent with "the use of the term ‘accursed’ among the Greeks, by whom it was applied to any animal devoted to death, and removed out of the sight of man, in order to avert calamity." It is granted fully it is "devoted to destruction," and occurs thus in a passage much more to Mr. C’s purpose, though quite inadequate for it: "if any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ,, let him be anathema" (1Co 16:22). But this in no wise shows what the destruction is, of which the animal sacrifice might be a figure. The argument goes too far, for those same animal sacrifices among the Hebrews spoke of Christ, and were equally "devoted to death, and removed out of the sight of man." Did the Lord suffer what Mr. Constable would imply by utter death"? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 83: 04.28. CHAPTER XXI A FURTHER SURVEY OF THE SCRIPTURE TERMS ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXI A FURTHER SURVEY OF THE SCRIPTURE TERMS DEATH and destruction are clearly Scripture phrases for the end of the wicked. But the first is never extinction as we have seen, and all this class of texts are clearly against the views they are quoted for. Destruction again is the ruin of the thing or being of which it is predicated, but by no means its passing out of being. The importance of the point is such, however, that we shall again review the matter in company with others of Mr. Constable’s school of thought, allowing them to state it to us in their own way, and to bring forward the arguments by which they believe their own view triumphantly sustained. Mr. Hastings has given us a summary as to "The Destiny of the Wicked" in a small tract bearing that title, and consisting of Scripture texts arranged under ten different heads. To these Mr. Jacob Blain has added others in his book, "Death not Life." These two will furnish us with divisions under which we may arrange the material furnished by several other writers. Mr. Blain has indeed recalled his book since the change of views already mentioned, and he owns "that part of the texts quoted to prove endless loss of life" he now sees "by further research only to refer to temporal death or earthly judgments." Still, as many yet hold his former views, we may use his headings as above said, as convenient enough for the purpose of our intended review. To begin with Mr. Hastings’ headings as to the destiny of the wicked: 1." They shall not live forever." To which we may add - 2. "They shall die," The texts quoted under the first we have already considered; for they are those which speak of eternal life, that which with God is really life. Take as an example: "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1Jn 5:12). Or again, John 6:53 : "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." How is it that Mr. Hastings does not see that, according to the passages he quotes, taken as he would take them, not only the wicked will have no future existence, but have none now ? That is what his proof texts show, if his system is correct. But what his texts do prove is, that eternal life is not merely existence or immortality, and that in the Scripture language one may be (to use Paul’s expression of the woman that lives in pleasure), 1Ti 5:6 : "dead while living." Now, if there be such a living death even now, as we are thus assured there is, why not for eternity? And if the believer, having now (as we have seen) eternal life, yet enters into it as his general state hereafter, why may not the unbeliever, dead now as alas he is, and alienated from the life of God, yet go into death as his final adjudged condition, by the sentence of the Judge hereafter? Mr. Roberts, apparently following Mr. Edw. White,* contends against this application of 1Ti 5:6. He asks of the person in question whether she was "actually dead, or in a state relating to death as a consummation? Is it not the sense actually expressed in the words of Christ, ‘Let the dead bury their dead’? (Luk 9:60): the living said to be dead, because destined to share the fate of the corpses In question? This," he says finally, "cannot be gainsaid." *Life in Christ, p. 281. But one would think it could. For very plainly, if that be all, the man whom the Lord addressed was as dead as anybody else, and the language would be quite unmeaning. Nor can Mr. Roberts talk about the second death, "The dead" who were to be buried could not mean dead of that death. Moreover, we have a similar phraseology sufficiently elsewhere to determine its meaning very precisely. For instance, where the Lord (in John 5:24-25) speaks of the dead hearing His voice and living, He is plainly not speaking of those subject to the first death, for the life must of course be in contrast to the death. If therefore those subject to physical death are "passed from death to life," they cannot physically die, which we know is not the truth. The "dead " must then be considered as subjects of, or sentenced to, the second death, according to Mr. Roberts; but this will not hold either. Under the power of the second death they are not yet, and need not in that sense deliverance, for the second death is the lake of fire. And again if we say sentenced to the second death, deliverance from this sentence would not be quickening. But as such our Lord represents it, the impartation of a true life here and now, a life which is morally characterized by the knowledge of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. The death in contrast with this can only he what we rightly call spiritual death, "alienation from the life of’ God through the ignorance that is in men; because of the blindness of their hearts" (Eph 4:1-32). Where this life is not, death is. Spiritual death is what the apostle intends then plainly by "dead while living." Nor can Mr. Roberts prove that Scripture anywhere intends by the dead the fiction he conceives. People dying of the first death are never in Scripture called dead until they are so; and he is merely evading the force of words too plainly against him as they stand. I ask again then, if there be such a living death now, as it is proved there is, why not for eternity? Again let us remind ourselves also that the second death is the lake of fire, beginning when death (as it is ordinarily understood) ends and is no more, and certainly not therefore its continuance or repetition. In no way can the threatening of "death" imply extinction. All Mr. Constable’s arguments as to the primary sense of words and the necessity of their being kept to their literal meaning, which so many beside himself insist upon, completely break down in the face of the facts of Scripture. It is in vain to urge a use of terms such as Macaulay and Hume in their character as historians of the present would necessarily require to make, when the things in question belong to that future where we see the word in a riddle. God has not mocked us indeed, nor used words in an unreal or untruthful sense. His solemn statements are not unfitted surely to convey a meaning which the general consent of Christendom unequivocally attaches to them. And writers such as Mr. Constable show plainly that they are not, by the way they constantly pervert that meaning in order to force it into contradiction with the Bible terms. Thus Goodwyn says: "If death does mean ceaseless suffering in life, there can be no confidence in expression by words"; and so Constable, "death is made to mean its direct opposite - life"; and so Dobney asks, "How was Adam to understand that death meant life - endless life - endless life in torment ?" But who asserts such a meaning? The second death is the lake of fire, and therefore torment cannot be excluded from the idea of it, as we have seen. But death in itself does not "mean" torment even here. It means anything but "life." It means separation from the Blessed Source of life: that "alienation from the life of God" on man’s side, which is spiritual death, meeting its end in God’s final withdrawal on the other. And as God’s withdrawal cannot mean indifference, and as He cannot cease to be the Moral Governor of His creatures, it implies the manifestation of that eternal displeasure, which the lake of fire is. This may suffice to answer Mr. Minton’s question as to what life the wicked can lose in the day of judgment, and which he settles by a process of exhaustion can be only physical life. We might answer that, if that be the judgment, surely it would be release to many, and scarcely, in comparison of preceding anguish, judgment at all. But his question is founded upon a misapprehension. We have seen that the righteous "enter into life" in the world to come, and yet that that does not imply that they have not got it here; and similarly the wicked enter into death, find it in all its awful reality, in that judgment day. It is their whole condition, unrelieved and unmitigated as before it might be aye, even for the rich man or for Cain. The resurrection for just or unjust alone can give them their full capacity for enjoyment or for suffering. The resurrection of the wicked precedes their judgment to the second death. We may pass on to consider Mr. Hastings’ third head, with which we may take as merely synonymous with it in the original, his fifth. These are - 3. "They shall perish." 4. "They shall be destroyed." Mr. Hastings depends mainly if not entirely here upon what he considers the simple force of the words "destroy," etc. Says Mr. Jacob Blain: "If destroy is sometimes applied to calamities on earth, it still means the ending of a thing, as of prosperity, liberty, country, character, etc.; so to say it does not mean the ending of the thing to which it refers is false." So it seems a question of some simple English words, which strangely enough, we do not understand. Our translators used however both destroy and perish for ruin where the thing remained in ruins, and did not come to an end. The bottles burst by the new wine are thus said to be "perished," as we have seen. They were ruined, looking at the original purpose for which they were destined. And so, though the righteous "perished." he entered into peace. So again we have, "the land perisheth," "the valley also shall perish;" so over and over again is it said that Israel was to be "destroyed," and after this had come upon her captivity was to be turned (Deu 28:30 :). The constant reference to death agrees entirely with this. In none of these cases is there an end of the thing destroyed. Mr. Roberts, in order to find an end somewhere, must say that if "the land perishes," the state of prosperity does, and this is what is meant by" the land"! "In the case of an article lost" - the same word in the original, - "possession is destroyed"! and so on. The case is very plain that destruction does not mean "annihilation" in any of these examples. But there is one text which we must specially look at in this connection, and a very important one it is. Mr. Minton has given it the fullest examination that I have seen, and therefore we may best follow his argument as to it. It is in his "Way Everlasting" (pp. 27-33), and follows what he calls the "settlement" by "exhaustion " of what life the wicked have yet to lose in the day of judgment. This we have seen he decides must be natural life, and be goes on: - "And is not that just the life which our Lord Himself precisely defines to be what will be taken away from them? ‘Fear. not them which kill the body and are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’ (Mat 10:28). Now I put it to your conscience whether you can find a more distinct and positive utterance than that upon any subject whatever in the whole Bible. Would it be possible for any human being who read that text with an unprejudiced mind, to have the smallest doubt as to its meaning? Does it not distinctly threaten that God will do to both body and soul that which man can do to the body, but is ‘not able’ to do to the soul - ‘kill’ them ?" No, Mr. Minton, it does not. The word is expressly altered to avoid saying so. And what is not said here is not said anywhere moreover in Scripture. The soul is never "killed." Let Mr. Milton say, what would be the result if it were said: -"And what is killing? Why, depriving of life. While the body retains one spark of life of any sort or description, it is not killed; and while the soul retains one spark of life of any sort or description, it is not killed." I quite agree with him. And how then can he account for the fact, that having used this decisive word in the first clause of the sentence, the Lord refuses it for the second part? Certainly not without some reason for it, He turns aside from saying what would seem the most natural thing for Him to say, and instead of using again the word "kill," which he had just used, He substitutes "destroy" for "kill." Not only so. Mr. Minton cannot find this word kill applied anywhere to the soul or to future punishment. It is rejected as unfit both here and everywhere. And I ask, why? Why does the Lord substitute "destroy" for "kill "? Would it be believed, after Mr. Minton telling us so emphatically what "killing" is, and how decisive of the controversy in his favour, that he has the boldness to reply, "Undoubtedly to increase the force of the threatening. It is the same thing, but expressed by a stronger word - in fact the strongest word that can be used "! Now the word "kill" is only employed for taking life, and scarcely ever in any figurative sense at all. Mr. Minton appeals to Liddell and Scott as his authority. We will accept the appeal, and contrast the words. The latter word in the verse, apollumi is indeed given as "to destroy utterly, kill, slay, murder," but it is added that it means "very frequently in all sorts of relations, to destroy, ruin, spoil, waste, squander," and in the middle form not only "to perish, die, fall," but "also simply, to fall into ruin, be undone," and even "to be wretched or miserable." Now compare the other word apokteino, and we find the only meanings given to be "to kill, slay, smite to death, to put to death, to weary to death, torment" - but this last metaphorical use a very rare one, and in Scripture never employed. Now I ask Mr. Minton, - I ask any honest man, - if our Lord had designed to use a word which should unequivocally set forth the annihilation of the soul which would have been the fitter for his purpose, the one which in Scripture language has no other sense than that of taking life, or the one which is very frequently used in other senses? And even this, decisive as it ought to be, does not put the argument in its strongest form. For if we will be at a little pains to go beyond the lexicon, and inquire for ourselves the force of the terms in Scripture, we shall find - and I do not doubt the same to be true elsewhere than in Scripture - that apollumi is NEVER the word used simply to express the taking of life. That may be (often is, no doubt) necessarily implied; but that is quite another thing. It is never once translated "kill" in our version, only once (in the middle) "die," where "perish" would be better (John 18:14), and is actually put alongside of kill in the same sentence to convey a different thought (John 10:10). The more any one will study the Scripture use of the words, the more he will be convinced that the very opposite of Mr. Minton’s assertion is the truth, and that the decisive word to convey the annihilationist meaning is the very word that the Lord rejects, and deliberately rejects, after having used it in the beginning of the very sentence from which He rejects it at the end. I close in Mr. Minton’s own words that "it would really seem as if the force of demonstration could no further go." We may pass on then to Mr. Hastings’ next class of texts: "4. They shall be cut off." All that he quotes in this way is from the Old Testament, and refers, as the quotations themselves prove, to the extirpation of the wicked out of the earth simply, without intimating their after-condition. Thus Psa 37:1-40 :, speaking of millennial days: "for evil doers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth." Again, Nah 1:15 : "O Judah. . . the wicked shall no more pass through thee: he is utterly cut off." Or again, Pro 2:22 : "But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it." There are few more frequent causes of mistake with that class of annihilationists to which Hastings, Miles Grant, Blain, and Roberts, among others, belong, than this confounding of the destruction of the wicked out of the earth in order to the great predicted blessing for it with the eternal judgment when the earth and heavens flee away. They believe in no heavenly portion of the saints, nothing more than a sort of "heavenly condition" upon earth. For them consequently destruction out of the earth is apparently indistinguishable from final judgment. We shall have to consider the difference hereafter, but the passages quoted speak for themselves. The same remarks apply to his sixth class: - "5. They shall be consumed." Take Zep 1:2-3, for example: "I will utterly consume all things from off the land; saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling blocks with the wicked, and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord." So Psa 104:35 : "Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more." These are some of Mr. Hastings’ own texts adduced for the annihilation of the wicked! The cause must be weak that requires such arguments. Mr. Hastings’ next three heads I must leave for after consideration. They are these 6."The agent of punishment shall be fire and brimstone. 7. "They shall be burned up root and branch. 8."Their punishment shall take place, not at death, but at the coming of Christ." To the ninth again the same remarks apply. It is all the earthly judgment which precedes millennial blessing. And upon the principle of interpretation which must be adopted in order to make texts such as these apply to the final extinction of the wicked, I could not only prove that Enoch was annihilated (because he "was not") but could find the doctrine of annihilation in most books that were ever written. According to Mr. H., if I but find Israel assured that "they that war against thee shall be as NOTHING, and as a THING OF NOUGHT," or "that they shall diligently consider the place [of the wicked] and it SHALL NOT BE," I am entitled to put these expressions in small capitals, and consider them conclusive proof that the wicked are annihilated! Once more I ask, what can I think of such arguments as these, or of the cause that needs them? Mr. Blain adds to these quotations 10. "Slay, slain, kill." All his texts as usual applying to earthly judgments. 11. "Blot out." Here he quotes Psa 69:28, which is earthly judgment, and Rev 3:5, which has reference to the peculiar case of those in Sardis who had "a name to live" on earth, showing that it applies to the profession of eternal life. Man had, as it were, written these names in the book of life. Christ would blot them out, where it was only that. What eternal life is we have already seen. 14. "Hewn down." here he quotes Mat 3:10; Mat 7:19. But compare as to the force of the expression Dan 4:14 : it does not at all imply even the taking away of natural life. His argument about the fire we may see the force of by and by; but certainly if "hewn down" itself signifies the extinction of natural life, there would be little cause to dread the "fire" afterwards. 15: "Lose life." These texts have been already considered. "End." Mr. B. remarks, "If the wicked are immortal, they have no end, and this language is absurd." But of what then, or of whom, is "everlasting life" (according to Rom 6:22) "the end"? If everlasting life be an end in any way, whether of a saint or of his works, then "end" is not necessarily cessation of existence. A man’s final estate is his end, and the end of the wicked is "destruction"; but annihilation it is not. As to Psa 7:9," O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end!" it is the groan of a soul feeling the strong hand of oppression, and has no reference to eternal judgment. Mr. Blain’s following texts (except one) have all reference to that clearing out of evil from the earth, which he everywhere seems to overlook. Yet it is a most real thing, and figures largely in the word of prophecy, as what is to take place at the coming of the Lord, before the earth shall have its blessing under the dominion of the Prince of peace. As to the way these texts are quoted I. have the same protest to make in general, as I had with regard to Mr. Constable’s quotations before. The citations are loose, random and careless. They are heaped upon one another, as if to make impression by their numbers, and overwhelm the judgment, rather than invite inspection. Words and phrases are taken from their context, and assorted in the fashion of a concordance, with no discrimination of the texts in which they are found. The examination of them leaves the impression of unmistakable carelessness in the use of Scripture, and a most thorough will to push to the utmost every expression that in the least may seem to favour their doctrine. Against it I appeal to the very texts they have cited. They need but a little patient examination, with singleness of purpose and waiting upon God, to give true and unambiguous testimony as the word of the blessed God who cannot lie, cannot fail the soul that looks in faith to Him. NOTE. - Messrs. Constable and White both press an argument here from certain passages in Plato’s Phædo in which some of the New Testament words are used by him to give the idea of the literal destruction or extinction of the soul. But Plato’s use of the words cannot avail to set aside a use of them, proved as we have proved it from the New Testament itself. Spite of their protest, it is well known that many words attain a moral or spiritual significance in Scripture, which will be vainly sought for in classical Greek. They will hardly deny this, as it can so easily be proved. That Plato should use some of these words therefore in a physical sense, while Scripture uses them in a spiritual, is no great cause of wonderment. Let them meet frankly the argument from Scripture, and not settle the question by appeal to the terms of Greek philosophy. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 84: 04.29. CHAPTER XXII THE PROVISIONAL CHARACTER OP DEATH ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXII THE PROVISIONAL CHARACTER OP DEATH WE now come to look at a point of great importance in many respects, and which has been indeed already spoken of, but not fully proved or dwelt upon as it deserves. I mean the provisional and temporary character of the first death. We have already argued that the penalty attaching to the eating of the forbidden tree was simply this, and did not at all (as so many beside Mr. Constable assume) include in, it "all that God purposed to inflict upon Adam and his posterity in case of transgression"! Where is the least warrant for this? The actual result to us of that primal sin we have had the apostle state to us, and that is (so far as infliction from God is concerned) physical death as His stamp upon a fallen condition, His judgment of a race corrupted from its beginning. Herein lay of course the possibility, nay, probability, of a final sentence But God is in no haste with judgment; and this was the beginning of the world’s history, not the close of it. Who, save for the need of making a system, could imagine the beneficent Creator of man, at once, and for the personal offence of our first parents, adjudging all their descendants to eternal death? Scripture at any rate has naught of it, and we are seeking to follow Scripture in its simplest - facts and statements. It may be urged, however, that death followed as one of these facts and that that shows that Adam’s posterity shared in Adam’s judgment. But that is a very different thing, as a little consideration will assure us. Death was indeed God’s judgment upon the race as vitiated and corrupt, but - inasmuch as it was corrupted by another’s sin and not its own, - a judgment which was a merciful discipline for it, a witness to the fallen creature of its own condition, an appeal to it by its own frailty and helplessness to look higher than itself for help, an admonition so to number its days that its heart might be applied to wisdom. What should we do without the thorns and thistles which grow out of the ground cursed for man’s sake? What should we do without the need of the sweat of the brow? What, without the ministry of death itself. Surely a blessing is in this curse; it is an evil which is good; the discipline of the Father of spirits for our profit, chastening of a holy hand that we may be partakers of His holiness, and in its own nature contrasted with that final sentence which is "Depart from, me, ye cursed." The first death and the second death are contrasts and not the same. Such is its nature, if we consider it as the fruit simply of Adam’s sin, its legacy to his descendants. It was the wish and tender foresight of Him who saw the floodgates of evil pierced, and the awful outburst of iniquity before it came and ordained this as its corrective, as One who did not intend to give up His creatures to it, to perish through helplessness alone. If by one man sin was entering into the world, then "death by sin" was the Divine ordinance. And right and good every prodigal proclaims it whom the pressure of hunger causes to think of a Father’s house: - very psalmist that ever was, with Israel’s sweet Psalmist when he owns, " Before I was afflicted I went astray, now I have kept Thy words." This is death as an appendage to a fallen condition; but if we left it there, there would be manifest incongruity with much of Scripture and of fact as well. In order to have the whole statement and the full harmonious truth, we must look further. We must distinguish between death as we should rightly consider it, as introduced into the world through another’s sin, and, on the other hand, as brought upon us through. our own, personal transgression. The Old Testament is full of this last subject, which is found also in the New. At Corinth, where they were profaning the Lord’s supper many were weak and sickly among them, and many slept (1 Cor 11: 80). And the apostle John tells us of a "sin unto death" for which he does not say that one should pray (1Jn 5:16). But the Old Testament it is that insists ever upon death as the penalty of personal transgression, and this is just what the text means on all sides so little understood, "the soul that sinneth it shall die." Even this is not the second death which the Old Testament knows nothing of. It is a sinner dying in his sins and under judgment, and which leaves its boding shadow upon the future beyond death. But we must reserve this subject for another chapter. Death is then a provisional, not a final, sentence. It is a corrective discipline from the Father of spirits in view of the entrance of sin into the world. It is in its own nature temporary and to pass away, as Scripture declares it will. As the separation of soul and body, it is a necessary hindrance to the full blessing of the righteous, and a hindrance also to the full judgment of the wicked. For the righteous and for the wicked alike, although with opposite effect, it is at the resurrection finally done away. Let us look at some Scriptures which in this way get their proper significance, and in this way only. First, the Lord’s answer to the Sadducees touching the resurrection (Luk 20:27-38). These Sadducees were consistent in their unbelief; and, as they denied resurrection, they denied the existence also of the spirit in the separate state; and it is this last that the Lord takes up and proves, in order by it to prove the resurrection. God says at the bush, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." But, if He were then in that relationship to them, they must be existent for Him to be so. He could not be the God of the dead (in the Sadducees sense of death, the non-existent), they must be sense alive: alive to Him, and so they are. But then this apparently proves but a separate existence of the spirit in death, and that has ever been the difficulty about it. How does proving the existence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the separate state prove resurrection? Very simply after all. For what is death upon this view of it? Manifestly the infringement of God’s creative plan. HE had not made man a spirit merely, but a spirit embodied. A spirit disembodied could not be God’s intention, for His. gifts and calling are without repentance. The body therefore must rise again. And this is no forced argument. I doubt not it was one well understood in that day, when men were accustomed to a sort of reasoning which the clear light of the New Testament (wherein life and incorruption have been brought to light) has set aside as unnecessary to those who have it. But that this is no forced argument we have the best possible evidence; for it is Mr. Constable’s own conclusion (perfect Sadducee as he is as to the separate state) as to what the separate existence of the spirit might imply. We have quoted his words already, but will cite them again to show how he considers this linked by implication with resurrection of the dead. "If the first death," he says, "is consistent. with man’s in fact not dying, but continuing to live in regard to his most important part, whose survival may again be supposed to imply the restoration of the body to life," etc. That is what it really does, and we may well believe it no forced or unnatural conclusion, when we find from such a quarter so decided a testimony as to its naturalness. Take an. illustration from a fact before our eyes. The preservation of the Jews as a nation after near eighteen hundred years of dispersion into all lands is one of the standing miracles whereby God rebukes the unbelief of His prophetic word. But what does it argue to those who believe in His hand as guiding surely and not doubtfully, all things according to his resistless counsels? If we must say, this is the finger of God, to what does it point ? Surely to that national resurrection from the dead, which yet in His own time He will accomplish. This is the simply prompt conclusion of faith. It may serve to illustrate the connection of thought between the belief in the separate spirit and the resurrection of the body. And we may note that the inspired historian seems in some way to connect them, when, Paul having proclaimed himself in the council a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, he adds in explanation: "for the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both." But we must not forget that there is another way in which the words of our Lord are attempted to be explained. Indeed, we have already heard Mr. Roberts upon the subject. Let us now listen to Mr. Dobney. He has taken particular pains to establish the sense in which the passage is to be understood. He says of the explanation of it in the way we have given: "With us it would be a striking and satisfactory proof of a continuance of conscious existence after death - but no proof whatever of a resurrection; and yet it is to prove this last exclusively that our Lord, who could not have reasoned inaccurately or sophistically, adduces it." He paraphrases therefore the Lord’s argument thus: - "God is not the God of the dead [utterly and eternally perished, which was the sense in which the Sadducees used it, with whom He was disputing] but of the living. "But he calls himself the God of the Patriarchs. "Therefore these still live - or ‘will live again [which is the same thing with Him to whom the future is the present, and ‘who calls the things that are not, but shall be, as though they already Were]. But then, as already intimated, since it was a resurrection our Lord undertook to establish, which He establishes only by proving a life after death, the life which carries with it a proof of resurrection must either be itself identical therewith, or else dependent thereupon." The patriarchs "live" then in the purpose of .God as to them, not actually, but God calling that which is not as though it were - that is how Mr. Dobney understands it. But then, when God says, "I am the God of Abraham," the present actually is everything. If otherwise, then as the past is the present also to Divine Omniscience, no less than the future, He might be Abraham’s God in that sense, and no resurrection be involved at all. But it is not true that, in the way Mr. Dobney understands .it, God calls the things that are not as though they were. In the passage he quotes God does indeed speak of the "many nations" of which he had made Abraham father, with divine certainty, as being, although they were not yet. But He does not speak of their present existence, while they do not exist. So He could not assert, "I am the God of Abraham" as a matter of present relationship, when none existed. To say so is to speak deceitfully for Him. "I am the God of Abraham" to human ears necessarily inferred what God was then at the time He spoke. Nor was there here prophecy at all; no announcement of the future, nothing that could involve the thought of the future. God could no more say He was the God of Abraham while there was no Abraham to be God to, than He could say I am raising the dead, a thousand years before the resurrection. "The Lord which is, and which was, and which is to come," distinguishes between the present and the future, which Mr. Dobney would confound. But God says, "I will be" as well as "I am," and in this distinguishes, that we may understand Him; binding Himself to the forms of human speech which He adopts; speaking like one of ourselves, however little He be that, instead of hiding Himself from us in His own perfections. "I am the God of Abraham" then involved the fact of Abraham’s existence when He spoke. He could not be the God of one who had no existence, could not be in relationship to a nonentity, could not be (in the Sadducees’ thought of what the dead were) "the God of the dead." The survival thus of Abraham in his most important part implied (as Mr. Constable allows) "the restoration of the body to life." Death is then in its own nature temporary. As the derangement of God’s thought of man in his creation, it must of necessity be set aside. It is. the provisional appendage of a scene into which sin has entered, but where God’s mercy also abounds. In its nature it could not be final. In fact it is to be done away. Death does not enter then into the final judgment. That is expressly stated to be "AFTER death." "It is appointed unto men ONCE to die, but AFTER this the judgment." There are men we wot of who say it is appointed unto men twice to die, - that the second death is of the same nature as the first, - and that death thus is the judgment. Let us examine carefully then this text also. There is one fruitful cause of misapprehension of it on all sides. The sentence produced is not understood to be, what upon the face of it it is, part of a larger sentence in which the portion of the saved is distinguished from the general lot of men. "Now once in the end of the world hath He [Christ] appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation’: (Heb 9:26-28). There is a manifest contrast here - a designed one. The express object of the passage is to display the efficacy of the work of Christ. He had appeared to put away sin by His sacrifice. Sin had brought in death, had created a necessity of judgment. How then did Christ’s work meet these effects of sin for those who believed? Were death and judgment their common portion still? Alas, the general answer has been in the affirmative, and thus the meaning has been almost taken away from this pregnant and wonderful statement. Men say still, with the woman of Tekoa of old "We must needs die," and as for judgment, to deny that a saint shall be judged would be by the mass considered heresy, if it were not lunacy. Let us seek to get "full assurance of understanding" as to this. First, as to death, is it a "must needs" that the believer die? Did Enoch die? Did Elijah? Will the saints that are "alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord"? "We shall not all sleep," says the apostle, "but we shall all be changed." Thus death, with the apostle, is no necessity for the believer. We may die, not must. We may meet it as the providential dispensation of an infinitely wise God, - not as wrath, not as penalty, nor necessarily even as judgment, in that sense in which the Father judgeth His own children.* It is "to depart and be with Christ, which is far better," - to be "absent from the body and present with the Lord." Thus has Christ "abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light by the gospel." *For of course I do not speak of such cases as those of the Corinthians, or of a "sin unto death." This, let me trust, is. simple, though only to the one who refuses the unbelief of the Sadducees as to death. If it be nonentity, the blotting out of existence, no fair words about it will ever make it other than it is confessedly to Mr. Constable. But we have not now to do with him. In Scripture and for faith (but oh how little alas, faith is with us) death is no more the portion of the saint. It is abolished. And, if alive and remaining to that coming of the Lord for which we are taught daily to wait, shall never even "sleep" at all. And now as to judgment after death. The plain unequivocal statement of our Lord has been obscured to us by an unhappy translation; but there is no question as to the, simple fact, that in John 5:24-29 the word used both for "condemnation" and "damnation" is the simple word for "judgment." Alford’s and the Bible Union revisions both give "he that heareth my voice, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life and shall not come into judgment"; and again, "they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment." The common thought is, "we shall have to come into judgment, but we hope not to be condemned." The Scripture truth is; if such as we are at our best came into judgment, we could not but be condemned. hear the Psalmist express it when as a servant of the Lord he yet pleads: "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall NO FLESH LIVING be justified" (Psa 143:2). And that this is the fact Scripture everywhere bears witness. The solemn final scene, as Rev 20:1-15 : pictures it, before the great white throne, we shall look at in detail at a future time. But the second chapter of Romans is sufficiently plain as to the issue of judgment for those who come into it. Let us look briefly at the apostle’s words. Mark then, in the first place, it is "the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (Rom 2:16). The principle, too, of the judgment is clearly stated. God "will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality (incorruption) eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile; but glory, honour and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God." These are the principles of judgment; what is the actual result? Who of all the sons of men can advance his claim to eternal life upon this ground, before a holy and heart. searching God? The issue is this: - "For as many as have sinned without law" - and these are the least guilty and the least responsible - "shall also PERISH without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be JUDGED BY THE LAW." Does any one think he can escape, when judged by the law? The apostle’s words elsewhere exclude absolutely so vain a hope. "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal 3:10). This then is the law’s judgment; and this the patient continuance in well doing which the law requires. Judged then by this rule, who can escape? Not one, assuredly. As it is written again: "Whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and ALL THE WORLD become guilty before God" (Rom 3:19). If then God enters into judgment with a saint and servant of His, be cannot be justified. The Old Testament and the New unite in this assurance. And God’s way of deliverance from condemnation is by deliverance from the judgment that would involve it. The believer does not "come into judgment": the "resurrection of judgment" is the portion of the wicked alone. Let any one consider, with the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, and the fourth of the first of Thessalonians, before his eyes, the order and connection of what is detailed there, and he will see how clearly and satisfactorily Scripture deals with this question. When "the Lord himself shall .descend from heaven with a shout," not yet visible to men, as we shall see directly, "first the dead in Christ shall rise." They rise "in power," "in incorruption," "in glory," "in the image of the Heavenly" - of Christ Himself. Could there be a question of trying for their life these perfected and glorious saints? They have been already, for a longer or shorter time, every one of them absent from the body, and present with the Lord. Can it be now a question of whether they had title to the blessed place they have been in? Assuredly it can never be: the case has been abundantly settled before this. And can it be other for those who, remaining alive, without dying change their mortality for immortality, and are caught up with the risen saints in one glorious company, "to meet the Lord in the air," and "be forever with the Lord"? It is after this that the Lord appears to judgment, for we are assured that "when Christ (who is our life) shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory" (Col 3:3). And not till after this is there judgment, personal judgment. "He shall judge. the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom." Details, as to the judgment will come afterwards. It is very evident there is here no putting upon trial to see who they are, and whether worthy or not to enter into life. Christ’s call, which makes no mistake, summons forth His saints to meet Him. Not one is forgotten; not one unknown. Blessed be His name! it could not be. And thus the whole matter is definitely settled, and can never come up again. That we should give account of ourselves to God, is another matter, and should not be confounded with this. As a question of reward, we shall receive for the deeds done in the body, and "suffer loss" or find gracious recompense accordingly. That is not denied but affirmed. But we are not judged according to our works: we do not come into judgment, if our works do. There is a very manifest distinction between these things. Having seen then the Scripture testimony as to death and judgment, let us return to look at these as the portion of men, from which Christ’s work delivers His own. "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" For the saint on the other hand, "Christ was once offered, to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear without sin," - or rather "apart from sin," as having no more to settle that question - "apart from sin unto salvation." "Once death," then, and "after this, judgment" is the lot of the unsaved. How clear this makes the distinction between the two! Death temporary and to give place to judgment, which is not in death but afterwards. Thus Scripture. How feeble then again all Mr. Constable’s arguments as to the primary sense of words; and that death and nothing but death in its primary sense is the final judgment! Twice death, in effect, is his argument: once before, and then again in the judgment.. Once death says Scripture, but after this the judgment. That judgment is indeed the second death. But therefore the second death is not the repetition of the first: it is cancelled forever when the judgment of the second death begins. Is it so ill-named "a death that never dies"? a death in which they who suffer it also never die? How vain to dispute the unspeakably solemn fact! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 85: 04.30. CHAPTER XXIII THE MINISTRY OF DEATH ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXIII THE MINISTRY OF DEATH IF death has then the place which we have seen it has, it is no longer a strange thing to hear of a "ministration of death"; nay, it is rather just what we should have reason to expect, that God would take up the fact of it, and of the condemnation of man which it involves, and press it home upon the hearts and consciences of men in some distinct and positive way. We should expect from His goodness, that He would not be content in letting the fact speak for itself, but would give it a voice and utterance which should be in itself - however much men might shut their ears to it - an unmistakable one. Now this is precisely what the apostle says he has done. The character of the law - of the Old Testament therefore - is that it was a "a ministration of death," - a "ministration. of condemnation." Death was therein taken up as a moral,. yea, spiritual teacher of a lesson most humbling to man’s pride indeed, and therefore most difficult to learn; but a lesson, when learnt, of the very greatest value. It was made a teacher of the inadequacy of all human righteousness, the impotence of human power, the impossibility of a corrupt and fallen creature standing in the presence of a holy God: all this we shall find in the Jewish system when once we understand: that the death it speaks of - "the soul that sinneth it shall die" - is not the yet unrevealed second death, but," "death"in its ordinary sense. This once established satisfactorily, we shall find the Old Testament in a new light, and the perfect self-consistency of truth everywhere in its utterances. And this will be established, as soon it is seen, what should be manifest as to the holy law of the unchangeable God, that the obedience it required was absolute, perfect obedience, and nothing short. This the New Testament, no less than the Old, abundantly declares. We have already had the apostle’s statement as to this, which shows that Christianity itself also had not modified the law’s requirements. It is the great apostle of the Gentiles, the man who, if any did, understood God’s grace in the gospel, who assures us that "as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal 3:10). It is again the apostle who is considered by many (however improperly) the apostle of law, who unites with Paul in this testimony, that "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (Jas 2:10). Unswerving, perfect obedience -was therefore that required by the law. To this, however, may be thought opposed the whole system of appointed sacrifices and the forgiveness that in this way the very law itself proclaimed. But the objection would apply then to the apostles’ teaching, who certainly were not ignorant of so plain a fact. We must take it up, however, a little particularly, and try to show the consistency of these two things. There were, as all will easily remember, two givings of the law. The first time (which we shall find as history in Exo 19:1-25, Exo 20:1-26, Exo 21:1-36, Exo 22:1-31, Exo 23:1-33, Exo 24:1-18) it. was pure law, with no whispered word even of mercy, - no provision for failure or for sin. Moses is then called up into the Mount to receive from God’s hand the tables of stone "written with the finger of God." There, in the Mount, he does indeed see the pattern of other and of heavenly things, for God would show us that mercy is already in His heart, as it surely is. But no word of this is yet spoken to the people, and as actual institution finds; no place till the covenant of the law as first given is transgressed and set aside. As far as the people is concerned, it is all as yet law pure and simple. Under this they fail utterly, turning their deliverer-God, "their glory, into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." The tables of the covenant are broken; judgment is executed on the guilty people; and all, on this ground, is over forever (Exo 32:1-35). But the blessed God has still resources in Himself, and again He takes up the people. Again the law is given, word for word the same, and not a jot abated; for the holiness of God’s nature can know no change. But there is this difference, and it is characteristic: it is now written by the hand of the mediator (Exo 34:28), and not by God Himself. The law is in the hands of the mediator, and now we hear the new glad tones of long-suffering goodness and mercy. Jehovah declares Himself, as he did not before. His glory shines out as not yet it had. He is "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, .long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." This is new ground; and yet not altogether new, nor grace unmixed: He is still the Lawgiver, still in a covenant of works with His people - "and that will by no means clear the guilty." This is the new basis upon which everything is now to rest. It is law, but it is not pure law. It is law in a mediator’s hand, ministered in mercy, yet not lessening its requirement: an apparent, contradiction, and in reality two principles. united which cannot unite really in the justification of man. God says so: He cannot clear - cannot justify; and it is of the law thus given, the second time and not the first, that the apostle speaks when he calls the law "written and engraven in stones," " the ministration of death" and "the ministration of condemnation" (2Co 3:7; 2Co 3:9). . It is of this law in the hand of the mediator, that he says again "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." If we look at the scene described in the book of Exodus (Exo 34:34), we shall find that God really gave witness at the very time He gave it, of its true character, although in that typical way, the well-known characteristic of Old Testament revelation. When Moses the mediator, and thus the representative of the people, prays, "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory," God answers: "I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." But He adds, - and the words are the key-note of the Old Testament dispensation, - "THOU CANST NOT SEE MY FACE; for there shall no man see me, and live. And He said, There is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock; and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and cover thee with my hand while my glory passeth by; and I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but my FACE shall not be seen." And thus, as at the first time of the giving of the law, the flame of fire upon the quaking mount, hid, not revealed, the Divine Goodness; so even now, while goodness covered the human eyes not yet able to behold face to face the One in whose presence he stood, still. it COVERED THEM; and what Moses actually saw, as the mediator of that dispensation, was: GOD WITH HIS FACE TURNED AWAY. And that remained the feature of that old economy. It was what the veil before the holiest declared: the way into the holiest was not yet manifested. None could stand in His presence. All had sinned, and having sinned, came short of the glory of God. Death, not life, condemnation, not righteousness, was the ministration of the law. God might forgive iniquity, transgression and sin. But He could. by no means clear the guilty. He could make known His long-suffering, and say, "When the wicked man turneth from his wickedness, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive" (Eze 18:27). But who ever did what was lawful, as measured by a law, to break one commandment of which was to be "guilty of all"? Who ever broke off his sins so as to be fit for the presence of a "holy, holy, holy" God? Never one: not one. "There is none righteous, no, not one" was the law’s verdict; "there is none that doeth good, no, not one." And the veil hung before God’s presence unlifted, save as once a year the typical blood was put upon the mercy-seat; and then it dropped again, impenetrable as ever, for "the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin." Thus, through all the old economy: until one day, marked out from other days by a darkness such as never was. And when that passed, the darkness in which God dwelt had also passed. "The veil of the temple was rent in the midst." God was no more "in the darkness"; He was "in the light" (1Ki 8:12; 1Jn 1:7). The way into God’s presence was no more barred up: Christ was "the Way" (John 14:6). And instead of; as heretofore, One who could not clear the guilty, there was revealed the glory of divine grace, justifying the ungodly (Rom 4:5). One would gladly enlarge upon this unspeakable loving-kindness; - would gladly apply this healing assurance to any soul conscious of the double character of evil attaching to man. He is "ungodly"; true, but he is more, much more, than that: he is "without strength" also. Christ died for him as having that character (Rom 5:6). As having it, he is welcome at once to the blood which cleanses from sin, and the grace which strengthens and enables for holiness. But our subject is now the character of the law rather: let us turn back to consider what this involves as to the Old Testament. God was, then, by a dispensation of law, shutting man up to mercy. He was running the plough-share into the soil to prepare it for the seed of the gospel. lie was not by it saving: He was convicting and condemning. The New Testament constantly asserts this as the object of the law. The apostle speaks of it as what all Christians were well aware of: "We know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." "By the law is the knowledge of sin." "The Law worketh wrath." "The law entered that the offence might abound." "If there had been a law given which could have given life., verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the Scripture hath concluded (shut up together) all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe." I need not quote more than this. But now, if such was the scope and object of the law, - if God by it was seeking to produce conviction of a sinful and helpless condition, and to cast men thus upon His mercy, - how simple that He should take up in it the solemn reality of that death which had entered in by sin, and which was constantly appealing to man in every possible way, - the broad seal of condemnation - wide as humanity - upon the fallen creature! How irresistible the conviction of what man was, and where he was, in the-eye of a holy God, if He should come in and say to him, meaning just what it would mean when heard in connection with the first threatening of death so literally carried out, "the man that doeth these things shall live in them," "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." The strangeness of this interpretation to many is just its perfect consistency with the whole design and meaning of the law. If no one under it ever escaped death (with one exception evidently on another ground) people think it impossible that death (in the ordinary sense) could have been meant. They forget that no one ever did fulfil it, that there was none righteous, no, not even one. How could they then escape it? And if God in the law were not judging for eternity, but as a present thing, to cast men in the conviction of their lost condition upon His mercy, how consistent with this plan that He should make the judgment upon that condition a thing apparent to every one under it, instead of something yet unseen, and which eternity alone should too late reveal! Had God said, as we have made Him say, "the soul that sinneth shall die the second death," they might have com forted themselves with the assurance that no one could know much about that, and written placid lies upon the gravestones, and lost the whole reality of the ruin they were in. Doubtless many did do so in spite of all, for light never yet opened eyes closed to it, but still God had borne witness, none the less, if they rejected it as men still reject, that they were fallen creatures, and who had confirmed by their own act and deed the original sentence under which they lay. Every white hair in a man’s head, every wrinkle in his brow, was thus God’s witness in a double way, a solemn appeal which one would think irresistible. Death was not that for which man was created; no, it was God "turning man to destruction." "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. . . So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Psa 90:8-9; Psa 90:12). But not only in this way was man’s lost condition manifest, but the judgment of the law still left God free to the grace which was under the veil, while yet the veil was not removed. Had God said, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die the second death," none could contest with Him the justice of that sentence; but surely it would seem to bind Him to eternal judgment, to universal justice, but divorced from grace. As it was He did not bind Himself so that to the broken and contrite He could not show mercy, outside of law and its penalty altogether. It could do its work as convicting man of sin, and on the ground of human effort and human righteousness shut him up in condemnation, bring him to hopeless self-despair, and yet leave him in that world beyond the grave into which the full light yet had not and could not come, to a mercy which He could be free to exercise, where man’s hope was in His mercy. It could in short tie man’s hands, as to all working out of claim upon God. It could not tie God’s hands as to mercy shown to man. As to the fact itself, that the law does really speak of the first and not the second death (and there is no death between) is a thing which, when we examine it, seems impossible to question. That he that honored father and mother should "live long in the land" of Canaan, is imbedded in the heart of the ten commandments. And in Deu 4:40, where Moses is urging the people to keep these very commandments, -what does he put before them as the result of their, being kept, but "that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou rnayest prolong thy days upon the earth which the Lord thy God giveth thee, forever." Let any one who doubts read on and on through the entire Pentateuch, if he will, and let him find if he can any penalty pronounced, or any reward promised, of which he has got the least proof that it refers to a future state at all. Doubtless death as the result of Him who had created man turning Him to destruction cast its shadow over the state beyond, which as certainly the people of the old dispensation had knowledge of. That I have affirmed. It is the very thing which gives significance to it such as I am speaking of. But everywhere the legal promise is a life of blessing in the land and everywhere the legal curse is the perishing from the earth. Pass on to the New Testament, and look at that which is the very central feature in the whole scene, and what is the "curse of the law" which the Lord of glory bore? "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." The hanging on a tree was only the outward expression surely of the curse, and not the whole thing; and so, as I have urged, is death. This is death in its most shameful form; but it is not the second death, nor does the law speak of that. Mr. Constable has endeavoured to show that the Old Testament announces death as the punishment of the wicked in the future state. It is not to be supposed that he has brought forward the worst passages to prove this position. Let us then see what he produces. He says - "There [in the Old Testament] the word must be taken in the sense God has stamped upon it, and left unchanged. It is there over and over again described as the end, in the future age, of obstinate transgressors. For such God declares He has ‘provided the instruments of death’; of such as hate divine Wisdom that Wisdom says, ‘they that hate me love death’; to the wicked God saith, ‘thou shalt surely die,’ ‘the soul that sinneth it shall die.’ " He adds: "No one, we suppose, will apply the death pronounced in the above passages upon unrepented and unpardoned sin to that death which all men alike, whether saved or lost, undergo as children of Adam. They can only apply it to future punishment. Death, then, is, according to the Old Testament, to be after judgment the result of sin, as life is the result of righteousness." I have shown how directly this doctrine is opposed to Scripture. Death after judgment is Mr. Constable’s version; "after death the judgment" is that of Scripture. And of course all he says upon this is his own conjecture. What proof has he that this death is after judgment? None. What proof that it is in the future state? None really. He has only a very weak argument that all men alike, saved. or lost, undergo the first death. But does he mean to say that it never comes upon men therefore as direct judgment for sin? If so, he is at direct issue with fact and Scripture alike. What would he say, for instance, to these statements of Elihu? "He shall break in pieces mighty men without number, and set others in their stead. Therefore He knoweth their works, and He overturneth them in the night, so that they are destroyed. He striketh them as wicked men in the open sight of others, because they turned back from Him, and would not consider any of His ways" (Job 34:24-27). Or again: "And if they he bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; then He sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity. If they obey and serve Him they shall spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures; but if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword, and they shall die without knowledge, But the hypocrites in heart heap up wrath; they cry not when He bindeth them: they die in youth, and their life is among the unclean" (Job 36:8-14; comp. also Job 33:18-30). This is indeed the great lesson of all this part of Job. The thorough and complete exemplification of the principle we shall shortly have occasion to consider, in that great day, the day of the Lord upon the earth, when it shall be cleared by judgment that the meek may inherit it (Psa 37:1-40). Of this the Old Testament is full, and the principle is, as we have seen, the principle of the law; to substitute for it the New Testament complete revelation is to lose the understanding of the old dispensation. Strange as it may seem, and inconsistent too with the known belief of the Jews before our Lord’s time, there is not really one passage in the Old Testament in which either heaven is spoken of as the abode of the righteous, or hell (in our present sense of it) as the abode of the lost. The word "hell" is always in it that word "sheol" which we have already looked at, and which is the equivalent of hades, "the unseen," and applied always and only to the death state. This abundantly confirms the belief that the death threatened, even to impenitence and unbelief, was death in our ordinary understanding of it but death as the judgment of God, and throwing its awful shadow over the eternity beyond. With this Mr. Constable’s texts completely harmonize. Nor does he indeed attempt to show that the death they speak of is judgment in a future state. It would be impossible for him to prove this, for it is not true. The legal dispensation was intended as a means of reaching on a broad scale (and with a still broader after-purpose) the consciences of men. It was part of a method of grace to prepare for the coming Christ by convicting men of guilt and of helplessness, shutting them up to the grace which was then to be revealed. And thus it was that there was a "due time" for Christ to come, as the apostle declares; and that when this purpose of the law should be accomplished. Thus "when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom 5:6). In the meanwhile for individual need was provided a way of cleansing and forgiveness (typical largely, of necessity) in which broken and contrite souls found hope of mercy. But the system was, as a whole, a ministration of. death and condemnation. And for this purpose the death which was the broad seal of condemnation upon universal man was taken up and used in the penal code of the divine government in Israel: man thus having under his eyes a temporal retribution which would witness to the most carnal God’s wrath upon sin, and his own condition a sinner under it. But that was not all the light shed upon the future, and we must look at what yet remains in some little detail: first, the prophetic landscape of the Old Testament, which is important many ways with regard to our present subject, and then the meaning and character of its typical teaching. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 86: 04.31. CHAPTER XXIV PURIFICATION AND BLESSING OF THE EARTH ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXIV PURIFICATION AND BLESSING OF THE EARTH LET us now seek to arrive at some definite conclusion as to the prophetic future portrayed in the Old Testament. It is quite necessary to do so in order properly to understand the predictions of coming judgment which are scattered through its pages. First then, the horizon is earthly, and extends neither to heaven nor to hell. It is recognized that, the souls of the departed exist indeed in sheol, but that it is as yet a land of darkness, unexplored and little known to living men. It is recognized, too, that there will be a resurrection, and the Redeemer will stand in the latter day upon the earth, and Job in his flesh will see him. But there is no dwelling in heaven openly revealed, and no hell, in the true sense. I do not say there were no beliefs upon these points, but we shall consider these hereafter. A. text or two here will give us the Old Testament range. First, what the psalmist says : - "The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth has He given to the children of men" (cxv. 16). There is no other statement anywhere than that, save that as a matter of fact, Enoch had not died, but the Lord had taken him; and Elijah, too, had gone up in a chariot of fire to heaven. But there is no statement anywhere that heaven is to be man’s dwelling place. God dwells there, but into his "hill" the righteous ascend, and in His "holy place" on earth they stand (Psa 24:3, comp. Psa 24:1). Zion is where Jehovah rests forever .(cxxii 13, 14). Then as to judgment or reward: - "For evil-doers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be; yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth, and delight themselves in the abundance of peace" (Psa 37:9-11). Again: "The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth; much more the wicked and the sinner" (Pro 11:31). This is the universal strain. The God of judgment is going by judgment to purify the earth, and make it the abode of righteousness and peace. Transgressors are to be rooted out of it. The whole earth is to he full of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. These are the promises. But whose? Mark well, there is not one word yet of the Father’s house or of the heavenly places. The inheritance is of earth only. The prospect is what we are accustomed to call Millennial. Whose then are these Old Testament promises? If I take the Old Testament itself, they are Israel’s. "Israel shall bud and blossom, and fill the race of the earth with fruit." "But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up unto the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in his paths; for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine, and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it" (Isa 27:6; Mic 4:1-4). Thus sealed with Jehovah’s seal is Israel’s claim to the Old Testament promises. If still we doubt, let the apostle of the Gentiles assure us whether we are to read the name typically or literally here. "For I was wishing," says he, "that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenant, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, AND THE PROMISES" (Rom 9:3-4). If we have no doubt then, as to who were Paul’s kinsmen according to the flesh, we can have none as to whose are these Old Testament "promises." They are literally Israel’s, spite of her present dispersion and casting off. For this she must of course be gathered and converted; and so she shall be, but it is interesting and important to ask when this national restoration and conversion shall be. Scripture leaves us in no doubt either upon this point. The same apostle intimates to us, what seems so strange and hard to be received now, that it will not be by the going forth of the gospel as at present; that the partial blindness of Israel will not cease, and "all Israel" - the nation as a whole - will not be saved, "until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" "As concerning the gospel" he adds, "they are enemies for your sakes; but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes: for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Rom 11:25-29). Thus the divine purpose holds, announced in the ancient Scriptures. God has not disinherited the people of His choice. Yet for the present blindness in part is theirs, and they are enemies (God is holding them as such) with regard to the gospel. Not till the full number of the Gentiles is brought in by it will "all Israel" be saved. And then how if not by the gospel? Scripture answers (Zec 12:10-14; Zec 13:1): " They shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourned for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn: in that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem. . . aid the land shall mourn, every family apart. . . In that day there. shall be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness." When shall they see Christ thus, and how? With the mental eye only, or actually? That too is answered: - "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also WHO PIERCED HIM, and all kindreds of the earth" - or "tribes of the land," as the Greek might read - "shall wail because of Him."* *(Rev 1:7). It is well known that in Greek, as in some other languages, there is one word which. stands for "earth" and "land." I do not insist on the latter for it is quite according to the character of the New Testament to be of greater breadth than the Old. But the reference to Zec 12:10 cannot be doubted. Here then is Israel’s national repentance, and how it is produced. It is then, when the Lord Jesus comes, their eyes shall see Him, and thus Israel’s blessing, and that of the earth, follows, not precedes, that for which we as Christians wait, to receive the fulfilment of heavenly, and not earthly, promises. We thus see how it is that the gospel, as now going forth, will have to come to an end, and the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. All is consistent here, for it is true; and the present gospel dispensation is thus seen to be an interval in Israel’s prophetic history, a time of the suspension of her promises, only suspended, to find, as soon as this has run out, their full accomplishment. And this is the uniform tenor of Scripture. The last chapter of Zechariah proves convincingly that the Lord God and His holy ones will have come, and His feet have stood. on the Mount of Olives, before He is "King over all the earth," and "in that day shall there be one Lord, and His Name one." Psa 2:1-12 also speaks with perfect plainness of the heathen being given to Christ for His inheritance, and. the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession; but often and rightly as that is quoted as a millennial prophecy, it is not always as clearly seen that, to take possession, He must "break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel." And Revelation adds distinctly the promise to him that overcometh, that he shall share with the Lord this rod of iron (Rev 2:25-27). Thus again, therefore, when in the visions of the latter part of the book, the Lord is seen coming forth from heaven to the judgment of the earth (Rev 19:1-21 :), it is after the marriage of the Lamb has taken place in heaven; and the armies of heaven that follow the white-horsed rider are clad with the covering of the bride herself - that fine linen which is the "righteousness of saints." Then follows that millennial picture with which we must become more familiar at a future time. All this is impossible to enlarge on now. But it needs to be seen in order to get rightly hold of two very different epochs of judgment which, if confounded, confuse the whole subject of the prophetic future. There is a judgment of the quick, and a judgment of the dead; and these are quite distinct from one another. The judgment of the living is at the coming of the Lord, and before the millennium. The judgment of the dead is after it, not when the Lord comes to the earth, but when the earth and the heavens flee away (Rev 19:20 :). The judgment of the living is the purification of the earth in order to its blessing, and that the meek may inherit it, as we have partly seen. The judgment of the dead is the final award at the close of all, when the object, is finally to give every one not a sharer in the "first resurrection" his discriminate award. It is of the judgment of the living that the Old Testament passages speak, which predict in so many ways the destruction of the wicked. As we have seen, its, predicted future is of earthly blessing, which such a judgment is needed to produce. While the obstinately wicked perish out of it God’s judgments cause the inhabitants of the world to learn righteousness (Isa 26:9). Then our Melchizedek becomes the Prince of peace; but still the character of millennial times is righteous authoritative rule, in which (if we are to take Scripture simply). the saints of the first resurrection reign with Him,* who is the manifest King of kings, and Lord of lords. *Rev 3:21 may help some to distinguish between a throne in which Christ now sits, and which, being the throne of absolute Godhead, the Father’s throne, mere man can never share, and a throne which as Son of man He calls His own (comp. Rev 1:13), and which He promises to share with the overcomer here. The future millennial kingdom is thus clearly distinguished from the kingdom of Christ as son of God (Col 1:18) in which we now are. That future one is when he takes His great power and reigns in order to bring everything into subjection to God; and, having accomplished this, he delivers it up to the Father (1Co 15:24). One other caution. The reign of the saints with Christ over the earth does not imply a return to a fleshly condition, the gross Chiliasm of many of the ancients. The heavenly and earthly spheres are always separate, whatever the links of connection in that time when the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven. There is one glimpse beyond this millennial condition in Old Testament prophecy, but it is only a glimpse. The Lord (in Isa 65:17; Isa 66:22) announces: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." The next verses return evidently to the millennial condition, before sin and death are finally done away. Again, He identifies the new earth with Israel’s promises: "For, as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain." But this verse, too, is parenthetical, and the next again returns to the millennium. It is plainly, however, to these passages that the apostle Peter refers, when be says, "We, according to His promise, look for new heavens† and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2Pe 3:18). The only expansion of this is in Rev 21:1-5. We cannot dwell upon it now. It is only adduced as giving us the full range of Old Testament prophecy. †Only the atmospheric heavens, which are dissolved with the earth. As I have said, it is to the purificatory judgment of the earth, which introduces the millennial blessing, that a mass of passages relate, which are brought forward to prove the extinction of the wicked. When only one "day of judgment" is thought of and that the judgment of the dead after their resurrection, such passages do indeed seem to have force in this way. But it is gone as soon as we perceive their true application. And this is as true of some New Testament passages, as it is universally of the Old. It is only of the Old we are speaking now. Let us consider some of these texts, and they will illustrate the truth of the statements we have been advancing. I. The Psalms abound in reference to this time. Passing over the second and eighth, which connected give us the prophetic outline, let its look at, some more detailed statements in the ninth: - * "For Thou hast maintained my right and my cause; thou satest in the throne judging right. Thou hast rebuked the heathen, Thou hast. destroyed the wicked; Thou hast put out their name forever and ever. But the Lord shall endure forever: He hath prepared His throne for judgment: and He shall judge the world in righteousness, He shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion; declare among the people His doings. The wicked shall be turned† into sheol: all the nations that forget God." *The second psalm has been already referred to; the eighth is applied by the apostle (Heb 2:5-8) Christ’s reign in the "world to come." That this term applies to earth, not heaven, this eighth psalm witnesses, as does the expression of the apostle, "the habitable (earth) to come," the expression translated "world " in Luk 3:1. . †Goodwyn’s attempt at an argument from this word is a specimen of the kind of criticism we meet with in such writers: - "David says by the Holy Ghost, ‘The wicked shall be turned back (ahoov) into (sh’ol) the grave, and all the nations that forget God.’ Having, been raised from sh’ol to appear before the great white throne, death relaxes not his claim upon them, but in the eternal embrace of the second, supplements his temporary hold at the first." This is pure imagination. There is nothing about the resurrection of the dead in the passage, but the destruction of living enemies: nothing about the great white throne, but God dwelling in Zion; while the "turned back" refers to the 3rd verse, where the same word is used: "when mine enemies are turned back," 1: e., from their assault upon the people of God. These words need no interpreter, if we will only read them literally as they stand, and not supplement them with other statements which have to do with a very different subject. Psa 37:1-40 has been more than once referred to. It should be carefully read in connection with our present theme. But pass on to the fifty-eighth, and listen to language which people quote of eternal punishment; it is again judgment upon living enemies: - "Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth; break out the teeth of the young lions, O Lord. Let them melt away as waters which run continually; when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrow, let them be as cut in pieces. As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away; like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. Before your pots can feel the thorns, He shall take them away, both living, and in His wrath. The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily, He is a God that judgeth IN THE EARTH." In a similar way speak Psa 83:1-18, Psa 101:1-8, Psa 118:1-29, Psa 144:1-15; but there is no use quoting testimony of the same kind repeatedly. But we must look a little at the prophets. Isaiah describes in his first chapters "the day of the Lord of hosts" upon the pride of man, and here again we find similar expressions "Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies; . . . . Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness; and the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." Again (Isa 11:1-16) "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,. . . with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall slay the wicked." Then follows a well-known picture of millennial peace and of the regathering and reunion of Ephraim and Judah. Ezekiel gives us the principle of these judgments, and applies them to God’s dealings with Israel; see especially Eze 33:1-33 : But even to refer to the passages which treat of the judgments themselves would fill up our space unduly. The theme is that of the prophets generally, but as a necessary step towards that blessing of Israel and the earth which fills everywhere the landscape of the future. One last testimony from the closing prophecy of the Old Testament is often quoted of eternal judgment, and with that we may leave the subject: - "For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts" (Mal 4:1-3). Now this is, as stated, the time of the earth’s day-dawn: the time when the sun rises. It is now night, although a night "far spent." This harmonizes the passage (which has no exceptional difficulty) with all the other prophecies of the same time. It is earth’s judgment in order to earth’s blessing. We have still to look at the bearing of the typical system of the Old Testament upon our present subject. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 87: 04.32. CHAPTER XXV OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXV OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS WE have mentioned it as an apparent contradiction to our view of the limited range of the Old Testament future, that the belief of the people plainly went beyond it. Not only does the epistle to the Hebrews tell us that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob confessed themselves pilgrims upon earth, and looked for a "heavenly country"; but also the very word used by our Lord for hell - Gehenna - seems to have been in use among the people before our Lord’s time in that very way.* This implies a knowledge apparently in opposition to the statements of the last chapters. But any one need only read carefully the first half of the book of Genesis, to be quite clear at least as to Abraham that there is no promise at all of heaven to him recorded there. How then did he obtain the assurance of there being in store for him "a heavenly country"? *It is used in the Targum of Jonathan, and in the Mishna, as well as commonly by the Jewish doctors since. It is not used in the Septuagint, save once in Josh. xriii. 16, for the literal "valley of Hinnom." One of two things, could alone be supposed. There was either an unrecorded promise; or else he must have been given to see very plainly the typical character of things which we know were types of the very truths which the New Testament shows us he had received. Abraham’s call to Canaan was the perfect symbol of our "heavenly calling," but how he could have understood it so, we may be at a loss to comprehend. Yet some things there were that might have aided greatly in this. Man had been shut out of Paradise two thousand years before, and Revelation ends with the picture of another Paradise, heavenly, not earthly, into which those that have "washed their robes" in the blood of the Lamb shall be admitted. No one doubts, save an infidel, that here again the first garden of God was a type of the other. Had the secret then been shut up those two thousand years, - absolutely shut up - that there was in it some such meaning? Our Suppositions in such a matter may not possess much value; but we are seeking to account in this way for a fact at least not to be denied, of Abraham’s having a knowledge of that which certainly does not appear upon the face of the inspired record. And, our attention being turned to this, we cannot but notice how much the divine way was in those early days to teach by type and figure. Did Abel know nothing of the significance of that "more excellent sacrifice" which by faith he offered? And if the "seed of the Woman" spoke, as we know it did speak, of a deliverer to come, it spoke still in the language of type of the bruising of the serpent’s head. In Abraham’s vision it was a figure spoke, though with some interpretation (Gen 15:1-21 :). So Jacob’s ladder; and still more the mysterious night wrestling, with its consequence of a halting thigh. Joseph’s dreams still exemplify this way of the divine teaching: and so the dreams which he interprets. In these and similar instances we find not merely the use of type and figure, but of these as things whose significance was known to the people in whose time they happened. They show us that these were the language of the day, unintelligible, certainly not wholly, when first uttered, however much the full mystery waited for revelation, when the appointed time should be come. Still more would this be so as the word of God grew gradually to its full proportion, and the meaning of the law came to be unfolded by the prophets, partial though the unfolding were. And though the people were indeed blind and carnal, even this would not hinder the attainment of a certain body of truth as orthodoxy, while the point and power of it as bearing practically upon themselves might be denied. Such exactly was the later Pharisaism which carried with it the mass of the people. And such, in the history of the Christian church, was the Nicene orthodoxy. We may thus account then for a knowledge in Israel beyond the apparent measure of the revelation that had been made to them. We have only to suppose (what is otherwise indicated also) that the great system of types which their law embodied was not wholly unknown to them; and while the ministry of death and condemnation was allowed to have its full effect, and the consistency of purpose was maintained throughout, the light was allowed in another way to shine, even if dimly, through the wonderful imagery in the midst of which they moved. This was surely divine wisdom. But let us seek to realize a little how far beyond the usual thought of it, this typical character of the Old Testament books extends. All must of course admit (who are not infidels) the figurative nature of the tabernacle and temple service. Priest, altar, sacrifice and sanctuary we must allow to have their inner meaning, for the New Testament so reads them all. But the New Testament finds such also in far other things: in the details of Israel’s history, their Passover and Red Sea deliverance, the manna, the water from the rock. "All these things," says the apostle, "happened unto them for ensamples (literally, types), and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world (or ages) are come" (1Co 10:11). But this typical teaching is not even confined to Israel’s history: we have similar explanations as to Adam and his wife (Rom 5:1-21 :, Eph 5:1-33 :), the flood and the ark (1Pe 3:1-22 :), Melchisedek (Heb 7:1-28 :), Abraham’s wives and sons (Gal 4:1-31 :), with more than a hint as to the offering upof Isaac (Gal 3:16-17). Thus the history itself (while of course true and divine) is typical and prophetic also. Guided thus far by the word of God, are we to stop where the actual explanation stops, and view the rest of it as history simply; or are we to take this explanation rather as the establishment of a principle which is applicable all through the historical books? On the one hand, we must remember that many of the parables given us by our Lord are given without interpretation, and that we are left to find this in the figurative meaning of words elsewhere, and the doctrine of Scripture generally. On the other hand, who could ignore a deeper meaning in such a story as that of Joseph, for which meaning yet no express warrant of inspiration can be produced? It seems plain then that we are to apply the principle to the history in general. And here what a field of research presents itself, and how marvelously light breaks out in new and unlooked for places in the Old Testament! From the first Eden, over now six thousand years, we look on to another, brighter and more blessed, God’s own Paradise; where the tree of life, in new luxuriance and beauty, hangs its glorious fruitage over the perpetual stream that flows from the throne of God itself. Who can miss the comparison, albeit no doubt there is contrast also, between these two? Who can fail to see that the one is designed to be the shadow of the other; and that the contrast is but to remind us that the first is only the shadow, and cannot be the very image of that before whose transcendent beauty all pictures and forecasts fail? The first scene is the earthly and the fleeting; the second heavenly and eternal. Earth is made the mirror of heaven, as indeed to mortal eyes (it would seem) must be, to convey to us what "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," but which "God hath (nevertheless) revealed to us by His Spirit." When we look further at the New Testament vision of the New Jerusalem, we find a new and most interesting link with the Old Testament. Let any one compare that picture of future blessedness with which Ezekiel closes, with this closing scene of our last Apocalypse, and say if the correspondence between the two can possibly be undesigned. The waters flowing from the house of the Lord, in Ezekiel, bring life even into the salt sea; "and by the river upon the bank thereof on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary, and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine" (Eze 47:12). Who can refuse the connection with the account in Revelation: "And he showed me a pure river of water of life, Clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations" (Rev 22:1-2). Yet there are contrasts also between the two descriptions. in the one case there are limits to the blessing which we do not find in the other, as, for instance, the marshy places are yet given to salt (Eze 47:11); and the one is connected with an earthly city and a temple, while in the "heavenly Jerusalem" no temple is seen (Rev 21:22). Thus here again we find the true characters of Old Testament types. The earthly is the pattern of the heavenly. The law has a shadow of good things to come, but not the very image (Heb 10:1). But then this shows us that not only the past history but the prophetic future also contains its types. And that the millennial age, which the prophecy in Ezekiel speaks of, is in part at least a picture for earth’s inhabitants of things outside of earth. Visible signs of divine power* will bring them thee to face as it were with eternal realities. It will be in short, in a very important way, a final dispensation of sight, as those preceding it have been of faith. Introduced by the appearing of Christ, and the manifestation of the risen and perfected sons of God, the reign of righteousness will be maintained by as manifest a display of divine authority. And as on the one hand we have seen in Ezekiel pictured the blessings which reflect the heavenly and eternal ones, so on the other hand does Isaiah show us the shadow of its awful opposite, by which men will be brought as it were face to face with "eternal judgment " *So, Heb 6:5, miracles are called "powers of the world (or age) to come." "And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh" (Isa 66:23-24). Now these are words in part quoted by our Lord in reference to another judgment, of which the scene in Isaiah is only the earthly type. We shall shortly consider the difference between His words and those of the Old Testament prophet: for there is here (as before in the blessing) a contrast between the Old Testament and the New. But in Isaiah it is evidently an earthly scene, and a literal one: - no mere figure, as Mr. Dobney with others supposes, of "the complete triumph of the cause of true religion." The solemn words will not admit of being explained in this way. It would not give them meaning but evacuate it. And yet what is surely a reality is also a symbol too. It is the designed contrast, openly manifested to the eyes of all in that day, with the living water flowing from Jerusalem. There was the symbol of eternal life, and here the shadow of the second death. Each with its tale to tell in the ears of the millennial nations, - this warning, that inviting: God’s last appeal to man this side of eternity. This then finally gives us the Old Testament with some completeness, and in full harmony with itself, and with that later revelation which supplements it, in which both life and incorruption are fully brought to light, and also the second death is seen to be what the first shadows, as it is that to which finally also it gives place. We must not even here, however, expect to have done with figures, for still we see in part and we prophesy in part, and the things with which we have to do are still seen but "through a glass, darkly" - in a riddle or enigma. But whatever is given by inspiration of God is given for our instruction, and we must patiently and humbly take God’s word as He has written it, and see if it deals in "ambiguous metaphors," and whether perhaps we may not find there the truth of which we are in search. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 88: 04.33. CHAPTER XXVI THE AGES OF ETERNITY: - THE QUESTION STATED ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXVI THE AGES OF ETERNITY: - THE QUESTION STATED WE are again stopped, upon the threshold of the New Testament. Stopped, by the need of considering a question of the utmost importance to our present subject. It is gravely asked whether we have any proper word for eternity in Scripture, in the sense, that is, in which we ordinarily understand the word "eternity." For even this the eccentricity of a few learned men would take from us by an etymological sleight of hand which is scarcely creditable to them. "Eternal" is "œviternal" - age-lasting. So aionios, Dr. Farrar tells us, is "translated rightly and frequently by ‘eternal,’ and wrongly and unnecessarily by ‘everlasting.’ "* *"Eternal Hope," Preface, 34: But again "everlasting" is in the same dilemma, for of course it only means "lasting ever," and "an evergreen is not a tree green to all eternity, but a tree continuously green during its life."† †"Hist. Doctrine Script. Retribution," p. 128. So that we are in some doubt as to our English even. The word "endless" is getting to displace "eternal," but as no word of exactly that meaning is found in the New Testament in any connection of interest to us here, we are practically left without any true word in it for what for want of a better term I must still call "eternity," at all! Authorities also differ - Mr. Oxenham thinks that the "word aïdios might be expected from its root aei to mean ‘everlasting’ in the strictest sense";* while Dr. Beecher assures us that "in the New Testament aei is never used in the sense of eternity."† *"Letter," p. 17. †"Hist. Retribution," p. 128. We must inquire, therefore, for ourselves; although we shall not refuse the help that those more learned than we can pretend to be can give us in the matter. The words with which we have to do are in the Greek but two: aion and aionios. They have been Anglicised into æon and æonial, and these terms, although not naturalized in our language, we may find it convenient for our present purpose to retain. The phrases "forever" and "forever and ever" in our common Bibles are literally "for the æon," "for the æons," "for the æons of æons," and akin to terms in the Old Testament where the Hebrew word "olam" takes the place of æon. "Eternal" and "everlasting" are both renderings of the word "æonial." It is upon the ground of this phraseology that the argument is built, that æonial cannot be in the strict sense "eternal" "For the æon" cannot be "for eternity," because there are æons, and æons of æons; and you cannot so reduplicate eternity. Æonial "belonging to the æon," consequently cannot imply a longer time than the "æon" to which it belongs. Æon, moreover, in Scripture itself is translated by "world" between thirty and forty times, and twice in the plural by "ages," and this last word seems to afford the most consistent rendering all through. "Eternal life," in that case would be "the life of the age" or "the life of the world to come," and "eternal punishment," of course, must be harmonized with this: it cannot or need not be an endless punishment. Mr. Jukes, in his "Restitution of All Things," goes a good way further. He contends that these ages of which Scripture speaks, and of which the heathen writers understood nothing, refer to "Christ’s mediatorial kingdom, which is ‘for the ages of ages,’ and must yet be ‘delivered up to the Father, that God may be all in all’ " "The ‘ages’ ( therefore (he says), are periods in which God works, because there is evil and His rest is broken by it, but which have an end and pass away, when the work appointed to be done in them has been accomplished. The ‘ages,’ like the ‘days’ of creation, speak of a prior fall: they are the ‘times ‘in which God works, because He cannot rest in sin and misery. His perfect rest is not in the ‘ages,’ but beyond them, when the mediatorial kingdom, which is ‘for the ages of ages,’ is delivered up, and Christ, by whom all things are wrought in the ages, goes back to the glory which He had ‘before the age-times’ (2Ti 1:9, Tit 1:2), that God may be all in all. The words ‘Jesus Christ (that is, Anointed Saviour), the same yesterday, today and for the ages,’ imply that through these ages a Saviour is needed, and will be found, as much as today and yesterday. It will, I think, too, be found, that the adjective founded on this word, whether applied to ‘life,’ ’times,’ ’punishment,’ ’redemption,’ ’covenant,’ or even God Himself, is always connected with remedial labour, and with the idea of ’ages’ as periods in which God is working to meet and correct some awful fall . . . Nor does this affect the true eternity of bliss of God’s elect, or of the redeemed who are brought back to live in God, and to be partakers of Christ’s ’endless life’ (Heb 7:16), of whom it is said, ’Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection;’ for this depends upon a participation in the divine nature, and upon that power which can change these vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue even all things unto Himself" (Rest., pp. 61-68.) This has the advantage of being very definite doctrine, and as such it can be examined and compared with Scripture. This we hope to do in detail presently. But first, it seems, we have to look at these words outside of Scripture, and in their roots and beginnings in ordinary Greek. Dr. Beecher has taken up this subject in a rather elaborate way, following out the suggestions of Dr. Tayler Lewis, which may be read in the "Genesis" and "Ecclesiastes" of Lange’s Commentary.* We may sum up Dr. Beecher’s statements in a much briefer way without detriment (we think), either to their clearness or their force. *Special Introduction to the First Chapter of Genesis, Part 3; and his excursus on " Olamic or .Æonian Words in Scripture," Ecclesiastes, pp. 44-61. He first of all examines the proof of aion meaning eternity from Aristotle’s derivation of it from aei on "always existing." Two questions arise from this: is this etymology correct and if so, is it decisive of the matter? On the first point he concedes it to be correct for the sake of argument, although sufficient reasons could be given for rejecting it, and Plato and Aristotle were very poor etymologists. As to the second he objects that "aei does not always, or even commonly, denote or imply eternity, and in this passage it manifestly does not, and to give it that sense involves Aristotle in inconsistency and absurdity, and in a war with notorious facts in the history of the Greek language." This last is by itself decisive, and we need not look further at the question of derivation. The constant meaning of aion in Homer is by all admitted to be "life": to "breathe out one’s aion" was to die. "From this abstract idea of ’life’ it passed to a concrete form to denote a living spirit, an aeon." This meaning occurs, not in Homer, but in Euripides, and is found at a later period in Epictetus, who declares that he is not an æon (a spirit) but a man. "The element of time in any form is not included in these original uses of the word," says Dr. Beecher.† †He would not deny it. I suppose, that by Arrian’s time, the meaning even of eternity has entered into this application of the word. His words are : - "I am not an Æon, but a man, a part of all things, as an hour of the day, I must subsist as an hour, and pass away as an hour." "Nevertheless, as the idea of duration is essentially connected with prolonged life, the word assumed an idea of time, and denoted the continuous time of life at any given point, and also the total duration of life." It is thus used not only by Homer, but by the great poets, Pindar, Æschylas, Sophocles and Euripides. And "as our word age, denoting the time of the life of a man, also comes to denote the lifetime of a generation, and then a period marked with some characteristic, as the antediluvian age or the Mosaic age, and then those living in that period, so was it with the word aion." "The senses of the word thus far spoken of, occur for above five centuries in such writers as Homer, Hesiod, the Orphic Hymnists, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Herodotus, Xenophon and Thucydides; but we do not yet come to the idea of eternity." But Dr. Beecher admits that afterwards we do find the idea. "The original idea of life was (at length) subordinated and disappeared, and ideas of time alone took possession of the whole ground, and aion, instead of denoting life, came to denote time." Thus it passed into the sense of eternity: for time, "when it is qualified by adjectives denoting totality, acquires the sense of eternity." At first this qualifying adjective was expressed; but by degrees came to be sometimes implied and understood, and "aion, with this understanding, was used for eternity." "Thus the expression eis ton aiona came sometimes to mean for all time, that is, forever, and to eternity. In such cases Cremer says that it means ’for the future,’ that is, for all time to come. But this same form that may thus denote eternity, may also denote for an age, or for a dispensation, in other circumstances. "There is still another use of aion, introduced by Plato to denote a kind of philosophical eternity, from which past, present, and future time are eliminated, and absolute being only is retained." I have thus far followed Dr. Beecher, as his account of the matter seems to be on the whole correct. I have nothing to object, nor (at least, at present) anything to add. The next step carries us into Scripture, and there we get upon more satisfactory as well as more familiar ground. In the Septuagint the word aion is used as the constant equivalent of olam, and it is easy to ascertain the meaning of it therefore at the time this translation was made. Olam is not the life of a man, and the Homeric significance of aion is not found. Olam is undoubtedly more often used for a limited time than for eternity. We have seen indeed that the Old Testament in general gives us only the shadows of what are eternal things. And the shadows are necessarily transient and to pass away. Yet to these the term is constantly applied. The covenant with Noah is a covenant of olam; and not less so the Mosaic statutes and ordinances, although these plainly were to pass away. So also even the ’’men of old" are "men of olam"; "the ancient landmark" is the "landmark of olam"; Israel’s yoke had been "broken from olam," and so repeatedly.* Now, in none of these cases do we find a parallel to the limitations which the nature of things in all languages imposes on the term "forever," and which yet leave it its full significance elsewhere. An ancient landmark is not a Landmark which had been there as long as in the nature of things it could; and so as to the rest. And such examples are numerous. By no process of fair dealing then can olam (or aion in its use in the Septuagint) be said necessarily to mean eternity. *Gen 6:4; Pro 22:28; Jer 2:20. It is rendered "old " or "of old" or "in old time," in Deu 32:7; Jos 24:2; Job 22:15; Pro 23:10; Ecc 1:10; Isa 46:9; Isa 57:11; Isa 58:12; Isa 61:4; etc. But again, it is used in the plural, where we can scarcely translate it otherwise than by "ages": Psa 77:5, "the years of ancient times" are "the years of ages "; Isa 2:9, "the generations of old" are the "generations of ages." Here the same remarks as before, and not less forcibly, apply. Moreover, there is in the Old Testament a way of expressing absolute eternity, which seems fully to recognize the inadequacy of olam definitely to express it by itself. This is by the addition to it of a word which may be taken as "and yet" "for the olam and yet,"* showing that beyond the olam there is a conception of time possible and actual This phrase occurs some fourteen times in the Old Testament, and in one instance only it may have a more limited meaning, Psa 104:5, and here really limited by the nature of that to which it is applied.† *Dr. Tayler Lewis speaks of it thus in Lange’s Ecclesiastes: Ad " is transition to, arrival, and going beyond - a passing beyond still further, on and on. Thus it becomes a name for eternity, as in those remarkable expressions, Isa 9:5, abi ad, poorly rendered ’everlasting Father,’ and shochen ad, ’inhabiting eternity,’ Isa 57:15 ; with which compare Hab 3:6, Gen 49:26, and Isa 45:17, where we have the same word as noun and preposition - the mountains of ad, the progenitors of ad - to the ages of ad: to the ages to which other ages are to be added indefinitely. Hence, the preposition sense to, making it significantly, as well as etymologically, equivalent to the Latin ad et, the Greek, Saxon at and to, in all which there is this sense of arrival and transition. The idea becomes most vivid and impressive in this Hebrew phrase, "forever and yet." †The other passages are: - Exo 15:18, Psa 10:16; Psa 21:4; Psa 45:6; Psa 45:17; Psa 48:14; Psa 52:8; Psa 119:44; Psa 145:1-2; Psa 145:21, Dan 12:8, Mic 4:5. This then gives us the sense (so far as the Septuagint goes) of both æon and æonial: for "æonial" is the word they use in such cases as those where in Hebrew would be found the noun olam with a governing preposition. A "covenant of olam" becomes thus an "æonial covenant," and the "landmark of olam," the "æonial landmark." No one can avoid the conclusion, as it would seem, that olam and æon in the Septuagint, may very properly be taken to mean "age," and that æonial in the same way means "belonging to the age, or ages." Here Dr. Beecher stops short in his inquiry, and does not follow it into the New Testament. Nor does he sufficiently recognize the fact that after all there are passages in which olam can scarcely stand for less than eternity, and that aion is therefore already used in the Septuagint in this way.* His examination is imperfect, and his statement partial. The former he does not carry far enough to decide the question, and yet leaves the full force of what he has brought forward to bear upon the decision of the meaning of the word as used by the Lord as to the condemnation of the wicked hereafter. This is scarcely candid. It is true he warns us at the beginning that he does not propose to discuss this question of eternal retribution, but he does unavoidably produce an impression by the partial investigation he has made. Nay, he would actually settle the point as far as concerns the meaning of the words "eternal "punishment, and "everlasting" fire. We may fairly demand of him, why he has omitted what is absolutely necessary to the mere philological inquiry even? and why the question of these words should be more difficult to settle in the New Testament than it is in the Old? Nor only so, but as he has shown us that the word aion did get to mean "eternity," and was used for it by Plato and others before the time of our Lord, it was surely above all necessary to see whether the New Testament might not use the word in some similar Way. *The very first use of both shows this: Gen 3:22; and see Deu 32:40; Psa 9:7; Psa 33:11; Psa 90:2; Psa 92:8; Psa 102:12; Psa 135:13, etc. Dr. Beecher, however, has not done this, and from this point we must go on without him. We have presented the arguments and conclusions to which he and others have come, fully, and (we think) impartially. We shall seek the final solution now where only we can find it, and where he has not ventured yet. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 89: 04.34. CHAPTER XXVII THE NEW TESTAMENT SOLUTION OT THE QUESTION ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXVII THE NEW TESTAMENT SOLUTION OT THE QUESTION IN the New Testament we find aion over and over again translated "world," and not badly, if we only think of worlds in time instead of worlds in space, but more intelligible to us if rendered "age." The "end of the world" in Mat 13:24; Mat 28:20 is thus in all these places "the completion of the age." In Heb 9:26, it is "the completion of the ages." So we have "this world" and "the world to come," "the children of this world," "the princes of this world," and similar expressions frequently. So again we have "ages to come," as we have ages completed, and can look back to a time before these ages began.* *Matt 12: 82, Luk 18:30; Luk 20:34, 1Co 2:6, Eph 2:7, Col 1:26, 1Co 2:7 (before the ages). Thus Scripture everywhere recognizes the fact of these successive ages, surely not purposeless divisions of time, but each a step in the accomplishment of divine counsels. We have in fact the very expression, and to it we shall have again to return, "the purpose of the ages" (Eph 3:11). The ages, then, are dispensational periods, whose existence and character are not unimportant things for the student of the ways of Him whose "going forth have been from of old, from everlasting." It is to the "King of (these) ages" that the apostle therefore ascribes "glory unto the ages of ages" (1Ti 1:17). Him they all serve in various harmony of the one everlasting anthem wherewith all His works praise Him their Maker. Eternity in Scripture we need not wonder to find expressed in terms of these divinely constituted "ages." This is done in a number of different ways, hidden very much in our version by vague and dissimilar phraseology, which has little of the beauty and appropriateness of the inspired original. The word aion is used nearly eighty times in this way in the New Testament, and above seventy times the word aionios. We have thus nearly a hundred and fifty occurrences to test the Scripture use of these expressions. Surely we should be able to arrive at some satisfactory result. Let us first look at the past ages. Of course from our point of view in time we can look at eternity as behind or before us. It is but one and the same eternity, of course; for there cannot in the nature of things be two: but to our conception there is a past and a future one. Let us gather up the expressions of the former first. We find then that there are "ages" in the "ends" of which we are: for we read that "all these things happened unto them for types, and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world (literally, the ages) are come" (1Co 10:11). We may surely connect that with the passage before cited from Hebrews (Heb 9:26), that "once at the completion of the ages hath (Christ) appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." These ages were the preparatory times of which we have been already thinking, when God by the ministry of condemnation and in other ways was shutting man up to the grace which Christ should show. Thus "when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly." This grace lay under the veil throughout these ages - there, but lacking full expression. The "ends of the ages" having come, that expression has been found; and thus the "types" of Israel’s history, as well as the shadows of the law in a stricter sense, give to us their full weight of "admonition." In Col 1:26 again, we hear of a mystery hidden "from ages and from generations," and in Eph 3:9 find a similar expression. There need be no doubt that here we have the self-same ages as before. Nor again, when Paul speaks of hidden wisdom "ordained before the ages, to our glory" (1Co 2:7). These ages then are plainly finite, and so is the whole course of them; but we have two other expressions which are different from these. In them aion is used in the singular, and in one passage at least eternity must be meant. "Known unto God are all His works from aion" (Acts 15:18), where we cannot say "from the age." In the other passages the expression may seem less decisive: God has "spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been from aion"; and similarly, "by the mouth of His holy prophets from aion" (Luk 1:70; Acts 3:21); but in neither case would "the age" do at all. What age? "From the beginning of the world" might suit the context, but would be no translation: and outside that beginning of the world is what? Surely, eternity. In this sense then "from eternity" would suit, and all the occurrences would be in harmony. Once more a similar phrase occurs in the words of the man to whom the Lord gave sight (John 9:32): "From the aion was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of the blind," and here again the meaning is simply "it never was heard." Thus wherever aion is used in these expressions it cannot be spoken of a particular age or dispensation, but seems invariably to imply eternity. This is all we have relating to the past. As regards the future we have more and various phrases, which we may here again classify accordingly as aion is used in the singular or in the plural. The plural form we shall look at first as being the most simple. We have here three expressions 1. Simplest of all, in Jude 1:25, glory is ascribed to God "both now and to all the ages." There is plainly no reason to limit this. 2. More often we have, and less fully, "unto the ages." This occurs eight times. Six times in ascriptions of praise to God or to Christ (Mat 6:13; Rom 1:25; Rom 9:5; Rom 11:36; Rom 16:27; 2Co 11:31); once there is the statement Mr. Jukes relies on, and as to the force of which we shall presently inquire, - "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and to the ages" (Heb 13:8); and once it is said of Christ, that "He shall reign over the house of Jacob unto the ages" (Luk 1:33). In none of these passages is there reason to question that a proper eternity is intended. 3. The third expression is a reduplicative form which plainly conveys a much greater impression of immensity: "to the ages of ages." And this is five times applied to the life of God Himself: He "liveth unto the ages of ages" (Rev 4:9-10; Rev 5:14; Rev 10:6; Rev 15:7); once to the resurrection-life of Christ (Rev 1:18); once to the kingdom of" our Lord and His Christ" (Rev 11:15); once to the reign of the saints (Rev 22:5); ten times in ascriptions of glory to God (Gal 1:5; Php 4:20; 1Ti 1:17; 2Ti 4:18; Heb 13:21; 1Pe 4:11; 1Pe 5:11; Rev 1:6; Rev 5:13, Rev 7:12); twice to the torment of the wicked (Rev 14:11; Rev 20:10); and once to the smoke of Babylon rising up forever (Rev 19:3). These last passages we shall have again before us, but if the duration of these ages is the measure of the risen life of Christ, of God Himself, surely its force cannot be questioned. In all these cases the plural form impresses us with the sense of vastness and immensity. In the cases we have now to consider the use of the singular conveys the idea, of course, of unity. Here again we have various expressions. 1. A very singular one is "the aion of the aion," where it is the duration of the reign of the Son of God: "Thy throne, O God, is for the aion of the aion" (Heb 1:8), where we have the Septuagint rendering of the expression before noted as the Hebrew one for proper eternity (olam vaed). Here then it does seem that aion must, even in the Septuagint, have this later but acknowledged sense. Plato has it, it is owned; and Philo also an Alexandrian Jew, from the very birth-place of the Septuagint, although of a somewhat later date. Here the expression is used for eternity, and we can only translate "for the age (or perhaps, course*) of eternity." We have seen a similar use of aion for the past (Acts 15:18). *Aion is thus used in Eph 2:2, "according to the course of this world." 2. Again, we have an ascription of glory to Christ, "for the day of eternity" (aion) (2Pe 3:18). Here once more a limited meaning can scarce be contended for. 3. Again, in Eph 3:21, we find, "Unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus unto all the generations of the age of the ages." Here no one, I suppose, would doubt eternity to be meant. It may define what "age" is meant when aion is used alone: it is the "age" of the ages, the age in which all ages are summed up. 4. But the most common expression of all is that for which no more suited rendering can be found than "forever" - for the aion. It is used twenty-eight times; and not in a single instance can it be proved to have a limited sense. It too is used for the duration of the life of Christ (John 12:34); of the abiding of the Spirit of God with His people (John 14:16); of Christ’s priesthood (Heb 7:1-28 :); the enduring of the word of God (1Pe 1:23), and of the doer of His will (1Jn 2:17); and of the believer’s righteousness (2Co 9:9). It is used too for the duration of the portion of the ungodly, "blackness of darkness forever" (Jude 1:13, 2Pe 2:17). Amid all this varied phraseology not one passage can be shown where our common translation gives some equivalent of "forever," in which less than eternity can be proved to be meant. Mr. Clemance has indeed said: "An æon may have an end. Æons of æons may have an end. Only that which lasts through all the æons is without an end, and Scripture affirms this only of the kingdom of God, and of the glory of God in the church."* Canon Farrar quotes this with approbation; but he has not attempted to produce a single New Testament passage that I can find, to prove the opposite of my assertion here. Instead of this, he goes to the Old Testament for his proof, and of course quotes olam instead of aion. This amounts to a confession that the New Testament will not serve his purpose. Would he not have produced its testimony, if he could? *Future Punishment, p. 86, quoted in the preface to Eternal Hope. Dr. Beecher, too, as we have seen, avoids the New Testament. Mr. Oxenham in his letter has nothing to say concerning these expressions. Mr. Jukes, however,* comes boldly forward, as we have seen, with a distinct statement as to the nature and duration of these ages to come. To his views, therefore, we must direct our attention. *And Mr. Cox, "Salvator Mundi," ch. 5:, 6: The substance of them we have given before in his own words. The ages, he believes, are periods in which God is working in grace to meet and correct the effect of the fall. His rest is beyond them, not in them, when the mediatorial kingdom of Christ, which is for the ages of ages, is given up, and Christ, the Worker of the divine purpose in them, goes back to the glory which He had before the age-times, that God may be all, in all. Throughout these ages Christ is a Saviour needed and found, as much as "yesterday" and "to-day." Now we have seen that over and over again it is asserted of God, that He "liveth for the ages of the ages," and so, too, of Christ as risen from the dead. Will Mr. Jukes say that His "behold, I am alive for the ages of ages" is not meant to convey the thought of the English version, "I am alive for evermore"? or that " God, who liveth for the ages of ages" means "God who liveth for the time during which He is showing grace"? Again, glory is over and over again ascribed to God for the ages of ages or the age of ages, and not once (according to this view of the matter) for a proper eternity at all! How beyond measure strange that there should be no glimpse beyond these ages, during which the smoke of torment never ceases! How strange that just when that long, lingering purgation shall have come to an end, - when praise should be most rapturous, and joy complete, - that just then we should come to the end of all that Scripture contemplates of joy or praise, or the very life of God Himself, and not a note be heard, not a ray of glory shine out of the impenetrable eternity beyond! Who can believe this? Who can seriously claim it as a thing to be believed? But we are told that Scripture itself thus speaks of the "purpose of the ages."* The phrase occurs, Eph 3:11, as the Greek of what in our version is "eternal purpose." But what is this purpose, as Scripture, not the Restitutionist, declares it? Is it not, so far as given in the passage produced, "the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the purpose of the ages"? There is no mention here of other beings than the angels and the church; the time for the wisdom of God to be thus made known is "now." Can Mr. Jukes show how this speaks of the recovery to God of those in an after-time cast into hell? If he can, at least he has not done it. *So also Cox (Salv. Mun., p. 107): "In his epistle to the Ephesians he both expressly names God’s determination to save men by Christ [all men?] ‘the purpose of the ages,’ the end that was to be wrought out through all the successions of time; and distinctly asserts that this redeeming work will take ages for its accomplishment." Ages to come? Where? But then "Christ’s mediatorial kingdom is for the ages of ages, and after these are finished, He delivers it up." Let us see what is the truth of this. Now sitting upon the Father’s throne as Son of God, and having "all authority in heaven and earth," He comes as Son of man in glory to take His own throne as such."† It is plainly this kingdom which He delivers up to the Father (according to 1Co 15:24-28), having accomplished the purpose for which He took it. He reigns, says the apostle - until when? "Till He hath put all enemies under His feet." Is that conversion? If it is, words have no meaning. No; it is the subjecting by power those who could not be subdued by grace. Death is among these enemies, and "death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed." When? When death and hell (hades), having delivered up their dead, will be cast into the lake of fire. When Gehenna shall swallow up hades, and the second death put an end to the first (see Rev 20:13-14). Then will the last enemy be destroyed, and all be under the feet of Christ. Then, therefore, will be the time when Christ will deliver up the kingdom to the Father. †Comp. Rev 3:21; Dan 7:18; Matt 25: 81, etc. But the ages of ages stretch on beyond this: for the torment for the ages of ages in the lake of fire begins even for the devil himself but at the close of the millennial reign (Rev 20:10). The kingdom which Christ takes to put down all enemies will be over. Death, the last enemy, will be destroyed. But the ages of ages roll on their unbroken course, and Christ’s "reign for the ages of ages" will of course go on also. It is a very common mistake Mr. Jukes has made, but it becomes a very serious one when made the foundation of a doctrine such as his. He has confounded the brief millennial reign in which Christ by power puts down His enemies with the everlasting reign of Christ as Son upon the Father’s throne, which never can be given up. For faith He reigns now before that kingdom is come. All authority is His in heaven and earth. It will not cease to be His when that coming kingdom shall be delivered up to the Father, that God may be all in all. And that coming rule, will it manifest as Mr. Jukes would intimate, a grace beyond the present - at least more prevailing grace than now? On the contrary, it is the rule of "THE ROD OF IRON,"* and the effect as to His enemies, not their being won by the grace of the gospel, but "dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel" *Psa 2:8-9; Rev 2:26-27. Now in Rev 11:15, to which Mr. Jukes refers, it is indeed said, "The world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ has come," and this does of course refer to the setting up of what is called the millennial kingdom; but it is looked at (in a very intelligible way) as the setting up of an authority which will never cease, a divine kingdom, "the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ," and so, when it is added, "and He shall reign for the ages of ages," this does not affect the truth that the mere human form of the kingdom will be given up. "He shall reign forever and ever." Though He leave the human throne to sit upon the divine, still "He shall reign." It is the everlasting pæan rightly then begun. Certain it is that if as man He reign till all enemies be under His feet, and then deliver up the kingdom to the Father, and if death be the last enemy destroyed, - then the ages of ages of torment begin for most from this point, in stead of ending here. And Christ’s reign for the ages of ages cannot end here either. Thus Mr. Jukes’ foundation is swept away. Another text upon which he relies, there is not even so plausible an excuse for misinterpreting. For when the apostle speaks of " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for the ages" (Heb 13:8), he is certainly connecting this either with the faith of the Christian leaders, of which he has spoken in the verse before, or with the "divers and strange doctrines" of the verse after, or with both. He is either showing the unchangeableness of Christ, as answering the confidence of His disciples’ faith, or else that He is ever the same, to rebuke the divers and strange doctrines. In either case, there is no question of His being the Saviour of those who have rejected His salvation; and to translate the name by which His people know Him, in order to insist upon His being an Anointed Saviour to those who on the contrary refuse and reject His salvation, - is nothing less than bold perversion of a blessed truth. Mr. Jukes’ views on this point need not then detain us longer. But we have yet to consider the word aionios, "æonial," or eternal. And it is here that we find the full phalanx of opposition to the commonly accepted meaning of the terms. Canon Farrar and Mr. Oxenham here make their stand, not perceiving that the battle is already gone against them irrecoverably. Messrs. Minton, Roberts, and others, their opponents in doctrine, coincide with them. But an answer to one will be at the same time an answer to all the rest. Aionios, as derived from aion, of course gets its meaning from this also. We have seen that aion has two meanings in the New Testament: one, that of "age" or dispensation, the other, of eternity in the commonly understood sense. We may expect then that aionios will reflect this double sense. And we shall find our anticipations verified by the fact. Let us first listen, however, to Dr. Farrar. "I now come," he says, in the preface to his book, "Eternal Hope," "to aionios, translated rightly and frequently by ‘eternal,’ and wrongly and unnecessarily by ‘everlasting.’ I say wrongly on grounds which cannot be impeached. If in numbers of passages this word does not and cannot mean ‘endless,’ - a fact which none but the grossest and most helpless ignorance can dispute, - it cannot be right to read that meaning into the word, because of any a priori bias, in other passages. All scholars alike admit that in many places aion can only mean ‘age,’ and aionios only ‘age-long,’ or (in the classic sense of the word) secular, which is often equivalent to ‘indefinite.’ Many scholars who have a good right to be heard, deny that it ever necessarily means ‘endless’ though it is predicted of endless things."* *Doctors differ. Mr. Oxenham in his "Letter " says "that ‘endless’ was one of (its) senses NO ONE THINKS OF DENYING." Sect. 5:, on Dr. Pusey’s Sermon. In a note he gives as his authority, so far as the New Testament is concerned, as to aion,† no reference, and as to aionios three (Rom 16:25; 2Ti 1:9; Tit 1:2). He adds, "He who said eternal fire used the word a few hours after in a sense that had nothing to do with time (J. 17: 3)." †By a clerical error aion and aionios - have changed places in the note. This sense he mentions in his sermon on hell as implying "something ‘spiritual,’ - something above and beyond time,* - as when the knowledge of God is said to be eternal life." He proceeds: - " So that when with your futile billions you foist into this word the fiction of endless time, you do but give the lie to the mighty oath of that great angel, who set one foot upon the sea and one upon the land, and, with hand uplifted to heaven, swore by him that liveth forever and ever, that time should be no more."‡ *Doctors differ here also. Mr. Cox, whose disciple Dr. Farrar mainly is, yet speaks on the other hand of aion and aionios as "words which, as I believe I can show you, so far from denoting that which is above time, or that which will outlast time, are saturated through and through with the thought and element of time " (Salvator Mundi, p. 100). ‡Dr. Farrar shows how he can trifle with Scripture by admitting in a note that possibly this may mean, - as it most certainly does mean - "that no further delay should intervene." If there be even a possibility of this, why argue (as above), from what is ‘possibly’ not what he quotes? In his excursus upon the word, at the end of the book, he tells us that - "it is not worth while once more to discuss its meaning, when it has been so ably proved by so many writers that there is no authority whatever for rendering it ‘everlasting,’ and when even those who like Dr. Pusey are such earnest defenders of the doctrine of an endless hell, yet admit that the word only means ‘endless within the sphere of its own existence,’ so that on their own showing the word does not prove their point." And he adds "It may be worth while, however, once more to point out to less educated readers, that aion , aionios and their Hebrew equivalents in all combinations, are repeatedly used of things which have come and shall come to an end. Even Augustine admits (what indeed no one can deny) that in Scripture aion, aionios must in many instances mean ‘having an end,’ and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who at least knew Greek, uses aionios as the epithet of an interval" "That the adjective aionios is applied to some things which are ‘endless’ does not, of course, prove that the word itself meant endless; and to introduce this meaning into many passages would be utterly impossible and absurd. . . . Our translators have naturally shrunk from such a phrase as ‘the endless God.’ The utter dearth of metaphysical knowledge renders most people incapable of realizing a condition which is independent of time - a condition which crushes eternity into an hour, and extends an hour into eternity. But the philosophic Jews and the greatest Christian Fathers were quite familiar with it. ‘Æon,’ says Philo, ‘is the life of God, and is not time, but the archetype of time, and in it there is neither past, present, nor future.’" This is Dr. Farrar’s whole argument. It is not all he says, of course; but it presents fully his thoughts. We may now compare his thoughts with Scripture. And it is remarkable how little his appeal is to the New Testament. He refers largely to the Old, that is, to the Septuagint version, but as to the New, three passages of an exceptional character, in each of which occurs the phrase æonial times" constitute really his whole appeal! We have seen, too, that as to the phrases in the New Testament for "forever," etc., he does not venture one single appeal! This is the final result after so much erudite research, out of near one hundred and fifty passages to be consulted, one phrase recurring in three of them is produced! Dr. Farrar’s will to produce more, if he could, need not be doubted. His learning is not for me to question. His mind is enlarged enough to apprehend that metaphysical eternity of which we shall have more to say by and by, but which the unmetaphysical part of mankind can so little realize, and which Dr. Beecher calls, somewhat otherwise interpreting the facts, "to common sense minds, nonsense." Yet after all, this is the result, after weighing (as we must give him credit for doing) one hundred and fifty passages, one phrase in three passages where aionios cannot mean "endless." And let me put the force of that a little plainer; for it is a kind of argument we have before encountered in the mouth of some with whom Dr. Farrar would not perhaps like to be associated, but which needs to be made plain to be duly appreciated: - Pneuma cannot be "spirit" in the first clause of John 3:8; it ought not therefore to be "spirit" in the last part of the same verse. Psuche is over and over again used for "life," where to translate it "soul" would be an impossibility. Therefore you cannot insist upon its being "soul" where the Lord speaks of man as being unable to kill it. Let us put the parallel: - Aionios cannot mean "endless" in a passage where it would read "endless times." Therefore it cannot mean this when God is spoken of as the "eternal God." I can quite understand that Dr. Farrar will not own his argument in that shape, but its only shame with him is the shame of its nakedness. He has clothed it with fair words, which after all cannot prevent its halting badly. Why does he not show us that aionios cannot mean "endless" in some of the passages in which we affirm it does, instead of taking up those in which we are as clear as he is that it does not? Why does he avoid the real issue, to create a false one? Dr. Farrar’s animus evidently obscures his judgment, fatally to the argument he maintains. "Even Augustine," he tells us, "admits (what, indeed, no one can deny) that in Scripture, aion , aionios must in many instances MEAN ‘having an end.’ " I do not believe myself the only one, by some thousands at least, who would deny it. Nay, I must believe that it is merely careless writing when Dr. F. affirms this. Aionios never meant "having an end" yet, and none should know it better than himself. It IS affirmed of things which have an end, and in those cases of course cannot mean "endless." No one will deny that: and that is all (I suppose) that he means to affirm. A moment yet as to the Septuagint. Dr. Farrar ignores the necessary change of meaning in words in lapse of time, and which Dr. Beecher’s history of it (certainly from no point of view hostile to Dr. F.’s theory) so plainly shows as to the word in question. Even the Septuagint does not refuse the later meaning of aion by any means altogether, while the New Testament shows this later meaning almost superseding the earlier, as the time-sense in the Septuagint itself has superseded the earlier Homeric. It is well-nigh as vain to bring up the Septuagint to settle the case for the New Testament, as to bring up Homer to settle it for the Septuagint. And, comparing the Old Testament with the New, where have you the leolain vaed* of the Hebrew reproduced in the Greek? That expression which does indeed imply a "beyond" to the olam is never used for the New Testament aion. Save only a word twice used (and where in one passage out of the two, people deny for it also that it means "everlasting "†) there is no other expression for this but aionios; no other for eternity but some phrase compounded of aion. The question is one of blotting or not every phrase for eternity out of Scripture. *Dr. Farrar takes even this term as not implying true eternity; but. the one exception is merely a limitation from the nature of the thing spoken of, which in no wise shows a limitation elsewhere. If we speak even of the "everlasting" hills so often urged, does that make Dr. Farrar doubt what we mean by "everlasting"? †Aïdios , Rom 1:20; Jude 1:6. I beg Dr. Farrar’s forgiveness, I must modify that statement. He will allow us to say "eternal" if only by that we do not mean "everlasting." But does not he know that we of the less learned see no difference between the two? Of course I do not dispute his right to go back to derivations and to speak of ævum or of ætas, as he will. The derivation of a word is one thing; its actual use is another. Do we use eternal in any other sense than everlasting really? As I have said, it really comes to this, that the expression (in the sense we have received) must disappear out of the English language - for aught I know, out of every other too - as well as out of Scripture. Dr. Beecher will not let us have "everlasting" any more than Dr. Farrar will "eternal," and with just as good reason. So serious is the question. And we can only conclude that if learning and sense are so opposed as they seem to be, we may as well retain the latter and dismiss the former. We might then perhaps as well return to simplicity and English, but we must not copy the example of those whom we have taxed with neglect of ascertaining the New Testament use of the word. We must seek ourselves to ascertain it; and out of 68 passages remaining to us, omitting the three produced by Dr. Farrar, we may surely discover the ordinary sense attaching to it. But first, what of these three passages? what does the expression mean - "æonial times"? Does "æonial" there speak of limited duration? I think we may very fairly argue that it does not there speak of duration at all. "Times" is the word which there implies duration, and limited duration too, of course. Why then should another word be added to express the same thing? That textual criticism deprecated so much by Dr. Farrar will help us here. We have before heard of a mystery "hidden from ages and generations," and now made manifest to the saints (Col 1:26), and we have seen that the ages here are those of preparation for Christ’s coming, and closed by His death; so that now upon us the ends of the ages are come, and we have the full admonition of what happened unto them as types. A reference to Rom 16:26 will show that to these "æonial" or "age-times" the apostle refers: times which had the character of "ages" or of dispensations. This is what "æonial" here signifies: not the limited duration of the times, which as "times" are necessarily limited, but their being special, divinely constituted, times. Æonial here then strictly means " belonging to the ages": it gets its meaning from the first sense of aion. But inasmuch as aion has the sense of eternity as well, we may expect to find it also signifying "eternal," "belonging to the age of ages." Let us see how far we can prove this meaning to be in aionios, and how far general in the New Testament this meaning is. Now, one very plain passage, one would think, to show that it means "eternal," is that in which it is contrasted with what is temporal: "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2Co 4:18). Here limitless duration must be the contrast with the limited. With this the "eternal weight of glory" of the verse preceding must be connected; and also "the house eternal in the heavens" of the following one. So again in Phm 1:15 the apostle writes: "For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldst receive him forever . . . a brother beloved;" and here the limited duration expressed in aionios is again contrasted with the limited "for a season." Thus simply is it proved to have the sense "eternal." And why then should its force be doubted when we have it applied to God, to His "power" and "glory," to the "Spirit," to the kingdom of Christ, to the saints’ "life," "inheritance," "habitations," "salvation," "redemption"? And this covers all the occurrences in the New Testament save those relating to the future judgment, and two others perhaps somewhat less decisive. Of these the "everlasting covenant" we need not doubt to be strictly such, only referring to the past, in our human way of speaking, the "covenant from everlasting"; while "the everlasting gospel" gives us a case of necessary limitation by the subject to which the term is applied, and which our English words, while incontestable as to their meaning, equally admit. I do not see how the New Testament could give us much more assurance of "æonial" being (save where necessarily limited by the subject) "eternal" in the fullest sense. But Dr. Farrar believes this is only because of "the utter dearth of metaphysical knowledge" which renders us "incapable of realizing a condition which crushes eternity into an hour, and extends an hour into eternity." We doubt sincerely if Dr. Farrar can realize it. "Eternity crushed into an hour," and that when time is eliminated from the thought, we believe to be simply a very gross absurdity. How can what is not time at all be "crushed into an hour"? And how can an hour which is "time," be extended into an eternity which is not? Perhaps we should get on no better with Philo and the Christian "fathers." We do think there is more of Plato than of Scripture in their thoughts as to this, and perhaps it is this at bottom which makes Dr. Farrar reject the New Testament "ages of ages" as being the true expression of eternity; for here, in pity to our human faculties it may be, but still the element of time is not, eliminated from the idea of eternity; eternity is just illimitable time. And we may thank God He does not write merely for metaphysicians, but for "babes." But then again we read that aionios "is in its second sense something ‘spiritual’ - something above and beyond time, - as when the knowledge of God is said to be eternal life." Does Dr. Farrar really mean that "eternal" here signifies "spiritual"? Or does he mean to refer it to that metaphysical eternity which may be crushed into an hour and be eternity all the same? If it be the latter I have said all that is needful; if the former, I scarcely need reply. Why should not aionios be "something" holy, because "eternal life" is that; or anything else almost by the substitution of which the obnoxious sense of eternity may be most thoroughly blotted out? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 90: 04.35. CHAPTER XXVIII THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES AS TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXVIII THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES AS TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD WE are now free to enter upon the New Testament, unembarrassed by the questions which would otherwise divert us too far from the study of the special texts which we shall now have to consider. And in order to pursue our study of the subject with more clearness, we shall first seek to separate from the texts which speak of final judgment those which speak of the judgment of the living when the Lord appears. We have already looked at this from the side of the Old Testament, as it is indeed a point of main concern throughout it. But the New Testament, while going beyond the Old as far as the literal sense extends, does not by any means lose sight of the coming judgment at the appearing of the Lord. The millennial blessing as to the earthly part of it is indeed very briefly touched on, and the blessings in heavenly places are substituted for this, Christian promises instead of Jewish ones. And in accordance with this the judgment coming on the earth is more a solemn warning to the impenitent and unbelieving, than as connected with the hope of the saints themselves. The Jewish promises being earthly, necessarily, for those who are to inherit them, the earth must be delivered from what defiles and destroys it. Israel’s foes must be put down with the strong hand of power, that they may be nationally saved, and inherit the earth. Christians, on the other hand, rightly expect to be with the Lord in heaven in the Father’s house according to His promise (John 14:1-3). Their part in the millennial kingdom is to reign over the earth with Christ, but this is not to be confounded with living on it. It is not, of course, possible here to dwell upon the points in controversy between so-called premillennialists, and the advocates of a merely spiritual reign. Still it will be found that the connection of truth is everywhere so intimate in Scripture that a wrong view as to the millennium may confuse many an otherwise clear passage of the gravest importance as to the present question. As already said, the putting off the Lord’s coming to the end of the millennium confounds together two wholly different epochs of judgment. But what has been already urged as to this must suffice us now. The texts which apply to the judgment of the living in the New Testament in general present no special difficulty. (1.) First, in the Baptist’s words we have Israel, I doubt not, purged by judgment at the coming of the Lord. "He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire". It is a figure of judgment wholly inconsistent with hope for those condemned as "chaff." Annihilationists would naturally claim it as a figure of utter destruction, and so it is. But then a figure and what it figures are as different things as here the "chaff" is from the men compared to them. This is what these writers constantly ignore. They argue from the literal effect of material fire as if the fire, the thing subject to it, and the effect itself were not all in some respects as much contrasted as compared. Material destruction is not a FIGURE of material destruction. It must figure something else. Not of course its spiritual opposite: and here it is that universalism of all grades so completely fails. Material destruction cannot figure spiritual restoration. It is wholly and absolutely opposed to this. But it figures spiritual destruction on the other hand, and not material; and here annihilationism of all grades fails as completely. When God’s wrath is the fire and man its object, who can argue that the necessary effect will be his material destruction? Certainly it must be argued at least on some other ground than this. And this has been attempted accordingly, Isa 57:16 being quoted in the random and careless way, I must say not unusual with them, to show that "the spirit would fail before" His constant anger, "and the souls that He had made." But this is said, in the style of the Old Testament which we have before insisted on at length, of death as the effect upon mortal man here, and has no reference to that judgment which is beyond death itself. The argument is therefore inadmissible. I have shown before what man’s utter destruction is. It is his perishing from the place for which he was naturally made and fitted, and this by the wrath of God because of sin: this solemn judgment it is that may find its figure in the chaff burned in the fire. No material destruction can be argued from it. Here the perishing even from the earth may be intended, for a similar figure is often used in the Old Testament when God’s wrath takes away living men. And to the judgment of the living the words here apply. Yet in this case eternal judgment is so closely connected with it, that I see no use in separating between them. (2.) In Mat 22:13 we are warned of the judgment at the Lord’s coming. The time is when the king comes in to see the guests invited and presenting themselves at the marriage-feast. The scene is earthly: no guest will find his way into heaven and be turned out. But here there is no figure even of destruction. The judgment is, "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." I need only refer to a similar picture in Mat 8:12. Here "darkness" is not annihilation, even in figure. There can be none as punishment where there is no eye to behold light if it were there. In Mat 25:30 the unprofitable servant is adjudged to the same thing; and in Jude 1:13, we shall find it again in stronger language used for an eternal doom. (3.) I pass over the separation of the sheep from the goats, because although it is really the judgment of living people when Christ comes, the terms of it connect it plainly with the final judgment. We shall examine it therefore in another place. Luk 19:27 again refers to the Lord’s coming, and presents no difficulty. (4.) Luk 20:18 is again one of those pictures in which material destruction figures another thing. I need scarcely repeat what I have just now said about a parallel case. (5.) We may pass on now to 2Th 1:7-9, upon which we shall dwell somewhat longer. It manifestly speaks of a time "when 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: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He shall come to be glorified in His Saints," etc. Mr. Dobney has the most fully of all writers that I know examined this passage in behalf of annihilationism. I shall therefore follow his argument as to it. He brings Whitby and Macknight forward to show that the "literal sense" appeared so manifestly the true one to these expositors that even they "had to adopt it to the fullest extent their mental philosophy would allow," and admit that the "utter destruction of the bodies [of the wicked] without any hope of their regaining new bodies" is involved in the passage. And Mr. D. presses that "beyond dispute, the sinner in his entireness can be destroyed literally; and if the word has any literal force at all in this passage, it comes in all its tremendous fulness against the whole man, and not merely against a part of his nature."* *Scripture Doct. of Fut. Punishment, pp. 216, 217. Now here is an instance of the value of a little knowledge of what the Bible says as to the close of the present order of things. Had Dr. Whitby been a pre-millennialist instead of being as opposed to it as it is well known he was, he would have understood the absolute impossibility of "everlasting destruction" being what he would make it. For the passage says plainly that this takes place at Christ’s appearing, - before the millennium therefore, and more than a thousand years before the resurrection of the wicked. In this last all the dead not raised at the first resurrection are to rise. It is impossible then that these could have been (in that sense) eternally destroyed, and so never to rise, a thousand years before. To any one who holds therefore to a true millennium, and Christ’s coming before it, this text alone should be decisive that "everlasting destruction" is not annihilation. Thus error is linked with error, and truth with truth. I need not follow Mr. Dobney in his further remarks upon the expression "from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power," as I do not take this to mean "away from." I am quite content to accept Mr. Hudson’s reference to "the times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord" as a parallel instance of the use of that phrase. In either case the "presence of the Lord" is what brings whether the judgment or the blessing. But I cannot allow so easily his remarks upon "everlasting." I believe with his Eclectic reviewer that "the apostle in speaking of everlasting destruction, means to describe something which has continuance as a state of suffering, and not extinction of being." But I must be permitted to state my own reason for this, which is outside all Mr. Dobney’s argument. For, supposing this awful penalty to be inflicted after resurrection, "destruction" alone would be sufficient (if a material destruction) to convey the whole thought, and the addition of "everlasting" would be redundant. Annihilation would be, after resurrection, necessarily everlasting, for there is no repetition of resurrection, and "everlasting annihilation" has no proper sense. If before resurrection, then, as I have said, the resurrection afterwards would sufficiently show it was not "everlasting’" I have shown besides that "destruction" is not what Mr. D. and his associates mean by it. (6.) In the next chapter we have another judgment which takes place at the same time, but the special destruction of the "wicked one". Without entering too much into particulars, which would divert us too from our present aim, it is evident that we have in this "wicked one" a person exalting himself above God, and claiming to be God Himself; and whom "the Lord Jesus shall consume with the breath (pneuma) of His mouth, and annul (katargeo) with the manifestation (or appearing) of His presence (epiphaneia hautou parousia). The words are a partial quotation from Isa 11:1-16 :: "and there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him; . . . . with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked (one)". If any one doubt who or what is in question here, let him follow on this quotation, and he will find a familiar picture of millennial days when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb," and also Israel and Judah be brought from the four corners of the earth and finally united together. Thus we have, both in Isaiah and Thessalonians, a premillennial judgment of this" wicked one." In the latter we are distinctly told it is at the appearing of Christ’s presence. Words could hardly more emphatically declare a personal, not a merely spiritual, coming. The wicked one is then to be "consumed" and "annulled," in the day when the rod of iron shall smite (and yet to heal) the earth. Now, if we turn for a moment to Rev 19:1-21 :, we shall find there (as I have before briefly argued) Christ’s coming to the earth. It follows the marriage of the Lamb in heaven; and upon the white-horsed warriors who follow their Head and Lord we see the same white linen which before clothed the bride, and which is interpreted for us as the "righteousness of saints" (Rev 19:8). It is a figure of course, but a very intelligible figure, of Christ’s appearing with His saints; and, as the sword out of His mouth to smite the nations answers on the one hand to Isaiah’s "rod of his mouth," so among the objects of the judgment we have two leaders, one of which (it does not matter for our purpose which) is generally allowed to be "the wicked one." Indeed, it seems hardly possible for one who believes in any harmonious interpretation of the word of God to doubt this. The history of the beast and false prophet is given in Rev 13:1-18, Rev 14:1-20, Rev 15:1-8, Rev 16:1-21, Rev 17:1-18 of the book, in close correspondence with what is said in Thessalonians, and there could hardly be a third person at the same time on earth, who could take the place that these do. But what then is the "consumption," or "annulling," or even "slaying" (putting to death) of this wicked one? "These both were cast alive into a lake of lire burning with brimstone," and there they are found still alive a thousand years afterwards! We shall have to return to this again. But here at least how fully evident that to be "consumed," "annulled," and "put to death," even, when applied to the final judgment of the wicked, do not mean material destruction or annihilation at all. Let Mr. Constable and others, instead of indulging in a priori reasoning as to the force of the words, only examine the interpretation of them by the facts of Scripture, and they will soon have indisputable proof that the general sense of Christendom has not been so far astray as to these common words of not very recondite meaning. Nor are they badly suited to convey just what they have conveyed to generations of at least ordinary intelligence as to the every day speech they used. I do not know of any other passages referring to the judgment of the living which can cause any difficulty, save one which has been reserved for future consideration. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 91: 04.36. CHAPTER XXIX THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXIX THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT THE Lord, in John 5:1-47, declares as distinct the "resurrection of life" and "the resurrection of judgment." I have before noticed that the word "damnation" in this place (as in John 5:24 the word "condemnation") is the ordinary word for "judgment." Dr. Farrar, it is well known, has raised the question as to whether the former word and its cognates really occur at all in the New Testament. I should agree with him entirely in discarding them in favour of a consistent rendering of the Scripture words all through.* But he means that this should go a good deal further, and evidently to expunge, if possible, the thought of what we now mean by "damnation" from Scripture along with the word. But "damnation" is only eternal judgment, in the true (not his) sense of "eternal," and "eternal judgment" is asserted in the fullest way. And when he tells us that the "judgment of Gehenna" is "something utterly different from the "damnation of hell," we must entirely differ from him: but this will come up anon. The fact is that the unutterably solemn meaning now attaching to damnation has only grown out of the impression which that eternal judgment has made upon those who believed the Scripture statements.† *In such passages as 1Co 11:29, 1Ti 5:12, Rom 14: 28, the ordinary rendering is impossible and misleading, as he rightly urges. †Mr. Cox objects, that if any "take the ‘judgment’ of God as equivalent to ‘damnation,’ that can only be because they conceive of the divine judgments as though they were confined to the future life, whereas the Scriptures constantly affirm that God judges all men, good and bad, every day and all day long; and because they wholly misapprehend the character of the divine Judge and Father" (Salv. Mun., p. 51, Amer. edit.). It is Mr. Cox who does not apprehend the difference between the judgment of the Father, now for our profit, and the judgment of the day in which "the Father judgeth no man." The two are contrasted by the apostle: "The time if come that judgment must begin at the house of God and, if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And, if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the sinner and the ungodly appear?" (1Pe 4:17-18; compare 1Pe 1:17-18; John 5:22-24; 1Co 11:31-32). But God’s judgment has with Mr. Cox no such meaning as would bring terror to an ungodly soul. Of a sensualist living prosperously in the world he asks, "Where is the judgment of God? Where is it? Why, there in the man himself, and in his base content with a lot so base" ! But in some places "damnation" is even inferior in force to that word "judgment," apparently so much less strong. In that before us for instance its use has obscured the solemn reality that none can come personally into judgment before God, except to be condemned. This is everywhere what Scripture asserts, and here with a force perhaps little less than that of any. For it is only "they that have done evil" who come forth to a "resurrection of judgment" at all. How plainly this should tell us that the saints cannot be numbered among those spoken of as raised for judgment according to their works before the "great white throne" (Rev 20:11-15). Yet this very passage in the gospel has been assumed to prove a general resurrection of saints and sinners together, because it is said" the hour cometh in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth," etc.; while a simple comparison of three verses before this would demonstrate that the "hour" in which the Son of God has been quickening dead souls has lasted now eighteen hundred years from the time He spoke. The Lord merely asserts here the general fact that all shall hear His voice, while He contrasts in the most absolute way the character of the two resurrections to which He summons them. People imagine that but one obscure passage (which is not obscure however) in a book of visions is the only one which can be brought forward for a "first resurrection" of the righteous, whereas in fact almost every passage that speaks of resurrection infers it in some shape. There is even a special phrase for it, "the resurrection out from the dead" (ek nekros), as to which the disciples (who knew well the general truth of resurrection) inquired "what the rising from the dead should mean" (Mark 9:10). It was of this special resurrection the Lord spoke, when in answer to the Sadducees He said that "they which shall be counted worthy to obtain that world" - the world to come - "and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels: and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection" (Luk 20:34-36). How could people be "counted worthy" to obtain a general resurrection which no one can lose or be the children of God as being the children of a general resurrection? Then again, where the apostle is expressly speaking of the order of the resurrection, he gives it as, "Christ the first fruits; afterward, they that are Christ’s at His coming." What more misleading, if all were to rise at the same time? Once more, in 1Th 4:16, when the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, we are told, "the dead in Christ shall rise first," then the living saints be changed, and all caught up together to meet the Lord in the air; and this before He appears to the world at all: for "when Christ who is our Life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory" (Col 3:4). The passage in Revelation moreover is not obscure. We have a vision; then the interpretation of the vision. "I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; and I saw the souls* of them that had been beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, nor in their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years were finished." This is the vision: and so simple in character that the interpretation repeats much of it over again. "This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: upon such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." *Dr. Carson, in a violent attack, more suo, on pre-millennialism has urged against literal resurrection, that we cannot say, "the souls of" people, without meaning literal souls. But it is an entire mistake, as we have seen long ago. It is a very common Hebraism. Thus the millennium is literally such, and the resurrection is literal, for these are given in the interpretation of the vision, not the vision itself. And, after the thousand years are over accordingly, we see the rest of the dead rise, and here plainly is the "resurrection of judgment," in which by that very fact the saints can have no part. All is thus consistent, clear, and intelligible. For all is true. There is little said as to the resurrection of the unjust in Scripture. The fact is affirmed. The nature of it is nowhere spoken of. It would seem therefore the only possible thing to say nothing about it. But as Mr. Constable proclaims it a point "of prime consequence" to know the unrevealed, and has written rather a long chapter upon it in his work so often cited,* we must needs follow him into the darkness. His arguments apply so little really to the view of things which we have taken, that we need dwell comparatively on very few of them. *Nature and Duration of Future Punishment, ch. 8: He first of all professes his firm belief in the resurrection of the wicked, but holds that they are raised to die again. Here he is opposed to Scripture as we have seen. In Scripture resurrection is the final end of death, for "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment." He, on the contrary, holds that the bodies of the wicked are raised, "still natural bodies as they were sown, resuming with their old life their old mortality, as such subject to pain, and as such sure to yield to that of which all pain is the symptom and precursor, physical death and dissolution." He rests this conclusion "mainly on the supposition that no change passes upon them at their resurrection . . . if no change passes upon them they must needs yield to the bitter pains which accompany the second death." He urges that the "Augustinian theorists" admit this, and so have to affirm immortality and incorruption of the wicked as raised. They therefore have to apply the language of 1Co 15:1-58 :, where the corruptible puts on incorruption and the mortal immortality, to the resurrection of the ungodly; and when asked upon what grounds they do so, they answer that there cannot be a resurrection without a change. This he disproves by referring to Lazarus and others, and as to 1Co 15:1-58 : insists that it applies only to the resurrection of the just. He then turns aside for a short time to show that the resurrection of the just is the only one which is a fruit of redemption; and if Christ says, "I am the resurrection and the life," He thus proclaims Himself the source of the "resurrection of life" alone. Mr. Constable identifies then (as we have done) the resurrection from the dead with this, and further states that the quickening of the mortal body is exclusively confined in Scripture to the just, especially referring in proof to the "if" of Rom 8:11 : "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." Thus "the resurrection of the just is the fruit of redemption: the resurrection of the unjust has nothing to say to it. . . Christ came to give no, fatal gift which should force everlasting existence upon myriads who asked not for it, and would shun it with all their hearts." Thus the resurrection of the wicked being no part of redemption, Paul could not, in 1Co 15:1-58 :, include it at all. This he proceeds to prove at length, but, as we fully believe it, there is no need to follow him in his proof. He concludes that the change to incorruption in the case of the wicked is essential to the theory of everlasting misery; and, since there are no grounds for holding this change, the theory which requires it falls to the ground. Thus an immense argument is built up upon the two props of ignorance and supposition. Mr. Constable occupies a number of pages with what we have reduced to perhaps three times the number of lines, for reasons already stated, but we have given the substance. There are two or three considerations which hinder our acceptance of his argument. We grant fully that the resurrection of the just is distinct in character from the resurrection of the unjust; and that it is the former alone which is the fruit of Christ’s redemptive work. We shall have more to say of this when we examine, as we hope to do, Mr. Birks’ view. We fully believe also that the resurrection described in 1Co 15:1-58 : does not include in any way that of the wicked. "It is raised in power," "it is raised in glory," "it is raised a spiritual body," could not apply to any but "the just." Mr. Constable is wrong, however, upon one point: for the "change" the apostle speaks of is not said of the risen saints, but of those who are alive and remaining when Christ comes. "The dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we" - the living - "shall be changed. For this corruptible (applying to the dead) shall put on incorruption; and this mortal (referring to the living) shall put on immortality." Mortality cannot be affirmed of the dead, and here certainly, as in 1Th 4:16-17, the two classes are recognized. The "change" applies to the living alone. We dissent from Mr. Constable’s view of the matter, in the first place, because his argument proves too much. If the wicked are to be raised in a condition of mortality, it is course impossible that they could exist forever, that is, in the body. But it is equally impossible that they could exist for "the ages of ages," as to which certainly Scripture affirms their torment. He must reduce these indeed to a minimum in order to harmonize them with his theory. Nay, more, a resurrection which is a mere restoration to a present condition involves certain things of which we must all be fully aware. It involves the being sustained by food to repair the continual waste of a corruptible body: and thus he might have forcibly urged that hell would be soon cleared by starvation, except upon the supposition of such a supply as we are certainly in no wise justified in making. In any way "ages of ages" must be a myth, a dream, an impossibility in the nature of things, as great as that of eternity itself. But again, Mr. Constable’s view ignores the true nature death, as I have shown it, a necessarily temporary provision in view of sin’s entrance into the world, and to be finally done away, when "death and hades are cast into the lake of fire;" and also that "after death" is "the judgment." If death be this exceptional temporary thing, it is plainly a false view that the resurrection of the wicked even will be to a condition of mortality; or that, if not, it must be the fruit of redemption, and a work of grace inconsistent with eternal judgment. On the contrary, "a resurrection of judgment" it is expressly stated to be, and not grace, but the pursuance of the original creative plan, only suspended for a time and for a purpose. This in no wise hinders the "resurrection of life" being due to Him who is "the resurrection and the life," for the "image of the heavenly," the likeness of Christ in which the saints are raised, is something immeasurably beyond what man naturally, if sinless, would have attained. That there should be difficulties in connection with a subject of which Scripture says so little as it does about the resurrection of the unjust need not surprise us, and will not those who consider but .the mysteries which surround our present life. It may be true that "incorruption" is not the state of the resurrection of judgment, and this not involve at all what annihilationists insist upon. We know too little to say much; but to bring our ignorance to bear against what is clearly revealed is at least wholly unjustifiable; and this is what Mr. Constable is doing in this case. Mr. Hudson has somewhat upon this subject which while we are upon it we may briefly glance at. He says of the unjust - "It is hard to believe that they are raised up by a miracle which ends in their destruction, or that accomplishes nothing but a judgment, which in this view must appear simply vindictive. If they have no immortality, why are their slumbers disturbed? But if their resurrection is connected with the redemption, by a law that finds illustration in analogous facts, this difficulty may be removed. Damaged seeds that are sown often exhaust themselves in germination. And we have noted the fact, that of insects which pass through the chrysalis state to that of the psyche or butterfly, many, from injuries suffered in their original form, utterly perish in the transition. Now the Glad Tidings of the Redemption, quickening and invigorating the soul with new life, may so far repair the injury done it in the fall, that even the unbelieving, who derive many benefits therefrom in this life, may not altogether perish in the bodily death. . . May not such truths, as food to the souls even of those who do not cleave to Him who is the Truth and the Life, cause death itself to be divided, as the proper effect and token of the Redemption? And for judgment, it is as if the unjust, hearing the voice of God in the last call to life, should be putting on a glorious incorruption, and should perish in the act."* *Debt and Grace, pp. 368, 264. This is a step beyond Mr. Constable, and it seems hard to understand how in this way the wicked rise at all. Certainly judgment upon these abortions would be scarcely possible. Nor is the resurrection of the wicked either an effect of redemption or a blighted natural process, but an act of divine power alone. It is "God who quickeneth the dead." Nor again does it appear on this ground how the heathen could ever rise. But it is useless taking up seriously what must be the idlest of speculations in the absence of revelation. They that have done evil will come forth to the resurrection of judgment. That is revealed; and that death will be over and ended when judgment begins and this alone completely negatives the conclusion of annihilationism. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 92: 04.37. CHAPTER XXX JUDGMENT: WHEN AND WHAT? ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXX JUDGMENT: WHEN AND WHAT? WE must now proceed to what comes after death. And here, before we can come to details, there are some misconceptions as to the very idea of judgment which we must examine by the light of Scripture, and seek to remove. In Mr. Constable’s volume upon Hades, so often referred to in the earlier stages of our inquiry, he has two chapters of considerable importance to his argument which we have as yet scarcely glanced at.† Their subjects are respectively, "The Time of Judgment" and "The Time of Retribution." The general object of these is to show that neither judgment nor retribution can take place until the resurrection, and we shall quote some passages that we may have a clear view of the issues before us. †Chap. 13:, 14: His first arguments, grounded upon his peculiar views of death and of the nature of man, I may pass over. He next brings before us what the Lord says of Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, as to a future day of judgment (Mat 10:15; Mat 11:22; Mark 6:11), and "what He affirmed of these heathen He also affirmed of the Jews living in His own days. Both are to be tried in this coming judgment day. And what He says of the Jewish cities of His own time, we suppose to be equally true of the Jews of all previous time. . . We are thus told that for four thousand years there was no such thing as judging men when they were dead." This judgment of the great day, Mr. C. argues, our Lord tells us "is when He returns from that right hand of God where He now is. He tells us this in His parable of the talents. It is ‘after a long time the lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them.’ There is no reckoning with good or with wicked servants until the Lord comes." Mr. Constable goes on to show us how - "our Platonic theology has virtually nullified this great truth of Scripture. It has not denied in words the great day of future judgment of which Christ and His apostles speak, but it has robbed it of all its significance and meaning by telling us that there is another judgment before it which effects for every man separately what the final judgment has to do". He quotes in proof of this the Roman Catholic "Key of Paradise" and Poole’s Commentary, the latter of which "tells us that ‘after souls by death are separated from their bodies, they come to judgment, and thus every particular one is handed over by death to the bar of God the great Judge, and so is dispatched by His sentence to its particular state and place with its respective people. At the great and general assize, the day of judgment, shall the general and universal one take place, when all sinners in their entire persons. bodies and souls united, shall be adjudged to their final unalterable and eternal state.’" Further, as to retribution, Mr. Constable quotes 2Co 5:10 as - "decisive that no retribution whatsoever, be it reward or punishment, takes place before the resurrection and the judgment. There can be no question that ‘made known or manifest’ should be the translation of the Greek verb in this verse, as it is its translation in the next. Bengel expresses its sense when he says that it means not merely that we should appear in the body, but that we should be made known, together with all our secret deeds. . . The judgment seat of Christ is that judgment seat which He sets up when He comes and raises up the dead. . . not until then will retribution take place ; not until then will the sinner be punished, and the saint receive his reward; 1:e, it is in the body, and not out of the body that retribution takes place. . . Paul was here only following the teaching of his Master. Nowhere in the teaching of Christ are His disciples taught to expect their reward, or any part of it, when they are dead. The very idea of dead men recompensed is enough to excite scorn against the school of thought which has taught it, until, from the perpetual repetition of the nonsense, we could not see its folly. But not to the state of death, but to the resurrection from that state of death, does our blessed Lord teach His people to look. ‘When thou makest a feast,’ He says, ‘call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou shalt be blessed for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. . . But are there, according to our Platonic theologians, any passages of Scripture which do directly state that before resurrection retribution of any kind, reward or punishment. takes place? Yes, they say, there is one. Where is it? In Luk 16:23. What do these words form part of? A parable! What are the words? ‘In hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.’ " He then has the usual objections to employing a parable to teach doctrine: all which we have already looked at. Now there is truth in Mr. Constable’s objections to the common doctrine here, as we shall see. The statements he objects to are not clear - do not distinguish between things which it is important not to confound. Especially the Romanist quotation (which I have not given, and which applies 2Co 5:10 to the intermediate state) does clash entirely with Scripture. But then Mr. Constable’s error on the other side is as plain. He meets a false issue with a partial truth, and is certainly no less superficial than those he is opposing. The full statement harmonizes all Scripture, parable and all else, instead of arraying one text against another. The very chapter last quoted from, as we have seen, bears witness, not in the last parable but in the lesson which our Lord deduces from the first, that when the righteous "FAIL" (that is, at death therefore, not resurrection) they are "received into everlasting habitations" (Luk 16:9). And this the last parable shows, in whatever figurative language, with regard to Lazarus. And it is in express contrast to this that the rich man in hades is tormented, as he is "comforted." Thus there is no room to doubt the meaning of the solemn words. The rich man is certainly pictured (and even Mr. Constable cannot deny that) as receiving retribution in hades, before the resurrection and the final judgment, and if the Lord did not mean that, He would not have used words which every one must admit give that impression, without one word of warning. It is useless to talk of trees speaking, etc., in the same breath with this. By the one no one could be deceived. In the other the Lord would be coming in with what men represent as false and heathenish ideas actually in the very minds of His hearers: for He spoke to Pharisees. And we are forbidden therefore by our reverence for Him, who was never anything less than Incarnate Truth itself, to allow that He could so trifle with untruth, and help to confirm in error the souls of those He came to rescue out of it. Thus far as to the parable. But as to the righteous at death being received into everlasting habitations, we cannot so ignore the direct teaching both of our .Lord and His apostles, as to allow Mr. Constable unchecked to assure us that we have no other Scripture than that just looked at to establish such a doctrine. He may believe that when our Lord said to the thief by His side, "To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," He meant only that he should fall asleep for perhaps two thousand years, so that it would be no matter to him whether that promise was kept or no! (What matter to him indeed, if he did not wake up forever? That quiet "sleep," in which the sleeper vanishes altogether, would not know one uneasy dream in consequence!) And so he may please to interpret Paul’s desire to depart and be with Christ, and similar things. All this we have before examined. But then we must believe that we have some Scripture for a truth like this. Mr. Constable may say, perhaps, "I am stating you have only one Scripture for retribution in the death state." Well, but the one involves the other. The righteous die, and the wicked. If death be extinction, the righteous could not be "comforted" in it, any more than the wicked "tormented." Mr. C. himself quits rightly puts both upon the very same footing. We should at least want proof of a difference, if difference indeed there were. We should need proof that the wicked were not tormented, if we were assured that the righteous were comforted. Thus every text for the one is an argument for the other also; and when the language even of a parable comes in to sustain the prior conviction, we must be permitted to think that it neither stands alone, nor gives an uncertain sound either. We do not expect that it should be much dwelt upon. We have just been considering how little even the resurrection of the wicked is. Enough is given to establish the doctrine. Warnings and promises alike may be expected to be connected rather with a final and everlasting state, than with one necessarily to pass away. Yet we do not accept Mr. Constable’s statement as to there being only one text. There are others, as Isa 24:21-22; 1Pe 3:19-20, the first of which speaks of the "kings of the earth" whom Revelation (Rev 19:19, Rev 19:21) shows us "slain with the sword" at Christ’s coming in glory, while Isaiah speaks of them as prisoners shut up in the pit, to be visited after many days; 1:e., at the judgment of the dead, after the millennium. While the latter speaks correspondingly of those disobedient in Noah’s days, as now "spirits in prison." Both texts assure us of retribution in the intermediate state. But Mr. Constable would allege doubtless, as he has against the views of others, that "retribution before judgment is contrary to all the principles of the divine and human law." I allow it fully. What he fails to see is that, as far as the settlement of personal guilt and condemnation is concerned, man - the world - is ALREADY judged - already condemned: a thing which, if it be not plain to him, as it would seem it is not, is none the less abundantly plain in Scripture. We have already seen that God by the ministry of death and condemnation was for centuries pressing home upon man his lost condition, and that the apostle could speak for Christians in saying, "we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and ALL THE WORLD become guilty before God." Is that, or is it not, a sentence of God and is it to be passed, or passed already? Certainly, it is long since passed, and this sentence of the law was, as we have seen, only itself the affirming and confirming of a prior sentence, of which every grey hair in man was witness. It is true man might, alas, prophesy smooth things to himself; and dream of being able to face God about his sins, and on the other hand it is blessedly true that, wherever there was real bowing to the sentence, the mercy of God was ready to manifest itself: real "repentance" is always "unto life." But it needed no judgment seat for him to manifest such mercy, wherever He knew a soul had bowed to own its guilt; while with all others judgment had not to be pronounced, but had been. This is what makes so solemn and so blessed that great truth of Ecclesiastes, the settlement of the question of the book "the spirit shall return to God that gave it." Not yet indeed the judgment seat, where He would "bring every WORK into judgment," but the assurance at least then, if never before, of PERSONAL acceptance, or of personal rejection. Mr. Constable does not see - as many do not - the difference between these two things. We must look at them, therefore, more in detail, and the Scriptures which affirm and illustrate them. Personal acceptance with God is NEVER on the ground of our works. "By the works of the law" - in which all good works are summed up - "shall no flesh living be justified." So the word of God decisively says. On the one hand not the most perfect upon earth (as Job was in his day) but must, with Job, put his hand upon his mouth in the presence of God, or open it but to say, "I am vile:" "I abhor myself; and repent in dust and ashes." On the other hand, let any soul but take this latter ground, and "if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The future day of judgment (whether we speak of saint or sinner) is, therefore, never in Scripture for the settlement of personal acceptance or the reverse. We have already seen that personal judgment for a sinful creature before a holy God can only be condemnation. The saved are saved here and now, and do not "come into judgment." The doom of the unsaved is determined in the present life also, and if men ignore it here, the spirit returning to God cannot remain ignorant. It is a "spirit in prison," already with the consciousness of wrath upon it, if not received into "everlasting habitations." This is the rich man’s portion, where the wrath of God is the consuming fire by which he is tormented, and yet resurrection plainly has not come. Does this set aside the reality of the judgment to come? By no means. It only affirms the reality of the judgment pronounced. The judgment to come is the judgment of works, and there is what answers to this even for the saint. But he comes to it in resurrection glory, and in the image of his Lord. Can he be put upon trial to decide the future of one already glorified? Clearly not. But he does stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and receives for the things done in the body, as a question of reward obtained or lost. Eternal life is not a reward, but the free gift of God in Christ, and justification is by His blood alone. Sonship, membership of the body of Christ, a home in the Father’s house, are all fruits of the same blessed work, His and not ours. And these can never be brought in question: judgment never is brought in to settle these. Similarly then as to the lost. The judgment to come does not settle that they are lost. If they come forth to a resurrection of judgment, it is not a judgment which is to decide if they can stand before God or not; but they are, as the saint is not, "judged," themselves personally, "according to their works" (Rev 20:13). They get a measured recompense, as the saint does, but a recompense of judgment and nothing else: "few" or "many stripes," as the case may be; an absolutely righteous apportionment for the sins committed in the body. This is the judgment of works, as distinct from the settlement of whether lost or saved as is the reward of works for the righteous. What has helped to confuse the minds of many has been a question of prophetic interpretation; and it helps to show how little there can be a thorough settlement of the question of eternal judgment without a previous settlement of what many judge so lightly as "the millennarian question." Failing to see the Lord’s coming as antecedent to the millennium, and the purification of the earth by judgment in order to the blessing, the separation of the sheep from the goats, in Mat 25:1-46 :, has been looked at as the same thing with the judgment of the dead more than a thousand years later. It was inevitable in this way that the latter should be supposed (yet in opposition to the plainest passages elsewhere) one in which righteous and wicked would stand together, and the former be discriminated from the latter by their works. It should be plain, however, that in Mat 25:31-46, we have a judgment of living nations when the Lord comes to earth and sets up His throne there, and not a judgment of the dead, when the earth and the heavens are fled away; and also that the account of the taking up of the saints to meet the Lord in the air in 1Th 4:1-18 :, before He appears to the world at all (Col 3:4), is quite inconsistent with such an interpretation. There is no hint of resurrection in our Lord’s prophecy at all. And the nature of the investigation differs much from that in Revelation. The truth is, that "the nations" in the former scripture are those who, after the taking away of the saints of the present dispensation, and during an interval which takes place between that and His appearing with them, have received a final call by the preaching of the coming kingdom. It would be too lengthy a matter to enter upon here. But the broad characteristic differences between this and the Apocalyptic vision, should be sufficient at least to prevent their being confounded. Into judgment he who now believes in Christ can never come. So He declares. "As it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and to them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, apart from sin, unto salvation." If "God has appointed a day in which He will judge the world by that Man whom He hath ordained," the saints whom He declares to be even now "not of the world even as He is not of the world," shall (not be judged with it, but) "judge the world" with Him (1Co 6:2). They are thus seen upon the throne in Rev 20:4-6 as having part in the first resurrection; and not till a thousand years afterwards does the judgment of the dead take place. God has taken care to separate thus widely between His people’s portion and that of those who hate Him. The truth is what alone makes all harmonious. Present judgment has been passed upon the world. The very cross itself as His portion at men’s hands, has only confirmed finally that sentence, to be executed when He comes.* Out of it God in His grace is calling men and saving them. His saved are upon the ground of Christ and His work, not their own. The unsaved are still under the universal sentence already judged; the judgment of works, the full measurement of each man’s due, being still to come. This is not a question of personal acceptance or rejection, which is on other ground, but is the solemn and exact award of deeds done in the body, as Scripture says. The doer and the deeds are questions, however connected, still distinct. *John 12:31-33; John 16:8-11. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 93: 04.38. CHAPTER XXXI THE DOOM OF SATAN ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXI THE DOOM OF SATAN THE very personality of Satan is, as everybody is aware, denied in many quarters in the present day. The only people with whom we have to do just now, however, who deny this, are the followers of Dr. Thomas. With these men, self-consistently enough, the devil is simply a personification of sin, which, however, may be represented apparently by a variety of living agents, in order to get rid of the distasteful idea of separate personality and yet meet the texts in which personality is too manifest to be denied. I may be allowed, without being thought to wander too far from the subject before us, to look briefly at this point. Now, we read of one in the book of Job who, when "the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, - came also among them" He is expressly called Satan, and is a true "devil" according to the meaning of that word "a false accuser." These "sons of God" are spoken of by Jehovah in the same book as present when He laid the foundations of the earth (Job 38:7), and therefore are certainly not men but angels. Among these angels then the accuser comes, as one of them: surely not a man among angels, and hardly a personification of sin. From the presence of the Lord he goes forth to exercise manifest superhuman power against Job within divinely ordained limits. He is here clearly an angelic, yet a fallen and evil being. In the book of Revelation we have a being figured as a "dragon," and explained to be" that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan" (Rev 20:2). "That old serpent" of course refers to Eden, and tells us who was the real tempter hid under the form of the irrational creature. Here too the words of the Lord apply: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44). As a tempter we accordingly again find him assailing the Lord in the wilderness, One in whom there was no indwelling sin to seduce or personify; and there too he is called the devil and Satan, and appears as one who claims the kingdoms of the world as his. And he departing from Him for a season, the Lord speaks of his return in a way which suits this claim of his: "the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me;" and of His own cross as that which was his judgment, and would ensure his casting out (John 14:30; John 16:11; John 12:31). In all which we travel back once more to Eden, and find fulfilling the words to the old serpent, "He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." We find his being and power so recognized among the Jews that the Pharisees impute the Lord’s casting out of devils to Beelzebub the prince of the devils; and the Lord rebukes them by asking, "Can Satan cast out Satan?" and, recognizing the fact of his having a kingdom, asks in that case how it shall stand? The devils He casts out, know Him in turn, call Him the Holy One of God and Son of God, and beseech Him not to torment them before the time. Everywhere in the Gospels the power of Satan is a thing as manifest as malignant. A woman cannot lift up herself for eighteen years, and it is Satan that has bound her. He puts into Judas’ heart to betray the Lord; and in the apparent zeal for Himself of another disciple Christ discerns Satan also. He sows the tares in the parable, and these springing up are the children of the wicked one. Among the signs that follow those who believe is this, that they cast out devils. In the Acts the workings of the same malignant spirit are as manifest. Satan fills Ananias’ heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and keep back part of the price of his land. Cases of possession are still noticed, and as a common thing. Paul speaks of being sent to "turn men from the power of Satan unto God." In the Epistles he is the constant adversary of the people of God, whether openly as a roaring lion, or transformed into an angel of light. He is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience; the god of this world who blinds the minds of those that believe not. If resisted he flees, but the shield of faith is that by which alone the fiery darts of the wicked one are quenched. "Shortly," we are reminded, according to the first promise, "God will bruise Satan under your feet." All this is but part of the testimony of the word of God as to the reality and power of man’s old enemy. If words mean anything they assure us of his true personality, with that of numberless evil spirits, "his angels," possessed of superhuman power, which is used to obtain dominion over men’s souls and even bodies, and from which nothing but divine power can deliver. I need not pursue this further now. But we shall have to consider some common mistakes as to Satan which it is of great importance to rectify", in order to have clearly before us the Scripture view. Satan has been considered commonly (as one finds in the Paradise Lost of a great poet) to be here as a prisoner broken loose from hell, into which he had been cast immediately upon his fall, a hell in which even now he is supposed to reign, and to reign there eternally over fallen spirits and lost men, the divinely appointed tormenter of those whom he has made his prey. For no part of this is Scripture responsible, and its grotesque horror has been the reproach of orthodox theology. What would be thought of a government which allowed its prisoners so to break their bounds, and which employed the. chief criminal to torture the lesser ones? There is in Scripture not the slightest trace of a reign in hell,* or of Satan tormenting anybody there. He will be there, doubtless, the lowest and most miserable of all, but he is not yet in hell at all. Strange and startling as it seems to many, instead of being in hell, he is in "heavenly places," and instead of reigning in hell, reigns here, the prince and the god of this world. *It may have arisen from a misconception of Rev 9:11. But the "bottomless pit," or "abyss" is not even hell at all. Thus we are exhorted to "put on the whole armour of God, whereby ye may be able to stand against the wiles of devil; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual hosts† of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph 6:11-12). Our translators have shown how foreign the thought was to their minds by putting "high" into the text instead of "heavenly." But here the devil and his angels are looked at as the antitype of the hosts of Canaan with which Joshua and Israel wrestled. We have long lost the type in losing the antitype. †Alford. " Hosts" is not expressed in the Greek it is "spirituals." But in Job we have already seen Satan among the sons of God; and the "heavenly places" were surely his original dwelling-place. And if his casting down to hell has not yet taken place, he will be still naturally there where he belonged by creation. Now his casting into hell belongs to a time plainly yet future (Rev 20:10), and everywhere in the Gospels, we find the devils anticipating their coming doom, but knowing it was not yet come. "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" they ask. It is plain then that hell cannot be their present portion. The binding of Satan precedes necessarily the millennial blessing. How could there be righteousness or peace in a world in which he was still as active as ever? Immediately, therefore, after the appearing of the Lord, among the other foes That are dealt with, Satan and his hosts are not forgotten. The fate of the beast and the kings of the earth is first shown us at the end of Rev 19:1-21 :, and then Satan is bound and shut up in the abyss a thousand years. The account may be given in figurative language, and is, no doubt, but yet with perfect simplicity, and Isaiah, eight hundred years before, gives us the same things with almost equal plainness, and in perfect harmony with the obvious meaning. For "it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth" - the two classes of which Revelation speaks; "and they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days (plainly, the millennium) shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously" (Isa 24:21-23). "When the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison." And this post-millennial loosing seems again to stumble many. It is evident that the object is to distinguish between the true subjects and the concealed enemies of the Lord, still such in the face of the long reign of blessing and of peace. That there are these is plain from such intimations as that in Psa 18:44-45. And the effect of Satan being free is soon apparent. "He shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up upon the breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." Then comes Satan’s final judgment. "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever." Concerning the nature of this punishment we are now ready to inquire. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 94: 04.39. CHAPTER XXXII GEHENNA ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXII GEHENNA GEHENNA is twelve times rendered "hell" in the common version, and is essentially* the only other word so rendered, beside "hades" already looked at. The rendering has, it is well known, been the object of special attack by Canon Farrar in his Westminster Abbey Sermons, as one of the three words (the others being "damnation" and "everlasting ") which in his opinion ought to be expunged out of our English Bibles.† *Once, referring to a class of fallen angels, the word tartarosas is used (2Pe 2:4), and translated " cast them down to hell," literally to Tartarus" †"Eternal Hope," Serm. 3. Gehenna, says Dr. Farrar, "means primarily the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, in which, after it had been polluted by Moloch-worship, corpses were flung, and fires were lit; and is used, secondarily, as a metaphor, not for fruitless and hopeless, but - for all at any rate but a small and desperate minority - of that purifying and corrective punishment, which, as all of us alike believe, does await impenitents both here and beyond the grave. "But, be it solemnly observed (he continues) the Jews to whom and in whose metaphorical sense the word was used by our blessed Lord, never did, either then or at any other period, normally attach to the word Gehenna that meaning of endless torment which we attach to ‘hell.’ To them, and in their style of speech - and therefore on the lips of our blessed Saviour who addressed it to them, and spake in terms which they would understand - it meant not a material and everlasting fire, but an intermediate, a remedial, a metaphorical, a terminable retribution." To this is appended a note in which the Jews as a church are stated never to have held either (1) the finality of the doom passed, or (2) the doctrine of torment, endless, if once incurred. For this he quotes various authorities, among others as the most distinct utterance of the Talmud, one in which it is said "that the just shall rise to bliss; ordinary sinners shall be ultimately redeemed; the hopelessly bad shall be punished for a year, and then annihilated." In another place, "Gehenna is nothing but a day in which the ungodly shall be burned." In his fifth excursus at the end of the book he adds other testimonies, among which is another from the Talmud, to the effect that "after the last judgment Gehenna exists no longer." His testimony of the Rabbins concerns us very little. He does not notice the views of either Pharisees or Essenes, who both held eternal punishment, as Josephus explicitly affirms. Mr. Hudson has made a similar appeal to the Talmud, naturally laying the stress upon the annihilationism contained in it, that Dr. Farrar lays upon the restorationism. Both allow that there are some passages which may be pleaded against these, although they believe not really against them. I do not lay any stress upon it, nor propose at all to take up this line of argument. I leave it to those more competent to do so, and shall confine myself entirely to Scripture. It is of Gehenna that the Lord speaks when He asserts God’s ability to "destroy both body and soul in hell." We have seen how little the text can be made to mean annihilation. It would seem to be no less decisive against Dr. Farrar’s view. Indeed he gives it up explicitly, if to be taken as implying that God will put forth this power that He claims. The passage, he says,* "merely attributes to God a power which we know the Omnipotent must possess. He can destroy the soul, but it says not that He will. If any think that this is implied, it seems to me that no logical choice is open to them, but to embrace the theory of conditional immortality." *"Eternal hope," Pref., p. 40: But surely the Lord holds out no vain warning here. In a parallel passage in the same way He says, "Fear Him who after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell;" and we certainly know that threat will be fulfilled. If He never wills to do this, men need no more fear it than if He had not power. And how strange a thing for the Lord thus to claim for Him a power no one can deny, and which notwithstanding He will never exert! We do not at all on that account believe in the logical necessity of annihilation, but we do believe that God will fulfil the awful warning, and destroy both body and soul in hell. Mr. Jukes indeed thinks even this to be for eventual salvation: he asks, "Is not the ‘losing’ or ‘ destruction’ of our fallen life the only way to a better one? Does not our Lord Himself say more than once, that the way to ‘save our life’ or ‘soul’ is ‘to lose it,’ or ‘have it destroyed,’ in its fallen form, that it may be re-created? These last words," he answers, "should of themselves settle the question, for in one place they occur in immediate connection with those other well-known words as to ‘fearing Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.’. . And yet, in the very closest connection with those words, our Lord repeats this selfsame word ‘destroy’ to express that death and dissolution of the soul, which, so far from bringing it to non-existence is the appointed way to save it."† †"Restitution," Appendix, p. 172 But Mr. Jukes can scarcely make so much out of the texts he cites. The destruction in them is not the destroying of the body of sin, or of the old man, with which Mr. Jukes evidently confounds it. For he goes on to say, "Christ saves it, as we have seen, by death; for being fallen into sin, what is needed is, that the ‘body of sin should be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.’" This is not, I say, the destruction spoken of in Mat 10:39; but the Lord is speaking of our taking up the cross - our cross - in face of the opposition of the world. Is this the destruction of our old man, or what really, in the spiritual sense, saves us? The Lord is not then here speaking of "losing our life, or having it destroyed in its fallen form, that it may be re-created." There is nothing about either destruction or re-creation, in that sense; He does not speak of " that death or dissolution of the soul, which is the appointed way to save it." Nor does Scripture anywhere speak of such a thing either. Dissolution of the soul is nowhere mentioned, nor its death as a way to save it. Similarly as to destruction: can Mr. Jukes point out one instance in which the destruction of the soul is the method of its salvation? He cannot; and his words are mere delusion. "Christ saves the soul by death," he tells us, "for the body of sin must be destroyed," but that is not the soul. He says again, "The elect, that is the first-fruits, are the living proof of this. A ‘new man’ is created in them; and the ‘old man’ dies and is destroyed while yet he in whom all this is done remains the same person." But if the new man is created in people, he is not destroyed first, to be created; and if the "old man" dies and is destroyed, he is not re-created at all; nor is the person destroyed in whom this takes place either. Mr. Jukes adds: "it is only the riddle of the cross, that ‘by death God destroys him that has the power of death."’ But then is he that has the power of death destroyed also in order to his salvation? Certainly there is not such a thought in the passage. It is in vain then for him to seek to escape from the force of the words. What folly, indeed, to suppose the Lord saying, "Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body, in order to save them." No; it is impossible to read the thought of salvation into its very opposite, the awful destruction hopeless of deliverance, just because it is God who "destroys," and destroys not to save, but as the alternative of salvation. Annihilationisrn and restorationism fail alike and fail utterly here. But then Gehenna is the place of this utter destruction, and though the terms used may be more or less" metaphorical," a "remediable" and "terminable" retribution they do not teach. Nor does Dr. Farrar attempt to produce Scripture to establish his position as to Gehenna. It is the Talmud and the Jewish doctors that are to define for us what the Scripture means, and Dr. F. even brings in the thought of "the pleasant valley of Hinnom,* as if to bear its part in transmuting darkness into light, and making tolerable the wrath of God itself *Preface, 32: "In the Old Testament it is merely the pleasant valley of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom), subsequently desecrated by idolatry, and specially by Moloch worship, and defiled by Josiah on this account. Used, according to Jewish tradition, as the common sewer of the city, the corpses of the worst criminals were flung into it unburied, and fires were lit to purify the contaminated air. It then became a word which secondarily implied (i) the severest judgment which a Jewish court could pass upon a criminal - the casting forth of his unburied corpse amid the fires and worms of this polluted valley; and (ii) a punishment which - to the Jews as a body - never meant an endless punishment beyond the grave." As to this we have seen, however, what the Lord affirms of it, in a threat according to Dr. Farrar never to be executed. The destruction of body and soul can hardly be this side of the grave, and cannot consist with restoration. Dr. Farrar’s words, too, are contradicted explicitly by Josephus, as is well known, both with regard to the Pharisees and the Essenes: a testimony he never even alludes to, and which as strangely Mr. Hudson sets aside as unreliable. But let us see now whence the Jews drew (or might have drawn) their views of Gehenna. We have the Old Testament as they had, and from it alone all right views, such as the Lord Himself adopted, must surely be taken. Revelation alone could be a light beyond the grave. To one of these Old Testament passages (Isa 66:24) we have already referred, in which we find both the fire and the worm attributed to the valley of Hinnom, and which more certainly are the basis of the well-known warning of our Lord which we must almost immediately consider now. As millennial and not final, it may be concluded to have given risen to thoughts of the temporary nature of Gehenna, which Dr. Farrar’s extracts have so much of, as well as also to have furnished argument for the annihilation doctrines of the day, in behalf of which also we find them quoting Mal 4:1, quite as do the present annihilationists. The main passage beside is also in Isaiah, and here Tophet, the valley of Hinnom, is expressly named as the place of judgment for the Assyrian, where the breath .of the Lord like a stream of brimstone kindles the pile (xxx. 33). Here, while the literal Tophet might furnish the terms of the prophecy, the language points to something deeper, which the fuller revelation could alone perhaps make plain. We must now look at the well-known passage in the Gospel of Mark (ix. 43-50), which I quote in full: "And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell [Gehenna], into the fire that never shall be quenched [or rather, the fire unquenchable], where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell [Gehenna], into the unquenchable fire; where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into the Gehenna of fire; where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another." It was to be expected that annihilationists should have stumbled over this passage as they have. The admitted borrowing of phraseology from Isa 66:24, and the word Gehenna, with the associations which we have just been looking at, are taken to show that the terms used in these verses imply the "utter destruction" (in the new sense) of the ungodly. Mr. Constable, appealing to the passage in Isaiah, says: "A moment’s glance shows us that both the worm and the fire are alike external to and distinct from the subject on which they prey; and also, that what both prey upon are not the living but the dead. . . These most solemn words of the prophet, so solemnly endorsed by Christ, assert a state of eternal death and destruction, not one of eternal life in hell, as the destiny of transgressors in the world to come."* *Eternal Punishment, p. 195. Mr. Minton thinks it - "difficult to conceive of any two images that our Lord could have put together, more hopelessly irreconcilable with the idea of never-ending misery, than the worm and the fire." And he adds, "It is contended that the worm not dying and the fire not being quenched, implies the continuance of being of that on which they prey . . . If the worm could die, or the fire be quenched, before they had done their work upon the body, it might possibly be rescued or left half consumed. But if neither the ravages of the worm, nor the burning of the fire, can be checked, then nothing can save the body which is exposed to them from complete extinction of being. If it be asked, what becomes of the worm and the fire after the body is consumed? it is enough to reply, that we have nothing whatever to do with that . . . And I will venture to say, that no one would ever imagine the idea of an eternal worm to be contained in this passage, if they did not bring to it the assumption that it is an eternal being who is preyed upon by it. Without that assumption the image is as plain and simple as possible. With it you have the monstrous incongruity of an eternal worm, and of a human body which is being eternally devoured by it, but yet remains forever as whole and entire as if the worm had never touched it. . . It is no reply to say that the punishment represented is not merely that of the body but of the soul also, or even, as some ‘would now say, of the soul only. For the figure used to represent it is the consumption of a body by worm and by fire; and that figure does represent destruction, but does not represent eternal existence." He further refers to Jer 17:27 : "I will kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusasalem, and it shall not be quenched," which, he adds, "can hardly mean that Jerusalem will continue in flames to all Eternity."* *Way Everlasting, pp. 50, 51, 53. Mr. Hudson again says, "It is not the immortality of the individual soul, but the multitude of those who finally perish, that challenges the unquenched fire and the unfailing worm."† †Debt and Grace p. 192. Other writers speak very similarly, but it is not necessary to repeat more of what they say just now. The first thing to be noted in answer to Mr. Constable is that he makes no difference between type and antitype; yet it is scarcely the literal valley of Hinnom of which the Lord is speaking, and as for Isaiah," the carcases" which he sees a prey to the worm and fire are surely not those of all the wicked, who are only raised from the dead at the time the earth and the heavens flee away. "Gehenna," as we have seen, was in point of fact used by the Jews in our Lord’s day in this figurative way as the Talmud has at any rate shown us. The typical character of millennial things also I have already pointed out. Consequently the carcases, fire, and worm are all the figures of deeper things. Does Mr. Constable even himself suppose that all the Lord threatens men with is that fire and worm should consume their carcases? This would be infinitely less than extinction itself, and instead of being the picture even of destruction, would be a picture merely of what would happen after they had ceased to suffer, and had been in fact destroyed! But then, Mr. Minton argues, we must take the words at any rate as a figure of destruction, not of eternal existence. Surely nobody contends that it is a figure of the latter. The question is, is it consistent with eternal existence? and that is a different thing. Now material destruction, if a figure, should be a figure of something else, and not of itself. The material should figure the spiritual: and spiritual destruction may be, nay, is, entirely consistent with continued existence of body and soul. If the fire were material fire, and man’s body the prey, according to its present constitution the body would come to an end. If the fire be a figure of divine judgment, however, this will not be so perfectly clear; and as a figure fire does surely speak of this. I have already so fully shown that the destruction of the sinner is in fact not annihilation, that I may be excused from going afresh into the proofs of this. The unquenchable fire may have been, as to the mere force of the phrase, unduly pressed by those against whom Mr. Minton contends; and I concede fully that the fire in the gates of Jerusalem could not be "everlasting." He must be aware, however, that "everlasting fire" is spoken of by our Lord elsewhere: if (that is) the New Testament has any word for everlasting. But if he will look even at the passage in Isaiah once again, I think he will find reason to own that unquenched fire does there imply at least perpetuity. If "from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another," all flesh, as they come up to worship before Jehovah, "go forth and look upon the carcases of those that have transgressed against Him", this implies a perpetuity of the awful spectacle surely. And the words following give the reason for this: "for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." The fire being unquenchable is not then given, as Mr. Minton argues, as a reason for the utter consumption of what it preys upon, but on the other hand for its abiding before the eyes of all flesh Sabbath after Sabbath and month after month. In the scene which Isaiah pictures it would matter little for the carcases themselves, whether the worm died or not, or the fire were quenched or not. Their being" caresses" doomed them to destruction, apart from all question of worm and lire; and these are surely added, not to bring them to any more speedy or certain end, but to intensify the solemn picture of judgment, and their being "an abhorring unto all flesh." Thus even as to the passage in Isaiah, Mr. Minton’s arguments are only plausible when the words he comments on are divorced from their context, and looked at as mere isolated expressions. Take the whole passage, and they become worse than unmeaning. For worm and fire make no more certain the destruction of a carcase already secured by simple natural law; and instead of being given as hastening the destruction, the undying worm, and unquenched fire give assurance of the perpetuity of an awful spectacle, which abides indefinitely before the eyes of men month after month. Still more do the arguments fail when we compare them with the passage in the gospel: for here the Lord is plainly not speaking of a spectacle before the eyes of others, but warning those who might suffer from it themselves. In Isaiah it is "they shall go forth and look," from one new moon and one Sabbath to another, for the fire shall not be quenched. In the other case it is in effect: Fear it,* for the fire shall not be quenched. And as these words in Isaiah announce the perpetuity of the judgment, so must they do when transferred to the passage in Mark. *Mr. Tipple, quoted approvingly by Mr. Cox, says, ‘The flame of the valley of Hinnom cannot be made to represent the awful suffering in store for sin it can only fitly represent the certain consumption of sin to be effected by the sharpness of the fire" (Echoes of the Spoken Words). They were to find the certain consumption of sin, without suffering! And this because the fires of Gehenna were not lighted to inflict pain and anguish! The same might be said of the burning up of chaff and all other figures! Cannot a figure figure anything but just itself? On the other hand who could call that "severest judgment which a Jewish court (even) could pass upon a criminal," - as Dr. Farrar puts it, - "the casting forth of his unburied corpse amid the fires and worms of the polluted valley," a "purifying and corrective," or "remedial" retribution? None, I think, who were not under hopeless bias, with which reasoning becomes impossible. Nor, as far as the Jewish court was concerned, was it "terminable" either. Of course it could not hinder the resurrection of those whom it adjudged to this; and in this way no human sentence could be eternal or irreversible; but it could represent this notwithstanding: for a final sentence, irreversible and not terminable by any after human one, would be the proper figure of irreversible and eternal judgment if divine. And only of such divine judgment would it be the proper figure. Dr. Farrar’s facts are hopelessly against his inferences. But the 49th verse in the passage of Mark adds something more; and Mr. Jukes has made what use he could of it for his purpose: "Take the ordinary interpretation," he says, "and there is no connection between never-ending punishment and the law here quoted respecting salt in sacrifice. But as spoken by our Lord the fact or law respecting the meat-offering is the reason and explanation of what is said respecting hell-fire, - ‘for every one must be salted with fire, and every sacrifice must be salted with salt.’" Then after explaining the meat offering as shadowing the fulfilment of man’s duty towards his neighbour,* he goes on - "The passage which we are considering begins with this, man’s duty to his neighbour, and the peril of offending a little one. Then comes the exhortation to sacrifice hand or foot or eye, lest we come into the worse judgment, which must be known by those who will not judge themselves. ‘For,’ says our Lord, thus giving the reason for self-judgment, ‘every man,’ whether he likes it or not, if he is ever to change his present form and rise to God, ‘must be salted with fire.’ This may be done as a sweet savour to God; though even here ‘every sacrifice is salted with salt,’ - for even in willing sacrifice and service there is something sharp and piercing as salt, namely, the correction which truth brings with it to those who will receive it. But if this be not accepted, the purgation must yet be ‘wrought, not as a sweet savour, but as a sin-offering, where the bodies are burnt as unclean without the camp; ‘where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched’ (the ‘worm’ alluding to the consumption of those parts which were not burnt with fire); ‘for,’ in some way, ‘every one must be salted with fire,’ even if he be not a sweet-savour ‘sacrifice,’ which is ‘salted with salt’ But all this, so far from teaching never-ending punishment, only points us back to the law of sacrifice, and the means which must be used to destroy sin in the flesh, and to make us ascend in a new and more spiritual form as offerings to Jehovah." *The meat-offering applies (like all other offerings) in the first place to Christ, the Bread of Life. Is this what it signifies as to Him? This is decidedly a new interpretation. Mr. Jukes throws Gehenna and the passage in Isaiah of course aside or else applies them as types parallel to the "holy" sin-offering! But here he can find no "worm," so he invents one, to consume what the fire ought wholly to have burnt! But we must look at this further. The Lord certainly says "Gehenna." Is this in any way connected with such a type as the sin-offering, or are they not in every sense contrasts? The sin-offering was a thing "most holy." It was an offering for sin, and therefore "without blemish," to be a fit type of such an one as alone could make atonement. The fat upon the inwards was put upon the altar of burnt-offering, and thus linked with those sweet-savour offerings of which Mr. Jukes speaks. The blood on the day of atonement went into the holiest, and at ordinary times was sprinkled before the veil, and anointed the horns of the golden altar of incense. That blood made atonement for the soul. Dare Mr. Jukes apply all this to the abhorred Gehenna judgment of the unholy and unclean? Dare he include under one figure the One who bare judgment suffering for others only, and those upon whom, because of what they are personally, God’s wrath abides? Dare he connect the "worm" of corruption with the type of God’s Holy One, who therefore could (even as to His body) know none? Will he say that the sin-offering figures a corrective judgment purifying the victim offered? Will he make the blood of the sinner an atonement for his sins? Carry his view of the matter out, and he must do all this. He may say (and I trust would) he has no thought of carrying it so far. But then the whole is one consistent type, and a type expressly of the putting away of sin: that is its proper force - its use. If Mr. Jukes is but applying language used of the sin-offering to something wholly different, let him say so, and then take scrupulous care how he does apply it. But what he says is very different from this. He says distinctly that if a man will not judge himself about sin, "the purgation must yet be wrought as a sin-offering." Now this is what in the very nature of it he could not be. A blemished beast could not be offered. And here, if I take his words in their simple force, the sinner becomes his own offering, his own Saviour! The worm and the fire point us back to "the law of sacrifice, and the means which must be used to destroy sin in the flesh, and to make us ascend in a new and more spiritual form as offerings to Jehovah!" "Sin in the flesh" is just what the sin-offering did not, and could not, typify, but the very opposite, a Holy One bearing sin not His own. And therefore, while the fire had its place, for the wrath of God Christ bore for us, the "worm," bred of corruption, could not possibly enter into such a figure. In Gehenna there are both: the torment of God’s wrath upon sin, but the torment also bred of the corruption within. The two things are essentially and wholly distinct. Even as to the body God’s Holy One could not see corruption: and these are types, whose significance and power become more and more realized the more we consider them. Gehenna judgment and the sin-offering are in their nature opposed. "Every one must be salted with fire,"* the Lord says. *Morris and Goodwyn prefer another rendering: "But the word ‘pas’ in the Greek may mean every one person or every one thing, and the word for fire is in the dative, puri; and the real force of the pas-sage is this: ‘For every one shall be salted TO or FOR the fire (that is, of the altar), even every sacrifice shall be salted with salt "(What is Man? p. 93). There is no ground for this: standing alone as here, can only mean "every person," and the word "salt" is just as much in the dative (hali) as "fire" is, so that there is as much ground for saying "salted TO or FOR the salt." Put without article as here, puri and hali are both datives of instrument, and exact parallels: "salted with fire" "salted with salt." Mr. Jukes adds, "if he is ever to change his present form and rise to God;" and thus assumes his whole ground. There is nothing of this expressed or implied in the passage. "Every one must be salted with fire; and every sacrifice must be salted with salt." Here salting with fire and with salt are distinguished. Salting is the figure of preservation. "Salt" which, as the Lord says, "is good," and always has a good meaning in Scripture, is the figure of that energy of holiness which preserves for God by keeping out corruption. But salting with fire is a widely different thing from salting with salt, fire being as always the figure of divine judgment. Now every one (it is quite unlimited) shall be salted with fire - even the saint, for he needs the discipline of it, and it is for his preservation as such, and salvation (comp. 1Pe 4:17-18). But the ungodly will have it after another sort. To them it will be "unquenchable" fire, because of evil ever needing to be kept down: repression by judgment, where judgment alone will avail. The Lord adds, "And every sacrifice shall be salted with salt." There is the point of transition, at which he begins to speak of the saint alone. Mr. Roberts finally has still another sense: he says: "The meaning of Christ’s words is made perfectly plain by Paul when be says (1Co 3:13-15), ‘The fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is, and if any man’s work be burnt be shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.’ Through this fire of judgment every man and all his works will pass, and this fact gives the strongest point to Christ’s exhortation; but the action of the judgment-fire is only preservative on certain kinds of men and work. The judgment justifies and makes such incorruptible; the others are destroyed." This is fatal false doctrine. Mr. Roberts does not yet see that if a man comes into judgment, judgment can never justify him: "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no flesh living be justified." How could a man, if judged according to his works, have his work burnt up and yet himself be saved; as the text be quotes says? Plainly he could not. The man is saved because building on the foundation, - on Christ, - and not because of what he builds, which is burnt up; he is saved not "by fire," but "through the fire," and in spite of it. But this question of judgment we have already sufficiently examined. We must, pass on now to other testimony of the word as to the final judgment. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 95: 04.40. CHAPTER XXXIII THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS - 1 ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXIII THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS - 1 AT the very mention of Revelation there is a well-nigh unanimous exclamation. The cause is believed almost confessedly hopeless that appeals to this book of symbols for its support. It is principally, of course, with reference to it that Canon Farrar enters his vigorous protest against "the tyrannous realism of ambiguous metaphors," and he is only giving fresh utterance to protests that have been again and again put forth by writers and speakers of every grade of orthodoxy or its opposite, in every case perhaps in which it ever was appealed to. In this regard the minds of many, who otherwise listen with reverence to the word of God, are under a cloud of unbelief which forbids their seeing some of the very plainest things that were ever written. While we look then particularly at these Apocalyptic visions, let Us remember for our encouragement, that the title of the book is "the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to Him to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass;" and that He has added, "Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of the book of this prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein." Plainly we have nowhere else in Scripture the full and orderly detail of "last things" which we have in this one book of New Testament prophecy, the priceless gift of a love so little realized, for which we have been so little thankful. Nowhere are eternal things so vividly pictured to us, "the city which hath foundations" on the one side, the awful solemnity of the "lake of fire" upon the other. Glad would Satan be to withdraw from us the joys which beckon us forward in it, the judgments which warn men to accept the grace that now beseeches. Has God written it so badly as to be unintelligible? Are the metaphors ambiguous? Shall we not at least look into it earnestly and reverently, before we thus dishonour the blessed Master and Lord who calls it His "Revelation"? We have already traced the outline of the 19th chapter, and have seen how, after the marriage of the Lamb in heaven, the armies there, clothed in the fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints, follow the white-horsed Leader to the judgment of the earth. The beast, the false prophet, and the kings of the earth with their armies, are the objects of the judgment. The mass are slain with the sword, two being exempted from this to share a special doom, being "cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." The next chapter shows us Satan bound and shut up in the bottomless pit a thousand years, while for the same time Christ and his saints reign together, the wicked dead not yet being raised. At the end of the thousand years Satan is loosed out of his prison, and after having deceived the nations, and the judgment of God overtaking his followers, he is again taken, and this time cast into the lake of fire. There we are told expressly, a thousand and more years after they have been cast in, "the beast and the false prophet are,"* and it is added of them, "and they shall be tormented day and night unto the ages of ages" (ver. 10). * "Are" is not in the original, but necessarily implied there. The word "they" is also omitted in the common version from the next part of the verse, which runs, "and shall be tormented." The difference between this and what I have given is, that the ordinary translation seems to confine the torment to the beast and false prophet, while mine includes the devil in it. The Greek is capable of either, but the connection calls for the sense given. Now, if the lake of fire be extinction, how is it that two men remain in it a thousand years unannihilated, and that then we are told they are to be further tormented for eternity? The expression is "unto the ages of ages" one of the strongest expressions ever used for eternity, as we have seen; and, if it were not so, as far as annihilationism is concerned, the use of such language would at all events preclude the possibility of reasoning, as this class of writers love to do, from the nature of fire, and the present constitution of human bodies, that it must imply the total consumption of those condemned to it. For if a man could live there a thousand years, why not ever so many thousand? if for ages of ages, why not for a proper eternity? Details we are not now attempting, but only seeking to get hold in the first place of the general outline of what is here presented, and presented with abundant plainness. It is not from any peculiar difficulty in these chapters indeed, that people stumble at them, but simply because they do not harmonize with the views they have elsewhere learned. But the plainest reading of these Scriptures is what is in most real harmony with all others. We have assured ourselves of this in part already. We may yet find equal assurance as to all here presented. Man, unsaved man, then, here shares the destiny appointed for the devil and his angels. That destiny is "everlasting punishment" in "everlasting fire." Quite true, we have not as yet seen all the unsaved sharing it. But that this twentieth chapter gives: "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." This is spoken of the dead, standing in mass before the great white throne. Into this lake of fire "death and hell," or hades, are also said to be cast; and people claim in this case (and many unthinkingly, too, concede) that this must at least as to them mean their coming to an end. It does not do this at all, as we may see, on looking more closely at the words. "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell (hades) delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to their works." Thus death and hell were emptied (it is "hades" as we have seen) and emptied of inhabitants, who, standing before God to be judged on the ground of their natural responsibility, "according to their works," come forth only to hopeless condemnation. Long before have the saints ceased to be tenants in hades. Nor does Scripture seem to speak of death for the saints living during the millennium.* The result would be that, as none but the "blessed" have part in the first resurrection, so none but the wicked have part in the second. It is the resurrection of judgment. And it is thus, as figuratively presenting their inhabitants, that death and hades are cast into the lake of fire.† It is immediately added, as if to show that the people are intended, "This is the second death:" of course, not of death or of hell, but of those represented by them. And I press it again, that the second death is the lake of fire; not extinction, for if there has been no first extinction, there CAN be no second. Yet so the first death (death, as we ordinarily call it) comes to an end. The last enemy is destroyed. The second death is deathless, and yet the "ages for ages" for most have but just begun. *Comp. Isa 65:20. †See Isa 14:9 for a similar putting of "hell "(sheol) for its inhabitants. It is the constant thing when speaking of cities: "O Jerusalem, that killest the prophets," etc. It would seem that all this was clear, simple and conclusive. The metaphors are not ambiguous, and their "tyrannous realism" amounts only to this, that they are in fact very positive in what they represent, because so clear. We shall have, however, to consider, with a care in some degree commensurate with their importance, the comments of those who read them differently, and in so doing we shall learn the force of them still better, and find what ambiguity there is in them, if any. As they have usually preceded, we may give precedence still to the advocates of "conditional immortality," and then listen to Dr. Farrar and the restorationist school. We may begin with Mr. Dobney. He says on Rev 20:9-10 : - "On the present text I submit - (i.) that the writer simply affirms that the devil shall be tormented forever and ever; which whatever be the legitimate meaning (concerning which we need not inquire) no one disputes. [!] At all events, I am not disposed to embarrass my present subject with any inquiry into the fate of fallen angels. What I have undertaken is sufficient. And so I simply remind my reader that this text says nothing at all about sinners of the human race. . . (ii.) Whatever this lake of fire may really symbolize, it is before the great day of judgment that the devil is represented as cast into it. It is moreover that into which the beast and the false prophet were previously cast, long before the final close of human history. Now the beast and false prophet are not individual and historical persons really. They are symbolic persons. Many expositors tell us that they symbolize a system, which is to come to an utter end, rather than particular individuals. If so, the idea of torment is not to be literally understood But this I waive altogether."* * Script. Doctrine, pp. 229, 230. Mr. Dobney is careful not to commit himself too much, where he is evidently not sure of his ground. The doom of Satan he admits to be torment forever and ever, and does not want to "embarrass" the doctrine of annihilation by considering it. No wonder, because Satan himself is to be "destroyed," and if that, may consist with eternal torment, it would "embarrass" an annihilationist. But then man is to share Satan’s doom: how can Mr. Dobney refuse to consider this then? Again, (ii.) no men are concerned in this judgment. The beast and false prophet are personifications and not persons. At least "many expositors" tell us so, and Mr. Dobney will accept their judgment upon a point so immaterial as this! Why, Mr. Dobney, not "many" but the mass of expositors tell us that eternal torment is the portion of men also. Are you satisfied to abide by this? Surely not, if I can believe your book. Why are you more credulous here? It seems to be immaterial whether or not two men are here said to be tormented with the devil forever and ever! But Mr. Dobney prefers to believe that the personal devil shares the lake of fire with two symbols, and is literally tormented, while they are figuratively tormented in the selfsame fire! Surely Mr. Dobney cannot blame us if we read the facts the other way. We should argue that, if the devil be a real person, and the torment real for him, his associates must be as real persons and as real sufferers. But he does not tell us what these "symbols" mean, and we must wait till another does, before we examine this. He dwells more at large upon ver. 11-15: - "Orthodoxy ingeniously connects this 15th verse with the one we have just considered, and pronounces thus: - ‘ The lake of fire is the symbol of the torment the devil shall undergo. This torment is to be day and night forever and ever. Into this lake the wicked are to be cast. Therefore they also are to be tormented forever and ever therein.’ " To this he objects: - "(i.) The inference is not a necessary one. Because in the lake of fire the devil shall be tormented forever, it does not necessarily follow that quite another race of intelligences, cast into the same lake, must therefore exist as long as be does, and endure the same torment. If the orthodox use it, it proves too much for them. . . they must affirm that all men, even the least guilty, will endure precisely the same torment as the devil himself, seeing that the least guilty of the lost are cast into precisely the same fire as the devil. If they shrink from this. . . they surrender the entire case. If it may produce different effects, it may torment the one and destroy the other." This is somewhat more like argument. But to it I answer: - Mr. Dobney is not putting all the facts of the case. We have seen that death is forever gone when the lake of fire (for most) begins; and that "the second death is the lake of fire." If we are to learn in any way therefore what the lake of fire is, we look back of course to the prior account. We find two men - we must take them as such, till they show us otherwise - a thousand years in it alive, and then the devil sentenced with these to eternal torment in it. We argue, necessarily, this is no repetition of the first death; nor could it be, for the first death is over, and not existing still under another name. If the second death is the lake of fire, extinction of being the lake of fire is not. Can any one show us the fallacy of such a conclusion? But, says Mr. Dobney, every one must suffer then "precisely the same torment as the devil himself:" There is not the least reason for that; for if the lake of fire mean torment forever and ever, all may suffer that, and yet in almost infinitely different degrees. "They were judged every man according to their works." Mr. Dobney is thinking and arguing really about material fire. In a material fire for eternity it would be natural to say all would suffer alike - the degrees could not at least be very far removed. But then how could the devil suffer in material fire? Doubtless it is a figure and to be explained by the use of such a figure elsewhere. It is indeed the true ignis sapiens, the discriminative wrath of God which must be the portion of all the impenitent, yet not alike to each. The Lord has Himself taught us to speak of stripes few or many, of judgment greater or less. As to even material fire and its effect, it is not conceded that the devil is in such sense of "quite another race of intelligences," as to be less susceptible to its action than the spirit of man: while as to his resurrection body, we can argue nothing, for we know nothing about it. But material fire we may be sure is not meant, as these very considerations show. Mr. Dobney’s second objection is: - "(ii) The inference is not a fair one. . . What does the being cast into the lake of fire mean, Rev 5:14? It denotes the utter ceasing to be of death and hades. There is to be no more death. And this plain fact is poetically set forth by the striking image of death cast into a lake of fire; fire being the acknowledged symbol of the prophets for destruction. So ‘death, the last enemy, is to be destroyed.’ This is the undisputed sense of Rev 5:14. When then, in the very next verse, sinners are represented as cast into the lake of fire, is it not obvious and legitimate to retain the sense necessarily attached to the symbol of fire in the verse before, rather than to overlook the near and go back to the remote passage?" This objection has been already met. It is strange how little Mr. Dobney can see the fallacy of an argument which asserts death to be destroyed when cast into the lake of fire, and yet that death is to reign still in that very place! It is quite true that death is in fact destroyed in that very way. Not as if the fire destroyed it, but its prisoners being given up finally, and cast into the lake of fire, death exists no more; but that is not what casting into the fire as a symbol means. Mr. Dobney reinforces his argument by reference to the book of life, and the threat of being blotted out of it. This, too, we have looked at, and need not return to it. Mr. Hudson’s main argument* also turns upon death and hades being cast into the lake of fire, and he says that if Satan, the beast, and the false prophet are immortal in it, by parity of reasoning death and hades ought to be. "Death and hades, symbolical personages, are supposed to cease from being; while their subjects, ‘the dead’ . . . . are supposed to be immortal! Who does not see (he asks) that hades and thanatos are only other names for the dead?" That is what I believe and contend for, and. that the passage does not represent their ceasing to exist at all. It is quite true they do so, but that is inference only, although a sound one; for if alt who make them up are gone from them, they are, of course, gone too. But if death be gone at the beginning of those ages of ages for which the torment of the lake of fire lasts, how can its subjects ever "die"? *Debt and Grace, p. 213. Mr. Hudson also regards the beast and false prophet as symbols of systems, and that they must come to an end with those who are their worshippers, but this again is not proved but taken for granted. If they are systems, come to an end for lack of supporters, how are they tormented for the ages of ages? "This might be said," he answers, "of the beast and the false prophet as impersonations, henceforth without power or worshippers." Death might indeed symbolize that, but it is the very thing they do not suffer. They are cast "alive" into the lake of fire, and remain alive a thousand years, and still to be tormented on forever and ever. How can there be life in systems without power or worshippers forever? Mr. Hudson does not even himself believe it, for he adds, "But we think the language describes their utter and irrevocable destruction in a dramatic form," and he compares it to Isa 14:9-12 : that is, the welcome given by the dead to the dead king of Babylon! As he gives no reason further than this, we have not much to answer. As to Satan himself he answers the question, "Is he mortal ?" by saying, "the prophecies all look that way." He produces but two, however: one, "that the seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent;" the other, Dan 7:11-12! His proofs are perfectly conclusive as to the untenableness of his position. As to the second death,* Mr. Hudson quotes various rabbinical statements to show that for the rabbis the phrase meant annihilation. If so, it would only show that Scripture in the most decisive way reverses their judgment. *Debt and Grace, p. 178. We will now look at Mr. Morris’ view, and shall give it in his own words:† "A two-fold destiny awaits the devil - the one, political and the other, personal . . the dramatic representation of the personal policy and scheme of Satan is that of ‘a great red dragon’ (Rev 12:1-3). In the doom of his policy, his person and the persons of his host are involved. But it is the personal policy of Satan that the ‘great red dragon’ more especially represents. And it is the great red dragon that is caught, and chained, and cast into the abyss, and is imprisoned there a thousand years, and is then let loose, and is afterwards cast into the lake of fire. The policy of Satan as we have just remarked, involves his person; and so the doom of his policy involves his personal doom. But it is the political doom of the devil, or the devil as politically considered, that is intended, and is dramatically described when it is said, ‘And the devil that deceived them (the nations) was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and THEY shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.’ The passive verb in the original, basanistheesontai, is a plural verb, and so requires to be read, ‘and THEY shall be tormented,’ or, as divested of the dramatic dress, ‘and they shall be PUT TO THE PROOF unto the ages of the ages.’ That trinity of evil, called the dragon and the beast and the false prophet, shall be together involved in the same final doom." In a note he adds, "The dramatic force and design of this plural verb, basanistheesontai, is not - they shall be tortured, as some men count torture. As we have noticed before: That the verb basanizo, and the noun basanismos, are derived from basanos, the name of a stone found in Lydia, in Asia Minor, by which gold was tried - a touch-stone. From the literal meaning of basanos came the metaphorical use of basanismos - that which tests or puts to the proof. In the mind of a Roman inquisitor - both ancient and modern - both secular and ecclesiastical - this word and its verbs came to mean torture, and torturing to elicit evidence, to extort a confession. But even in this there was an end proposed to be obtained by means of the torture, and so an end to the torture itself. The torment inflicted was, professedly at least, a means to an end, and not for the mere sake of tormenting . . . . In common discourse, the word basanismos and its verbs came to represent the ideas of painful toil and great bodily affection . . . and the infliction of torture. But basanismos and its verbs always retain their radical meaning when used in relation to the jurisprudence and penal administration of God. The feminine symbol called ‘Babylon the great,’ and the masculine symbols called ‘the beast’ and ‘the false prophet,’ are said to be tormented; that is, the systems of ecclesiastical and of secular and moral polity and power, which these symbols represent, shall be tested and put to the proof." †What is Man, p. 120, etc. Thus far Mr. Morris. We have all these words in the New Testament. basanos three times, Mat 4:24; Luk 16:23; Luk 16:28, always given as "torment;" basaniomos similarly "torment" five times, Rev 9:5; Rev 14:11; Rev 18:7; Rev 18:10; Rev 18:15; basaniotes once, Mat 18:34, "tormentors;" basanizo once rendered" tossed," Mat 14:24; once "toiling," Mark 6:48; once "vexed," 2Pe 2:8; once "pained," Rev 12:2; and the other eight times "torment," Mat 8:6; Mat 8:29; Mark 5:7; Luk 8:28; Rev 9:5; Rev 11:10, Rev 14:10; Rev 20:10. Mr. Morris’ canon of interpretation is a very simple one. These words, so uniformly rendered by some word expressive of suffering and pain, may be allowed to retain that meaning in every case where the penal administration of God is not in question, that is, wherever the theories of annihilationists do not require it otherwise, but there we must absolutely exclude the idea of torment: it must be "put to the proof" in all such cases. In vain we ask, is there another instance which requires or would allow this rendering in the New Testament? Mr. Morris is sufficient authority evidently in the matter, for he condescends give no other, nor even to reason about it. But he is somewhat unfortunate nevertheless. For in the very text in question the canon strangely fails. "Divested of the dramatic dress," he says, the passage reads: "and they shall be PUT TO THE PROOF unto the ages of the ages." "That trinity of evil," is his own comment upon it, "called the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, shall be together involved in the same final doom." That is, these three, two of them symbols, are "doomed" to be put to the proof (without torture) in a lake of fire and brimstone forever. The end of the "putting to proof" is never to come! For this putting to the proof; is to "elicit evidence"! The strange trial is to go on forever, and come to no result! But this is not what Mr. Morris means. Possibly not. It is only what he says. They are tested forever. The fire and brimstone, too, are of course "dramatic," and it is only the devil’s political doom, as personally he is to be destroyed! Perhaps that makes it plainer. If not, it is pretty certain to bewilder, which is apparently the next best thing. But Mr. Morris comes at last to the question for which we have been waiting, "who or what are the beast and the false prophet?" And he answers: "They are symbols of governmental and of moral polity and power." "The beast is a composite symbol of the secular polity and power of the Roman world in the last stage of its history." "He ascendeth out of the abyss, and he ‘goeth into perdition,’ - eis apoleian, that is, unto destruction - final and eternal destruction; but he is first to be put to the proof." " ‘The false prophet,’ " he goes on, "is in the first instance, called ‘another beast,’ which is represented as coming up out of the earth." He "is the symbol of the moral polity and power of the Roman world in the last stage of its history. It will be accredited of Satan, who will display in it most marvellous powers - miraculous powers, in imitation of the powers of the Holy Ghost. . . This second beast is first called the ‘false prophet’ in Rev 16:13, and he is so called because the moral polity which is thus described will claim to be the mature result of manly wisdom. "In Dan 7:11, the destiny of the Roman beast is spoken of thus: ‘I beheld till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame.’. . . But here in Rev 19:20, an additional truth is supplied. . . John saw the beast and the false prophet cast alive into the lake of fire, and they are represented as being still there and alive at the end of the thousand years, when Satan is let loose out of his prison. And this is intended to teach. . . that during and throughout the thousand years, it shall be left as an open question, as to whether those same systems of secular and moral power ‘will ever be able to rise up again and be re-established upon the earth. . . and so the beast and false prophet are represented as alive in an open pool, or lake of fire burning with brimstone upon the surface of the earth and in view of all. And when Satan is let loose the great experiment is tried. . . . Instead of an escape and a re-establishment on the part of the beast and false prophet, by the assistance of the devil, he himself is cast into the same lake of fire with them, and to share their doom: and it shall not any longer be an open question as to whether moral evil will reappear and become rampant on the earth, or in any department of the universe of God." The great question which concerns us here, and on account of which I have quoted so much from Mr. Morris, i8, are the beast and false prophet men, or are they simply systems or polities as he represents it? I shall attempt no interpretation of the prophecy, save so far as it is needed for the purpose of definitely settling this; and it may be definitely settled, for God’s metaphors are not ambiguous, and scarcely so hard to read as Mr. Morris’ interpretations. The book of Daniel conclusively settles that the seven-headed, ten-horned "beast" of Revelation is the Roman empire, as Mr. Morris states it, although in a somewhat different form. In Rev 17:11, however, there is a feature of the case which seems to have escaped him, for there the beast is identified with his own eighth head. Now "the Seven heads are seven kings." The imperial beast of Revelation is thus stated to be the last king, for in his day it "goes into perdition." In Daniel, at the commencement of the Gentile empires, of which Rome is the last, we find a statement very similar to that in Revelation. In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream the head of the image is of fine gold, and typifies the Babylonian power; but Daniel applies it personally to Nebuchadnezzar himself: "Thou art this head of gold." This double identification of the golden head may help us to understand that as in the days of Babylon one man represented in fact the empire so it will be in the time of the fulfilment of Rev 17:11. One man will represent the empire for God; and of this as to the last beast an intimation at least is given in the book of Daniel also. "I beheld then," says the prophet, "because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake, I beheld even till the beast was slain." The beast is judged for the words of the horn: beast and horn are one as to responsibility before God. Now a "horn" too is a "king" (Rev 17:12); and here even in Daniel is one morally so identified with the beast as to draw down the judgment of God upon it. More than this, when we look at the picture in the Old Testament we find this horn to be an eleventh horn, feeble in its beginnings, but rising to superiority over the rest at last. In Revelation this eleventh horn, so all important in Daniel, does not appear at all; but there is an eighth head of the beast in Revelation, which on the other hand did not appear in Daniel, and which is in its place identified with the beast. Who can resist the conviction that these two (both "kings ") are really one? But the great words of the horn bring down judgment upon the beast: and this assures us still more of the horn’s personality. For a "polity" is not a responsible agent, for that we must have a living being. Nor could we think of ten polities, of which an eleventh subdued three, as is said of the "horn;" whereas, if a real king be intended, nothing is more natural. Now, a king is the interpretation both of "horn" and "head," and this ought to be simple enough not to need another interpretation to explain it to us. The simplest is the best. The beast is " worshipped" too by all that dwell on earth, and the number of the beast is the number of a man. He is found, when Christ comes, with the kings of the earth, (literal kings, as Isa 24:21, assures us), heading their opposition, and receives signal, awful judgment as the head of it. That judgment we shall look at directly; but first as to the "false prophet." Apart from all interpretation he is manifestly the same as the second beast of Rev 13:1-18, as again Mr. Morris truly says. His character and time and end couple him unmistakably also with the "man of sin" in Thessalonians, and who, however much he too may represent a "polity," is plainly yet (or should be so) a man. A "false prophet" hardly even can represent a polity; save as it represents one who may be identified with it. His miracles are Elias-like: he makes fire come down from heaven in the sight of men; he exercises all the power of the first beast in his presence; he gives breath to an image of the beast; he causes all to receive the latter’s mark. Why and upon what warrant we should believe that this is not a personal agent, who can tell us? And when we find such an one united with the beast and kings of the earth in opposition to the Lord and cast alive with the beast into the lake of fire into which first Satan and afterward all the wicked are cast, and suffering torment there for ages and ages, why should we allow the dreams of men, who seem only to know how to darken daylight itself, turn us from or make us hesitate in the assured belief, that these two are men, and nothing but men? But Mr. Morris’ interpretation of the judgment must detain us a little, wild and incongruous as it surely is. Examination can only deepen the conviction of the reality of what we have to do with here, and of its simplicity also, a simplicity worthy of the Divine Author. It is not without profit ever to be occupied (if one’s heart be in it) with the word. Does "taken and east alive into a lake of fire" mean judgment? Surely one would think so. But no; they are systems it seems, still alive in men’s minds, it remaining an open question whether they will come up again in power upon earth or not. After the loosing of Satan and his failure, and being cast into the lake of fire also, it is not an open question any more, he says, but strangely enough they are still tested on and on for ages and ages in the same lake of fire! And that lake of fire receives others also. Men are judged, and after judgment cast in, to be tested of course further still. The lake of fire is on earth, too. But the earth and the heavens flee away from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and still the lake of fire abides as before. I might, perhaps, conclude with Mr. Morris here; but he, too sees in the crushing of the serpent’s head the personal annihilation of the devil, and (again with Mr. Hudson) his personal destiny involved in the destruction of the Roman beast in Dan 7:11. As for the first, the annihilation of the serpent as such is allowed to be complete when Satan is cast into the lake of fire, but his personal annihilation is by no means implied. As for the last, they must show us how they argue it before we can treat it as other than imagination. We will now listen to Mr. Constable, and it need not be for any length of time, for he fairly gives the matter up. He says:* "The sense we would put upon the passages in Revelation is, that they convey in highly wrought figures suitable to the character of the entire book, only the old idea which we have already gathered from the rest of Scripture, ‘viz., that the punishment of all consigned to hell will be of an eternal nature, and that its fearful effect - the plunging of its subjects into death and destruction - will ever remain visible to the redeemed and angelic worlds. We will not try to establish this sense by examining the force of each word. We deny that language so highly figurative is capable of any such dialectical analysis, or that such is the manner in which we ordinarily interpret language of the kind." *Nat. and Dur. of Etern. Punishm., p. 199. He prefers to go to other passages to show the use of similar language. Of these, he produces two: Isa 34:9-10, and Jude’s reference to Sodom. Isaiah says of Edom, "The land thereof shall become burning pitch: it shall not be quenched night nor day, the smoke thereof shall go up forever." Mr. Constable asks: "Will the advocates of Augustine’s hell tell us that if we went to Idumea, we should see people suffering pain from some period subsequent to Isaiah’s prophecy to the present time? . . . The present condition of Edom is the explanation of the poetic figure: its cities have fallen into ruin: the whole land is a desert. The burning pitch, the unquenchable fire, the smoke ascending forever, is reduced to this sober hue in the language of prose." This is only saying that the language is that of poetic exaggeration. We utterly and absolutely deny it. The present condition of Edom is not what Isaiah prophesies of. He speaks of a yet future time, as ver. 2-8 distinctly show, and then this terrible judgment will be fulfilled. If Scripture language were so deceptive, who could trust it? But Isaiah says nothing about "endless life in pain" - not a word. It is Mr. Constable who has foisted the thought upon him. Nor is the Old Testament "forever" the "ages of the ages" of the New. Next as to Jude 1:7, where it is said that "Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," Mr. Constable says this cannot refer to any suffering in hades, for their condition there is never alluded to in Scripture, and is therefore no "example"; that hell is a future thing for all, and Jude speaks of something "which had long been a plain and palpable warning to the ungodly of this earth." He concludes therefore it can only refer to "their overthrow in the days of Lot, and their abiding condition ever since." "They and their works were burnt up; and this ruined, lifeless, hopeless condition has remained to the present time. The whole transaction conveys the idea of conscious pain for a time, followed by ruin and death forever. This is, according to Scripture, to ‘suffer the vengeance of eternal fire.’ " This is, rather, the way in which men venture to interpret the word of God, until it becomes the bye-word and scorn of infidelity. The cities are burnt up and not to be found, and the land lies desolate, and this is the vengeance of eternal fire! Words may mean anything in this way; they are made not to express sense, but to hide it. But it is not very hard to see that Jude in speaking of these "cities" speaks of the people in them. The people had sinned, and upon the people the judgment fell, the "fire and brimstone" from heaven being the type or pattern of that "eternal fire", in which they suffer still. The temporary fire by which they perished from the earth was not the eternal one, nor is it stated to be such. But the wrath of God manifested upon them is a sample or specimen (deigma) of what could not be temporary, that wrath against sin which is the "eternal fire." Mr. Constable confounds the people with the mere material cities, and thinks of a present condition of palpable judgment, of which not a word is said. The fire which destroyed them was "eternal fire," if you look, not at the material fire which was at once its instrument and symbol, but at the divine wrath so manifested. There is then no difficulty in the matter. Nor need we discuss therefore the principle which Mr. Constable obtains from this passage, "that the judgments of God upon individuals or nations, in destroying them here for sin, is the pattern and example of that destruction which He will inflict on them hereafter for sin;" although he presses to the same end also our Lord’s words in regard to the Galileans, "Unless ye repent ye shall all likewise perish," and even Paul’s statement that the things that happened to Israel in the wilderness "happened to them for ensamples," where the margin reads "types." We have been ourselves largely reading such types, and it is not to be supposed that we are afraid of the latter principle. But when we are told that "the slaying of the Galileans by Pilate essentially resembles the death of the wicked in hell," we may be allowed to ask for some further proof than his saying so can afford us. Thus neither Jude nor Isaiah are in the least sympathy with Mr. Constable in his endeavour to give a sense to Scripture which he "will not try to establish by examining the force of each word." It is a very real, however little ingenuous a confession, that the words, if sifted, are against him. He does, however, try to do somewhat even here, and with reference to basanizo "to torment," he points out, that "it is as applicable to things without life as to living things," be cause it is applied once (metaphorically) as we have seen, to the tossing of a boat! So he thinks the devil might be "tossed" in a lake of fire and brimstone forever! If that will not do, Schleusner, it seems, has said that it is used, not only for actual pain, but "for death produced by such pain," and "in this sense (he thinks) it is peculiarly applicable to future punishment." No doubt; so the devil is to be killed by torment day and night forever and ever! We may leave Mr. Constable then, to look at some fresh arguments with Mr. Minton. It is strange how fresh the arguments are, and how little one writer accepts those of another; each seems satisfied only with his own. But we must be as brief as the case will allow. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 96: 04.41. CHAPTER XXXIV THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS. - 2 ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXIV THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS. - 2 "If we are to learn anything with regard to what will happen to the persons here represented," says Mr. Minton,* "we must first inquire what would happen to that which represents them, as the consequence of being cast into a lake of fire. Now it so happens that in every one of the five or six cases here specified, the result would be utter destruction. They are all living things, and not one of them could possibly exist in a lake of fire. A wild beast; a false prophet; ‘the devil,’ evidently under the form of the ‘dragon,’ seen first in Rev 12:1-17, and again in Rev 22:2 ‘death and hell’ (hades), as evidently under the form already seen in Rev 6:8, of a rider or riders on horseback; and ‘whosoever’ of the dead, small and great, that stood before God, ‘was not found written in the book of life.’ If these things be intended to predict the final doom of wicked men and wicked spirits, then their doom is set forth under images which point to nothing less than extinction of being." *Way Everlasting, p. 58, etc. This shows how utterly at fault as to these figures is the speculation Mr. Minton recommends. How long would a wild beast live in a lake of fire? Certainly, if we follow our thoughts, an exceedingly short space of time. How long if we take Scripture? A thousand years as first seen, and then the ages of ages. Similarly as to the false prophet. So as to the devil from the time he is cast in. How worse than vain to speculate! How entirely Scripture contradicts Mr. Minton’s suggestions. But this Mr. Minton is candid enough to own, and he says: "I at once admit my inability to explain this in any way that is quite satisfactory to my own mind. But I do not admit that the view which it seems to oppose must therefore be radically wrong (!). . . A wild beast could no more live in such a condition for a day than for an age." What then? "This inclines me to think that the ages of ages indicate, not the period of suffering to the condemned, but the eternal destruction that comes upon them. . . .What then, you will ask again, do I understand by ‘torment’? I understand by it - destruction (!) And to all objections that torment and destruction are two different things, I reply that the Spirit of God Himself has most pointedly applied the word torment to destruction in one of those very passages. Read the account in Rev 18:1-24 of Babylon’s destruction. The inhabitants perish ‘in one day’ by ‘death and mourning and famine’; and then the city itself is ‘utterly burned with fire.’ Now in the long description of the burning which follows, there is not a word of any living persons or things being left in the city, to suffer torture from the fire that consumes it. The city is, of course, destroyed for the sin of its inhabitants; but their destruction is distinguished in Rev 18:8 from its destruction. Yet they who gaze upon that burning mass ‘stand far off for the fear of her torment.’ What can the word mean there but destruction?" Thus must words be perverted by man’s will, and torment mean what torment never meant, and the sanction of the Spirit of God be claimed for an unnatural and impossible use of language, such as never could be imputed to anything beside Scripture. And what is the ground for this notable absurdity? Babylon’s inhabitants perish "in one day," says Mr. Minton, by "death and mourning and famine," but the city as distinguished from these is burned with fire, no living inhabitant being in it; and Rev 18:8 distinguishes the destruction of the inhabitants from that of the city! It is Rev 18:8 he is citing for all this: of course he must have read it, but this is what it says : - "Therefore shall her plagues COME in one day, death and mourning and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God that judgeth her!" Where is it said, Mr. Minton, that the inhabitants all perish in one day? Nowhere: her plagues come in one day, not are over! Where is the city distinguished from the inhabitants, so as to imply that these do not suffer in the burning of the former? Again, nowhere! it is bold perversion of the language: and all to give to the word torment in the subsequent verse an impossible meaning, which would scarcely have been attempted to be fastened upon any other book than Scripture, as I have already said. We can well believe that his interpretation is not satisfactory to Mr. Minton. It is the only encouraging thing about it, that it is not. But yet he has not done with Babylon. If she perishes so as not to be "found any more at all" - "what then," he asks, "is the meaning of her smoke rising up forever and ever? What, but that her guilt and her destruction will never be forgotten; that she will be preeminently an object of everlasting contempt? Such destruction I believe to be the ‘torment’ of all impenitent sinners, and such an eternal memory of sin and its destruction to be the smoke of that torment ascending up forever and ever."* * Mr. Roberts, who in his "Man Mortal" does nothing but repeat Mr. Minton’s arguments, and to whom no separate reply is needed therefore, quotes, however, "her smoke rose up forever and ever," to remark: "If the sense here were the popular notion of absolutely endless futurity, how absurd to describe it in the past tense - ‘rose up’ - as a thing having happened! How can a thing have happened ‘forever’ in the English sense? " Aye, or in the Greek either? Mr. R. has forgotten his Greek here, although be quotes it in the very next words. The Greek is anabainei, "goeth up." The only additional thing to be noticed as to him is, that he makes the casting "alive" of the systems into the lake of fire to intimate that they will not die of themselves, but be destroyed by the Lord at His coming"! Do the "kings of the earth" die of themselves, because they die! And how is it the systems are still "alive" after a thousand years. if they are destroyed (in his sense) by the Lord at His coming? So that we must read instead of "torment," "destruction day and night for the ages of ages"! I do not believe that Babylon’s smoke ascending up forever and ever means that the memory of it will be forever.* The memory of all that has ever been will endure forever and this is more than the assertion of such a common-place thought. The key to the expression is that identification of the city and people which Mr. Minton so vainly contends against. The expression is, of course, figurative, but identical with that in Rev 14:11, yet to be looked at. Babylon suffers forever, of course in those to whom her guilt really belongs. * In a former work I did accept this, but on more mature consideration must withdraw that acceptance. But Mr. Minton goes on: - "But it is urged that the wild beast and false prophet, who were cast into the lake of fire before the millennium, are spoken of at its close as if still there. This is, however, a mistake, the ‘word ‘are’ not being in the original. When a word has to be supplied, it should be supplied from what has preceded, and not made to assert an independent fact. ‘The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet’ - what? Surely ‘were cast.’ To supply ‘are’ is just to beg the question, and assert a fact which is not stated in the record. The words which follow, ‘and (they - the verb being plural) shall be tormented day and night forever and ever,’ merely contain a declaration that the destruction of the beast and the false prophet and the dragon would be final and irremediable; none of them would ever appear again. The two former are included in this subsequent declaration, because nothing of the kind had been said when they were first cast into the lake of fire." That is, again, we must transform torment into destruction, and say "they shall be destroyed day and night forever and ever"! And even so we must believe that "they shall be destroyed" means that two of them have been already, and only the third "shall be"! These are somewhat large demands upon our faith - the sceptical would say "credulity"; but where man’s will is at work there is still credulity enough for this and more. Yet Mr. Minton finds it himself not quite satisfactory, it would seem. he cannot blame us if we sympathize with him. But he has still a resource, if his explanation of these texts fails to be "wholly satisfactory," as he admits it may, he can still question ours! If he can make nothing else out of them, he will not accept what they plainly say: - "Now, waiving the question which a Universalist would raise, as to the ages of ages" - If the doubt is not Mr. Minton’s own, why does he affect to raise it? - "your argument manifestly depends upon the assumption that the ‘torment’ spoken of in these visions represents torment in the future realities which are therein predicted. But how can you prove that? You can produce a string of texts to show the precise meaning of basanos (torment); and so can I produce a string of texts to show the precise meaning of therion (a wild beast). Does the beast in the vision represent a beast in the reality? Then why should torment in the vision represent torment in the reality ?" Before we answer this, let us hear Mr. Minton’s summing up of conclusions against this "1. The word ‘torment’ is applied to the burning of the city Babylon, when its inhabitants had already perished." This has been disproved. "2. Its smoke is said to rise up forever and ever, after it has been so completely destroyed that it cannot be found." This is also a mere confusion arising out of the first mistake. "3. While the beast and the false prophet are cast into the lake of fire, all their adherents are ‘slain with the sword’; which, on your principle of interpretation, would show, that some of the wicked will be punished with eternal torment, others with death." Quite true, as to the time of the Lord’s coming; but the latter are raised among "the rest of the dead," and then cast into the lake of fire also. How, if the beast and the false prophet are "phases of evil," as Mr. M. suggests, and not persons, they should be cast into the lake of fire into which Satan and all the wicked afterwards are cast, is a difficulty upon his side he can never explain. If their adherents had been at the same time cast in, it might have been contended that they shared the fate of their adherents, or if all had been slain this might have been said. But that "phases of evil" should be cast into a place of torment is inexplicable in the way the verses stand. His fourth objection applies only to Rev 14:10, so must be reserved. His fifth is the old mistake as to death and hades being cast in. His sixth is, that torment is not mentioned with regard to the dead in ver. 15. But the lake of fire is not (as he asserts) "the very embodiment of destruction," in his sense of it, as we have seen, and death being destroyed at the beginning of the ages makes it impossible thereafter that men should die. He asks: - "But does the lake of fire itself go on burning forever? Is it ‘everlasting’ or ‘unquenchable’ in that sense? What are the very next words? ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.’ What then has become of the lake of fire which St. John saw on the first earth? Why, of course, it has passed away with the earth of which it formed part. Is there any lake of fire on the new earth?" I think it useful to quote exact words, or people might really believe there was some strange perversion on my part, or misconception at least of an adversary’s arguments. Mr. Minton proceeds with a full page more of reasonings upon this foundation, in which it is, of course, quite useless to follow him, for the foundation itself is lacking. Where does the passage speak of the lake of fire being on earth at all? He would seem to be reading from another Bible than that which is in all our hands. Why, the devil is only cast into this lake of fire at the close of the millennium, there to he tormented day and night for the ages of ages. Whatever that means, a long lapse of time is surely indicated. But in the very next words we read of the great white throne set up, and the earth and the heavens fleeing away. Are the ages of ages all expired in the meantime, and before the final judgment? But again, the throne is set, the earth and the heavens flee away; but the dead summoned from their graves are cast into the lake of fire, which, of course, has ceased to exist with that earth which has fled away! We will now answer Mr. Minton’s question as to why "torment" in the vision should represent torment in the reality. And we answer: - 1. Because it is impossible to say what it does represent figuratively. No one has given us, - no one (it seems) can give us, any meaning in the least degree satisfactory. 2. Because the language throughout the twentieth chapter becomes more and more literal continually. The "devil," when cast in, is distinguished by the title given him in the interpretation of the previous vision, not by "the dragon," as in the vision itself.* The interpretation in verse 6 of the "first resurrection" shows us the exceeding simplicity of the vision it interprets. Souls (persons) slain are seen to live again, and that signifies literal resurrection. The "thousand years," the reign as kings and priests, are the same in the vision and the interpretation alike. And as the solemn subject of judgment is approached, the plainest words seem studied by which to set it forth. How simple and decisive they are we can realize the better, after their survival of the treatment which we have seen them endure. *The "beast" is indeed still that, but I see not how else he could be spoken of without revealing the mystery which is left to the "mind which hath understanding." The second "beast" has become "the false prophet." 3. Because literal death in the lake of fire we have seen to be impossible, and fire which does not annihilate must apparently torment. 4. Because the devils in the gospel speak of torment as their future doom, and here, therefore, the word is guaranteed as literal. We ask Mr. Minton’s attention seriously to these reasons as well as to the examination of his own views which has been given. He cannot complain of misrepresentation or of partial representation, nor do we think we have dealt with them more severely than he would himself desire if God give him another mind upon this subject every way so important to souls. There is but one more argument, adduced by Blain, and repeated by Goodwyn,* that "day and night are characteristic lements of this dispensation," but in that case, for the purpose of his argument, "this dispensation" must last "for the ages of the ages." That "night" is not found in the New Jerusalem (xxii. 5) or the new earth is nothing to the purpose self-evidently. I grant the language may be figurative, but its obvious use is to convey the thought of what is continuous or ceaseless, which in addition to the phrase" forever and ever" shows even by itself that annihilation cannot be meant. What would be the force of "annihilation day and night forever and ever"? *Death not Life, Truth and Tradition, p. 32. The arguments on the side of " conditional immortality" close then here. But we have still to glance at those of the restorationist school. Dr. Farrar is "quite content that texts should decide" this question. That would give us hope that in telling us what hell is not, he would have shown us at least what this connected prophecy of Revelation on the very subject does not mean. But although he has spent pages upon the rabbis, I cannot find ten lines upon this main text throughout his book. Indeed the only thing at all to the purpose that I can find is one note of two lines quoted from Dr. Chauncey, that "If all things without exception be subjected to Christ, then death, the second death, as well as the first death, will be finally swallowed up in victory."† This belongs properly to another branch of our subject, but a word or two is amply sufficient in answer. For the "second death" is always subject to Christ, and never opposed, never needs to be subjected. Are the prisons to which a king commits his prisoners not subject to the king who commits them there? Dr. Farrar’s reasoning is scarcely equal to his powers in other respects, if he believes this. †Eternal Hope, Excursus 5, p. 222. Mr. F. N. Oxenham in his "letter" to Mr. Gladstone, again spends pages upon two lines of Keble, and not a line upon the Scripture so all important in this matter. We must depend then upon Mr. Jukes mainly to represent the restorationist view here, apart of course from the general reasoning upon the expressions for eternity which we have already examined. And we shall allow him as usual to speak for himself. He says: - * "I cannot even attempt here to trace the stages or processes of the future judgment of those who are raised up to condemnation . . . but what has here been gathered from the word of God as to the course and method of His salvation, throws great light upon that ‘resurrection of judgment’ which our Lord speaks of." *Restitution of All Things, pp. 88-95. How the method of God’s salvation should throw great light upon the process of final judgment, it is very hard to say. Mr. Jukes of course assumes that that judgment is itself a process of salvation. In that case of course it would throw light. But on the contrary, Scripture contrasts these as two incompatible things. He that believes in Christ "has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment," while "he that believeth not the Son shall not see life." "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned." "To them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation." "There is one Lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy." "And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?"† This is the uniform tenor of Scripture, in a great variety of expressions which assure us that the judgment of the wicked is the very opposite of being a method of salvation: it is a method of destruction. But we will let Mr. Jukes proceed. †John 5:24; John 3:36; Mark 16:16; Php 1:28; Jas 4:12; 1 Pet. iv 18. "Awful as it is, who can doubt the end and purpose of this judgment? for ‘God, the judge of all,’ ‘changes not,’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ is still ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and for the ages."’ Which assures us of His unrepenting performance of all that He has threatened, as of all that He has promised. "And the very context of the passage which describes the casting of the wicked into the lake of fire, seems to show that this resurrection and the second death are both parts of the same redeeming plan, which necessarily involves judgment on those who will not judge themselves, and have not accepted the loving judgments and sufferings which in this life prepare the firstborn for the first resurrection. So we read, - ‘And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new . . . He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be His God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death.’ What does He say here but that ‘all things shall be made new,’ though in the way to this the fearful and unbelieving must pass the lake of fire?" He says the very opposite. For instead of "passing" the lake of fire, He says they "have their part" in it, as the saints have theirs in the first resurrection. And these (or among these) are they who have their "part" taken out of the book of life (Rev 22:19) of whom Mr. Jukes teaches they have their part there really still. Moreover it is only as to the condition of the blessed that God says, "Behold, I make all things new," as the context proves. "He that overcometh, I will be his God, and he shall be my son; but" - but what? He that overcometh not shall be also in the end my son? No, surely, "but the fearful and unbelieving, etc., shall have their part in the lake of fire." Mr. Jukes’ explanation is a destruction of the sense, a sense which is as plain as can be. But again he says: - "The ‘second death’ therefore, so far from being, as some think, the hopeless shutting up of man forever in the curse of disobedience, will, if I err not, be God’s way to free those who in no other way than by such a death can be delivered out of the dark world whose life they live in. . . . To get out of this world there is but one way, death; not the first, for that is passed, but the second death. Even if we have not light to see this, ought not the present to teach us something of God’s future ways; for is He not the same yesterday, to-day, and forever?" So it is "forever" now, instead of "to the ages"! but now is the accepted time, behold, now is the day of salvation." Is the day of judgment and of wrath still the same? If God is (as of course He must be) essentially always the same, does that make grace and wrath the same, or judgment and salvation? Does it not rather assure us that He who has threatened will make good? And that the word will fully be sustained, "he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him"? Is it no perversion of the truth of His unchangeableness, to say that His wrath abideth not, and all shall finally "see life"? He goes on "We know that in inflicting present death, His present purpose is to destroy him that has the power of death, that is, the devil." We know nothing of the kind; it is Christ’s death, not ours, which does this. Has Mr. Jukes read the next words in the text he quotes? "How can we conclude from this, that in inflicting the second death, the unchanging God will act on a principle entirely different from that which now actuates Him ?" That is, again, why should a day of salvation and a day of judgment differ in character? But as to death itself the principle is not different; for as the first death is the judgment upon the natural world, so the second death is upon the world beyond the grave for those who endure it. And as the first is final as to this present scene, the second will be as to that. "And why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should raise the dead, who for their sin suffer the penalty of the second death? Does this death exceed the power of Christ to overcome it? Or shall the greater foe still triumph, while the less, the first death, is surely overcome? Who has taught us thus to limit the meaning of the words, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’?" I answer to the last question, God Himself; if 1Co 15:1-58 : be inspired of Him. For the apostle there tells us that it is fulfilled at the resurrection of the body, and that is no question of the second death at all. Nor is the second death Christ’s foe, as the first death is. For the first death does (while it lasts) prevent the fulfilment of the eternal purpose fully, whether with saint or sinner. The second death does not, and is not an enemy, as I have before replied to Dr. Chauncey. As to what is "credible," all is that God reveals. This He has not revealed, but the very opposite. "Is God’s ‘will to save all men’ limited to fourscore years, or changed by that event which we call death, but which we are distinctly told is His appointed means for our deliverance ?" We are not told this as to physical death. Are the saints who do not die, but are changed at the Lord’s coming, not delivered? God would indeed have all men to be saved, but this is not purpose or counsel, which is always another word,* but desire. "How often would I," says our Lord as to Jerusalem, "and ye would not." And "now is the accepted time" applies only to living men. But all this will come up again elsewhere, and the rest of Mr. Jukes’ argument will then be considered more fittingly. They are not based upon the text before us. * bulimia, boule: as Mat 11:27; Luk 22:42; Acts 2:23; Acts 4:28; Acts 27:42; Eph 1:11; Heb 6:17, etc. But we shall have to recur to this again. Thus then we have examined every objection which has been raised to that simple reading of this important Scripture with which we first began. We have surely seen that the metaphors are not ambiguous, but written in the speech of Him who cannot lie, nor call by the name of "revelation" an exaggerated, or at least "mysterious and highly-wrought" account, which, when reduced to the "sober hue" of truth, becomes the total opposite of what is on the face of it. Thank God, His word never fails to justify itself; and its witness is neither to be brow-beaten nor cajoled from its first statements for the simplest honest-hearted hearer. He has hid these things from wise and prudent, to reveal them unto babes. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 97: 04.42. CHAPTER XXXV THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS. - 3 ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXV THE APOCALYPTIC VISIONS. - 3 THE examination of our next passage will not detain us so long, as the argument with regard to it is necessarily of a very similar nature to what has been already advanced on either side. It is, however, a separate and independent testimony of the destiny of the wicked, and as such we must not pass it by. It reads thus: - "And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever (for ages of ages) ; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name" (Rev 14:9-11). One would think that was as plain as it is solemn. Even Mr. Morris’ "putting to the proof" instead of "torment" could scarcely much darken it. He has noticed the passage, however, and objects to its teaching the commonly received doctrine on these grounds 1. It is the penalty of a specific crime, and therefore cannot be the doom of those who have not committed that crime. Therefore, if it teach endless woe for some, that cannot be the "common penalty due to sinners." But Mr. Morris is again at fault; for hell-fire may be the common penalty of sinners, and yet men be solemnly warned, as here, that once let them commit the sin in question and that hell would be their portion. What is intended very evidently is that for such persons there would be no escape The objection is therefore vain. 2. Mr. Morris says, that, whatever may be the "dramatic force" of what is said, " it is evident that it transpires on earth, and before the coming of the Lord." But be gives no evidence for this at all, unless "it is evident" be considered such. I should think myself that "the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb," would rather make the opposite evident. 3. He appeals to the " smoke of Babylon rising up forever" (Rev 19:3), as showing that such words do not imply the necessary existence of the sufferers, as Babylon had been "utterly burned with fire." But this we have looked at in our reply to Mr. Milton on the previous text. The comments of the rest of annihilationist writers are no better than this. Mr. Dobney’s main argument is that "the advocates of any tenet - no matter what - must be hard driven, if they are glad to take their stand among the hieroglyphs that attract us to the isle of Patmos." If he had been one of those "foolish Galatians" whom the apostle rebukes with the statement that "Abraham had two Sons," etc., he would, of course, have brought a similar argument against the apostle. Yet he will condescend to notice the "hieroglyphs;" and the second argument he produces is, that "their torment is in Rev 19:11 represented as synchronous with their worship: ‘they who worship the beast have no rest." The scholarship of which is not profound: as I suppose the word simply to mean "the worshippers," without any distinction of whether the worship were in the present or the past, and moreover if "have no rest" proves the worship and the unrest to be synchronous, then "shall be tormented must show the reverse as to the torment. But Mr. Dobney concludes farther from the omission of the saints as spectators along with the "angels and the Lamb" "that the vengeance denounced is inflicted here on earth, and in the time state," which must last, therefore, as the torment lasts, for the ages of ages! And again, "that in subsequent chapters we have the fulfilment of these very threatenings exhibited; which fulfilment indisputably takes place here and now." Certainly the fulfilment is found in Rev 20:1-15, and we have been looking at it already, but he who can believe that the torment of individuals here and now can be "for ages of ages "must be very anxious to believe it. We need scarcely follow him there. Nevertheless, Mr. Hudson also agrees that the passage "refers properly to- the scenes of time, and not to the final judgment;" his first argument being that there is "no allusion to the resurrection or to the opening of the books"! "And the very expression ‘who worship the beast and his image, seems (!) to refer to the earthly conduct and condition of idolatrous people. The passage proves an earthly immortality, if it proves any." I need not waste time upon these arguments. Mr. Constable’s remarks do not call for much attention either. "Elliot," he tells us, "has no hesitation in referring Rev 14:10-11, together with the kindred passage in Rev 19:3, to a temporal judgment, viz., the swallowing up by volcanic fire of the territory of Rome in Italy." As to which our readers are, we think, in a position to judge for themselves. But Mr. Constable does not himself insist upon this; he will take the passages in their usual application, but only insist on their being images of "death and destruction," for which we have had his arguments under the previous texts. Mr. Minton too unites this with the passages in Rev 20:1-15 :, there being only one argument exclusively relating to it, and that is its inconsistency .(understood in the orthodox way) with 2Th 1:9. "The torment is said to take place ‘in the presence of the Lamb.’ But in 2Th 1:9, those who are found in opposition to Christ at His coming, are ‘punished with everlasting destruction from (away from) the presence of the Lord.’ They are ‘gathered out of His kingdom’ and cast into outer darkness, away from the manifested presence of Christ during the millennial age." But the "from" in Thessalonians does not mean "away from." We have already examined the passage, which Mr. Hudson rightly compares with Acts 3:19 to prove this. If it did, it by no means follows that the torment is always in the presence of the Lamb or of the holy angels, but that the judgment will be executed under their eye. They will be witnesses, but it does not say eternal witnesses. Gen. Goodwyn is also one of those who believe that the ages of ages expire before even the millennium, that they are in fact commensurate with the pouring out of the vials in the 16th chapter! "The wrath of God," he says, "the cause of their torment, is never spoken of in connection with the final judgment of the wicked, nor has it any reference to hell and its fire." It seems he has never read the apostle Paul’s words about "indignation and WRATH upon every soul of man that doeth evil. . . in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (Rom 2:8; Rom 2:16). It is, on the contrary," he adds, "identified here with the seven vials that will be poured out ‘upon the earth,’ previous to the advent of the Lord in glory (2Th 1:9) which are called ‘the vials of the wrath of God.’ " How identified he does not further say, and it is hard to understand; for "previous to the advent of the Lord" seems as much opposed to "in the presence of the Lamb," as do "the ages of ages" to the very short period comparatively of the pouring out of the vials. The series of mistakes founded upon these fundamental ones we scarcely need examine. Finally Mr. Roberts, in his "Man Mortal," objects to the orthodox view, in a very similar way: - "1. [The orthodox] ‘wrath of God’ is a wrath always operating in hell from generation to generation, whereas the wrath of the Apocalypse is a wrath that ‘comes’ at a particular juncture of affairs on earth, when the dead are raised." On the contrary, the "judgment of hell." in the true sense, - of Gehenna, has not yet come for any one; and its coming at a particular juncture is not in opposition to its abiding when it does come. "2. [The orthodox] sufferers of hell-fire are immortal souls, while the apocalyptic drinkers of the wine of the wrath of God are ‘men,’ with ‘foreheads’ and ‘hands.’" This is utterly false, as Mr. Roberts must know, for we all believe that God will "destroy both body and soul in hell," and in point of fact it is only those in the body that go into it. "3. [The orthodox] hell-fire is endured in hell, in banishment from the presence of Christ and the angels while the apocalyptic torment in fire and brimstone is inflicted in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb." This is the old confusion between their being witnesses and eternal witnesses, which we have before remarked upon. "4., [The orthodox] hell is away from earth, in some distant transpatial region without solid standing ground, whereas the scene of Rev 14:1-20 : is enacted in the presence of the Lamb, after the Lamb has come to Mount Zion," etc. The passage in Rev 14:1-20 : says not one word about the locality of hell at all, but merely threatens the worshippers of the beast that they shall endure it. It is never said to be on earth. This closes the arguments as to these passages, the strength of which is only the more brought out by all such efforts to evade their force. The simplest interpretation still approves itself the only consistent one, after repeated examinations and criticism by those who lack neither will nor mental capacity, but who fail here utterly and hopelessly, because in conflict with the word of One who cannot lie nor change, nor mock with needless mystery the souls of the simplest among those who "read or hear the words of the book of this prophecy," and whom He pronounces "blessed," if they "keep the things which are written therein." It is learned men who have unwittingly devised entanglements for the feet of these simple ones, until they have learned to stand in doubt of that which they own to be God’s word, because of the interpretations which have been put upon it. If the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven and all His holy angels with Him may mean the taking of a Jewish city, no wonder that they need a learned man to tell them so. And if this is the Scripture mode of speech, no wonder if it should be thought "highly wrought and mysterious inflated and exaggerated rather: and if this be its common mode, who would seek out (as expecting to make aught of them) the "hieroglyphs of Patmos"? It will be a matter of the greatest thankfulness to me, if (apart from the subject of special interest to us now) any shall learn by the long discussion which we have gone through, how true and trustworthy is the word of God; how little it "reflects the ignorance of a dark age"; how ignorant rather is the learning which would belittle it. "Heaven and earth shall pass away" - and the voice is that of the Lord and Maker of heaven and earth - "but my words shall not pass away." We must now return to look at a text designedly left to the present, although its fitter place might seem to be long before, inasmuch as it is the judgment of the nations at the coming of the Lord. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 98: 04.43. CHAPTER XXXVI "EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT" IN MATT. XXV ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXVI "EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT" IN Mat 25:1-46 IT is not needful to our present purpose to establish the particular application of what has been strangely called by some the "parable" of the sheep and the goats. It is indeed no parable, but a very simple statement of the separation of the living upon the earth when the Lord comes to it sets up His throne there, which separation is compared a shepherd separating his sheep from the goats. It is therefore a part of that premillennial judgment of the quick already spoken of, and which precedes by more than a thousand years the judgment of the dead before the great white throne. With this it has been identified in the popular view, simply because the Lord’s coming having been considered to be at the end of the world,* distinction between the two was not possible. * The expression in Mat 13:24 :, as before noticed, is not this, but is "the completion" (or ‘consummation’) "of the age." But the result has been a disastrous one. For the judgment in the one case being evidently a discriminative one it was, of course, considered that the risen saints were to be picked out from sinners by the trial of their works; and then the natural suggestion followed, that all must wait till the day of judgment, to know what was to be their everlasting condition. I do not need again to enter into this, but I shall briefly state the distinction which the passages themselves show as obtaining between them. 1. The judgment in Matthew is evidently (and stated to be) when the Lord comes, a coming connected with various features of the previous part of the prophecy, which make indisputable its character. That in Rev 20:11-15 takes place when instead of His coming to earth the earth and the heavens flee away. 2. In Matthew there is no resurrection, and the judgment is of the living "nations," not of the dead; while the contrary is true of that in Revelation. 3. In Matthew they are judged according to their behaviour to some whom the King styles His "brethren" In Revelation they judged in general "according to their works." These are distinctions which are simple enough and broad enough between the two scenes to prevent their being confounded. There is, however, a point of resemblance, and it is on this account that I have left the, passage in Matthew to the present time, that, instead of being slain by the sword as those are who follow the beast, they on the left hand receive a judicial sentence, and are sent to the lake of fire as are those in the Apocalyptic vision; but, as it would seem before the millennium, as the beast and the false prophet are. I do not say positively that they go directly into it, but so it would seem. It is certain that they are appointed to "everlasting punishment" in "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Men have come in with their explanations again here, and to these we must turn. They have to do chiefly, as our argument has, with the expressions "everlasting punishment," and "everlasting fire." With regard to "everlasting punishment," the objections to the ordinary sense are various, some based upon the word for everlasting, some upon that for punishment, some upon considerations apart from the meaning of either word, while some combine several of these objections together. We must first, in the natural order, look at the word "punishment," for which several other renderings are suggested - "cutting off," "restraint," but especially "correction," the word, as it is stated by Mr. Jukes for example, being "always used for a corrective discipline, which is for the improvement of him who suffers it."* *Restitution, p. 129. The word for "punishment" here is kolasis, and is given by Liddell and Scott as meaning "a pruning": hence a checking, punishing, chastisement, correction, punishment." The verb kolazo, from which it is derived, means "strictly to curtail, dock, prime, but usually to keep within bounds; hold in check, bridle, check, then to chastise, correct, punish." The words derived from this show a similar meaning. Thus we find, "chastisement, punishment"; "a place of chastisement, prison," or 2," an instrument of correction or torture"; "a chastiser, punisher." is the word used for punish, Acts 4:21, finding nothing how they might punish them," and again 2Pe 2:9," to reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished" is only found in the passage before us, and in 1Jn 4:18 : "fear hath torment." All is against the rendering of "cutting off," which is adopted by Ellis and Read,* Blain,† Storrs,‡ Hastings, § Morris, and even on the orthodox side by Landis.# Blain adopts Ellis and Read’s rendering, "And these will go to the cutting off that takes place at the age"! Morris says that it refers to the "cutting off" of false Christians from the flock of Christ, and from every pretence to the kingdom.¶ And even as to 1Jn 4:18, he says that its being represented by "torment" "is not justifiable; for the word relates to the children of God, who are not yet ‘made perfect’ in an experimental knowledge of the love of God. They are not tormented; but they are cut off from much experimental blessedness, which properly pertains to them." But this is poor and foolish reasoning. The words are "fear - 1: e., dread of God - hath torment," and so it has whether in saint or sinner. "Cutting off" (as he would have it here also) it never is, being never simply that, as the dictionaries show, and as even Mr. Hudson, who has no prejudice certainly against the word, admits. He says, "This (meaning of ‘excision’ - cutting off) seems to be supported by the cognate word, and by the original sense of ‘pruning.’ But in pruning the tree is not ‘cut off’ - only the branches. And though, by the laws of language, the word might easily have acquired this sense, we find no proof ‘that it has done so."** This argument is thus fairly given up. *Bible versus Tradition. †Death not Life, p. 79. ‡Six Sermons, p. 59. §Paulitie Theology, p. 59. #Immortality of the Soul, p. 480. ¶What is Man ‘i pp. 100, 101. **Debt and Grace, pp. 189, 190. The rendering by "restraint," Mr. Hudson says, "is favoured by the use of the present tense in 2Pe 2:9 (comp. 2Pe 2:4; Jude 1:6; and perhaps Acts 4:21), and by a remark of Schleusner. It is favoured by the tenor of various passages, which represents the wicked as the troublers of the righteous, to be effectually restrained by God’s final judgments.†† But," he adds, "this idea is not prominent in Mat 25:1-46 :, and such a rendering would be hardly tenable." ††He gives the following texts: Psa 92:1-15; Isa 66:24; Dan 12:2-3; Mat 13:40-43,; 2Th 1:6-10; 2Pe 2:4-12; Jude 1:5-7; Jude 1:13. The word certainly would not serve the cause of annihilationism, nor even of restorationism, if the "restraint" is to be "everlasting"’ This meaning, however, connects with that which restorationists would give, according to the passage which Mr. Hudson quotes from Eustathius, "Kolasis is properly a certain kind of punishment; that is, a certain chastising and restraining of the disposition, but not vindictive punishment." It is on the ground that the word expresses, not vindictive, but corrective suffering, that Mr. Jukes and Dr. Farrar take their stand. The latter affirms that "kolasis is a word which in its sole proper meaning ‘has reference to the correction and bettering of him that endures it.’ "* Mr. Jukes adds, that "those who hold the common view are obliged to confess this," and supports this by an appeal to Archbishop Trench’s "Synonyms of the New Testament," who distinguishing between the two words kolasis and timoria, says, "In timoria, according to its classical use, the vindictive character of the punishment is the prominent thought; it is the Latin ‘ultio’; punishment as satisfying the inflicter’s sense of outraged justice, as defending his own honour and that of the violated law. . . in kolasis on the other hand, is more the notion of punishment as it has reference to the correction and bettering of him that endures it." As to which he refers to Philo, Plato, and Clement of Alexandria, and adds, "And this is Aristotle’s distinction." *Eternal Hope, p. 200. It is true that the Archbishop resists the restorationist application of this. He says: "It would be a very serious error however to attempt to refer this distinction in its entireness to the words as employed in the New Testament." Mr. Jukes’ comment upon this is, "that is, it would be a serious error to give the word its proper sense." ‘Why should it be a serious error," asks Dr. Farrar, "to refrain from reading into a word a sense which it does not possess?" Archbishop Trench has, however, produced witnesses for this latter assertion,* which those who take him thus to task prefer to disregard. Indeed it cannot be shown that what Dr. Farrar considers "the sole proper meaning" of the word is ever the meaning of it, either in the Septuagint or the Apocryphal writings, in which we have certainly better authority for the meaning of words in the New Testament than can possibly be found in Plato or Aristotle. *"In proof that kolasis had acquired in Hellenistic Greek this severe sense, and was used simply as punishment or torment, with no necessary underthought of the bettering through it of him who endured it, we have only to refer to such passages as the following: Josephus, Ant. 15: 2. 2; Philo, De Agricul. 9; .Mart. Polycar. 2; 2 Macc 4: 88; Wisd. of Sol 19: 4" (Syn. of New Test. 7:). It occurs six times in the Septuagint of Ezekiel: twenty-one times in the Apocryphal books. "So iniquity shall not be your ruin" (Eze 18:30) is translated "your punishment." In a passage in 1 Esdras, we find the disobedient enjoined to be punished whether by death or other inffliction, "penalty of money, or imprisonment": where for "infliction" the word is actually the very word said to be opposed so entirely in meaning to kolasis, - "punished by timoria"! and where death, the alternative of fine and imprisonment, is certainly not a "corrective discipline." In the book of Wisdom the word is applied to the punishment of the Egyptians, and in the 2 Macc. also to death.† †Prof. Bartlett, in his Life and Death Eternal, has a long note on the "meaning of kolasis," in which he brings forward a number of other instances, citing among the rest Plutarch, the (spurious) second epistle of Clement, and the Martyrium Polycarpi. The list of passages from the Septuagint and Apocrypha is as follows: Eze 14:3-4; Eze 14:7; Eze 18:30; Eze 43:12; Eze 44:12; 1Es 8:24; Wis 3:4, Wis 11:5, Wis 11:9, Wis 11:14, Wis 11:17; Wis 12:15, Wis 12:27, Wis 14:10; Wis 16:1-2, Wis 18:11, Wis 19:22, Wis 19:4; 1Ma 7:7; 2Ma 4:38; 2Ma 6:14; 3Ma 1:3; 3Ma 6:3. Dr. Farrar can scarcely be acquitted then, either of superficial acquaintance with the subject upon which he speaks, or of wilfully shutting his eyes to the facts before him, some of which are cited in Dr. Trench’s book. Even in the New Testament, where out of four passages one is that in dispute, the evidence is certainly against him. "Fear hath kolasin," can hardly refer to "corrective discipline"; and the "punishment" of the wicked in the day of judgment which Peter speaks of, we have, as we believe, more right to claim than he. The word means then practically in the Hellenistic Greek of the New Testament, "punishment" simply, and the mode of punishment it does not express. Fine, imprisonment, death may come under the term; in the epistle of John (as well as in other passages outside of Scripture) it can scarcely imply other than suffering in some form. Here it is " everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," and that we have seen is torment: "they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever." But arguments pursue us still; for to yield here would be to give up all. These turn mainly upon the term for "everlasting," and they are of so very similar nature, that we think we shall omit nothing if we allow Mr. Minton to be their expositor. He objects that "everlasting punishment" - "is an expression taken out of a most difficult parable, and which occurs nowhere else in the whole Bible. The moral of the parable is plain enough. But in that aspect it has no bearing whatever on the question. It is only in its prophetical aspect that we are now concerned with it, and in that aspect it is beset with difficulties."* *Way Everlasting, p. 41, etc. This is the cry habitually raised. But why should prophetical questions be a difficulty, when in point of fact people of all kinds of prophetical belief see none, and agree perfectly in their interpretation? As to being a "parable," one verse and a half introduces and dismisses all that is in it of this character There is a simple comparison of the separation the Lord makes in that day between the righteous and the. wicked to a shepherd dividing his sheep from the goats, then immediately the righteous are called "sheep," and the wicked " goats"; after which, instead of the figure being kept up, it is immediately dismissed, and this language never returned to; and the details are quite inconsistent with the figure being kept up. Mr. Minton goes on: - "Whether the event it refers to will take place at the beginning, or at the end, of the millennium; whether the sheep and the goats represent ‘nations’ or individuals, and in either case what nations or individuals, - whether Jew or Gentile, Christian or heathen, true and false professors in the church; and lastly, who are Christ’s ‘brethren,’ apparently distinguished both from the sheep and the goats ; all these questions are hotly disputed." No doubt; but, as I have said, it has little to do with the matter. The parabolic nature of the passage has been most unwarrantably pressed, and as a consequence a veil of mystery has been thrown over what is very simple in character. What may fairly be questioned, as for instance who the "brethren" of the King may be, need raise no question touching our present subject. The everlasting punishment into which the wicked are sent away is defined as plainly as can be to be "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." It may be doubtful who are those punished, and when they are; the punishment itself is not doubtful.* *I do not mean that to myself these questions of who or when are doubtful. I have no question that they are the "nations" evangelized by the "everlasting gospel "(Rev 14:6-7) during the interval that elapses between the taking away of the saints to heaven, and their appearing in glory with the Lord. The interval is of seven years at least, the last week of Daniel’s seventy, and the time of preparation of the earth for its blessing, as the present period is that of the gathering for heaven. The "brethren" are, I believe, the publishers of this gospel, and Jews. But all this it would take many pages to establish from Scripture, and is quite unnecessary to the argument. "And yet it is out of such a parable as this, that a term is chosen to be unquestionably the main pillar of so stupendous an edifice as the theory of endless misery, and to be the name by which it is universally known. The name may well express the doctrine, and thus here come into common use for it, without offence to those who claim that they hold eternal punishment as much as we do. If the term is itself so offensive, it surely must be because felt to be in opposition really to their views. Why urge the "difficulties" of the passage, if not so? But because it gives a name to the doctrine, it is not, therefore, necessary to the doctrine, which has been already abundantly proved, apart from this. Mr. Minton next comes to the argument as to "everlasting," which, although in fact already met, we shall allow him to state in his own way: - "There is at once the first crack in your infallible proof. Everlasting’ " - he adduces - "the everlasting hills," and Aaron’s "everlasting" priesthood. ‘everlasting’ does not necessarily mean ‘endless.’ Why are you so sure that it does so in the passage before us? Your answer is ready: because the same word, though rendered differently in our translation, is in the same verse applied to the life of the righteous, which we know to be endless. This is without doubt the Sebastopol of your position. Thousands of persons who are wholly unable to follow anything like an argument, can feel the full force of this fact. When they once know that the word is the same in each clause of the sentence, they are perfectly confident that it must bear the same meaning in each. "But why are you so sure that it means endless in either case? That eternal life means endless life elsewhere cannot prove it. We know that the expression is used in at least two different senses namely, as a present possession, and as an object of hope. . . . Why may there not be some third aspect in which ‘eternal life’ can be presented differing from, however closely connected with the other two?" Mr. Minton surely confounds things here. A thing may be seen in many aspects, and yet after all be but the same thing. "Eternal life" is always "eternal life," in whatever aspect seen, as a house is not a tree, whether seen from the north or from the south. Thus there is no warrant for his suggestion. "Now here it becomes necessary to ascertain the precise meaning of the word aionios, rendered ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting.’ And happily there is no difficulty either in its etymology or its usage. It is simply the adjective of the word aion, an age or period. It means, therefore, belonging to, or lasting throughout, some age or period. What that period is, in any specified instance, can only be known from the nature of the case, from the context, or from collateral evidence." Here Mr. Minton ignores the later use of aion for eternity, which, we have seen, some of the stoutest advocates of limited periods have to admit, and makes the matter simple by denying all that does not consist with his theory. Aionios is never in the New Testament, when used in a time sense, less than "everlasting." It may be limited by the nature of what it qualifies, as "everlasting" itself is; but that does not make the meaning more doubtful in the one case than in the other. "Sometimes it is left quite indefinite, as in ‘the everlasting hills.’ Sometimes it is unmistakably precise, as in ‘everlasting consolation and good hope ; "where the assurance is, that the consolation provided will never fail us, but will last throughout the whole period of our earthly life, that is, as long as we require it." Which last would show that instead of being "unmistakably precise" according to Mr. Minton, its meaning has in this case to be determined by collateral evidence, and is not precise at all. The truth is, however, it is precise, and instead of being bounded by a lifetime, the consoling thing, the consolation, lasts forever in the strictest sense. If the future state did not fulfil it, it would be truly bounded by a lifetime, but that would make it only the hypocrite’s hope that perishes. And so in the next example he produces. "So also St. Paul says, ‘I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, literally ‘to the age,’ elsewhere translated ‘forever.’ The aion there is the period of his own life, and, if the saying was to be rendered idiomatically, it should have been translated. ‘as long as I live.’ " I should think if Paul ate no meat for the period of his life, he would eat none literally forever; and the argument is but a plausible deception. If the apostle were going to eat meat in eternity, it would have force. Perhaps Mr. Minton thinks he is, but he should show us why he thinks so. "The question therefore stands thus: Is there any aion, except an endless one, to which the eternal life in Mat 25:46, can refer? And if so, is there any reason to believe that it does refer to such aion there? Turn to Luk 20:35, ‘They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world (aion) and the resurrection from the dead.’ You and I believe that the age there spoken of is the millennial age. . . then why might not the obtaining of the blessedness connected ‘with that age, by resurrection in the case of the dead, or by change in the case of the living, be called ‘æonial life,’ which we render ‘eternal life,’ deriving our word ‘eternal’ from the Latin ætas, or age? And would there not be a peculiar propriety in this, if, at the same time that those who are counted worthy enter into the life of that age, the members of that visible church, then living on the earth, who are counted unworthy, incur destruction from the presence of the Lord, and are gathered in bundles to be burnt?" Let Mr. Minton produce a passage in which "æonial" means "millennial" plainly, and he will be entitled to be listened to. This he cannot do, and if he could he would, we may be sure. Even then, how could "æonial life mean sometimes "everlasting," sometimes "millennial" life? Again, what is the meaning of "millennial" life? It cannot be life simply entered into at the millennium, but life belonging to it. Does the believer’s life belong to the millennium? In no sense whatever. It is not the "life of that age" into which believers enter; whatever special reign they may have during that time, their life belongs to eternity in the strictest sense. I agree with Mr. Minton that the judgment here spoken of precedes the millennium, and that it is a judgment of individuals To me these are both as clear as need be, and therefore I need not bring forward his proofs for them. The argument he founds on this is none the less worthless. But he comes now to the question in answer to the postmillennialist who he thinks will not be moved by his prophetic expositions. He will allow "eternal" to mean endless, for the sake of argument. "And suppose it does, how much nearer would the passage be to proving the doctrine of endless misery ? Not a particle." But why then so much pains to prove that it means "millennial"? Why, the protest against a term for the doctrine taken from so "difficult a parable"? Is Mr. Minton fighting for the sake of fighting, to show us his power as a combatant, or for the truth? Why contest points which as far as the doctrine in question is concerned, have "not a particle" of importance? "In order to make it prove that, they would have to prove that the word "eternal" cannot be applied to anything which is accomplished once for all, but the effects of which are eternal; that for anything to be eternal, it must be in eternal process of accomplishment. This is your assumption throughout. Others have asserted it more confidently. But what then are we to make of ‘eternal judgment’? Will God be eternally judging the wicked, as well as eternally punishing them? Will not the judgment take place once for all? In what sense can it be called eternal, except that its effects are eternal - that is, if the word be used in its most extended meaning - in other words, that it will be final and irreversible? And what are we to make of the ‘eternal redemption,’ which Christ is spoken of as ‘having wrought out for us’? It is distinctly declared to have been accomplished once for all: it will not be a continual process lasting through eternity. It is called eternal, because its effects will be eternal And why should not punishment be called eternal on the same principle? If eternal judgment is not eternal judging, nor eternal redemption eternal redeeming, why should eternal punishment be eternal punishing"? Now the words are, "these shall go away into everlasting punishment," and this is explained to be "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." It is singular how the force of these expressions is felt, almost admitted, and then denied. First, the complaint is, that a phrase is taken out of a most difficult parable; then everlasting is not everlasting but millennial; then if it is everlasting it is perfectly correct annihilation doctrine: the effect of the punishment is eternal, and punishment is not "punishing." Now even as to the last it is really the literal force of the word,* which, moreover, always implies suffering in some form. Fine, imprisonment, death are that, and the passage in the first epistle of John, already quoted, cannot be rendered otherwise than by some word near akin to "torment." It is not a word that will possibly allow the thought of the sufferer passing away from under it, while yet it endures. The punishment cannot continue when there is no longer a person to be punished. Annihilation cannot be eternal punishment. This is why Mr. Minton is so anxious to have it "millennial," as we have seen. He is uneasy under the very idea of its being eternal. Why will we call it so, quoting the words of a very difficult parable? Then he turns round and says, let it be eternal, it is all right, and we all believe in it alike. It must be seriously doubted if we do. *Kolasis not kolasma. But "eternal redemption" is not an eternal process, and "eternal judgment" is not; why should eternal punishment be? As for eternal judgment, of course "sentence" (krima) is not always being passed; but the person is always under it, or it would not be eternal. And similarly as to redemption, the person is always enjoying it. If the punishment then be inflicted suffering (and that is the very idea of punishment), the person cannot cease to be and the suffering go on. Let Mr. Minton find the passage in which kolasis does not imply suffering of some sort, and then he will have some argument; but then it will be easy to prove that every beast that dies (and multitudes die in severest pain) suffers eternal punishment as truly as a man. And he cannot deny it. A beast’s loss may be, of course, as much less than a man’s as a man is more than a beast. But eternal punishment is as real in the one case as in the other. It will not do then to talk as Mr. Minton does of the effect being eternal. The effect and what produces the effect, are very different things. In "eternal redemption" the redeemed are not merely eternally enjoying the blessedness into which they are brought as the effect of redemption, but the redemption also itself. And this is, if you like to say so, one of the effects; but the redemption itself is possessed and enjoyed forever. It is in vain to plead that the punishment is endured forever, when there is no longer any being to endure it. As to the "everlasting fire," Mr. Minton as usual refers to Sodom and Gomorrah, but adds nothing fresh to the argument. We have seen what this "everlasting fire" is, and what its effect. It would be but the mere lengthening unnecessarily of a sufficiently protracted argument to take this up again. We have still to consider some things connected with this doctrine in Scripture, and it is time to turn to these. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 99: 04.44. CHAPTER XXXVII "THE GOSPEL OF HOPE" ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXVII "THE GOSPEL OF HOPE" OUR accounts with annihilationism are well-nigh closed. But there remain still some from the opposite side of restorationisrn which require to be looked at, and among the advocates of this, spite of his protest, we must reckon Dr. Farrar. He is not indeed an assured Universalist; but it is not wronging him to say that he is one in hope. His book is styled "Eternal Hope," and his own views are evidently identical with what he calls, "the gospel of hope": where by "hope," he does not mean certainty, not a "hope which maketh not ashamed," but at least a hope that may. His utterances are naturally somewhat inconsistent and contradictory in consequence. But we will credit him with the somewhat independent ground he takes, and reserving the doctrine of the apokatastasis, the "restitution of all things," as stated in Scripture, for future consideration, we will now look at his position, which we will state in his own words. "On such a question as this," he says,* "I care but little for individual authority, but this much at least is proved by the many differing theories of wise and holy men - that God has given us no clear and decisive revelation on the final condition of those who have died in sin. It is revealed to us that ‘God is love’; and that ‘Him to know is life eternal’; and that ‘it is not His will that any should perish’; and that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’; but how long, even after death, man may continue to resist His will; - how long he may continue in that spiritual death, which is alienation from God; - that is one of the secret things which God hath not revealed. But this much at any rate, that the fate of man is not finally and irreversibly sealed at death, you yourselves, - unwittingly perhaps, but none the less certainly, admit and declare and confess, every time you repeat in the Apostles’ Creed, that Christ descended into hell. For the sole passage which proves that article of the creed is the passage in St. Peter which tells us that He went and preached to the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient.’ St. Peter in my text tells you in so many words, that ‘the gospel was preached to them that were dead,’ and if, as the church in every age has held, the fate of those dead sinners was not irrevocably fixed by death, then it must be clear and obvious to the meanest understanding that neither of necessity is ours." *Eternal Hope, p. 86, etc. There then is the sole answer which I can give to your question, ‘what about the lost?’ My belief is fixed upon that ‘living God,’ who, we are told, is ‘the Saviour of all men.’ My answer is with Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, that ‘we are lost as much as there, and that Christ came to seek and save the lost;’ and my hope is that the vast majority at any rate of the may at length be found. If any hardened sinner, shamefully loving his sin, and despising the long-suffering of his Saviour, trifle with that doctrine, it is at his own just and awful peril. But on the other hand, there be some among you - as are there not, souls sinful indeed but not hard in sin - souls, failing indeed, yet even amid their failing, who long, and pray, and love, and agonize, and strive to creep ever nearer to the light - then I say, have faith in God. There is hope for you - hope, even if death overtake you before the final victory is won; - hope for the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; - hope for the mourners, for they shall be comforted - though you too may have to be purified in that Gehenna of æonian fire beyond the grave." "We are wretched; therefore - not surely in this short world only, but forever - God will pity us. Punish us? Yes, punish us, because He pities. But ‘God judges that He may teach, He never teaches that He may judge.’ His æonian fire is the fire - of love; it is to purify, not to torture; it is to melt, and not to burn."* *Eternal hope, p. 97. This is Dr. Farrar’s "hope." And if it were confined to himself, one might afford to pass it by, but it is a hope that suits men well, and that they are drinking in - a hope that is not the true hope for those "poor in spirit" whom he addresses, and for whom God has far sweeter comfort; but a hope that just those triflers with a Saviour’s mercy of whom he speaks will take to hang themselves over that awful abyss of hell, till they prove it, not the fire of love, but the awful and eternal fire of wrath, which answers to the undying worm within. First then, as to these "poor in spirit" - souls longing, praying, agonizing, striving ever to creep nearer to the light - is God’s answer to your longing this, that after all the fire of Gehenna may be needed to purify you? No, it is the news of a better purification "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin." What saved a dying thief at the last hour, can save still without the need of "æonian fire.". Dr. Farrar’s "gospel of hope" misstates the whole case as to man’s condition, but worse, it slights Christ’s blessed work, and substitutes penal fire for atonement, - wrath for grace. Is man willing to have God’s salvation, and God lacking in will or in power to save him? Never, surely.† "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Is salvation a doubtful, laborious process, arrived at by long effort, by prayers, by strivings, which may have to be eked out after death by some supplementary process? Nay, but being "justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," "justified through the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law." Is hell-fire God’s process of salvation for those who look to Him, or God’s wrath upon those who reject His salvation? It is the latter, and not the former. Did Christ tell the "poor in spirit" that theirs was the lake of fire or "the kingdom of heaven"? Did He tell the mourners they should be "comforted" or tormented? †I take this opportunity of noticing briefly Mr. Cox’s argument in this connection, which is the starting-point of his book. He asks, if Tyre and Sidon would have repented in view of Christ’s mighty works, why were they not permitted to witness them? "Can we blame them, will God condemn them, and condemn them to an eternal death, or an eternal misery, because they did not see what they could not see?" "It seems hard and unjust that a man’s salvation, a man’s life, should hang on the age into which he is born." "And yet who dare say of any class of men, in any age, that nothing but their own will prevented their salvation? . . . No; to say, ‘Doubtless God gave these poor men all that, was necessary to life and virtue . . is simply to offer him that insincere flattery, to show Him that respect of persons, which even Job could see He Himself would be the first to rebuke." Thus Mr. Cox can "see no way out of the difficulty, so long as we assume what the Bible does not teach, that there is no probation beyond the grave." He has no doubt that the men of Sodom and Tyre have heard Christ’s words long ere this and that the words "it shall be more tolerable for them in the day of judgment imply this"! Salvator Mundi, ch. 1: Now we are among the people of "brain so narrow" as to believe the Lord’s words imply the very opposite of this. They certainly show that the issue of the day of judgment depends upon the present response given by man to God, and not upon a supposed future one; for if it depended upon the future, it could not be decided now that it would be "more tolerable"; especially as nobody has a fair chance now! But then, if man’s will is not the obstacle, what are we to think our Lord’s, "how often would I, and ye would not," or "ye will not come unto me," etc. Doubtless Tyre and Sidon will not be condemned for not seeing what they could not see: no one believes they will. But they are responsible for the light they had, and there is a "more tolerable" judgment, - "few stripes" instead of "many." Again, "Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonas," an illustration of what the Lord means in this very connection. Was that repentance unto life"? The city remained in consequence, was not overthrown; Capernaum, not repenting, was. The comparison shows that the Lord does not affirm that Tyre and Sidon could have been so brought to God and saved, but that at least they would have been affected and humbled, like Nineveh, by a visitation which the Cities of Israel were callous and indifferent to. With this sense there is no "difficulty" to get out of by an unwarrantable and unscriptural supposition. Dr. Farrar’s gospel is really infidelity as to fundamental truth - as to Christ and grace. It makes their hearts sad whom God has not made sad, while those only could find encouragement in it who are as ignorant of grace as he is, or else those who want comfort to go on in sin as long as they can. The apostle asks, "how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" Dr. Farrar answers, we may escape, even out of hell itself and most will, perhaps all. The Lord bids, "Fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell." Of course He is able, but He never will, says Dr. Farrar. It is not an exceptional thing that the question of God’s love and the denial of His truth should go together. We have not forgotten the texts, however. One article of the apostle’s creed, it seems, rests upon a most "isolated text," "the sole passage" in Scripture for it. According to his own words elsewhere, we might suppose he would not care to lay stress upon this. But we should be mistaken. He thinks this isolated text sufficient to bear the entire weight almost of the whole doctrine that the fate of men is not fixed by death, but that they may be saved after it. We could not upon our own principles, however, object to the production of even one passage if really clear. But Dr. Farrar takes no pains to show that it is so. While speaking as he does about texts torn from their context, he himself presents us with the middle of a sentence from Scripture with both ends cut of; and while believing, on another subject, that the "differing theories of wise and holy men " prove as to it that "God has given no clear and decisive revelation," quotes this as if entire unanimity prevailed about it, as what "the church in every age has held," when he means "some in the church," more or less as it may be. Perhaps we must not expect over-much consistency; but if the Canon of Westminster apprehended aright the greatness of the issue he is raising, and if he believed in Scripture as what alone could settle it, he would not be content to deal in this light and flippant way with the authorities he adduces. One cannot but feel that after all Scripture is very little that for him, and that his main reliance is elsewhere. For haply if his own text went against him he would protest against "this ignorant tyranny of isolated texts," as he has done already, and vaunt the more his "Christian liberty" to adopt his own independent thoughts. But we, who claim no such liberty, nor desire it, are bound therefore, nevertheless, to accept his appeal to Scripture as if it were a loyal one. Let us first read the passage then, as it stands in our version, which is sufficiently correct: - "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit, by which also [He went and preached to the spirits in prison, which* sometime were disobedient] when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water" (1Pe 3:18-20). *Edw. White, who takes a similar view of this passage with Dr. Farrar, reads "though they once had been disobedient" - but this is interpretation,, not translation (Life in Christ. p. 320). I have bracketed the part that Canon Farrar quotes, and emphasized the immediate context which he omits. It ought to peak for itself as to the suitability of the passage for his purpose. First, it was by the Spirit that Christ went and preached - not personally, as the words separated from their context might be thought to mean. It has been sought to make "the Spirit" signify Christ’s human spirit; with this necessary effect, that if He were "quickened in His human spirit,"* that human spirit must have itself died, in order to be quickened. On this account it has been attempted to substitute "quick," or "alive," or "preserved alive," for "quickened": meanings which the word cannot possibly bear. "Made alive by the Spirit" can only refer to resurrection, and thus it is not Christ as a disembodied spirit that is spoken of at all. *The words are quoted thus in "Yesterday, To-day, and Forever". But people urge that "He went and preached" shows a personal going. It has been answered that in the same way He "came and preached peace," in Eph 2:17, must be (what confessedly it is not) a personal coming. "By the Spirit He went" excludes the thought entirely. Then further as to the "spirits in prison." They are in prison now (that is the force of it) as having been once disobedient in the days of Noah. But disobedient to what? Why, to the Spirit’s preaching. It was of these that of old God had said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." Plainly it was in that time of old that Christ had preached to them, and what should make it certain, without any nice questions of translation, is that the limit of God’s striving with these antediluvians is plainly set - "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: but his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." It is strange that some should think that a limit put to human life, which was then, and for generations afterwards, far longer. It is the limit of the Spirit’s striving with that generation, at the end of which the flood came. With them the end of the Spirit’s striving and of their life came together. And it is just these whom Dr. Farrar and others will have it that Christ specially singled out to preach to more than two thousand years afterward, in direct contradiction of the divine assertion that His Spirit would not strive. The text is an unfortunate one for Dr. Farrar. It is unfortunate that the very examples to which he appeals of probation protracted beyond the grave, should be the very examples given us by the word of God itself of the precise opposite! And we may take his reasoning to reverse his conclusions, and say that, "if the fate of these dead sinners was irrevocably fixed by death, then it must be clear and obvious that" we have no good reason to suppose that ours is not as much as theirs. Nay, it is scarcely reasonable to imagine that they are an exception to, instead of an illustration of; the universal rule. Canon Farrar has a similar text, however, in the next chapter of the first epistle of Peter. Let us take it, too, in whole and not in part, and see if it will lead us to any other conclusion. "For for this cause [was the gospel preached also to them that are dead] that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit" (1Pe 4:6). Here Dr. F. has substituted "that were dead" for "that are dead" without comment, evidently that we may infer that the people were dead when preached to. But the passage reads literally "to the dead"; and we must gather the rest from the context which he omits. And here it is not hard to see that his inference is as wrong as his translation is. The apostle has been speaking of the altered conduct of converted from heathenism, and of how the Gentiles around misjudged them. "Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you; who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." Thus sinners were judging in their fleshly way the spiritual life that approved itself to God as such. Christians were judged after the manner of men in a fleshly way, but lived according to God in a spiritual one. And for this - to separate them from the ranks of these misjudging ones, themselves the objects of God’s righteous judgment, - had the gospel been preached to them. So far all is plain; but why "to the dead"? Surely because the apostle would bring in the very thought Dr. Farrar rejects, that death fixed the condition in which it found men. These righteous ones had got the good of that preached gospel, which had made them anticipate the coming doom of sinners, and accept the judgment of men in the flesh, rather than God’s final and eternal one. But could they possibly be "dead" before they were preached to? Not certainly if the end was to be their being judged according to men in the flesh for their changed lives! The context is conclusively against the restorationist interpretation* *Edw. White (Life in Christ, p. 321) says: ‘They had the gospel preached to them in hades, in order that they might be judged by Jesus Christ, and judged like men in the flesh, by the same rule as others who have had the gospel on earth, that is, by the gospel message itself; so that they should not necessarily perish under the law, but ‘may live (enter into life) according to God in the Spirit.’ " he does not see that they who receive the gospel are NOT "judged," and if they were, could not escape condemnation. For men are judged not "by the gospel," which is a dream of his own, but "according to their works." The other texts cited will come in more fittingly elsewhere. Meanwhile we must look at one or two Scriptures more in this connection, which, although glanced at by Dr. Farrar, are more strongly put by Mr. Jukes. He thus speaks of - "the passage respecting the sin [‘blasphemy,’ it should be] against the Holy Ghost, which our Lord declares ‘shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, not in that which is to come.† For this it is concluded that the punishment for this sin must be never-ending. But does the text say so? The whole passage is as follows: - ‘Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor the coming one.’ †Mat 12:32. These words, so far from proving the generally received doctrine, that sin not forgiven here can never be forgiven, distinctly assert - first, that all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men - secondly, that some sins, those namely against the Son of Man, can be forgiven, apparently in this age - and thirdly, that other sins, against the Holy Ghost, cannot be forgiven either here or in the coming age; which last words surely imply that some sins not here forgiven may be forgiven in the coming age, the sin or blasphemy against the Holy Ghost not being of that number. This is what the text asserts; and it explains why God has so long withheld the general out-pouring of His promised Spirit; for man cannot reject or speak against the Spirit, until the Spirit comes to act upon him. God has two ways of teaching men; first, by His word, the letter or human form of truth, that is, the Son of Man, in which case a man may reject God’s call without knowing that he is really doing so; the other, in and by the Spirit, which convinces the heart, which therefore cannot be opposed without leaving men consciously guilty of rejecting God. To reject this last cuts man off from the light and life of the coming world. This sin therefore is not forgiven; neither in this age, nor in the coming one. But the text says nothing of those ‘ages to come,’ elsewhere revealed to us; much less does it assert that the punishment of sin not here forgiven is never-ending.* *Restitution, pp. 120, 121. Dr. Farrar does not go quite so far; he says: -† "If aion be rightly rendered, as, in nearly every passage where it occurs, it may be rightly rendered, by ‘age’ our Lord only says that there is one particular sin - and what sin this is no one has ever known - which is so heinous as not to be pardonable either in this (the Jewish) or the coming (the Christian) dispensation. Nothing therefore is of necessity implied respecting the world beyond the grave. But if it be, how overwhelming is the argument with which I am supplied! Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven, our Lord says, - without further limitation, and with no shadow of a hint that He refers to this life only - a gloss which indeed His words directly exclude; every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven here or hereafter, except one! If one sin only is excluded from forgiveness in that coming age, other sins cannot stand on the same level, and the dimness behind the veil is lit up ‘with at least a gleam of hope.’" †Eternal Hope, Pref., pp 40: 41: Mr. Oxenham has still another view:* - "Now on this verse I observe, first, that our Lord says nothing about hell; and secondly, that what He does say bears on examination no resemblance to an assertion of the popular doctrine of endless misery. Our Lord declares that there is a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no aphesis either here or hereafter. He uses the words aphesis and aphiemi, the root-meaning of which is ‘sending away,’ ‘getting rid of.’ He declares of this sin that it can never be got rid of; 1: e., something of the sin, its character, its consequences, ‘will last on always - this is what He really says; and is it beyond the reach even of our present understanding to conceive that the penal consequences of wilful sin against the Holy Spirit, viz., e. g., loss of capacity to know and to love the truth, and Him who is truth, may ‘well be irremediable either here or hereafter? How great such a penalty would be, or in what manner it would be felt or received, we have no means of knowing; but we feel at once that this penalty is something wholly different from what is commonly meant by eternal punishment; it is compatible with existence in heaven." *Letter III. (a). The three views being so dissimilar, it will be no great marvel if Scripture be again dissimilar from them all. We shall take them in retrograde order, Mr. Oxenham first. His view is that "something of the sin, its character, its consequences," he does not ‘know exactly what, will last on forever. But surely that is loose and unsatisfactory enough. Aphiemi and aphesis are the only words for "remit" and "remission," the latter also the only word for "forgiveness." The phrases used are, "it shall not be forgiven him," and "hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of (or subject to) eternal judgment" (Mark 3:29). That defines it plainly enough. "Hath never ‘sending away’ " would be insufferable, not merely in sound but in sense; and if one subject to eternal judgment can be in heaven, heaven can scarcely be what Scripture represents it. It would be no better for Mr. Oxenham if we read with Canon Farrar and others, instead of eternal judgment, "eternal sin." I cannot accept the reading, but it is immaterial to the present question. Dr. Farrar’s own reasoning turns upon the rendering of "this world" and "the world to come." Whether we read it "age" or not, the " world to come." is not in Scripture heaven or hell or hades. It is undoubtedly what the Jews understood well and looked for, the world under Messiah, which Christians unhappily less know under that title than as the millennium. It is even called (in Heb 2:5) the "habitable (earth) to come," the word used for "the world" under Cæsar’s rule, which he decreed should be taxed (Luk 2:1). If not (as Dr. F. thinks it may be) the Christian dispensation, it is yet a dispensation affecting men in the body, not "spirits in prison" nor the resurrection of judgment. Consequently when it is said, whosoever shall blaspheme, it shall not be forgiven him either in this world or that which is to come, it does not refer to forgiveness beyond the grave, nor mean the same person in this world and the world to come, but that the sin would not be remitted to any one who committed it in either age. Even Mr. Jukes falls into the same error, but he is bolder, and adds various suppositions of his own to it. He supposes that the sin against the Son of Man would be forgiven only in this age. He supposes that some sins not forgiven here may be forgiven in the coming age. And the ages beyond being quite unnoticed, there may yet be forgiveness there. But in truth the reason for not going beyond the "age to come" is an opposite one. It is because beyond the millennial age is the judgment and eternity, and all is fixed forever. We have already examined Mr. Jukes’ theory these ages of eternity, on which, of course, his view of this text is based; and need not, and shall not, return to it again. But a word we must yet say as to another Scripture, where the "great gulf fixed" assures us of the impossibility in the death state at least, of any passing from the flame of torment on the one side to the comfort in Abraham’s bosom on the other. Mr. Jukes, of course, objects that it is a parable, but that we have considered. No doubt the expressions here are figurative; yet they express very plainly what they figure. He also tells us that this great gulf fixed, "though utterly impassable for man, is not so for ‘Him who hath the key of David, who openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth,’ who ‘hath the keys of death and hell’; and who, as He has Himself broken the bars of death for men, can yet ‘say to the prisoner, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves.’"* *Restitution, p. 137. There is more of the same kind, always confounding a day of grace with a day of wrath and judgments and assuming that "judgment without mercy"† shall be mercy still. The great gulf fixed is not impassable to Christ, he says. But Christ is the very One who has fixed it. He has ordained that none shall pass it, and that settles it for the death state at least that none shall. After this, eternal judgment allows no escape. †Jas 2:18. Yet Dr. Farrar will have it that the parable shows us "how rapidly in that condition [in which the rich man is seen in hades] a moral renovation has been wrought in a sinful and selfish soul."‡ He has not told us how it shows this, but I suppose by the concern he manifests for his brethren. But the motives for this the parable does not show, so that it would be difficult to assign its true moral significance. The fact remains of a "great gulf fixed" already in the intermediate state between the two classes of just and unjust, - a gulf which cannot be traversed upon either side. "After death, the judgment," and the nature and duration of that final award we have been for some time considering. ‡Eternal Hope, Pref. 31:, note. But all Scripture assures us of the momentous fact that the significance of the present life is just this, that here and now is decided man’s eternal destiny. He is called to repent TODAY, lest God swear ‘he shall not enter into His rest’ (Heb 4:7; Heb 4:11). And who shall say that brief as indeed it is, the present life may not as fully test the individual man, as indefinite ages of probation or eternity itself? The judgment after death it must be allowed is according to deeds done in the body and no other. If these did not after all characterize the man, that judgment would be partial, and therefore false. It is in vain then to plead for the extension of a day of grace beyond the present, which brings with it no extension of responsibility such as the day of judgment would take notice of; as vain as to plead that the Gehenna-judgment of one whose corpse was cast out amid the worm and flame of the polluted valley is the type of a remediable, or a terminable retribution. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 100: 04.45. CHAPTER XXXVIII ANNIHILIST - RESTORATIONISM - MR.. DUNN�S THEORY ======================================================================== CHAPTER XXXVIII ANNIHILIST - RESTORATIONISM - MR.. DUNN’S THEORY IT is no wonder that - considering the moral arguments that have been put forth to sustain it - annihilationism should have failed to satisfy the minds of many of its advocates. It is well to note, in looking briefly at the views now to come before us, that they are the product of a mind influenced by speculative considerations, anxiously seeking a way of escape from what in the first instance was believed to be the teaching of Scripture. I mean, it was not Scripture itself that raised question in the mind, nor led him who puts them forth away from what passes current as orthodoxy as to these points, but certain feelings of his own which rose up against it, and under which he sought and at last found, as he believes, a way of escape. It is precisely in the same way that infidelity rejects Scripture altogether, and we shall have to consider it more fully at another time. I am not by this pronouncing upon the result at which he has arrived. I am only stating that (true or false) this is how he got upon the path which led him to it. Mr. Dunn’s theory is a compound of two apparently very dissimilar things, annihilationism and restorationism. It diminishes the former to the least possible degree, reserving it for some obstinate transgressors only. In this respect it resembles the doctrine (or one of the doctrines) of the Talmud already noticed, which in a similar way combines the theories. In other respects Mr. Dunn’s system is quite different, however, for those finally saved with him never come into Gehenna. For convenience and brevity we may take Mr. Blain’s representation of the views, of which he has become the zealous advocate. He has incorporated in the book* with which he has replaced his former one, a letter by Mr. Dunn himself, so that we shall have the doctrine also in the words of its first teacher. The main points moreover are all that we have space to deal with. *Hope for our Race (Buffalo, N. Y.. 2nd ed, 1878). Mr. Blain first gives the chief points in Mr. Dunn’s "theory"- (as Mr. B. himself calls it), as follows. We shall look at them as they are stated "1. God, in all the dispensations previous to the second personal coming of Christ, has been and is still calling out and preparing a select people, called in both Testaments ‘the church,’ the ‘elect,’ ‘the bride, the Lamb’s wife,’ ‘the first-fruits,’ ‘firstborn,’ ‘a chosen generation,’ and also ‘kings and priests,’ to indicate that they are to be rulers and teachers in a dispensation yet to come. It was this elect people that Christ meant, when He said He ‘prayed not for the world,’ and whom He called the ‘little flock who should possess the kingdom,’ or to whom ‘the Father would give the kingdom,’ meaning by the kingdom the government in the world to come. . . To be one of Christ’s bride we must find the ‘narrow way,’ the ‘strait gate’ which comparatively few find in these dispensations. Thus if this view be sustained, these texts and others like them, are no proof of only a few being finally saved. Others will be saved subjects" The first part of this statement is in the main true, that those called out before the coming of the Lord are to reign with Him during the dispensation that follows His coming. This we have before considered. It is no "theory" but a Scripture statement, and received by many long before Mr. Dunn. It is not true that this means that there will be salvation for those who die unsaved now; nor is "election" what Mr. Blain states. But that is not our subject here. "2. The Jewish nation was called out to be the headship of nations (sic) or to be what is meant by the elect church, as the prophecies show plainly. See Exo 19:5 : ‘if ye will obey . . . ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is mine, and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, an holy nation.’ But this promise was conditional, and as they were not obedient, and finally rejected Christ as a nation, they became the broken off branches of Rom 11:17, and only the ‘election’ named by Paul, or the really righteous among them, of every age, together with the called of the Gentiles, are finally to constitute this ‘kingdom of priests and kings’ (?) - to be the bride of Christ. This is the people meant in Psa 22:30-31. . . Mic 5:3 tells us how long they [‘the rest,’ Rom 11:7] to be blinded, and that they are to be restored: ‘Therefore, will ye give them up, until the time that she which travaileth has brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel’ Read from Rom 11:1-4 and comp. Rom 11:3 with Rom 11:25-27, and we see this given up remnant are to be saved. The church now travails and will, until the ‘fulness of the Gentiles is brought in,’ then the ‘broken off remnant’ is to be restored to those Paul says ‘are of Israel,’ meaning the ‘elect.’ " Mr. Blain reads Scripture, I am compelled to say, very carelessly indeed. There is some truth here, but more error, as will be apparent in a moment. It is not true in the first place that to Israel as a nation were ever given, even conditionally, the promises which are now ours in Christ, nor that believers now inherit the promises which were once theirs. Rom 9:4 should keep any one from confounding these, as it shows that the "promises" given to 384 the nation still were theirs (although for a time in abeyance) after they had rejected Christ. The passage in Exo 19:1-25 : shows that these promises had to do with an earthly, as ours with a heavenly inheritance. It is quite true that the two correspond more or less in their different spheres, the earthly being the type of the heavenly, as the Jerusalem of the future corresponds (with some essential differences) to the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse.* But the earthly and heavenly are easily recognizable and abundantly distinct. Scripture never confounds them, if interpreters have done so; and it is not responsible for their mistakes. *See ante, "Old Testament Shadows." But the last statements of Mr. Blain are equally careless at the least. Where does Mic 5:1-15 : speak of the restoration of the blinded Jews? It does speak of the rejection of Messiah, and that for that the nation would be given up until the time that she which travailed had brought forth. (I do not take that last expression as referring to the Christian church, but need not contest it here: the result is much the same.) Then "the remnant of his brethren" - the brethren of the "Judge of Israel" whom they had smitten on the cheek - "shall return unto the children of Israel" Mr. Blain makes "the remnant" the unbelievers - "the broken off remnant" he calls them, while the apostle shows us the remnant as the "election of grace" and not broken off. The remnant of His brethren (remembering the Lord’s words to the Jewish people, Mat 12:49-50) are plainly this believing, remnant, "those who do the will of His Father in heaven" whom alone He accounts such; while "the children of Israel" should be quite evidently the nation at large. So that it is the believers who return to the nation of Israel, not the unbelievers who return to the believers. Mr. Blain may have difficulty in understanding the sentence read in that way, but the reason is, not that it is really difficult, but that his views are exactly opposed to the true meaning. This is often the apparent obscurity of Scriptures that it does not fit with our "theories" of what it should say. Its meaning is very simply this: during the present unbelief of Israel, believers among them are necessarily by their very faith separated from the nation. In Christ there is "neither Jew nor Greek." But when the time shall have come for God to fulfil His ancient unforgotten promises to the nation as such, when Israel, in travail with her hopes of a progeny shall have brought forth,* then believers among them will, of course, find their place again in connection with the nation. This will not be, as we have seen,† till "they look upon Him whom they have pierced" and mourn for having pierced Him, when "He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him" too. *Comp. Isa 66:7-12, and many other places in the prophets. †See ante, ch. 10:, "The Purification and Blessing of the Earth." That is, when Christ has taken up His people of the present and the past, and when He is preparing blessings (though through judgment) for the earth, then the time of His giving Israel up will be over, and with His return to them, His brethren henceforth (not the individuals gone to heaven before it) will become identified with the nation as of old, This explains how according to Rom 11:1-36 :, the "fulness of the Gentiles" will be come in, and so "all Israel" saved: 1:e., not the former unbelievers but the nation as such at the time indicated. Mr. Blain confounds these in a manner not very creditable to his intelligence, and certainly entirely unauthorized by the texts he has produced. 3. When Christ comes personally, which he thinks will be soon - the church, the tried and purified, will be raised first. ‘Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s, at His coming.’ They will be raised immortal . . . . will be associated with Christ in judging the world: ‘the saints shall judge the world.’" As to this we have already looked at Scripture; nor do I question its truth. The next point brings out fully the distinct feature of the system, and its essential error: - 4. At Christ’s coming, and after the resurrection of the elect church (how soon not told), all who have died impenitent will be raised, and in due time Christ will be made known to them by the elect church; or by Christ appearing to them as He did to Saul; and the offer of life be made to all who have not ‘blasphemed against the Holy Ghost’ or ‘sinned wilfully after having a knowledge of the truth,’ in former dispensations. In this coming dispensation, and in due time, light being given, the mass will repent and accept Christ, and so be saved; but with what he calls the lesser salvation, - will not reign with Christ, or be of the bride, but be ‘the nations’ outside of the New Jerusalem, as told of in Rev 21:22-26. Like many others, Rev 20:1-15 : seems dark to him - says but little about it; but decides there will be a dispensation, called that of ‘the fulness of times,’ before Christ gives up the kingdom. As to the time this dispensation is to last, he is indefinite, not being guided by the one thousand years of Rev 20:1-15 :" It is no wonder that "not being guided" by God’s express "revelation" upon the subject, Mr. Dunn should be in the dark. had he been so guided, he would have seen that the thousand years he can make nothing of, are the whole duration (or nearly so) of that reign of righteousness which precedes the eternal state, and that the resurrection does not take place till after this, when the heavens and earth flee away. But the whole idea of a resurrection of the wicked, which is not to judgment, is the flat contradiction of Scripture, not interpretation at all. The Lord has expressly divided "all that are in the graves" into these two classes raised to opposite destinies: "they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment." Mr. Blain tells us "the sorrow, shame, and self-reproach felt by Saul (of Tarsus) and the three thousand at the day of Pentecost" will be "the main, if not the only, wailing and bitterness which the impenitent risen dead will experience," and that "only as they will lose the ‘crown,’ or ‘birth-right’ blessing." A man that can make out that to be the resurrection of judgment, such as it is described in the passages we have at large considered, it seems really useless to argue with. This whole idea of a resurrection of impenitent men at the Lord’s coming, and of Christ afterwards made known to them by the church, or by His appearing to them, not even one text is adduced for here. Nor is there one that has even the semblance of sustaining it. Mr. Dunn’s texts are evidently the ordinary ones pleaded by Universalism, from which he just saves himself; as Mr. Blain tells us, by taking "all," "every" and "the whole" as meaning often the mass, or great majority. "The term ‘the kingdom of God,"’ Mr. B. also tells us, "becomes an important word in this theory. It frequently means in the New Testament the same as ‘life’ or ‘eternal life.’ " And with this idea, the saying of Christ, ‘narrow is the way that leadeth unto life’ is easily explained." No doubt it is. Few difficulties could be expected to survive such a process of manipulation. It would scarcely spare the lexicographers themselves. Mr. Dunn’s letter is addressed to the Rev. Henry Constable, the writer of two books which we have been already examining, and details at length how he was led into the views he has adopted. We have only space however for what bears directly upon our present subject. Mr. Dunn became first an annihilationist,, and gives some of the usual arguments, but he found annihilation fail to give him full satisfaction. His first trouble was that still the creation of man seemed to be a failure. "Christ, in such a case, seems not to have destroyed the works of the devil, since that is accomplished, according to this view, by mere power, and by the fiat of the Eternal Father. Satan, instead of seeing his schemes baffled, his work undone, his malignity utterly defeated, becomes in a certain sense conqueror, inasmuch as he succeeds in preventing man’s restoration to the image of his Maker, and drags with himself into eternal perdition, thousands or tens of thousands merely, but the whole human race, with the exception of the comparatively few who here receive the truth, and obey it to the saving of their souls." Now the ruin of man is not merely the devil’s work - it is man’s own. We have all heard how at a certain place the Lord cast out a legion of devils with a word, and how the people of the place, instead of welcoming the Deliverer, prayed Him to depart. So it is ever wherever a soul is finally lost. It will not do to say it is the devil’s triumph: if it were that, Mr. Dunn’s scheme would be no more satisfactory than what he gave up, for the question of how many times God has suffered defeat is a very minor thing compared with the question, how could He suffer defeat at all? If a hundred souls lost were Satan’s victory, in these God would be a hundred times defeated! If that be possible, a million or a billion such might be. We do not believe in Satan’s triumph in even one single instance. He has been permitted to gain a temporary advantage, and by it a worse and utter defeat at last. Hell is not his "work," but his judgment, and he does not "overcome when he is judged." But I agree with Mr. Dunn that the settlement of the question of the existence of evil by mere physical annihilation would be a mere riddance by power of what might be well thought could not be got rid of in any other way. But he continues: - "Further - and this seems equally impossible - the scheme represents God as allowing hundreds of millions to come into existence every thirty years, under conditions that all but compel their utter misery and eternal ruin after a brief, painful, and apparently unmeaning earthly existence." But neither can this be a true representation of the matter. We are as sure as Mr. Dunn is, that God would never punish for eternity what was the fruit more of ignorance and weakness amid the pressure of circumstances too great to be resisted by human strength. If that is the true state of the case, men, or a mass of them, would be more the objects of pity than of blame. And He who is infinite in pity, and is slow to judgment, because He delighteth in mercy, could not overlook the essential difference. God will not damn for ignorance, for weakness, for inability to resist when circumstances were too strong, but for wilfulness and obstinacy in wickedness alone. So Scripture represents it. It represents men perishing, not as destroyed of Satan, or of adverse overpowering force of any kind, but as self-destroyed; and whatever be the mystery of this, and no one can pretend a competence to explain the depths of God’s providential government of the world, we may safely leave it to Him, who will in the end vindicate the wisdom and goodness of His ways; and "overcome when He is judged," not by superior power but by truth and right. But by these speculations Mr. Dunn was influenced in his pursuit of some fresh light that was to clear up the mystery. He says: - "I felt that I had not yet reached the whole truth . . . I could not feel satisfied that I had so far rid myself of hereditary prejudice, and a sinful fear of consequences, as to have established anything in harmony with the revealed doctrine that Christ was the Saviour ‘of the world,’ the Second Adam, and as such the Redeemer of the race that had fallen in the first." Universalism had already, that is, got hold of him, but his difficulty was to make Scripture agree with it. He was already steering his course towards a definite point, bent upon finding what he had decided must be there before he found it, and already was so far under the delusion of it as to be confounding the potential and the actual, what the will of God is for every man, with the result in which man’s contrary will meets His: "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate I" So Mr. Dunn went on "for many long years," struggling have things as he thought they ought to be. "I now turned," says he, "to examine the words of the prophets, and began, for the first time, to listen with purged ear to the whisperings" - the emphasis upon the word is his own - "the whisperings, so to speak, of ‘holy men of old who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,’ and who so often unconsciously addressed themselves to those on whom the latter days of the world should come. I found in them much more than I had expected which seemed to bear on the ultimate purposes of God, in relation not to the Jew only, but also to the Gentile; much that spoke of restoration in connection with resurrection. The first passage I noticed as apparently throwing light upon repeated declarations that a period shall come when truth and righteousness will be universal, was that remarkable portion of Isaiah (Isa 25:7-8) in which the prophet declares that the removal of the ‘veil which is spread over all nations’ will take place at the time when God shall ‘swallow up death in victory,’ and when He shall ‘wipe away tears from all faces’ - a passage which is distinctly applied by the apostle Paul to the resurrection, and partially by John to the happiness of the redeemed." These are what Mr. Dunn calls "whispers," so that I suppose we are not to expect in them very distinct utterances of what he contends for. It is certain they are not very distinct. For on the face of what Paul says, he is speaking of the resurrection of "those that are Christ’s; at His coming," and of no others. If otherwise, then when he speaks of their being raised "in incorruption," "in power." "in glory" - the wicked too are raised in this way, and of course the question is eternally settled for all of them, apart from all question of Christ being offered to them afterwards. We have always believed too that the "veil spread over all nations" had to do only with the nations alive on earth when Christ came, and had nothing to do with their resurrection; and that "God wiping away all tears from their eyes" might be applied to the happiness of the redeemed without showing that the wicked dead are among the redeemed. Mr. D. goes on - "A second, found in the same prophecy, was expressed in these words: ‘In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land; whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people and Assyria. the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.’ " A third appeared in Ezekiel, where the prophet speaks of Sodom and her daughters as returning ‘to their former estate,’ and says to Israel, ‘I will give them to thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant (Eze 16:55-61). A fourth was found in Jeremiah, ‘I will bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter days,’ and further, ‘I will bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the Lord’ (Jer 48:47; Jer 49:6). There are many other kindred texts, but these, referring to the heathen nations of antiquity, steeped as they were in the grossest sin, will suffice for the present. No one pretends that they have yet found a fulfilment, or that they can do so under the present dispensation. Regarding apostate Israel similar declarations abound. Take only one by Hosea (Hos 13:9-14): ‘O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help. I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plagues, O grave, I will be thy destruction; repentance shall be hid from mine eyes,’ 1:e., the promise shall be made good. To me it seemed utterly impossible to attach any rational meaning to predictions like these, whether, relating to Gentile or to Jew, which did not directly contradict the supposition that the persons spoken of were to be annihilated. The assertion made by Matthew Henry and others, that in such passages denunciations are applied to the natural Israel, and promises to the Spiritual Israel, appeared to me, and still appears, nothing less than a complete changing of the prophecy." To me also. Nevertheless Mr. Dunn has himself missed the meaning. The above passages are evidently the whole strength of his position, as apart from ordinary restorationism. His mistake is throughout identical, and it is one he would not surely have made, had he not been under the power of preconception, as he has already frankly owned to be. He confounds, as do a large number of so-called "Adventists," national with individual restoration, and national with individual resurrection. Yet in that diligent examination of the prophets which he had for so long a time been carrying on, he must have come across passages which should have corrected mistake. Take for instance the well-known passage in Ezekiel, (Eze 37:1-28) where the resurrection of dry bones is expressly interpreted in this way. "Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live; and I shall place you in your own land." If Mr. Dunn wanted a passage to express his views, he could scarcely find one more suitable every way than this. One might have imagined it the very one which had furnished him with his idea. Here is resurrection, and conversion after resurrection, quite according to his thought. Yet he has not ventured to produce this passage in evidence, and it is clearly inapplicable as evidence. It is a figure of national revival simply, such an one as the chosen people are yet to know. People literally dead as individuals would not be represented as saying, "Our bones are dried," etc., while they might well bewail their national death so. This way of speaking is not uncommon in the prophets, and I have no doubt that an example of it is found even in Dan 12:2, where literal resurrection is more generally believed to be in question, but where the contradiction to any view of literal resurrection is absolutely prohibitory to the thought. It is not a general resurrection (a thing moreover found nowhere else in Scripture), for it would not in that case be "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth." However numerous the "many," they cannot be all the dead. Again, it is not the first resurrection, for some awake "to shame and everlasting contempt." Nor is it the resurrection of judgment, for the reason that others awake "to everlasting life." And the rendering some would propose, "these (who awake) to everlasting life; but those (who continue asleep) are for shame and everlasting contempt" is an inadmissible rendering to get over a suppositious difficulty. For "those who continue asleep" do not come into the text at all, as is evident. Interpreted in accordance with the passage in Ezekiel, there is no difficulty, for in the national revival of Israel there will be that double issue. It will not be blessing to all, but sifting and discernment between the righteous and the wicked, in many places asserted as to Israel in the strongest terms. Again in Isa 26:15-19, we have a similar figure : "Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord, Thou hast increased the nation: Thou art glorified; Thou hadst removed it far unto all the ends of the earth. Lord, in trouble they have visited Thee, they poured out a prayer when Thy chastening was upon them. . . Thy dead shall live, my dead body, they shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out her dead." Here the misapplication to literal resurrection has led to a very unwarrantable translation. In our version it is put "together with my dead body, they shall arise," as if the prophet expected his own resurrection among these, whereas it is Jehovah answering the cry of the people, and claiming them, dead as they were, as His: "My dead body, they shall arise." Again in Hos 6:1-2, the prophet exhorts them to repentance in the assurance of mercy: "Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for He hath torn, and He will heal us: He hath smitten, and He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; in the third day He will raise us up. and we shall live in His sight." This is symbolism, very suitable, and by no means hard to understand, whereas if literally taken, as Mr. Dunn takes it, it clashes with many Scriptures. And the same remark applies to the restoration and revival of other nations, where the image of resurrection is not however used. Moab and Ammon, Assyria and Egypt, are undoubtedly to revive, whether by the recovery of the identical races or not. He knows who can and will accomplish it, just as He will bring forth in His own time the tribes of Ephraim, now so vainly being searched for. On the other hand, Edom and Babylon lie under irreversible doom. In all this there is no difficulty with God; and even as to Sodom, we have no proof of the race being utterly extinguished when judgment fell upon the guilty city. Thus there is no impossibility in restoration, without bringing up from the grave the people destroyed then. In supposing the latter, Mr. Dunn has been listening to the reasonings of his own mind, and not to the "whisperings" of the prophets. His further texts are mainly those appealed to by Universalists of every class. Its being "more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment" than for Capernaum, he found it difficult to reconcile with the annihilation of either. He quotes the Lord’s words, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me," which will be quite true of that future condition of the earth, when the "prince of this world shall" (according to what He says in immediate connection with this) "be cast out" (John 12:31-32), but has no reference to those dying in their sins. He refers to what Christ also says, when "He bids them be like their heavenly Father in forgiving their enemies, not for a time only, but from the heart, and therefore forever; not for certain offences only, but for all; not ‘seven times’ merely, but ‘ seventy times seven": words which he misquotes and misapplies, as is plain, for according to such a principle there could be no "day of judgment" at all for any. He quotes also Paul’s words: "As by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall the many be made righteous," where he accurately enough puts "the many" instead of "many"; but inaccurately retains "one" instead of the one. It is plain that that indeed spoils the argument he would draw from this: for if "the many," in that definite way, must mean the same people in each case, then "the one," by the same rule, must mean the same particular one, which we know it does not. He cites next: "The creature itself (all creation) shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God," which is "creation" as we ordinarily apply the word - the lower creatures. They could not be brought into the liberty of grace, but shall be into "the liberty of the glory" (which is the exact expression) when the sons of God are manifested in glory (Rom 8:19-23). In the same way and in the same passage, it is not "in relation to man generally" that the apostle tells us, "he is a captive not by any choice of his own" (for he is, alas, a willing captive): it is still the lower creatures who have fallen with man, not of their own will, but as connected with him who was ordained the head of creation, "not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope." After telling us that he had studied also most carefully every text that appeared to have another bearing without finding reason to reverse the conclusion at which he had arrived, he goes on to say: "So again and yet again I went back to the only source of light and truth, asking with deep earnestness, ‘What is written in the New Testament regarding the future lot of the masses of mankind?’ The passage that struck me as affording a kind of key-note to the inquiry was found in St. Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation. . . . We trust the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe. These things command and teach.’ Here was ‘the missing link,’ and one certainly that could not be set aside by the pretence that ‘Saviour’ meant temporal preserver In one clause of the sentence, and, spiritual Redeemer in the other." I suppose few would affirm that, and that it is rather believed that soter is here in both clauses "preserver," and not "Saviour." Mr. Dunn can hardly dispute that it may mean that, and therefore that he has no proof here of his position, especially as everywhere in Scripture "the day of salvation" stated to be "now," in the present time, and not beyond the grave. Indeed if Christ be now "the Saviour of all men," as in a sense He is, it does not follow that He will be that finally for such as now reject Him, and it is often threatened that He will not be, But then Mr. Dunn’s proof is nowhere. He goes on to connect this with what he presently found as to the kingdom of God, and here (as we have noticed) he presents much that is really Scriptural. But even here he is, as natural, too much engrossed with one aspect of future blessedness in which every other is merged. I may not pause to point out where he fails, however. It is quite true on the other hand that the saints saved now are "to ‘sit on thrones’; to ‘judge others’; to ‘reign on the earth’; to be ‘priests’ as well as ‘kings’; to rule some ‘with a rod of iron.’ " No part of this is new to believers in the Lord’s premillennial advent. It seems to have been new to Mr. Dunn, and so to have encouraged him to believe that here he had found what he wanted for the perfecting of his idea. "May it not then," this kingdom, he asks himself "be the appointed agency for bringing about the final triumph of the Redeemer by placing the myriads who here live and die without light, without training, I might almost say without probation, under perfect government and infallible teaching?" He notices then that there are ‘nations’ represented as outside the New Jerusalem, "who are said to be in process of healing by the leaves of a "mystic tree, growing by the pure ‘river of water of life’ that proceeds’ out of the throne of God and of the Lamb; "‘ and these "nations" he assumes to include, of course, those of whom his thoughts are full, the unsaved dead of all ages and generations. This closes the argument of his letter, in which it is interesting and sad to trace how the prepossession with one fixed thought led an intelligent man to find in Scripture just that thought which prepossessed him. It is touching too, and a matter of hope, to note how doubtfully he has yet to speak. "That much is not said regarding this possible, or rather probable, field of future usefulness," for the heirs of this kingdom, he says," need not excite our wonder." The things he speaks of are, at the most, "probable." What if they are not true? There is no "full assurance of faith," or "of understanding" here. With Mr. Blain, too, it is "Mr. Dunn’s theory." And thus after years and years of study, a hope that may make ashamed is the sole result. The false principle of this interpretation of Scripture has I believe been sufficiently shown, and there is no need of following Mr. Blain’s book further. It is not hard to trace the workings of it all through the subsequent pages; but it would swell these pages to too great a number to follow them out. With its foundation the whole building falls. ======================================================================== Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-f-w-grant-volume-1/ ========================================================================