I"' ■' "■■- .' " " :■' '■■ 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 BT75 .64 1891 
 
 System of Christian theology / by Henry 
 
 n in i 1 ii i i ii I ii j ii i n iiiilliiniiiTir ii ' i nit i i ' 
 
 3 1924 029 369 927 
 
 olm 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029369927 
 
SYSTEM 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY B. SMITH, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM S. KARR, D.D. 
 
 Professor of Theology in Hartford Theological Seminary. 
 FOURTH EDITION, REVISED 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 THOMAS S. HASTINGS, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON, 
 
 1891. 
 
Copyright, 1884, 
 By Elizabeth L. Smith. 
 
 Copyright, 1890, 
 By Elizabeth L. Smith. 
 
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 This volume, so ably edited by the late Prof. Wm. S. Karr, 
 D. D. ? has taken its place as a standard work on theology, not 
 only among Presbyterians, but in the Church at large. The 
 influence of its distinguished author is still widely felt, and his 
 power as a theological authority is evidenced by his writings 
 being quoted on both sides in recent discussions. 
 
 This new edition of Prof. Smith's Theology will be prefaced 
 by an introduction by his pupil and life-long friend, the Rev. 
 Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, President of Union Theological Sem- 
 inary. The Rev. Henry Goodwin Smith has kindly undertaken 
 a revision of the foot-notes, the correction of some typographical 
 errors in the earlier editions, and the preparation of a Scriptural 
 Index, not in former editions. 
 
 By a special arrangement with Prof. Smith's family, this new 
 
 edition will be issued at the very low price of Two Dollars. 
 
 A. C. Armstrong & Son. 
 April 1890. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 This work was prepared for the press by the late Prof. William 
 S. Karr, D. D., of the Hartford Theological Seminary, by the careful 
 and laborious comparison of the MSS. of Dr. Smith with such notes 
 as could be obtained, and with a stenographic report of the Lect- 
 ures. It was a difficult task, for the performance of which Dr. 
 Karr deserves the hearty thanks of Dr. Smith's pupils and friends. 
 
 The power of this distinguished teacher is traditional in the 
 minds and hearts of his former pupils. They with one voice testify 
 that their teacher stimulated and guided their thinking as no other 
 professor has ever done. He had a quiet, magnetic power, which 
 reached and stirred all who listened to the outpouring of his mar- 
 vellous learning and followed those keen analyses and masterly 
 generalizations which seemed so natural to him as to cause him no 
 effort. 
 
 It was exceedingly difficult to take satisfactory notes of his Lect- 
 ures. One needed to get every word; for his style was not the 
 mere dress, but, as Carlyle would say, it was " the shin of Jus 
 thought" No other words than his own would exactly fit his 
 thought; and so, work as intensely as we could, we failed to secure 
 all we desired for preservation and use. 
 
 Professor Smith had never finished his Lectures; he was always 
 adding or omitting; trying new statements; presenting clearer 
 views. No true teacher ever finishes his Lectures until he is near- 
 ing the end of his career. But the end of Professor Smith's career 
 came too soon and too suddenly for him to leave us the full legacy 
 of his matured instructions. 
 
 Yet this volume has a great deal of Dr. Smith's peculiar power 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and will be read with profound interest by those who so knew him 
 that they can remember him in their reading of the book. 
 
 In one regard this system of theology is unique, and so deserves, 
 and is likely to secure, increasing attention. It is the only Ckristo- 
 centric system which our American scholarship has given us. This 
 method had long been in his mind. On his twenty-first birthday 
 he wrote to a friend, cc M.j object is to make and harmonize a sys- 
 tem which shall make Christ the central point of all important re- 
 ligious truth and doctrine." 
 
 In his Inaugural Address, which produced a very deep impres- 
 sion at the time of its delivery (May 6, 1855), Dr. Smith said: " To 
 Christ as mediator all parts of theology equally refer. He is both 
 God and man, and also the Redeemer. The logical antecedents of 
 His mediation are, therefore, the doctrine respecting God, the doc- 
 trine respecting man, the Fall and consequent need of Redemption, 
 as also that Triune constitution of the Godhead, which alone, so far 
 ■j,& we can conceive, makes Redemption by an Incarnation to be 
 possible. Thus we have the first division of the theological system, 
 the Antecedents of Redemption, which is also first in both theologi- 
 cal and historical order. Its second and central portion can only 
 be found in the Person and "Work of Christ, his one Person uniting 
 humanity with divinity, in the integrity of both natures, adapting 
 Him to his one superhuman work, as Prophet, Priest, and King, 
 making such satisfaction for sin, that God can be just and justify 
 every one that believeth; and this second division of the system 
 follows the first in both the logical and historical order, giving the 
 peculiar office of the Second Person of the Godhead, the Purchase 
 of Redemption, the Christology of theology, and in like manner the 
 same mediatorial idea passes over into the third and last division of 
 the system, which treats, in proper logical and historical order, of the 
 application of the redemption that is in Christ, to the Individual, to 
 the Church and to the History and final Supremacy of the Kingdom 
 of God, both in time and eternity.' 
 
 This interesting and attractive outline Professor Smith followed 
 
INTRODUCTION* vii 
 
 and filled out in his teachings, as may be seen in this volume. To 
 him " Christian theology is that exposition of the Christian faith, in 
 which all its members are referred to the mediatorial principle as 
 their centre of unity and bond of cohesion. To have Christ, to 
 have the whole of Christ, to have a whole Christ, is the soul of 
 our Puritan theology; the rest is foundation, defence or scaffold- 
 ing." 
 
 As a theologian, Professor Smith was both conservative and pro- 
 gressive; conservative in order to be truly progressive; progressive 
 in order to be truly conservative. With a thorough philosophical 
 training, and a very rare breadth of learning, he united a deep rev- 
 erence for the Scriptures which was. always apparent and impres- 
 sive. He held to the old truths with tenacity, but believed that 
 clearer and more consistent statements of those truths may be 
 given, as we know more of the substance and of the Spirit of the 
 Scriptures. In an important sense he believed in the saying that "A 
 statement of religion is possible which makes all scepticism absurd.' 
 Near the end of his life he wrote, cc What Eeformed Theology has 
 got to do is to Christologize predestination and decrees, regenera- 
 tion and sanctification, the doctrine of the Church, and the whole 
 of Eschatology." In his Inaugural Address he quoted Ullmann's 
 words: "Not fixedness nor revolution, but evolution and reform, is 
 the motto for our times.' He said, "The theologian is to be z deep 
 in tlie boohs of God,' as the naturalist in the book of nature; both 
 are to divest themselves of fancy and to become interpreters. The 
 Science of Nature has advanced apace because its eminent explorers 
 have studied that kingdom with an humble and reverential spirit. 
 And one of the reasons, — is it not so? — why theology has been less 
 fruitful, is that we study ethics and not divinity, our own wills, and 
 not the will of God, and expect in Psychology to find the kingdom 
 ©f God. But the registry of God's wisdom is in His own revelation.'' 
 To the writer it is z privilege to acknowledge his debt of grati- 
 tude to this truly great teacher; a debt which has been deeply felt 
 for more than thirty years, and which has prompted him to say of- 
 
viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ten through these years, — " No other teacher has so stimulated my 
 intellectual and spiritual life as has Henry B. Smith." 
 
 One regrets that not all the readers of this volume can read it in 
 the light of the vivid memories of the Lecture Room where Profes- 
 sor Smith wielded such a masterful influence. We are grateful for 
 this new edition of his Theology and for this opportunity to pay a 
 
 personal tribute to his revered memory. 
 
 Thomas S. Hastings. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 April 9th, 1890. 
 
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 
 
 In preparing this work use has been made of a 
 phonographic report of the larger part of Professor 
 Smith's lectures as they were given in the year 1857, 
 of several full sets of notes taken by students in other 
 years, of the whole of Professor Smith's sketches and 
 outlines of his lectures as left in manuscript, and of a 
 number of his unpublished sermons. 1 The result is that 
 the following exhibition of his views in theology is much 
 fuller than that which he was able to impart to any one 
 class during the years of lecturing to successive classes 
 
 The order of topics given in Chap. YI. of The Intro- 
 duction to Christian Theology is observed in this volume 
 with some few deviations. The author did not always 
 keep with strictness to the order which he had prescribed 
 to himself. But all the main features of the system pre- 
 sented in The Introduction are preserved here. 
 
 Following the two books already published, 2 this vol- 
 ume completes the author's statements on all the chief 
 questions in theology, and as care has been taken to 
 give not only his thought but his precise language in 
 
 1 Selections from the sermons are inserted, for the most part, in the Second 
 Division and at the beginning of the Third. 
 
 - The Apologetics and The Introduction to Christian Theology. 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 all cases where this was practicable, it is hoped thai 
 the work will not be found wanting in any of the char- 
 acteristics which distinguish his productions. The foot- 
 notes are made up from materials found in Professor 
 Smith's papers. In a few instances the editor has given 
 his own impressions as to the authors views, and has 
 added references to his published works. 
 
 The two sons of Professor Smith have rendered val- 
 uable assistance in carrying the book through the press, 
 and the Index has been prepared by Mrs. Smith, who 
 has thus added to her most attractive memoir of her 
 husband a summary of his chief work. 
 
 W. S. K. 
 
 Hartfoed Theological Seminaby, 
 March, 1884. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 DIVISION FIRST. 
 
 ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION 
 
 PAKT I. 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE RESPECTING GOI). 
 BOOK I.— THE DIVINE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES. 
 
 Chap. I. — The Divine Nature. 
 
 § 1. Can God be known ? 3 
 
 § 2. Can God be denned? 7 
 
 § 3. The Mode in which we gain our explicit Conception of the Deity. 7 
 
 \ 4. Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism 9 
 
 § 5. Scriptural Designations of the Divine Nature . . 10 
 
 § 6. Theological Definitions of the Divine Nature .... 11 
 
 Chap. II. — The Divine Attributes. 
 
 § 1. The Idea of the Divine Attributes 12 
 
 § 2. Classification of the Attributes 15 
 
 Chap. III. —The Attributes of God as Pure Essence or Being. 
 
 § 1. Self-existence 16 
 
 § 2. Unlimited by Space or Time 17 
 
 § 3. Eternity of God 17 
 
 § 4. The Divine Immensity and Omnipresence 20 
 
 § 5. The Divine Spirituality. The Divine Simplicity ... 21 
 
 § 6. The Divine Unity 21 
 
 Chap. IV. — Attributes of God as the Supreme Reason and Understanding. 
 
 § 1. Proof that God is the most perfect Intelligence .... 23 
 
 § 2. Definition of Omniscience 23 
 
 § 3. The Objects of the Divine Knowledge 24 
 
 § 4. Of Scientia Media 25 
 
 § 5. The Divine Prescience or Foreknowledge 26 
 
 § 6. The Divine Reason 28 
 
 Chap. V. — Attributes of the Divine Will. 
 
 § 1. Idea of the Divine Will 29 
 
 § 2. The Distinction of the Divine Will as to its Objects 3G 
 § 3. Other Distinctions as to the Mode of Manifestation of the Di- 
 vine Will 31 
 
 Chap. VI. — The Omnipotence of God 32 
 
 Chap. VII. — The Divine Holiness ... 34 
 
^"11 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chap "VIII.— The DrnNE Ldve. 
 
 § 1. Definitions of Divine Love . . ... 57 
 
 § 2. Proofs of the Divine Love 37 
 
 § 3. Divisions of the Divine Love as to its Objects . . .38 
 
 § 4. Other Modifications of the Divine Love 38 
 
 § 5. The Divine Benevolence SB 
 
 § 6. Sources of Proof of the Divine Benevolence .... 40 
 
 § 7. Objections to the Divine Benevolence from the Existence of Evil 40 
 
 Chap. IX.— The Divine Veracity 43 
 
 Chap. X.— The Divine Justice. 
 
 § 1. General Idea of the Justice of God 44 
 
 § 2. Proofs of the Divine Justice 45 
 
 § 3. Distinctions in respect to the Divine Justice . . . .45 
 
 § 4. Why does God as a Moral Governor exercise Punitive Justice ? . 46 
 
 BOOK II.— THE TRINITY, OR GOD AS KNOWN IN THE WORK OF 
 REDEMPTION. 
 Preliminary Remarks . 48 
 
 Chap. I. — The Manifested Trinity. 
 
 § 1. That God is One 50 
 
 § 2. That the Father is Divine and a Distinct Person ... 51 
 
 § 3. That the Son is Divine and a Distinct Person from the Father . 53 
 
 § 4. Objections to the Proof of the Divinity of Christ on the Ground 
 
 of the Arian Hypothesis ........ 63 
 
 § 5. That the Holy Spirit is Divine and a Distinct Person from the 
 
 Father and the Son . .... 65 
 
 § 6. The Father, Son, and Spirit, are classed together, separately 
 
 from all other Beings, as Divine ...... 71 
 
 § 7. Result of the Biblical Evidence in respect to the Divinity of the 
 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit 72 
 
 Chap. II. — The Essential Trinity. 
 
 § 1. That the Distinctions of the Godhead are represented in the 
 
 Scriptures as internal 73 
 
 § 2. Remarks on Sabellianism .... ... 77 
 
 § 3. That these Distinctions in the Godhead are appropriately desig- 
 nated as Personal Distinctions 79 
 
 § 4. The Ecclesiastical Statements as to the distinctive Characteris- 
 tics of the Persons 80 
 
 § 5. Is the Term Son used in the Scriptures in reference to Christ's 
 
 immanent Relation to the Father? 83 
 
 § 6. How are we to conceive this Relation as an internal one in the 
 
 Godhead? ... 87 
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN COSMOLOGY. 
 
 Chap. I. — Creator and Creation. 
 
 § 1. The Scripture represents God as the Creator of the World . . 92 
 >§ 2. The Scripture represents the Son of God as the Medium by 
 
 Whom the World was brought into oeing . . 92 
 
CONTENTS. XU1 
 
 § 3. God Created freely and not by necessity . . ... 92 
 § 4. Creation is not from any previously extant substance ... 92 
 § 5. The Relation of God as Creat6r to what He has created . . 95 
 § 6. The Scripture represents Creation as a plan and not as a De- 
 velopment .... 95 
 
 Chap. II. — Of the Created Univebse as set fokth in Scripture . . 96 
 
 Chap. III.— Of the different Orders of Created Beings ... 98 
 
 Chap. IV. — The Preservation of Creation. 
 
 § 1. Sources of Proof of the Doctrine 102 
 
 § 2. The Purport of the Doctrine 102 
 
 § 3. Theory of continued Creation 103 
 
 § 4. A Modification of the Theory of continued Creation . . . 104 
 
 § 5. The Mechanical Theory of Preservation 105 
 
 Chap. V. — Divine Providence. 
 
 § 1. General Statements in respect to this Doctrine .... 106 
 
 § 2. Proof of the Doctrine of Providence 108 
 
 § 3. Distinction as to general and particular Providence . . .110 
 
 § 4. Modes of the Divine Providence Ill 
 
 Chap. VI. — The Decrees of God 114 
 
 § 1. Preliminary Statements 115 
 
 § 2. Of the Terms used to denote the Doctrine 117 
 
 § 3. Characteristics of the Divine Decree or Decrees .... 117 
 
 § 4. Proof of the Doctrine of Decrees . . ... 120 
 § 5. Objections to the Doctrine of the Divine Decrees . . .122 
 
 Chap. VII. — The End of God in Creation 126 
 
 § 1. Meaning and Statement of the Question ..... 127 
 
 § 2. Conditions of the Solution of the Problem — if possible . . 129 
 
 § 3. Statement of the Theories 130 
 
 § 4. The Scriptural Argument 131 
 
 § 5. The Supreme End of Creation is the Declarative Glory of God . 132 
 
 § 6. Arguments in Favor of this Position 136 
 
 § 7. Consideration of Objections 138 
 
 § 8. The Happiness Theory 140 
 
 § 9. The Connection between the View of the End of God in Crea- 
 tion and the Theory of the Nature of Virtue . . . _ . 142 
 § 10. Some historical Statements as to Theories of God's End in 
 
 Creation .... 143 
 
 Chap. VIII.— The Theodicy. The Question of the Best System . . 146 
 
 § 1. Is Sin the necessary Means of the greatest Good ? . . 147 
 
 § 2. Does the Nature of Free Agency account for Sin? . . . 149 
 § 3. We cannot State all the Beasons for the Permission of Sin . .353 
 
 PART III. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY. THE DOCTRINE RE- 
 SPECTING MAN 
 
 Chap. I. — "What is Man as a Moral Being? 161 
 
 § 1. Of Man in his most General Relations , 161 
 
 § 2. What constitutes the Individuality of each Man ? 163 
 
 §3. Of the Union of Body and Soul in Man 163 
 
A1V 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chap. 
 
 Chap. 
 Chap. 
 
 Chap. 
 
 Chap. 
 Chap. 
 
 Chap. 
 Chap. 
 
 Chap. 
 Chap. 
 
 Chap. 
 
 § 4. Of the Origin of Souls (after the Creation of the first Soul) . 
 
 § 5. Of Personality 
 
 § 6. The primary Facts involved in all Personal Agency 
 
 § 7. The Powers and Faculties of the Soul . 
 
 § 8. Of the original Tendencies of Man's Soul . 
 
 § 9. Of Conscience 
 
 § 10. Of Man's highest Spiritual Capacities 
 
 IT. — What is the Law of God: What does it eequiee? 
 
 § 1. Some general Statements as to the Characteristics of the Law 
 
 § 2. The two fundamental Objects or Ends of the Law of God . 
 
 III. — The Highest Good 
 
 IV. — The fobmal Theoetes of the Nattjee of Vibtue. 
 
 § 1. Virtue is acting according to the Fitness of Things 
 
 § 2. Virtue is that which promotes the great End of our Being . 
 
 § 3. Virtue is Acting in conformity with the Relations of Things 
 
 § 4. Acting in conformity to the Will of God 
 
 § 5. Kant's Theory .... 
 
 § 6. Dr. Hickok's Theory ... 
 
 V. — The Happiness Theoetes ....... 
 
 § 1. The Selfish Scheme. The Ethics of Paley. 
 
 § 2. Virtue consists in the Tendency to the greatest Happiness. 
 
 § 3. Subjective Happiness or Self-Love Scheme .... 
 
 § 4. General Remarks on all the Happiness Theories . 
 
 VI. — The Holy Love Theoetes 
 
 VII.— Some Hints as to a Theoby of the Nature of Vibtue. 
 § 1. Preliminary Statements. ....... 
 
 § 2. The Scriptural View of the Nature of True Virtue 
 
 § 3. Statement of the Principle of True Virtue in the abstract . 
 
 § 4. Arguments for the Definition ...... 
 
 § 5. Some Objections to the Theory ...... 
 
 § 6. Statement of the general Principle of all Virtue in the concrete 
 
 Vin. — Of Man's Peesonal Relations to the Law of God . 
 
 IX. — Of the Seat of Moral Chabaotee. The Will 
 
 § 1. Of the Idea of the Will. 
 
 § 2. Of the Power of the Will . 
 
 § 3. Of Self-Determination . 
 
 § 4. Modes of the Will's Action . 
 
 § 5. Of the Liberty or Freedom of the Will, 
 
 § 6. Of the Will and Motives . 
 
 X. — Of Liberty and Necessity . 
 
 XI. — Of the peimeval Moeal State of Man 
 
 § 1 . The Scriptures teach that there was a primitive State of Innocence 
 
 § 2, This original State is described in general Terms as the Divine 
 
 Image in Man . . ••-... 
 
 § 3. Yet this primitive State was not one of confirmed Holiness but 
 
 mutable .... . 
 
 § 4. On the different Interpretations of the "Divine Image " . 
 XII. — The Destination of Man if he had continued in Obedience. 
 The Covenant of Life oe oi Works ...... 
 
 253 
 
 255 
 255 
 
 256 
 
CONTENTS- XV 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 CHRISTIAN HAMARTOLOGY. THE DOCTRINE 
 RESPECTING SIN. 
 
 Chap. I. — The Fall historically viewed. 
 
 § 1. The Temptation. Is it Historical ? . . 26C 
 
 § 2. The Features of the Temptation , 261 
 
 Chap. II.— The Penalty. The Death threatened for Disobedience , 264 
 
 § 1. As to Spiritual Death 265 
 
 § 2. Temporal Death 266 
 
 § 3. Eternal Death 271 
 
 Chap. III. —The Consequences of the Fall to the Human Race . . 273 
 
 § 1. Sin as known by Experience. ... ... 274 
 
 § 2. The universal Sinfulness of Man as testified to in Scripture . 275 
 § 3. This universal Depravity is set forth in the Scriptures as total, 
 
 i. e., as affecting the whole Man 276 
 
 § 4. This depraved State is native to Man 277 
 
 Chap. IV.— Original Stn 283 
 
 § 1. General Statements . . . .... 286 
 
 § 2. The Facts of the Case, in respect to Original Sin, as given in 
 
 Scripture 291 
 
 * 3. The Facts of the Case as to Original Sin, as argued from Experi- 
 ence, and on other than Scriptural Grounds. .... 297 
 
 Chap, V. — The Counter Representation as to Sin and its Punishment 
 
 in Scripture and Experience 302 
 
 Chap. VI. — The Theories proposed for the Solution of the Problem. 
 
 § 1. The Theory of Immediate Imputation ...... 304 
 
 § 2. TheTheoryof Direct DivineEf&ciency, inthewayof a Constitution 308 
 
 § 3. The Hypothesis of Physical Depravity 309 
 
 § 4. The Pelagian and Unitarian View 312 
 
 § 5. The Hypothesis of Pre-existence 313 
 
 Chap. VII. — Of so-called Mediate Imputation 314 
 
 Chap. VIII. — Objections to the Doctrine of Original Sin . . . 323 
 
 Chap. IX. --Of the Bondage of Sin, its Power over the Human Well , 326 
 
 § 1. Preliminary Definitions. 327 
 
 § 2. The Power to the Contrary 329 
 
 § 3. The positive Statements as to the Relation of Natural Ability 
 
 and Moral Inability ... 331 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 DIVISION" SECOND. 
 
 THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. THE PERSON 
 AND WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 PART I. 
 
 OF THE INCARNATION IN ITS GENERAL 
 NATURE AND OBJECTS. 
 
 Chat. I. — "What is presupposed in the Incarnation. 
 
 § 1. Of the Incarnation in Kelation to Sin 343 
 
 § 2. Such a Constitution of the Divine Nature as made an Incarnation 
 
 possible 359 
 
 Chap. II. — The Incarnation primarily Fact and not Doctrine . . 353 
 Chap. HE. — The Fact of the Incarnation in Kelation to Man's Moral 
 Wants. 
 § 1. It presents us with the Life of a perfect Man as a Model for 
 
 Imitation, and so meets Need . . 354 
 
 § 2. The Relation of the Incarnation to Human Wants is seen in its 
 giving to Man the most direct Access to, and Communion 
 
 with, God . 358 
 
 § 3. Incarnation in order to Redemption ...... 360 
 
 Chap. IV. — How far may an Incarnation re said to be necessary on the 
 
 part of God? 362 
 
 Chap. V. — The Incarnation in History 369 
 
 Chap. VI. — Of the Incarnation as connected with the whole of the 
 
 Theological System, and as viewed by different Parties . 369 
 Chap. VII.— Of the Incarnation on Philosophical Grounds . . . 373 
 
 § 1. As to the Philosophy of Christianity 373 
 
 § 2. In the Incarnation we have the Means of adjusting the conflict 
 
 between Christianity and Philosophy 374 
 
 Cutvp. VIII. — Comparison of the Incarnation with some other Facts as 
 
 GIVING THE CENTRAL IDEAS OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. . . 377 
 
 Chap. IX. — Of the Incarnation as the Unfolding of the Possibilities 
 
 of Human Nature. The Second Adam 379 
 
 PART II. 
 
 OF THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR. THE SON OF GOD 
 MANIFEST IN THE FLESH THE GOD-MAN 
 
 Chap I —The Scriptural Teachings respecting the Person of the 
 
 God-man 306 
 
 § 1. The general Impression of the Declarations of Scripture on this 
 
 Point 386 
 
 § 2, The Proof from Scripture of Christ's Divinity . . . .387 
 
CONTENTS. XV11 
 
 § 3. The Miraculous Conception 389 
 
 § 4. In the Miraculous Conception the Logos assumed a true and 
 
 complete Humanity. ........ 392 
 
 § 5. In the Scriptures both the Divine and Human Natures of Christ 
 
 are often brought under one View 393 
 
 § 6. The various Modes in which what is said of Christ in the Script- 
 ures is to be interpreted in respect to his Person and Natures 393 
 § 7. According to the Scriptures, Christ was one Person, and his Per- 
 sonality was from his Divine Nature 394 
 
 § 8. Summary and Conclusions from Scripture Testimony as to the 
 
 Two Natures and One Person. . ... 395 
 Chap. II. — The early Heretical Opinions as to the Person of Christ. 396 
 Chap. III. — Later Doctrinal Differences brought up in the Contro- 
 versies 03? the Reformation. . 397 
 
 Chap. IV. — The Objections and Difficulties urged against the Doc- 
 trine of the Person of Christ .... . 399 
 Chap. V. — The entire Result as to the Person of our Lord. . . 421 
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE MEDIATOR. 
 
 Chap. I. — Preliminary Statements. 
 
 § 1. The General Object of Christ's Coming 430 
 
 § 2. Munus Triplex. Christ's Offices as Prophet, Priest, and King . 431 
 Chap. II. — Of Christ's Work as the only true Priest. Of Atonement 
 
 and the Necessity for Atonement . . . . . 437 
 
 Chap. III. — Of the leading Scriptural Representation of the Atoning 
 
 Work of Christ — that it is a Sacrifice 442 
 
 § 1. The System of Sacrifices prevalent in the Pagan World . . 443 
 § 2. In the Old Testament we find the same essential Elements as in 
 
 the heathen Sacrifices 445 
 
 § 3. Another Argument for the same Position is derived from the 
 
 Old Testament Prophecies of Christ 447 
 
 § 4. The New Testament Descriptions of the Sufferings and Death of 
 Christ repeat the same Ideas, give us in more strict Form 
 
 of Assertion the same Elements 448 
 
 § 5. Consideration of Objections 453 
 
 Chap. IV.— Analysis of the Scriptural Statements as to Christ's Suf- 
 ferings and Death ......... 461 
 
 Chap. V. — The Theory of the Atonement . . 464 
 
 § 1. Theories which define the Atonement ultimately by its Influence 
 
 on Man, in bringing to a New Life . ... 464 
 
 § 2. Theories which put the Essence of the Atonement in Satisfaction 
 
 to Distributive Justice 46G 
 
 § 3. Theories which assert that the Atonement consists in the Satis- 
 faction of General Justice ....... 469 
 
 § 4. The Atonement, while it indirectly satisfies Distributive Justice, 
 does not consist in this: it consists in satisfying the demands 
 of Public Justice 470 
 
XV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chap. VI. — The Extent of the Atonement. 
 
 § 1. Statement of the Question t 478 
 
 § 2. Proof of General Atonement 479 
 
 § 3. Objections to General Atonement 480 
 
 Chap VII. — The Intercession op Christ 481 
 
 DIVISION THIRD. 
 THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 Introductory Remarks 491 
 
 PAKT I. 
 
 THE UNION BETWEEN CHRIST AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 BELIEVER, AS EFFECTED BY THE HOIjY SPIRIT 
 
 BOOK I.— PREDESTINATION, ELECTION, THE EFFECTUAL CALL. 
 
 Chap. I.— General Observations 502 
 
 Chap. II. — Election ant> Reprobation. 
 
 § 1. Statement of the Scriptural Doctrine of Election , . . 505 
 
 § 2. Reprobation ........... 508 
 
 § 3. Objections to the Doctrine of Predestination - i . . . 509 
 
 Chap. in. — The Gospel Call. 
 
 § 1. Of the External Call 515 
 
 § 2. The Internal Call 516 
 
 § 3. Under this General Statement, some Questions and Difficulties 
 
 are raised 516 
 
 BOOK II.— OF JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 Chap. I. — Preliminary Considerations 522 
 
 Chap. II. — Op the Term and Idea: Justify — Justification; The General 
 
 and Scriptural Sense ........ 526 
 
 Chap. III. — Justification involves a Righteousness as its Ground . . 528 
 
 Chap. IV. — Personal Righteousness ........ 528 
 
 Chap. V. — The Ground of Justification 529 
 
 § 1. Statements of Scripture as to the Ground of Justification . . 530 
 § 2. How Christ can be the Ground of our Justification . . . 531 
 § 3. In what Way does what Christ has done avail to the Believer 
 through this Union, for his Justification as a Right- 
 eousness ? 538 
 
 Chap. VI - The Instrumental Cause of Justification. 
 
 § 1. Faith, and Faith alone 539 
 
 § 2. The Idea of Faith . 540 
 
 § 3. Some questions in regard to Faith * 543 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 § 4. Is Man responsible for his Belief— i. e., for his Unbelief? . . 543 
 § 5. Why is the High Office assigned to Faith of being the Instru- 
 mental Cause of Justification ? ...... 544 
 
 Chap. VTL — The Diffeeence between the Roman Catholic and Peotestant 
 
 Views of Justification . . 54& 
 Chap. VIII. — Histoeical Statements bespectxng the dtffeeent Theobies of 
 
 Justification ... .... 548 
 
 Chai. IX. — Objections to the Doctrine of Justification . . . 551 
 
 BOOK III.-REGENERATION AND EEPENTANCE. 
 Chap. I. — Inteoductoey Statements. 
 
 § 1. The Doctrine as held in some of the different Systems . . 553 
 
 § 2. Of the Terms employed 557 
 
 § 3. Connection of the Doctrine of Regeneration with other Truths . 559 
 
 Chap. II. — The Necessity of Regeneeation 560 
 
 Chap. III. — The Subjective Chakacteeistics of Regeneeation . . 560 
 
 Chap. IV. — The Aitthoe of Regeneration 563 
 
 Chap. V.— How does the Spieii eegeneeate the Soul? .... 564 
 Chap. VI. — The Means of Regeneeation. 
 
 § 1. External Providential Means 566 
 
 § 2. Acts of the Sinner as among the Means 566 
 
 § 3. Of the Truth as a means of Regeneration ... . 568 
 
 Chap. VII. — The Exhoetation: Make to youeself a new Heaet. . 569 
 
 Chap. VIII.— The conscious Peocesses of the Soul in Regeneeation . . 570 
 
 Chap. IX. — Repentance ... 572 
 
 § 1. Some general Statements of the Protestant View .... 573 
 
 § 2. Repentance should be immediate 574 
 
 § 3. Some special Works and Signs of Repentance .... 574 
 
 BOOK IV.— SANCT1FICATION AND PERFECTION. 
 
 Chap. I. — Sancttfication. 
 
 § 1. The nature of Sanctification according to the Scriptures . . 575 
 § 2. The Difference between Justification, Regeneration, and Sancti- 
 fication . 576 
 
 § 3. Of Good Works and Sanctification 576 
 
 § 4. The Means of Sanctification 577 
 
 Chap. II. — Peefectionism 579 
 
 § 1. The older Theories 580 
 
 § 2. The modern View of Perfectionism 581 
 
 Chap. HI. — Peeseveeance of the Saints 585 
 
 § 1. Arguments in favor of the Doctrine 586 
 
 § 2. Explanations of the Doctrine 586 
 
 § 3. Objections to the Doctrine 587 
 
 PART IT. 
 THE ONION BETWEEN CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 
 
 § 1. Of the fundamental and germinant Idea of the Church of the 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ . . ... 590 
 
 5 2. Of the Nature of the Church as seen in the Light of this radical 
 
 and central Idea 53] 
 
xx CONTENTS. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION 
 IN TIME AND ETERNITY, THE ESCHATOLOGY. 
 
 Chap. I. — Of Death and Immortality. 
 
 § 1. Death 598 
 
 § 2. Of Immortality 598 
 
 § 3. Annihilation 600 
 
 § 4. Objections to Immortality ........ 601 
 
 Chap. II. — Of the Intermediate State . 602 
 
 § 1. Historic Facts as to the Doctrine 603 
 
 § 2. Proposition. There is no sufficient Scriptural warrant for such 
 
 an Intermediate State as described 604 
 
 § 3. Of Purgatory 606 
 
 § 4. The Sleep of Souls 606 
 
 Chap. III. — The Second Advent 608 
 
 Chap. IV. — Resurrection of the Body. 610 
 
 Chap. V. — The Last Judgment 612 
 
 Chap. VI. — The Awards of the Last Day 613 
 
 § 1. The Scriptural Testimony as to Endless Punishment . . . 614 
 
 § 2. Objections to the Doctrine of Endless Punishment . . . 617 
 
 § 3. Of the Restitution of all Things 618 
 
 § 4. Position and Relations of the Doctrine of Future Punishment . 620 
 
 § 5. The Award of Eternal Blessedness to the Righteous . , . 620 
 
DIVISION FIRST. 
 
 ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE RESPECTING GOD. 
 
 BOOK. I. t THE DIVINE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES; BOOK II., THE TRINITY.) 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE DIVINE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DIVINE NATURE. 
 
 In Natural Theology 1 we have considered the Being of 
 God as the infinite, absolute, personal Spirit, the ground and 
 cause of all that exists. We are now to consider more fully, 
 adding the Scriptural proof, the Divine Nature. 
 
 § 1. Can God be hnown ? 
 
 The difficulty on this point as it lias been discussed, is 
 this: God is an infinite and absolute being; man, on the other 
 hand, is a limited and finite being, of course limited in his 
 power of knowledge. How then can this finite and limited 
 being know the infinite and absolute being? The terms are 
 incommensurable. The whole diameter of being lies between 
 the Creator and the creature. There appears to be no common 
 measure. On the other hand, if God cannot be known, all 
 our idea of Him would be simply equal to zero. It would be 
 an abstract notion without any life. Consequently, both in 
 philosophy and in theology, in heathenism and in Christian- 
 ity, we have a variety of speculations and statements, ranging 
 from utter skepticism to the height of faith, from the assertion 
 of the absolute impossibility of knowledge to the claim of 
 absolute knowledge. 
 
 1 [See "Apologetics," p. 85, aud " Introduction to Christian Theology," p. 84.] 
 
* CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THESE DIFFERENT POSITIONS. 
 
 1. The philosophical positions. These are chiefly four: — 
 (a.) Many philosophers and schools of philosophy take the 
 
 position that God in himself cannot be known at all. This 
 is illustrated in Plato's well-known saying (Timeeus): "that 
 to find the center and father of all is difficult, and if found it 
 is impossible to talk to all about Him, for He is the highest 
 good, having no essence or existence, but ranging beyond all 
 essence and existence in his worth and power/' So Philo 
 says: "God is without any qualities, and we can only ascribe 
 to Him pure being without attributes." This is everywhere 
 the tone of thought in the New Platonic School. Among 
 modern philosophers, Kant teaches that it is impossible for 
 the intellect, "the pure reason," to know God. What we 
 come at under the guidance of reason is a series of eontradic 
 tions, and what we can know about God is attained not by 
 the pure, but by the practical, reason, by the urgency of our 
 moral wants. Yet these very statements imply some degree 
 of knowledge 1 — that He is, if not what He is. 
 
 (6.) The same position is held by many skeptical philoso- 
 phers, with whom it takes the form of a denial of all piety 
 and of all religion. The highest speculative minds, however, 
 while denying that God can be properly "known," have as- 
 serted that our moral nature aspires to Him. 
 
 (c.) God can be known fully and really, but only in the 
 way of mystic contemplation, not in any proper knowledge 
 through the intellect, but only in a knowledge through feel- 
 ing and devotion. This is an opinion of the ancient school 
 of mystics and also of the modern school. 
 
 (d.) Counter to all these is the position that God can be 
 absolutely known by the intellect. This is the pantheistic 
 theory, especially as advocated by Spinoza and Hegel. We 
 can know God purely and completely because we are a part 
 of Him. To have the idea of Him is to know Him, and we 
 could not know Him unless we were a part of Him. 
 
 2. Positions held in the Church. We have the same genera] 
 
 1 [See " Apologetics," p. 35.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. O 
 
 positions as before, modified by the acceptance of the Christian 
 revelation. 
 
 (a.) There are those who assert that God can be fully 
 known as we know logic and mathematics. Thus the Arians, 
 in their discussions on the Trinity, claimed that God could be 
 known, and so fully known as to justify the assertion that there 
 could not be any pluri-personality in Him, that He must exist 
 as a single, individual mind. 
 
 (h.) Others have asserted that God is utterly incompre- 
 hensible in himself, that He is above all names. No term 
 can name Him. If we give a name we cannot affix to it 
 any definite conception. 
 
 (c.) There is also the position that in this life and with the 
 mere understanding God cannot be known, and that He cannot 
 be known by the wicked, those who are alienated from Him by 
 wicked works; but that He may be known so far as He is re- 
 vealed in Christ, and through this revelation we may attain to 
 a knowledge of Him sufficient for our devotion and direction, 
 but not sufficient to fill up the idea of God. 1 
 
 3. The Scriptural assertions and statements. Exodus xxxiii. : 
 the scene in which God appears to Moses. "Show me thy 
 glory," etc. The sense of this gives a key to the whole Scrip- #, ^ 
 tural revelation of God. We cannot know God face to face, but* TIT" 
 we can track Him (Exodus xxxiii. 2 3) by his revelations.^* ^'/i^ {r ° 
 
 He cannot be known fully by man: Job xi. 7; Matt. xi. 25; 
 Rom. xi. 34; 1 Tim. vi. 16. These Scriptural representations 
 show us that there is in God that which is to the human intel- 
 lect incomprehensible and unfathomable. 
 
 On the other hand we have statements which show that 
 some knowledge can be had by man: Matt. v. 8; xi. 27; 1 Cor. 
 xiii. 12; Rev. xxii. 4. Particularly do the Scriptures assert that 
 God is known in Christ, as in John xvii. 26. The word name 
 here, as frequently, stands for the nature of God. 
 
 1 See, in Cudworth's "Intel. Syst.," an admirable discussion of the atheistic 
 positions. Also, Berkeley's "Minute Philosopher." "The Divine Analogy,' 
 by Bishop Brown, an opponent of Berkeley, inclines to the position that we 
 must have a revelation in order to gain any knowledge of God. 
 
 i-Ui.-. 
 
° CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 From these passages of Scripture and from the nature of the 
 case the following results may be obtained — 
 
 (a.) There is a great difference between the assertion that 
 we can know God without a revelation of Him and that we can 
 know Him through the illuminating influence upon the soul of 
 the Divine Spirit. The finite cannot of itself attain to the in- 
 finite. If the finite and the infinite were all and there were no 
 communication between them, the finite could not know the in- 
 finite. It is only as the infinite being reveals himself that the 
 finite can know the infinite at all. Otherwise the terms are 
 incommensurable. 
 
 (b.) It likewise results that God, in his interior essence, 
 cannot be known or fathomed by man. We can know that 
 He is; we cannot know fully what He is. We can know 
 that there must be an infinite Being, the source and ground 
 of all else; we can know that He must be unlimited in all his 
 attributes, but all that is included in his attributes we can- 
 not comprehend, still less can we grasp the essence on which 
 they are based. 
 
 (c.) It results, that God, in his moral nature, cannot be 
 fully known by the wicked, because they are opposed to Him, 
 and only the loving can know love. 
 
 (d.) It also results, that God, in his moral nature, may be 
 known by the pure and holy, in proportion to their holiness, 
 their sanctification. In his light we see light ; in proportion as 
 we become conformed to his image we know Him. This posi- 
 tion is strikingly illustrated in Christian experience in all ages, 
 iu an Augustine and Edwards sometimes to such an extent that 
 an enrapturing sense and vision of Deity fills the soul. 
 
 (e.) It results, that God, in all his fulness of wisdom, love, 
 and grace, is known and can be known only through Christ, 
 only as we know Christ. He is "the Way" of knowledge as 
 well as of redemption. Through Him we attain intellectual 
 views of God as well as knowledge of the divine mercy. So 
 that in one sense ive go through Ghrisiology to Theology, in the 
 way of knowing. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. i 
 
 § 2. Can God be defined? 
 
 If by definition we mean a complete view, so that the sub- 
 ject can be properly grasped, so that we can understand, and, 
 so to speak, exhaust it, we must all say that we cannot give a 
 definition of Deity. In this sense to define God would be to 
 circumscribe Him. But the word definition is used in other 
 senses. There are two chief senses in which we may answer 
 the question in the affirmative. (1) An enumeration of the 
 essential attributes or predicates of any being, substance, or 
 thing. (2) The logical definition, which consists in giving the 
 genus and differentia of any subject. In both these cases, we 
 may attain at least to a proximate apprehension of what God is. 
 We can enumerate the essential attributes as in the definition 
 of the Shorter Catechism. Or, we can use the other method, 
 the generic idea being spirit, and the differentia an enumeration 
 of the attributes of spirit by which He is distinguished from 
 other spiritual beings. God is a spirit, who is infinite, abso- 
 lute, and perfect in all his attributes. In either of these senses 
 we may be said to give a definition of Deity. 
 
 § 3. The Mode in which tve gain our explicit Conception of 
 Deity. 
 
 There are here two chief modes found in systems of theology. 
 (1) It is said that we can form an explicit conception of God, 
 simply by an analogy of human nature. (2) The general Cal- 
 vinistic position is that we form our explicit conception of Deity 
 from the analysis of the idea of a perfect being. 
 
 Some Statements on both tliese Points. 
 1. Is it true that all we can know of the divine nature is 
 from the analogy of human nature? 1 It is sometimes said that 
 our whole idea of God is derived, not from the human spirit, 
 but from the analogy of the human spirit's operations; that we 
 take the human mind which we know by consciousness, and 
 then simply extend the powers and operations of which we are 
 conscious and thus form our idea of God ; that this is the way 
 
 1 This position has been discussed and defended by Dr. E. Beecher in ' * Bib. Sac. ' 
 
* CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 in which the idea of God comes up in the human mind; in 
 short, that God is an infinite man in our conception of Him 
 In regard to this, 
 
 (a.) Man is made in the divine image, according to the Scrip- 
 tural representations, as to his essence, his spiritual being, yet 
 he is put under the limitations of time and space. He is made 
 in the divine image morally and also in his spiritual nature and 
 capabilities. 
 
 (6.) We cannot help transferring to God the essential attri- 
 butes of spirit as we find them in ourselves. This is a neces- 
 sity of the mind as soon as we come to think about God. We 
 know these attributes first consciously from our own spirits. 
 Yet, 
 
 (c.) We do this and can do it and are warranted in doing it 
 only under one condition, that of conceiving these attributes 
 in God as perfect, as unlimited, saying that they are freed from 
 all possible limitations of time and space by which we are con- 
 fined. It is only on this condition of extending every attri- 
 bute to infinity that we can make the transfer. Consequently, 
 besides the analogy of a human spirit, we must have tJie idea of an in- 
 finite and perfect being, in order that we may make the transfer. 
 The analogy would be false and fatal unless in making it we 
 everywhere extended to infinity and absoluteness every attri- 
 bute. That we have this idea of God as "native" to us is 
 shown in Natural Theology. 1 
 
 (<£) So God is not only like man but He is absolutely differ- 
 ent from man, because He is an infinite and perfect Being, and 
 in forming our conception of Deity we have to take these char- 
 acteristics and add them to the analogy. 
 
 2. The other mode of gaining our explicit conception of 
 Deity, — the analysis of the idea of a perfect Being. The older 
 theology says there are three ways in which we do this: the 
 way of Negation, of Causality, and of Eminence. By the way 
 of Negation is meant, removing all imperfection, denying to 
 God any limits or imperfections. By the way of Causality is 
 meant, that what is found in the manifestation or revelation in 
 
 1 f il Apologetics," p. 76.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. U 
 
 the creation, we ascribe to God as the cause, and we ascribe to 
 Him those attributes which are needed to produce the effects in 
 creation. By the way of Eminence is meant, that we ascribe 
 to God in an eminent sense whatever of excellence is in tho 
 creature. He has the necessary attributes of spirit, but in an 
 eminent degree. Each of these three ways is to be applied to 
 all the attributes. 
 
 § 4. Anthropomorphism and Anthropopathism. Ascribing to 
 God the form or the passions of man. 
 
 This has been done not only by heathen, but by some who 
 have had a light of divine revelation, as the Alexandrian Jews 
 in the time of Philo; Tertullian, in the reaction from the purely 
 ideal speculations of his time; Swedenborg, who says that God 
 exists or is in the form of a man. The tendency of all rude 
 nations is to imagine God as having some definite form and as 
 having passions kindred to human infirmity. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 1. All idolatry wherever found comes from the impulse to 
 make an image of God and worship Him as such. The image is 
 first made in the mind, and then carved in wood or stone. The 
 idolatry begins in the soul, it is expressed externally and thus 
 we have polytheism. This is one extreme, that of superstition. 
 The image is made and worshiped and does not lead to any- 
 thing beyond. 
 
 2. The other extreme is the thought of God as wholly out 
 of relation with what is human and finite, an abstract deity. 
 This is irreligion. This is the essence of the Deistic conception 
 of God. He is supposed to be so distant that we cannot be 
 brought into any relation with Him. Any feeling in Him, it 
 is said, would be an imperfection. The constant tendency of 
 the highly speculative, cold intellect is to this view — a God 
 without feeling. 
 
 3. In the Christian system there is an intermediate view. 
 It sets forth that man was made in the divine image, and hence 
 
10 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 there must be some analogy between God and man, hence there 
 may be symbols, and in our souls we may find something of 
 God. 1 In the doctrine of the Incarnation, we have the contra- 
 dictions between these two extremes, idolatry and deism, solved 
 in a higher light. God comes in the form of man, and thus we 
 are justified in attributing to Him human sympathy and love. 
 The Christian faith is thus intermediate between heathenism 
 and deism, in the sense that it exhibits in perfection that which 
 these have felt after, God's nearness to man and his infinite 
 majesty. 
 
 § 5. Scriptural designations of the Divine Nature. 
 
 In the Scriptures we have a great variety of divine names.' 
 They are divided as essential, attributive, and names of the 
 modes in which God works, (a.) The essential names are 
 Jehovah and Elohim. Jehovah is put in the front rank, it was 
 to the Jew the ineffable name. The word is from the Hebrew 
 verb " to be," it designates the pure being of God. Elohim 
 has a more general sense. The relation in which these words 
 stand to each other has been very much discussed. It appears 
 to be proved that in the main Elohim is used of God in his 
 most general characteristics and relations, while Jehovah sets 
 Him forth as the covenant God, the God of his people, the God 
 who manifests himself. This usage can undoubtedly be traced 
 in many parts of the Scriptures. — Another discussion was started 
 some years ago in a work entitled Yah-veh, which urges that 
 the name, as restored to this, its proper form, does not signify 
 the covenant Deity and the pure being of God, but rather 
 il He who is to be," as referring to the future manifestation of 
 Deity in the Person of Christ. — The objections are: that even 
 if the word have the future form, it would not necessarily have 
 a future sense. " Jacob " has the future form, but it means, he 
 supplants, and not, he will supplant. Still further, there is an 
 
 1 Thus in the Old Testament we have representations of God derived from 
 human emotions, as when it is said, "God was angry," "It repented Him of what 
 He had done." So too the form of God is represented as passing before Moses. 
 
 2 See Havernick's "Introd. to Old Testament," and Hengstenberg's " Au- 
 thenticity," etc. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 11 
 
 mappropriateness in representing God as revealing himself as 
 one who is to be, merely. The proper revelation in the first 
 stadium would be that of God himself, (b.) The attributive 
 designations of God are those which describe Him- by certain 
 attributes, as The Almighty, etc. (c.) Those which designate 
 Him in relation to his works are such as The Most High, The 
 King, The Lord of Hosts, The Father of all. 
 
 § 6. Theological Definitions of the Divine Nature. 
 
 The definition of God in the Shorter Catechism is one of the 
 best, considered as a definition from enumeration of the essential 
 attributes. It includes the attributes and the qualities of those 
 attributes. First, He is a Spirit, then, infinite, eternal, and un- 
 changeable, and then these attributes cover all the essential 
 qualities of being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, 
 and truth. The highest definition in Pagan antiquity is that 
 of Plato: " God is the eternal mind, the cause of good in nature." 
 Calvin's definition, (and Luther's, nearly the same): " God is an 
 infinite and spiritual essence.'' This is representative of a class. 
 In the 16th century the Pantheistic discussion had not sprung 
 up. It would do very well then to describe Deity as an infinite 
 and spiritual essence, but it would not do now. In order to 
 save Theism, besides such abstract statements, we must intro- 
 duce terms which include the personality of God. Another 
 definition very orthodox in its time is that of Wolff: " God is 
 a self-existent being in whom is the ground of the reality of the 
 world." This, if given now, would at once be called pantheis- 
 tic. In most of the modern definitions the personality is insisted 
 upon. Hase's is a good specimen: "God is the absolute per- 
 sonality who out of free love is the cause of the universe." 
 Hegel's: "God is the absolute spirit," in the mouth of a Chris- 
 tain would mean, a self-conscious spirit, but with Hegel it meant 
 a spirit without consciousness until it becomes conscious in the 
 reason and thoughts of mankind. 
 
 A definition intended to combine the different attributes and 
 to ward off Pantheism: "God is a Spirit, absolute, personal, and 
 holy, infinite and eternal in his being and attributes, the ground 
 
12 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and cause of the universe." In this definition the following 
 points may be noted: (1) Spirit, which gives the generic idea, 
 in contrast with what is material; (2) Absolute, free from re- 
 strictions, not dependent on anything, complete in himself; (3) 
 Personal, to emphasize that characteristic as essential to Deity, 
 (4) Holiness, that holiness which is the sum of his moral perfec- 
 tions, is essential to Him; (5) Infinite and eternal, i. e., his being 
 and attributes are not to be limited by any restraints of time and 
 space; (6) The ground and cause of the universe. The reason 
 of adding this phrase is the fact that as we know God we know 
 llim in part through the universe, ascribing to Him as the cause 
 whatever is found in the universe as an effect. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 
 
 § 1. The Idea of the Divine Attributes. 
 
 In a large sense an attribute may be said to be any concep- 
 tion which is necessary to the explicit idea of God, any distinc- 
 tive conception which cannot be resolved into any other. We 
 start from the position that there is a divine substance, or es- 
 sence ; and an attribute, in distinction from the substance, is any 
 necessary predicate that can be applied to this essence. The 
 term attribute covers all the generic statements that we can 
 make about God, in respect both to what He is and to his mode 
 of working. Thus the unity of God, though inhering in the 
 essence, is said to be an attribute. God's spirituality is also said 
 to be an attribute, although spirituality belongs to his very es- 
 sence or nature. Some of the definitions of attribute found in 
 systems of divinity show that it is used in as broad a sense as 
 this, e. g., "Attribute is a quality by which anything is distin- 
 guished from any other thing;" "The attributes are the single 
 elements {momenta) of the idea of God " (Hahn). In other words 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION 1 3 
 
 attributes are defined as the modes under which we are obliged 
 to conceive of the divine essence, making the attributes simply 
 subjective. Schleiermacher, carrying this to the extreme, says; 
 "The attributes are simply individual relations of the divine 
 perfections, which we conceive of irwthe fluctuations or changes 
 of our pious feelings." Hegel in common with all pantheists 
 says that the attributes of God are simply our subjective concep- 
 tions of God. There is in the divine nature nothing correspond- 
 ing to them. This suggests the question, the most important one 
 in respect to the attributes, whether there is a real distinction 
 of the attributes in God himself or whether the differences are 
 nominal, related merely to our conceptions. Here comes up the 
 old controversy between the Realists and the Nominalists. The 
 Realist said that in the divine nature there were proper distinc- 
 tions, and the Nominalist that these were merely subjective 
 names for Deity. In respect to this question we remark: 
 
 1. The divine attributes do not imply any real distinction 
 in God in this sense, that God is a being composed or made up 
 of distinct attributes. There is no distinction in the sense of 
 composition of parts to make a whole. This can be applied only 
 to a material organization. 
 
 2. What we call the attributes expresses our necessary 
 conceptions of God, our analysis of the idea of God, of the most 
 perfect being, and they are the necessary analysis of this idea. 
 This analysis may be imperfect owing to our finiteness. It may 
 include altogether too little; at the same time, it is a necessary 
 analysis. We cannot do otherwise than make it. Otherwise 
 the idea of God is a blank. To hold that the ideas exist merely 
 subjectively in our minds would annul the very idea of a per- 
 sonal God. We cannot conceive of God except as active. 
 
 3. The attributes express real distinctions in God so far as 
 this: that no one of them can be resolved into any other, and 
 also so far as this, that all of them cannot be resolved into one 
 idea or one fact about God, except the fact or idea that God 
 is the most perfect being. Take the attributes of love and 
 of omnipotence ; you cannot resolve love into power, or power 
 into love. You cannot deduce one from the other. So you 
 
14 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 cannot resolve immensity into justice or derive justice from 
 immensity. 
 
 4. The attributes describe in part what is essential to God 
 in pure being or existence, and in part what belongs to Him as 
 an active being. Yet, • 
 
 5. It should ever be held fast that all the attributes are to 
 be taken simply as modes of the being and action of one simple, 
 perfect, spiritual essence. The essence and attributes are not 
 separable. The attributes express the essence, the essence is 
 the ground of the attributes. It is one simple spiritual essence 
 in these different modes. 
 
 6. The attributes of God must differ from those of man at 
 least so far as this: In man the faculties or powers act imper- 
 fectly, owing to the human finiteness; in God the activity of all 
 the attributes must always concm*, there must be a perfect har- 
 mony of working of all the attributes. Schleiermacher makes 
 an objection to the whole doctrine of the Divine Attributes on 
 this ground, that these imply limitation, and if so they cannot 
 belong to God, and therefore cannot express anything real in 
 God. As to this we say: (a.) What is meant by the attributes 
 is this: certain modes of being or activity of an infinite being. 
 But an infinite being may be infinite in a variety of modes. There 
 is nothing in the nature of infinitude which contradicts the idea • 
 that it may be in a variety of modes, and express itself in a va- 
 riety of ways, and if we say the attribute is a simple mode of 
 being or acting, there is nothing in the nature of infinitude which 
 prevents it. Even Spinoza said that of the infinite substance 
 there were two modes, thought and extension, and one of his 
 propositions is that there may be many others even in an in- 
 finite variety. There may be an infinitude of power and also of 
 love, and one does not limit the other, because each of them is 
 infinite, (b.) The view of Schleiermacher involves essentially 
 the position that an infinite substance cannot act under finite 
 modes, because it would be limited. This however is contrary 
 even to the pantheistic theory, which claims that the one infinite 
 substance does act or express itself under finite modes and a 
 variety of them. An infinite being need not always act for an 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 15 
 
 infinite object or end. It may express itself in the finite. Space 
 and time, for example, are boundless, but there is also a limited 
 space and a limited time, and these do not exclude the infinitude 
 of space and time. Then that which is infinite may exist in 
 finite modes; therefore it may be true in respect to God that He 
 can act under finite modes, (c.) The position of Schleiermacher 
 amounts to this, that in God there cannot be any distinctions at 
 all, or, in other words, we cannot say anything about God. In 
 respect to Him we cannot have a subject and a predicate to- 
 gether. God is a mere It, blank, vacancy, ultimately zero. 
 With a similar statement Hegel starts, viz., that being and noth- 
 ing are the same, i. e., being is wholly without distinctions, so 
 that we can say anything about it, and therefore it is the same 
 as nothing. 
 
 Concluding definition of a divine attribute: Any simple con- 
 ception necessary to our analysis of the idea of God, whether in 
 his mode of being or acting. 
 
 § 2. Classification of the Attributes. 
 
 Various classifications have been proposed. One of the most 
 current is the distinction of the natural and moral attributes: 
 the natural, meaning the attributes of God in reference to and 
 in contrast with nature; the moral, the attributes of God as our 
 moral governor. (It is not meant, as sometimes interpx'eted, 
 that the moral attributes are not native to God.) Sometimes 
 the distinction is into moral and metaphysical attributes, the 
 term metaphysical meaning, beyond the sphere of the physical. 
 Another famous distinction is, the immanent and the transeunt, 
 the former relating to God as He is in himself, internal, quies- 
 cent; the latter, as He is revealed in nature, the attributes in 
 which his energies pass over into the external world. Another 
 distinction is into negative and positive: negative, by which cer- 
 tain limitations are denied; positive, by which certain perfec- 
 tions are expressed. Another: communicable and incommunicable: 
 those which can be and those which cannot be imparted. 
 
 All these modes are liable to the objection that we have to 
 bring in the same attributes under both divisions. Every attri- 
 
16 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 bute can be both negative and positive, every one must be botn 
 immanent and transeunt, every one must partake of the quali- 
 ties of natural and moral. Accordingly, there have been vari- 
 ous attempts to depart from this merely formal mode and to 
 describe or classify the attributes more from the analogy of 
 man; e. g., Hase and Hahn have a fourfold classification: attri- 
 butes expressive of the divine essence, those pertaining to the 
 divine understanding, to the divine feeling, the divine will. 
 Undoubtedly there is a degree of truth in this. 1 
 
 It is proposed to consider the divine attributes here under 
 the following general scheme: (1) Of God, as an infinite and 
 spiritual essence, or as pure being, not considered as in action; 
 (2) The attributes of God as the supreme reason or understand- 
 ing; (3) The attributes of God as moral, as holy. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD AS PURE ESSENCE OR BEING. 
 
 Strictly speaking, perhaps these would not be attributes, but 
 they are generally classed as such. They might have been 
 considered under the head of the divine nature, because they 
 are different aspects of the divine substance. 
 
 § 1. Self-existence. 2 
 
 This is expressed in barbarous Latin as " aseitas" and also 
 in the phrase "causa sui" "cause of himself." We could not 
 
 1 Dr. Breckinridge has a peculiar classification, fivefold: The primary, essen- 
 tial, natural, moral, and consummate. In this arrangement it is difficult to see 
 where a distinction can be made between the primary, the essential, and the 
 natural. What is primary must be essential, what is essential must be primary, 
 and what is natural must be both essential and primary. The consummate attri- 
 butes express merely the harmony of the attributes, they are not distinct attributes, 
 but modes in which these exist: fulness of life, majesty, all-sufficiency, and omnip- 
 otence. Omnipotence is certainly a primary, natural, essential attribute. 
 
 2 See Sam. Clarke's " Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God" foj 
 %n ingenious argument upon this. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 17 
 
 now say this in our sense of the word "cause," which implies a 
 priority in time of the cause to the effect. But in the old clas- 
 sical sense it meant also the ground of being, that God has the 
 ground of his being in himself. In other words, God is himself 
 an absolute being, self-existent and complete in and of himself, 
 not dependent on any other being. The proof of this attribute 
 is not deduction, but an analysis of the idea of being. When we 
 come to reflect upon being, as in Clark's demonstration: " Some- 
 thing is, something must always have been, and if something has 
 always been, it must have been self-existent," we find that we are 
 employing, not demonstration or deduction, but analysis. This 
 idea of self-existence is expressed in the word "Jehovah," in 
 the assertion that "the Father hath life in himself" (John v. 
 26), in the declaration that God is independent of all other 
 beings (Isaiah xl.); Ps. cxiv. is also a description of the same. 
 
 § 2. Unlimited by Space or Time. 
 
 God is unconditioned and unlimited by space or time. This 
 is defining God in contrast with the finite. The infinitude of 
 God has in it two elements. We define it negatively by deny- 
 ing that the attributes of the finite apply to it, and positively by 
 describing God's being and modes of being. The limitations ja* 
 of the finite being comprehended in the two particulars of time 
 and space, the infinitude of God may be resolved into two points, 
 which are defined and described as two attributes, eternity and 
 immensity. 
 
 By the very necessity of our thinking we are obliged to 
 3onceive of all that is finite under the limitations of space and 
 time. We cannot define anything except in reference to space 
 and time. 
 
 § 3. Eternity of God. 
 
 1. The eternity is a necessary inference from the necessary 
 existence. It implies, on the one hand, a negation of the limits 
 of time, and positively, a mode of the being of God in relation 
 to time. One of the old definitions of eternity is: the attribute 
 by which God is freed from all the successions of time and 
 
1 8 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 contains in himself the ground or reason of time. Another 
 definition 1 is: God is the eternal Now. It is paradoxical, but 
 that heightens its force. He is present in all time, as though 
 all time were to Him a now. As far as his knowledge of time 
 goes, it is as if past, present, and future time were before Him. 
 Eternity has been defined by the Scholastics as unicum instans, 
 semper presens et subsistens. 
 
 2. The popular definitions. God exists in the past, present, 
 and future, and this is eternity. Or, that attribute by which 
 God neither begins nor ceases to be. The phrase, God existing 
 in past, present, and future, must be understood with some re- 
 strictions. God cannot exist in time. If He could, or did, He 
 would be limited by time. The expression is popular, not 
 scientific. The Scripture passages which describe God's eternity 
 are more in the popular than in the scientific sense. Job xxxvi. 
 26, "The number of his years cannot be searched out;" 2 Pet. 
 iii. 8; Isa. xli. 4; Ps. xc. ; Eom. i. 20. 
 
 3. Of the relation of Time and Eternity to each other. Time 
 is, properly speaking, according to the common definition, du- 
 ration measured by succession. The idea of succession is 
 necessary to the time. It is a continuance measured by dis 
 crete parts. Eternity, as used in contrast with this, has a two 
 fold sense. It is sometimes used as equivalent to the whole of 
 time, past, present, and future time constituting eternity; and 
 secondly, in the most appropriate and strict sense, it is that which 
 cannot be measured by time, which is not included in time or 
 limited by it; it is the contrast with successions of time, and 
 God as eternal is not in time, but, to use the old phrase, is the 
 " Lord of time," considered as a series of successions. In the 
 origin of our ideas, chronologically the order is time first, but 
 logically eternity is first. Time presupposes the eternity. If it 
 did not, we never could come at it through time, because no 
 succession that we could conceive could make up eternity. It 
 is the same impossibility as deducing the infinite from the 
 finite. 
 
 4. In the attribute of eternity is involved the notion of im« 
 
 • Given by Boethius. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION . 1 9 
 
 mutability The two are closely connected in the Scriptures, 
 as respects immutability of being and of the divine purposes. 
 God's relations to man change, his own being never changes. 
 
 5. The metaphysical difficulty involved in the doctrine of 
 eternity as applied to God. This arises from the idea of putting 
 the successions of time in the divine mind. If they exist in God, 
 then they have always existed. And as these successions are 
 finite, the finite has always existed. This difficulty is to be re- 
 moved, so far as we can, by the form of statement that the suc- 
 cessions of time are not in God but dependent on God. Time 
 as succession begins with the created universe, when there are 
 beings to whom the succession applies. The successions of time 
 are not in God, although they are present to Him in eternal 
 knowledge. Yet it is granted that there is a difficulty here 
 which we cannot perfectly master. 1 
 
 6. Other points which are raised as to the attribute of eternity. 
 (a.) As to the Scriptural representation that God repents. 
 
 Hos. xi. 8; Ex. xxxii. 14; Ps. cvi. 45. How are these declara- 
 tions of God's repentance reconcilable with his immutability in 
 his eternity ? We are to consider that the changes here spoken 
 of are not changes in Him, but in his relation to men. He 
 repents and always meant to. The purpose is immutable. It 
 involves no change in Him. 
 
 (b.) A difficulty arises in connection with Christology. If Go 1 
 is immutable, how could He become incarnate? The answer 
 must be found in the position that in the Incarnation there if 
 not a change in the divine nature, but in the divine mode of 
 manifestation. The humanity is assumed by the divinity. The 
 assumption does not change the divinity, which remains. It 
 simply manifests itself in a human form. God can reveal 
 himself in finite forms, and from eternity determines thus to do. 
 
 1 There is a remarkable passage in the Principia, which illustrates Newton's 
 metaphysical genius: " God is eternal, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, t c, He 
 endures from eternity to eternity and is present from the infinite to the infinite. 
 He is not duration and space, but He endures and is present; i. e., duration and 
 space in their finite measures are not God, although God ever endures and le 
 everywhere present, and by existing always and everywhere He constitutes, He 
 makes duration and soace." 
 
20 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 4 The Divine Immensity and Omnipresence. 
 
 By the divine immensity is meant the attribute of Gcd in 
 relation and in contrast with finite and limited space, as eternity 
 is the attribute in relation to successions of time. The attri- 
 bute in relation to space is expressed by two words, and has 
 thus an advantage over the phraseology which expresses eter- 
 nity. The two are, immensity and omnipresence. In the attri- 
 bute relating to successions in time, we have no word corres- 
 ponding to omnipresence. The immensity of God may be 
 thus defined: the attribute- which expresses (gives the point 
 of view) that God is not limited or circumscribed by space, but 
 that on the contrary all finite space is dependent on Him. It 
 has both a negative and positive side: negative, denying all 
 limitations of space; and positive, asserting that God is above 
 space. 
 
 This attribute brings God into distinct contrast with all that 
 is material. Matter is in space and is space-filling. Finite 
 spirits have no ubiquity. To every finite spirit there is implied 
 a here, which also implies that there is a there where it is not. 
 But God by his ubiquity is everywhere, and yet in a certain senso 
 also he is nowhere, in the sense of not being limited. The mode 
 of the divine omnipresence is a question of debate. 
 
 1. God is present everywhere in working, in efficiency. There 
 is an operative omnipresence of Deity. He acts in and through 
 all space, He acts with and through every substance and thing. 
 
 2. On the other hand, God has also a substantial omnipresence, 
 a presence of his substance or essence everywhere. In what this 
 substantial omnipresence consists it is impossible for us to con- 
 ceive. The necessity of asserting it comes from the fact that 
 if we do not, we carry in our idea the thought that God is 
 somewhere and works everywhere else, and that is limiting 
 Him at once. The divine spirit must be everywhere in working, 
 and therefore everywhere in essence, but how we know not. It 
 is not a difficulty respecting God alone. The case is so in a 
 measure with ourselves. Where we work we are present, but 
 how we are present we know not. We cannot define ourselves 
 with any relation to space whatever, as we can an atom. The 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 21 
 
 Biblical representations are in the form of description : Job xi. 7 ; 
 Ps. cxxxix. ; Isa. lxvi. 1; Jer. x xiii. 23 ; 1 Kings viii. 27. 1 
 
 § 5. The Divine Spirituality, including the Divine Simplicity. 
 
 These are also enumerated as the attributes of God, although 
 they are but abstract statements for the concrete spirit in its 
 mode of being. The divine spirituality is defined as negative 
 and positive : negatively, materiality is excluded ; positively, God 
 is asserted to be essentially spirit or life. He is described in 
 Scripture as the living God, as having life in himself, the most 
 perfect life, efficiency, and power. Involved in the divine spirit- 
 uality is the divine simplicity, the point of view under which God, 
 as He is not allied to matter, so is not susceptible of division, not 
 composite, not capable of being decomposed. Thus God is set 
 forth in the Scriptures in contrast with idols, no graven image 
 can be made to express Him : He is invisible, eternal, spiritual. 
 
 § 6. TJie Divine Unity. 
 
 The idea of unity is a simple idea. As applied to God, how- 
 ever, it is not used as it often is in regard to finite things. As 
 applied to these, unity is equivalent to one of a class, as, one 
 man, an individual in comparison with other men, an individual 
 copy of a class. This is not the sense of the doctrine of the 
 unity of God. He is not one of a class. The synonymous word 
 here is not one but only. God is the only God. There is only one 
 infinite, eternal, personal being. God is one in all that concerns 
 absolute divinity. There is but one God. -}L^^ ^ *^*~-- 1 
 
 1. The Scriptural argument for the unity of God. It is at the 
 basis of the whole Scriptures. In the Old Testament, Exod. 
 xx. 3; Dent, iv. 35, vi. 4; Ps. cxxxv. In the New Testament, 
 Mark xii. 29; John xvii. 3; 1 Cor. viii. 4; Eph. iv. 6; 1 Tim. i. 
 17, ii. 5; Rom. xvi. 27. 2 
 
 1 In Christian literature some of the most magnificent descriptions of Deity are 
 those of his immensity, as the hymn of Abelard : * * Super cuncta, subter cuncta, ' ' etc. 
 
 2 Some German "writers have endeavored to make out that the Scriptures con- 
 tain the vestiges of Polytheism, as, e. g. , in the word Elohim. Again, in represent- 
 ing God as the God of the heavens, the God of hosts, some find traces of star wor- 
 ship. But star worship is forbidden in the early Scriptures. There is nothing in 
 the Scriptures which has any reference to idolatry except in the way of opposition. 
 
22 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY . 
 
 2 The significance of these representations that God is one. 
 It is implied that God is the absolute personality, the absolute 
 causality , the absolute independent beinep : that He is thus in 
 contrast with idols, that He is the only being to whom these 
 characteristics belong. Dens solus unions . These Scriptuial rep- 
 resentations are still further opposed to two main errors, Poly- 
 theism and Pantheism. The opposition to polytheism is manifest 
 As against pantheism, the Scripture represents God as a living, 
 personal, conscious being, one in contrast with any mere abstract 
 idea, such as the generic reason or life, as a being having self-con- 
 sciousness, blessed in himself. All his attributes are in constant 
 life, activity, And energy. 
 
 3. Our rational idea of God cannot carry us any further than 
 this, as to the divinity : that God is the absolute personality and 
 causality, and that He is the only being to whom these terms can 
 be applied. Eeason does not decide what modifications there may 
 be in the mode of existence of the divine being, as compared with 
 that of creatures. There may be in God modifications of personality 
 and of the attributes, which may make Him unlike the creature. 
 What the Scriptures demand, and our moral nature demands, is 
 one sole being, the object of worship. Scripture and reason both 
 reject the idea of two absolute beings, or two infinite beings. 
 There could not be such. Further than this, however, our reason 
 does not take us. 
 
 4. The sense of the divine unity cannot be supposed to be 
 exclusive of the divinity of Christ, as the Unitarians suppose, 
 for the following reasons: (a.) Because the assertion of the unity 
 was primarily directed in the Old Testament against idolatry, 
 the worshiping of any beings less than God. (5.) Because the 
 sacred writers use such language about Christ as would involve 
 idolatry, if it were understood that the unity of the Godhead ex- 
 cluded the divinity of Christ, (c.) The Scriptures would be in 
 contradiction to themselves, if they were interpreted as exclud- 
 ing the divinity of Christ. 1 " In the very exclusion of number 
 from the Godhead, we may find the real significance of the unity 
 
 1 In "Bibl. Sacr." 1846, p. 770, there is a very good statement on this point, 
 from Twesten. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 23 
 
 of God. By denying to Him all number, we ascribe to Him ab- 
 solute unity. But this unity is still an immanent attribute of 
 the divine nature." Its meaning is, that the nature of God is 
 not capable of reduplication, is not to be regarded as a generic 
 union, which includes under itself many or several individuals. 
 Unitarians make a great assumption when they call themselves 
 Unitarians, as if they defended the divine unity. The divine 
 unity which many of them maintain is not the Scriptural view ; 
 it is the unity of an individual being; God is represented as a 
 single individual, as one compared and contrasted with other 
 individual beings. But this is neither a natural nor a Scriptural 
 view of God. He is the Supreme Intelligence, the- one Supreme 
 Personality and Causality, but not one as an individual in the 
 sense in which one man is an individual. If this could be es- 
 tablished, the essential Godhead would be destroyed. It is a con- 
 ception essentially anthropomorphic. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ATTRIBUTES OF GOD AS THE SUPREME REASON AND UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 § 1. Proof that God is the most perfect Intelligence. 
 
 This is proved: (1) By the idea of the most perfect being 
 (2) From the intelligence shown in the world, the course of hu- 
 man history, and also, indirectly, by inference from our own in- 
 telligence. " He that made the eye, shall He not see ? " (3) The 
 Scriptures assert the divine Intelligence and its perfection, set- 
 ting forth the omniscience and the wisdom of God: Job xii. 13; 
 Ps. cxxxix. ; L ukexvi. 1 5: Rom. xi. 33; xvi. 27. (4) The divine 
 government proves the divine intelligence The only basis of 
 certainty in God's government is that He Jniows what is to 
 occur. ' ^ %m Y^ f^^^T^f^ *****^"7 
 
 § 2. Definition of Omniscience, 
 
 Calvin's is one of the best: "That attribute whereby God 
 knows himself and all other things in one eternal and most 
 
^4 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 simple act." This includes what is omitted in many definitions, 
 the knowledge which God has of himself. The characteristics 
 of the divine knowledge are well given by Dr. Pye Smith: "It 
 is (a.) Intuitive: all that God knows He knows by immediate 
 view as we know things by direct inspection; (b.) Simultaneous: 
 all that occurs in all times is in the divine knowledge at once; 
 (c.) Exact; (d.) I nfallibl e." The difference between the divine 
 knowledge and ours is thus summed up in most theological 
 statements: We acquire knowledge, but God knows immedi- 
 ately; we acquire in succession, but God knows simultaneously; 
 we have a knowledge of only a part of time, God has a knowl- 
 edge of all time; our knowledge is indistinct, God's is clear; 
 ours is fallible, God's is infallible. 
 
 § 3. The objects of the Divine Knowledge. 
 
 The divine knowledge is further divided in regard to the 
 objects in the divine mind. (1) God knows hims elf, and in 
 himself all other things, so far as they come from Him. This 
 is the internal knowledge. (2) God truly knows all things as 
 they actually come to be, as past T present, and fu ture. He 
 knows them under their real relations. This knowledge is not 
 conditioned by those relations, but He knows them in those re- 
 lations. He makes those relations. (3) God knows the^ffjsences 
 of things, and here is a point where the divine knowledge sur- 
 passes any that man can have. Man comes to the barrier 
 when he comes to the essence, but he knows there must be an 
 essence, and it must be an object of knowledge. From our 
 knowing that essences are and our ignorance of what they are, 
 there must be some Being who knows more than we do. This 
 proves that there must be an omniscience. (4) God knows 
 what ispossibl&as well as what is actual. He knows the pos- 
 sibilities of things. In making any human being, He knows 
 how that being might possibly act. He jfcmows how the individ- 
 ual will act under certain circumstances. He adopts a certain 
 action into his plan and this secures a certain occurrence, but 
 He knows also what is possible. This is opposed to the panthe- 
 istic view as given by Schleiermacher: "God knows only what 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 25 
 
 is certain, what comes by necessity from his own being, his 
 own nature, and not what is possible.'' But if God knows only 
 what is and not what is possible, his knowledge must be infe- 
 rior in some respects to that of man, -because man can conceive 
 of that which is possible. 
 
 § 4 Of Scienlia Media. 
 
 The authentic definition of this is, the hypothetical knowl- 
 edge of the conditional future. Make an analysis of this phrase. 
 A conditional future is a future which is dependent on certain 
 conditions or contingencies. A knowledge of a conditional fu- 
 ture would imply a certain knowledge of that future with its 
 conditions and contingencies; that though it was contingent 
 there was a certain knowledge of it; but a hypothetical knowl- 
 edge means that the knowledge is still subject to some doubt. 
 E. a., God creates a certain man and places him in certain cir- 
 cumstances. What he does is dependent upon conditions, upon 
 Eis surroundings and upon his will. A contingent event is one 
 dependent on will, fod knows what^ the man will do under 
 the circumst ances. But the theory of soieniia media suggests 
 that God's knowledge is not certain but hypothetical. E. g. t 
 a man comes to a place where four roads meet. God knows 
 that the man will be there and that four routes will be open to 
 him, knows that he may take either, knows what will happen 
 to him if he takes this, what if he takes that, but does not cer- 
 tainly know which he will take. For each of the contingencies 
 God provides and meets with his own action in government 
 whatever the man may do; He exhausts and provides for all 
 the possibilities of the man's action, but does not know precisely 
 what that action will be. This is the most ingenious theory on 
 the Arminian basis. It aims to leave an uncertainty in respect 
 to human volition and at the same time to secure a certainty of 
 divine arrangement. 1 The form in which the theory is stated 
 above is the one in which it is objectionable. In another form 
 
 1 The theory of sdentia media was first propounded by Fonseca, a Portuguese 
 Jesuit, in the 16th century, and was further developed by Molina, a Spanish 
 Jesuit, in the 16th century. It was opposed by the Dominicans, by the Jansenists, 
 and by the Protestants generally. 
 
2 6 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 it is gi.ven simply as the knowledge of a conditional future, 1 i. e., 
 God knows all that a creature can do, then determines as to 
 what the creature will do, and thus forms his plan. The divine 
 wisdom knows all that is possible, and among all possible things 
 chooses that which it deems best. This is undoubtedly correct; 
 and is in harmony with Calvinistic views. But the other view, 
 that God simply provides for all contingencies, confounds two 
 things: the knowledge of all possibilities, which is true; and the 
 assumption that God does not know which of the possibilities 
 will become actual. Against this form of the theory the two 
 objections are: (a.) It makes the divine acts dependent on 
 man's choice or will; (b.) It annuls the certainty of future 
 knowledge, and if the future knowledge is uncertain, the knowl- 
 edge is imperfect, there is no omniscience. 
 
 § 5. The Divine Prescience or Foreknowledge. 
 
 This is commonly divided into knowledge of future ne cessary 
 things, of f atiire-C onditiQRaJl jy\in gg, and of future contingent 
 things The future necessary things are those which are in the 
 course of nature connected by physical sequence. The future con- 
 ditional things are those which will be, under certain conditions. 
 The future contingent things are usually defined as events depen- 
 dent on free will. The divine foreknowledge was doubted as early 
 as the time of Cicero, who says : " If the acts of man are foreseen, 
 then there is a certain order to them, an order of causation, 
 and if there is an order of causation, then fate is the result." 
 Socinus took the ground that there may be some things which 
 God cannot be said to know in any way. Rothe says that God 
 in creating man free, necessarily relinquished his knowledge of 
 future actions. Dr. Adam Clark and Methodists generally de- 
 fine omniscience as the power to know all things. They deny 
 that God does know all future events, but this is because Pie 
 does not choose to know. As omnipotence is the power to do 
 all things, so omniscience is the power to know all things, but 
 this does not imply that all things are actually known. But 
 omniscience, if omniscience at all, must be complete in itself. 
 1 In this form it is carefully stated by Kttapp. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 27 
 
 it must be the knowledge of all things. Unless God have 
 knowledge of future contingent events, we cannot say that 
 He is omniscient, and in order that there may be any cer- 
 tainty in the divine government, God must know what is to 
 occur in the future. 
 
 There are t wo ch ief s ources of objection- to this doctrine, viz., 
 that it is inconsistent with free agency , and that we cannot 
 know how God can know ty.nrft onnt.jn crp-.-nt p.vpnffi Answer 
 to the first objection.:,. .The .difficulty is only with those who deny 
 that liberty and cerJ&ULtjL can be reconciled. If these are con 
 sistent, then God may know how free agents will act. So the 
 question runs over into the other, whether certainty and free 
 agency are inconsi stent and p.ontrfl.dintorv ideas. Even in respect 
 to man, our knowing an event as certain does not prevent its be- 
 ing free. We can predict how some men will act under certain 
 circumstances. If those who know a good deal about man may 
 predict with more certainty, He who knows all about man may 
 know with all certainty. If a tolerable knowledge of certainty 
 with us is consistent with free will, who may say that a total 
 knowledge may not be consistent with free will? The answer 
 to the second objection, that omniscience as implying the 
 knowledge of future contingent events, or events dependent 
 on free will, is inconsistent with free agency, is to be considered 
 more fully in connection with the subject of divine decrees. It 
 may be said here: (a.) that the objection seems to rest on the 
 assumption that God in respect to knowledge has a past, present, 
 and future, so that the limitations of time in respect to knowl- 
 edge apply to Him. This would assume that the whole veil of 
 futurity lies before God as before us. But there cannot be any- 
 thing future to the divine knowledge any more than there can 
 to the divine being. (&.) God may know events in their causes. 
 If He knows all the causes, then He may know all the events. 
 This is a way in which God may know the possible future. Of 
 course we here include in the cause, free will. God who made 
 it may know how it will act under certain circumstances, and 
 may adopt that action into his plan, (p.) God also knows the 
 essences of things, and thus has a source of knowledge to us in- 
 
^8 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 scrutable, so that although we may not be able to conceive how 
 God knows, yet He may know. 
 
 § 6. The Divine Reason* 
 
 Not only is God's intelligence or understanding omniscient, 
 knowing all things, but in God is also the primal reason. In 
 God is the source of the ideas and knowledge of all intelligences. 
 In the divine mind are the archetypes of all truth. Others have 
 truth only by gift and derivation. The ideas of all things are 
 ultimately in the divine mind, are eternal. That is the old 
 Patristic view and is the sense and heart of the Eealism of the 
 Middle Ages. The Pantheistic view says that the ideas accord- 
 ing to which all things are fashioned are extant in the universe; 
 the Theistic »view says that they are only in the divine mind. 
 The ideas of space, time, goodness, etc., exist only in the divine 
 mind. This was the sense of the Logos in the ancient schools, 
 the ideas in the divine mind according to which the world was 
 fashioned. In the school of Philo, Logos means the same as 
 Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs. In Prov. viii. 22 seq. Wisdom 
 is personified. 
 
 Proof of the divine wisdom: (a.) The wisdom of God is 
 asserted in Scripture: Job xii. 6; Proverbs iii. 19; Isa. xl. 13, 
 etc. (&.) Besides, it is proved a priori from the divine omnis- 
 cience. It is impossible to conceive that an omniscient and 
 omnipotent and holy God could be other than wise. There is 
 no conceivable reason for God's being other than in perfect and 
 eternal accordance with wisdom, (c.) Also there are collateral 
 proofs from the history and order of nature, the whole plan and 
 history of the world, the divine moral government, and especi- 
 ally from the scheme of redemption, where we have the highest 
 wisdom manifest. 
 
 Definition of Wisdom: That attribute of God whereby He 
 produces the best possible results with the best possible means. 
 That is wisdom everywhere, and in God it is superlative. The 
 best possible results would of course bring into view the great 
 end of God in creating the universe. Taking that end into view, 
 considering that as decided, wisdom may be defined in another 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 29 
 
 form, bringing out the divine attributes which concur in it, viz., 
 the divine intelligence and love. Then God's wisdom is seen in 
 his using the best means to secure the supremacy of holiness i n 
 the universe. Intelligence and love both concur. Wisdom is 
 not merely an attribute of the intellect, but also of the heart. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ATTRIBUTES OF THE DIVINE WILL. 
 
 § 1. Idea of the Divine Will. 
 
 In some of the discussions in Theology, difficulty is occa- 
 sioned by the different meanings of the term Will. In respect 
 to God it is used in at least four different senses, viz., (1) As 
 the faculty of self-determination , choice, power of determining 
 self to any given course of action. (2) As significant of what 
 God desires should he. not, as expressive of a power but of a 
 desire. This by the Scholastics was called " Velleity." (3) What 
 God determines shall be, what God adopts as a part of his plan. 
 (4) That which expresses the whole moral nature of God, the 
 equivalent to which would be the divine holiness or the divine 
 love, considered as the supreme moral attributes. — These differ- 
 ent senses are important in the discussion of two main points: 
 (nr.Vn.fi to the doctrine of decrees. (K\ aa to t.hft doctrine of 
 virtue. 
 
 Definitions of the Divine WiU. Gerhard: "The will is the 
 essence of God. It is God willing, Deus volens" Calvin: "The 
 will of God is that attribute whereby God tends to the goon 1 rpn- 
 ognized by his intellect. " The most general idea of will is 
 that power by which one prefers and acts out his preferences, 
 It includes both of these conceptions, both immanent and exec- 
 utive acts. Freedom ought also to be defined so as to include 
 these two conceptions; "doing as one pleases" should not be 
 understood as confining freedom to the executive act; there is 
 
30 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 freedom in the being pleased as well as in the doing. The divine 
 will may be defined in a comprehensive sense as that capacity 
 of the divine Being whereby He chooses and acts for the highest 
 good. That combines the two senses of will, and states that they 
 have ultimate respect to the highest good. The divine will as 
 thus defined involves radically three notions: (a.) Freedom, 
 (6.) Power, and (c.) Moral preference. The divine will as in- 
 volving freedom is the absolute freedom of God, as involving 
 power is the divine omnipotence, and as preferring what is best 
 is the divine holiness. 
 
 § 2. The Distinction of the Divine Will as to its Objects. 
 
 1. There is an internal activity of the divine will winch we 
 must conceive of as in God himself under the three points of view 
 named, (a.) As freedom. It is the essential freedom of God, 
 the attribute by which He is the author of all his acts. It in- 
 volves the notion of the highest freedom and the highest moral 
 necessity. (b.) As omnipotence. It must be conceived as hav- 
 ing an internal sphere, and there it is the perpetual and self-sus- 
 taining energy of Deity, (c.) In the sense of preference. Here 
 also it has an internal sphere. It is the immanent preference 
 for the highest good. 
 
 2. External relation of the divine will. Here it is viewed 
 as omnipotence, (a.) As power over possibilities. It is that 
 characteristic whereby what God wills He might not, and 
 what He does not will He might. It lies in his own pleasure 
 to do or to refrain from doing. He might or He might not 
 produce what He does produce in the world, (b.) Divine om- 
 nipotence as actually exerted in the creation and preservation 
 of the universe, (c.) The divine holiness in relation to the cre- 
 ation. This is seen in God's willing and bringing about the 
 highest good, which is the glory of God in the best possible 
 moral system. 
 
 Note. The divine will can never be considered as arbitrary. 
 The true sense of the expression that He does as He pleases is, 
 that He is independent of the will of His creatures, though hav- 
 ing the highest and best reasons for what He does. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 31 
 
 § 3. Other Distinctions as to the Mode of Manifestation of the 
 Divvne Will. 
 
 1. The decreti ve and p receptiv e will of God. The decretive 
 is that which has reference to the divine decrees, what God 
 purposes shall take place. The preceptive is that which God 
 commands his creatures to do. These are often confounded by 
 Arminians. God commands all his creatures to be holy. He 
 permits sin. The permission is a part of the divine decree, but 
 God does not enjoin or desire what He thus permits . Exam- 
 ple of the decretive will, Isa. xlvi. 11; of the preceptive, the 
 Decalogue. 
 
 2. The permissive and efficign£ will of God. This is the dis- 
 tinction made all through the history of Calvinistic theology 
 down to the time of the Hopkinsian school in New England. 
 God permits the morally evil and effects the good. In respect 
 to sin, He for wise reasons simply determines not to prevent it, 
 all things considered. The efficient will of God has respect to 
 what God directly produces through his own agency. The im- 
 portance of this distinction is, that we cannot logically or 
 rationally or morally conceive that God would directly produce 
 by his positive efficiency what He forbids. Accordingly we 
 must employ some milder term than efficiency with respect to 
 the relation of God to moral evil, and the term selected is per- 
 mission. This may not be the best, but it is well to retain it 
 until we get a better. 
 
 3. The secret and revealed will of God. This relates to what 
 God keeps in his own counsel, and to what He has communi- 
 cated: Deut. xxix. 29; Kom xi. 33. The same distinction is 
 signified in somewhat barbarous Latin by the two phrases, 
 tl voluntas signi" and "voluntas placiti" This distinction used 
 to be much insisted on in the discussion of the divine decrees: 
 1 Tim. ii. 4; 2 Pet. iii. 9. It was said to be the revealed will 
 of God that all should be saved, the secret will or actual de- 
 termination in the matter, that some should be. A better point 
 of view for this is found in the distinction between what God 
 desires, in itself considered, and what He determines to bring to 
 
 _pass on t he whole. In itself considered, He desires the happiness 
 
3 2 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of every creature, but on the whole, He may not determine to 
 bring this to pass. 
 
 4. Other distinctions have been made, but thpy are not of 
 much service, (a.) The antecedent and consequent will of 
 God. The antecedent, God desires the salvation of all. The 
 consequent, He determines to save some. Here will is used in 
 the. two senses of general benevolence and purpose, (b.) Abso- 
 lute and conditional. ^What, God wills without conditions and 
 what is depend.ent.Qn .moral. character.. ._He_ a wills. sanctification 
 through the truth, but He wills the renewal of the soul without 
 antecedent repentance and faith, because the renewal is in the 
 repentance and faith, (c.) T he, effi cacious ^jjo^in efficacious. 
 That producing by efficiency, and that which does not act 
 directly. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 This is the attribute of the divine will as power or efficiency. 
 
 1. The idea of Power. It is a simple idea in our minds, of 
 force exerted. The origin of it is probably the exercise of our 
 own power of willing or choosing. We get it not so much from 
 external nature, as from the putting forth of energy in our own 
 acts and from the resistance which Bse»ejQj£ounter«— ■»■ 
 
 2. Omn ipotence is tha t attribute by which God is the abso- 
 lute and highest causality; the absolute, i. e., complete in 
 himself, the highest, i. e., above all other causes. In popular 
 definition omnipotence is said to be that attribute by which God 
 can do whatever He pleases. But this is not a sufficient state- 
 ment, because it limits the omnipotence to the doing, whereas 
 it is a capacity of doing as well as an actual doing. Philosoph- 
 ical limitation is given to it in another way, that God cart do 
 whatever is possible or whatever is an object of potver. 
 
 3. .Proof of the divine omnipotence. 
 
 (a.) Rational proof from God's very nature. W.e cannot con- 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 33 
 
 ceive it otherwise than that an infinite and eternal being should 
 be all-powerful. 
 
 (&.) From the order and existence of the created universe. 
 The act of. creation involves an omnipotent energy, if anything 
 does. 
 
 (c.) Biblical proof. This is various and manifold. Gen. 
 xvii. 1 ; Job ix. 12 ; Ps. cxv. 3 ; Jer. xxxii. 17 ; Rom.i. 20 ; Eph. i. 19 ; 
 Eev. xix. 6. 
 
 4. Limits of Omnipotence. This phraseology is hardly strict. 
 The limitations are simply those which arise from the divine 
 nature or the nature of things, and are not any proper limitations 
 of divine power. They relate to points which do not involve 
 power, as, e. g., that which is contradictory cannot be established; 
 in other words, it cannot be an object of power. So God cannot 
 change mathematical relations or make right to be wrong. This 
 simply means that God's power cannot be conceived as mani- 
 fested except in harmony with and as expressive of his perfect 
 nature. It is not viewed as limited by anything outside of 
 himself. The limitation comes from the perfection of his being. 
 
 Here comes up the question whether God can sin. So far as 
 the real act is concerned, the answer must be No. It is incon- 
 sistent with his nature. It would destroy his divinity, that 
 holiness or purity which makes the essence of his divinity. If 
 He could sin He would not be God. The question however is 
 discussed on another point, as to the bare, abstract, metaphysical 
 possibility. Has God power enough to sin if He had a mind 
 to ? Then the question is absurd. Nobody would contest it. 1 
 
 Another question is whether God can destroy himself. This 
 involves a self-contradiction, the inconceivability of a self-anni- 
 hilation, in which self both asserts and destroys its energy. 
 
 5. Schleiermacher's definition of Omnipotence. He says it 
 is not properly understood as God's power to do what He pleases, 
 but rather that God is the cause of all that is. Also, that there 
 
 The question has been brought up in connection with " ability." "When it is 
 said that a man continuing in his sin can repent but will not, it is said that a 
 parallel case is, God has the power to sin but will not. This certainly does not 
 open much help to the sinful man, for if he should not repent until God sins he 
 would never repent. 
 
34 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is 110 causality in God other than what is manifested. There is 
 no power of doing but simply a doing. There is no reserved 
 causality in God. The reply is: this is contrary to the very 
 idea of rational, intelligent, andindependentbeing. IfGodissuch 
 a being, his power cannot be limited by what is produced. The 
 hypothesis rests on an essentially pantheistic notion of what God 
 is; that He is simply a substance pouring itself out, and that 
 all that exists is simply an emanation from Him, simply an evo- 
 lution of his nature. 
 
 6. Objects ofrthe divine omnipotence. 
 
 These are: (a.) Himself, God is self-sustaining, (b.) The 
 works of creation, bringing these into being and upholding them, 
 (c.) The moral world, omnipotence being directly exerted here 
 in miracles and in the renewal of the soul, while in the ordinary 
 course of nature it is exerted through second causes, making 
 itself thus a regulated, ordinated omnipotence. 1 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DIVINE HOLINESS. 
 
 This is the attribute of the Divine Will considered as the 
 immanent preference for the highest moral good or for that 
 which is in itself righteous. This is the positive aspect of the 
 attribute. Negatively, it excludes all moral imperfection and 
 all moral impurity, not only from the Godhead, but as far as 
 may be from the sphere of God's government. The divine holi- 
 ness, taken in its fullest extent, is applied in a threefold way: 
 (1) As designating the internal operation of Deity; (2) As 
 expressed in the law of God which is holy, just, and good. 
 The law expresses God's holiness in the form of injunction 
 upon others. (3) It has a sphere in demanding moral con- 
 formity on the part of others. " Be ye holy, for I am holy." 
 
 1 The question -whether God could prevent all sin will come up in its propel 
 place. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 35 
 
 As God is holy, so must all moral beings allied with Him be 
 holy. Holiness is sometimes used as equivalent to justice and 
 contrasted with benevolence, holiness having respect to right- 
 eousness and benevolence having respect to happiness. But it 
 is better not to use it in so restricted a sense, but rather to 
 employ it to express the sum of God's moral perfections, his 
 internal preference for the highest moral good. 1 
 
 The definitions of the moral attributes of God depend upon 
 the ethical theory which one adopts. Those who take the Utili- 
 tarian or Happiness view define all these as having respect to 
 happiness. The same is true when holiness is taken to be the 
 chief good, all the moral attributes being then defined as hav- 
 ing ultimate respect to holiness. The various definitions and 
 statements of these attributes form a wilderness. The difficulty 
 arises largely from the fact that theologians are not agreed as 
 to what attribute shall be viewed as the highest in God. In 
 our view, holiness is the best term to use for this, and we frame 
 our definitions in accordance with this usage. 
 
 In pagan antiquity the idea of holiness was external. It was 
 simply the separation of the sacred from the profane, and this 
 was largely the idea at the beginning of the spiritual educa- 
 tion of the Jews. In no other religion than that of the Old 
 and New Testaments is holiness considered as a distinct moral 
 attribute. There holiness is made supreme in God and made 
 to be binding upon men, and in no system of nature is this the 
 case. Objectors sometimes say that all the precepts of the 
 Bible can be found in pagan creeds, but there is no such pre- 
 cept as " Be ye holy, for I am holy." Neither is there any 
 proof of love being the supreme virtue in any pagan system. 
 
 Questions sometimes raised in respect to the Divine Holiness. 
 (1) It is said, we are holy, because conformed to a law; as God 
 is holy, He must be conformed to a law, and therefore there is 
 a law above God. Reply: There is no need of supposing a 
 law to which God is subject. God is himself the reality of the 
 law. There is no law above Him. The law is the expression 
 
 1 There is one definition of love which would correspond with this, as we shall 
 hereafter remark. 
 
3 6 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of the divine moral excellence, and holiness is the moral ex- 
 cellence itself. The definition of holiness as conformity to a 
 law is inaccurate. Even our own holiness is not found in our 
 accordance with a law. That describes holiness, but does not 
 define it. Holiness is not holy because it is conformed to the 
 law, but because it is the best moral state possible. (2) An- 
 other point of debate is raised in the statement: God is holy, 
 and in that choice is involved, it is a state of the divine will: 
 then He might not have chosen ; and hence, He might not have 
 been holy. To this we say: (a.) It is a bare, abstract possibility, 
 purely metaphysical, (b.) The state of God as holy is sponta- 
 neously such or eternally so, by a moral necessity. It is not 
 holy because God first chose to be holy, and then became so. 
 Such a choice is utterly inapplicable to Deity, involving a time 
 when God was not holy. The holiness is the immanent moral 
 state. Wherever there is holiness there is a choice, but holi- 
 ness is not the product of a choice. A holy state cannot be 
 produced in a creature as a creature moves an arm. Holiness, 
 repentance, faith, love are the choices themselves. So in God 
 holiness was not the result of a choice, but an eternal choice. 
 (3) Another question raised is, Whether God's will as holy i» 
 the source of right. Remarks: (a.) Taking God's will as the 
 source of being to all his creatures, He gives them all, and 
 gives them undoubtedly, the idea of right and of moral law; 
 God's will is the source ot right in that sense, (b.) Taking 
 God's will as expressing God's moral pleasure or holiness, 
 that will may be said to be the rule and standard of right, be- 
 cause it is supreme moral excellence to which we should be 
 conformed, (c.) Taking the question to be whether God's 
 will creates right and wrong, so that it can make right to 
 be wrong and wrong to be right, it becomes absurd, (d.) Yet, 
 things morally indifferent may be so commanded that they 
 become right or wrong under the circumstances or relations; 
 not that their nature is changed, but for wise reasons God has 
 chosen thus to command. All external acts are indifferent in 
 themselves and are made right or wrong only by the motive. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 37 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DIVINE LOVE. 
 
 § 1. Definitions of Divine Love. 
 
 These vary like those of the divine holiness, benevolence, 
 etc. The divine love is taken most truly as equivalent to the 
 divine holiness, in the sense that love is viewed as the sub- 
 jective feeling, while holiness is the proper term for that as 
 descriptive of its moral character or excellence. " God is love." 
 Love is the interior state. Holiness is its characteristic. Love 
 is the internal affection. Holiness is the purity of that affection. 
 
 The best definition is, Love is the attribjite^by^jwhich God 
 delights in and seeks to Cjommunicate all good, especially moral 
 good: and as correlative to this, it is implied that God is averse 
 toTmd must overrule and punish, all moral evil. Punishment 
 has a ground in love. If I love moral excellence, I must hate 
 and oppose that which is opposed to moral excellence. 
 
 The question arises whether the divine love can be exhausted 
 or fully met within the sphere of the Godhead itself. Love seeks 
 an object to fasten upon. If we say, the object of the divine 
 love is the creature, then until the creature existed, God's love 
 was simply a craving. Accordingly some from the attribute 
 of the divine love deduce the doctrine of the Trinity. Love 
 seeks an object. Divine love is infinite. It seeks an infinite 
 object. Therefore there must be in the Godhead a distinction 
 of persons. Taking this as a demonstration of the Trinity, it is 
 imperfect, but as an illustration it is good. 
 
 § 2. Proofs of the Divine Love. 
 
 1. From Creation. In the order of creation, love shines 
 through all the hosts of animated beings. 
 
 2. From Redemption especially. 1 John iii. 1; iii. 16. 
 
 3. The Scriptures abound in descriptions of the divine love, 
 besides those which are given in connection with the plan of 
 redemption. 1 John iv. 16; Matt. v. 45; Rom. v. 8; Luke vi. 35 
 
3 8 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 3. Divisions of the Divine Love as to its Objects. 
 
 The divine love has two main objects, the primary, God 
 himself, the secondary, the creature. In the -supreme love of 
 God to himself, egoism is excluded by the nature of God. In 
 loving himself most, God loves the embodiment of all that is 
 supreme in excellence. 1 The divine love viewed as having re- 
 spect to its secondary object, the creature, has two main forms: 
 the love of benevolence and of complacency. The love of be- 
 nevolence is that disposition of God or that form or modification 
 of the divine love which leads God to desire to communicate 
 happiness to all his sentient creatures, which leads Him to de- 
 light in all their happiness. The love of complacency is that 
 element'in the divine love which leads God to communicate and 
 delight in the holiness of 'his creatures. The love of benevolence 
 may be considered as having respect to happiness, the love of com- 
 placency to holiness; but both make up the divine love, both 
 together and not one alone. Complacency is taking pleasure in 
 something. Benevolence is disposition to do good to any one. 
 
 § 4 Other modifications of the Divine Love. 
 
 Mercy and pity. These describe love as exercised towards 
 the wretched, seeking their happiness. Mercy is sometimes 
 used in reference to our needs as sinners. Luke i. 72; here, the 
 term mercy is equivalent to grace, which is the divine love 
 towards the undeserving and sinful. 
 
 Patience and long-suffering. Rom. ix. 22, ii. 4; 1 Pet. iii. 20. 
 
 Lenity of God, his goodness in mitigating punishment. 
 Rom. xi. 22. 
 
 § 5. The Divine Benevolence. 
 
 If the divine love as benevolence, or as exercised towards the 
 creature, be taken as the highest moral attribute, it is not properly 
 defined as the communication of happiness apart from holiness. 
 If it be taken as a modification of the highest attribute, it may 
 bear that restricted sense. It has been said that Edwards con- 
 
 1 It Is not best perhaps to make this prominent in preaching, lest it should 
 be misunderstood; self-love in G-od being the highest excellence and in the crea- 
 ture the ground of all sin. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 39 
 
 sidered benevolence to be the highest moral attribute, made the 
 divine holiness to consist in benevolence and then made the 
 benevolence to have ultimate respect to happiness. But this is 
 not the real view of Edwards. 1 If benevolence be defined as 
 having ultimate respect to happiness, and at the same time be 
 made the highest moral attribute, the following objections lie 
 against the position: (1) The theory presupposes that happiness 
 is the highest good, which is yet to be proved. In the present 
 stage of our inquiries we certainly cannot take this for granted. 
 Rather we must assert that happiness is not the highest good, 
 that holiness is; that being the highest good it involves of course 
 a state of happiness as its accompaniment, but the essence of 
 the highest good is holiness. 2 
 
 2. If happiness be the ultimatum of benevolence, that to 
 which it tends, it is difficult to reconcile with this the existence 
 of so much misery in the world. Misery may be defended in 
 relation to sin, and if holiness is the greatest object to be 
 achieved; but if happiness is the greatest good, it is difficult to 
 see how this can be made consistent with the actual amount 
 and kinds of misery. It is said in reply, "Not all happiness but 
 the highest happiness is the object;" but then what is the 
 highest happiness ? If it is happiness essentially then the same 
 difficulty lies against the position; if the "highest happiness" is 
 something more than happiness and includes another element, 
 then that is the thing to be found out. What is that element 
 in the highest happiness which makes it the greatest good, 
 whereas other forms of happiness are not? Now there is hap- 
 piness or pleasure in sin and there is happiness in virtue, but 
 the difference of happiness is not what makes the difference 
 between sin and virtue, because it would then be simply a dif- 
 ference of degree. Then there must be in the highest happiness 
 an element which is not in the lower, which gives the moral 
 
 1 There are but one or two passages in his treatise which would possibly bear 
 thi\t interpretation and they are not in formal parts of the work. The younger 
 Edwards no doubt made benevolence to have ultimate respect to happiness. The 
 assertion that the elder Edwards did so has been made so positively that it would 
 be well for every one interested in the subject to read his treatise with this ques- 
 tion in view. 
 
 2 Happiness is but its glitter. 
 
40 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 character; but that element cannot be the happiness, because 
 that is what it has in common with sin. It must be a proper 
 moral element. 
 
 § 6. Sources of Proof of the Divine Benevolence. 
 
 (1) From the idea of a perfect hging. There is no conceiva- 
 ble motive for such a one to be otherwise. (2) From the whole 
 testimony and revelation of God set forth in the Scriptures. 
 (3) From the sentient creatjon T the millions of sources of happi- 
 ness found in nature and in man; from the fact that all the func- 
 tions of animal life and of man in their proper and normal use are 
 accompanied by happiness, and that there is nothing in nature 
 to show a malevolent intent (Paley, Nat. TheoL). (4 ) From 
 man's whole nature, intellectual, moral, socia l. (5) From the pur- 
 pose and plan of Kftdemptio-n . Here is the revelation of the 
 highest benevolence. 
 
 § 7. Objections to the Divine Benevolencefrom the existence of Evil. 
 
 Evil is of two kinds, natural and moral. Natural evil is pain 
 from physical causes, moral evil is sin and its consequent suffering. 
 
 1. In respect to natural evil. Natural sufferin g, i. e., the suf- 
 fering from physical causes, cannot be shown to be inconsistent 
 with benevolence. It is often warning^ it is in different ways 
 subservient to the good of the organism. Much of pain is a 
 means of good in the discipline of the powers of individuals. 
 Pain is not the worst thing in the world. Benevolence may i n- 
 flict pain and may constitute beings so that they shall suffer 
 pain. A nervous system is given, having high susceptibility to 
 pleasure, and the liability to pain is incidental, often becoming 
 a means of protection. We doubtless exaggerate in regard to 
 the amount and degree of pain which the animal creation en- 
 dures. In man the moral anticipation and the moral effects are 
 peculiar and are the worst elements of pain. As to death, which 
 is the great article of physical evil, as far as that is limited to the 
 merely animal world, it is consistent with benevolence, taking 
 benevolence to have respect only to the greatest amount of hap- 
 piness. A succession of animals gives a greater amount of hap - 
 ^iness than one animal in continued existence. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 41 
 
 2. Moral evil. That suffering which is the consequent or 
 punishment of sin is not inconsistent with benevolence. It is 
 demanded by benevolence. Sin, as the worst thing in the world, 
 must be punished by the next worst, which is pain. Sin is the 
 worst thing, and the only way in which a stigma can be attached 
 to it is to affix the next worst thing to it. Just as happiness in 
 a just administration is connected with virtue as its immediate 
 concomitant, so should suffering be with sin. Such suffering, as 
 it is connected with transgression, has four relations: (a.) It is 
 the direct expression of the desert of sin, (b.) It is for the highest 
 good, the end of public justice — to sustain the law and the law- 
 giver , (c.) Suffering for sin in a state of probation may be a 
 means of reformation to the sinner, (d.) In a state of probation 
 it may be a means of discipline to higher holiness , to those who 
 are already partly sanctified. 
 
 3. The real problem or difficulty remains, the existence of sin 
 itself All forms of physical evil can be shown to be consistent 
 with benevolence. But if God might have prevented sin in a 
 moral system, how is it consistent with benevolence for Him to 
 allow it? There are several theories on this point. )rj 
 
 The Jlrst theory. Sin is not an intrinsic evil, but an imper 
 feet state of development. Sin is a necessary result of the finite. 
 It is the imperfect action of the finite, a transition stage only, 
 which is to issue in the highest good. It is a negation, {. e., the 
 sin of any act is what that act falls short of being. It might have 
 been by so much better. A moral being might love God with all 
 his heart, but he only loves his fellow men. He falls short of ex- 
 panding his love to its full measure, and his sin is that deficiency. 
 All finite beings must sin, and therefore the divine benevolence 
 might allow sin. If a finite world was to be created, sin 
 must be allowed. This is the general view of Leibnitz and his 
 school. — Objections to this theory: (a.) It is in conflict with our 
 inherent sense of sin as a moral evil. The disobedience of the 
 divine law is not a partial obedience of that law. Sin is a vio- 
 lation of that which is holy and binding upon us. It is not a 
 negation, it is the strongest affirmation of self. (&.) Sin is not 
 merely the choice of a less good, but such a choice as implies 
 
42 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the refusal of a greater good. If sin were simply the choice of 
 a less good, the whole animal creation would be sinners, because 
 they choose lower good, and they would be sinners in propor- 
 tion to their weakness as animals. Sin in act is the choice of 
 the less, knowing the greater, (c.) This theory does not show 
 how the existence of sin is consistent with benevolence, but 
 merely shows how the existence of relative imperfection is con- 
 sistent with benevolence. No one doubts this, and if there are 
 different orders of being, there must be relative imperfections 
 somewhere. It may be consistent with benevolence to inflict 
 pain for the sake of a greater good in the process of education, 
 to stimulate an imperfect being to the proper development of his 
 powers. In order to teach an animal to do something, we in- 
 flict pain. And it is benevolence on the whole to do that, if 
 the teaching be worth anything ; but that does not show how 
 it is benevolent to make a man morally corrupt for the good of 
 othersr*""(rf. ) 'Relative imperfection is r necessary, but sin is not, 
 and therefore the theory cannot hold. 
 
 The second theory. This is the position that sin is the nec- 
 essary means of the greatest good, though in itself the great- 
 est of evils. This has been attributed to several New England 
 divines of the older Hopkinsian school. It is the result of the 
 divine efficiency scheme. Those who hold it are careful to say 
 that they do not mean that sin is in itself a good or that it is 
 a direct means of good, but that it is overruled to the greater 
 display of the divine goodness. Sin is the necessary means of 
 the greatest good, and therefore it is consistent with benevo- 
 lence, because benevolence has respect to the highest good. 
 This comes up for discussion afterward in another connection. 1 
 We mention here only some of the ambiguities in the state- 
 ment. — What is meant by the greatest good? Is it happiness 
 or holiness, or happiness in holiness? What the purport of 
 the position is, depends very much upon the answer to this 
 question. Then what does the term necessary mean? It is used 
 in different senses. It may stand for a metaphysical necessity, 
 so that sin is the necessary stage in the progress toward the 
 greatest good, and in this sense the theory would be the same 
 
 1 Page 147. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 43 
 
 as the first. Or, necessary may mean that the highest good 
 cannot be obtained without this, that it is a necessary condition ■ 
 the sense of the word may be that the end of the moral system 
 pould not be attained without sin, that God could not manifest 
 his glory perfectly except by means of, or on occasion of, sin. 
 
 The third theory. That sin is in the best system because 
 it is the necessary incident to moral agency. God could not 
 create free agents and prevent all sin in the system. The ne- 
 cessity comes here, not from the relation of sin to the highest 
 good, but from its relation to freedom. Freedom is such a 
 power that it can be exerted in sinning despite omnipotence. 
 God could not prevent all sin in a moral system from the na- 
 ture of free agency. Prevention of all sin under the circum- 
 stances is not an object of omnipotence, any more than altering 
 the relation of the three angles of a triangle to two right angles. 
 We defer the discussion of this theory also. 1 
 
 The fourth statement The relation of the existence of sin to 
 the divine benevolence is beyond our comprehension. There is 
 clear proof, on the one hand, of the benevolence and even of the 
 grace of God, and on the other, of the existence of sin. We 
 must take the two as matters of fact, and not allow the exist- 
 ence of sin to override the divine benevolence. To solve the 
 problem we would need omniscience. 2 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DIVINE VERACITY. 
 
 This is not, strictly speaking, an attribute, but a modification 
 of the attributes of holiness and wisdom. Yet it is often treated 
 as an attribute. Veracity is equivalent to the truthfulness of 
 God, the certainty that He will be true in declaring what He 
 is and what He will do. Truth generally is the conformity of 
 declaration or representation to the reality. 
 
 1 Page 149. 
 
 2 Miiller says, that if we could understand sin it would not be sin, for that 
 would imply its rationality, whereas it is irrational. 
 
44 , CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 > v* 
 
 Proof of the Divine Veracity. 
 
 1. There is no cause or motive for error in the Supreme 
 Being. 
 ^ 2. Scriptural Proof: Exod. xxxiv.6; Num. xxiii. 19; Isa. xxv. 1. 
 
 The Scriptural usage of Truth, as applied to God, implies three 
 things: (1) That God is the truth, metaphysically, as to his 
 nature. God is that which as God He must be: 1 John v. 20; 
 -John xvii. 3. (2) That God is the source and center of all 
 truth. (3) In the sense of the divine veracity or truthfulness. 
 On this point two or three questions are raised: (a.) Whether 
 God is sincere in his invitations to sinners who will be lost. 
 The invitations are actually made on practicable conditions, and 
 there is no obstacle to their acceptance but man's depravity. 
 (&.) Whether it is consistent with the divine veracity to threaten 
 those who may not ultimately be punished. All such threaten- 
 ings are to be taken as penalties attached to the violation of law, 
 and if anything can take the place of the execution of penalties, 
 there is nothing inconsistent with veracity in such substitution. 
 The great end to be answered by the, penalty of the law is reached 
 in the atonement. The end of the law and of the penalty is 
 not the penalty itself or suffering. If suffering were the great 
 end, then God could not be true and take away the suffering. 
 But the great end is holiness, and the suffering is merely in 
 order to that, (c.) Whether it is consistent with the divine 
 truthfulness to say that God repents, etc. This has already 
 been considered. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DIVINE JUSTICE. 
 
 § 1. General Idea of the Justice- of God. 
 
 The word justice is one of the disputed terms in the theories 
 ol the atonement and of justification. It is used in both a gen- 
 eral and a specific sense; in the general sense as equivalent to 
 holiness; in a specific sense, as in distributive justice, for example, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 45 
 
 where it means, technically, dealing with each according to his 
 deserts. Justice is not benevolence, though benevolence may 
 require it. Benevolence, used in a partial sense, refers to happi- 
 ness; and justice, used in a partial sense, refers to desert. It is 
 best to carry both up into a higher attribute, public justice, holi- 
 ness or love. Still, public justice and love differ in this, that 
 love expresses the attribute of God, and public justice its mani- 
 festation in a moral government. Holy love induces God to in- 
 stitute a moral system, by which He may show his highest glory 
 and secure the highest good of his creatures. Justice is his 
 mode of administering that system by his moral law, so as to 
 secure its ends, by treating each according to his deserts, yet 
 each iu relation to the great ends of the system. We might 
 show by citations from many authors, that this is the established 
 meaning of distributive justice. 
 
 § 2. Proofs of the Divine Justice. 
 
 1. God as perfect must be just. We cannot conceive other 
 wise of a moral Governor. 
 
 2. The divine justice may be deduced from the other attri 
 butes, wisdom, holiness, and love. 
 
 3. History abounds in evidences of the divine justice. 
 
 4. The Scriptures recognize and assert that God is just 
 2 Chron. xix. 7; Job viii. 3, xxxvii. 23; Rom. iii. 26. 
 
 § 3. Distinctions in respect to the Divine Justice. 
 
 1. Legislative, by which is meant, God's holiness in giving 
 a law with sanctions. Its requirements are holy, its sanctions 
 are rewards and punishments. 
 
 2. Executive or judicial justice, as seen in God's administer- 
 ing moral government according to moral law, by positive re- 
 wards and punishments. There must be in it rewards and 
 punishments in order to distinguish a moral government from 
 a physical, and law from advice. By these God shows his ap- 
 proval of holiness and disapproval of sin, and only thus secures 
 the end of a moral government. This is sometimes called vin- 
 dicatory justice, 
 
46 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 4. Why does God as a Moral Governor exercise punitive 
 Justice ? 
 
 There are four theories: (1) Because sin is essentially ill-de- 
 serving. (2) To reform. (3) To deter. (4) From the interests 
 of general justice. 
 
 The first theory. Sin is punished because it is essentially ill- 
 deserving, (a.) Sin is the worst thing possible, and as such re- 
 quires to be attended by evil, the next worst thing, (b.) Con- 
 science asserts the desert of punishment. In him who sins there 
 is a sense of guilt which is met only by punishment, (c.) Our 
 judgments about others attest the same, our indignation, for 
 example, at great injustice or cruelty. The moral emotion is 
 instantaneous, the mind pronounces that the evil act deserves 
 punishment, (d.) God as a moral governor must manifest his 
 hatred of sin as the opposite of his own holiness, and to do this 
 He must punish. 
 
 The second theory. That the end of punishment is to reform. 
 This is the position of Pelagians, Socinians, and Universalists. 
 It views the punishment in relation to the culprit. There is 
 no doubt that punishment has incidentally this effect. But 
 this cannot be the sole end, for if it were, (a.) It would be op- 
 posed to the moral convictions of the culprit himself. He feels 
 that punishment is right even though it does not reform him. 
 (b.) If this be the end, the end is not answered, there are many 
 cases where punishment does not reform, (c.) Punishment could 
 not answer the end of reforming unless it was also felt to be right. 
 
 The third theory. That the chief end of punishment is to 
 deter others. This views the punishment in relation to other 
 culprits. Deterring others is also an incidental end of punish- 
 ment, but is not the chief end, for, {a.) It is against our moral 
 convictions as to justice that we should be punished simply to 
 keep others from doing wrong when we do not deserve pun- 
 ishment ourselves. (&.) If this is the only end of punishment, 
 it is not attained. Unless the first theory be true, the second 
 and third lose their force. 
 
 The fourth theory. That punishment is required by what is 
 called general justice or regard for the general good. This is 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 47 
 
 ambiguous. It is false or true according to the explanation of 
 it. There are three explanations of it. (1) The public good 
 is taken to be happiness. (2) The general good is taken to be 
 more specific — to reform the criminal and to deter others. As 
 thus understood the position comes to be that of the second and 
 third theories. (3) The public good is understood as equiva- 
 lent to holiness, and thus punishment is necessary as the ex- 
 pression of, and to promote, holiness. 
 
 If the public good is taken in the first sense, happiness is 
 made the great end of the divine system, which falls to be con- 
 sidered by and by. If it be said it is the highest happiness 
 which is intended, there is then the doubt as to what the highest 
 happiness means. If the happiness is such as is found only in 
 holiness, another form of the theory is presented.— The third 
 form above is the true statement, viz., punishment is required 
 by public justice, as the expression of, and to promote, holiness. 
 Punishment is needful to express the displeasure of a holy God 
 against sin as ill-deserving, and also to preserve the love of 
 holiness and hatred of sin in others, (a.) This unites the two 
 views of the inherent ill-desert of sin and the final ends of the 
 whole system. Sin is punished because it is ill-deserving and 
 also to promote the great end of the system, or holiness, (b.) 
 This view does not make the punishment of sin to' be the great 
 end of the system, but holiness, the maintenance of the suprem- 
 acy of righteousness. According to the reasoning of some in 
 respect to the first theory, it would seem that the great end of 
 the system was reached by punishment, but really punishment 
 is inflicted in order that holiness may be maintained, (c.) This 
 view will of course allow that punishment may in any case be re- 
 mitted, if the end can be gained in some other way. Whereas, 
 taking the first view in its strictness, that sin is punished because 
 it is essentially ill-deserving and for that sole reason, then it fol- 
 lows that sin must be punished at any rate, and then there can 
 be no atonement, or else it must be a commercial atonement, 
 a quid pro quo, an exact equivalent to the same amount of 
 punishment. 
 
i 8 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 THE TRINITY, OR GOD A3 KNOWN IN THE WORK OF 
 REDEMPTION. 
 
 ">Ev rpidSi rj SeoXoyiot reXejct Idti." — Athanasius. 
 ," Ubiamor, ibi Triniias." — Augustine. 
 
 Preliminary Remarks. 
 
 1. The specific character of the Christian doctrine respecting 
 God is, that He has become known to man in connection with 
 the work of Redemption, as Father, Son, and Spirit; so that 
 all our knowledge of God may be reduced to the formula: 
 God = Father, Son, and Spirit. 
 
 2. The center and source of our knowledge respecting the 
 Trinity is to be found in the Person of Christ, and in his revela- 
 tion of God to man. His person is set forth as distinct from that 
 of the Father : He also sends the Spirit. _ 
 
 3. The primary Scriptural aspect of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity is not speculative but practical. In the Scriptures it is 
 a great truth, underlying the whole Christian revelation : God 
 as Father, the source of Redemption ; God as Son, achieving Re- 
 demption ; God as the Holy Spirit, applying the Redemption to 
 man. It is not a barren, abstract truth, but vital, interwoven 
 with the whole Christian economy. This holds true, whatever 
 difficulties may be found in the formal statement of the doctrine. 
 The doctrine has always been vital in Christendom, the source 
 of the life and power of Christianity. We find God in the plan, 
 God in the work, God in the carrying into execution of the 
 economy of Redemption. The whole revelation of God ad extra, 
 the divine economy ad extra, is in this Trinitarian plan. 
 
 Nothing can be further from the truth than the representa- 
 tion of the Trinity as a mere abstract doctrine about the interior 
 of God, with no vitality. 1 
 
 4 The doctrine of the unity of God, taken in the sense that 
 God is a single person, like a human person, having a single, 
 circumscribed personality, is no more natural, and no more 
 
 1 See Dr. Bushnell, in New Englander, 1854. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 49 
 
 rational in itself, than the doctrine of the Trinity. God is the 
 only being; there is only one such being — that is the truth, and 
 the whole of the truth on this point. But it is in itself really no 
 easier to conceive of God as one person, single I, than as three 
 persons, and no more rational. It is anthropomorphic as truly 
 as some popular misrepresentations of the Trinity are said to be 
 tritheistic. 
 
 5. The doctrine of the Trinity being one respecting the in- 
 terior economy, as well as the mode of revelation, of the Godhead, 
 we must naturally expect that it will be mysterious, in the sense 
 that we cannot grasp it, conceive of it definitely, as we do of 
 things and beings finite and limited. It is a mystery, not an 
 absurdity; an absurdity is a statement which involves what is 
 self-contradictory to conception. It is a mystery, not an enig- 
 ma; for an enigma is something that puzzles the ingenuity, of 
 which there is supposed, however, to be a definite solution. A 
 mystery is somewhat, which is partly intelligible and partly 
 unintelligible — intelligible in many of its relations and modes 
 of manifestation, unintelligible in its interior nature. Athana- 
 sius hence well says, "this doctrine is not an enigma, but a 
 divine mystery." We may know that it is, but not what it is. 
 A mystery, again, is, in the Scriptural usage, some revealed fact 
 respecting God and the divine agency, which we can compre- 
 hend so far as it is revealed — which we can believe on sufficient 
 testimony, but which we cannot grasp with the understanding. 
 
 The doctrine does not assert that God is one and three in 
 the same sense, "which one consideration," says Dr. South, 
 " well weighed, will blunt the edge of all assaults against this 
 article." How far we may even find something rational in it, 
 we shall consider. 
 
 6. For the Trinity there is a strong preliminary argument in 
 the fact that in some form it has always been confessed by the 
 Christian Church, and that all that has opposed it has been 
 thrown off! When it has been abandoned, other chief articles, 
 as the atonement, regeneration, etc., have almost always fol- 
 lowed it, by a logical necessity; as when one draws the wire 
 from a necklace of gems, the gems all fall asunder. It is also 
 
5 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, 
 
 true that it has been the subject of many prolonged controversies 
 and various modes of statement. But the great result of these 
 has been to bring out the doctrine in its various aspects, and 
 especially as interwoven with the scheme of Redemption. 
 
 7. The leading formula of the doctrine was adopted to guard 
 against three errors: Tritheism, Sabellianism, Arianism. 
 
 Outline of the Course on the Trinity. 
 
 Prop. I. — The Scriptures represent God as one, yet they ascribe Divinity to 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Pbop. II. — The Distinctions of the Godhead set forth here are not confined to 
 the revelation of God, but are internal. 
 
 Pbop. III. — The existence of such personal distinctions in the Godhead is not 
 contrary to reason, though it involves a mystery. 
 
 Pbop. TV. — The history of theology and of philosophy tends to confirm the 
 Christian faith in the Trinity. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MANIFESTED TRINITY. 
 
 First Proposition. While representing God as one, the 
 Scriptures also ascribe divinity to the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 Course of the Argument, 
 L — That God is one— unity is ascribed to God. 
 IX — That the Father is divine. 
 TTT- — That the Son is divine. 
 IV.— That the Holy Spirit is divine. 
 
 V.— That the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are classed together, separately from 
 all other beings. The Trinitarian texts. 
 
 § 1. That God is one. 
 
 See discussion of the Divine Unity. 
 
 Scripture Proof: 
 
 Exodus xx. 3. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me.'' 
 
 Deut. iv. 35. " Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest 
 know that the Lord He is God; there is none else beside Him." 
 
 Deut. vi. 4, "Hear, Israel: The Lord our God is one 
 Lord." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 51 
 
 Mark xii. 29. "And Jesus answered him, The first of all 
 the commandments is, Hear, Israel: The Lord our God is one 
 Lord." 
 
 1 Cor. viii. 4. "We know that an idol is nothing in the 
 world, and that there is none other God but one." (Referring 
 to Deut. iv. 39. " Know therefore this day, and consider it in 
 thine heart, that the Lord He is God in heaven above, and upon 
 the earth beneath: there is none else.") 
 
 Eph. iv. 6. " One God and Father of all, who is above all, 
 and through all, and in you all." 
 
 1 Tim. i. 17. "The only [wise] God." 
 
 § 2. That the Father is divine and a distinct Person. 
 
 This is not contested. 
 
 (a.) The word Father is used in the Scriptures in a two- 
 fold sense and relation in respect to the Godhead: sometimes aa 
 equivalent to God, sometimes of the first person in the Trinity. 
 
 Of passages where the word is used as equivalent to God, 
 and not implying personal distinctions, there may be mentioned: 
 
 In the Lord's prayer: "Our Father which art in heaven." 
 
 Deut. xxxii. 6. "Is not He thy father that hath bought 
 thee?" 
 
 Isa. lxiii. 16. "Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abra- 
 ham be ignorant of us Thou, O Lord, art our Father, 
 
 our Eedeemer." 
 
 Ps. ciii. 13. " Like as a father pitieth his children." 
 
 (b.) Passages in which the word is applied to God in con- 
 trast with Christ, (yet not with direct respect to their personal 
 relations to each other as Father and Son, even in the revelation). 
 
 1 Cor. viii. 6. " To us there is but one God, the Father, of 
 whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, 
 by whom are all things, and we by Him." This is spoken of 
 Christ, not in his internal, but, so to speak, external relation to 
 the Father, (a statement of course not inconsistent with the divin- 
 ity of Christ). The word Father here means not the whole 
 Godhead, but the unrevealed. 
 
 Gal. i. 3, 4. " Grace be to you, and peace, from God the 
 
52 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for 
 our sins, .... according to the will of God and our Father/' 
 (The latter expression is a Hebraism, and for the relative). 
 
 John xvii. 3. "That they might know thee the only true 
 God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." 
 
 Eph. iv. 5, 6. " One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
 and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in 
 you all." 
 
 (c.) There are other passages where the word is used as de- 
 noting a special relation to Christ as Son, to Christ in his office 
 of Eedeemer. 
 
 Rom. xv. 6. "That ye may with one mind and one mouth 
 glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 2 Cor. xi. 31. "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not." 
 
 Eph. i. 3. " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in hea- 
 venly places in Christ." 
 
 John v. 18. The complaint of the Jews because Christ had 
 " said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with 
 God." 
 
 John v. 23. Christ's declaration of the design of God, "that 
 all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father." 
 
 (d.) A class of passages may also be referred to, in which a 
 still more intimate relation seems to be implied, (not now to 
 discuss what relation, but deferring the question until the Sonsliip 
 is considered). 
 
 John xvii. 1. "Father, the hour is come: glorify thy Son, 
 that thy Son also may glorify thee." 
 
 John x. 30. " I and my Father are one." 
 
 Note.— That form of the Sabellian hypothesis, which makes the Father one 
 of the modes of manifestation of the hidden God, • has no countenance in Scrip- 
 ture. It is inconceivable. There is no Father manifested; it is God the Father 
 — Father being the perfect equivalent of God. 
 
 * This view says that the hidden, unrevealed, God and the Logos are from 
 eternity, but that the Father, Son, and Spirit are modes of manifestation of that 
 hidden God. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 53 
 
 John x. 15. "As the Father knoweth me, and I know the 
 Father." 
 
 § 3. That the Son is divine and a distinct Person from the Father. 
 The argument for this is cumulative, derived from a variety 
 of independent assertions of the Scriptures. 
 
 (A.) Christ was pre-existent He existed as a distinct per- 
 sonal being before He came into the world. "Manhood was 
 not his original character." 
 
 (a.) The following passages have special force, being Christ's 
 own testimony; 
 
 John iii. 13. "No man hath ascended up to heaven but He 
 that came down from heaven, even the Son of man," etc. 
 
 John vi. 38. " I came down from heaven, not to do my own 
 will." 
 
 John vi. 62. " What and if ye shall see the Son of man as- 
 cend up where He was before ? " 
 
 John xvii. 5. " Glorify thou me with thine own self with 
 the glory which I had with thee before the world was." 
 
 John viii. 58. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abra- 
 ham was, I am." (Socinus would interpret this, Before Abraham 
 can be Abraham, 1 must be Messiah, i. e M in the decree of God. 
 The Jews interpreted the verse before differently, saying, "Thou 
 art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ? ") 
 
 (b.) Another class of passages embraces such as these: 
 
 1 Cor. xv. 47. "The second man is [the Lord] from heaven. * 
 
 Gal. iv. 4. " When the fulness of the time was come, God 
 sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law " 
 
 Col. i. 17. He is before all things and by Him all things 
 consist." 
 
 John i. 1, and 3. " In the beginning was the Word." " All 
 things were made by Him." 
 
 (c.) There is a class of texts which imply a change in Christ's 
 condition, through his Incarnation. 
 
 John i. 14. " The Word was made flesh." 
 
 Phil. ii. 6, 7. " Who being in the form of God made 
 
54 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 himself of no reputation." (The expression "form of God" proves 
 pre-existence. "Form of God" could not be used for mere 
 endowments.) 
 
 (B.) Christ was not merely pre-existent (and superangelic, 
 Heb. i. 4, 5, 6; Rev. v. 11), but He was the first of all beings ex- 
 cepting the Father. 
 
 John iii. 31. " He that cometh from above is above all." 
 Col. i. 15. " Who is the image of the invisible God, the first- 
 born of every creature." 
 
 Col. i. 18. "Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the 
 dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence." 
 Kev. i. 5. " The prince of the kings of the earth." 
 Rev. iii. 14. " The beginning of the creation of God." 
 Matt. xi. 27. " All things are delivered unto me of my Father." 
 Matt, xxviii. 18. "All power is given unto me in heaven 
 and in earth." 
 
 John x. 15. "As the Father knoweth me, and I know the 
 Father." 
 
 Col. i. 15, 17. " Who is the image of the invisible God." " And 
 He is before all things." These and many similar passages show 
 that Christ is the first being in the universe, next the Father. 
 
 (0.) Christ was not only pre-existent, superangelic, next the 
 Father, but also the Creator of the universe. 1 
 
 John i. 3. " All things were made by Him," 67 avtov iyevero. 
 
 Heb. i. 10. "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the 
 foundation of* the earth ; and the heavens are the works of thine 
 hands." 
 
 Col. i. 16. " For by Him (kv avrta) were all things created 
 
 (£?m'c?37/) all things were created by Him and for Him " 
 
 (td TtcLvroL Si avtov nai ei$ avtov sxtidtai). 
 
 As to the force of this argument we remark : 
 
 1. Creation is an act of omnipotence; it is inconceivable that 
 
 • "The Christian Cosmos: the Son of God the Revealed Creator," by E. W. 
 Grinfield, London, 1857, is full and good on the Biblical teaching, the Testimony 
 of the Church, and the Bearings of the Doctrine. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 55 
 
 it should be delegated; if anything implies omnipotence, crea- 
 tion does. 
 
 2. Creation is expressly attributed to God, hence Christ is 
 God. 
 
 Gen. i. 1. " In the beginning God created." 
 Isa. xliv. 24. "I am the Lord that maketh all things." 
 Heb. iii. 4. " For every house is builded by some man, but 
 He that built all things is God." 
 
 3. It is no objection that in John i. 3, SI avrov is used (in 
 Col. i. 16, it is hv avro)), for in Rom. xi. 36, of God the Father 
 it is said "all things" Si avrov; and of Him also in Heb. ii. 10, 
 Si ov, *' through whom are all things." 
 
 4. Nor can an objection be drawn from the passages which 
 ascribe instrumentality to the Son in creation. 
 
 Heb. i. 2. "By whom also He made the worlds.'' 
 
 This is not inconsistent with proper divinity: we infer that 
 
 only through a divine being could such a work be accomplished 
 
 — for Christ is elsewhere described as divine. 
 
 {D.) Christ is not only pre-existent, superangelic, next the 
 Father, Creator, but other incommunicable divine attributes 
 (or those we must conceive of as such) are ascribed to Him. 
 
 These attributes are not merely such as imply the perfection 
 of any being after his kind, but those which imply divinity. 1 
 
 (a.) Omnipotence. 
 
 Is. ix. 6. "His name shall be called the mighty God." 
 
 Phil. iii. 21. "The working whereby He is able to subdue 
 ovon all things unto himself." (See also 1 Cor. xv. 26. "The 
 last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.") 
 
 Heb. i. 3. "Upholding all things by the word of his power. 7 ' 
 
 Rev. i. 8. "I am the Almighty." 
 
 (&.) Omnipresence. 
 
 Heb. i. 3, see above. (Ubiquity.) 
 
 Matt, xxviii. 20. "Lo, I am with you alway." <&>*.•, . 
 
 (c.) Eternity. ' t^&^^S^"^^'' 
 
 John i. 1. " In the beginning was the Word." 
 
 » The argument is: having divine attributes, He must be divine. 
 
56 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Kev. i. 8. " I am Alpha and Omega." 
 
 17. " I am the first and the last" 
 
 18. "I am He that liveth." 
 
 Kev. xxii. 13. "I am Alpha and Omega." 
 
 Compare Is. xliv. 6. "I am the first and the last: and beside 
 me there is no God." 
 
 (d.) Omniscience. 
 
 As to Christ's superhuman knowledge: 
 
 Compare Luke ii. 47: "And all that heard Him were aston- 
 ished at his understanding and answers," with Isa. xl. 2: "And 
 the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom 
 and understanding." 
 
 John ii. 24. "He knew all men" — "what was in man." 
 
 Matt. xi. 27. "Neither knoweth any man the Father save 
 the Son." 
 
 John xxi. 17. " Lord, thou knowest all things." 
 
 Rev. ii. 23. "I am He which searcheth the reins and hearts." 
 (Compare Jer. xvii. 10. " I the Lord search the heart, I try the 
 reins." Acts i. 24. "Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts 
 of all men.") 
 
 Two confirmatory grounds of argument as to Christ's posses- 
 sion of divine attributes. 
 
 1. From his working of miracles — in a peculiar way: (a.) As 
 proof of his messiahship, and Messiah is divine; (&.) In his own 
 name and for his own glory — different from the disciples, who 
 wrought in the name of Christ, and by power received from Him. 
 
 2. The last judgment is to be conducted by Christ, which 
 implies a divine position and authority together with the attri- 
 bute of omniscience. 1 
 
 (K) Christ is not merely pre-existent, above all, Creator, pos- 
 sessor of divine attributes, but the divine name is applied to 
 Him as to no other being in the Scriptures, excepting the Fa- 
 ther, and in a way which implies supreme divinity. 
 
 i In the Christ. Exam., Nov. '57,. the judgment is resolved into the idea of 
 retribution as centering in Christ. The older Unitarians did not allow that the 
 Scriptures taught these things of Christ, but the younger allow them and say 
 they are metaphorical. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 57 
 
 The passages in which Christ is called God: 
 
 Ps. xlv. 8; Ps. cii. 24, 25, compared with Heb. i. 8, 10; Acts 
 xx. 28; Eom. ix. 5; Eph. v. 5; 2 Thess. i. 12; Titus ii. 13; 2 Pet. 
 i 1 ; John i. 1 ; 1 John v. 20. 
 
 A general objection to the whole argument under this head 
 is that there are cases where the name "God" is applied to in- 
 feriors. As Exod. vii. 1, "Jehovah said to Moses, See, I have 
 made thee a god (Elohim) to Pharaoh"; Ps. lxxxii. 6, "I have 
 said ye are gods, and all of you children of the Most High " 
 (Elohim used of magistrates). 
 
 But, in these cases the context decides. Besides the term is 
 Elohim (the appellation rather than the most proper name of 
 God), while "Jehovah" is expressly applied to Christ. 
 
 (a.) The first class of passages, showing the direct use of the 
 name, God. 
 
 (The consideration of John i. 1 is postponed.) 
 
 1 John v. 20. "This is the true God and eternal life." The 
 passage has immediate reference to Christ. "The eternal life," 
 in John's usage, relates to Christ, and the reference here is the 
 same for the true God as for the eternal life. 
 
 Rom. ix. 5. " Whose are the fathers, and of whom as con- 
 cerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for- 
 ever." All the MSS. and ancient versions have it thus: in the 
 latter part of the last century, it was proposed to alter to: 
 "Who is over all: God be blessed forever." But (1) this was 
 never heard of until so late ; (2) in the Greek, in all regular dox- 
 ologies, "blessed" comes first; (3) we might, by punctuation, 
 alter any other passage just as well. 
 
 Heb. i. 8, 9. " But unto the Son He saith, Thy throne, God, 
 is for ever and ever . . . therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed 
 thee." (Cf. Ps. xlv. 6, 7.) Some render: "God is thy throne," 
 but against usage and destroying the argument, for it supposes 
 " the throne " to be used as a support, which is not warranted. 
 " Thy God " brings to view the relation of'the Son to the Father, 
 either as official or internal. 
 
 John xx. 28. "Thomas said . . . My Lord and my God." Not 
 "mere excitement of feeling." 
 
58 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Acts xx. 28. "The church of God which He hath purchased 
 with his own blood." 
 
 John i. 18. For "the only begotten Son" it is most probable 
 "the only begotten God" should be read. 
 
 1 Pet. iii. 15. "Sanctify the Lord Christ" (instead of "the 
 Lord God") "in your hearts." Cf. Is. viii. 13, "Sanctify the 
 Lord of hosts himself." 
 
 (6.) The second class of passages: those in which the name 
 of the supreme deity in the Old Testament is ascribed to Christ 
 in the New Testament. 
 
 Is. vi. 1. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the 
 Lord .... high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple." 
 
 John xii. 37-41. " These things said Esaias, when (because) 
 he saw his glory, (i. e., Christ's, see verse 37, and seg.,) and 
 spake of Him." 
 
 Ps. cii. 25. "Of old hast thou ("My God," [Eli] verse 24,) 
 laid the foundation of the earth : and the heavens are the work 
 of thy hands." 
 
 Heb. i. 10. "And, thou, Lord (verse 8, "unto the Son He 
 saith") "in the beginning hast laid," etc. 
 
 Is. vii. 14. " Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, 
 and shall call his name Immanuel" (El). 
 
 Matt, i 21. "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou 
 shalt call his name JESUS; for He shall save his people from 
 their sins." 
 
 Is. ix. 6. " For unto us a child is born .... and his name 
 shall be called .... the mighty God" (El). 
 
 That the New Testament ascribes the whole of what is 
 said in Is. ix. 1-7 to Christ is seen by comparing Is. ix. 1, 2, 
 with Matt. iv. 16, Eph. v. 8, 14; Is. ix. 6, first clause, with Luke 
 ii. 11, second clause with John iii. 16, last clause with Eph. ii. 14, 
 and the expression "the mighty God" with Titus [ii. 13: 
 "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of 
 the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." 
 
 Is. xl. 3. "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 Prepare ye the way of the Lord" (Jehovah). 
 
 John i. 23. " He said, I am the voice of one crying in the 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 59 
 
 wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the 
 prophet Esaias." (Cf. John iii. 28, and Mai. iii. 1. "The 
 Lord whom ye seek.") 
 
 (c.) The third class of passages: those in which there is 
 an indirect use of the name of God, or of expressions which 
 imply entire divinity. These heighten the incidental effect 
 of the argument. 
 
 Phil. ii. 6-8. "Who, being in the form (floppy) of God." 
 
 The form of God (jAopq>r/, in distinction from 6xr}V-<x-> or the 
 outward and changing) means, the real nature, the divine 
 attributes, the aggregate of the " distinctive qualities,"— so 
 from Aristotle down; apitaynos is not " robbery " (which would 
 directly affirm Christ's divinity), but = rd apitay }.i<x=. "a prize" 
 ("spoil") — i. e., a treasure to be seized. Still it implies di- 
 vinity, for (Lightfoot, Comm. on Phil., 1868,) "How could it 
 be a sign of humility in our Lord not to assert his equality 
 with God, if He were not divine?" 1 
 
 Heb. i. 3. " Who being the brightness of his glory and 
 the express image of his person." 
 
 John v. 18. "Because he had not only broken the Sabbath, 
 but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal 
 with God." 
 
 (It is objected that verse 19 reads: "The Son can do noth- 
 ing of himself, but what He seeth the Father do:" but the mean- 
 ing is, Not apart from or independently of God, but in perfect 
 concurrence with and "subordination" to Him). 
 
 John x. 33. "For a good work we stone thee not; but 
 for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest 
 thyself God." 
 
 John xix. 7. " We have a law, and by our law he ought 
 to die, because he made himself the Son of God." 
 
 Upon the three passages last cited this remark is to be 
 
 1 So I>orner (Jahrb. f. d. Theol.): "Though in and of himself having the 
 divine form, he yet did not look at equality with God {such as his whole person 
 was destined for or to) [with a view to] robbery (as to be gained by violence) 
 but He humbled himself," etc. 
 
60 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 made: "If Jesus was not God, he was guilty of blaspnemy, 
 and the Jews were right in seeking to put Him to death." 
 
 (d.) There are passages, implying Christ's entire community 
 of action and purpose with God, which are best explained by 
 the Saviour's divinity. 
 
 John v. 19. "The Son can do nothing of himself." (See 
 above.) 
 
 John xvii. 10. "And all mine are thine, and thine are 
 mine." 
 
 John v. 17. "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." 
 
 John x. 30. " I and my Father are one." 
 
 (e.) There are passages such as those which follow, in which 
 the term "God" is, on the basis of the previous citations, most 
 naturally applied to Christ. 
 
 Eph. v. 5. " Nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath 
 any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God" (where 
 "even of God" is most natural). 
 
 Tit. ii. 13. "The glorious appearing of the great God and 
 our Saviour (there should be a comma after Saviour, "ap- 
 pearing of our great God and Saviour",) Jesus Christ." 
 
 2 Pet. i. 1. "Through the righteousness of God and (even) 
 our Saviour (Saviour,) Jesus Christ." 
 
 2 Tim. iv. 1. "I charge thee therefore before God, and 
 the Lord Jesus Christ" (before God even Christ Jesus). 
 
 Luke i 16. " And many of the children of Israel shall He 
 turn to the Lord their God." (Proof; verse 17, "And he 
 shall go before Him. 11 ) 
 
 Col. ii. 9. "For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily." 
 
 (F.) Christ is exhibited in the Scriptures not merely as 
 pre-existent, above all, Creator, possessor of divine attributes, 
 and bearer of the divine names, but also as the object of re- 
 ligious worship. 
 
 The force of this additional argument is seen from a com- 
 parison of passages. 
 
 Worship is to be paid only to God: the Son is worshiped. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 61 
 
 Matt. iv. 10. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
 Him only shalt thou serve." 
 
 Heb. i. 6. "Let all the angels of God worship Him." 
 
 Exod. jx. 3. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." 
 
 John v. 23. " That all men should honor the Son, even as 
 they honor the Father." 
 
 Is. xlv. 5. "No God beside me." 
 
 Heb. i. 8. "Thy throne, God, is for ever and ever." 
 
 Is. xliv. 8. "Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no 
 God." 
 
 John i. 1. "The Word was God." 
 
 Result of such comparisons, (Waterland): (1) From divine 
 worship all beings are to be excluded excepting God; (2) Christ 
 not being excluded, must be God. 
 
 Other passages: 
 
 Heb. i. 6. " Let all the angels of God worship Him." The 
 word for "worship" is %po6nvvr}6dtw6av\ but it is the same as 
 in Matt. iv. 10, "Thou shalt worship (rtpodxwiideis) the Lord 
 thy God." (In Ps. xcvii. 7, to which Heb. i. 6 probably refers, 
 the command "worship Him all ye gods" [ElohimJ is pre- 
 ceded by the denunciation : " Confounded be all they that serve 
 graven images, that boast themselves of idols.") 
 
 Phil. ii. 10. " That at the name of Jesus every knee should 
 bow .... and every tongue confess," etc. Here He is wor- 
 shiped by the adoring universe. 
 
 2 Tim. iv. 18. "To whom be glory for ever and ever." 
 
 2 Pet. iii. 18. "To Him be glory both now and for ever." 
 
 Eev. v. 13. " And every creature heard I saying, 
 
 Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that 
 sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." 
 
 The apostles and primitive martyrs worshiped Christ. 
 
 Luke xxiv. 51, 52. " He was parted from them, and carried 
 up into heaven, And they worshiped Him." 
 
 Acts vii. 59, 60. "And they stoned Stephen, calling upon 
 
 [the Lord], and saying, Lord Jesus receive my spirit 
 
 Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." 
 
 2 Cor. xii. 8. "For this thing I besought the Lord thrice 
 
62 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 that it might depart from me." Who "the Lord" is, is seen in 
 the next verse: "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in 
 my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 
 
 1 Thess. iii. 11, 12. "Now God himself and our Father, and 
 our Lord Jesus (Christ), direct our way unto you. And the 
 Lord make you to increase and abound," etc. 
 
 Here there is distinction between Christ and the Father, yet 
 Christ is equally with the Father the object of the prayer. 
 
 2 Thess. ii. 16, 17. "Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself" 
 (reverse order from that in the passage just cited, Christ being 
 named first) "and God, even our Father, which hath loved 
 
 us, comfort your hearts and stablish you in every good 
 
 word and work." 
 
 Confirmatory passages: 
 
 1 Cor. i. 2. " With all that in every place call upon the 
 name (ro?s kTunaXoviievotc, to ovojua; compare 1 Peter i. 17, "and 
 if ye call on the Father," si narepa £7tixaXeidSe y ) of Jesus Christ 
 our Lord, both theirs and ours." 
 
 This shows that "calling upon" Christ was the trait of 
 Christians everywhere. 
 
 John xiv. 14. "If ye shall ask anything in my name I will 
 do it." 
 
 When, now, we compare with such declarations and state- 
 ments of fact, passages such as, Isaiah xlv. 22: " Look unto me 
 and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and 
 there is none else ; " and as, Jeremiah xvii. 5 : " Thus saith 
 the Lord, cursed be the man that trusteth in man and that 
 maketh flesh his arm," and see here, how praise and glory 
 and honor, etc., are given to Christ, then we meet this di- 
 lemma: Either the Scriptures are self-contradictory or Christ 
 is divine: Either the Scriptures recognize more gods than one 
 or Christ is divine: Either God gives his glory to another oi 
 Christ is truly divine. The only way of saving the unity of 
 God, consistent with the Scriptures, is by admitting the divinity 
 of Christ. 
 
 (The objection that the name "God" is given to other beings 
 than the Supreme Deity has already been considered. It is 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 63 
 
 needful to add only: (a.) It is never given to any other as it is 
 to Christ, (b.) The argument for his divinity is not drawn from 
 the name alone, but in connection with divine attributes and 
 works which are ascribed to Him, and in the greatest variety 
 of terms.) 
 
 (tr.) The argument is confirmed by the fact, that Christ is 
 the Redeemer and Saviour: we are to look to Him directly, be- 
 lieve Him, trust in Him wholly for our highest spiritual needs. 
 
 There is always war here with Christian experience, on the 
 part of those who refuse the divinity of Christ. Such love and 
 trust as arise in Christian experience can be rendered only to a 
 divine being. Christian experience is in harmony only with the 
 doctrine of Christ's divinity. 
 
 Thus the proposition is established. The Son is (1) divine 
 and (2) a distinct person from the Father. (The word Son is 
 used here as a general term: for the whole of Christ; his Sonship 
 as such not having been yet considered.) 
 
 § 4. Objections to the proof of the Divinity of Christ on the 
 ground of the Avian hypothesis. 
 
 The Arian hypothesis grants the pre-existence of Christ, but 
 asserts that God the Father created Him (that He is a product 
 of the divine will), and communicated to Him omnipotence, 
 omniscience, holiness, etc., made Him an object of worship, and 
 allowed Him to be called God and the Son of God. 
 
 The general position in regard to this hypothesis is: Pas- 
 sages which imply inferiority can be explained in harmony with 
 the passages which express divinity — but not the converse. 
 
 The passages which are cited in support of the Arian hy- 
 pothesis are those in which the inferiority and subordination of 
 the Son are asserted. 
 
 Thus (a) works are ascribed to the Father which are not to 
 the Son. 
 
 1 Cor. i. 21. " Now He which stablisheth us with you in 
 Christ, and hath anointed us, is God. 
 
 Gal. i. 1. "An apostle by Jesus Christ, and God the 
 
 Father, who raised Him from the dead." 
 
64 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Acts v. 30. " The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom 
 ye slew." 
 
 But compare: 
 
 John ii. 19. "Jesus answered, destroy this temple, 
 
 and in three days I will raise it up." 
 
 The Father has, as Father, special works: He sends the Son, 
 for example; but those works do not necessarily imply greater 
 power than, e. g., creation, which is ascribed to the Son. 
 
 (6.) Omniscience, it is said, is not in Christ. 
 
 Matt. xxiv. 36. " But of that day and hour knoweth no man, 
 no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." 
 
 Mark xiii. 32. " Not the angels neither the Son, but 
 
 the Father." 
 
 There are two ways of understanding this: 1 
 
 1. Though the Son as Logos knows, as incarnate, He does not: 
 
 2. The Logos, as incarnate, parts with the exercise of his 
 divine powers. 
 
 (c.) It is said, that the worship paid to Christ is mere invo- 
 cation. 
 
 See above, under the passages cited. 
 
 (d.) Jesus prays to God, as subordinate and doing his will. 
 Matt. xxvi. 39; Mark xiv. 36; Luke xxiii. 46; John xii. 27. 
 
 This, however, is in his official relation. It is not inconsistent 
 with his divinity. For prayer is the inmost communion of the 
 soul with God. Christ as incarnate must commune with the 
 Father. 
 
 (e.) Hf calls God his God, and in so doing places himself on 
 commo'i ground with his disciples. 
 
 John xvii. 3. "That they might know thee, the only true 
 God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." 
 
 But compare 1 John v. 20. "This is the true God and eter- 
 nal life." 
 
 To make out the Arian view, John xvii. 3 must be held to 
 mean: know thee the only true God in contrast with me, not 
 God. But the contrast is with idols. 
 
 1 This is considered more fully in connection with the doctrine of the Person 
 
 of Christ. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 65 
 
 John xx. 17. "Touch me not ... I ascend to my Father and 
 your Father, to my God and your God." 
 
 The sense probably is, "Do not thus lay hold of me as if you 
 feared to lose me. I go to my Father who is also your Father, 
 to my God who is also your God." This same remark applies to 
 Eph. i. 17, "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 
 glory;" 1 Cor. xi. 3, "The head of Christ is God;" 1 Cor. xv. 28, 
 "The Son shall be subject to Him that put all things under 
 Him." 
 
 (/.) It is said that there are passages in which the absolute 
 inferiority and derivation of Christ are asserted. 
 
 John xiv. 28. " My Father is greater than I." The Father 
 has a greater office than the Son, by the very nature of the relation. 
 
 John v. 26. "Even so hath He given to the Son to have life 
 in himself." Observe: to have life in himself \ not to direct the 
 quickening energies which abide in the Father. The resurrection 
 is to be the result of the exertion of the Son's own power, which 
 as Son He has by gift and covenant of the Father, in himself. 
 
 Col. i. 15. "The first born of every creature. For by Him 
 {kr avTop) were all things created, (kxritiS??) that are in heaven 
 and that are in earth." Evidently, here, Christ is placed, in 
 antagonism with the creation, on the side of God. Moreover, 
 the first born (xpGororoxos) not created, the apostle calls Him. 
 See also Heb. i. 8 (from Ps. xlv. 7): "But unto the Son (=first 
 born) he saith, thy throne, God, is for ever and ever." Also 
 Rev. i. 5: "And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, 
 and the first begotten of the dead," in connection with verse 8, 
 or 11, " I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last;" or vs. 17, 
 " I am the first and the last " (compared with Isa. xli. 4, xliv. 6, 
 xlviii. 12), or verse 18, where Christ says He is from eternity, 
 the ever-living. 
 
 § 5. That the Holy Spirit is divine and a distinct Person from 
 the Father and the Son. 
 
 (a.) General usage of the terms which designate the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 "Holy Spirit" and "Spirit of God" are sometimes used in 
 
66 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 an impersonal sense, as denoting a general divine influence or 
 mode of operation. 
 
 But we may distinguish (as has been well stated by Ebrard), 
 three distinct modes or relations in which He is spoken of, 
 
 (1) In the Old Testament, God gives his Spirit to the prophets, 
 or the Spirit speaks in or to them. (2) In the New Testament^ 
 converting, regenerating influence is ascribed to Him; He leads 
 to Christ and applies Christ's wor-k 1 Cor. xii. 3 : " No man speak- 
 ing by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man 
 can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." Rom. 
 viii, 14: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are 
 the Sons of God." John iii. 5: "Except a man be born of water 
 and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." 
 Luke xi. 13: "How much more shall your heavenly Father 
 give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ? " (3) He exerts a 
 special miraculous agency. Acts ii. : the Pentecost. (Fulfil- 
 ment of the promise, John xiv. 16, 26.) (Cf. John xvi. 7: "For 
 if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.") The 
 Apostles were "filled with the Holy Ghost." In 1 Cor. xii. 
 and xiv., the charismata, the extraordinary and also the per- 
 manent gifts for the Church, are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. 
 The extraordinary are also mentioned in Acts iv. 8: "Then 
 Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of 
 the people and elders of Israel," etc. (Compare Luke xxi. 14: 
 "Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what 
 ye shall answer" .... ["when brought before kings and rulers 
 for my name's sake;"] . . . ."for I will give you a mouth and 
 wisdom/') 
 
 Hence, says Ebrard, the work of the Spirit is (1) prophetic, 
 
 (2) regenerating, (3) Church-building, and this (a.) as founding 
 the Church with miraculous accompaniments or (b.) sustaining 
 it with permanent gifts. 
 
 That these all are from one and the same Spirit, is seen from 
 the comparison of Joel ii. 28-32 with Acts ii. 16, and from the ex- 
 plicit declaration of the Apostle Peter. 
 
 In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is also the source of 
 converting grace. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 67 
 
 A difficulty may seem to be presented by John xiv. 16, 26. 
 "He shall give you another Comforter." "But the Comforter 
 .... whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach 
 you all things." 
 
 But these are to be understood as promising a special mode 
 of the Holy Spirit's operation, for a new stage in the divine 
 economy of redemption. 
 
 (b.) The Holy Spirit is divine. 
 
 This is generally conceded. He is called the Spirit of the 
 Father, of the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit 
 of life. 
 
 1 Cor. iii. 16. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, 
 and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? " The temple of 
 God, by reason of the indwelling of the Spirit of God: the asser- 
 tion implies the absolute divine holiness of the Spirit, at least. 
 To the same effect is 1 Cor. vi. 19. 
 
 Acts v. 3, 4 "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie unto 
 the Holy Ghost? .... thou hast not lied unto men but unto God." 
 The offence was not against the Spirit of God as dwelling in the 
 heart — but as objective, the Spirit which rules in the Church. 
 Hence, as present and ruling in the whole Church, He is divine. 
 
 The Holy Spirit has the attributes of absolute truth and wis- 
 dom. What God says the Holy Spirit says — and interchangeably. 
 
 Acts xxviii. 25. " Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the 
 prophet unto our fathers/' and 
 
 Isa. vi. 8. "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying," etc. 
 
 Heb. x. 15. "Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to 
 us: for after that He had said before, This is the covenant that 
 I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord," and 
 
 Jer. xxxi. 33. " But this shall be the covenant saith 
 
 the Lord." Also xxx. 1. 
 
 The regenerating power and influence of the Holy Spirit are 
 such as could not be exercised by any created energy. 
 
 His action within the divine nature is inconsistent with any 
 supposition save his divinity. 
 
 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11. " For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea 
 the deep things of God." 
 
68 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 o> 
 
 (c.) The Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son, 
 ' and is personal: is not the mere activity of God. 
 
 Matt, xxviii. 19. "Baptizing them in (sis) the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Neither a 
 creature nor a mode of agency could be so spoken of. 
 
 2 Cor. xiii. 14. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with 
 you all." The Holy Spirit must be as distinguishable from the 
 Father as from the Son. 
 
 The same fact was symbolized at Christ's baptism (Matt, 
 iii. 16, Mark i. 10), Luke iii. 22. "And the Holy Ghost descended 
 in bodily shape, like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from 
 heaven," etc. Here the symbol of the Spirit is distinguished 
 from the voice of the Father. 
 
 Eom. viii. 16. "The Spirit himself beareth witness with our 
 spirit." 
 
 Rom. viii. 26, 27. " The Spirit himself maketh intercession .... 
 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of 
 the Spirit." 
 
 Eph. iv. 30. "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." This 
 is not intelligible, if the Spirit is not personal: a mode of divine 
 agency cannot be grieved. 
 
 1 Cor. xii. 11. "But all these worketh that one and the self- 
 same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will " (fiovXsrat). 
 
 1 Cor. xii. 4-11. In this passage the Holy Spirit is distin 
 guished from the gifts of the Church; in the fifth verse He ia 
 distinguished from Christ, and in the sixth, from God. 
 
 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11. "The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the 
 deep things of God." 
 
 Matt. xii. 31, 32. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is dis 
 tinguished from that against Christ. 
 
 Masculine, not neuter, forms are employed to designate the 
 Spirit. John xiv. 16, dXXov napdxXrjrov, 26, 6 de xapdHXqroS, 
 XV. 26, 6 7tapdxA??ro$ ? dv, xvi. 13, ovav Se e\$y kuslvo 1 ;, to ityevjua 
 
 Ttjs dXrjSeioti. {kxeivoi alone would not be conclusive as referring 
 to 6 naftdKX7]ro% i but it is decisive, as referring to rd xvtvjua). See 
 also John xvi. 14. kxelvot kjj.s So^ddei. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 69 
 
 Personal acts are ascribed to the Spirit. He teaches, testifies, 
 speaks, convinces. 
 
 All this is inconsistent with personification merely. 
 
 Acts xiii 2, 4. "The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Bar- 
 nabas and Saul .... So they, being sent forth by the Holy 
 Ghost," etc. 
 
 Acts xv. 28. " For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and 
 to us." 
 
 Gal. iv. 4-6. " God sent forth his Son .... that we might 
 receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God 
 hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 
 Abba, Father." Here the sending of the Son and of the Spirit 
 are described in the same terms. 
 
 1 Pet. i. 12. — "them that have preached the gospel unto you 
 with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." 
 
 (d.) Objections to the distinct personality of the Spirit. 
 
 First Objection: There are passages which speak of Christ 
 dwelling in us, in the same way as the Spirit of God and oi 
 Christ is said to dwell in us, e. g., Eom. viii. 9, 10, 11; Gal. 
 ii. 20; Cf. Eom. viii. 14; Eph. iii. 17; Cf. Gal. iv. 6. 
 
 Yet the Scriptures speak distinctly of the continued difference 
 of the Son and the Spirit. 
 
 Acts ii. 33. "He (Christ) hath shed forth this" (the outpour- 
 ing of the Spirit). Acts iii. 21: (Jesus Christ) "Whom the heaven 
 must receive until the times of restitution of all things." So 
 through John xiv., the same difference is shown: the Paraclete 
 is to take the place of Christ. 
 
 1 John iii. 2. The Spirit transforms us into the image of 
 Christ when at last we see Him as He is. 
 
 Kom. viii. 16, 26. The Spirit gives assurance of adoption, 
 but, Heb. vii. 25, Christ in heaven intercedes. 
 
 1 Cor. iii. 16. The Spirit dwells in us as a temple, but, Eph. 
 T. 23, Christ is the head of the body. 
 
 Acts xix. 2. (si itvevfj.a ayiov kXafiere mdrev'darrss') "Did 
 
 ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?" 
 
70 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Second Objection: 
 
 In John vii. 38, 39 it is said, "For the Holy Ghost was not 
 yet [given]; because that Jesus was not yet glorified" ; as if 
 the existence of the Spirit began with the glorification of Christ. 
 
 But Christ had the Spirit before, as prophet; Acts x. 38, 
 "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost." 
 Christ had received the Spirit at his baptism; Matt. iv. 16, and 
 parallels. 
 
 The prophets of the Old Testament were enlightened by the 
 Spirit: 1 Pet. i. 11; Cf. Ps. li. 12, cxliii. 10; Isa. lxiii. 10, 11. 
 
 In the Old Testament the Spirit is promised to Christ as 
 Messiah. 
 
 Isa. xi. 2. "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him" 
 (upon " the rod out of the stem of Jesse "). 
 
 Isa. xlii. 1. "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; 
 
 I have put my Spirit upon Him." 
 
 Isa. lxi. 1. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me." (Cf. 
 Luke iv. 18; John iii. 34 — "not the Spirit by measure.") 
 
 Isa. lxv. 2. " I have spread out my hands all the day unto 
 a rebellious people," etc. Cf. Acts vii. 51. "Ye stiffnecked 
 and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the 
 Holy Ghost;" and Eom. x. 21. 
 
 Hence, it is the same Spirit that speaks in the Old Testament 
 and in the New. 
 
 Third Objection: 
 
 That the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, or, Christ coming again 
 to men, as Spirit. The Lord is to 7tvEvna, 2 Cor. iii. 17. 
 
 Against this (1) is the fact that Christ promises his dis- 
 ciples that the Spirit should come in his stead: John xiv. 18, 
 xvi. 16, 22. 
 
 The return of Christ is to be "in glory" — not at his resur- 
 rection — not at the Pentecost: John xiv. 3, "I will come again 
 and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be 
 also ; " this refers to a coming in which He will receive the Church 
 permanently, having previously prepared " a place*' for it. 
 
 This whole mode of statement, that Christ would depart, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 71 
 
 send in his stead the Comforter and again himself return, is 
 utterly inconsistent with the view that He himself returns 
 simply as spirit. 
 
 (2) As to passage cited (2 Cor. iii. 17), the apostle goes on to 
 say, " and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The 
 contrast is between the Spirit of Christ and the law of Moses : 
 the sense, he that has the Lord (in contrast with, he that has 
 Moses), has the Spirit. 
 
 A fourth objection, from John iv. 24. God is Spirit {-Jtvev^a 
 6 %s6s). 
 
 But this cannot mean, Spirit is equivalent to God: we can- 
 not say the Spirit of Christ is equivalent to the spiritual nature 
 of God. The meaning is, God is Spirit, in contrast with the 
 world. 
 
 § 6. The Father, Son, and Spirit are classed together, separately 
 from all other beings, as divine. (The Trinitarian texts.) 
 
 It is a conceded point that no other beings or names than 
 these, through the whole Scriptures, are so represented, with 
 divine powers and attributes. That these three are thus rep- 
 resented, separately, we have already seen. 
 
 But, besides these separate passages, there are also such as 
 combine the three together — in a peculiar way, as no others are 
 thus combined. Having shown the divine names, attributes and 
 personality of each, the Scriptures bind them together in one, 
 and in a peculiar manner. 
 
 2 Cor. xiii. 14. " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with 
 you all." 
 
 ** 1 Pet. i. 2. "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God 
 the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience 
 and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." 
 
 John xiv. 16. (The Trinity hinted at.) "I will pray tlie 
 Father, and He shall give you another Comforter" 
 
 1 Cor. viii. 6. " But to us there is one God, the Father, of 
 whom are ail things, and we in Him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, 
 by whom are all things, and we by flira." Compare with 
 
I 2 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 1 Cor. xii. 3-6. " No man can say Jesus is the Lord but by 
 the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the 
 same Spirit And there are differences of administration, but 
 the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it 
 is the same God which worketh all in all." 
 
 Matt, xxviii. 19. " Baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 The baptized person is represented here as brought into the 
 same relation to the Holy Spirit, as elsewhere to the Father 
 and Son. 
 
 (At the Baptism of Christ, Matt. iii. 16, the voice of the 
 Father is accompanied by the descent of the Holy Spirit.) 
 
 § 7. Result of the Biblical Evidence in respect to the divinity of 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit 
 
 1. That the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are personally dis- 
 tinguished from each other. There is recognized throughout 
 a personal relation of the Father and Son to each other. So of 
 the Holy Spirit to both. 
 
 2. They each have divine names and attributes. 
 
 3. Yet there is only one God. 
 
 Note. These distinctions are not restricted to Christ's formally 
 appearing in the world, or to the giving of the Holy Spirit; but 
 continue still. Any other view than this would destroy our 
 whole Christian experience. Christ is still the personal object 
 of faith and love, distinct from the Father. 
 
 If the distinction is not immanent, yet it is permanent. 
 
 We apply what the Scriptures say of the distinction of per- 
 sons still; we separate between Him to whom we are reconciled, 
 the Father; Him by whom we are reconciled, the Son; and Him* 
 through whom, the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The Trinity, at any rate, is in the whole economy of re- 
 demption, as permanent. From the Trinity in the economy 
 we pass to the second point, The Essential Trinity, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 73 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ESSENTIAL TRINITY. 
 
 The Second Proposition: That the Distinctions here proved 
 are not restricted to the economy, the manifestation, or revela- 
 tion of God ad extra, but are internal. 
 
 Order of discussion: 
 
 1. That they are internal. 
 
 2. That they are appropriately designated as personal distinctions. Sense of 
 " Person." 
 
 3. In what way, as personal distinctions, they exist in the Godhead. How to 
 be conceived of— if at all. 
 
 4. Of the "Sonship." 
 
 § 1. That the distinctions of the Godhead are represented in the 
 Scriptures as internal. 
 
 The question here is a simple one: on Biblical grounds, 
 whether what is asserted in Scripture, of the Father, Son, and 
 Spirit is spoken simply and solely with respect to the modes of 
 manifestation, or, so as to imply, necessarily, internal modes of 
 subsistence. 
 
 This is primarily a question of Scriptural interpretation. 
 It is a question with respect to Sabellianism. Sabellianism, 
 as contrasted with Arianism, says : The_jon_in his jaat/ure 
 is 6!iyine l but not _ eternally personal; J3e .becarne, in the In car 
 nation^ a^,4i^ n ilt person from the Father. (1) In the man 
 Jesus the infinite God appears, personally; the divine nature 
 is in Him. (2) God from eternity decreed this. (3) As pre- 
 existent in God Jesus is the Logos. 
 
 Sabellianism has two forms: (1) God, revealed as Father, Son, 
 and Spirit; (2) God the Father, revealed as Son and Spirit. 
 Strict Sabellianism says : The Logos is the medium of the reve- 
 lation. It is called Modalism. 
 
 As compared with Arianism, Sabellianism is more profound; 
 it is congruent with the divine nature of Christ; it explains 
 the passages which speak of that nature, and also of the 
 
74 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 relative subordination. The relation of Arianism and Sabel- 
 lianism is this: what Sabellianism urges for the inherent di- 
 vinity of Christ refutes Arianism; what Arianism urges for 
 the distinct pre-existent personality of the Son refutes Sa- 
 bellianism. Sabellianism, says Athanasius, is refuted by the 
 idea of the Son, Arianism by the idea of the Father (Ath. 
 cont. Ar. iv. 2. 3.) 
 
 The simple primary question is this: Do the Scriptures 
 restrict the personal distinctions to the sphere of the mani- 
 festation, or do they demand that we conceive of them as 
 eternal in the Godhead. 
 
 (a.) Passages which speak clearly of a personal pre-ex- 
 istence of the Son, before the Incarnation. 
 
 John viii. 58. " Before Abraham was, I am." This can 
 not be interpreted as setting forth an impersonal pre-existence 
 in the mind of God, as idea. Also John viii. 42. " I proceeded 
 forth and came from God." 
 
 John xvii. 5. " Glorify thou me with thine own self 
 (jtapd 6£avr&) with the glory which I had with thee, before 
 the world was" (j? sixov itpd rod tor u66jxoy sivai Ttapd 6oi) : a state 
 which was once, and is to be again: it is to be again, as 
 personal; therefore it was personal. 
 
 Phil. ii. 6-8. " Who being in the form of God .... took the 
 form of a servant: and being found in fashion as a man," etc. 
 .... The "form of man " was personal: so, "the form of God." 
 
 John xvi. 28. LL 1 came forth from the Father, and am 
 come into the world." 
 
 John vi. 62. " What and if ye shall see the Son of man as- 
 cend up where He was before?" 
 
 John i. 1-14. The doctrine of the Logos. 
 
 Logos must be either reason or word: the latter is the 
 New Testament and Septuagint usage. Reason (Wisdom) as 
 ereative is expressed by 6o<pia in the Bible and Apocrypha. 
 
 The ''beginning" spoken of must be before creation: for, 
 verse 3, "all things were made by Him." He was with God, 
 intimate, yet separate. "The Word became flesh and dwelt 
 among us, and we beheld his glory." Before this the Word 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 75 
 
 was either a person or a personification: it could not be the 
 latter, for it is the same being after the Incarnation as be- 
 fore. The Logos is not a mere activity of God. "Word" 
 is inconsistent with that. It is an internal modification. It 
 is an activity, in the sense of an eternal speech, word of God 
 as a modification of the Deity — such that thereby He makes 
 the world and becomes incarnate. 
 
 The great acts of God ad extra are two: creation and 
 incarnation, and these are both referred to the Logos. 
 
 Even if kv apxy is to be taken as the beginning of the 
 world, it was the beginning of what is temporal: what is 
 before is eternal. 
 
 ' Ttpdi xdv %e6v designates a living relation. 1 
 
 Col. i. 15. "Who is the image of the invisible God, the 
 firstborn of every creature." 
 
 Heb. i. 3. "Who being the brightness of his glory and 
 the express image of his person." 
 
 The expression " firstborn of every creature " refers to his 
 ante-temporal condition, also including his superior excellence. 
 Whatever else may be questioned in this passage, it must be ad- 
 mitted that his origin is a begetting; not a creating. 
 
 (&.) Passages which imply such pre-existence (not yielding the 
 strictest proof of it, but not naturally interpreted without it). 
 
 John iii. 16. "That He gave his only-begotten Son." 
 
 John vi. 33, 38. "The bread of God is that which cometh 
 down from heaven .... For I came .down from heaven, not 
 to do mine own will." 
 
 John xii. 49. "But the Father, which sent me, He gave 
 me a commandment." 
 
 This use of the word Father, showing that Christ speaks 
 as Son, and the reference to himself as "sent," presuppose a 
 previous personal relation. 
 
 Such passages as these are to be also noted: 
 
 Gal. iv. 4 "But when the fulness of the time was come, 
 
 1 The historical genesis of the idea of the Logos confirms this. Wisdom, 
 Logos of Philo, Angel of God, Glory of God, Name of God, etc., become concen- 
 trated in the doctrine of the Logos. And this proves a pre-existent hypostasis, 
 
76 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the 
 law." Observe that before He was sent, He was viewed as 
 the Son. 
 
 John xvi. 28. "I came forth from the Father, and am come 
 into the world." 
 
 John iii. 31. "He that cometh from above is above all." 
 Cf. verse 11, "and testify that we have seen." 
 
 1 Cor. x. 4 "They drank of that spiritual Rock that 
 followed them: and that Rock was Christ." 
 
 (c.) The assertion of Scripture that Christ created the world, 
 is inconsistent with all the forms of Sabellianism. Sabellianism 
 supposes that Christ was a person only in relation to the re- 
 demption of the world. 
 
 (d.) The Old Testament in speaking of Jehovah and the 
 Messiah, the Wisdom, the Angel of the Covenant, etc., con- 
 firms the view that the relations of the Father and Son are 
 internal. 
 
 Isa. xl. 3, 9, and especially 10. "Behold the Lord God will 
 come with strong hand." 
 
 Zech. ii. 10. "Sing and rejoice, daughter of Zion: for lo, 
 I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord." 
 John i 14. "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
 us." The perfect fulfilment: Rev. xxii. 7. "Behold 1 come 
 quickly." 
 
 (e.) The continued personal being and relation to us of the 
 Son, is also against the Sabellian position. 
 
 He is to remain forever in this relation. 
 
 Rom. i. 4 — "declared to be the Son of God with power 
 by the resurrection from the dead." 
 
 Heb. xiii. 8. " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever." 
 
 Rom. vi. 9, 10. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth 
 
 no more in that He liveth, He liveth unto God." 
 
 Acts ii. 33. "Therefore being by the right hand of God 
 exalted .... He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and 
 hear." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 77 
 
 § 2. Remarks on Sabellianism. 
 
 The general result of the Sabellian hypothesis, on the basis 
 of the Scriptural evidence for the pre-existence of Christ, and 
 that He is the Creator. 
 
 Sabellianism wants to show that the personal distinctions 
 belong to the revealed and not to the immanent Godhead — 
 that they arise in the revelation ad extra and only for the 
 purpose of a revelation, and have no essential being in the 
 divine nature. 
 
 But the pa&sages cited prove : 
 
 1. Personal pre-existence before Incarnation, so that that form 
 of Sabellianism which makes the personality of Christ begin then 
 is effectually ruled out. 
 
 2. They also show that Christ as pre-existent, created the 
 worlds, all things in heaven and earth, so that the person- 
 al distinction had a being before anything created was, and 
 did not come into being for the exigencies of the divine mani- 
 festation. 
 
 3. The only resort then for Sabellianism, consistent with 
 these passages is to say: God as Son existed personally before 
 Creation and Incarnation — was a distinct personal agent before 
 time began; but if this is said, then the Son did not come into 
 being as a person with special reference to any revelation of God: 
 the utmost that can be said is, He came into being as a person, 
 antecedently, because the world was to be made and redeemed 
 by Him. But his distinct existence as a person is thrown back 
 into the nature of God, into eternity. 
 
 And when this is said, we have really either Arianism, or 
 what is equivalent to an eternal generation of the Son. Sup- 
 posing Arianism to be refuted, the only question that remains 
 in respect to Sabellianism would be this: does God, from a ne- 
 cessity of his nature, exist internally as Father, Son, and Spirit — 
 or, do these personal distinctions in God exist in Him from all 
 eternity, with respect to a future revelation of himself. The 
 eternal existence being conceded, this question is an unimpor- 
 tant one; and there is no ground in Scripture or reason for 
 Baying that the existence of these personal distinctions is con- 
 
78 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ditioned by the possible future existence of the world and of 
 redemption. 
 
 Note.— That form of Sabellianism -which makes it to be, that the same God 
 assumed these different characters, viz., as Father, the character of Creator, a:; 
 Sou, of Redeemer, as Holy Spirit, of Sanctifier— is utterly irreconcilable with th. 
 patent fact of the distinct personal being of the Son. 
 
 Further Remarks on tlw Sabellian Hypothesis. 
 
 1. That the Father, Son, and Spirit are simply manifestations, 
 is inconsistent with the doctrine respecting the Father, as already 
 expounded. 
 
 2. If these are taken strictly, as modes of manifestation, 
 following on each other and receding, we lose the abiding 
 personalities. 
 
 3. We have still three (if not four) divine persons to wor- 
 ship. We have the inconvenience which is supposed to inhere 
 in the orthodox view, without the firmness of personalities which 
 that gives. 
 
 4. The Sabellian view leads logically to the idea of a change 
 in God in his mode of being, a change in time. 
 
 After the Incarnation, God exists as, is, a triad — a three-fold 
 personality; He was not«so before. Hence a change must have 
 occurred in his mode of being, and the view conflicts with the 
 divine unchangeableness. This also leads to the pantheistic 
 view — that the Incarnation is an essential mode of the man- 
 ifestation of Deity, a process of self-evolution. 
 
 Either this must be admitted, or else the personalities must 
 be viewed as fleeting and unsubstantial. 
 
 5. Logically, there must be some ground in the Deity why 
 He is revealed as a three-fold personality. Either, there is a 
 creative power, so that the person of Christ is produced by 
 divine efficiency, or there is a mode of subsistence in God him- 
 self, corresponding to the manifestation, so that the latter is but 
 the expression of the former. We must apply either the cate- 
 gory of cause and effect or that of ground and manifestation. 
 The first cannot be applied; for then Christ would be a created 
 being, and the passages which speak of pre-existence (to refer 
 to no others) are against this. If the second is applied, then 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 79 
 
 we must recognize a specific mode of subsistence in the Deity 
 corresponding to the manifestations. 
 
 The Sabellian idea of God is that of the abstract unity allow- 
 ing no differences. It is a transference to God of the idea of a 
 human individual personality. Of old it was accused of Judais- 
 tic tendencies; it has also pantheistic tendencies. 
 
 6. The Sabellian hypothesis, instead of simplifying, does only 
 confuse our relation to God. 
 
 We have, as Christians, a direct personal relation to Christ, 
 also to the Father, also to the Spirit. This presupposes a personal 
 relation (objective) between the Father, Son, and Spirit. If it 
 does not, we are in a two- fold relation to God : to God as re- 
 vealed, and to God as He is in himself. We cannot make this 
 clear, cannot extricate ourselves from an inevitable confusion. 
 
 It is taking the subjective side of revelation to the exclusion 
 of the objective — a part of the process which ends in the denial 
 of the objective validity of the Christian revelation. 
 
 7. By logical consequence, it leads to the pantheistic view: 
 the Father is God, in his abstract, unfathomable, impersonal 
 unity; the Son is the world, creation — this abstract divinity 
 realized, coming to personality in man; the Holy Spirit is the 
 process by which all things return back to the original con- 
 dition. 
 
 8. The humanity of Christ is lost, on this view. It has no 
 abiding worth. This, if not a necessary, is a natural consequence. 
 
 § 3. That these Distinctions in the Godhead are appropriately 
 designated as Personal Distinctions — Hypostases? inthe present Usage. 
 
 The Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, the Holy 
 Spirit is neither. They are distinguished from each other, while 
 they are all termed divine. 
 
 We express what is common in them by saying, they have 
 the same divine nature (essence) and attributes: the same iden- 
 tical nature and attributes. 
 
 They differ, in this, from three men, having the same human 
 
 7 AXXd rovro h6ri to itoiovv rozS aipETixoiS r?)v itXdvijv, rd ravro 
 \sysjv rrfv epvdzv ncci r?}v vito6ra6w. Joh. Damasc. DeFide Orth. lib. i. c. iii. 
 
80 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 nature : in the latter case there is not an identity of substance. 
 But in God the same numerical substance belongs equally to 
 Father, Son, and Spirit. 
 
 How, now, shall that in which they differ be expressed? 
 It is all expressed in common usage, in the three distinct terms, 
 Father, Son, and Spirit. Another mode of expressing it is by 
 the term Person: the first, second, and third persons in the God- 
 head. The doubts about this are: (1) It is a word not used iu 
 the Scriptures for this purpose, (2) It seems to convey too defi- 
 nite an idea, as of three human persons. Some have preferred 
 to say, "three distinctions." 
 
 What, then, are the definitions of person, as distinguished 
 from substance or essence? Substance is that which is common, 
 person that in which they differ. 
 
 The old Scholastic definition of person is, "ipsa essentia divina 
 certo charactere hypostatico insignita, ac proprio subsistendi 
 modo a reliquis distincta." Each person is a mode of subsistence 
 of the same divine essence. In common usage a person is one 
 who can say I: who can be addressed by the personal pronouns. 
 Self-consciousness is then the distinctive attribute of personality 
 — it is that by which we specifically know personality. Each 
 of the persons of the Trinity must, then, be supposed by us to 
 have a self-consciousness: this is the least that can be said, main- 
 taining anything like discrimination. If we do not say this, we 
 deny any conceivable distinctions in the Godhead — we must say 
 "three distinctions," three modes of self-consciousness in the 
 Deity. 
 
 § 4. The ecclesiastical Statements as to the distinctive Character- 
 istics of the Persons. 
 
 How are we to conceive of these immanent personal distinc- 
 tions? Not how they came to be; but, how they are — how the 
 persons are distinguishable from each other. 
 
 There are two forms of statement here: The persons are dis- 
 tinguishable (1) as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, (2) As, first 
 person, second person, and third person, of the Godhead. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 81 
 
 Statements of the Westminster Standards: 
 
 "Conf." ch. ii. § 3. "In the unity of the Godhead there be 
 three persons of one substance, power, and eternity; God the 
 Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is 
 of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally 
 begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding 
 from the Father and the Son." 
 
 " Larg. Cat." Ans. to Q. 9. " There be three persons in the 
 Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these 
 three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in 
 power and glory: although distinguished by their personal prop- 
 erties.*' Q. 10. " What are the personal properties of the three 
 persons in the Godhead?" Ans. "It is proper to the Father to 
 beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and 
 to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son, from 
 all eternity." 
 
 Note. — The expression, "equal in power and glory" is sometimes interpreted, 
 incorrectly, as if the power and glory were numerically distinguishable. 
 
 The Significance of these "Personal Properties." 
 
 Without them, the doctrine is reduced to indefiniteness. 
 
 The received statements about the Trinity in most of the 
 orthodox expositions, may be here appropriately adduced to il- 
 lustrate the sense of these distinctions. These statements are 
 given under the three heads: (1) Unity, (2) Difference, (3) Mutual 
 Relation. 
 
 1. Unity. This lies in the essence, 6v6ia, or substance. The 
 earlier mode of conceiving the matter placed this unity in the 
 Father as the fountain and source of the other personalities; but 
 this was abandoned after Augustine's time. It has since been 
 Dommonly held that the one divine essence is common to all the 
 three, and that each has the totality thereof. 
 
 What is this divine essence? It is absolute spirituality, all 
 divine perfections and attributes— those of the understanding and 
 of the will. Thomasius: "The absolute personality is common, 
 the same for the three persons." God, as essence, is not dead, 
 but living: "actus purissimus." 
 
82 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 2. The Difference, or Distinction of Persons. 1 In the one essence 
 there are different "modes of subsistence," not nominal, nor es- 
 sential, but real. Each one of the three " Persons " has an ap- 
 propriate mode of subsistence, peculiar to himself, whereby He 
 is distinguished from the others — as a person. The properties 
 of these persons are partly internal acts and partly the personal 
 properties thence resulting. The act of the Father is generation 
 — his characteristic then is, paternity. The act of the Father 
 and Son is spiratio. Or, "Generation" is the eternal production 
 of the Son from the Father — "God of God." Spiratio — proces- 
 sion — is the eternal proceeding of the Holy Spirit from the Fa 
 ther and the Son. 
 
 These acts are different from creation, as being eternal acts 
 and as not being the production from nothing. They are also 
 acts differing from each other, each produces a different person, 
 but what they are is unfathomable. 
 
 The personal properties resulting from these personal acts 
 are: the distinctive traits of the three persons, viz., paternity, 
 eonship, procession. The Father is unbegotten, the Son be- 
 gotten, the Holy Spirit proceeding, — eternally. 
 
 The procession of the Holy Spirit is equally from the Father 
 and the Son, not as distinct, but so far as they have the same 
 divine essence. " Fatendum est, patrem et filium principia esse 
 Spiritus Sancti, non ut duo principia, sed ut unum principium." 
 Augustine, de Trin. v. 14. 
 
 3. The relation of 'the Per 'sons to the Unity. The three are related 
 to the same divine essence, not as parts, but as modes of subsist- 
 ence. The divine essence is not before, nor external to, but in 
 the persons eternally. This must be held, otherwise we should 
 have four persons instead of three. The difference is not in the 
 eternity, nor in any divine attribute, but in the order of subsist- 
 ence. The Father is first in order (not in time), the unbegotten; 
 
 1 The derivation of persona from 7tf}66oa7tov (=7tp6$ tov$ oJ^a?) is not 
 sustained. Thomas Aquinas, *' Summa," p. 1, qu. 29, art. 4, says " persona dicitui 
 quasi per se una." In the tract "De Persona," ascribed to Boethius, it is said, 
 " Persona dicta est a personando." This is the true derivation, to sound througi 
 a mask (larva histrionalis). 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 83 
 
 the Son is second, the begotten: the Son has the principle (not 
 the cause) of his subsistence in the Father; the Holy Spirit in 
 both. If we say, first, second, and third persons, we indicate, 
 still, an order of subsistence. 
 
 Aquinas (p. 1, q. 31, art. 1, ad 4 m ): "Cum ergo dicimus trinita 
 tern in unitate, non ponimus numerum in unitate essentise, quasi 
 sit ter una; sed personas numeratas ponimus in unitate naturae, 
 sicut supposita alicujus naturae dicuntur esse in natura ilia." 
 
 Questions: 
 
 (a.) Is the Father the cause of the being of the Son and 
 Spirit ? 
 
 No — not cause — the ground. 
 
 (5.) Does the Son exist by the will of the Father ? 
 
 Not as the product of that will : but free activity. 
 
 (c.) If activity is stated as the ground, then before that the 
 Son was not? 
 
 No, the activity was eternal. 
 
 (d.) Is all subordination inconsistent with divinity? 
 
 Yes, if it involves anything ad extra — or any want of the 
 divine perfections. 
 
 (e.) Is not derived being inconsistent with divinity? 
 
 Yes: if the relations of time are introduced. 
 
 Remaek. The whole conception is in accordance with this canon: "Prmci- 
 pium missionis in tempore est principium missionis in seternitate. " 
 
 § 5. Is the term Son used in the Scriptures in reference to Christ's 
 immanent relation to the Father ? 
 
 Positions in respect to " Sonship." 
 
 1. The term is not used for the mere humanity of Christ. 
 
 2. It is certainly used for his whole office as Redeemer. 
 
 3. There are passages which seem to imply that it includes 
 his whole relation to God. 
 
 4. There are passages which cannot without constraint exclude 
 divinity. 
 
 The question is not of the highest theological importance. 
 It has its chief dogmatic importance in connection with the dif- 
 ficulties on two points: an inherent subordination of the Son 
 
84 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and the doctrine of eternal generation. Apart from these 
 points, it is a question of philology and Scriptural usage of the 
 term. As a question of philology and Scriptural usage, it re- 
 duces itself to this : Is the term Son applied to Christ, or the 
 term Father to the Father in relation to Christ, solely from his 
 human or official manifestation — or is it applied, when this is 
 not in view? Both sides allow, that now as a matter of fact, it 
 may be applied to the whole divine-human personality of Christ. 
 Those who say it is derived from the human manifestation 
 originally, allow it afterwards to be applied to the whole un- 
 divided person. The others say, it is applicable to Christ's 
 original relation to Deity, and that the human and official usage 
 is but a manifestation, a revelation in a lower sphere, of an ante- 
 cedent relation. 
 
 Christ designates himself in Scripture, by four terms : — 
 (1) Man, (2) Son of Man, (by which not his lowliness but his 
 headship of men is indicated), (3) Messiah — Christ, (4) Son of 
 God. The question, then, comes to this: when He calls himself 
 the Son of God, or when He speaks of God as his Father, does He 
 mean the same thing, or refer to the same relation that is des- 
 ignated by either of the other terms — man, Son of man, Messiah ; 
 or, does He express another intimate, pre-existent, essential 
 relation ? 
 
 A preliminary argument for the latter position may be 
 derived from this consideration: He calls God his Father, the 
 Father calls Him Son. Now, who is the He, that is thus called? 
 It is the person, Jesus Christ. God is not the Father of Christ's 
 mere bodily humanity; nor of Him as bearing an office, but is 
 the Father of the Son, of that person who is the Son. Now, 
 that person, as a personal being and agent, pre-existed. He did 
 not begin to be a person when He came into the world; He pre- 
 existed as a distinct person from the Father, and when He came 
 into the world He simply assumed humanity. When, now, God 
 is called his Father, it designates, in many cases, the intimate 
 personal relation of the two to each other. It is not the relation 
 of the mere outward humanity, nor of the office to God; but of 
 the person of Christ to the person of the Father. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 85 
 
 (a.) The term Son of God (and the correlative, Father) is not 
 used in Scripture in reference to Christ merely as a man. 1 
 
 Luke i. 35. "The angel answered and said unto hex*, The 
 Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest 
 shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall 
 be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." 
 
 Because He was born of God, He was to be called the Son of 
 God: He was born of God in a special sense. It is used as a 
 designation of a special relation to God. That relation might 
 have pre-existed in another form: the human (temporal) mani- 
 festation may have been merely the revelation of it in time. The 
 passage merely says, that because generated by a direct and 
 special divine influence, He shall be called the Son of God. He 
 is not made the Son of *God thereby, but called such. His mi- 
 raculous conception should lead men to acknowledge Him as 
 the Son of God: thus He would be known to be Immanuel, Isa. 
 vii. 14. 
 
 Besides, to interpret this name, Son of God, with respect to 
 his being born into the world is contradictory to other passages, 
 in which it is applied to Him under other aspects, e. g., the 
 quotations of the passage in, 
 
 Ps. ii. 7. " Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee " 
 (where TTO; mav ^ e » " nave I so declared thee," i. e. to be my 
 Son): 
 
 Acts xiii. 33, " God hath fulfilled the same as it is also 
 
 written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son," etc. (here the sup- 
 position that the "declaration" refers to the resurrection is 
 highly doubtful: it is rather to hie whole manifestation that the 
 quotation is applied). 
 
 Heb. i. 5, 6. " For unto which of the angels said He at any 
 
 time, Thou art my Son And again when He bringeth the 
 
 first-begotten into the world." 
 
 1 Episcopius (Theol. Inst.) on the Person of Christ says, there are four grounds 
 for Christ's being called Son: (1) Conception, (2) Mediation, (3) Resurrection, 
 (4) Ascension. Another "divine filiation" is not necessary to be believed. 
 Bishop Bull met these assertions in his "Judicium EccL Cath." 1694— his second 
 great work. 
 
86 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Heb. v. 5. " Christ glorified not himself to be made an high 
 priest; but He that said unto Him, Thou art my Son," etc. 
 
 In these passages, the Sonship is referred to Christ's whole 
 manifestation and work in the world. 
 
 The sense is, Christ is declared or proved to be the Son of 
 God, by his whole work, here. He is not made to be such by 
 his Incarnation, his humanity. 
 
 (b.) Jesus as the Messiah — Christ — is called the Son of God: 
 but it is not asserted that the title Son of God is given Him be- 
 cause He is the Messiah. By his works and words He is proved 
 to be the Son of God; but it is not proved, that that is the reason 
 for so calling Him. 
 
 Instances : John vi. 69 ; Matt. xvi. 16 ; John xi. 29, and many 
 others. 
 
 (c.) There are passages in which the term Son seems to be 
 applied to Christ in his divine nature; in his direct personal re- 
 lation to the Father; or, in respect to which it is at least doubtful 
 whether it be not so applied. 
 
 John i. 14. "And we beheld his glory, the glory as of 
 the only begotten of the Father." 
 
 This " only begotten of the Father" is undoubtedly the Logos. 
 
 John i. 18. " The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom 
 of the Father, He hath revealed Him." 
 
 John v. 17. "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." 
 
 Jesus here calls God his Father, with respect to his higher 
 nature. The Jews so understood Him. 
 
 Eom. viii. 32. u He that spared not His own Son," etc. (John 
 v. 18, Christ " said also that God was his [own] Father.") 
 
 Matt. xvi. 16. " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God." 
 
 John iii. 16. " For God so loved the world that He gave his 
 only begotten Son." 
 
 Gal. iv. 4 " When the fulness of the time was come God 
 sent forth his Son." 
 
 John xx. 17. "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father* 
 (not "our Father"). 
 
 Matt, xxviii. 19. The baptismal formula. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 87 
 
 (d.) The term Son is so used iu respect to Christ that we can- 
 not say it excludes, but most naturally say, it includes, his divine 
 nature, his intimate personal relation to the Father." l 
 
 And even if we get rid of the application of the term Son to 
 his personal relation to God, yet the same kind of relation is 
 hinted at by other terms and phrases, which are applied to Him 
 in respect (probably) to his pre-existent state. 
 
 The Logos, the Word, is that which expresses or reveals: 
 that in a being whereby it is revealed. "The image of the in- 
 visible God, the firstborn of every creature/' If the first clause 
 relates to the historical Christ, the second points to a different 
 origin from the creation, and leads most naturally to the in- 
 ternal relation of the Godhead which is intimated in other 
 Scriptures. 
 
 So, the Son is "in the form of God" and "the brightness 
 of his glory and (x a P aHT vp *y$ v7to6rcc6e<*>z) the impression of his 
 essence." 
 
 The relation of speech to the mind, of the first (and peculiarly) 
 begotten to the Father, of the brightness to the glory, of the 
 impression to the seal, discovers something of the same relation 
 as is designated by the terms Son and Father: i. e., the same 
 substance or essence in different forms. 
 
 § 6. How now are we to conceive this relation as an internal one 
 in the Godhead ? 
 
 Here is the question and the difficulty ; and here is seen the 
 arbitrary character of many theories. 
 
 The relation of Sonship is figurative. It cannot be taken 
 literally, or after the mode of human fatherhood and sonship. 
 
 1 If we deny any definite internal relation of dependence of the Son on the Fa- 
 ther—a certain inequality (yet wholly immanent), we are led to an arbitrary in- 
 terpretation of some passages of Scripture . What is said about the whole person 
 of Christ and his total relation to the Father, by himself and others, is referred 
 to Him as a man exclusively. "My Father is greater than I"; "I and my Father 
 are one"; if the former of these is spoken of Christ's humanity, or official state 
 alone, so must the latter be. It seems to be forgotten often that it is the same 
 person who is speaking in the different passages; and that what is true of Him 
 as a person, in His personal relation to God, must be abiding. 
 
8 8 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 The relation among men denotes (a.) priority of being in the 
 father to the son, in point of time, (&.) communication of nature 
 from the one to the other, in the relation of antecedent cause 
 to a subsequent effect, (c.) consequently an absolute dependence 
 for being of the son on the father. The literal application of the 
 analogy would draw after it, then, a denial of the independent 
 being, of the self-divinity of the Son. It is an analogy — the best 
 among human relations; and to hold what must be held of the 
 eternity and independence of Christ we must say, it is an anal- 
 ogy which applies only to the relation itself, not to the mode in 
 which this relation came to he. 
 
 It expresses the relation — and of the same general kind as 
 the term Logos; there are two persons, their relation to each 
 other is like that of the son to the father, of speech to the mind. 
 
 To arrive at a more definite conception or form of state- 
 ment of this relation, we may regard it, (1) Negatively, (2) 
 Positively. 
 
 1. Negatively: Statements not authorized: 
 
 (a.) The most common is, that the Father communicates the 
 divine essence to the Son. John v. 26, "Even so hath he 
 given to the Son to have life m himself," is commonly adduced. 
 But this gift does not probably refer to the divine mode of 
 being. 
 
 "The communication of the divine essence" seems to sup- 
 pose that the Father is before the Son ; though the relation is 
 not that of a created being, yet it is not eternal. 
 
 (b.) The view which makes the relation to be that of emana 
 tion, as a ray from the sun. The old objection is valid; it im 
 plies a division or possibility of division, in the divine essence 
 
 2. Positively: 
 
 (a.) God is not a single individual person, like an individual 
 man, alongside of other men. 
 
 (&.) God is perpetual activity— actus purissimus ; and his eter 
 nal activity is not merely that of attributes ever working, but 
 is that of a three-fold, internal, personal relationship, as Father, 
 Son, and Spirit, or as the first, second, and third persons of the 
 Godhead. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 89 
 
 (o.) In the order of interdependence, though not of time, 
 there is a dependence of the second person, the Son, upon the 
 first person, the Father, and of the third person upon both the 
 Father and the Sou; yet not so that the Son is really dependent 
 upon the Father any more than is the Father upon the Son. It 
 is an order of subsistence, an internal relation. The same di- 
 vine essence and attributes exist eternally in this personal rela- 
 tionship. Any view of the Trinity must concede a difference in 
 Father, Son, and Spirit, in the first, second, and third persons; 
 in short an ordo subsistendi — a certain inequality. Only in some 
 such mode of representation can we keep clear of annulling the 
 personal distinctions in the Godhead, of reducing them to three 
 distinctions. 
 
 (d.) There is an eternal generation, meaning the relation in 
 which the Father and the Son are, not how they came to be. 
 
 By this, too, we discern in the Godhead the same relationship 
 internally as that which is externally revealed. 
 
 The ground is in the divinity itself, why it must be revealed 
 as Father, Son, and Spirit; as it is revealed, so it is, abstracting 
 from it the limitations of time and space. This is the fact with 
 regard to everything else: so by analogy with the Godhead. 
 There is the same relation eternally, which in the manifestation 
 is revealed. 1 
 
 1 Pascal, in a letter to his sister (cited in Vinet, " Etudes sur Pascal," pp. 78-9) 
 speaks thus: Referring to a peculiarity in retaining the knowledge of spiritual 
 things, not by memory — "though we can as easily remember an Epistle of St. 
 Paul as a Book of Virgil" — but in things of grace — "H faut que la meme grace, 
 qui peut senle en donner la premiere intelligence, la continue et larende toujours 
 presente en la retracant sans cesse dans le cceur des fideles, pour la faire toujours 
 vi vre ; comme dans les bien heureux Dieu renouvelle continuellement leur beatitude, 
 qui est un effet et une suite de la grace: comme aussi l'gglise tient que le Pere 
 produit continuellement le Fils, et maintient l'e'ternite* de son essence par une effu- 
 sion de $a substance, qui est sans interruption aussi bien que sans fin." 
 
 Dr. R. S. Candlish (in Introduction to " The'Eternal Sonship," by Jas. Kidd, 
 D.D., 1st ed., 1822, London, 1872, p. xlix.) says: "The Trinity is a revealed fact, 
 .... but is there nothing in the laws of intelligent thought, in the essential con- 
 stitution of the thinking mind, that responds to and closes with the doctrine or 
 fact when presented to it, so as to facilitate the acceptance of it by the understand- 
 ing, and give it a place behind or beyond the understanding in the deeper region of thi 
 souts intuitional perceptions." Then he goes on to say, substantially: Before ere- 
 
9 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ation God was infinite and alone, He was of infinite intelligence and moral excel- 
 lencies, which latter are essentially communicative — seeking objects of fellow- 
 ship. If only one being existed in all eternity, it must be assumed that "all 
 these attributes existed in a state contrary to their very nature: a state of sheer 
 passivity, or rather potentiality: under the category rather of the posse than of 
 the esse." E. g. y Love is under "a necessity of communicating itself in grace and 
 glory to some one to whom it may say, I and Thou — I Giving, Thou Receiving." 
 .... "The life of God is love. He lives in loving . . . And his love cannot 
 be without an object." .... " Here is the precise difficulty which the doctrine 
 of the Trinity is fitted to solve " (p. lix.) 
 
PART II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN COSMOLOGY. 
 
 We have considered the proof of the Being and Attributes of 
 God; also God as revealed in and by the system of Redemption, as 
 Triune, the immanent Trinity as the basis of the economic, which 
 latter is found in the whole subsequent work of God. We are now 
 to pass from God in himself to God in his works, the mirror of 
 himself; his eternal power and Godhead are understood by the 
 things that are made (Rom. i. 20), and of course are in them. 
 
 The general title here is Christian Cosmology, or, The World 
 viewed as a Divine Cosmos or Order, manifesting the divine 
 glory: The immanent glory as seen in the declarative glory of 
 the Godhead. The subject of consideration here is the Cosmos, 
 not as seen in itself, as science studies it, in detail, by induction 
 and generalization, but as seen in its relations to God, to Re- 
 demption, to the Christian system, to eternal life. For the Cos- 
 mos is essentially the manifestation of God in time and in its 
 progress towards eternity. It comes from the eternal God, it 
 finishes its course and returns to its source, perfected, transformed 
 into an eternal kingdom of grace and glory. In God himself 
 there is infinite fulness, but that He might manifest his glory 
 He brought into existence a universe, material, moral. In this 
 creation God is revealed, his attributes co-working to produce 
 the highest result for infinite wisdom and infinite love. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CREATOR AND CREATION. 
 
 God is set forth in Scripture as the author and creator of the 
 world as well as the Being who sustains and carries it on. The 
 world is to fulfil a good end, the manifestation of the divine ful- 
 ness so far as this is possible in the forms of space and time. 
 
92 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 1. The Scripture represents God as the Creator of the World. 
 
 It represents Him as the cause of being, to all that exists ad 
 extra. The ground and source of all life are in God. This is 
 frequently declared in the Scriptures: Gen. i. 1; Acts vii. 50; 
 Rom. xi. 36; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Eph. iii. 9; Heb. i. 12; Rev. iv. 11. 
 The creation of particular parts of the world is ascribed to the 
 divine power: Acts iv. 15; Heb. i. 10; Rev. x. 6. 
 
 § 2. The Scripture represents the Son of God as the Medium by 
 whom the World ivas brought into being. 
 
 Col. i. 15; John i. 3; Heb. i. 2. — The Socinian explanation of 
 such passages is that they refer to the spiritual creation of the 
 kingdom of God, but the passages far surpass such interpreta- 
 tion. See Grinfield's " Christian Cosmos, or The Son of God the 
 Revealed Creator." l 
 
 § 3. God created freely and not by necessity. 
 
 No external or internal necessity for creation can be supposed, 
 certainly no external, for all that is external is the product of the 
 divine act; nor any internal, excepting a necessity from the di- 
 vine love, which is moral, and not physical or natural. God is 
 described -in the Scripture as blessed and sufficient to himself: 
 Acts xvii. 25; 1 Tim. i. 11. — This is shown also by the nature 
 of the case, if God be an infinite and absolute Spirit. In the 
 Scripture, Creation is ascribed to the will of God, of course 
 implying voluntariness: Ps. xxxiii. 6; Eph. i. 11; Heb. xi. 3; 
 Rev. iv. 11. 
 
 § 4. . IJye/jtian is not from any previously extant substance. 
 
 It was not a modification of an eternal material. An apoc- 
 ryphal book, Wisd. xi. 17, speaks of creation as u from formless 
 matter," but in the Scriptures God is represented as the only 
 cause, producing by a word and not from extant material. All 
 things are said to be from Him, which implies that there can be 
 no eternal substance. See^ Heb . xi. 3, the purport of _wJbiich_is_ 
 ihat the visible universe is_not^a mere manifestation of what is in^ 
 
 1 He perhaps goes too far in saying that this idea has almost vanished from 
 evangelical preaching; stiU it is not enough insisted upon. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 93 
 
 ^visib le but is the product of divine^po iwer.. Rom. iv. 17 contains 
 a strongly corroborative expression: Who calls what is not 
 into being as if it were. 1 
 
 Some of the Theories held on this Subject 
 
 The old theologians distinguished between the first and sec- 
 ond act of creation : the first, the creation from nothing, indicated 
 in Gen. i. 1, with the result in the second verse; the second, the 
 work of the six days, bringing all into shape and order and 
 implying, what is perhaps correct, a distinction between the 
 creation of the prime material and its specific arrangement 
 and organization. This is found also in some of the heathen 
 cosmogonies, although it is a matter of doubt whether they held 
 matter to be eternal. In Plato this is disputed. The New Pla- 
 tonists were dualists, holding to the eternity of matter. As 
 the question is now raised there are several theories. 
 
 The first theory. That there was a^ r^imitive or, original 
 matter haying jts laws^^j^J i s^o^y 3 eJ^p_ed into the worlds and 
 all the orders of life in them, through the gradations of gas, 
 fire, etc., the forces of the planets and their rotation, the geological 
 stadia of the earth's progress, and then the orders of plants and 
 animals up to man— all developed out of an original matter. — 
 The questions which this theory does not answer are: Whence 
 thejnatter and whence its laws? Whence is the order of crea- 
 tion, and what is it? There cannot be anything in the effect 
 which is not in the cause. If from the cause sprang life, instinct, 
 organization, intelligence, reason, person, and personal being, 
 then in the cause there must have been at least as much, and 
 therefore the primitive matter mu st have b een a matter having 
 intelligence and personality^ which is an extraordinary kind of 
 matter. 
 
 The second theory. Spirit and not matter js p rimitive ; 
 spirit, not as conscious, intelligent spirit, but in a generalized 
 abstract sense, as containing all the laws and ideas out of which 
 matter is developed. This becomes external to itself, and is 
 developed into all the forms of the created universe. This 
 theory may be either pantheistic or pantheistico-theistic, ac- 
 1 Compare this with 2 Mace. vii. 28. 
 
94 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 cording as spirit is viewed as having self-consciousness or not. 
 If viewed pantheistically the prime objection to it is that we 
 cannot derive from it any explanation of the mind in the uni- 
 verse. How can the abstract produce the concrete ? How can 
 an idea bring into being an animal, by its own force as an idea? 
 If it cannot, the theory will not explain the works of creation. 
 The other form, that spirit is primitive and all else is an emana- 
 tion from it, is pantheistico-theistic. It allows that the intelli- 
 gence which is disclosed in nature is divine, but says that there 
 is likewise in the divine Being a kind of material out of which 
 the worlds were formed, the mode of development, however, 
 never having been explained. This is the emanation theory of 
 some German philosophers, and it is akin to the theory next 
 to be mentioned. 
 
 The third theory. That God is a self-conscious Being, 
 having an antagonism in himself, which is called "the nature 
 in God." This develops itself in the forms of the finite and 
 material. Space and time, in their finite measures, existed as 
 really for God as for ourselves. In God there is a kind of finite 
 material out of which the worlds were made. 
 
 The fourth theory. That which alone is primitive is_ Godj 
 the infinite, absolute, and personal Spirit, and all that is in being 
 is the product 'of his power. In Him, however, in his being and 
 attributes, there was always the possibility of the existence of 
 a finite and dependent universe. In his love lies the impulse 
 to producing such a universe; in his will, the power of bringing 
 it into being. That which was previous to creation in God 
 was the possibility of its existence and also the idea of the 
 world or the plan of the whole world from eternity. That was the 
 archetype of the world, and it is this ideal world which is real- 
 ized in a created universe. In creation God brings into being 
 that which was not, as far as force or material are concerned. 
 Although this was always in the divine mind, and in that sense 
 eternal, yet as actually existing it came into being through the 
 divine will. The purport of this theory, in relation to the others, 
 may be shown by two or three considerations, (a.) It implies 
 that the substance of the created universe is not that of the 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 95 
 
 divine nature. The substance of the created universe as ma- 
 terial is radically different from the divine essence; in the quali- 
 ties of impenetrability and attractive force, in the qualities which 
 make the atom and form the play of forces, neither of which 
 can be supposed to be existing in a spiritual and eternal essence; 
 and therefore the universe must be absolutely different from 
 God. We must distinguish in creation between the matter 
 (the element or atoms) and the forces. Both of these are entirely 
 distinct from anything that can be in Deity. Thus, that which 
 is absolutely new in the creation, which was not there before, is 
 the existing of these material atoms and forces, in the forms of 
 space and time. 
 
 § 5. The Relation of God as Creator to what He has created. 
 
 The Scripture view is that God is exalted above the world, 
 yet present in it by his works, is both transcendent and imma- 
 nent, far surpassing the universe, yet dwelling and working in 
 it. He exists in one way in nature, and in another in man; is 
 related in one way to the heathen, and in another to his people 
 the Israelites; is revealed in one method in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and in a closer relation in the New. He dwells among 
 his people and sets his tabernacle among them. The humble 
 and contrite heart He will not despise. Those who love Him 
 become the temple of the Holy Ghost. These different relations 
 are in accordance with the different characteristics of the objects 
 which He has brought into being. Especially is God's relation 
 different to the good and to the bad. Heaven is his peculiar 
 place of blessing. In the realm of despair, He works only in 
 punishing. The omnipresence of God of course extends to the 
 bounds of space and time, but the presence of God, in his special 
 workings, is according to the nature of the objects which He 
 works upon. 
 
 § 6. The Scripture represents Creation as a Plan and not as a 
 Development, 
 
 Creation is not a development in the sense of the "Vestiges 
 of Creation." It is a plan in which all the parts are connected. 
 
9 6 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 All opt is tqjreveal the^divine^glory. The great end of God is 
 the manifestation of his fulness, his wisdom and power, in a cre- 
 ated world, and all the universe is made upon one plan with ref- 
 erence to that, with its regular orders and stages: which are set 
 forth even in the first account of creation, that of the six days, 
 where there is a regular and philosophical order in which the 
 objects are brought into being, beginning with the lowest in 
 the scale, and ascending to man. We have first, the ele- 
 ments, secondly, the vegetable kingdom, thirdly, the animal 
 kingdom, ending fourthly, in man; but this is not an order 
 or plan which has a development, in such a sense that the 
 higher springs out of the lower. The unity of the plan is 
 made by its being one in the divine mind. There is no evi- 
 dence that there can be a passage from a lower to a higher 
 order, or from the inanimate to the animate. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE CREATED UNIVERSE AS SET FORTH IN SCRIPTURE. 
 
 It is designated by different names: the^Creation, as having 
 its origin in God ; the Cosmos, as exhibiting a fair order^^Jhe 
 .35ons, as having its being in time. It is described as having 
 a real being of its own, not a mere seeming, as held by some 
 philosophers. The finite universe is not a perpetual creation, 
 but consists of proper second causes: Heb. iv. 3. Each partic- 
 ular order has its proper functions and office, its distinct char- 
 acter: 1 Cor. xv. 38, "To each seed its own body," implies a 
 distinction in the natural characteristics. While Scripture repre- 
 sents that there are different spheres of creation, different parts 
 of the universe, it represents them as all having respect to the 
 kingdom of God. Heaven, earth, and hell are the chief divi- 
 sions, and all are named and described as being a part of^one 
 Jon *k A «rU^i^ ^k; — .4- ~f ,.,u;~u ;„ *.~ m.,«i-„„4.~ +u« ,k„:«« ~i - 
 
i~> 
 
 ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 97 
 
 Under this point of view the Scriptural representation is much 
 higher than that of natural science. The conception of unity- 
 given here is much higher than the sciences have been able to 
 attain. The two parts of the world, in the general description 
 of them given in Scripture, are the heavens and the earth, the 
 relation of above and below being that which is generally im- 
 plied: the heavens being the invisible, and the earth the visible 
 (Col. i. 16); the earth being for a time, the heavens for eternity. 
 Yet the earth is to become heaven (Rev. xxi.): they are sepa- 
 rated now for a time in order to a reunion, against the time 
 when the Bride shall be prepared to meet the Bridegroom at 
 his coming. Earthly things thus become an image of heavenly 
 things, (a.) Heaven^ is the place in which the kingdom of God 
 is fully realized, where unfallen and redeemed spirits abide and 
 in which God dwells and is perfectly revealed: the Father's house 
 in which are many mansions, with which the name of God as 
 our heavenly Father accords. The kingdom of God is called 
 the kingdom of heaven in reference to its moral character and 
 also to its ultimate destination; Christ is spoken of as having 
 dwelt in heaven and as having returned thither. In it are dif- 
 ferent degrees or mansions. Christ has ascended above all the 
 heavens. Paul speaks of having been caught up to the third 
 heaven. (6.) Earth is that portion of the universe in which 
 fallen humanity dwells, and where the kingdom of God is not 
 yet fully realized. It is to be transformed, and the seeds of 
 heaven are found even here: Heb. vi. 5: "The powers of the 
 world (or age) to come " are already at work. The earth is to 
 pass through a process of change and redemption. Such a pro- 
 cess is probably set forth in Rom. viii. 20, 21. The word " creature " 
 here appears to mean the whole physical universe, and this is 
 described as in sympathy with redemption and destined to share 
 in the redemption when completed. 2 Pet. iii. 10 gives further 
 indications of the same destiny, (c.) The other grand portion 
 of the universe is the under- world, Hades, the worI3™oTdepartecf 
 spirits. This is represented as being under the earth. There 
 are two main divisions ...of it;, Paradise (Luke xxiii. 43), a place 
 for the departed good, called also Abraham's bosom (Luke xvi. 
 
98 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 27); and the prison (1 Pet. iii. 19), the place where the evil are 
 kept, which at last becomes the Gehenna, 1 the hell, the lake of 
 fire, denoting the place of final torment to which the wicked 
 are condemned along with the devil and his angels. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE DIFFERENT ORDERS OF CREATED BEINGS. 
 
 The creation is represented as having different orders of 
 animated beings, not a series in development, but a series 
 in a plan, constantly ascending to man, the highest. Be- 
 tween man and God there are other orders of beings. The 
 Scriptures reveal the existence of angels, making another 
 scale of ascents. These are sometimes called the sons of 
 God. As far as any distinct revelation guides us, we are 
 constrained to think of these as spiritual beings. If they 
 have any body at all, it must be what is termed a spiritual 
 body, not partaking of flesh and blood; and apparently they 
 are not so far subject to the restrictions of space and time as 
 men are. There is no evidence that they belong to any order 
 of beings that grows from small to large. It appears that 
 what they are at creation, that they remain. Their power 
 is superior to that of human beings, yet subordinate to that 
 of God ; working through second causes and not above them ; 
 and it is doubtful whether they can have any immediate in- 
 fluence upon human souls: at any rate this is not directly 
 asserted. Probably their influence is limited to working 
 through and by second causes, and thus they must work 
 according to established laws. They are described as ap- 
 pearing for the most part at the great epochs of the world; 
 at the creation, the giving of the law, the Incarnation, and 
 the scenes of the final judgment. That there are some orders 
 
 * Dr. Campbell, in his "Introd. to the Four Gospels," has one of the best 
 essays in respect to the Jewish views as to Gehenna, etc. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 99 
 
 among them is implied in Col. ii. 10, and other passages, 
 but we have nothing more definite than the general desig- 
 nations, " principalities and powers," "thrones and dominions." 
 A few names of angels are given. The good angels are de- 
 scribed as angels of light, as employed in the service of 
 God, as ministering in some respects to man, and in one pas- 
 sage as having some particular relation to children (Matt, 
 xviii. 10). 
 
 As to the evil angels. (1) If there a ri^axisd^JJa^xajn ay he 
 evil angels. If there may be spiritual beings of purity, there 
 may be spiritual beings impure, sinful, and evil. The evidence 
 that such beings do exist, rests solely, of course, on the testi- 
 mony of the Bible. From a priori reasoning we could make 
 no inference except the possibility of their existence. The fact 
 of their existence is revealed to us in the Scriptures! Speci- 
 mens of the Scripture testimony are 1 Tim. iii. 16 ; Jude 6 ; 2 Pet. 
 ii. 4. It appears from the passages cited that these angels 
 were not originally evil. They became such . 1 (2) The Script- 
 ure representation of the character of the evil angels. The 
 love of evil is rooted in them. They rejoice in the destruction 
 of others. 1 Pet. v. 8. Works of deceit, fraud, temptation 
 to sin, and malignity are ascribed to them, as seen in the 
 names, Adversary, Accuser, The Evil One, The Destroyer. 
 In them probably evil has reached its height, so that the 
 love of sin is paramount even when it is known to be folly. 
 (3) The Scripture represents that the evil angels together form 
 a kingdom or organization: Eph. ii. 2; vi. 12. Elsewhere, 
 the prince of demons, of the power of the air, the devil with 
 his angels, is spoken of, so that in such designations we 
 have the intimations of an order. (4) The power of these 
 evil spirits is described as extending to spiritual solicitations 
 and also to influences upon the body. Satan binds the mind 
 _anoLensnares. "The Devilish wisdom" is spoken of; this power 
 is controlled, but it is a power appealing to men's evil passions 
 and moving them by wicked motives. The power over the 
 
 1 The "sons of God," in Gen. vi. 2, are most probably the purer part of 
 mankind, and not angels as some writers would suggest. 
 
1 00 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 body comes out in the Demoniacal Possessions. The reality 
 of these possessions cannot be given up without giving up 
 the historical verity of Scripture. That there are forms of 
 disease now something like these is undoubtedly true, such 
 as lunacy and epilepsy, but this does not show that all these 
 phenomena are connected solely with bodily causes. Epilepsy 
 may be the result of a violent conflict of passion. The phe- 
 nomena of epilepsy and lunacy may have occurred in con- 
 nection with demoniacal possessions. That they did rests solely 
 upon Scriptural evidence. We cannot now show that there 
 are cases of possession, and science is unable to prove them 
 impossible. It may be that our Saviour's great work in sub- 
 duing them was such that the power of these possessions 
 should be paralyzed for the future. That there was a conflict 
 with the power of evil, and that Christ broke that power, 
 is evident from Scripture, and it may be that this was one 
 of the cases. 
 
 The chief objections to this doctrine of the reality of evil 
 spirits are presented by Schleiermacher. He objects to the 
 whole doctrine of the Devil as inconceivable, as not to be 
 thought consistently, and therefore reduces it to a personifica- 
 tion, placing it among the mythical elements of Scripture, 
 on the following grounds: 
 
 1. That the fall of Satan and his host, whether they fell 
 together or separately, is inconceivable, because no motive can 
 be assigned which would not presuppose the fall already 
 accomplished. Reply. This lies against the case of every first 
 sin in every creature, and would prove that there could not 
 be any first sin. 
 
 2. ^It is impossible to conceive of the fall of Satan in con- 
 nection with such high intellectual endowments and knowl- 
 edge as must be assigned to him ! Reply. We do not 
 know how much Satan knew. We know that he was not 
 omniscient. We do not know whether he himself knew all 
 the consequences of sin. But even if he did know, that is 
 no reason why he might not have fallen. In every creature 
 the knowledge of the evil consequences of sin is such that 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 10] 
 
 if that knowledge were followed there would be no sin. Hu- 
 man beings know that when they sin they are exposing them' 
 selves to wretchedness, and yet they sin. No one can say 
 but that there might have been such knowledge as Satan 
 had, and still he would have fallen. 
 
 3. It, is_ inconceivable , that, .Satajg . should Jiave..,, parted with 
 this knowledge by an act of the will; that the will in surrender- 
 ing itself to sin should be the means of blinding the intellect. 
 Reply. It is of the very nature of all sin and evil that they 
 carry the soul away in opposition to light and knowledge. The 
 knowledge may exist, and the will be still perverse. The reply 
 under the second head applies here also. 
 
 4. Some fall while others do not. — This is no real objection. 
 
 5. Such a being could not hope to relieve his misery by, con- 
 stant hostility to God, and yet he engages in such hostility 
 knowing that it will only increase his wretchedness. Reply. 
 Satan in this respect is like all who sin. Every sinner knows 
 that in the end he must succumb, and yet he sins. All sin is 
 folly in its very nature. 1 
 
 Another objection may be mentioned, viz., that the S cri p t ur al 
 representations of the Devil's power are dangerous: that it is 
 dangerous in a public teacher to say much about this. — If this 
 be true, and the Scriptures are truly from God, it is wonderful 
 that they should contain such representations. There cannot 
 be any danger in using Scriptural revelations in the Scriptural 
 sense. The chief danger has been not in taking Scripture, but 
 rather Milton's " Paradise Lost," as our standard. Whatever be 
 the amount of Satan's power, it is all subject to God's power, and 
 §atan can never overcome the s_oui that~trusts in God. 
 
 Observation. We should guard ourselves against teaching 
 the ubiquity of Satan. There may be evil influences widely dis- 
 persed, but that the Devil has ubiquity is not contained in the 
 Scripture. — Also we should note the difference between Scripture 
 and other pretended sources in regard to details of the spiritual 
 world. The Scriptures give simply intimations, while fanatics 
 and pretenders enter into minute particulars. 
 
 1 See Twesten's "Doct. of Angela," Bib. Sac. I. 792. 
 
102 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PRESERVATION OF CREATION. 
 
 By preservation is meant a continuance in being by God's 
 omnipresent agency of what has been brought into being by 
 God's omnipotence, including of course the preservation of the sub- 
 stance and the qualities and the powers of each individual thing. 
 There are various theories of the Preservation. Some represent it 
 as a continued creation. Others view it as mechanical continu- 
 ance. A mechanic makes a machine, and leaves it to work 
 through its own properties; preservation here is simply non- 
 interference. Limborch, the chief Arminian theologian, says 
 that preservation is simply not annihilating. Others represent 
 it as a continual influx of God, by a substantial omnipresence, 
 so that God is in everything by his essence. Calvin has some 
 strong expressions upon this subject: he says, God is everywhere 
 present by illapse and influx, terms which would be understood 
 now as having almost a pantheistic sense. 
 
 § 1. Sources of the Proof of the Doctrine, 
 
 From the divine attributes in their necessary working, Pres- 
 ervation might be inferred. Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and 
 Wisdom, exerted in reference to a world brought into being, in- 
 volve a divine energy continuing it in existence. It may also be 
 said that the world being the product of divine omnipotence 
 must be continued in being by the same power or fall into an- 
 nihilation. Otherwise the world would have the principle of its 
 being in itself. Again, God having produced the world, his 
 wisdom and love would of course prompt Him to continue it in 
 existence. The Scriptures set forth God's preservation of what 
 He has made in passages such as the following: Acts xvii. 28; 
 Ps. xxxvi. 6; Neh. ix. 6; Ps. lxvi. 9. Christ is revealed as the 
 Preserver as well as Creator : Col. i. 17 ; Heb. i. 3. 
 
 § 2. The Purport of the Doctrine. 
 
 1. It recognizes what is true in the other theories, the theory 
 of continual creation and the mechanical theory, without im- 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. ±U3 
 
 plying the denial which is implied in them, viz., in the one case, 
 of proper second causes, and in the other, of a continued de- 
 pendence of the world upon its author. 
 
 2. This doctrine further maintains and insists upon the real 
 presence of God in all his works, operative, upholding, and guid- 
 ing all things for his own purpose and plan. It asserts a real 
 operative presence, and does not deny a substantial presence. 
 
 3. The proper theory of preservation also allows the real 
 existence of second causes, while still insisting that these are 
 kept in being and upheld by the great First Cause. They are 
 proper causes in themselves, and have a proper mode of activity 
 and being, but not as separate from God. All experience proves 
 the existence of these causes. They are not modes of action of 
 the great First Cause, but proper second causes sustained by the 
 First Cause. This view alone is consistent with God's making 
 real responsible agents, who must yet recognize their depend- 
 ence on God. 
 
 § 3. Theory of continued Creation. 
 
 This theory asserts that the same divine creative power which 
 was at work in the first instance is ever at work, producing all 
 things by an omnipotent energy at each instant. It of course 
 involves a denial of any real subsistence in the things them- 
 selves. It is the creative omnipotence which is the upholding 
 omnipotence. 
 
 That the creative omnipotence does-uphold is undeniable, but 
 that the creative and upholding omnipotence are the same, rests 
 on no valid ground of evidence. This position has been taken 
 by some of the New England divines of the strictest Hopkinsian 
 cast, suggested no doubt by* the speculations of Berkeley, who 
 held that the external world had no real proper being, but con- 
 sisted of ideas, which were constantly produced by the divine 
 power, and had their origin only in the divine mind. This in- 
 volves of course the position that there is no real substance be- 
 hind the phenomena. 1 
 
 1 The Divine Efficiency scheme of Dr. Emmons is but a modification of the same 
 Berkeleian position, being Berkeley's principle applied to the inner acts of the mind 
 as well as to the ideas of what is outward. 
 
104 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 The Objections to this Theory. 
 
 1. It is against our native belief in the existence, external 
 to us, of real, proper substances. This is a belief of which we 
 cannot divest ourselves. 
 
 2. If carried out logically, the theory would lead to the po- 
 sition that God is the only real being, and that -all besides has 
 merely phenomenal being without reality; and so we should be 
 brought to pantheism. 
 
 3. In the same manner the theory runs athwart another of 
 our beliefs, that of a proper causal action, the connection of 
 cause and effect, which is certified by reason. It asserts that 
 God is the only causality. Second causes are denied. 
 
 4. It is against the tone and general representations of Script- 
 ure, which represents creation as completed: Gen ii. 1, 2; Heb. 
 iv. 3. 
 
 § 4. A Modification of tlie Theory of continued Creation. 
 
 This modification is found among the Scholastics, in Thomas 
 Aquinas, and in some of the Reformed and Lutheran divines. 
 Acknowledging the real existence of finite substances, that 
 there is a real proper substance beneath the phenomena, the 
 theory denies any efficiency to this, tracing the efficiency to God. 
 It confesses that there is an underlying substratum which is 
 the ground of the phenomena, but all the activity of the phe- 
 nomena is ascribed to a divine influence. Newton, in one of his 
 speculations, comes nearly to this, saying that the laws of the 
 material universe are the stated modes of the divine operations. 
 All who deny proper second causes stand here. 1 This same gen- 
 eral view is found in the Cartesian philosophy, and is there called 
 Occasionalism, which represents God as producing the activities 
 of body and soul correlatively to each other. 
 
 The Objections to this Theory. 
 
 1. Like the previous one it contradicts our experience, our 
 native belief— not now in the existence of substance, but — in the 
 existence of causes in nature. What we perceive in nature, ac- 
 cording to. this view, must be not the phenomena of matter, but 
 1 Dr. Woods borders on this. Works, Vol. ii. 20. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION, 105 
 
 the phenomena of God, God working. In thus resolving all 
 activity into a mode of Divine operation the theory tends to a 
 pantheistic conclusion. 
 
 2. As applied to mind and moral agency, the theory is in con- 
 flict with our conviction that we are proper causes, the proper 
 authors of our own acts, which we know by immediate con- 
 sciousness, if we know anything. We know that we choose and 
 decide, and do it by our proper power, and yet this theory would 
 compel us to say that these acts are modes of the Divine agencj r , 
 and would thus annul moral agency. 
 
 3. In doing this it would of course lead to the conclusion 
 that God is the author of sin, because all causality is traced back 
 to Him, and this annuls the idea of God as a holy being. 
 
 4. While there is no evidence that there are not second 
 causes, there is very much evidence that there are such. They 
 are not independent of Deity, but have a proper sphere of their 
 own. The theory rests on the underlying notion that there is 
 only one cause; but if there is only one cause there is only one 
 substance, and pantheism is the only theory. 
 
 § 5. The Mechanical Theory of Preservation. 
 
 This is, that God has brought into being the world and all 
 that is in it, and then sustains it without any constant agency 
 or personal direction and care. This was the general view of 
 the Arminians, also of the Deists in England and on the 
 Continent. 
 
 The objections are: (1) It makes the creation to be virtually 
 independent of God. After his works are once brought into 
 being, they subsist by their own power, work by their own 
 efficiency. Thus this view is opposed to the truth of God's 
 omnipresence, and it is also opposed to the doctrine of God's 
 Providence, which comes presently to be considered. (2) If 
 the view be carried through and acted upon consistently, there 
 cannot be any prayer. Religion expressing desire in prayer 
 would be impossible, and thus the theory runs counter to the 
 Scriptures and to Christian consciousness. 
 
106 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 
 
 § 1. General Statements in respect to the Doctrine. 
 
 The "Westminster Confession," Chapter V., gives the main 
 points of the doctrine in a full and clear manner, viz., (§ 1) 
 " God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dis- 
 pose and govern all creatures, actions and things, from the 
 greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy provi- 
 dence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free 
 and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the 
 glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness and mercy." 
 (§ 2) "Although .... all things come to pass immutably 
 and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, He ordereth them 
 to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either 
 necessarily, freely or contingently." This providence extends 
 likewise to sin, (§4) ". . . . not by a bare permission, but 
 such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bound- 
 ing, and otherwise ordering and governing of them [his crea- 
 tures], in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet 
 so as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, 
 and not from God; who being most holy and righteous, neither 
 is nor can be the author or approver of sin." 
 
 The acts of Divine Providence are divided by theologians 
 into immanent and transeunt, the immanent being the foreknowl- 
 edge and purpose of God, and the transeunt the execution of 
 this purpose through and by his creatures. Providence is di- 
 vided also in respect to its objects, into general, as having re- 
 spect to all; special, having respect to man and his destiny; and 
 most special, having respect to the good or to the bringing 
 about the supremacy of holiness in the divine dominion. 
 
 The doctrine of Divine Providence includes the following 
 particulars : 
 
 1. It supposes or presupposes the carrying into execution 
 of a divine purpose or plan in the world, which God has brought 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 107 
 
 into being. God's agency in the world is in order that his prov- 
 idence or plans may be consummated. This is the terminus ad 
 qitem, and in doing this all the divine attributes concur. God's 
 power, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are all in- 
 volved in his bringing about this end by his providence. 
 
 2. The doctrine further asserts that to promote and execute 
 this plan, God's government extends to each and all. Every- 
 thing in the world may be viewed in reference to this end, all 
 being subordinate means to this general purpose. 
 
 3. The doctrine further asserts that God governs each thing 
 and all things that He has made, according to their respective 
 natures: that the Providence in respect to the animal and vege- 
 table kingdom is one thing, and in respect to moral agents is 
 another, is a moral government carried out in God's direction of 
 his moral creatures. 
 
 4. It still further implies that God treats men as moral agents, 
 governs and guides them according to their character as good 
 or bad; that the divine providence is different in the good from 
 what it is in the evil, i. e., that it acts in a different mode. 
 
 5. Moreover, by the very statement of the doctrine it is im- 
 plied that the natural world is in order to the moral; that God 
 directs the ends of nature not to subserve natural results but to 
 promote the divine plans, and thus nature is ever subordinate to 
 the divine kingdom. 
 
 6. It is involved in this that in the regular order of nature 
 God may interpose in the midst of physical causes by special act 
 or by miraculous intervention, acting against and interrupting 
 second causes, producing that which second causes cannot pro- 
 duce. Yet this interposition, this miraculous intervention, are 
 all part of the plan, as much involved in it as second causes are. 
 
 As thus stated the doctrine is opposed to the doctrine of 
 Fate, because there is a wise end and a wise author, and equally 
 and for the same reasons to the doctrine of Chance. 1 
 
 i James Douglass: "There are but three alternatives for .the sum of existence, 
 Chance, Fate, or Deity. With Chance there would he variety without uniformity, 
 with Fate uniformity without variety, but variety in uniformity is the demonstra- 
 tion of primal design and the seal of the creative mind. In the world as it exists 
 there is infinite variety and amazing uniformity." 
 
1 08 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 2. Proof of the Doctrine of Providence. 
 I. — The Scriptural Argument. 
 
 1. The Scriptures prove that the divine providence is uni* 
 versal, extending to and embracing the whole world and the 
 whole of human history: Ps. cxxxv. 6; Eph. i. 11, last clause; 
 Ps. ciii. 19; Dan. iv. 34, 35. Here also is to be produced in 
 proof the general tone of the prophecies, which set forth every- 
 thing as arranged with reference to the divine purpose : Ezek. xxi. 
 27; Isa. x. 5; Acts xvii. 26; Rom. ix. ; xiii. 1. 
 
 2. This providence is further declared in Scripture to embrace 
 the natural and animal world, the whole physical sphere : Matt 
 vi. 26 ; Ps. civ. 27 ; Acts xvii. 25, xiv. 17 ; Job xxxviii.-xli. 
 
 3. Individuals also in their destiny are under the divine 
 guidance and providence. This, which is implied in the whole 
 of Scripture, is declared in such passages as the following: Prov. 
 xvi. 9 ; Isa. xlv. 5 ; 1 Sam. ii. 7. So in all passages which trace 
 disease and health to the divine guidance, and represent man as 
 in his temporal destiny under the guardianship of God. 
 
 4. Still further, the Scriptures represent the actions of men 
 as under the control and government of divine providence: 
 Prov. xxi. 1 ; xvi. 1. Every opportunity that we enjoy, every 
 capacity, every blessing, is traced to this divine guidance. Suc- 
 cess or failure in our enterprises is in the hands of God. 
 
 5. Sin also is included in the divine government. God per- 
 mits and controls it, the permission being such and only such as 
 involves control. It exists not without divine permission, but 
 God overrules it. This is implied in the reasoning of the Apostle 
 in Rom. ix., where he speaks of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart 
 and the blinding of men's eyes. Also, Ps. lxxvi. 10; Rom. xi. 32; 
 Acts ii. 23. Such passages prove more than simple providence, 
 they set forth a predestination, but as a matter of course they 
 involve the doctrine of providence. Yet the Scriptures never 
 represent God as the author of sin. They positively assert the 
 contrary: 1 John ii. 16; James i. 13. 
 
 II. — Proof from the divine attributes, their character and 
 characteristics. If God's wisdom be such as we have seen, He 
 would not create a universe and then leave it. His attributes 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 109 
 
 must be in constant activity, and the exercise of these, om- 
 nipotence, omniscience, goodness, etc., is the exercise of divine 
 providence. 
 
 III. — Another argument is from the fact that God is a moral 
 ruler, and as such has a proper end in the creation which He has 
 made, and He must so govern and direct it that the end shall 
 be accomplished. 
 
 IV. — From History. The Biblical history is the history of the 
 divine providence, the only history that ever was written from 
 the truest, highest, and broadest point of view; and in this God 
 appears at work in all the events recorded, among the heathen 
 as well as the Jews, directing everything for his purposes. The 
 highest point of view for treating all history would be this. 1 Di- 
 vine providence is clearly seen in the lives depicted in the Script- 
 ures. Moreover, the general course of history, when regarded 
 from its highest point of view, demonstrates a divine agency, 
 working towards an end. The old world, the mediaeval and 
 the modern times unite in one plan, tending towards the con- 
 summation of the Messiah's kingdom. No unity can be given to 
 history on any other plan. No other central point of view can 
 be found. History without this is chaotic. The only views that 
 can make any pretence to compete with this are the Positivist 
 and the Hegelian theories: the former asserting that human 
 history is intended to develop the social and material welfare 
 of mankind; the latter, that history is tending towards the illus- 
 tration and development of human freedom, particularly as that 
 is found in a well-ordered state. 2 But each of these theories 
 narrows the view and cannot take in all the facts. 
 
 V. — From the order, harmony, and adaptation of nature. 
 God is everywhere, intelligently acting, directing the different 
 orders of creation, putting them in their just relations, mak- 
 ing one subserve the other, the inorganic to contribute to the 
 organic, and the different orders of the organic to each other, 
 until man is reached, the head and crown of all. 
 
 1 [See the author's Introd. to Christian Theol., page 174.] 
 
 2 This is well criticised in Flint's Phil, of Hist, in France and Germany, 
 p. 534. 
 
110 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 VI. — From the nature and necessity of faith, piety, and re- 
 ligion. Without belief in God's providence, religion is an im- 
 possibility. All prayer, all sense of dependence upon God, 
 involve the belief that God works through his providence. 
 
 § 3. Distinction as to general and particular Providence. 
 
 General providence is God's control over the whole ; particular, 
 his care over each in relation to the whole. There are not two 
 kinds of providence, but the same providence is exercised in two re- 
 lations. The phrase, special providence, is sometimes used to de- 
 note a different aspect of the subject, i. e., to describe God's provi- 
 dence as it appears in its relation to us, to designate some special 
 combinations, as in a special answer to prayer or a relief in an 
 emergency, and in fact in all instances where grace and help come 
 in critical circumstances. There is doubtless a special character 
 in these, involving as they do an unusual combination of inci- 
 dents in order that a petition may be answered or a particular 
 purpose be accomplished. There is understood to be an order- 
 ing of the ordinary course of things particularly to some high 
 moral end. 1 
 
 The proof of such particular or special providence is derived: 
 •'1) From the fact that general providence cannot be carried out 
 without this. All great events are somewhere small. The destiny 
 of nations turns at some points on very slight circumstances. 
 (2) From Scripture. In all parts of Scripture it is presupposed 
 that God directs and guides individuals and has a care for their 
 life. Appeals and exhortations are made on this ground: 1 Pet. 
 v. 7; Luke xii. 6; Prov. xvi. 33. (3) From individual experi- 
 ence, particularly of all Christians, who have found that the 
 more they presented to God their cares, the more they were 
 
 1 The rule for the due interpretation of special providences is to be taken from 
 their bearing on our spiritual state. Have they made us more spiritual or hum- 
 ble? Probably the "providence " is imaginary when it does not minister tc the 
 Christian graces, but fosters pride. Especially should caution be used when mat- 
 ters concern a wide sphere of interest, as, e. g., a nation or political party or 
 church. We may be kept from much error in the interpretation of special prov- 
 idences by observing the condition referred to, viz., in its true idea a special 
 providence is a providence having respect to the spiritual growth or welfare of 
 individuals. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. Ill 
 
 guided and blessed. Such trust in God's providence exercises 
 a healthful influence upon all who love Him. It is particularly 
 necessary to belief in the doctrine of the renewal of God's chil- 
 dren. Without a most special providence this is inconceivable. 
 An objection to such special providence is sometimes made 
 on the ground that it represents God as interposing at points 
 which are unworthy of his greatness. This is to be met, if it 
 needs to be met at all, by a consideration of the relation of the 
 little to the great. The objection moreover proves too much. 
 It would bear as directly against God's bringing little things 
 into being, as against his sustaining and guiding them. 
 
 § 4 Modes of the Divine Providence. 
 
 1. God by his providence governs the whole universe in all 
 its parts, each and all, and each for all. 
 
 2. He does this for one comprehensive end, in respect to which 
 we do not yet inquire what it may be. 
 
 3. He governs not by suppressing second causes, but in har- 
 mony with them. Here comes up the chief point of discussion 
 and controversy on the relation of providence to second causes. 
 From the views and arguments already advanced, it is evident 
 that the government of second causes is not to be taken as a 
 mode of direct divine efficiency. Second causes are not modes 
 of operation of the one great cause. What then the mode of 
 the direction of second causes is, is the topic of discussion. The 
 theological term by which the divine agency in connection with 
 second causes is designated is, Concursus, and what we have to 
 consider is the theory of the concursus. That there is a co-agency 
 or co-operation is implied in all the Scripture. 
 
 The first theory. This co-agency is general. God acts 
 upon and through all, but He does not determine the specific 
 nature of the activity of each second cause. So, e. g., the 
 sun excites all sorts of seeds to activity, but the seeds grow 
 according to their specific nature, and the office of the sun 
 is simply that of general excitation. It stirs equally all sorts 
 of seeds, and then its work ceases, the specific activity of each 
 seed being determined by the nature of the seed. This is 
 
112 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the way in which the co-agency of God in man's spiritual 
 quickening and life is interpreted by the Remonstrants and 
 the Jesuits. 
 
 The second theory. A more specific statement is made by 
 the main body of the Roman theologians, including Aquinas, 
 and by the greater part of Protestant teachers. It is that 
 besides such a general exciting agency on the part of God, 
 there is an immediate and simultaneous co-operation, a joint 
 agency in every effect, i. e., the divine agency extends to 
 all and each. The agency of the sun upon the seed and 
 plant is outside, is superficial simply, is exerted in the way 
 of general excitation. But the agency of God as omnipotent, 
 omnipresent, exerted in conformity with the idea of the 
 divine co-operation, must enter into the interior as well as 
 arouse the surface. It must go along with every motion, 
 every activity which is found, there must be a joint simul- 
 taneous activity of God with the trembling of every nerve, 
 with the. particular or specific growth of each plant, so that 
 a divine power shapes and works along with the seed itself, 
 with the secret agencies as well as the external products. 
 And so with the human soul. The divine power must enter 
 into the soul itself, and sustain each second cause in working 
 according to the particular end of that second cause, must 
 sustain and direct it in every movement so that the concursus 
 shall be perfect throughout, as if there were a twofold ac- 
 tivity perfectly parallel in every act. But this raises 
 
 The third -question. How then can this view be reconciled 
 with the sinful activities of certain second causes? In meet- 
 ing this difficulty almost all Roman Catholic and Protestant 
 divines insist upon the distinction between an act and its 
 moral character, and put the sin, as far as the divine agency 
 is concerned, in defect. God's agency thus extends to sin 
 not as sin, but simply as an act of the creature. Augustine 
 illustrated it thus: the power which causes a lame man to 
 walk is not the cause of his limping: the striking of an in- 
 strument which is out of tune is not the cause of the discord. 
 The cause of the limping is not in the agency of God, it is 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 113 
 
 in the structure of the limb, so that there can be co-agency 
 in the whole limping, while yet the co-agent does not produce 
 the limping and is not responsible for it. As to the musical 
 instrument, the influence acting upon it is not the source 
 of the discord. This is in the structure of the instrument, 
 and there may be a co-agency in the production of the sound, 
 the player being responsible only for the striking and the 
 instrument for the discord. So in respect to sin. God's agency 
 may extend to every act and activity, while yet He is not 
 responsible for sin, because this comes not from his agency, 
 but from the state of the heart of the individual with whom 
 He co-operates. — These illustrations are not perfect, but per- 
 haps they are as good as can be found. 
 
 A fourth position. God in his providence so governs that 
 the natural world is subordinate to the moral world. He 
 governs the natural in order to the moral. Some naturalists 
 oppose this view, urging that there are two entirely different 
 spheres, the one physical, the other moral, and that the whole 
 physical sphere proceeds without reference to the moral, that 
 the physical realm comprises cases of mere necessity, and that 
 these never can be modified or diverted for moral ends. 1 The 
 doctrine of Divine Providence maintains the general position 
 that although the spheres are different, and though physical 
 and moral laws are different, yet both spheres are a part of 
 one plan and make one whole, and that in the divine plan 
 the natural is in order to the moral, and is upheld and guided 
 for moral ends. In both God is equally a sovereign. The nat- 
 ural laws are seen chiefly in the preservation and in all the 
 agencies and effects of our natural powers. The moral order is 
 God's government of moral beings to secure the highest moral 
 ends. This may be illustrated by the following considerations. 
 
 1. As a matter of fact, in the divine government, the natural 
 is made to subserve the moral. This is in the ordinary course 
 of God's providence. Natural pains or pleasures are directly 
 
 1 One "Writer says, they can no more be turned aside than the ball coming 
 from the mouth of a cannon, that both systems of laws must go on, and that the 
 physical cannot bend to the moral. See Prof. Chase in Bib. Sac. 
 
114 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 connected with the violation of, or obedience to, moral laws 
 The course of nature thus works for God's government. 
 
 2. Also in the course of nature, besides these connections in 
 the ordinary course of providence, there may be and are, on the 
 part of God, interpositions for high moral ends and purposes. 
 " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all 
 these things shall be added unto you." God so directs the course 
 of nature as to make it subserve the interests of his moral gov- 
 ernment. Obedience to his divine laws in the long run is seen 
 to issue in greater temporal well-being. There is no violation 
 of natural law in this, but there is direction of natural law in it. 
 God so arranges the whole complexus of physical laws that in 
 the long run the physical follow in the wake of the moral, and 
 tend to uphold the moral. God turns the physical law into the 
 current of his moral government. This is illustrated in the 
 prosperity and destiny of nations. 
 
 3. God likewise acts above the course of nature, as in the 
 renewal and sanctification of the soul, and as in the Incarnation 
 of his Son. 
 
 4. God may and does interrupt the course of nature, as in 
 miracles. 
 
 5. God so governs moral beings that they are free. More 
 over, his efficiency is not the same in sinful as in holy acts. 
 
 6. God governs in different modes of interference according 
 to the exigency. 
 
 7. God knows the causes and essences of things, and hence 
 He may and doubtless does work in ways which we cannot 
 fathom. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE DECREES OF GOD. 1 
 
 The relation of the decrees of God to his providence is simply 
 
 this: the whole course and order of divine providence are the 
 
 i The subjects of the Order of the Decrees, Election, etc., belong in the third 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 115 
 
 result of a decree and purpose. God as a sovereign has fore- 
 ordained the course and order of providence. He has purposed 
 that things should be and take place as they are and do actu- 
 ally occur. In other words, the doctrine of the divine decrees 
 is the doctrine of divine providence referred back to the di- 
 vine sovereignty. The doctrine asserts that all that is in the 
 natural and moral world, including the kingdom of grace, takes 
 place in consequence of a fixed and unchangeable and eternal 
 purpose of God. (In some systems of theology the doctrine 
 of decrees is treated before that of providence, which is the 
 logical order, but the natural order is rather to consider the 
 divine providence first.) 
 
 § 1. Preliminary Statements. 
 
 I. — In his decree God is a sovereign. The doctrine of di- 
 vine decrees is simply and ultimately that God is the sover- 
 eign ruler of the universe which He has created, and that 
 He does as He pleases, according to the counsel of his own 
 will and wisdom, not in an arbitrary sense, but in such a 
 sense that He needs not to take counsel of his creatures. The 
 argument for this is from various sources. 1 (1) The doctrine 
 of the divine sovereignty results from the divine nature and 
 attributes in relation to a dependent universe. (2) It is best 
 that a Being of infinite power and wisdom should be the 
 sovereign of the universe, and that it should not be left to 
 the contingency and change of inferior creatures. (3) Our 
 deepest religious convictions show us the need of the doc- 
 trine for our renewal and sanctification. We cannot rest 
 on any created power, but must cast ourselves on the arm 
 of a sovereign. As is often said, Arminians are Calvinists 
 when they pray. (4) The Scripture argument. Ps. cxv. 3; 
 cxxxv. 6; Rom. xi. 36; Eph. i. 5; i. 11; Phil. ii. 13. 
 
 II. — This sovereignty is not a bare omnipotence, although 
 that is involved in it, but it includes the activity of all God's 
 attributes and powers. Sovereignty is often taken as equiva- 
 
 1 See especially Dr. Woods's Lectures, Vol. I, and Dr. Ealmer in Brown's 
 Theol. Tracts, Vol. HI. 
 
116 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 lent to arbitrary power, but the doctrine is not that God 
 has no reason for his action; He has the best of reasons for 
 all that He does; He has a rational, wise, holy end ever in 
 view, and the doctrine is that God brings this wise and holy 
 end to its consummation. 
 
 III. — God's decrees are one decree, one plan, in which each 
 is for all and all for each. 
 
 IV. — God's decrees or purpose simply determine this: that 
 all things are to be as they occur. The order and plan of 
 the universe, both natural and moral, are in divine fore-or- 
 dination just what they are in fact — nothing more nor less. 
 Whatever anything is in itself, in its internal and external 
 relations, so it was decreed to be. The decrees refer to all 
 things, results, and means, just as they occur in the course 
 of divine providence. If there are contingent events in provi- 
 dence, there are contingent events in decrees; if there are 
 free acts in providence, there are free acts in decrees; if there 
 are sinful and guilty acts in providence, so there are in decrees. 
 The doctrine of decrees or sovereignty is a comprehensive 
 doctrine. Most objections spring from taking isolated facts 
 by themselves, as if God purposed each event by itself, as 
 if, e. g.) He determined to condemn a certain individual to 
 eternal death without any regard to anything else, when the 
 true statement is, that if, in point of fact, the condemnation 
 comes as the issue of a sinful career, so it was in the divine 
 purpose. On this ground we may meet the common objection, 
 that if an action is decreed we cannot be responsible for it. 
 The objection supposes that the action is decreed in circum- 
 stances which prevent responsibility, whereas the conscious- 
 ness of the individual is that he is responsible, and that con- 
 sciousness is as much decreed as the act is. If there is a 
 sinful act it was decreed as the act of a man and as his 
 own act. 
 
 V. — In short, the doctrine declares in substance, that the 
 present system of the universe in all its parts, as it was, 
 is, and is to be, is an eternal plan, or purpose, or idea in 
 the divine mind. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 117 
 
 § 2. Of the Terms used to denote the Doctrine. 
 
 The term purpose is equivalent to the term decrees. The 
 word decree is in some respects unfortunate, because misunder- 
 stood so frequently. Decree is used ordinarily, and in Script- 
 ure, in the sense of edict or law, that which God commands. 
 But the theological usage takes the word not in the sense 
 of command or approbation on God's part, but of what He 
 permits or determines to be done as a whole plan. It does 
 not imply moral approval on the side of God, or fate or ne- 
 cessity on the side of the act, but it does imply certainty. Of 
 the general decree of God, predestination is a part The de- 
 cree of God embraces all that occurs; predestination is tech- 
 nically a part of the divine decree, and is used of that which 
 relates to moral beings, and especially to their final condition 
 (although predestination really applies to every event of their 
 history as well as to their final destiny). As thus used it 
 implies that man's final state is involved in God's plan, yet 
 never without respect to what has gone before, rather as being 
 the sum of what has gone before. Predestination contains the 
 end only as containing the sum total of what has gone before. 
 
 § 3. Characteristics of the Divine Decree or Decrees. 
 
 I. — They are sovereign, expressing the good pleasure of God, 
 and so in many respects must be unsearchable to man. 
 
 II. — They are unconditional. They are not dependent on 
 anything which is not a part or parcel of the divine decree 
 itself. This does not mean that the decrees themselves are not 
 mutually dependent, but that nothing in the plan is conditioned 
 by anything which is not in the decree itself. 1 
 
 III. — They are eternal. They must be so on the considera- 
 tion that otherwise there would be a change in the divine plan 
 or appointment: Eph. i. 4; 2 Tim. i. 9; 1 Pet. i. 20. When 
 the Scriptures speak of one decree as preceding another, the 
 order is in the unfolding of the decrees, and not in the formation 
 of them. 
 
 1 Yet the phrase unconditional decree is usually understood to mean an arbi- 
 trary purpose. This is the sense in which it is taken by Supralapsarianism. 
 But that theory, since the Synod of Dort, has scarcely dared to lift its head. 
 
118 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 IV. — They are immutable. This is involved in their eternity 
 Ps. xxxiii. 11; Isa. xlvi. 11. 
 
 V. — -They involve the certain occurrence of that which ia 
 decreed. This is the meaning of the word efficacious as applied 
 to the divine decrees, i. e., what is contained in them is sure, 
 certain, the decree is effectual, a purpose which is carried into 
 effect. Not that the decree itself is efficacious, or that God by 
 a direct efficiency carries each decree into operation. The rea- 
 sons for this are: (1) If it were not so there would be no certainty 
 to divine government. This might be overthrown or set aside. 
 The fulfillment of prophecy may depend upon a million of mi- 
 nute particulars whose occurrence must be secured. (2) The di- 
 vine attributes prove the position. (3) The Scriptures assert it. 
 All the prophecies establish it: Isa. xiv. 27. Also all passages 
 which declare the divine sovereignty. 
 
 VI. — The divine decrees, as including all events, include sin 
 also. The controversy between the Supra- and Sub-lapsarians 
 is not on account of this point, whether the decree of God in- 
 cludes sin as certain, but it is in respect to the order of the 
 divine decrees. The Supralapsarian says that the divine purpose 
 in respect to sin or the permission of sin in the world was subse- 
 quent to the divine purpose for salvation and punishment, i. e., in 
 the order of divine decrees, the logical order, the first decree is 
 that God will set forth his glory, the second, that He will do 
 this by saving some and condemning others, and the third is 
 the decree of the fall, the Lapsus. The Sublapsarian says 
 that in the order of the divine decrees, there is first the 
 decree to create, then the permission of the fall, and then elec- 
 tion and redemption, or redemption and election. There ap- 
 pears to be good reason for asserting the sublapsarian position 
 as against the supralapsarian, though it is to be acknowl- 
 edged that the whole subject of the order of the divine de- 
 crees is above man's comprehension. But it appears absurd to 
 speak of redemption unless there was a fall in the order of 
 thought, or of a punishment unless there was sin to be punished. 
 Irrespective of supra- or sub-lapsarian speculations, it is necessary 
 to consider that in the whole divine plan sin somehow has its 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 119 
 
 place. It is taken into the plan, not under God's approval nor 
 as the means of good, but as a fact. The arguments for this 
 position are: (1) If sin be excluded from the divine decree or 
 purpose, then that on which the whole economy of grace rests is 
 not contained in the divine purpose. (2) If sin is excluded, much 
 the larger part of the history of mankind is excluded. How 
 much of human history is there which is not sin or of sin ? To 
 exclude it would be to throw the divine plan out of the world. 
 (3) As all events are connected, and sin belongs in the line of 
 cause and effect, to exclude sin from the decree would annul the 
 possibility of providence and a divine government. Sin is ever 
 interlocked with good. It is the overruling of sin which produces 
 the highest good. 1 (4) The relation to sin in which the Script- 
 ures exhibit God is that of permitting and overruling it, but at 
 the same time they imply that it is included in his general pur- 
 pose: Rom. v. 20; ix. 18; xi. 8; xi. 32; Gal. iii. 19; iii. 22. 
 
 Note. — The question between Calvinists and Arminians is this: whether the 
 decrees depend on foreknowledge. Does the divine decree depend upon God's 
 foreseeing that such and such a thing will be ? Is it decreed simply because God 
 foresaw it would come to pass? In relation to this: (1) In one sense the fore- 
 knowledge must be the ground of the decree, i e., God does not decree anything 
 which he does not know, He must know what He is going to decree. God knows 
 what is possible, what is best to be in a certain plan, knows what belongs to all the 
 parts of the plan, knows all this in the order of thought before He determines that 
 the plan shall take effect, and in this general sense the foreknowledge is the log- 
 ical and intellectual condition of the purpose. But this .is not the real question. 
 The real question is, Is the foreknowledge that such and such an event will be, 
 the ground of the determination that it shall be ? The Arminian says that God 
 foresees that Peter will do a wrong apt, and foreseeing that he will, God determines 
 to allow it. In regard to this, (a.) God may undoubtedly foresee that a free agent 
 in such and such circumstances will act in such and such a way, and may deter- 
 mine to place him so and so, and in doing that may virtually determine the action, 
 and here God's determination is simply not to prevent the doing of what He fore- 
 sees will be done. This is a supposable case, and here of course there would be 
 no interference with the freedom of the individual, (b.) But the ground of the 
 certainty of the event that Peter will do a wrong act, is not the divine foreknowl- 
 edge, but the divine purpose, i. e., the purpose of God to permit the act, to take 
 it into the whole divine plan is the ground of the certain occurrence of the event. 
 God foresaw that Peter would do so and so, but that is not"all. That Peter would 
 do so and so is also certain, for it is included in the divine plan. What is the 
 ground of that certainty ? Is it that God foresaw that Peter would thus act? No. 
 
 1 Nominal Calvinists and Anninians protest against the doctrine of decrees, 
 because they insist upon putting a foreign sense upon the word decree. 
 
1 20 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Because all which that would bring with it is, that if Peter is placed eo and so, he 
 will do so and so. But it is that God has determined that that event with all its 
 circumstances shall be, and it has been adopted into his plan, (c.) Unless the 
 event or act was adopted into the divine plan, there could not be a certainty of 
 its occurrence. It would only be possible. Thus there is both foreknowledge 
 and certainty in regard to an event, but the certainty of an event as future rests 
 in the purpose and not in the foreknowledge. The purpose is the ground of 
 the foreknowledge, and not the foreknowledge the ground of the purpose. ' (d.) In 
 respect to the Scripture testimony, see passages cited above. The passage Rom. 
 viii. 29 is brought into the controversy. "For whom He foreknew, He also fore- 
 ordained (or predestinated) to be conformed to the image of his Son." Even 
 supposing that itpoeyvw (foreknew) means solely to foreknow, the Arminian in- 
 terpretation would not follow; because all that the passage can be said to assert 
 is, Whom God did foreknow (i. e., Christians) He did also predetermine should 
 be conformed to the image of his Son. But the better interpretation is that of 
 taking foreknew as equivalent to predetermine, and to understand the passage as 
 declaring, Whom He predetermined to be Christians He also did appoint to be 
 conformed to the image of his Son. 
 
 § 4. Proof of tlie Doctrine of Decrees. 
 
 I. — There is a strong analogical argument from the doctrine 
 of providence. There is the same God working in natural and 
 moral government. There are designs and ends in nature: why 
 not the same in God's providential dispensations? The designs 
 in nature were planned beforehand : why not in the moral sphere? 
 If in the less, why not in the greater ? If in the natural, a fortiori 
 in the moral, as being more important. 
 
 II. — There is also a rational argument on the general posi- 
 tion that it is best that all events should be embraced in one plan 
 of a wise and holy, omniscient and omnipresent sovereign. 
 
 III. — The various divine attributes imply and demand the 
 doctrine. (1) The attribute of omniscience implies the divine 
 decree. 2 Omniscience cannot know events unless they are ob- 
 jects of knowledge. If they are known as certain, the quality 
 of certainty must have been imparted to them. Anything can 
 be made certain only in one of two ways; either by an internal 
 necessity or by a divine purpose. Free acts are not rendered 
 certain by necessity, consequently if they are certain they can 
 only have become so through the divine purpose. That they are 
 certain is shown by prophecy and providence. If it be said that 
 
 i Edwards on the Will, Part ii. § 12. 
 2 Fully argued in Edwards on the Will. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 121 
 
 God foreknows them as certain through the laws and processes 
 by which they are made certain, yet it must be acknowledged 
 that He made these laws and established them in their goings, 
 and fixed the conjunction under which they work at any par- 
 ticular point. (2) The immutability of God is a proof of the 
 doctrine of decrees. It is sometimes said that the proper state- 
 ment is, If men will do so, then God will do so, and that is the 
 posture of things in God's government; He changes his conduct 
 when man changes. To which the sufficient reply is, that He 
 does this undoubtedly, changing his relation to men as they 
 change, and that He always meant to do this, and this is the 
 doctrine of the divine purposes; and if He did not always mean 
 to, then something comes upon Him unawares in the course of 
 his providence. It is also said that the decree of redemption 
 was dependent on the fall, and before the fall this decree could 
 not have been formed. In the order of time it is true that 
 redemption is brought in in connection with the fall, and in 
 the logical arrangement of the decrees it is true that the de- 
 cree of redemption is subsequent to the notion of the fall, but 
 that is simply an order of the divine purposes and not a depend- 
 ence of those purposes upon anything that is to occur by and 
 by. (3) God's holiness is a proof of his decrees. It must be 
 the purpose of a Holy Being that holiness shall be triumphant, 
 and this can only be by a plan to make it triumphant, and that 
 is the doctrine of decrees, viz., a plan by which God makes every 
 thing to work so that holiness shall triumph. In the same way 
 God's benevolence and all his moral attributes may be adduced 
 in proof. Everything must be provided for, otherwise God 
 would commit the fortunes of the universe to an uncertain sys- 
 tem. (4) The Scriptural proof, (a.) Some direct and pregnant 
 assertions: Is. xlvi. 10, 11; Eph. i. 9, i. 11. (&.) From proph- 
 ecy. The whole of prophecy proves decrees. Christ was de- 
 livered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. 
 It was before announced that He should come, (c.) The doctrine 
 of decrees is involved in the doctrine of a special providence aa 
 derived from Scripture (see above), (d.) From the Scriptural 
 representation that man's destiny for life and death is in the 
 
122 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 hands of God. " He giveth to all life and breath and all things." 
 Job xiv. 5: — "his days are determined." (e.) As far as sin is 
 concerned, the Scriptures represent that as embraced in the di- 
 vine purpose: Acts ii. 23, iv. 27. (/.) The doctrine of election 
 also involves the truth of the divine purpose. 
 
 § 5. Objections to the Doctrine of the Divine Decrees, 
 
 I. — It is said that the doctrine involves fatalism. 
 
 Fatalism is an indefinite term, and the different senses which 
 it has need to be carefully distinguished. (1) The chief doctrine 
 of fatalism is that which makes everything that is produced in 
 the world to be the result of matter and motion. In this sense the 
 doctrine of decrees is not fatalistic. (2) Pantheistic fatalism makes 
 everything to be the result of a blind necessity, and although the 
 original source may be conceived as spirit rather than matter, yet 
 it is a blind unconscious force, and not an intelligence which is at 
 work. — These are the two strict systems of fatalism. (3) The 
 Stoical system of fatalism of ancient times and the system of 
 strict necessity of modern times assert that all things are bound 
 together by a series and concatenation of causes, make God to 
 be merely the necessary First Cause and deny human freedom. 
 The human will is declared to be subject to the law of cause 
 and effect, its freedom not being allowed as one of the causes in 
 the continual connection. This system has been repudiated by 
 Calvinistic divines in the statement that the divine purpose em- 
 braces freedom. — Hence, in no proper sense of fatalism can the 
 doctrine of the divine purpose be said to come under it. For the 
 doctrine of divine decrees simply asserts that all things are fore- 
 known and predetermined by a wise, omniscient, and omnipotent 
 being and conscious intelligence, and that in the plan everything 
 is provided for just as it occurs in fact 
 
 II. — Kindred to the objection just considered is that which 
 asserts that the doctrine of divine decrees is a doctrine of 
 necessity. 
 
 The word necessity is used in a variety of senses. (1) Meta- 
 physical necessity, by which is meant the impossibility of the 
 opposite. It is impossible that at the same time a thing should 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 123 
 
 be and not be, — that there should be an event without a cause. 
 Wherever there is that in the nature of the case which makes 
 the contrary view impossible, there is metaphysical necessity 
 In this sense the doctrine of decrees is of course not the doctrine 
 of necessity. (2) Logical necessity, by which is meant the logi- 
 cal impossibility of the opposite. Given the premises, and such 
 a conclusion is the logical result, so that any other logical con- 
 clusion is an impossibility. (3) Physical necessity, which is 
 what is ordinarily meant in the objection. This is a necessity 
 which is based on the uniformity of natural Jaws, a necessity 
 in which the terms conjoined are physical, in which with a cer- 
 tain physical cause a given physical effect must result. The 
 assertion that physical necessity must rule if the doctrine of 
 divine decrees is true, rests on the position that the laws of 
 nature are uniform in their action, and that these imply in 
 their relation to the will, coercion, that they simply force the 
 will. The position implies that the result will come although 
 the opposition of the will may be put forth. — In this sense the 
 doctrine of divine decrees is not a doctrine of necessity, because 
 it does not assert or imply that the decrees take effect in man 
 in spite of his will, or that they coerce man by a physical force 
 which he cannot resist, or that the terms conjoined are simply 
 physical. (4) Moral necessity, by which is meant x the certainty 
 that they will be and take place as they are and do. It is equiv- 
 alent to certainty. In this sense of moral necessity the opposi- 
 tion of the will is not conceivable. The concurrence of the will 
 is embraced in the necessity. In other words, moral necessity 
 is the conjunction of moral causes and effects, as physical ne- 
 cessity is the conjunction of physical causes and effects. The 
 laws of cause and effect are at work in both moral and phy- 
 sical necessity, but in cases of moral necessity the causes are 
 inclination, motives, desire, etc., which do not force the will. 
 With this understanding of the term necessity, as a combina- 
 tion of moral antecedents and consequents, the doctrine of 
 decrees may be said to involve it, in the sense of there being 
 a certainty of action, certainty not under physical, but under 
 
 1 As explained by both the older and younger Edwards. 
 
124 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 moral, laws. The term necessity is an unfortunate one. Cer- 
 tainty is better. 1 
 
 HI. — It is sometimes objected to the doctrine of decrees that 
 it is the result of a speculative tendency; that it is the introduc- 
 tion of a philosophical thesis into theology, and has not a re- 
 ligious source. As a matter of fact this is false. All the great 
 advocates of decrees have been influenced not by a philosophical 
 but by a religious view of things. 2 
 
 IV. — Objection is made on the score of human freedom, with 
 which the doctrine of decrees is said to be inconsistent. 3 — But if 
 decrees are inconsistent with human freedom, it must be from 
 something in the nature of the decree, or something in the nature 
 of freedom, which is inconsistent with the decree. The general 
 answer is that there is nothing in the nature of the decree which 
 is inconsistent with human freedom, because what the decree 
 secures is certainty; and there is nothing in the nature of human 
 freedom which is inconsistent with the decree, because freedom 
 is consistent with certainty: i. e., the middle term here is cer- 
 tainty. The decree secures certainty, and freedom is consistent 
 
 1 On the position of the younger Edwards some further remarks will be made 
 under the head of Liberty and Necessity. We cannot agree with the limitation 
 which he puts upon the action of the will, especially in seeming to imply that in 
 the case of moral agency we have a given volition or choice, and that what is the 
 cause of that choice is simply and solely the motive, and not the man. In order 
 to save the doctrine of liberty in the causality of any choice, we must put in hu- 
 man freedom, the will as well as the motive. Any given choice or volition con- 
 sidered as a result, is the product of two factors, of the motive on the one hand 
 and the choosing on the other, and the result of the choosing is the choice. The 
 difficulty arises from not distinguishing between the choosing and the choice, be- 
 tween the man willing and the volition which is the result. If we make the whole 
 cause to be in the motive and desires, and the whole effect to be in the volition, and 
 do not put in an act of choice as also included, it becomes impossible to assert the 
 freedom of the will except in mere words. See Pres. Day's Keview of Edwards 
 on the Will, which is one of the best expositions of the subject. 
 
 2 See Julius Mtiller in iSiudien und Kritikm, 1856. He goes through the litera- 
 ture of the subject, and shows that the belief of both Calvin and Luther was con- 
 nected with their views of justification, and with the general position that man is 
 in such a moral state that he cannot rely upon himself for salvation. 
 
 3 This is the chief argument of Bledsoe in his Theodicy, on the whole the 
 ablest work in this country against the Calvinistic system. He is obliged to take 
 refuge in an absolute self-determining power of the will, ultimately in the sense 
 that that which determines the will to any particular course of action is nothing, 
 that all that cin be said is that the will determines itself. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 125 
 
 with this. The chief point to be considered is the assertion that 
 certainty is consistent with freedom. On this it is to be said : 
 
 1. There is nothing in the nature of the decree which is in 
 itself inconsistent with human freedom. The decree says events 
 are certain as they take place, and if they take place freely 
 through choice this is included in the decree. Whether we are 
 able to state fully how this is or not is a secondary question ; it 
 is enough to save the doctrine, that the sense in which we hold 
 it is one which includes human freedom in the field covered by 
 the decree. 
 
 2. Nor can it be alleged that in the execution of the decrees 
 there are proceedings which are inconsistent with human free- 
 dom. The execution of the decrees, as they are actually carried 
 out in regeneration, and so in all cases of sin, takes place without 
 interference with free agency. There is nothing in man's con- 
 sciousness which is at variance with his acts, his activity from 
 beginning to end proceeds according to his free and responsible 
 nature, and yet his acts are the results of the decree. 
 
 3. For each fact, the fact of the divine decree and the fact 
 of human freedom, there is sufficient independent proof, and 
 there we might rest. There is enough proof for decrees on ra- 
 tional and Scriptural grounds, and enough for freedom in con- 
 sciousness; and if we state the two so that they are consistent 
 with each other, we have done all that is required. They could 
 be so stated as to involve a contradiction; e. g., the decrees as 
 bringing the human will under physical necessity, or freedom as 
 consisting in the power of arbitrary choice or determination of 
 the will, without or in spite of motives. But if we view the de- 
 cree as that which secures certainty, and freedom as the power 
 of choice under motives, which is consistent with certainty, then 
 so far as the form of statement is concerned there is no objection 
 to be made. And if we cannot find all the links, the points of 
 connection between the certainty which is secured by the divine 
 decree and the freedom which is attested by consciousness, we 
 may simply say that we are under no obligation to do this. 
 
 4. Moreover, there are positive facts which show that cer- 
 tainty is not inconsistent with freedom. God's acts are doubt 
 
126 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 less all certain, and they are unquestionably all free. And if 
 freedom and certainty can co-exist in God, the omnipotent, much 
 more may they in man the creature. It is certain that all the 
 divine acts will be holy; it is certain that they are perfectly free. 
 So in respect to Christ, it was certain that He would continue to 
 be holy, harmless, and undefiled, and yet all his acts were volun- 
 tary, free. Scripture asserts that the saints will persevere in 
 holiness to the end, yet in the whole course of their perseverance 
 they are conscious of freedom. In all cases of regeneration, we 
 believe that the renewal is effected by the Spirit of God. All 
 Arminians confess this. And yet, in all that we can trace as be- 
 longing to the regeneration, we know that we are free, we act 
 "most freely" under that divine influence which secures the 
 certain renewal of the soul. Further, all cases of sin in the 
 sinner's conscious experience illustrate the fact that certainty 
 and freedom are reconcilable with one another. It is certain 
 that sinners will go on to destruction unless grace intervene, and 
 yet in all their course they are free and are conscious of free- 
 dom. We ourselves can foresee with tolerable certainty how 
 men will act under certain circumstances; and if we with our 
 imperfect knowledge may have a degree of certainty in regard, 
 wl^y may not God have entire certainty in respect, to them ? 
 
 V c \ CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE END OF GOD IN CREATION. 
 
 Eeferences: Edwards, vol. ii., also in Brown's Theol. Tracts, 
 vol. 2, "God made all things for the most perfect gratification 
 of his infinitely benevolent mind " ; Dr. Spring: " God the end of 
 all things," Princeton Repos., 1832, Princeton Essays, vol. ii., an 
 unsatisfactory discussion ; Pres. Day, on Benevolence and Selfish- 
 ness, Bib. Repos., 1843: "There are several ultimate ends, since 
 an end is a good in itself;" Rev. W. C. Wisner, Bib. Repos., 
 July, 1850 : "The end is happiness in holiness," — against Edwards ; 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 127 
 
 Burton, Essays, pp. 286 seq. ; Dwight, SermonXXV., "The chief end 
 of man"; Dr. Samuel Austin, Worcester, 1826: "that God could 
 not be in any sense His own end — He could not gain anything 
 by creation": so Wisner, for substance; Dr. Harris, in Man Prime- 
 val: ch. i., The great reason why God must be his own Last 
 End, ch. ii., The divine all-sufficiency, last end of creation; Hop- 
 kins, System, i. 90-92; Bretschneider, Dogmatik, I.; Strauss, 
 Giaubenslehre L, § 47; Ebrard, Dogmatik, L, § 273, pp. 355-8; 
 Twesten, Giaubenslehre, II., pp. 88, 89; Kant, Kritik d. Urtheils- 
 kraft ( Werke vii. ) p. 311 seq. ; Schweizer, Giaubenslehre, I. , 137-143 ; 
 The Glory of God the great End of Moral Action, John Martin, 
 D.D., Brown's Theol. Tracts, vol. iii. ; Quenstedt: The last end 
 is the glory of God, glory of his goodness, power, and wisdom. 
 " Finis intermedius est hominum salus. Omnia enim Deus fecit 
 propter hominem, hominem autem propter se ipsum." 
 
 In the discussion of this subject the following points are as- 
 sumed on the ground of what has gone before: 
 
 That God is the author of creation ; 
 
 That He is a wise, holy, and benevolent Being; 
 
 That the creation is something distinct from himself; 
 
 That there is an end, an object, to be attained by it. 
 
 § 1. Meaning and Statement of the Question. 
 
 The meaning of the phrase, " End of God in creation," is, the 
 final object for which the world was made, the result which God 
 intends to bring about, to consummate in the created universe, 
 the last end, the chief end. Some have discriminated between 
 the chief and the last end, but this can hardly be done, as they 
 run into one another. 1 It is said that the chief end is holiness 
 and the last end is happiness; but this is a forced distinction. 
 
 The inquiry is still further after the last end of God in crea- 
 tion, not the last end for the creatures simply, though that may 
 be included in it, but the end of the divine manifestations. 
 
 It is an inquiry, too, about one such last end, to which all 
 others may be referred and subordinated. If there be several 
 
 1 See Bib. Sac, Oct. 1853, article on Edwards's Nature of Virtue, where ulti- 
 mate is made to mean last in order of time. 
 
128 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ends, the problem is, to refer them to one which shall include, 
 in their integrity, all the others. 
 
 The inquiry is also for the last end of God in creation; and 
 by creation is meant, here, all of the universe which is not God, 
 and which He brings into being for an end. 
 
 The last end of anything, Kant truly says, is that end or 
 object which does not need anything beyond it as the condition 
 of its existence. Distinctions have been made as to ends, and 
 differences in theories arise partly from neglect of these distinc- 
 tions, (a.) Subordinate and ultim ate ends: subordinate, one that 
 is sought for with reference to an ultimate end. 1 (&.) Inferior 
 ajaj3j}hi£f. These terms relate to a comparison of different ends 
 — whether subordinate or ultimate — as to their respective value 
 and worth, (c.) Objective ,anpl jgujbjgcjive, in respect to creation. 
 Subjective means, that which moved the mind of the author, 
 his pleasure in the act; objective, the end to be realized in crea- 
 tion, the object in view, that in which the pleasure is found. 
 This distinction brings up one of the main differences in the 
 theories. With the distinction as here made, nobody would deny 
 that God's subjective end in creation is his pleasure, his hap- 
 piness in it. "For thy pleasure they are and were created." 
 But that is not what God intended to realize; our inquiry is 
 not for this subjective end in itself — that ive knoio; — but it is 
 for that objective end in view of which this divine joy arises. 3 
 (&) Original .a.nd consequential. Edwards (ii. 197) distinguishes 
 between ultimate 3 ends as original and independent — and 
 consequential or dependent. E. g. 9 God loves to do justice 
 to men as a good in itself: but this could not be an orig- 
 inal end with Him in creation, for it is consequential or 
 dependent on their existence. So God loves to make his 
 
 1 In this sense ultimate ends may be as various as our specific duties and aims, 
 natural or moral. 
 
 2 Objective and subjective ends are also found in the creation itself; subjective 
 meaning man's happiness, and the delight and happiness of aU sentient beings, 
 and objective meaning that manifestation of the divine operations which is to 
 moral beings the source of their highest blessedness. By this usage the terms 
 aro much intermingled and confused. 
 
 3 In his use of "ultimate" Edwards is sometimes perplexing. He ought 
 always to have used supreme or last end. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 129 
 
 creatures happy; this is an end, yet consequential and de- 
 pendent upon their existence. 
 
 The purpose of the inquiry. In asking, What is the end of God 
 in creation, we mean to inquire for his original, ultimate, ob 
 jective end in all^isjvc^ks^oX^cj^aticjL. We mean by original, 
 that which needs nothing besides as the condition of its being, 
 which is not to be conceived as derived from a higher end ; by 
 ultimate, not simply that which is last in time but also that which 
 is supreme in value; by objective, that which is extant in the 
 creation itself, and as such is found and rejoiced in by God. 
 
 § 2. Conditions of the Solution of the Problem — if possible. 
 
 1. The end must be one, and as such, sufficiently general to 
 include in one form of statement a great variety of inferior, sub- 
 ordinate ends. Nobody doubts that there is such a variety, and 
 the question is as to the reduction of all these under one. The 
 problem is virtually given up as insoluble, when several original 
 ultimate ends are stated. 
 
 2. These subordinate or inferior ends must be so included in 
 the one that all shall be seen to be parts of that one end, that 
 they all can be referred to it fairly, as expressive thereof. If 
 they cannot be, that one cannot be the end, because there is 
 something which it does not include. This is one of the strictest 
 tests of any theory. 1 God and man must be both concerned in 
 this end. 
 
 3. Hence, this end must be one which includes in itself all 
 that is in creation, according to the measure and degree of each 
 part: it must be found and exemplified, more or less, in the whole 
 of creation, natural, moral, and spiritual. The sum of all the 
 works and ways of God is in the natural world with its moral 
 ordering, in providence and in the kingdom of God's grace — what 
 is his end in all these, is the question: it is necessary to comprise 
 them all under some object to which they all refer. 
 
 4 This end, while it is to be fully realized only at the end or 
 consummation of all things, yet must also be contained, in its 
 
 1 In our view one of the strongest objections to any form of the happiness 
 theory is made by the application of this test. 
 
130 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 proper measure and degree, in creation as it is, and in the whole 
 past history of creation. 1 It must not be inconsistent with what 
 already is, but be illustrated by it: it must be an end which is 
 future in the sense of complete realization, but. present in the 
 sense of partial realization, at each point in the historic course. 
 And hence, it may be possible for us to find the end. 
 
 § 3. Statement of the Theories. 
 
 Here as elsewhere there are two antagonistic views sharply 
 in opposition, and the question is as to their respective rights. 
 The fundamental contrast is in the statements: the ultimate, 
 objective end is God himself, God makes himself the end; or that 
 end is man, the happiness of the creature. 2 The different theo- 
 ries are formed either by taking one of these to the exclusion of 
 the other, or by attempting to reconcile them. 
 
 1. The end is the happiness of man. In its best form of state- 
 ment, this theory says that God could not make himself the end 
 of creation, because He is sufficient unto himself, and could 
 need nothing. And if He could not make himself the end, then 
 that can be found only in the creature, and ultimately in the hap- 
 piness of the creature — taking happiness very comprehensively. 
 
 2. The end is God himself. The divine glory is the ulti- 
 mate end: in man there is no ultimate end, only means to the 
 end. Divine glory is used in different senses: some making it 
 equivalent to God himself, others making it to be the objective 
 manifestation of God, while the pleasure of God in this is the sub- 
 jective ground for the creation. 
 
 3. An attempt at reconciling the two : that the good of man 
 is an ultimate and yet intermediate end, while the glory of God 
 is the ultimate objective end. 
 
 4. Another attempt at reconciliation: that the end is the 
 glory of God as seen in the highest good of the creature, and 
 that this last is the objective end. 
 
 1 Wisner, p. 434, says the end must be " future." 
 
 2 These respectively form theology and ethics: they constitute two great ten- 
 dencies, the one making God to be all in all, the other making the good of creatures 
 to be the ultimate end. The problem is, their reconciliation. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 131 
 
 5. That neither alone is the end, but that the two are iden- 
 tical: the highest good is the divine glory, the divine glory 
 is the highest good. The mediation is through love. 1 Some 
 seem to put the end in happiness in two forms: God's delight 
 in doing good, and the happiness of the creature. 
 
 6. The ends are various, as much so as the whole manifes- 
 tation of the divine attributes in the divine works. This is to 
 say that no solution is possible; there is no last end. 
 
 § 4. The Scriptural Argument 
 
 This is elaborated by President Edwards in his u End of God in 
 Creation." He has given it fully: we shall give only a summary. 
 In regard to this Scriptural argument one thing is certain: either 
 the ends are various or the divine glory is the end. There is no 
 passage of Scripture which asserts that happiness is the end: 
 there are numerous passages to, show that the divine glory is 
 such. 
 
 1. A class of passages, which decide only that God in some 
 way — God and not the creature — as He is the source, is also the 
 end of all: Rev. iv. 11; Rom. xi. 36; Heb. ii. 10; Col. i. 16; 
 Prov. xvi. 4. These passages do not say what the end is, but 
 do go to prove that that end is in God. 
 
 2. Passages which more specifically declare that the divine 
 glory is the end. Scripture sets forth in a variety of ways that 
 this is the end of external nature. It is to be remembered that 
 the glory of God is sometimes designated by the term name, 
 which is equivalent to nature or essence : Ps. viii. 1 ; Isaxliii. 7 ; lx. 9. 
 
 3. Passages which show that the end of the creature is in 
 glorifying God. These, as against the so-called happiness 
 theories, are decisive, for if the end of the creature were the 
 creature, then he must be exhorted to seek his own good as ul- 
 timate; but if he is exhorted to seek something beyond himself, 
 then the good of the creature himself cannot be the end: 1 Cor. 
 x. 31; vi. 20; John xv. 8. Also such passages as Ps. cxxxvi. 1-9; 
 cxxxviii. 5. 
 
 4. Those passages which set forth in the same strain that 
 1 So Twesten, Vol. ii. p. 89: and so perhaps the younger Edwards. 
 
132 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the holy obedience of the creature is not the -ultimate end, that 
 even this redounds to the divine glory. If all that God had in 
 view was to insure the holiness of the creation, then Scripture 
 would naturally stop short with that, but such holiness is said to 
 reach beyond, and to redound to the glory of God. Isa. Ixi. 3, 
 where the glorifying of God is not made the means of the holi- 
 ness of his people, but the converse is stated; Eph. i. 5, where 
 we have the subjective end in the creature or the creature's sub- 
 jective end, "the being adopted as children," the subjective 
 divine end, " the good pleasure of his will," and the objective 
 divine end, " the praise of the glory of his grace." 2 Thess. i. 10; 
 Phil. i. 10, 11; 2 Cor. i. 20, "unto the glory of God by [or 
 through] us." 
 
 5. Passages which show the end of Christ's work to be the 
 glory of God. John xii. 28; xvii. 4; Phil. ii. 6-11. 
 
 The result of the Scriptural teaching then is, that this world 
 is a revelation of the divine glory, and that God's being glorified 
 by it is its chief end. 1 
 
 , r 
 
 s \ -§ 5. The supreme End of Creation is the Declarative Glory of 
 
 By the declarative glory of God is meant, the manifestation 
 of the internal divine glory . The word glory is used in the 
 Scriptures, in reference to God, in several distinct senses: (a.) 
 For the divine internal perfections, the inherent excellency of 
 God's nature and attributes; (b.) In the sense of the manifesta- 
 tion of this inherent excellency, of the internal made external or 
 "extant"; (c.) For the rendering ,q£_ p.rais_e_ to God on both 
 accounts, for his internal and external glory; as when we give 
 
 - Edwards, ii. 242, says, " an ultimate end of God is the communication of good 
 to his creatures as something not merely subordinately agreeable, "yet this is "not 
 what he delights in simply and ultimately." John xvii. 19; Isa. liii. 11; and in 
 short, all the Scriptures which set forth God's goodness, mercy, grace, that He 
 desire th not the death of any, rejoices in his people, delights in doing good, etc. 
 There is no question that the communication of good to creatures, is an ulti- 
 mate end, in the sense of being a good in itself. 
 
 Such passages as the following are sometimes brought to supjort the position 
 that the highest good of creatures is the ultimate end. Ps. civ. viii. 5; cxix. 64 
 Acts xiv. 17; xvii. 24. These prove simply the reality of God's goodness 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 166 
 
 glory to God. [Another sometimes given as (d), The glory 
 which God has in his creatures, comes properly under (6.). J The 
 second is the sense intended in the proposition here maintained : 
 the first is the ground and the third is the result of the second. 
 The second is the true end. (Christ is also called the glory of 
 God, and the Shechinah is perhaps a form or radiance symbolical 
 of all the declarative glory.) 
 
 I. — To explain the proposition negatively: 
 
 1. It -does not mean that this glory is separable , in re, from 
 other ends subordinate to this and included in it. It is seen in 
 those other ends, in the good and the happiness of the creature. 
 
 2. Nor does the proposition mean that the receiving glory 
 from others is the end. The receiving of glory is an end, in- 
 cluded in the supreme end, but is not itself the supreme. God 
 did not create in order to receive glory, but to make his glory 
 extant and manifest. 
 
 3. Nor is it meant that God had ultimate respect to himself 
 (subjectively) in such manifestation of himself, that his joy in 
 the manife station was the final cause thereof. This is the sub- 
 jective happiness scheme as applied to God. He undoubtedly does 
 rejoice in his work, but we cannot say that He did it in order tc 
 rejoice in it. Some have taken this view, 1 but this representation 
 of the matter is the chief reason why it is argued that the mak- 
 ing the divine glory the chief end of creation is a selfish pro- 
 ceeding. 2 We prefer the statement that the joy of God in his 
 work was the ultimate subjective end in his mind, but was not 
 the objective motive for the creation itself. 
 
 4. Nor does the proposition mean that in creation God had 
 not a true and an ultimate regard to the highest good of his 
 creatures . He must, as a God of love, as a God who delights in 
 what is best, have had such a regard. The creature is not to 
 be sacrificed, the good of the creature is to be estimated at its 
 proper value, but it must also be maintained that the supreme 
 
 1 So Dr. Spring. See President Day on the connection between this and the 
 self-love theory of morals. 
 
 2 Edwards, ch. i. § 3, "Works, ii. 207-11, explains "making himself the end" 
 as meaning the communication to others of himself, the impulse of and pleasure 
 in self-communication: * ( a disposition to diffuse and communicate himself." 
 
134 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 end is as much larger than the creature, as God is larger. God 
 the infinite Being cannot have ultimate respect to finite beings 
 and their happiness. There is no inconsistency between the 
 two views, that in creation God had respect to his own glory as 
 ultimate, and that He regards also as a real good,, and desire h 
 for its own sake, the highest welfare of his creatures. 1 
 
 II. — Meaning of the proposition stated affirmatively. 
 
 The objective end of God in the whole created universe, i. e., 
 the end which He had as objective to himself, was to manifest . 
 in the most complete way, the sum of the divine perfections or 
 the internal divine glory, in such a way as to ensure as a sub- 
 ordinate end the highest good of his creatures, by their partici- 
 pation in this manifestation. (This is shown to be a subordinate 
 end by the fact that the highest good of the creature is found 
 in glorifying God.) Creation is the mirror of Deity, and as 
 such it is the objective end of God. We mean of course by crea- 
 tion, all that is not God. It is the whole system that is the 
 objective end of God. The end is not in individuals or their 
 state, but in these as parts of the whole plan, in relation and 
 subordination thereto. The whole system, as reflecting God, 
 is the end. 
 
 JL ..In what does the internal divine glory consist, which we 
 here declare to be set forth in creation ? It is the radiant sum 
 of all the divine perfections. These may be viewed as consist- 
 ing of four chief excellences: (a.) The infinitude o f God's Being, 
 including his power, his resources: (6.) The perfection of his wis- 
 dom; (c.) His absolute holiness; (d.) His perfect love. 
 
 2. The declarative glory consists in setting forth these per- 
 fections, in manifesting them, making them to be extant, which 
 is the objective end of the Creation. And this may be said to 
 be done: 
 
 (a.) As regards the infiuitndft of +,)ia divine bein g;, compris- 
 ing the immensity and eternity of God, in the existence of in- 
 
 1 Dwight, Sermon XXV., holds that it is God's end to glorify himself: "the 
 manifestation of his inherent glory " is what is intended by the glorifying of God. 
 "To show his own character, to unfold his power, knowledge, and goodness to 
 oeings capable of understanding them, was the supreme object He had in view." 
 But Dr. Dwight makes all to culminate in benevolence. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION, 135 
 
 Jinifce space and unending time, which are the conditions of all 
 finite existence. These mirror forth the divine immensity and 
 eternity. 1 The power of God is also mirrored in the energies 
 which act through the creation. 
 
 (b.) The perfect wisdom of God is set forth in the whole order 
 qf creation , and in the plan which is there found , running through 
 all the orders of existence and culminating in man and in human 
 history, where God's divinest purpose is seen in the imparting 
 the knowledge of himself to his creatures. 
 
 (c.) God's absolute holiness is revealed in the giving of Ha 
 law, and making rational creatures capable of knowing it as 
 holy, and further in making all that is transacted in history to 
 show the supremacy and triumph of his holiness. The holiness 
 of God is the consent of his will and his wisdom, constituting 
 his supreme moral excellence. This holiness is his essential 
 goodness — love in the broadest sense. 
 
 (d.) God's per fect love — love in the narrower sense as the at- 
 tribute which prompts Him to communicate to others — is poured 
 forth and exemplified, in imparting good to all his creatures, a nd 
 so that He himself is the supreme object in which that good is 
 found, as He is the real source of it, the highest good and joy of 
 creatures being found in glorifying Him. This is seen most 
 fully in his gracious purpose of redemption . 
 
 These are the several particulars into which the divine glory 
 both as internal and external may be distributed. The enumer- 
 ation is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient for our purpose. 
 
 The sense in which God makes himself his end 2 is, then, 
 
 1 [Of course the question is here raised whether space and time belong to the 
 creation. The following hints of the author's view of this are gathered from his 
 papers:— Certainly, absolute immensity and eternity do not belong to the creation, 
 but time as successive and finite, and as indefinite in duration, and space as lim- 
 ited and indefinite in extent, do. — It is a false view that God exists in all space 
 p.ry] fr'nnfl ; his eternity and immensity precisely are — his not existing in space and 
 time. — Space and time are not attributes of the infinite, they are not substances 
 or entities, they are not relations; but if they were any of these it would hold true 
 that they cannot belong to the uncreated or the unconstituted, for then that which 
 is finite — in its parts, though immeasurable as a. whole — would be uncreated. 
 Conceive them as merely subjective phenomena, and even then they come into 
 being as such phenomena, with finite existences.] 
 
 9 Undoubtedly there is » sense in wMcjbi^&od (as no creature can) maken 
 himself his end. &v 
 
136 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 simply this : that He delights most in that system which best 
 sets forth his own perfection. 1 
 
 § 6. Arguments in Favor of this Position. 
 
 1. It is most accordant with the Scriptur es. See above. 
 
 2. It i s the highest conceivable end for God himself. In 
 respect to his creation, nothing more comprehensive or complete 
 can be conceived of than this: that it should mirror forth the 
 divine perfections, so far as this can be done by what is limited 
 and finite. This is the idea of the world, the divine plan of 
 things. All things here are from God and for God. The splen- 
 dor of his glory irradiates them, is seen through them. 2 If 
 there is any shining, it is the glory of Deity. 3 And this which 
 is a positive result is a higher result than doing good to sen- 
 tient creatures, than benevolent activity: for that is only a 
 part of God's ways; it is an integral part, an ultimate end, 
 but the highest result must be the highest end. 
 
 It is sometimes said, in the way of objection , that this 
 seems to argue a display of the divine perfectiomN ^'or the 
 sake of display. The answer is plain: It is not display, in 
 any evil interpretation, for the sake of the glory accruing, 
 or for. any outward sake; it is such a display as everything 
 that^nas fulness of life is prompted to by its very fulness. 
 
 is such a display as is that of the acorn t i'n becoming an 
 
 j)ak. It is such a manifestation as a poet makes of himself, 
 
 when he pours out the fulness of his soul in an epic or drama. 
 
 The end for which the true genius makes the epic or the sys- 
 
 1 In this system we find several ultimate ends in the sense of results good 
 in themselves. The divine wisdom, in the plan and order of creation; the divine 
 holiness, in the moral constitution and ordering; the divine love, in providence; 
 the divine grace, where holiness and love are concurrent, in the work of redemp- 
 tion; and happiness occurring in and by each and all of these. The grand 
 objective end is God's union with man through Christ in a divine kingdom . 
 Here the glory of wisdom, holiness, and love all concur: Here the material (in 
 the new heavens and earth), the moral, the spiritual or gracious, all find theii 
 unity of ends. 
 
 8 Hegel says that the great end of his primitive substance is, to become ob- 
 jective to itself, and he declares this the ultimate statement in philosophy; so 
 that here Pantheism is compelled to do a sort of homage to old Orthodoxy. 
 
 3 The positive philosophy has given us as the alternative : ' ' The heavens 
 declare no glory save that of Kopler and Newton." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 137 
 
 tern of philosophy is, to satisfy the longings of his being 
 for a full expression of itself. So God sets forth himself in 
 his works; in the universal epic of all nature, in the grand 
 drama of history, in the whole system of things which is 
 ensouled by himself; his archetypal ideas are expressed and 
 symbolized in all nature and history. And what higher di- 
 vine end can we conceive? 
 
 3. A third argument is that the end here assigned is alone 
 sufficiently comprehensive to be the true end of all God's ways 
 in creation . 1 It has the advantage of comprising in subordi- 
 nation other ultimate ends, subsuming them under this one 
 For example, the great end of the material creation is included 
 here. "The heavens declai'e the glory of God." It is very 
 difficult to bring what we find in nature under the idea of 
 happiness as the chief end. For what end were the hosts 
 of heaven made ? To fill the beholders with sublimity, it may be 
 said: but this gives us use for a small part only of the heavens, 
 and gives us an inadequate end even then. How late were 
 the discoveries in^astronomy ! How impossible to bring under 
 the idea of happiness many of the discoveries in science! We 
 find order, wisdom, manifestation of mind. Doing good to 
 sentient and intelligent creatures can be included under the 
 me supreme end of manifesting the divine perfections, for in 
 ill his works of goodness the glory of the divine love is 
 manifested. So also the maintenance of holiness in the uni- 
 verse is a revelation of God's essential holiness, and the blessed- 
 ness which He gives in redemption is a joy in himself, in 
 the sum of his own divine perfections. 
 
 It is objected that the end here stated is too general; but 
 what we are seeking is, a sufficiently comprehensive view to 
 include the whole range of the divine manifestations. If the 
 end were so indefinite as not to allow of being distributed, 
 as not to include fairly ail the other ends as subordinate to 
 itself, the objection would be valid. But its value is, that 
 it is a general statement under which all the others may be 
 brought; and therefore we remark, as our next argument, 
 1 This alone agrees with the definition of "end " given by Kant. 
 
138 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 4. It is also an end which, while fully realized only at the 
 .consummation of all things, is found going; on and illustrated 
 in all that has been and is. This glory of God, consisting in 
 making himself extant to his creatures, began with creation, 
 when the morning stars sang together; it is illustrated in all the 
 tribes and orders of creation ; it is seen in Paradise with its prime- 
 val goodness; it looks out upon us through the whole course 
 of human history; it descended incarnate in the person of our 
 Lord; through the centuries since his coming it has been grow- 
 ing more and more radiant; and the full carrying out of the 
 divine idea in the future history of the earth will bring about 
 its consummation, even to the ushering in of that day when 
 Christ shall give up the dominion to the Father, that God may 
 be all in all. 
 
 And thus are all the conditions which we proposed of a right 
 solution of the problem met in this most comprehensive state- 
 ment of the end of God in creation. To this we might add 
 
 5. That no other view does meet frheae non^i^'o ns * but as 
 there is confessedly only one other view, we defer consideration 
 of that until we come to speak of the Greatest Happiness scheme. 
 
 § 7. Consideration of Objections. 
 
 1. It is said that a selfish schem e of the universe is presented 
 when the end of creation is made to be the glory of God. 1 Here 
 we might concede that to say simply and without qualification 
 that God made everything for himself, for his glory, is to use 
 language which is liable to be misunderstood. Such forms of 
 expression may not convey the real truth which we hold. In 
 reply to the objection, we say, 
 
 (a.) Even if God "made himself" the purl, ITa ^nnld not )•»»■_ 
 selfish in this. Even if it were strictly true that God made all 
 things for himself, vet h j^s love to himself , as Edwards remarks, 
 sanjaoi-^er^rsein^hJove , a preference of the individual to the 
 universal, of the narrow to the general; for in loving himself 
 He "in effect" loves all, and in acting for himself Pie in effect 
 
 i Pres. Bay even seems to argue that this view gives support to the self-lov« 
 theory of morals. But read Edwards, ii. 215, etc. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 139 
 
 acts for the universe; for in displaying himself, what does He 
 do but simply bring the universe and all the good and glory 
 and happiness of it into being? 
 
 But (b.) God does not make himself the end as alleged. He 
 made the nniverse r not in order to gratify himself as the great 
 end, although He does d^TT^nr Ttr^in, J aut to manifest himself , 
 for the sake of hi s declarat iv e glory. That is the objective rea- 
 son; the subjective delight therein is not the rational ground, 
 the final cause and end of the creation. And this considera- 
 tion does away with, or rather puts in its true light, the main 
 objection. 
 
 2. It is also objected that this scheme leads to the inference 
 that God created some men ^n order to damn them, in order 
 that, by their perdition, the awful ness of the divine justice might 
 be glorified. Such a representation may have been favored by 
 the incautious language of some writers. But the fact is, that 
 the punishment of the individual sinner or of all sinners is not 
 truly and properly to be called an ultimate end, that is, a good 
 in itself. The punishment when inflicted does doubtless illus- 
 
 *- — ■ ■■ I '■ ■■■■!■ — ^- W—^^^— »■— " ■' ■■I I I ' 
 
 trate the terrible splendor of the divine_ holiness, but the end of 
 the divine holiness even is not punishment.. That the punish- 
 ment of the transgressor is not an ultimate end is proved by 
 the fact of an atonement, by pardon on the ground of an atone- 
 ment. If it were an ultimate end, a good in itself, there could 
 not be transfer; Christ could not suffer in the place of the trans- 
 gressor. God did not create anv man in nrdp.r to punish hjm. A 
 
 3. It is asked, which is better, a system in which God's glory 
 is the means of the creature's good, or one in which the creature's 
 good is the means of God's glory ? and it is argued that that is 
 better in which God's whole aim is to do good to his creatures, 
 rather than a system in which the creature is — relatively — sac- 
 
 1 [No more, says the author, than He made the race-horse, which was driven 
 one hundred miles in eight hours and died at the end, for such inhuman sport 
 of man. If there is perversion of his work and this is visited with his holy dis- 
 pleasure, this does not prove that He did his work in order that it might be 
 perverted. The same argument would seem to apply in reference to Darwin's 
 question, whether divine intelligence made the bull-dog in order that brutal men 
 might delight in its ferocity.] 
 
1 40 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 rificed to the divine glory. This comes to be more fully con 
 sidered elsewhere; here we only say, that that is the best system 
 which puts the two, man and God, in their just relations to each 
 other. And a system which, while it allows that God does all 
 good to his creatures according to the promptings of his infinite 
 love and the dictates of his infinite wisdom, yet asserts that He 
 does also more than this, is a higher and better system than 
 one which restricts the whole agency of God to a single form 
 of activity. If we distinguish between the objective end of the 
 system and its subjective end in relation to creatures, 1 we have 
 ample grounds of comparison and judgment. The objective end 
 of creation is the making extant of the divine perfections; the 
 subjective end of that same system is the promotion of the 
 highest good — not happiness merely — of creatures. And this 
 subjective end of the system is found in creatures becoming 
 participants of, finding their highest good — and therewith their 
 highest happiness — in, the objective end of the system : in the 
 fact that man's chief end is to glorify God; and thus these two 
 ends are in the last result one end. 2 
 
 § 8. The Happiness Theory 
 
 The other system, that wirfch puts the end of God in creation 
 in the happiness of the creature, or in the greatest happiness of 
 the whole system, ^comparatively imperfect and narrow in 
 several points . Full discussion of it would come up later, under 
 the head of The Nature of True Virtue; here we only consider: 
 
 1. There cannot be subordinated to this end all that is 
 
 3 [ "Subjective" here has a different meaning from what it has in the distinction 
 made between God's objective and "subjective" end in creation. It means now, 
 the sense which intelligent creatures have of the excellency of God's objective 
 end in creation.] 
 
 2 Compare Edwards, ii. 219. "God and the creature in this affair of the ema- 
 nation [it must be remembered that in Edwards's time Pantheists had not appro- 
 priated this word as they have now; otherwise he doubtless would not have used 
 it] of the divine fulness are not properly set in opposition, or made opposite parts 
 of a disjunction. Nor ought God's glory and the creature's good to be spoken 
 of as if they were properly and entirely distinct, as they are in the objection. 1 * 
 "God in seeking his glory, therein seeks the good of his creatures. Because the 
 emanation of his glory (which He seeks and delights in as He delights in him- 
 self, his own eternal glory) implies the communicated happiness and excellencj 
 of his creatures." " God is their good." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 141 
 
 fonnfl inJJie creation. All that is, cannot be explained in rela- 
 tion to happiness, still less to human happiness. The vastness 
 and sublimity of the creation are degraded when they are con- 
 sidered simply in regard to the emotions they may excite. Their 
 adequate end is found in their exemplifying the wisdom of God, 
 thus manifesting his glory; while the happiness which they con- 
 fer is subordinate and resulting. 
 
 2. This sch eme does not account for the creation, but only 
 for God's co nduc t to a creation alrea dy in being. Creatures ex- 
 i sting-," God may be said to delight in doing them good; but this 
 does not answer the question, Why did God create them ? He 
 created them for a variety of purposes, one of which was that 
 He might do good to them, but this was not the whole. The 
 doing good to them supposes them to be, and therefore it could 
 not be the ground of their being brought into existence. 1 
 
 3. This theory begs the question (a t least for us at present) 
 upon the most important ethical questioning ^ whether happi- 
 ness be the highest good. If the affirmative of that question 
 cannot be held, the theory cannot be maintained. 
 
 4. When framed to accord with the "subjective happiness" 
 view of the nature of virtue, the theory leads to the inference: 
 J f God's highest end be the creature's happiness, theh'the crea-^ 
 t are should seek his own happiness in all that he does, as the 
 supreme end; t hus giving a most vicious ethical theory . 
 
 5. When happiness is taken in a larger sense, the term be 
 comes indefinite and the theory that happiness is the end of the 
 creation becomes vague. If the word happiness be made to take 
 in all happiness, including the divine blessedness, and to include 
 a peculiar kind of happiness, that arising from holiness, i. e., to 
 take in all that is good in the system, all that can be appreciated 
 and be the ground of satisfaction to God and to finite intelligences, 
 then of course we simply come out upon the statement that the 
 subjective end of creation is commensurate with its objective end. 
 God created the universe to manifest his own perfections, and in 
 the manifestation He has his own subjective joy and intends that 
 his creatures shall have theirs. But that which is highest and 
 
 1 Compare Edwards, ii. 206. 
 
142 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 best in the system is distinct from the appreciation and love of 
 what is highest and best, which is the source of the truest hap- 
 piness. If the highest happiness is made synonymous with the 
 highest good of the whole system, we have one of two things: 
 either a restatement of the subjective happiness view or a vague 
 use of language. If the meaning be, that the end of the whole 
 system is the highest happiness of individual beings, we come 
 back tojthe inference. that the individual should seek his own 
 happiness as his highest end; if.it be. said that what is meant by 
 the highest happiness is, that which constitutes the goodness of 
 the system taken as a whole, this leaves the question open, what 
 does constitute such goodness of the whole system: its reflection 
 of the divine glory or its power of producing happiness? If the 
 meaning be, that the great end of the system is the sum of 
 good which is in it, all of which is appreciable and capable of 
 producing happiness either in God or in man or in both, then 
 there is no objection to the view, but it would seem best to keep 
 to the common use of terms, and not. confound the happiness 
 with the good from which it arises. 
 
 In fact, the- happiness scheme if consistently carried out, would 
 lead to the position that the glory of God in the whole system is 
 the great end in creation. All the happiness of all the good, 
 taking.. j.t. in—its largest^geji§e, is derived from God, is only a 
 participation on their part of what God gives. What God 
 reveals in the system is the objective ground or source of the 
 happiness: the creature's happiness is found in having part in 
 that; and if we could suppose the creature's happiness so great 
 as to be co-extensive with this, still it would be dependent upon 
 this manifestation or revelation of God, and thus the happiness 
 will be merely the accruing good. 
 
 § 9. The Connection between the View of the End of God in 
 Creation and the Theory of the Nature of Virtue. 
 
 1. That which is the great end of God's work in creation 
 must be the summum bonum to his creatures also; for their high- 
 est good can only be found in subjection to or harmony with 
 the great end for which all is made. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 143 
 
 2. This end, as we have seen, is the whole system of things, 
 considered as declarative of God's inherent perfections, terminat- 
 ing in redemption and the union of himself with man; all of 
 which declare his glory. 
 
 3. Man's chief end must then be found in his harmony with 
 this system; in glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. 
 
 4. The subjective condition of man's doing this is, his love to 
 the whole system of things as declarative of God, or to God as 
 declared in the whole system. 
 
 5. Ultimately then, in the last analysis, love to God as being 
 *in effect" all being, is the root and ground of all true virtue. 
 
 § 10. Some historical Statements as to Theories of God's End 
 in Creation. 
 
 Justin Martyr: itpoS evdsi&v rrjs Ssfas avrov dvvd/ieoos. 
 
 Origen, de Princ. ii. 9, 6: u [Deus] nullam habuit aliam creandi 
 causam, nisi propter se ipsum, id est, bonitatem suam." 
 
 Greg. Naz. Orat. xxxviii. : '* God's goodness was not content 
 with the purely immanent activity of self-contemplation, but 
 would pour itself out and multiply itself externally." 
 
 Aquinas, Summa I. Q. 44, iv. : " Communicare suam perfection- 
 em, quge est ejus bonitas." 
 
 Bonaventura: "The honor of God, i. e., to reveal and impart 
 his glory, and thus at the same time to promote the highest 
 good of creatures." 
 
 The Calvinistic theologians who have been led by the very 
 nature of their system to dwell much on this subject, have 
 adopted the general position of Augustine; the glory of God is 
 the end of creation. 
 
 Zwingle, iv. 81: "... . ita bona sunt, ut ab illo bono sunt, ut 
 in illo bono sunt et ut ad illius boni gloriam sunt." 
 
 Calvin, Inst. I. v. 5: "Mundus in spectaculum glorias Dei 
 conditus est.'' 
 
 A common representation is, that the glory of God consists 
 in the manifestation of his love in salvation, and of his justice in 
 condemnation, and that these together make up the glory of the 
 divine holiness, which is to be taken as the ultimate end. The 
 
1 44 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 supralapsarian theology emphasized the statement, that God 
 decreed the creation of a reprobate portion of mankind in order 
 that He might show forth the glory of his justice. 
 
 The general Calvinistic view is: The objective end is the di 
 vine glory; the subjective, the good of creatures. All that is, 
 is from God and for God — a self-revelation or manifestation of 
 God. "The highest end is the manifestation of God — finis ob- 
 jectivus, ultimus, est gloria Dei: the subordinate end" — our chief 
 end — "is the glorifying of God in our salvation — finis subjectivus, 
 subordinates, est salus nostra" (Cf. Schweizer, I. 135). 
 
 Stapfer, I. 122: "Finis existentise hujus mundi est manifest- 
 atio glorise divinse." 
 
 Wendelin, 3: "Finis — est glorificatio Dei et nostra salus; hie 
 finis proximus, ille finis summus.'' 
 
 The school of Kant urges that the harmony of virtue and happi- 
 ness is the highest good, and so the chief end of all things. (But 
 this confines the end to the sphere of the rational and moral.) 
 
 Bretschneider, I. 670-1 (for substance): "The last ground 
 Df creation, which is also its last end, cannot be objective, but 
 must be subjective, and is to be sought in God himself. (God's 
 independence obliges us to seek the ground of all his purposes 
 
 in himself) But we do not fully know what it is So much 
 
 we know: it must be an expression of the divine ideas, a rev- 
 elation of God, a mirror and image of his perfection. Its im- 
 mensity corresponds with omnipotence; its order to the divine 
 wisdom; its well-being to God's goodness; to his holiness and 
 justice, rational [moral] beings. The revelation of his majesty 
 to rational beings is a subordinate end; the revelation of his 
 perfection, for its own sake, must be the highest end." 
 
 Ebrard, Dogm. I. 358: "The last end for which the world was 
 made must be the glorifying of the moral attributes of God, L e., 
 of God as holy, blessed, and wise. And since it is personal beings 
 (men and angels) in whom these moral attributes are glorified 
 — and that in the way of their blessedness — it follows that the 
 glorifying of the ethico-Trinitarian nature of God in the blessing 
 of finite subjects, is the last end to which the providence of God 
 is directed." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 145 
 
 Edwards. The following seems to be, for substance, the 
 view of Pres. Edwards, especially as unfolded in his last section : 
 Other ultimate ends (i. e., results good in themselves) are in- 
 stances, exemplifications, all of them of the one end, i. e., the 
 manifestation of the internal divine glory — are different modes and 
 degrees of this manifestation; not means to that end, strictly, 
 so that they are sacrificed to it — but higher and lower modes of 
 realizing it. And the highest mode, within the creation, in 
 respect to the creatures, is, the communication of the divine 
 love, in the form of grace, reuniting man with God. This is the 
 highest, brightest manifestation of the divine love, in respect to 
 the creatures. But this is still, in respect to God's end or total 
 plan, a form or mode of the divine declarative glory.- — Some of 
 President Edwards's statements, as when he argues, ii. 207-11, 
 that God makes himself the end, might at first sight seem in- 
 consistent with this, but a careful study of that in connection 
 with the last section shows, that he could not have meant it in 
 any sense which implied a supreme regard to himself as self; 
 though on this point he is not always entirely consistent. 
 
 The younger Edwards thus represents his father's views (Cf. 
 Remarks on Improvements, I. 481): "The declarative glory of 
 God is the creation, taken not distributively but collectively, as 
 a system raised to a high degree of happiness. The creation 
 thus raised and preserved is the declarative glory of God. In 
 other words it is the exhibition of his essential glory.'' This, 
 though in form a reconciliation of the two theories as to God's 
 end in creation, is in fact a sacrificing of the divine glory as an 
 independent ultimate end; the glory is put in the happiness. It 
 is not his father's theory, which expressly subordinates the hap- 
 piness to the glory. 
 
146 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 V 
 
 THE THEODICY. THE QUESTION OF THE BEST SYSTEM. 
 
 The word Theor y is used in the sense of Vindication of God 
 i n th e •jwork_gY_ creation, especially as to the existence of sin. 
 
 The Best System means, not the best conceivable in the 
 abstract, but the best in relation to its materials and objects; 
 that which is best on the whole, in a world of matter, for a 
 race, destined to have a history, — a race of personal, free, and 
 moral beings, capable of sin or holiness, and made for fellow- 
 ship with God. 
 
 The sum of what is intimated in the Scriptures on this 
 subject is that God has spec ial regard to red emption in the 
 permission of sin, and so has regard to the special manifesta- 
 tion of his own attributes: Rom. xi. 32, 33; Acts xvii. 30, 31; 
 Eph. iv. 13; 2 Cor. iii. 18; 1 John iii. 2; especially the argument 
 of Paul, Rom. v. 12-21. 
 
 The probl em is, to reconcile the existen ce ofjjm^wjth the 
 divinef aharacjber^_ or, in other words, to reconcile the existence 
 of a system in which sin is, with the position that it is from the 
 hand of an omnipotent, wise and holy author. The fact of sin 
 is conceded. Those who believe that God is holy, wise, and om- 
 nipotent, of course believe that the reconciliation may be made 
 even though they cannot effect it. The existence of sin being 
 conceded, and the belief in a holy, wise, and omnipotent God 
 being taken for granted, the different theories are the attempts 
 to account for sin. We come here upon the old dilemma which 
 was put even in pagan times: 1 God either wishes to take away 
 
 'The argument of Epicurus as given by Lactantius, "De Ira Dei," xiii. : 
 " Deus aut vult tollere mala et Don potest; aut potest et non vult; aut neque vult 
 neque potest. Si vult et non potest, imbecillis est; quod in Deuin non cadit. Si 
 potest et non vult, invidus; quod seque alienum a Deo. Si neque vult neque 
 potest, et invidus et imbecillis est; ideo, neque Deus. Si et vult et potest, quod 
 solum Deo convenit, unde sunt mala? aut cur ilia non tollit?" 
 
 The dilemma is here carried further than is necessary. It is sufficient to say: 
 either will and cannot, so denying omnipotence, or can and will not, denying 
 benevolence. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 147 
 
 evil and cannot, or He can and will no t. In the one case He 
 lacks omnipotence, in the other benevolence. There are two 
 main theories in the Theodicy corresponding to the parts of the 
 dilemma: Jt^Jg^jaidonthe one side, It is not against omnip- 
 otence to allow sin, because sin could not be prevented in a moral 
 system; on the other side it is said, It is not against benevolence 
 to admit $i&, because sin is the necessary means of the greatest apod. 
 
 § 1. Is Sin tJw necessary Means of the gr eatest Good ? 
 
 Is it a solution of the problem of moral evil to affirm this ? 
 Does that i*econcile the existence of sin with the divine char- 
 acter, so that God is still seen to be benevolent, because sin is 
 the necessary means of the greatest good?- 
 
 There are two chief subdivisions of this theory : I. The phil- 
 osophical or metaphysical; II. The theological or orthodox. 
 
 I. — The philosophical form of the theory. This has been 
 stated and considered under Part I., Book i., § 7, p. 40.^-; > ^ 
 
 II. — The theological form of the theory. This was found i^J& 
 chiefly among the New England divines of the strictest effi- ^ u * 
 ciency school, Hopkins, West, etc. It affirms that sin^is an in- 
 herent evil, yet is the necessary means of thegreatestgood; in the 
 sense, not that sin is a good or the direct means of good, but 
 that the high est gnnd, ftn^h a.« thqj^om plete ma nifestation of i he 
 divinejextections,.- cannot he-reaahad ..excppt hy ,9Y^rrnHng^ sin. 
 
 Is it a solution of the problem to say, that sin is a necessary 
 means of the greatest good ? To say the least, the phraseology 
 is objectionable. The only real scheme of this sort is the panthe- 
 istic, that sin, from the nature of the finite, is a necessary stage 
 in progress. 
 
 1. The theory is liable to the objection that jt seems to im- 
 pose a necessity on God to produce sin, in a moral system ; since, 
 from the nature of things, He could not produce the best system 
 without sin. Consequently there is a necessity for the existence 
 of sin, even to God. So that thus the scheme is carried over 
 into the scheme of necessity. 
 
 2. Jfjthesense of " the greatest good" be happiness, then 
 it is difficult to see how sin, which is and produces wretched- 
 
148 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 nes£, is necessary to the highest happiness; for just so far as 
 sin exists, it is so much taken from the sum of happiness."'* 
 
 3. If, on the other hand, we define the greatest good as holi- 
 ness, the same difficulty remains. Sin is the opposite of holiness. 
 and if so, how canitba the .necessary means of holiness ? Just 
 so far as it exists, there is a deficiency of holiness in the universe. 
 We might as well say, Darkness is the necessary means of light, 
 whereas just so far as there is darkness, there is a want of light. 
 
 4. If the greatest good be defined as ^the declaraJiY^^ory of 
 the divine perfections, then the theory is, that sin is necessary 
 to the fullest illustration of thesg^ To this there are objections: 
 
 (a.) It is difficult to see why, taking the divine attributes 
 separately, the divine wisdom, love, holiness, may not have been 
 perfectly manifested without sin. Why could we not have had, 
 e. g., a perfect manifestation of the divine wisdom, without sin? 
 
 (b.) In respect to the Godhead itself, the Trinity and the In- 
 carnation of God, why might* there not have been a manifestation 
 of God in his triune being or an incarnation, without sin ? As 
 a matter of fact, the Incarnation was connected with sin, but we 
 do not see that it was necessarily so. 
 
 (c.) The only difference in the manifestation of divine attri- 
 butes which sin has occasioned, that can be conceived or stated, 
 is in respect to two points: Without sin the divine benevolence 
 in redemption could not have been manifested, nor could the 
 divine holiness in punishing. Then this is the theory: Sin is 
 the necessary means of the greatest good, because without sin 
 God could not redeem or punish. This is what the theory must 
 logically come to. It is not all the divine attributes which are 
 here supposed to be fully exhibited, but only those which are 
 concerned in redemption and in the punishment of sin. In re- 
 spect to this: (1) As to punishment. If we say, sin is the 
 necessary means of the greatest good, because God could not 
 otherwise manifest his glory in punishing, that is to make the 
 punishment an end and object for which God acts as ultimate, 
 which, as we have seen, could not be the case. In consistency 
 with his attributes, He could not bring into being persons with 
 the object of punishing them. (2) As to redemption. If it be 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 149 
 
 said that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good, because 
 without it there could not be Redemption, and in Redemption 
 God's greatest grace is seen, this is to assume that Redemption 
 is the highest good, whereas it is not: it is the highest good for 
 sinners, but holiness is the highest good absolutely. Redemp 
 tion is not ultimate; it is in order to holiness. The system of 
 the Gospel is a, method. We cannot then meet the real question in 
 the Theodicy, from this point: we cannot, i. e., say that the simple 
 object of the manifestation of the divine glory in redemption is 
 sufficient, alone, to justify God in introducing sin and misery, — 
 though, being introduced for other reasons or grounds, they do 
 serve to illustrate the divine glory in redemption. Certainly, so 
 far as the present system of the world is concerned, we may say, 
 as a matter of fact, though not of moral necessity, that in the 
 system of Redemption we have the highest glory of God re- 
 vealed. As far as this scheme is concerned, then, the argum ents 
 to prove that sin is strictly necessary to the greatest good, are 
 insufficient, do nojjj*each to the point. All the scheme gives us 
 is, the fact, but not the fact as a necessity. 
 
 § 2. Does the Nature of Free- Agency account for Sin ? 
 
 Is it a solution of the problem to say, that from the nature of 
 free-agency God could not prevent all sin in a moral system ? 
 
 In New England theology this position was taken in oppo- 
 sition to the divine-efficiency or necessary-means-of-the-greatest- 
 good scheme. The position is most precisely given in Dr. N. 
 W, Taylor's Lectures on Moral Gov., ii. 309: u What, then, is the 
 impossibility of God's preventing all sin in moral beings, which 
 it is now supposed may exist? I answer, It is an impossibility, 
 the supposition of which involves a contradiction in the nature of 
 the case. It is the impossibility of God's preventing moral beings 
 from sinning, by anything which He can do, when beings who 
 can sin in despite of God do in this respect what they can do." 1 
 Yet he says, ii. 340: "[We do] not affirm that God could not 
 
 1 Cf. also, Lects. on Moral Gov., i. 321-2; ii. 366; notice that nevertheless he 
 argues, ii. 313-15, "that the moral acts of men and of God may be certain "; ii. 
 342; ii. 357. In i. 309, it is said that " the power of the creature to sin is superior 
 to God's power." 
 
150 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 prevent all sin in a moral system ; but simply that its prevention 
 in such a system may be impossible to Him." * — The position at 
 the root of this scheme is, that a free agent is a being- who can 
 and may sin at any rate, in spite of all conceivable or possible 
 agency, even of God, Choice is essentially the power to the 
 contrary, and the power to the contrary always involves a pos- 
 sibility of a different choice and possibility of sin, and even om- 
 nipotence cannot control it. 2 — Now, is this position a vindication 
 of the divine government in respect to sin ? Does it give us a 
 sufficient reason and account of the present system ? 
 
 Remarks : 
 
 1. This theory at the utmost srives us only the possibility of 
 sin, not its certainty, not._ its actuality. God in making a free 
 agent, gave him power to the contrary, made it possible for him 
 to sin. The theory accounts for the possibility, not for the fact, 
 of sin. 
 
 1 This is an important point in the theory. So Leibnitz, Theod., p. 158, says: 
 " Bayle demands too much: he would have us shew how evil is bound up with the 
 best possible plan of the creation, which would be a perfect explanation of the 
 phenomenon: but this we do not undertake to give, nor are we obliged to do so: 
 it would be impossible in the present state; it is enough that it may be true, it may 
 be inevitable, it may be that particular evils are bound up with what is best in 
 general. This is sufficient to answer objections, but not for a comprehension of 
 the thing." 
 
 Dr. Taylor wishes to throw the burden of proof on his opponents. He does 
 not say, that God could not prevent all sin in a moral system, but, it cannot be 
 proved that He could. God can exclude sin from a moral system, but perhaps 
 not from the best, not from all. The sin and punishment of the fallen angels may 
 be the means, the necessary means of preserving the rest: so of man: so that the 
 fact of the existence of sin in some may be the reason why, in the actually holy, 
 God keeps sin out. — But where does the burden of proof lie ? It is proved that 
 God is omnipotent, that He can do all that can be done. The presumption, then 
 is, that He can exclude sin, and that He has not allowed it because He lacked 
 power, but for other reasons. This presumption is strengthened by the fact that 
 He has excluded it from oue system, and that He can and will keep saints to the 
 end. It is for the negative then to show that such is the nature of a moral system 
 that God cannot prevent sin in it. The affirmative might go one step further and 
 say, that the nature of moral agency is such that God can prevent sin in a moral 
 system, for He does and will in some. And since moral powers are the same in 
 all, He can in all; and the reason why He does not is not that He cannot, out is 
 something else. 
 
 2 Compare Whately's Bampton Lectures for 1822, App. II., against Arch. 
 King, who says, " the best system is one of free agents, liable to wrong.'* There 
 is a fallacy, says W., in the use of" liable to sin.'* It means only, "in his power, 
 and in that sense possible, for him to sin " ; does not mean, " may be expected tc 
 sin ": this begs the question. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 151 
 
 2. On this basis, sin could never be certain in the system, 
 and therefore it could/hever be provided for by any eternal pur- 
 pose or plan. It rn^ht^^be or might not^be. The plan of God 
 in respect to it must always be a plan of possibilities and not 
 certainties; because while it is possible for a creature to sin, it 
 is equally possible that he might not sin, and therefore all the 
 future there could be to God would be one of bare possibility 
 and not certainty. 1 The creature might sin, though omnipo- 
 tence should try to prevent it; he might be holy, notwithstand- 
 ing all finite inducement to the contrary. The matter would be 
 left in equilibrio. — So, of other divine attributes. God could not, 
 if his attributes are such as we have proved, bring such a sys- 
 tem of uncertainties into being. The theory regards the finite 
 will as an absolute contingency, in respect to which nothing 
 can be certainly foreseen. 
 
 3. This th&pjry derogates also from the divine omnipotence. 
 It puts a limit in the creature to omnipotence. God as a mat- 
 ter of fact lias exercised his omnipotence in keeping holy angels 
 from sinning, and He has promised to keep renewed men in 
 holiness and to secure their final sanctification. 
 
 4. An attempt is sometimes made to meet these difficulties 
 by ajaothar form oj. ^a^tementj^viz^, " j^hatjsin is necessarily in- 
 cidental to. the^best system." This form of statement does not 
 help the matter. It is true, as all will concede, that as a mat- 
 ter of fact sin is incidental to the best system, but what the 
 word "necessarily" means in connection with the term "inci- 
 dental," is difficult to decide. Of course the meaning is not that 
 sin is a necessary incident in the best system, and then the 
 only necessity which the phrase attempts to keep in view must 
 be that supposed to inhere in the nature of free agency. And 
 here, as we have seen, we have mere possibility, not necessity. 
 "Necessarily incidental" can amount only to this: that sin is 
 necessarily possible, and that really means (unless there be con- 
 fusion of terms) nothing more than possible ; so that the word 
 
 1 See Math. Quarterly, 1860-1 and Jan. 1862: "God foreseeing how each and 
 every possible free agent in any possible case will freely act, so places all free 
 agents in existence, and so adjusts his own course as that from their free, unne- 
 cessitated, undecreed actions He may educe the best possible result." 
 
152 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 " necessarily '' serves only to make it more difficult to understand 
 the theory. 1 
 
 5. Even if the theory could be freed from its difficulties in 
 relation to omnipotence, it after all would not solve the problem 
 before us. The questio n is, Why did God choose a system in 
 which it was certain that sin would exist? It is no answer to 
 say, God chose it because it must be a system of free agents, 
 about whom it was wholly uncertain whether they would sin or 
 not. The only object of a theory would be to give a reason why 
 God chose a system in which sin was certain to be, while this 
 only states why He chose a system in which sin might possibly be. 
 
 6. The, theory is stilly further no answer to the real_question, 
 which is this: Why is the present system the best system? All 
 that the answer amounts to is, that the best system is one in 
 which there are beings who have the power of choice. But 
 their having the power of choice is not what makes the system 
 best; it is simply an incident, a sine qua non. The bare power of 
 choice — or power of sinning — is no particular good. That which 
 constitutes the " good " of the system must be found either in 
 happiness or in holiness; and the theory in relation to either hap- 
 piness or holiness would amount to this: that the highest happi- 
 ness or holiness could not be insured without the power of 
 choice, which everybody grants; but it does not answer the ques- 
 tion at all, Why sin is in such a system ? — To state the matter 
 in another form: the only question which can be proposed in 
 respect to vindicating the divine government, and the point to 
 which any theory that attempts to solve the question must come, 
 is this: To show why a holy andjbenevolent God chose a system 
 in which sin was to be as a matter of fact, and why the exist- 
 ence of sin in that system was a condition of its being the best 
 system. Understanding that to be the question, it may be said 
 that the theory that sin is the necessary means of the greatest 
 good fairly undertakes to meet the question, though it does not 
 
 The theory is also sometimes supposed to be stated with a modification, thus: 
 God's omnipotence in the case is restrained by his view of what it is best or not 
 for Him to do. He cannot as a wise Being do what is unwise. — But this is a dif ■ 
 ferent theory. It puts the solution on a very different ground. It runs into the 
 first theory or a modification of it. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 153 
 
 answer it. But the other theory does not meet the question. It 
 merely says, that in the best system free agency involves the 
 possibility of sin, and that there cannot be a moral system, with- 
 out free agents. 
 
 The theory thus leaves the question and problem wholly 
 undecided. No relief can be found m a scheme which limits 
 divine omnipotence. 
 
 As far as we feel constrained to make a dilemma, we seem 
 to be compelled to say: God cou ld exclude sin but would not. 
 "Could" asserts the divine omnipotence as not limited by, but 
 extending over, moral beings and systems ; " would not " of course 
 ctbes not mean that God ever approves sin from any point of 
 view, but simply that He allows it for some good and sufficient 
 reason which we may or may not be able to state. 
 
 § 3. We cannot state all the Reasons for the Permission of Sin. 
 
 The true position is, that we do not know the ultimate or 
 metaphysical reason why God allows sin to exist, and so cannot 
 give a theoretical solution of the problem before us, while yet 
 the Christian system gives a sufficient practical solution, so that 
 they are without excuse who reject the redemption offered in 
 Christ. 
 
 The two preceding theories attempt demonstrative solutions, 
 they undertake to give the ultimate reason for the existence of 
 sin — and fail. 
 
 In saying that we cannot give the final reason in the case, 
 it is not meaut that we cannot give some important reasons, in 
 certain aspects and relations of the matter, but only that we do 
 not know the ultimate reason in the divine mind, or the reason 
 which is the complete vindication of Deity. 
 
 The preceding theories may afford a measure of help in 
 meeting difficulties and objections, and clearing the subject in 
 certain relations. 
 
 1. The state of the question. We prove that God is a holy, 
 wise, omnipotent, and benevolent Being, on independent grounds 
 and with certain evidence. The proof as far- as we go is suf- 
 ficient. Then, objection is made to the proof for this one rea- 
 
154 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 son: the existence of moral evil or sin, with its consequences. 
 (The existence of natural evils, and of suffering as the just 
 desert of sin, can be left out of account here, as the pressure 
 of the problem is not on these grounds.) That objection is 
 supposed to be sufficient to undermine the whole sum of the 
 evidence derived from other sources, that God is omnipotent, 
 wise, holy, and good. Then the state of the question is this. 
 Is it a valid and sufficient objection to the proof that we have 
 of the divine wisdom and benevolence, that sin should exist 
 in the world? Or although sin exists, may we still hold fast 
 to that proof? In meeting this question, there are two classes 
 to be argued with, on different grounds: — infidels, with whom 
 the whole argument from natural theology is to be urged, 
 with the proofs given there of the divine wisdom and love; 
 and believers in God, with whom the question comes as to 
 the grounds on which we can reconcile the two positions. 
 
 2. Points on which the parties in dispute are agreed, as 
 the question has been discussed in this country : (a) That the 
 actual system is the best system on the whole, for some reason 
 or other; (&) That sin is in it; (c) That sin in its nature is evil 
 and only evil, and hence it cannot be in the system for its 
 own sake; God did not put it in the system because it was 
 a good or the direct means of good; (d) That it is in the 
 system as the act and guilt of the creature. With agree- 
 ment on these points, the differences come out in the two 
 theories already considered. 
 
 3. Some reasons why this may be the best system, though 
 sin is in it. There is a difficulty about the phrase, " best sys- 
 tem." Defining it that no better system can possibly be con- 
 ceived, involves us at once in a difficulty; because we can 
 imagine a system in which there should be no sin, and that 
 would be better than the system in which we now are. But 
 the best system is defined by Leibnitz as the system which 
 answers the great end the best; we mean by the phrase, not one 
 that we could not conceive to be better, but the system which an- 
 swers best, or as well as any system we could conceive, the great 
 end: the manifestation of God and the good of the creature. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 155 
 
 Without pretending to give the ultimate grounds or reasons, 
 the divine government may be vindicated on the following 
 grounds, which give points of relief and rebut objections (ae 
 tliat God is not both omnipotent and benevolent, if He allows 
 sin, etc.), in connection with the Incarnation, the Atonement, 
 the Redemptive system. 
 
 (a.) The divine benevolence, which we have taken as the 
 highest divine attribute, is not a mere and ultimate regard 
 to happiness, but to holiness. The divine benevolence has 
 for its main object to secure the supremacy of holiness in God's 
 moral system. That must be the great object to which God 
 looks: a moral system in which holiness shall be supreme, 
 — not a moral system in which holiness shall be implanted 
 in every creature, but in which holiness shall be triumphant. 
 
 (b.) Such a moral system can only exist with and by free 
 agents. It is inconceivable that there could be holy beings 
 without freedom, and in that freedom there is of course given 
 the possibility of sin as well as of holiness. This does not 
 make sin certain but possible. The possibility is not a ne- 
 cessity, and if sin ever becomes actual, it will be through a 
 free act for which the actor is responsible. 
 
 (c.) Now, having got a system in which holiness is to be 
 the end, and a system of free agency in whose free agents 
 there was a possibility of sinning, we advance to the state- 
 ment that God might allow the possibility of sin to become 
 actual, for two main reasons. For two reasons, God as a 
 benevolent Being having ultimate regard to holiness, might 
 permit the creature to sin. (1) From the consideration that 
 if God should prevent sin by omnipotence or exclude it wholly, 
 this might diminish the capabilities of holiness (and of course 
 of happiness also) in the system. He could do it, because 
 omnipotence can do all that can be done, and it could control 
 a free agent. But if God should exercise his omnipotence 
 in that way throughout the whole creation, it might require 
 <3uch an exercise of omnipotence as would diminish the capa- 
 bilities of holiness and happiness. (2) From the consideration 
 that the system of which sin is a part allows a special mani- 
 
156 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 testation of the divine attribute of benevolence or love, in 
 Redemption. We repeat that these reasons are suggested, not 
 as solving the problem ultimately, but as showing that God 
 in his omnipotence might, in consistency with his benevolence, 
 still permit the existence of sin. 
 
 (d.) The reasons why God may have permitted sin may also 
 be reasons for his not suppressing it finally in the system, i. e., 
 for allowing some to go to eternal condemnation. 
 
 (e.) As Chalmers says, for aught we know, it may be better 
 for each individual to be in a system where there is a common 
 sin and a common redemption, than for each to be in a system 
 where he might sin and where there was no redemption pro- 
 vided. — As far as the whole system of the world is concerned, it 
 seems plain that the vindication of the divine government is ulti- 
 mately in the scheme of Redemption. God chose the system, as 
 far as his own agency was concerned, for the sake of the Redemp- 
 tion in it, and not because He was obliged to take it with its pos- 
 sibilities of evil for the sake of free agency. If there had not been 
 a Redemption, there would not have been a race of sinners, proba- 
 bly. God would have cut off the race at the root, if it had not 
 been in his purpose to provide a scheme of Redemption, and a 
 scheme co-extensive in its provisions with the extent of the 
 apostasy. So far as God's own motive or agency was con- 
 cerned, a general Redemption set over against a general ruin 
 was the reason why he allowed sin to go on, a Redemption 
 which will ultimately no doubt embrace by far the great major- 
 ity of the race. 
 
 (f.) God is more than benevolent, He is gracious. Man is 
 ultimately condemned for rejecting grace. (As to those who 
 know not the gospel, we need not fear to assert that God will 
 deal with them, too, benevolently as well as justly.) 
 
 Summary. Concluding Statement: God might, by omnipo * 
 tence, have excluded sin ; v et we must say; for wise and good 
 reasons, some of which we c an see, other s not, He ch ose not t o 
 exert his omnipotence in , tha way of its suppression . 
 
 For aught that appears, the present system answers its end, 
 i. e., the manifestation of the declarative glory of God and the 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 157 
 
 ensuring the triumph of holiness through free agents, as com- 
 pletely as any can, in which both these elements are to be 
 conjoined. Both of them are to be taken into account in 
 estimating the system. 
 
 The full Theodicy could be known only by knowing the 
 universe; for evil began in angelic natures, and has its full issue 
 only in eternity. This world gives us but a part ; the Theodicy 
 is to be framed with reserves and suspense of judgment as to what 
 is ultimate; but so far as we do frame it, we are to avoid natu- 
 ralistic grounds, and put ourselves on the basis of the Eedemptive 
 scheme. The problem of evil brings us and leaves us face to 
 face with the offer of Redemption, and that is the most we can 
 do with it: to make opposers concede that the existence of sin 
 is explained as far as may be in the Redemption, and then ask 
 them themselves to taste and see that the Lord is gracious. 
 The practical solution of the problem is and ever must be found 
 in the personal acceptance of the offers of grace. 
 
 Note. — Some additional statements not incorporated by the 
 author in his lectures. 
 
 I. — Attempts to prove a priori the metaphysical necessity of 
 sin in the best system fail, if sin be held to be sin. The only 
 consistent statement here is the pantheistic: sin is a stage of 
 development. 
 
 II. — The proof from free will, motives, etc., fails in showing 
 more than liability, possibility. It does not show how God could 
 choose a system involving the actuality of sin. 
 
 III. — The position, This is the best system — sin is in it — 
 therefore, etc., is analysis and not proof. 
 
 IV. — Sin the necessary means of the greatest good, fails too. 
 
 V. — Yet we have enough to answer objections and difficul- 
 ties so as to leave us face to face with the system of Redemp- 
 tion. This is all that can be rationally asked in a Christian 
 Theodicy. 
 
 VI. — We should remember that the moral system of which 
 we are a part, embraces the angelic as well as the Adamic 
 world. Sin is far reaching; it reaches back into the past 
 
158 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 eternity and forward into the future. Hence the more need 
 of caution the less the probability that we can see or know 
 the whole. 1 
 
 VII. — We should recollect, also, that as far as this world is 
 concerned, it is a system, not of individuals, but for a race; with 
 common characteristics, and a moi-al government for the whole 
 as well as for each individual. In such a system there may be 
 elements which would not be found in one of pure individualism. 
 E. g., It might be better for each individual to be in a system 
 with sin for all and a common redemption, than in one where 
 each came into the world to stand or fall for himself alone. 
 More might be saved, on the whole, by such a system than by 
 one of individual action and penalty. God would make a race; 
 individuals to be generated; there must then be body and soul; 
 this gave occasion for sin — and also for Eedemption. The fact 
 of Eedemption is connected uniformly, in the Bible, with Incar- 
 nation. No redemption for angels is intimated. 
 
 VIII. — Recollect also, the necessary constituents of a moral 
 system. The best system is that which secures the highest glory 
 of God, through and by the acts of free moral agents. There 
 are two elements in it: the declarative glory of the divine per- 
 fections, and the agency of the creature : or, the supremacy of 
 holiness as the end, and the freedom of the creature in relation 
 to that end. Such a system of course implies that men are free 
 moral agents; yet also, that God through and by their free agency 
 will secure the end of his system. 
 
 IX. — 1. The Ideal: God — a perfect world — man, free, holy — 
 collection of individuals like angels — immortal bliss in obedi- 
 ence to the holy law for each. 
 
 2. The Actual: God — a sinful world — man in bondage to sin 
 — common ruin — violated law — uncertain or dismal future. 
 
 1 As to the fall of Angels, seeBirks, Difficulties of Belief, ch. v. (1) A moral sys- 
 tem was first set forth in creation, in the simplest "way; in angelic hosts and orders; 
 individuals; all favorable to stability. (2) The Fall, through pride, before the Ad- 
 amic. (3) The system passing over to a mixed one: a new trial, in the human race; 
 sinful angels still connected with it. (Angels not at once cast down to the lowest 
 hell, as is inferred from 2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 6, 7. This last refers [probably to« 
 the first] to the sin of angels with the race, » second apostasy.) " A later fall of 
 Satan in the Garden, in connection with the Adamic." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 159 
 
 3. The Union of the Two: Christianity — Man a race — with 
 common sinfulness: Christ a*. Redeemer — common provision of 
 Redemption — the world a probation — eternity unveiled. 
 
 The difficulties of natural religion solved by the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 X. — Consider the attitude of God in respect to sin and its 
 consequences. The general maxim here: "Deus concurrit ad 
 materiale, non ad formale actionis liberae.'' God is to overrule, 
 bound, control sin. God could not prevent sin, from regard to 
 his plan; could, per se. Consider that metaphysical evil is not 
 really such; in gradation there is no real evil. Misery and 
 death are in the world for the sin of the race ; they are not nec- 
 essary; are to pass away: Rom. viii. 21; viii. 18-25; Rev. vii. 16, 
 17; xxi. 4. Evil still attends sin: Rom. v. 12; vi. 23. Evil serves 
 the glory of God: John ix. 3; xi. 4; Rom. viii. 28; James i. 2-4. 
 
 XL — Such a permission of sin in this race allows a peculiar 
 manifestation of the divine love, in this system of Redemption, 
 where the highest divine glories shine. In its results in saving, 
 it will doubtless reach far beyond our common thoughts and 
 ways of estimating. — Infants. — Who knows what a millennial 
 period maybe? — some conjecture three hundred and sixty thou- 
 sand years (year of thousands). We need not fear to make this 
 statement broad and strong. y 
 
PART III. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY. THE DOCTRINE 
 RESPECTING MAN. 
 
 This Third Part of the First Division treats of man, in his 
 original endowments , his moral relations, and his original moral 
 state. It differs from Psychology (which considers man in his 
 isolation — a mind — an intelligence ) in taking the broadest and 
 highest view of man, treating the whole doctrine respecting 
 man in his relations to God, 1 and as a subject of God's moral 
 government. 
 
 Under this title we include the discussion of the much-de- 
 bated questions as to the nature of moral agency and of holiness 
 and sin, which are to be applied in respect to all the doctrines, 
 both in Anthropology (with Hamartology) and, in the Third Di- 
 vision, the Application of Redemption. We have here to con - 
 sider t he nature of free agency, of conscience, of true virtu e; all 
 of which go to exhibit the true nature of God's moral government. 
 
 The general subject of the prime constituents of human na- 
 ture, or of man's endowments and relations as a moral being, 
 can be considered under these points of view: I. What is man 
 as a moral being? II. What is the law for which as a moral 
 being he is made? III. What is man's relation to the law (syn- 
 thesis between I. and II.) — man's destination as a moral being ? — 
 In what is conformity to this law found? 2 
 
 '[The author sometimes made Anthropology include the Doctrine of Human 
 Nature — I. in Itself; II. as Fallen; III. as capable nevertheless of Redemption. 
 The first head would treat of the prime constituents of human nature and its chief 
 moral relations; the second, of the condition into which man as a race has fallen, 
 and of the penalty and power of sin in men as individuals; and the third, of the 
 need on man's part of deliverance from without and above, and of the possibility 
 of receiving deliverance which still survives in human nature. But on the whole 
 the division of the subject into Part III. Anthropology, and Part IV. Hamartology, 
 suits his treatment best] 
 
 a [This is the question of " the nature of true virtue." The above scheme is not 
 strictly followed, yet it governs more than any other in the ensuing discussions.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 1 61 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT IS MAN AS A MORAL BEING? 
 
 In order to know what man is as a moral being, we must 
 consider the relations in which he stands, his endowments and 
 capacities. 
 
 § 1. Of Man in his most General Relations. - 
 
 (a.) Man in his relation to the Creator., which is his highest 
 and chief relation, is finite and dependent. His fundamental 
 relation is that of a creature of God, dependent upon Him for 
 life and breath and all things: Gen, i. 26; Acts xvii. 28; Eev. 
 iv. 11. As a creature, man falls under the general condition of 
 finite existence, limitation by space and time. As a creature 
 of God he is made for God, having the destination of glorifying 
 God, so that that is his chief end; and in nothing that he does 
 can he be independent of the divine government, as exercised 
 in the way o general providence, ordering all things with om- 
 nipotence and wisdom, for the highest ends of such a government. 
 
 (b.) In relation to the rest of the material creation man is the 
 crown and head thereof? One aspect of the world viewed by 
 itself is, that it was made for man; it culminates and is cen- 
 tralized in him. This is foreshadowed in the order of creation 
 given in the book of Genesis: man was made last and to have 
 dominion over all. 2 It is proved also by science, which shows 
 that everything in the lower orders of animals points to man. 3 
 The order is: inorganic; organic with life — vegetables; organic! 
 with souls (in broad sense) — animals: man has all these elements] 
 in his constitution, and 
 
 (c.) He has not only what allies him with and makes him 
 the recapitulation of the order of creation, but he has also what 
 
 1 "Man is not an animal whose mind is agitated with animal sympathies and 
 passions, but a calm, deep sea, in which the heavens with the sun and stars are 
 mirrored" (Herder). 
 
 2 Here religion and theology have anticipated science. 
 
 a Especially the investigations into the stages of embryo life. 
 
162 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 puts him above all other natural beings, a spiritual subsistence. 
 He is made up of both matter and spirit. The two realms meet 
 in him. The angels are spirits without bodies, and the l ower 
 orders have a material constitution without a rational soul L 
 Man is the union of both. This combination assigns him his 
 place in the whole creation. The difference between matter and 
 (spirit: (1) General: we cannot ascribe the qualities of the one to 
 ; the other; (2) Matter is defined by its relations to space: spirit, 
 not; (3) Matter is moved by foreign agency: spirit is self-active, 1 
 is essentially free; (4) "Spirit has its center in itself: matter, 
 not" (Hegel). 
 
 (d.) Man is not only thus related to God and to nature, but 
 each individual man is also one of a race: he is an individual 
 example of a race. What he is as a member of the race is the 
 substratum of what he is as an individual, personal being. The 
 unity of the race as a whole underlies the idea of the individual. 
 In each individual the constituent elements of human nature are 
 individualized. The individual has all the common properties, 
 relations, tendencies, qualities, attributes — or whatever they may 
 be called — of the race of which he is a part and an individual 
 - copy. The unity and " solidarity " of the race is at the bas isof 
 the doctrines of sin and of redemption. As a whole, as well as 
 in each individual, it is the object of the divine government: 
 Gen. i. 27, 28; Acts xvii. 24-26; Rom. v. 12. The race is in idea 
 before the individual: the whole is in idea before the part: for 
 the part has essential respect to the whole. 2 Hence, men can- 
 not be considered as isolated beings. We cannot understand 
 the human body except in its relations to nature, which it was 
 •made to act in. We cannot understand a human affection ex- 
 cept as it is related to other beings. The very idea of man is 
 that of an individual being or agent in such leading relations as 
 have been namec T His capacities and powers have respect to 
 these. And, 
 
 (e.) In all these relations man is a moral being. In them all 
 
 > In a broad sense we must admit a spiritual principle in animals: they ars 
 self-active. 
 
 2 Aristotle, Pol. 1, 2: " Manifestly the state is by nature before the family an.] 
 before each individual. For the whole must needs be earlier than the part." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 163 
 
 he is to live as a moral agent. He is such a being, he has such 
 a constitution that he can and must be in moral relations with 
 all, can and must act in a moral way, in respect to all. As con- 
 sisting of body and soul, as related to nature, to his fellow- 
 beings and to God, he is to act morally, in accordance with a 
 moral law, for a moral end. ' This is his fundamental destination: 
 to be morally at one with himself, with nature, with other 
 rational beings, and with God. 
 
 And he has such endoioments that he can do this. Man is 
 made a moral being: having such capacities and powers, in such 
 a state, that he can and must act in a moral way, under a moral 
 law. And this leads us to consider — 
 
 § 2. What constitutes the Individuality of each Man ? What 
 are the specific Characteristics of each Man as an Individual Person ? 
 
 The most general statement: Man is a personal agent, hav- 
 ing capacities or powers and tendencies corresponding to all 
 the relations in which he is placed and for which he was made. 
 
 The order of discussion: I. Man as made up of body and 
 soul ; II . Personality; III. Faculties; IV. Tendencies; V. Con- 
 science . Man is primarily constituted of body and spirit, and 
 is thus connected with the natural and spiritual sphere; his 
 body has a central principle of life, which is not the result 
 of, but the living center of unity to, all his organism; his 
 personality presides over and expresses itself in all that he 
 does; he has powers or faculties; he has tendencies towards 
 the various objects to which he is related; and in respect to 
 all, he has the power of moral discernment, feeling, and self- 
 determination, and of moral judgment upon himself and upon 
 all that comes within the moral sphere. 
 
 § 3. Of the union of Body and Soul in Man. 
 
 I. — The dichotomy in man. Man is animal rationale, the cen- 
 ter betw een m atter and spirit, made up of both ; his material por- 
 tion we call his body: his spiritual substance, his soul. This 
 union is the most wonderful and mysterious fact in our organic 
 frame. Various theories have been proposed to explain or illus- 
 trate it. The theories rest upon one of two assumptions: that 
 
164 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 body and soul are one substance originally , or that there is an 
 essential duality of matter and spirit. On the first assumpt ion 
 we may have (a.) Materialism , which affirms that this primitive 
 substance is matter which takes the form of spirit; or (&.) Ideal - 
 ism, affirming that the primitive substance is spirit which be- 
 comes objective to itself in what is' called matter . 1 The diffi- 
 culty in either of these cases is that things so different as 
 body and soul cannot be deduced the one from the other. 
 We cannot bring one under the other; we can only super- 
 add the qualities of spirit to those of matter, or the qual- 
 ities of matter to those of spirit. The second assumption, 
 that matter and spirit are dual, essentially distinct, may be 
 carried to the extreme of asserting that they are entirely 
 disparate, giving rise to the three chief theories as to 
 their mode of acting upon each other, (a.) T he union is^ made 
 in the sensorium: the nerves carry impressions thither, and then 
 the soul receives them. But when we have got to the senso- 
 rium and the nervous action and the spirit awaiting the 
 reception of the nervous influence, we still have to explain 
 the nature of this union as much as before; and therefore 
 some have imagined a nervous fluid intermediate between 
 matter and spirit, which is so vague that it may be taken 
 to be matter or spirit, or both. 2 This theory really materializes 
 the soul, while it leaves the problem unsolved, and simply re- 
 moves the difficulty to parts unknown, (b.) The theory of 
 occasionalism — Cartesian. This started with the position that 
 matter works by its particular laws, and spirit by laws peculiar 
 to itself, and that these are so different that there is no possi- 
 bility of a mutual action. Then, to explain what appears to 
 be the mutual action, it was said that God, on the occasion 
 of the action of the one, produces by hi s direct agency a cor - 
 responding action in the othe r, (c.) The theory of pre-estab - 
 lished harmony, suggested by Leibnitz . This also rests on 
 the assumption that there is no direct interaction between 
 
 1 To say, the primitive substance is neither matter nor spirit, as in Cudworth'a 
 *' plastic soul of nature," etc., {so Morell) is to make a union in statement merely, 
 not in any definite conception. 
 
 s "Physical influx " designates a similar theory. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 165 
 
 the material and spiritual, but it hesitates to say that God 
 produces the actions by continual interference; and says in 
 distinction that He made the soul and body in a perfect cor- 
 respondence the one with the other, so that, e. g., when a motion 
 took place in the body the re should be a motion in the soul, t 
 not by the dir ect act of God, but by the action of the spirit 
 itself, according to a pre -established harmony. These three 
 theories have been illustrated by the instance of two watches 
 keeping the same time, which might be taken under three i 
 points of view: they keep time together, (1), because they act I 
 on each other; (2), because the maker of the watches acts di- 
 rectly upon both; (3), because both watches were made so perfect 
 at the first that they correspond in movement at every point. 
 
 The simple facts, however, to which we must come back are. 
 that body and soul are distinct; that they do interact; and that 
 the mode of their interaction surpasses human scrutiny. We 
 must accept the fact as ultimate and a mystery. We may say 
 that the soul is prior; takes to itself a material form ; and that in 
 this union neither is understood without the other. 1 "The soul 
 is the entelechy of the body." The whole body is the seat of 
 the soul. Both soul and body are in constant union and mutual 
 action. The body is the organ for the manifestation of the soul, 
 and the medium of its communication with the material world 
 and beings. The union of body and soul is through and by— 
 not bare matter, but — the forces of matter, or through matter as 
 force. There is force in the action of all the organism : mechan- 
 ical, chemical, vital; there is force also in the soul. Force is 
 common to both body and soul, and here, in some way, is the 
 point of union. The soul shapes, forms the body; and because 
 it does this, it is s usceptible to all its mo tions. This does not 
 explain, so that we can comprehend, the union: but it deter- 
 mines the relations of the body to the soul. 
 
 After all, body and soul, while essentially distinct, are per- 
 haps not so disparate as we traditionally imagine. 
 
 1 Compare The Theory of the Soul, by Rev. J. B. Dalgairns. He vindicates, 
 against the Cartesian dualism, the Aristotelian view of the soul as "entelechy." 
 He says, (t Man is one complete being made up of body and soul, in the sense 
 that the intellectual soul is by itself the true and immediate form of the body." 
 
I 66 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 II. — Does the dichotomy (body and soul) in man include also 
 a trichotomy (body, soul, and spirit) ? Those who affirm that it 
 does, rely upon two passages of Scrip ture : 1 Thess. v. 23, rendering 
 
 | this " May you remain, be preserved entire, in all your parts, body, 
 soul, and spirit, blameless," etc. — It seems better, however, to un- 
 derstand it : May you in all your spheres, all your relations, be 
 blameless: in Spirit, i. e., in relation to the new spiritual life; in 
 soul, in all your individual traits; and in body. The other pas- 
 sage adduced is Heb. iv. 12; where "piercing to the separation, 
 or the dividing, of soul and spirit" is taken to imply a difference 
 in substance between soul and spirit, or at least a difference in 
 the whole mode of existence and manifestation. — But the pas- 
 
 i sage appears to refer not to two distinct compartments of the spir- 
 itual Christian man, but to two different relations: a relation to 
 the whole spiritual sphere and to the natural, both of which are 
 searched to the very joints and marrow of them by the Word of 
 God. 1 
 
 If spirit and soul were two distinct substances, then, (a.) death 
 could not be described as the giving up of the soul (Gen. xxxv. 
 18; 1 Kings xvii. 21; Acts xv. 26, Cf. xx. 10, 11), and again as 
 the giving up of the spirit (Ps. xxxi. 5 ; Luke xxiii. 46 ; Acts vii. 59 ; 
 Cf. Luke viii. 55); (b.) " souls" and "spirits" of the deadcouldnot 
 mean the same (1 Pet. iii. 19; Heb. xii. 23; Rev. vi. 9; xx. 4); 
 (c.) we should not find the Scriptural formula for man to be 
 sometimes " body and soul " (Ps. lxxiii. 26; Matt. vi. 25; x. 28), 
 and sometimes " body and spirit " (Eccl. xii. 7; 1 Cor. v. 3, 5). 
 
 § 4. Of the origin of Souls (after tlie Creation of the first Soul). 
 
 While it is agreed that the first members of the human race 
 were the immediate objects of the divine power, and that their 
 souls were immediately created like their bodies, 2 on the question 
 how the souls of their descendants come into being there are 
 three chief theories: Pre-existence, Creationism, Traducianism. 
 
 1 The words, "spirit" and "soul" designate, the former, the life as proceed- 
 ing from God; the latter, the life as that of the individual. This is the only gen- 
 eral view that can be carried out. 
 
 a [With those who do not agree to this, the author's plan was to conduct dis- 
 cussion under the head of Apologetics.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 167 
 
 I. — Pre-existenc^ : God created originally (on "the first day," 
 some have said, some, on " the sixth,") all the souls of the human 
 race that ever should exist. (The view of the Rabbins was, that 
 these souls were kept in a heavenly treasury until conception 
 took place, and that then the soul was introduced into and united 
 with the new body.) Some have supposed that there is an 
 allusion to this in John ix. 2. If the man did sin, of course he 
 pre-existed, it is said. The phrase, however, is colloquial and 
 not metaphysical. Ps. cxxxix. 15 is also cited, but this is 
 doubtless an allusion to the formation in the womb. 1 
 
 Plato, Philo. Justin Martyr T Theodoretus, Origen, Synesiu s, 
 Prudentms, taught pre-existence ; some holding that the souls 
 were in the ether and came freely, the Church Fathers for the 
 most part teaching that they were brought into the body as a 
 punishment and with the benevolent intent of giving them the 
 opportunity of redemption. Against it were Tertullian, Greg- 
 ory of Nyssa, Cyril, Augustine, Leo the Great ; at a synod under 
 Justinian (Mansi, IX. 396) it was condemned. 
 
 II. — Creationism: Each soul is created by the divine power , 
 and united with the foetus, which alone is propagate d. The 
 soul is supposed to be created pure, and united with a depraved 
 body . This view was held by Hilary, Pelagius. Theodoretus. 
 Gennadius, Ambrose, Jeron if^ hv the Sp,ho1a. stics T by Melanoh - 
 fchon, an d most of the Reformers . It has been the view of most 
 Roman Catholic divines, and of many Calvinists. Lutheran 
 theologians are for the most part against it, though Luther him- 
 self was not decided. Pelagius used it against the doctrine of 
 original sin, urging that God would not create a soul impure. 
 Augustine was not decided. Against it are usually cited: Gen. 
 i. 26 ; ii. 2 ; for it, such passages as Heb. xii. 9, " Father of spirits.'' 
 The chief objections to it are: (a.) It is difficult to see how God 
 could create a perfectly pure spirit, a nd unite it with a depraved 
 organization; (&.) It pu ts man out of analogy with all the other 
 livin g being s i n the world ; in these the entire vitality is allowed 
 
 1 Other citations are: Isa. xlii. 5; Job xii. 10; 1 Pet. iii. 18. The following 
 have been quoted to show that the souls of children are in Hades before birth: Job 
 i. 21; Ps. cxxxix. 14, 15; Ps. xxii. 30. 
 
168 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 to be propagated, including all that goes to the animal soul, the 
 degree of intelligence, traits, etc.; (c.) It tends to destroy the 
 organic unity of the race. 1 
 
 III. — TraducianisnT ("Tradux," the vine shoot, brought over 
 to become a new branch.) This theory, which on the whole 
 has been the most widely approved, accounts for the genesis of 
 souls from the first pair, by the position that th e soul is propa- 
 gated with the body . 
 
 Certain passages of Scripture are believed to be most in ac- 
 cordance with this view, though they cannot be said to be ab- 
 solutely decisive. Heb. vii. 10; Gen, v. 3. — the " likeness ^ to 
 himse lf in which Adam begat a son can scarcely be restricted 
 to the body, andjfj t was also in the soul, then that was include d 
 in the beget ting ; Pa. li . 5, — this certainly cannot refer to thej XHJy 
 alone, but to the depravity in the soul . If the Psalmist has not 
 m view his own sinfulness, what could he have had in view? he 
 was not speaking of the guilt of his mother; John iii. 6, — "the 
 flesh" here means, all the natural constitution of man, all that 
 is not the effect of a special divine influence; Rom. v. 12 seq., 
 where the reasoning seems to presuppose transmission of the en- 
 tire human endowment from the first man; and the general 
 Scriptural mode of describing generation as of the whole man: 
 "Adam begat Seth," "Isaac begat Jacob:" it would seem that 
 (here is everywhere recognition of the fact that man does not 
 beget mere animals, but persons, or at least personal natures . 
 
 Other arguments in favor of the Traducian view are: (a.) the 
 * analogy of creation already referred to; (b.) the slow develop- 
 ment of the powers of the mind seems more in harmony with 
 t this view than with Creationism; (c.) the traits of parents de- 
 scend to children, peculiarities of intellect, even moral peculiari- 
 ties, all of which must have their seat in the soul; (d.) the doc- 
 trine of original sin is best stated in accordance with this vie^\ . 
 
 The chief objection to Traducia nism is the philosophical 
 
 1 Lasaulx, Phil. d. Gesch., p. 15: "In all human pro-creation, it is not the 
 individual man and woman that generate, but the race (the generic) in them; hu- 
 manity generates life: i. e., in the last instance, "the eternally pro-creative na- 
 ture," springing from "the original and universal prototype," and "the divine 
 creative power dwelling in the protoplast." So Plato, De Leg. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 169 
 
 difficulty raised i n respect to the simplicity of the soul . It is 
 asked, how can a pure essence be propagated? is it derived from 
 the father or the mother, or both; if from both, must it not be 
 divisible ? Propagation seems to imply a division of souls and 
 a reunion, and yet the soul is not composite, but simple. We 
 can only answer such questions as these by asking others. If 
 on account of simplicity of essence we exclude man's soul 
 f rom the line of propagation, we must also exclude the animal 
 soul, for that too is simple and indivis ible, and we must extend 
 the theory of Creationism to animals. Indeed we should hardly 
 know what to say of the principle of life in the vegetable. Must 
 we assume in each seed a new creation? We should not be free 
 from embarrassment in our thoughts of the ultimate forces of 
 nature. These are simple, at least to our thought, and yet they 
 act in a great variety of ways, transmit, incorporate themselves — 
 so to speak — at different points. Take, e. g.> electricity. In fact 
 the old assumption, that simplicity prevents difference in modes 
 of action, has been abandoned. jfj: 
 
 On the whole, Traducianism is the most natural theory, and, 
 has fewer difficulties. We are not bound to answer the question, 
 how the soul is propagated. That we do not know. We need 
 only say, that such appears to be the constitution of the race, 
 that souls are potential in it, are ultimately from the first father 
 of the race. 
 
 Yet this view should not be held so as to exclude the agency 
 of God from the origination of each soul. God does doubtless act > 
 in a specific way in producing each human individua l. There is a* 
 peculiar co- working of divine power, but the mode of that agency 
 need not be asserted to be strictly creative. Martensen, Dogm. 
 162, 3: "Every indi vidual is the effect of the natural productivity 
 of the race, while the mysterious natural agency is the organ 
 and mea ns of the individualizing agency of God. " "Both Tradu- 
 cianism and Creationism are true. 1 Traducianism alone would 
 give us the natural side, the copy of the race : Creationism alone 
 would demand absolute purity, which is inconsistent with the 
 sinfulness of the race." 
 
 - Pre-existence is also of course true, in the sense that souls existed in idea in 
 the divine creative counsels. 
 
170 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 5. Of Personality. 
 
 Man is made up of body and soul , but he is also a personal 
 agent, and personality is the center of unity to the conscious 
 being. The central fact in respect to man as a moral agent is 
 that he has a distinct personality. Personality is indefinable, 
 because ultimate. Wherever there is consciousness, there are 
 ? ~ the ele m e nts of self and not-self and the union of the twq : there 
 '^ is a knowle dge of self and of that which is not-self* . The equiva- 
 lent of personality is self, and personality may be described as 
 that in man which enables him to say " I." It is man's self-hood. 
 knowledge of self (not of " the existence of self) directly giver 
 in consciousness. The having of personality is what distin- 
 guishes man, so far as the central principle in him is concerned, 
 from the brutes. So far as we know, they do not distinguish be- 
 tween the ego and the non-ego. Eudiments and anticipations of 
 personality are found in the plant and animal: they have centers 
 of life and activity. Man is more than a self-active being; each 
 animal is that, self-active in its sphere; man is a personal agent: 
 > he has a derived and dependent, but still a real, personal agency; 3 
 all that he does is an expression, a manifestation of this central 
 personal force, which is inalienable from his very being. 2 This 
 personality gives the possibility of his fellowship with God, in 
 which his glory as a man chiefly consists. There is a degree of 
 vagueness about the us^ of the terms, person and personality. 
 The word person is usua lly employed to designate the whole 
 man as apparent, while personality refers rather to the center 
 of tha t being T to self-hood s. 
 
 § 6. The primary Facts involved in all Personal Agency. 
 Personality is the central principle in man; at the basis is the 
 distinction of the me and the not-me, the personal agent and the 
 
 1 Thomasius, Dogm. I, 135: "The divine idea of man is, that the absolute 
 personality is imaged forth in the limits of the finite and created." 
 
 2 Another form of statement: Man is self-active, is a center of force determined 
 by its relations. This is true of plants, of all that is organized. Brutes are subjects 
 (individuals). But man's center is proper personality, essential to which are rea- 
 son and conscience and affections of a moral nature, with free will as the organ 
 of manifestation. Personality and free will are inseparable; the latter is the ex- 
 pression of the former. In man, germ (as in plants) and individuality (as in brutes) 
 are merged in personality. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 171 
 
 objective universe, with which he is placed in relations; for 
 man's powers have respect to all that is objective, and they can- 
 not be conceived as acting except in respect or relation thereto. 
 But this statement gives us only the central fact in human na- 
 ture, not its full idea. There are certain fundamental elements 
 in all personal action, or essential conditions of it, or primary 
 facts involved in it. These are : 
 
 I. — Consciousness. The fundamental form of personal activity 
 is consciousness; by which is not indicated a specific power, but 
 the condition of the exercise of all our powers. Consciousness 
 simply means that the mind knows that it acts . The tree knows 
 not that it grows, but man feels and knows it, thinks and knows 
 it. rHe is -&ke^ conscious of the external world) Consciousness 
 may be analyzed as containing the elements: (a.) the person , 
 (b.) the object^ (c.) a real connection between the two . All of 
 these make up every act of consciousness. It is not the knowl- 
 edge of the operations of the person, but of the person himself 
 in his operations. It is given with, not after, each act. 1 Brutes 
 probably have no proper consciousness: they know, but do not 
 know that they know: do not distinguish self and knowledge. 
 So perhaps, very young children do not say "I." 
 
 This is the primitive fact lying at the basis of all the mind's 
 faculties; confirming the position that these faculties have re- 
 spect to the person's relation to other being, to what is objective. 
 
 II. — The fact of personal identit y. Personal id entity is the 
 continued existence of the same self or person, in a variety 
 of states . The knowledge of personal identity can only come 
 upon a comparison of at least two states of mind. The knowl- 
 edge of self may be given in a single act; personal identity 
 implies a comparison of at least two. One state of conscious- 
 ness gives us self and an object: another, self, an object, and 
 the sameness of self in this diversity of states. This also is a 
 primitive fact in relation to the soul's agency, and is so deeply 
 involved that doubt of it, in a sane person, is a psycholog- 
 ical impossibility; the doubt cannot be stated without affirm, 
 ing the fact : the doubt annuls itself. The identity which we 
 
 - Yet "the marvel of consciousness involves the marvel of memory " (Maurice) 
 
172 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 know in personal identity is that of the soul, the self, not of 
 the particles of the body. A person may lose the conscious- 
 ness of his identity, but not the identity itself. Identity is not 
 in consciousness, — though Locke says: " Identity is depend- 
 ent on consciousness." 
 
 III.— The conti nuity of the mental states. This is the third 
 fact lying at the basis of the mind's operations. This is distinct 
 from identity, though identity is involved in it. The fact is 
 this: the states of the mind are held together by the self or pe r- 
 son in the unity of consciousness ; they succeed one another in 
 time and are mutually dependent; they serve to produce and re- 
 produce one another. This fact is connected with the existence 
 of the soul in time. Given the identity of the person and the 
 continued existence in time, and the product is, the continuity 
 of states. A part of this fact is what is known in general under 
 the term, association of ideas, but the whole fact is more than 
 that: it is the association of all the states of the mind. It in- 
 volves memory. There are: (1) successive states; (2) which are 
 also dependent; (3) which are retained after passing; (4) which 
 come up again, as they at first co-existed: (a.) some, always to- 
 gether as ideas, etc. ; (b.) some, as faculties always operating to- 
 gether (Hamilton's Law of Reproduction). 
 
 It should be remembered that the above are/acte, not/acuities, 
 of the mind. 
 
 IV. — In all its operations the mind is an active agent, work- 
 ing for some end or object; it is an efficient cause working for a 
 final cause; and the final cause, or the object, for which it works, 
 exists and must exist in itself , as impulse or motive. This is a 
 universal law or condition of all the mind's practical agency, 
 activity, in relation to what is objective, different from itself. 
 The ultimate ground or reason for the action is in the mind 
 itself: (1) as efficiency, (2) also as the impulse, motive (the ob- 
 jective as subjective). 
 
 V. — In all its agency the mind is both active and passive . 
 This is virtually contained in the preceding. It is the necessary 
 result of man's finiteness, that he should be both acted upon and 
 active, receptive and reactive. Even in the animal soul there 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 173 
 
 are spontaneous reactions, and in the lowest spheres of organized 
 being, this law is shown in contractility and expansibility. In 
 respect to the soul, there are influences from without, waking 
 it up, and reactions, by spontaneous power or force, in view of 
 these. There is no conceivable activity of the mind which is not 
 under this law. Still, the mind, when acted on, is only excited to 
 self-agency, to manifest what it is in itself, in the way of re-agency. 
 
 § 7. The Poivers and Faculties of the Soul. 
 
 All of these facts , now, of personality: consciousness, identity, 
 continuity of states, and action for ends, are presupposed in moral 
 agency, are conditions of such agency ; they are at the basis of all 
 the operations of the mind ; they are the conditions of the exercise 
 of all the faculties. But they are not these faculties or po wers 
 themselves^ What these are, we are now to inquire. Under the 
 above conditions all man's powers act: what are these powers? 
 The faculties themselves are man's essential powers as a moral 
 agent. 
 
 I. — Of the method of determining as to the faculties. 
 
 The term, faculty, is variously used. In attempting to de- 
 fine it, we are apt to run into a practical difficulty, which is the 
 division of the mind, more or less after the phrenological method. 
 It is easy to say that we do not mean to divide up the soul, but 
 difficult to get rid practically of the feeling that we have done 
 so, when we have distinguished its faculties. Many of our 
 reasonings go upon the supposition of a real division, e. g. t in 
 ethics and theology, as respects the question whether regener- 
 ation is of the will or the affections. If we only can refer it to 
 the will, it seems as though we had made it much clearer than 
 if Ave say it is in the affections; but we have not, in reality; we 
 have only put the work into another word. In determining the 
 faculties, the following points are to be observed: (a.) The mind 
 acts as one indivisible faculty or power, in all that it does. There 
 is one undivided energy in all its operations; and in almost all 
 its acts, all the main faculties work together: man acts as a 
 person, an agent, not as an intellect or emotion; e. g., a person 
 stoops to pick up a stone: he perceives the stone, and here is at 
 
174 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 work in the intellect; he desires to take it up, — in the emotions; 
 he determines to take it up,— in the will, (b.) Our divisions, 
 then, are matters of convenience and classification, and do not 
 imply re al divisions in the mind's operation s, (c.) By faculties 
 or powers, is meant about this: the largest classes of distin- 
 guishable operations under which we can consider the mind and 
 its actions; the largest classes of operations in respect to objects 
 under which we can view the mind; intellectual powers having 
 respect to knowledge about objects; sentient, to feeling; will, to 
 choice and action, in regard to them. Or, stating the matter 
 from another point of view: A general faculty is a class of oper- 
 ations havin g respect to so me specific function of the agent ? a 
 distinct mode of operation . (There is a difference between 
 power and state, which comes up for consideration later.) 
 {d.) The rules for division into faculties: (1) The _sum of the 
 divisions m ust include all the phenomena o f the mind : nothing 
 in it must be left unassigned. This is the rule of comprehen - 
 siveness . (2) In each division or faculty, there must be one 
 class of phenomena unlike those which are found in the ot hers. 
 If all the phenomena in one division are like those incjuded^in 
 any other, there is no line of demarcation. Th ^^fuie rule of 
 similarity and difference. (3) The ground of the divisions must 
 be sought in the characteristics of the phenomena themselves. 
 We must make the division on the basis of facts found in the 
 phenomena. We must not come from the outside and put a 
 7oreign measul^upon them. We must not divide by mathe- 
 matics or metaphysics, but psychologically, by the laws of the 
 phenomena themselvesN ^This is the rule of characte ristic qual - 
 ities as the principle of divisio n. 
 
 II. — The divisions themselves. 
 
 According to the principles and rules above given, the main 
 faculties of the human mind will be those of Intellect, Feeli ng, 
 
 and WiH. The old distribution was two-fold: 1 understanding 
 and will, perceptive and active powers. (This, Edwards pro- 
 ceeds upon.) The division almost universally current now is 
 that of Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will: the phenomena of the 
 1 Yet Aquinas had the three-fold distinction as clearly as any modern writer. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 175 
 
 will being separated from those of the desires and affections. 
 There are unquestionably such phenomena, which cannot be 
 brought under either of the other classes without constraint, 
 though t here is a constant tendency to give to the will an au- 
 t onomy which does not belong to it. These three main powers 
 express man's relations to what is objective to himself; they are 
 real powers for these relations. The most general statement in 
 respect to them is this: by the intellect, we know, per c eive 
 what is objective; by the sensibilities, we desire, or, more 
 generally, are affected in a feeling way, in regar d to what is 
 objective; ana by the will — considered as se parate from the af- 
 fections — we decide t o act in respect to objective things: an3 
 by th e will — considered as in union with the affections — w e 
 choose, prefer, love them. This act of will as love includes the 
 action of all the faculties: it is the concentrated action of all 
 our powers, of the whole man, in relation to the objects and 
 ends for which he is made. 
 
 These three faculties are also described in another way: as 
 expressing differences in nearness of relation to objects. By 
 the intellect , we view what is outside ourselves simply as a mat- 
 ter of contemplation ; by the feelings , we are drawn towards the 
 objects and desire them ; by the will ? we put forth activity in 
 regard to them, and make them our ow n as far as we can. So 
 that in the will we have the closest conjunction of man with the 
 objects around him. The will marries the man to what he de- 
 sires and seeks. 
 
 1. The Intellect . In the intellect man is contemplated as 
 knowing. (S ensation and perception are commonly brought 
 under the intellect, although in sensation there is also a phys- 
 ical side. In a more correct division of Anthropology, what has 
 respect to the body would be separated and treated by itself as 
 the basis of the activity of the mind. In the senses, there are 
 physical elements, and the intellect is secondary.) Under the 
 intellect are comprised all the processes by which man obtains, 
 retains, and combines knowledge; and all through which the 
 knowledge thus obtained is brought under generalization, sug- 
 gestion, and memory; the logical processes, inductive and de 
 
176 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ductive, are included, together with the powers by which we 
 apprehend ideas. 1 
 
 2. The Sensibilities . Under the sensibilities are combined 
 all the facu lties which ha ve the common eleme nt o f feeling . 
 Their having this common characteristic is what warrants us 
 in making this common division of them. Though the sensi- 
 bilities are widely different from one another, yet they all have 
 this common element. There are the desires which are con- 
 nected with our animal organization ; then, the higher emotions 
 in view of the beautiful, etc. ; then, our highest moral feelings 
 and affections, which come forth in connection with our relation 
 to other personal agents. Under this head belong all those af- 
 fections which unite us to nature, to our kind, and to God. The 
 permanent acts and states of the will are referred by many to 
 this division. But the permanent moral states of man are both 
 feeling and will, and cannot be referred to either class by itself. 
 
 3. The Will . As this comes up again, we only remark here, 
 that the common characteristic by which we set off a certain 
 class of operations of the mind, called the Will, is that of choice 
 or preference. Wherever there is choice there is wil l. Intellect 
 and feeling are necessary conditions of the choice, hnt the choice 
 is distinct from both. The act of the will is the simple act of 
 choice or determination, a putting forth of power in relation to 
 some perceived or desired object. And it is always accompanied 
 by the possibility of not putting forth this act, which possibility 
 is grounded in the very nature and definition of the Will. The 
 will may not have in distinct view more than one object, but 
 there is the possibility not only of choosing but of refusing that 
 object, so that there are always two objects in fact, though there 
 may be only one in consciousness. 
 
 § 8. Of the original Tendencies of Maris Soul. 
 We have considered the general relations in which man is 
 placed, and then the specific characteristics of the individual; we 
 
 1 If the philosophy of the subject were here our chief aim, we should urg6 
 that it is undoubtedly better to consider under psychology only the faculties and 
 their operations, and to take up the subject of ideas as another part of philosophy 
 —metaphysics proper. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION, 
 
 177 
 
 are now to consider the tendencies of the individual man in 
 respect to these relations. The personal agent, with intellect, 
 affections, and will, is placed in, is an integral part of, the uni- 
 verse; hehas thereby certain relations to nature, to his fellow- 
 beings, and to God. And he n ot only has general faculties and 
 powers, but also implanted, specific tendencies, constituting the 
 bent, bias of his soul in respect to these relations. He has 
 inherent relations to nature, man, and God; and to these relations 
 correspond certain implanted, connatural tendencies, which are 
 not his faculties, which cannot be resolved into his faculties, 
 which are the connatural or native biases of his soul. 
 
 These tendencies, abstractly considered, are neither right nor 
 wrong. As we find them in actual exercise, out of their proper 
 state of subordination and government, they are wrong; but in 
 themselves, viewed simply as implanted tendencies and con- 
 natural dispositions, they are neither right nor wrong: 1 1 Cor. 
 vi. 13; Mark vii. 15; 1 Tim. iv. 3. There is an aspect of the 
 flesh and of the will of the flesh in which they are necessaiy 
 constituents of human nature. The antagonism of flesh and 
 spirit. as_g-iven in Korn. vii. 22, 23, Gal, v. 17, is no t the^ 
 original, but a degene rate state. T he only rule by which to 
 measure the character of these native tendencies or impulses 
 is that of proportion — the^kfwer under the higher — in a strict 
 subordination: if they are not in that state, they have become 
 evil: Luke xvi. 10; Matt. vi. 33; Luke x. 27. All that is lower 
 is to be subordinated to the higher — to the highest — ends. 
 That alone is a normal state in which this is the case: Matt, 
 iv. 4; 1 Cor. iii. 21-23. 
 
 Another form of statement: Man is placed in the midst of 
 varied relations, as an integral part of a great whole . Corre- 
 sponding to these relations, he has specific impulses and desires . 
 There is for him a good in the various objects to which he is re- 
 lated, and in which he finds happiness according to the measure 
 of each object and relation. 
 
 The leading tendencies may be classified by means of the 
 
 » They may become, and actually are, in all cases of exercise, probably, either 
 right or wrong. 
 
178 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 leading relations. (1) Tendencies as impulses, having r espect 
 to the preservation of the body, a s the love of life, hunger , etc. 
 (2) Those which h a ve respect to the continuance of the specie s, 
 — sexual love, family affections, etc. (3) Those which have re- 
 spect to society and the state, our social instincts in a wider 
 sphere; the love of man for his Bni>L the disposition to unite in 
 social order, which gives rise to the state and ultimately forms 
 government. (4) Moral tendencies i (using " moral " in a restricted 
 sense): those which have respect ito our specific moral relations 
 to other finite personal agents, giving rise to human "rights" ; 
 which tendencies are also to be regarded as specific and im- 
 planted. (5) Those wh ich have resp ect, to what is beyond the 
 sphere of time and sense; to^3risu"persensuous and supernatural 
 world , to the proper and highest Supernatural, t o the Divine. 
 Man has these as truly as he has the tendencies and relations 
 of the body or of society. Man is made to be religious, and he 
 has a tendency or bias in respect to that implanted in him. 1 
 
 These are the main tendencies, different from the faculties; 
 they are the man in all his relations; they exist more or less in 
 all; they express, according as they are in proper measure or 
 are inordinate^JJie^bjas of each individual in view of his rela- 
 tions; and in these tendencies, all the faculties meet and act. 
 There is always involved in them a.jeeling of conscious want 
 and an impulse towards its realization, so that they, may be said 
 to move between the poles of need and desire. 
 
 4 J § ^'*\Qf Conscience. 
 
 Jr Conscience is a collective term, embracing certain natural oper- 
 ations of the mind in view of what has moral quality, in view of 
 
 <- right and wrong, whether this exist in law, states, acts, or relations. 
 It is often taken in narrower senses. (1) It is sometimes 
 taken as a special faculty, which decides upon single acts im- 
 peratively, by a sort of sovereign arbitrament, without respect to 
 anything but the individual act. 2 Hence an objection is some- 
 
 1 " Man is a religious — animal " (Edm. Burke). 
 
 2 See an article on Conscience, by Pres. Day, in New Englander, May, 1856 
 It ia a "moral faculty" ; its decisions relate to acts and states of a man's own mind, 
 though it may judge also about others; if allowed to be perverted, "we cannot dc' 
 right either in obeying or disobeying it." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 179 
 
 times brought to its very being, from the fact of different 
 decisions by different men and peoples. (2) By others it is 
 taken as chiefly an emotion , as a particular kind of compla- 
 cency or displacency in view of our acts. (So Brown and 
 Mackintosh. On the other hand, Butler: "We cannot form 
 a notion of this faculty without a judgment.") (3) It is de- 
 scribed by others as a law ; a transcript of the divine law 
 upon the human soul; God's law in man's soul; the presence 
 of God in the soul, always judging and warning in respect 
 to acts. (So Coleridge.) 
 
 All these different statements have a partial truth, present- 
 ing different aspects of what is included in the general term. 
 Conscience isjb etter viewed, not as a special faculty, but as that 
 combinati o n of powers by which we judge and feel in respect to 
 moral right and wrong. It embraces operations of the mind in 
 view of what has moral quality, which are partly of the intellect 
 and partly of the feelings. Conscience as a power cannot be 
 brought exclusively under either: it is combined of the mind's 
 operations both in respect to feeling, and to judging of and in 
 respect to moral right and wrong. The term Conscience no 
 more designates a special faculty than the term Eeligion does. 1 
 Under religion we comprise all the mind's operations in respect 
 to God ; under conscience are comprised all the mind's operations 
 of judging and feeling in view of rectitude. 
 
 The elements that belong to it, or the different points in its 
 action, are the following: 
 
 1. It discriminates: discerns right and wrong in actions, 
 states, etc. ; has a knowledge of moral right and wrong as ulti- 
 mate. This may be called the intellectual part of conscience. 
 
 2. It feels : (a.) it has the feeling of obligation, of what Kant 
 calls " the categorical imperative :" when we know the right, 
 we- feel- that we ought to do it. This is an urgent feeling. 
 (b.) Besides the above, there is another emotion: a susceptibility 
 to right and wrong, a capacity of being moved by the excellency 
 of the one and the heinousness of the other. 
 
 3.- It approves or disapproves: judges morally about the right 
 
 1 rW-+li»-n +T*rt 3P„+1.«4^« n,-™™ 
 
180 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and -wrong in states, conditions of things, conduct, etc., on tke 
 ground of conformity to right, or not. 
 
 4. It passes sentence: has a sense of the merit of those who 
 do right and of the demerit of those who do wrong. The sense 
 and judgment as to what is due in respect to reward and punish- 
 ment belong eminently to conscience. 1 
 
 Some definitions: Aquinas, Summa Theol. i. 79, 13, gives — 
 " actualis-applicatio scientiae ad ea quae agimus." Butler, Serm. i. : 
 " This principle in man by which he approves or disapproves his 
 heart, temper, or actions is conscience; for this is the strict sense 
 of the word, though sometimes it is used so as to take in more." 
 Locke: "It is our own judgment of the rectitude or purity of 
 our own actions." Stewart, Act. and Mor. Powers: Conscience 
 " refers to our own conduct alone,'' while " the moral faculty " 
 includes also judgments on others. But the unity of conscience 
 is not in its being one faculty or in its performing one function, 
 but in its having one object, its relation to one idea, viz., Sight 
 
 Having made these general statements as to the nature and 
 functions of conscience, we proceed to some special points which 
 arise under it 
 
 {A.) The Scripture Testimony. The Scripture presuppose s 
 the existence of conscience in men . In the Old Testament the 
 word conscience is not found; we have the word, "heart," in 
 which moral judgments and feelings are implied throughout. 
 (There are in the Septuagint one or two instances in which the 
 Greek word corresponding to conscience is used. See Die Lehre 
 vom Gewissen nach d. Schrift. Guder ijT*Sfiii$.~it. Krit, 1857.) 
 In the New Testament the nature and functions of conscience 
 are developed most distinctly by Paul, who has been called 
 "the Apostle of Conscience. n ^^juJ^S^ % ^S^^ ^^ 
 
 1. Conscience referred to in the Old Testament : Jer.jxx. 9* 
 1 Kings ii. 44; Pro v. vii. 22; Jer. xvii. 1; Job xxvii. 6; 1 Sam. 
 xxiv. 10; Ps. xxxii. ; xxxviii. ; li. ; 1 Kings viii. 38; Hos. vii. 2. 
 
 1 Another statement: Conscience acts: (a. ) before we act/-as monitor; (6.) when 
 and while we act,— as motive; (c.) after we act, — as juelge, and also, in part as 
 dispenser of the award, as executioner of the doom. U^- 
 
•* iti***^ ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 181 
 
 j 2. N Kginre of conscience as recognized in the New Testament : 
 
 [Rom, ii. 3> jx g Cor, i. 12 ; iv. 2; v. 11; 1 Cor. viii. 7, 10, 12; x. 25, 
 
 27-29; 1 Pet. ii. 19 (conscience as determined by the previous 
 
 knowledge of God). These are the chief passages showing ho\tf 
 
 conscience is regarded as to its essence and principal functions. 
 
 3. The relation of conscience to the faith and life : 1 Tim, i. h j 
 
 i. 19 ; iii. 9 ; 1 Pet. iii. 16. ^^^^4fc^ ^ A ^ 
 
 4 The good conscience: Heb. xiii. 18 ; 2 Cor. i. 12; Acts 
 
 xxiii. 1; xxiv. 16; Rom. xiii. 5; 2 Cor. iv. 2; v. 11. 
 
 5. The weak conscience: 1 Cor, viii. 7, V2 .J£+^C**"^4 u**M* 
 
 6. The evil and perverted conscience: 1 Tim. iv. 2; Tit. i. 
 15; Heb. ix. 14: x. 22. "C^^ <2. /*— -**— < *— *^, ? 
 
 The sum : The Scriptures set forth that the mind has a native 
 capacity of judgment and feeling in respect to moral subjects; 
 but that this may be enfeebled, darkened, and even perverted, so 
 iis to become a source of delusion and a snare. 
 
 (i?.) The existenc e of conscience proves a moral law above lis . 
 for which we were made. It testifies constantly to the grand 
 fact that man is a moral being, made for moral ends. It leads 
 logically to the position that there is a moral Lawgiver: a moral 
 order of the world directed by a moral Governor. This law is 
 universal: Rom. ii. 14 There is not merely an outward law; 
 it is also written on the heart: Rom. ii. 15. Cicero: " Nor does 
 
 it speak one language at Rome and another at Athen s but 
 
 to all nations -and ages, deriving its authority from the common 
 sovereign of the universe, and carrying home its sanctions to 
 every heart." Butler, Serm. ii., upon Hum. Nat. (ad sensiim): 
 " Superintendence is a constituent part of the faculty of con- 
 science, and to govern belongs to it, from the constitution 
 of man." 
 
 ((7.) The existence of conscience thus testifying to a moral 
 law, imp lies an essential distinction between right and wrong, 
 an imm utable morality. It acts in view of Right, which is a 
 simple idea, no more to be resolved than the idea of Beauty. 
 
182 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 From this judgment we cannot get rid. We can no more help 
 pronouncing this and that action to be wrong or right, than we 
 can help judging this or that proportion to be true or false. We 
 not only say pleasant or painful, but we are also compelled to 
 say right or wrong: to put one of these words on each of our 
 acts. We may give good or bad reasons for the judgment, but 
 we sum up by saying, right or wrong. The con science may be 
 perverte d so as to say evil is good, and good is evil ; but still it 
 says evil is good, etc., %. e., it pronounces a moral judgment. And 
 in that judgment each one for himself rests, as final and sufficient. 
 In individuals there are differences in details l about particular 
 courses of conduct, but still a moral judgment and decision is 
 applied throughout. 
 
 That there is this independent moral judgment, is proved by 
 several considerations. 
 
 1. By our constant consciousness. We are invariably pro - 
 nounci ng this judgme nt on ourselves: it is a concomitant of all 
 our own acts. 2 It is a judgment we are ever passing on others . 
 And its power is seen in the simple fact that it binds us to a 
 law from which we would, as sinners, gladly escape. 
 
 2. By the consensiis gentium, as shown in laws. customs T Ian - 
 guage, p r overbs, literature. The noblest dramatic literature 
 especially runs back into this conviction. The State is a moral 
 body, existing for moral ends: this is the idea of it, though in 
 actual practice, it is often otherwise. 
 
 3. By the early and instinctive moral judgments of children. 
 They can be led to a moral judgment as quickly as any. And 
 then in proportion to the progress of men in knowledge and 
 culture, they judge more and more according to the simple 
 standard and rule of right. 
 
 4. (though this may be a branch of the 1st): Even when 
 ^ reasoning from expediency, from prudential considerations, we 
 
 cannot stop with the affirmation "This is expedient": we pass 
 
 1 Though differing in details, conscience is generaUy true in the main princi- 
 ples, e. g., Honesty is always right; Ingratitude is always wrong; Selfishness iff 
 sinful; Benevolence is virtuous. 
 
 2 "A guardian angel or an avenging fiend" (Coleridge). 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 183 
 
 to the further affirmation, " It is right " and therefore binding. 
 And it is an inexplicable fact that after saying anything is 
 for the highest good, we should also say that it is right, if right 
 be not the ultimate ground of decision, the consideration which 
 is simple, ultimate, supreme. This fact no utilitarian scheme 
 can master. 
 
 (D.) This perception (and feeling) of right and wrong is im- 
 mediately attended by a feeling of obligation to do the right 
 and refuse the wrong. We are obligated morally to do only wha t 
 is morally ri^ht. No force can morally bind us which is not 
 resolvable into right. This feeling of obligation is definite and 
 peculiar. It is expressed by the word " ought. " It enforces a 
 simple and imperative obligation. In calling it the " categorical 
 imperative," Kant frees morals from the happiness scheme. 
 Right and Ought are inseparable: we need no intervening 
 terms. From a simple regard to happiness or the general good 
 we cannot derive this sense of "oughtness " ; we can only derive 
 impulse, tendency, desire, not a specific moral obligation. On 
 the utilitarian view, the highest idea of obligation is that man 
 should perform that which is for the highest good; but that 
 gives only desirableness. The statement eliminates from the 
 word "ought" its whole force. Why "should" I, or "ought" I 
 to seek the highest good? As a means of happiness, it is desir- 
 able, but why is it morally binding on me? The only possible 
 answer is, because I feel that it is right and therefore I ought 
 to do it. This ought is native to the soul; it comes up before we 
 have any conception or idea of the highest good ; children feel 
 its force against all that seems to be pleasant or desirable. 
 
 (&) In the operatio ns of conscience tb^rft i« alway s involvprl 
 moral approval or disapproval. We need not dwell on this 
 further than to say that tnese are emotions arising in view 
 of rectitude or its opposite. Moral approval and disapproval 
 cannot be derived from the idea of happiness or good: all we can 
 get from that source is, pleasure and displeasure, satisfaction 
 and discontent 
 
184 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (F.) Of merit and demerit. There is further involved in 
 conscience a special judgment in view of personal account- 
 ability. It differs from approval and disapproval, as having 
 special (though perhaps not always exclusive) regard to per- 
 sonal acts and liabilities, or responsibility. The merit of per- 
 sons is their desert of good on account of right moral action; 
 demerit, their desert of evil, suffering, personal punishment, 
 on account of transgress ion. This judgment is made with 
 respect to each individual as under the law, as an account- 
 able moral agent; and it is strictly according to each ones 
 personal character, on the basis of personal acts. Hence 
 the judgment of merit or demerit cannot be pronounced until 
 there has been ^personal choice or action. On the utility 
 scheme, we cannot distinguish between regret and remorse, 
 between the natural consequences and the deserved punish- 
 ment of transgression. 
 
 (6%) The domain or sphere of conscience. To what does 
 conscience apply, or what is under its supervision ? As a 
 general answer to this question we say: Everything in which 
 t here is moral quality ; everything in which right and wro ng 
 can be found or are exemplified. Subjectively considered, as 
 my conscience, it has special respect to my moral states and 
 acts. In its fullest exercise, in the use of all its functions — 
 including the ascription of merit and demerit — it is applied only 
 to individual, personal character; but in some of its activities 
 it has a wider scope than personal actions. Conscience is no* 
 merely my conscience. 
 
 1. We pass moral judgments about laws and institutions, etc. 
 Wherever right and wrong can be applied, conscience has its 
 sphere. We say, such a law or enactment is right or wrong: it 
 is conformed or not conformed to a standard. What do we mean 
 by that judgment? Do we refer merely to the motives and 
 character of the men who passed the law ? No; for we also say, 
 they were right or wrong in passing it. We refer to its abstract 
 nature, as conformed to the moral standard. The law is not a 
 person or the act of a person. We speak of the divine law as 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 185 
 
 holy, just, and good, although it is not a person. So the State 
 is a moral body, and we judge its officers not merely as individ- 
 uals, but as officers of the law. We may pass a moral judgment 
 on a treatise on Ethics, although it has no merit or demerit in a 
 personal sense. Either it is true that conscience has a wider 
 scope than pe rsonal acts, or we must say ttiat the judgment s 
 about right and wrong do not belong to the conscience, but 
 to the inte llect. We should then make conscience to be an 
 emotion. 
 
 2. We pass judgments not merely upon laws, institutions, 
 books, etc., but upon dispositions and tendencies, when not 
 acting or antecedent to action. A man asleep has a moral 
 character. Dispositions which underlie action, native tenden- 
 cies of the mind , are esti mated and passed upon from the 
 moral point of view. We do not indeed make such judg- 
 ments in an individual, personal sense; but we make them 
 in a general and truly moral sense. That we do this is 
 evident from common forms of speech, and from our own 
 consciousness. I cannot help believing and saying that an 
 inordinate self-love, viewed as a disposition, is wrong, and 
 needs to be extirpated by divine grace. 
 
 If it be asked whether the law is worthy of punishment, and 
 the disposition, of everlasting condemnation, the answer is, No, 1 
 but none the less is the law worthy of moral disapprobation, 
 and the disposition also; and we are bound, as moral beings, 
 to oppose the one and eradicate the other. It may be still 
 asked, does not a moral de cision alway s imply desert of re- 
 ward or punishment? It always does when, and only when, 
 it has respect to the acts of moral beings; it always does 
 when applied in the way of strict personal acc ountability. 
 But there is here a new element, warranting another judgment, 
 viz., that of personal desert. 
 
 3. Conscience, in judging of the individual in his personal 
 liabilities «ind relations, judges of his outward acts as they are 
 presumed to contain personal intentions or moral dispositions. 
 
 1 The theological statement that an evil disposition, a native depravity, causes 
 liability to eternal condemnation comes up in its proper place. 
 
186 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Conscience does not blame the acts of the body as such, nor ex > 
 ecutive acts of the will as such, but blames the person for being 
 influenced by wrong emotions in wha t he does. The executive 
 acts of the will and the external acts of the man are viewed in 
 relation to the right and wrong motive; but even the motive is 
 not what is blamed, but the person for being influenced by the 
 motive. 
 
 4. The oppos ite view is that cons cience ha s only to do with 
 exercises, choices; and has no other function than the personal 
 one. This rests on two assumptions, (a.) That conscience des- 
 ignates a special faculty , whose sole province jje^fo decide upon 
 personal acts, instead of designating all the operations of the 
 mind in judging and feeling about what is right and wrong. 
 One difficulty about this view is, that it is contrary to experience. 
 What we know is, that the mind judges and feels in respect to 
 right and wrong, and this is conscience. Another difficulty is 
 that this view is logically obliged to confine conscience to the 
 intellect or to the feelings, while at the same time it is obliged to 
 concede that it is both a judgment and a feeling. Then again, 
 if conscience be a special faculty, how can we account for the 
 variety of moral decisions? The only way of bringing unity 
 into our treatment of conscience (and of ethics) is to subsume it 
 all under the general idea of right and wrong, (b.) The other 
 assumption is the atomistic view of morals : th at which confines, 
 by force of definition, all that is moral T to acts , and ultimately to 
 acts of the will. Of this we shall have to speak later. Here we 
 need only say, that it appears to rest upon a confounding of two 
 entirely distinguishable ideas, viz., those of right (or wrong) and 
 of personal desert. In fact right is by some actually defined as 
 that which deserves good; and wrong, as that which deserves 
 punishment: a defining by the consequences, and not by the char- 
 acter, of acts. 
 
 (H. ) Is conscience always right in its decisions ? Generally, 
 and not universally. It is more generally right than man is in 
 his acts, and perhaps more generally right than even reason is 
 in pronouncing its judgments; but it is not more universally 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 187 
 
 right than man or reason is. If we assert that conscience is 
 universally right, we must also assert that each man having a 
 conscience is universally right. Also, so far as conscience in- 
 volves reason, that reason is universally right. If man is not 
 infallible, conscience is not. If reason may be darkened, con- 
 scien ce may be. If man having reason may believe what is 
 false to be true, he may also, having conscience, believe what 
 is wrong to be right. 
 This further appears: 
 
 1. From the diversity in moral decisions. Men agree that 
 what is right should be done: but when we come to specific 
 points, differences commence. This is so evident that those who 
 advocate the universal correctness of conscience say, that in 
 these cases it is the intellect that is wrong, and not the con- 
 science: the data are wrong and not the conscience. But this 
 does not help the matter. The decision is a wrong one, and it 
 is the decision of conscience. If it is not, what is a decision of 
 conscience, and what is the sphere of conscience ? This attempt 
 to evade the difficulty rests on the assumption that conscience is 
 an ideal dictator of right and wrong, something apart from or 
 above the man. Whereas we have maintained that it is neither 
 a faculty pronouncing dictatorially on all actions, nor a faculty 
 giving all men right principles of action, but that it is simply 
 the mind judging and feeling in view of right and wrong: it 
 includes all the operations of the mind in view of what has 
 moral quality, except the desires, the choices, and determinations 
 of the will. 
 
 2. Soripture speaks of the perverted, seared, evil conscience. 
 the conscience that needs to be purified, etc. 
 
 3. Conscience, as much as any power or tendency of the 
 mind, may and ought to be cultivated, educated, enligh tened ; 
 and if this be so, it is presupposed that unless it is cultivated, it is 
 not universally right. Kant makes conscience to be purely na- 
 tive. 1 He says: " It is not to be attained; it is not a duty to get 
 a conscience, but every man has it by nature;" he describes it as 
 "the consciousness of an internal judgment-seat in man." But 
 
 1 Rel. innerhdlb, etc., p. 287. 
 
188 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 this is a rationalistic position, and is against Scripture. Con- 
 science, in its primitive func tion, assures us that right is ulti- 
 mate, an d is essentially different from wrong. This is its most 
 distinct, unmistakable, and well-nigh universal utterance; but 
 it does not tell us what the right is, in all its particulars and re- 
 lations. Conscience, in short, is not of itself alone autonomic, a 
 self-law above all law, or rather dictating all law. This is the 
 ethical against the theological position: it is the rationalistic 
 against the supernaturalistic. Here is the turning-point in 
 many discussions: in discussions, e. g., as to the Scriptures go- 
 ing against conscience; the general abstract statement of the 
 binding nature of the distinction between right and wrong is 
 mixed up with the question as to what is right or wrong in par- 
 ticular cases. Conscience tells us that th ere is an essential dif- 
 ference between right a nd wrong, and does this so certainly 
 that if th e word of God should seem to reveal what we abso- 
 lutely knew to be wrong, we could not receive it and be con- 
 sistent. But the discussion, so far as Scripture is concerned, 
 does not turn upon that point, but rather upon particular cases. 
 It used, e. g., to be frequently said: My conscience tells me that 
 the Scripture, in allowing the continuance of the relation of 
 master and slave, permits what is wrong, and I cannot receive 
 it as the Word of God. A man is apt to say, in such a case, 
 "My conscience tells me so." Now conscience, as a native 
 power, asserts the general distinction between right and wrong, 
 and the necessity of observing it, but does not, as a native 
 faculty, decide upon particular cases. We do not believe that 
 conscience says directly, in regard to any external relation, that 
 it is necessarily right or wrong. The assertion must come back 
 to the internal state. Yet we remark: 
 
 4 Conscienc e, when enlightened and educated, is right ; 
 and, as is said above, it is generally 7 right in respect to general 
 principles, though not so generally as to details and modes of 
 carrying the principles out. 1 The ideal conscience is of course 
 theoretically always right. 
 
 1 Yet these are the cases in which those who mistake their wills for their con- 
 sciences always insist most strongly. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 1 89 
 
 Note I. — As to the practical question whether an individual 
 oug;ht always tn follow hiH conscience . 
 
 The well-known Scholastic maxim is, that a wrong conscience 
 obligates "per accidens et secundum quid," i. e., as to the matter 
 in hand. 
 
 Several quite distinct points are involved in the question. 
 (1) Suppose a man so blinded by sin as to say, "Evil, be thou 
 my good," and to believe that it is so, and he appeals to me 
 who knew it to be wrong: shall I encourage him in following 
 his conscience? Assuredly not. Can I tell him he will be 
 without blame ? I know that he will be blameworthy, if he is 
 acting on a wrong basis and from wrong motives. So far then 
 as the judgment is influenced by any wrong motive or belief, so 
 far it is a wrong one, and ought not to be followed, but cor- 
 rected. (2) This is confirmed by experience. Paul says, " I 
 verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things 
 contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth." But when re- 
 newed, he confessed his sin and guilt in doing that which at 
 the time he had allowed. This is the case more or less with 
 all sinners and all sin, and in all Christian experience. Before 
 conversion we approve what we afterwards condemn, and we 
 condemn ourselves not for doing it now, but for having done it 
 then, and this although at the time we may have felt justified. 
 (3) Yet there are undoubtedly some cases in which, while we 
 condemn the act, we acquit the person of intentional blame: he 
 may have meant to do right, but lacked the opportunity and 
 the knowledge. Yet even here we must still condemn the act: 
 it was wrong. (4) There is another case under this same head 
 — in the matter of faith. It is said, " It is no matter what one 
 believes, if he is sincere." This is the general practical form of 
 the matter: %. e., the question comes up in reference to faith 
 rather than to moral duties. A person is sincere in disbelieving, 
 and we are asked to say that he is as well off before God and 
 man, as a believer. This demands consideration later under the 
 title of Faith, but here we may briefly say: (a) Sincerity can 
 never be taken to be the highest moral state. Sincerity is not 
 the chief of virtues, as seems to be assumed. It is nothing 
 
190 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 more nor less than ray personal conviction that I am right in a 
 given course of action or article of faith. But wholly above the 
 question o f my personal conviction, is the question whether my 
 principles be really right and my faith correct. Man's great 
 duty is not t o be sincere, but to~be right : to be so, and not tc 
 believe th a t he is so. (b.) Nowhere would this plea be admitted, 
 except in religion or by religious indifferentism. It is not ad- 
 mitted in the state, for holding a wrong opinion in politics: if 
 communism, e. g., be carried out by men who sincerely hold it, 
 the state comes in and checks them. If the Mormons are sin- 
 cere in their polygamy, we say so much the worse for them and 
 their society, (c.) It is a fact that men may be sincere from 
 wrong motives as well as from right ones; so that the sincerity 
 cannot be pleaded as sufficient, (d.) It is a fact — a terrible fact 
 — that men may be given over to believe a lie, and be conscien- 
 tious in iniquity. But this is no evidence of their being blame- 
 less, but of the fearful power of iniquity in them, and of their 
 need of being duly enlightened, (e.) The position that it is no 
 matter what a man believes if he is sincere, is inconsistent with 
 the ground that the Bible is the standard and rule of duty and 
 life. In its logical results, the position makes conscience and 
 reason supreme, and religion subordinate. It puts ethics above 
 theology, instead of inquiring for the harmony between them. 
 
 Note II. — The possession of conscience — meaning by it 
 what has been described and defined — does not confer per- 
 sonal righteousness. It is an essential condition of personal 
 righteousness, but not the righteousness itself. Conscience is 
 man judging and feeling about what is right and wrong; 
 but personal character is in the affections and will. Some 
 Unitarians maintain that a person cannot be wholly depraved, 
 because there remains a conscience, a sensibility to right 
 and wrong. But this may only show the greatness of the 
 depravity, having conscience and yet ever disobeying it. 
 
 § 10. Of Mans highest Spiritual Capacities, 
 The outline of treatment [not carried out]: Man is made 
 for God, with an implanted tendency to the eternal and infinite. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 191 
 
 ( Thou hast set eternity in his heart." This is not a faculty: 
 but Reason, Conscience, Affections and Will, in relation to their 
 goal. There is an in tuition of the unseen, a feeling of d epend- 
 e nce, a sense of a law above time and the world, the awe of 
 Judgment, the longing for immortalit y. 
 
 Bemaek,, in the way of transition to Chapter n. 
 
 We have thus far gone over the main points under the general head in Chap- 
 ter I. What is man as a moral being? viz., (1) Man in his most general relations; 
 (2) Man in his specific traits; (3) Man in his native tendencies, in respect to these 
 relations; (4) Man in his conscience, or his judgments and feelings in view of 
 right and wrong. Now, here as (5) might be introduced the doctrine respecting 
 the Will; — but that is so involved with the inquiry respecting the nature and ob- 
 ligation of the law of God, that we shall first discuss this (which will include the 
 question of the nature of virtue) and then in Chapter HZ, viz., Man's Relations 
 to the Law, take up the question of the Will. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT IS THE LAW OF GOD: WHAT DOES IT REQUIRE? \j 
 
 The " Law of God " 1 is used in two different s enses : some- ^ 
 times for the positive, written law, given to his people : as such. 
 it includes the ceremonial laws, the precepts and prohibitions 
 of the old dispensation; again, it is used to signify the moral 
 jaw , that which God has made and given for the moral govern- 
 ment of his creatures, summarily comprehended in the two 
 precepts of love to God and to our neighbor. The Mosaic law 
 was given for God's people then : from Christ the law is given 
 in a more perfect form. It is also revealed in conscience, the 
 natural law. This law, as recorded in the Scriptures, is the 
 norm, the rule for human life and conduct, prescribing 
 what man, as a moral being, ought to be and to do. It 
 rests in the idea of rectitude; this is presupposed in it, 
 not made by it. It commands what is right and holy. 
 It is commanded because it is holy, and not holy be- 
 
 1 One of the best treatises on the Law is Dr. John Smalley's sermon: "Per- 
 fection and "Usefulness of the Divine Law," in Brown's Theol. Tracts, vol. iii. 
 
192 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 cause it is commanded. The majesty of the law is in this, 
 its inherent rectitude. The law of God may then be defined 
 as rectitude embodied in the form of command (both in precept 
 and prohibition). 1 In the form of example, the law is given 
 us perfectly in the life of Christ. Lactantius calls Him the 
 living 1 and present law. Augustine says, "The law of the Lord 
 is He who came to fulfil, not to break the law." 1 Pet. ii. 21-25. 
 
 § 1. Some general Statements as to the Characteristics of the 
 Law. 
 
 1. The law is holy, essentially good and perfect. It is 
 such as being the expression of the perfect will of a holy and 
 wise Sovereign. It is the expression of the inherent rectitude 
 of God, enforcing a like rectitude on the part of his creatures. 
 "Be ye holy for I am holy:" there is no utterance which gives 
 us a higher conception of the dignity of human nature than 
 that. 
 
 2. This law is enforced, not merely by its own inherent 
 rectitude, which gives it a rational power, but also b y the 
 authority of the lawgiver. It is the law of God, our Moral 
 Governor, and as such has the force that a person has over and 
 above ah idea. The moral law of abstract ethics is moral duty. 
 The law of the Bible is that'same law, enforced by a supreme 
 Power. 
 
 3. .This law is still further enforced by its appropriate sanc- 
 tions: penal evil for transgressions, and eternal life for obedience. 
 In each case the award is eternal . 
 
 4. The law is for the highest good of each and all . It com- 
 mands what can ensure — what alone can do this — the highest 
 moral ends of the universe. It is not only the expression of 
 rectitude and designed to maintain rectitude, but it has also in 
 view the highest good. 
 
 5. In order to ensure the highest good, the law enjoins pe r 
 feet holiness on the creature, nothing less and nothing else. 
 Holiness is what the law enjoins, and it is that which is to be 
 
 1 Miiller on Sin, i. 58. Law, in the purity of its idea, is "die Darstellung del 
 sittiichen Idee in der Form der Fordemng." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 193 
 
 the highest good of the moral universe. Some restrict the law 
 to external legality, to the outward act, and do not extend it 
 to the inward state. Paul sometimes does this, speaking as a 
 Jew, and in respect to his bondage under the law; but in his 
 Christian experience he recognizes it as spiritual: this is what 
 marks his conviction of sin and his feeling of the need of a 
 Saviour. 
 
 6. The hp ) mess which the law requires of each man is his 
 pers onal perfection. It is perfection to the extent, and the full 
 extent, of man's capacities: u all the heart, all the soul, all the 
 mind, all the strength," Matt. xxii. 37, Mark xii. 28-34. Man's 
 natural ability 1 is to be completely expressed, his physical ability 
 to be completely employed in fulfilling the command. 
 
 7. The law, as commanding entire holiness, is always obli- 
 gatory upon all moral beings. It cannot be satisfied in any 
 individual case with anything less than entire conformity. It 
 is unchangeable in its obligations, and is equally binding upon 
 all. It has not one standard for the heathen, another for the 
 Jew, another for the Christian. It does not require of a child 
 that he love God with the power of an angel, because he has 
 not that capacity; but it demands of a child that he love with all 
 his heart. Man insensible to the demands of God's law is not 
 a man: in the most debased there are gleams of its glory. 
 
 Note I. — The distinction between moral law and physi- 
 cal. Dr. Wayland, in his Moral Science, gives a singular defi- 
 nition of moral law. He defines law generally as a mode of 
 existenc e or order of sequence, and then moral law as an 
 order of sequence e st ablished between the moral quality of 
 actions and their r esults. But this is reversing all our moral 
 conceptions, and confounding the province of morals with 
 that of physics. Physical law is undoubtedly an order of se- 
 quence: the cause and effect make the law, in the sense that the 
 same causes in the same circumstances will work in the same 
 way. If there be an exception in this sphere, the physical law 
 
 1 This is the old notion of natural ability, the reach to which our powers 
 could extend if we would. The modern sense of power to the contrary is a new 
 and derivative idea. 
 
194 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is disproved. 1 But law in morals rests upon an entirely different 
 idea: it is that which ought to be: it is rectitude commanded: it 
 is no less law, though what it commands may not be fact: it 
 would be eternally binding, though nobody conformed to it. 
 The moral law is not the connection between holiness and 
 happiness. The consequence depends on the law, and not the 
 law on the consequence. 
 
 Muller's position God's law in relation to man is this: God 
 has the idea of man (end of his being) and presc ribes this, as 
 law. In man's formal freedom there is the possibility of losing 
 the end, of not realizing the idea: hence the law comes as the 
 objective norm : man needs it in order to begin his moral life 
 and to grow as a moral being: 2 Matt. v. 17-19, the law and the 
 prophets must control until the end of the economy: Gen. ii. 
 16, 17, the law was given for the state of rectitude, and laws 
 were needed at the beginning ; but to the perfect, law (as ex- 
 ternal) ceases: 1 Tim. i. 9. — Discussion of the German view, that 
 the law ceases. [Discussion is not given, only indicated.] Not 
 so. In nature, law determines things absolutely: in man, the 
 law is distinguished from his powers; he is conscious of it as 
 demand, and must ever be, so that it cannot "cease." The "end" 
 of the law is to bring man from the undeveloped and indefinite 
 relation to good, to the full reception. 
 
 Notk II. — As to the' order of discussion. The following are 
 the chief points : (1) Moral rectitude — its abstract nature: (21 The 
 common principle of all holiness, in beings; (3) Formal state- 
 ments of the same; (4) Happiness; (5) Love. 
 
 § 2. The two fundamental Objects or Ends of the Law of God. 
 
 These are: (1) In respect to the whole system of things. The 
 object of the law is to bring out, to realize, the most perfect state 
 and order of God's intelligent moral universe. This is the highest 
 good: the law has respect to the highest good of the whole. The 
 ideal end of the law is to make holiness supreme, to secure gen- 
 
 1 We hold a miracle to be the effect of the divine mil, interposing, and of 
 course that does not disprove physical law. 
 
 fl [Dr. Bushnell's speculations give a different view The author, without dis« 
 cussing these, intimates his entire dissent from them.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION, 195 
 
 eral justice or the triumph of holiness, which is the highest good 
 (2) In relation to each individual moral being. Its object is, to 
 prescribe that rule, by following which, such a state of the uni- 
 verse may be brought about. This is the highest good of the 
 individual, viz., that state of mind, by which he is a dapted to 
 produce, in his measure and degr ee, the highest good of t hejini- 
 verse. This is personal holiness, this is virtue. The law com- 
 mands each individual to have those motives and that state of 
 heart, by which, if every one possessed them, the great end of 
 the universe would be promoted to the highest degree. 
 
 We have thus to inquire: I. What is the highest good of the 
 universe? II. What is the highest good of the individual? 
 What is holiness? What is virtue? 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE HIGHEST GOOD. 
 
 We have here the question of the Summum Bonum * the vexed 
 question, yet fundamental in morals. 
 
 The highest good is taken in a two-fold sense: it is taken 
 both objectively and subjectively. 
 
 I. — Taken objectively . The highest good, thus taken, can only 
 be found in that state of things which is the last and highest re 
 suit of the divine providence, of God's government of the world. 
 The whole system of things, carried to its highest degree of 
 perfection, is the highest good, objectively considered. It is the 
 final end, the result the ultimate end of the whole moral groy- 
 e rnment of God: it is the general good, taken comprehensively. 
 
 And that consists, as we have seen (End of God in Creation), 
 in God's revelation or manifestation of himself to his creatures , 
 in the communication of him self t o them, so that they find their 
 joy, their good in Him. It is the union between God and his 
 creatures carried out so that all things human are conformed to 
 the divine plan and purpose. 
 
196 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 The law of God has this for its ideal end; obedience to that 
 law would bring about this result; disobedience interferes with 
 it; God — nian having disobeyed— interposes on his part to bring 
 about the same result in another way than that of obedience , 
 viz., by an atonement, but still the general object of the atone- 
 ment is the same as that of the law, to produce holiness. ' The 
 law of God is sometimes spoken of as if all its bearing was in 
 respect to individuals. Those who define conscience as a faculty 
 which simply individualizes, which has respect only to individual 
 choices and acts, define the law also as having respect simply 
 to the choices and acts of individuals, and ultimately as having 
 respect simply to acts of the will (in the narrower sense), voli- 
 tions, which volitions are accompanied with full power to the 
 contrary (in the modern sense), and which are deliberate in view 
 of all the consequences. But this gives us conscience as having 
 to do only with the faculties concerned in choice (as volition), 
 and the law of God as dealing only with the same. Thus orig- 
 inal sin is excluded; there is no sin except in such choices; there 
 is nothing save these that comes under God's law. The bearing 
 of such a view upon the atonement is evident. It is granted 
 that Christ suffered in our stead, but not under the law ; because 
 the law has to do only with personal acts, and these are not 
 transferable; and if that be so, Christ could not suffer under 
 the law for us, and so the atonement is removed from the 
 law entirely. 
 
 [What else the author meant to give under this head appears 
 to have been combined with the final statements of the next 
 chapter.] 
 
 II. — The highest good take n subjectively . The consideration 
 of this leads us to the general statements as to the nature of virtue. 
 What is the sense of the inquiry as to "the nature of true virtue " ? 
 
 1. Virtue is here used in a large sense, as the equivalent of 
 holiness, and so as to include even the virtue of the divine mind. 1 
 This however is a bad form of speech; because the word virtue 
 
 1 Aristotle denies moral virtue to God; i. e., God does not, like man, act from 
 a senso of duty; there is no struggle in Him to an end not yet realized; God's 
 perfection begins where man's ends. 
 
> ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION, 197 
 
 has acquired such a secondary meaning that we can hardly speak 
 of God's virtue. In common speech the term is used for the 
 separate virtues, but the inquiry here is not for these, in their 
 limited relationships, but for virtue generally. 
 
 2. The inquiry is not, as it is sometimes said to be, an inquiry 
 as to the abstract rectitude of our acts. It is not an inquiry 
 whether there be such an idea as Right, and whether that idea 
 be ultimate . It is assumed in the inquiry, that what is virtuous 
 is right, that virtue is a proper moral state, that it is conformable 
 to the idea of rectitude, that we apply that idea to it. Some, 
 when anj^thing more is stated as to the nature of virtue than that 
 it is rectitude or the love of rectitude, are apt to say that a util- 
 itarian view is presented: but this is a confounding of two in- 
 quiries. The questions: What is virtue? and, What is right 
 abstractly viewed? are very different. The one inquiry is, Is 
 there an idea of right, ultimate, independent of all other ideas: 
 The other is, What is that in our state and actions which is right? 
 
 3. Hence, the inquiry is not as to all that is right, as to all 
 that comes under that idea; but as to what that is in a moral 
 being which is truly conformed to the Moral, what state of the 
 affections in such a being it is which is virtuous., 
 
 4. There are a great many minor separate virtues : the inquiry 
 is not whether these are right — that is presupposed; but the in- 
 quiry is as to the common subjective principle of what is virtuous 
 and holy. In other words, Can all that is holy be reduced to 
 some one common principle, and can that principle be stated ? 
 That principle makes the nature or essence, or as some say the 
 foundation, of virtue. The inquiry is, What is that state of mind 
 or heart which i s common to and expressed in all virtuous affec- 
 tions and acts ? We are grateful; we love parents and friends; 
 we are just, honest; we seek the welfare of our fellows: is there 
 any common principle in all these acts which makes them vir 
 tuous, and which alone makes them to be virtuous ? 
 
 5. It is still further an inquiry after true virtue and holiness 
 How can we distinguish the true from the counterfeit? Is all 
 that men call virtuous re ally so ? Does it oome from that which 
 is supremely virtuous? President Edwards was led to write his 
 
198 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 essay on The Nature of True Virtue by that which came up in 
 his treatise on Sin; because the Arminians held that human na« 
 ture could not be wholly depraved, inasmuch as it retains more 
 or less of what are commonly deemed virtues: honesty, kindness, 
 temperance, etc. Plis object is to show, that although these may 
 be virtues in a minor sphere, yet they are not true virtues, be- 
 cause they do not contain the essence of true virtue. 
 
 The Theories on this subject may be divided into two classes* 
 (1) Those that measure and define virtue by some formal and 
 external standard, that describe virtue in some other way thau 
 by giving a common internal quality which is found in all vir 
 tuous acts. A yard stick can measure cotton, woolen, or silk, 
 but it does not tell us anything about the cotton itself or the 
 silk itself. No more from the formal theories of virtue can we 
 get anything as to its distinctive nature. (2) Those that attempt 
 to define virtue by something contained in the virtuous acts 
 themselves ; by some quality or ciualities of the acts themselves . 
 These are the only theories that attempt to grasp or answer thp 
 inquiry. This class is subdivided into (a.) The Happiness 
 Theories and (b.) The Theories which put Virtue in Holy Love. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FORMAL THEORIES OF THE NATURE OF VTRTUE. 
 
 § 1. Virtue is Acting according to the Fitness of Things . 
 
 This is a strictly formal definition. It was employed by many 
 of the Independent Moralists of England, Cudworth, etc. It has 
 its value in contrast with the theory of mere Utility, which is, 
 acting for present good or happiness. A virtuous man will act 
 according to the fitness of things, but that does not tell us in 
 what his virtue consists. We have here a scaffolding descrip- 
 tion of virtue. Animals, even machines, act according to the 
 fitness of things, as a horse, a locomotive, going safely on the 
 right track. Many of our own actions accord with this definition 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 199 
 
 which are not virtuous. If, to relieve this difficulty, it be said, 
 Virtue is a voluntary acting according to the moral fitness of 
 things, then in the word moral the whole question appears and 
 we have to ask, what is the moral fitness of things ? 
 
 § 2. Virtue is that which promotes the great End of oar Being. 
 
 Virtue undoubtedly does this, but the defect of the answer is, 
 that it does not answer two other questions: (1) What is the end 
 of our being? (2) What is that in virtue which promotes or 
 produces the end of our being? 
 
 § 3. Virtue, is Acting in conformity ivith the Relations of Things. 
 
 This is Dr. Wayland's view in part. There are certain re- 
 lations, he says, in view of which there arises a feeling of moral 
 obligation: in view of the relation, e. g., of parent and child, there 
 is a feeling of obligation to have certain emotions, to do certain 
 things; in view of the relation of the creature to God, arises a 
 feeling of obligation to love and obedience. An act performed 
 in obedience to the obligation to man, is virtuous, — to the_ ob]i- 
 gation to God, is pious. 1 
 
 1. If a man feel as he ought and act as he ought, he is 
 undoubtedly virtuous, and all his acts take in and include his 
 virtuous acts. Everything finite is in relations, and if we act 
 in a ccordance with all of them, we are virtuous. 
 
 2. But there are some relations which a man may act in 
 conformity with, without being virtuous, e. g., the physical 
 relations. The definition is too wide. 
 
 3. Then the conformity cannot be to all relations, but to 
 some particular kind of relations. Therefore there is a question 
 behind that of relations: What particular relations are th ose 
 which call out the sense of moral obligation ? Here is the in- 
 sufficiency of the theory. In view of certain relations we have 
 the feeling of moral obligation ; but what peculiarity is there in 
 these relations which gives rise to this feeling in us, when we 
 
 1 Moral Science, pp. 44-48, 75-77. Cudworth and Clarke hold that virtue is to 
 act conformably to relations. The "fitness of things" theory runs into this. 
 They supposed the general power of judging of truth and falsehood to he the 
 power which perceives these relations: Wayland, with the later Scottish School, 
 supposes a distinct power, viz., Conscience. 
 
ZOO CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 do not have it in other relations ? To get at the moral element, 
 we must go behind the mere statement that we are under 
 certain relations. 
 
 4. Even supposing that we have ascertained what these re- 
 lations are, there remains another inquiry: Virtue, we are told, 
 is acting in conformity with, or feeling as we ought in view of, 
 certain relations ; what then are those motives and feelings which 
 are such "a s we ought" to have , such as constitute the true 
 conformity with the relations ? 
 
 § 4. Is it any better explanation of virtue to say that it is 
 Acting in Conformity to tlie Will of God, or that the will of God 
 constitutes virtue ? There are four senses in which this theory 
 is held: 
 
 (1) God is our superior, our creator, and as such He has a 
 perfect right to us and to our services. His will is our highest 
 law. Our relation to God as creatures draws this after it, and 
 this is the ultimate thing in morals: it would settle, e. £., the 
 questions raised as to the course of the Israelites with the Ca- 
 naanites, etc. Virtue is obedience to the will of a sovereign. 
 (2) God's revealed will is law to us: and acting according to that 
 is_y_iri_ue. (3) God's will creates, mak es virtue and its opposite. 
 Virtue exists by an act of the divine will as much as the world 
 does, and so that God could make it different if He chose. 
 (4) God's will is taken for the expression of his whole nature, 
 so that what He declares or reveals, the expression of his will, 
 is the e xpression of what seems to Him wise and good . (This 
 fourth view is closely connected with the second, though it is 
 well to distinguish them.) And our action in conformity with 
 that will (thus understood) is virtue. 
 
 As to the first position : We grant that such is our relation to 
 God, our natural relation, that it does lay a foundation for 
 obedience. Moral obligation is inseparably connected with ou r 
 relation to God. This is indisputable. Still the mere perception 
 of power, even of omnipotence, the mere relation of authority, 
 does not constitute the moral relation which exists between us 
 and God. God being what Heis< it is our duty^ to obey Him, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 201 
 
 But suppose an omnipotent being who is malevolent, would it 
 be virtue to obey him? The very supposition shocks the mind: 
 but that only shows that we connect with the idea of God's power 
 his other attributes. Without these we could not feel moral ob- 
 ligation. Mere omnipotence may control us in a physical sense, 
 and may constrain us to the performance of certain acts , but it 
 can never call forth a moral respons e. That can be evoked only 
 by what is moral. 
 
 As to the second position : It is indisputable that God's re- 
 vealed will is law to us. If God commands me to do anything, 
 I am bound to do it. God's revealed will is the rule of action - 
 wherever it is revealed, there it is binding. But this does not 
 reach the inquiry as to the nature of virtue, for two reasons: 
 
 (1) God's revealed will commands us to be holy, to be virtuous. 
 That is a part of the revealed will itself, it is what the command- 
 ment has respect to. If we obey, of course we are virtuous, but 
 it is not the command which makes the virtue. The inquiry 
 still remains, What is that holiness which is thus commanded? 
 
 (2) And why do we yield such unhesitating assent? It is only 
 from our conviction that God's revealed will must be holy and 
 altogether right. Take, for example, the instance of the Israel- 
 ites commanded to destroy the Canaanites. They were bound 
 to obey, although they might not see all the reasons for the 
 justice of the command. Why were they bound to obey ? Be- 
 cause God commanded. But was it because God commanded as 
 a sovereign, or as a holy sovereign ? It was because of their 
 conviction that He could not command what was not holy . 
 
 (3) This second position really means: God's revealed will is a 
 perfect expression of a perfect will. God gives a law: in doing 
 this, (a.) He appeals to our moral nature, the sense of right and 
 duty in us. This is before the command, and necessary to its 
 binding force. And (&.) We feel that He knows best in all 
 cases where He gives a positive command. It does not follow, 
 that if we do not see the reason, or the full reason, of a com- 
 mand, we are not bound to obey. But in order to feel the obli« 
 gation, we must have the conviction that the command is right. 
 If we have not this, what is our obedience worth ? 
 
202 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 As to the third position: God creates virtue and vice, by the 
 act of his will, as such, — we do not believe that any one can hold 
 this. Could God make benevolence to be sinful, and hatred to- 
 be right ? If any one should pretend to a revelation which con- 
 tained s uch things, we should instinctively reject i t. Still further , 
 when carried nnt, this theory must deny that God has any es - 
 sential holiness. There must have been a time when He was 
 not holy. He made holiness by an act of will, and then He be- 
 came holy. 
 
 When we say that it is the essential holiness of God that 
 makes virtue, some object that we are putting something behind 
 God; but this is not the fact; we are only putting something in 
 God. We do not say that virtue was before God. Before has no 
 sense here. But we say, holiness is as eternal as God, and 
 necessary to the very conception of His nat ure. God, if He 
 were not holy from the beginning, would not be God, any more 
 than if He were not omniscient. 
 
 It is further said that God has ci*eated us, our minds and 
 ^moral natures, our perception of virtue and feel ing of obligation, 
 and in this sense G od _js the author of virtue, in this sense virtue 
 is dependent on th e will of God. This is undoubtedly true. But 
 in giving us such a feeling in regard to virtue, such perceptions 
 of right, and appealing to these always as ultimate; in address- 
 ing to us his commands and making us feel the value of virtue 
 for its own sake; in making us so that we can think of virtue and 
 right without thinking of his commands; in all this, He shows 
 that the independence of virtue is recognized by Him. He cre- 
 ated us capable of perceiving virtue, but that does not include 
 the position that He created virtue. He made us capable of per- 
 ceiving mathematical truth, but He did not make the truth that 
 the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles: that 
 truth is eternal. 
 
 As to the fourth position: This may be accepted, in the sense 
 that all truth, all relations, all ideas, ultimately inhere in the 
 divine mind. All that is wise and good appears to H im to be 
 such ; all that is true an d right is forever apprehended by H im 
 as such; and if his will is taken as the expression of his whola 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 203 
 
 nature, of course his will and what is right, or virtue, will 
 coincide. Yet, after all, this is not the best form of statement in 
 morals any more than in mathematics. Nothing is added to an 
 axiom by saying that it is the will of God; e. g., by saying, 
 Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one 
 another, and this is the will of God, because all truth inheres 
 in the divine mind. Right is the will of God, but is not the 
 product of the will of God. In order to have an idea of right, 
 we do not need to have an idea of it as first coming from God. 
 It adds immense practical force to the right that it is the will 
 of the holy God, but we do not need this consideration to have 
 the idea of right. 
 
 And after all these statements and qualifications, allowing 
 them their utmost weight, they do not reach to the real point 
 of the inquiry as to the nature of virtue, which is, not, what is 
 virtue conformed to ? not, what is the source of virtue ? but, 
 what is the essence of virtue, or what is the common, subjective 
 quality in all virtuous acts ? 
 
 § 5. KanCs Theory. 
 
 It is taken from the New Testament rule: "Do unto others 
 as ye would that they should do unto you." It is: " Act so that 
 the free use of thy will may consist with the freedom of every - 
 one, according to a universal law." Fichte's is somewhat sim- 
 ilar: " Let each restrict his freedom by the idea of the freedom 
 of others." 
 
 This, again, is a merely formal rule for virtuous action, good for 
 outward actions, but not telling us anything of the principle of 
 virtue itself. What is that universal law, according to which we 
 must act and use our freedom ? What does it demand? What 
 is the state of mind which it demands ? This is a formula, but 
 not a formula into which all our acts can be put, and it does 
 not give the internal quality of the acts themselves. 
 
 § 6. Dr. HichoWs Theor y. 
 
 "When the man sees himself to be just what the spiritual 
 excellency of his being demands that he should be, he has, in 
 
204 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the contemplation of this worthiness, at once his virtue and his 
 reward." "This worthiness is no revelation from without, but 
 a necessary truth seen in the spirituality of his own being from 
 within." 1 
 
 This, again, is one of the formal theories of virtue; it gives us 
 an account of it, but not the thing itself. What i s it which 
 spiritual excellency de man ds that a man should be?^ In spirit- 
 ual excellency is virtue, is approbation, is happiness: Yes, but 
 what is spiritual excellency ? And what is the conformity to it 
 which is virtue ? The whole inquiry is still before us. 
 
 Remark on all the formal theories: — The common fault of them 
 all is that they give us a description, a general account, of virtue, 
 but do not tell us what it is in itself. They define it by some 
 standard or rule, but they do not give us any principle of it, any- 
 thing inhering in it, any common quality. If a man has it, he 
 might from these descriptions give a pretty good guess as to 
 what was meant by it, and hence the plausibility of such theo- 
 ries. They give us some characteristics and conceptions of 
 virtue, but not the concrete conception of holiness itself. De- 
 fining it thus is like defining body as that which occupies 
 space, instead of by its inseparable qualities. It is giving an 
 external objective measure of virtue, but not its internal, real 
 characteristics. 
 
 But the class of theories we are next to consider, though 
 widely differing among themselves, have the common charac- 
 teristic of attempting to answer the question : What is virtue ? 
 and to do this by some supposed common, subjective quality of 
 all that can be called virtuous. 
 
 Of these theories there are two classes: those which make 
 Happiness, in some form, objective or subjective, to be the spring 
 and end of all virtue; and those which do not, placing it in 
 Holt Love. 
 
 i The Westm. Rev., Oct. 1853, says, this reads like Cudworth, but in truth ia 
 more like Dr. T. Brown's * ( moral approbation," 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 205 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE HAPPINESS THEORIES. 
 
 Preliminary Inquiry : Wltat is happiness ? 
 
 The most general notion of happiness is that of the pleasure 
 o r gratification of sentient beings, attending or consequent upon 
 their activity. All feeling in the li ne of law confers happiness. It 
 is a simple term, expressive of a fact known to all sentient beings 
 in their measure and degree. It is found in animal life. It is 
 found in the exercise of all our powers, whether intellectual, 
 sensitive, affective, or voluntary. Future happiness is such pleas- 
 ure or gratification expected or destined for any in the future ; 
 present happiness is the gratification now enjoyed. Happiness 
 is contrasted with conditions of pain, suffering, want, sickness, 
 etc., where the exercise of our powers, whether bodily or mental, 
 is a source of suffering. 
 
 Self-lov e (" self-regarding affections," Bentham) is defined 
 sometimes as t he desire of happiness, the instinctive desire of 
 that gratification which attends the exercise of all our powers : 
 the highest happiness being found in the highest exercise ot our 
 powers on their highest objects. 
 
 Since happiness is ultimate, all we can do is to describe it. 
 It is a simple psychological fact about the exercise of the powers 
 of sentient beings; in the exercise of them they are happy, and 
 happy in proportion to the degree of the exercise and the worthi- 
 ness of the objects. But still, notwithstanding this difference 
 of degree, all the exercises have a common element, viz., hap- 
 piness, and this is a real good, it is the only real good, it is that 
 which alone is sought for its own sake. The highest happiness 
 contains the same elements as the lower forms: its differentia is 
 in its objects. 1 
 
 1 The noblest view of such happiness, as the perfect good, is given by Aristotle : 
 "An energy of the soul, or the powers of the soul exerted according to that vir- 
 tue or excellence which mostly consummates or perfects them" (Hampden's par- 
 aphrase). Further, Nic. Eth. Bk. x. 4: "It is doubtful whether we strive forhappiness 
 for the sake of life, or for life for the sake of happiness ; both are inseparable. " This, 
 from a heathen, is a much higher view of Utility (if indeed it can be considered 
 as an Utilitarian view) than is. found in some Christian writers. 
 
206 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Of these happiness theories, there are several distinct forma 
 of which we will first speak separately, and then comment on, 
 in reference to their fundamental common assumption, viz., that 
 happiness is the only good, is the ultimate object of desire and 
 action. The question is, Can all virtue be resolved into happi- 
 ness, in some form ? 
 
 There are t hree chief forms of the happiness scheme: 
 
 1. The selfish scheme of Palev, which makes the s eeking of 
 our own future happiness (or avoiding' misery) to be virtue . 
 
 2. The objective 1 happiness scheme, making virtue to consist 
 in a tendency to promote the general happiness, or in the love 
 of the general happiness (happiness, not good). Not our own 
 future happiness, as Paley has it, but the general happiness. 
 
 3. The subjective happiness s cheme (as distinguished from the 
 selfish scheme), or the self-love scheme, which is perhaps a union 
 of the two above, the substance of which may be thus expressed: 
 My happiness in the general happiness is the spring and sum of 
 virtue. Logically, both the others are to be resolved into this. 
 
 There might be added : 
 
 4. A scheme which defines benevolence, as primarily a love 
 to general happiness, and ultimately having regard to it, which 
 has been defended as Edwardean. 
 
 5. Perhaps also the theory of President Finney: Virtue is 
 the choice of the greatest happiness of God and the universe. 
 
 § 1. The Selfish Scheme, The Ethics of Pahy. 
 
 " Virtue is doing good to mankind in obedience to the will 
 of God for the sake of everlasting happiness." According to 
 this definition, the will of God is the rule, the good of mankind 
 is the subject, and everlasting happiness is the motive, of human 
 virtue. Take in connection with this Paley's statement about 
 happiness, viz., " Pleasures differ in nothing but in continu ance 
 and in intensity/' and we have a moral system about as bad as 
 
 ' John Maclaurin, Philos. Inq. into Nat. of Happiness (written before 1736, 
 first printed in 1773 in Goold's Edition, ii. 491), makes the distinction of subjective 
 and objective thus: Happiness must have an objective cause and a subjective ex- 
 perience. God is the sufficient objective cause of the highest happiness to man ; 
 man is formed for God's glory, etc. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 207 
 
 one can be, — inexcusable even in a heathen. It does not even 
 recognize duties towards God: the doing good to mankind is all 
 that it takes into view as the field of virtuous action. 
 
 But particularly and specifically, reduced to a proposition, 
 the subjective motive of virtue is said to be one's own future 
 happiness, seeking our own personal future good. 
 
 Against this lie considerations such as the following: 
 
 1. Com mon experience tells us that, when we do not think 
 of our h appiness, we are the happiest; e . g., in relieving misery. 
 The idea of our own happiness is an intrusion, in religion and 
 benevolence for instance. 
 
 2. Mackintosh says : Upon this theoiy, unless we are think- 
 ing of our everlasting happiness, unless we have that as a direct 
 motive before us i n all that we do , w^ r^.nnot, hp virtuous. We 
 should be — what^ then ? vicious? Vice must consist in not 
 seeking our happiness. When a man thinks only of doing good, 
 he is sinful. 
 
 3. The theory allows no difference in the motives of sinful 
 and holy action. Both have regard more or less to the happiness, 
 real or supposed, of the agent. There is no rule. All men act 
 from self-interest; all men are so far forth virtuous. All that is 
 left is to resolve virtue into the arbitrary will of God, as Paley does. 
 
 4. Acting in view of future everlasting rewards and punish- 
 ments is undoubtedly acting under a right motive, a motive 
 which has its important place. But why are such promises and 
 threatenings made? and to what? They are given to attract 
 and deter, to virtue and/rom vice : not to make either virtue or 
 vice. Motives in respect to virtue and vice do not constitute the 
 motives of either. The consequences, not the nature of our acts 
 are here shown. — Exhibition of the future consequences of action 
 serves to arouse those who cannot yet feel any higher motive. 
 
 In sum, the motive of self-interest has its place in a moral 
 system, but it is not that w h ich makes virtue to be virtue. 
 
 § 2. Virtue consists in the Tendency to the greatest Havmness. 
 The advocates of this scheme say that virtue and tendency 
 to happiness are the same thing. If this be so, then two things 
 
208 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 follow: (1) Everything which promotes the general happiness ia 
 virtuous; all that is useful is virtuous, because virtue is the ten- 
 dency to promote the general happiness. (2) Nothing can be 
 declared to be virtuous until we can see or prove in some way 
 that it promotes the general happiness. 1 
 
 But we must deny both of these positions. 
 
 1. Not all that in any way promotes the happiness of men is 
 virtuous. Many things are useful, are as useful as they can be, 
 pro mote happiness, promote as much happin ess as they can, 
 which nobody thinks of calling virtuous. Many animals are 
 useful : what they do tends to promote the happiness of the com- 
 munity. Steam engines are useful ; vegetables are useful ; our 
 natural instincts, our involuntary affections, are all useful: they 
 tend to promote happiness and the highest happiness which 
 from their nature they can do. 2 The tendency to happiness is 
 the same in the unintelligent and the intelligent being: this term 
 remains the same: so that it cannot be this which makes the 
 difference — confessed on all sides — between a virtuous act and 
 oue which has no moral character. This forces us to the con- 
 clusion than an act of man is virtuous, not because it has such 
 and such a tendency, but — for some other reason, which reason 
 is the object of our inquiry. 
 
 1 Wayland discusses the question on the supposition that virtue and the ten- 
 dency to happiness are different things. His opponents insist that they are the 
 came thing: that if we want to define virtue we must say that it is the tendency to 
 promote happiness. Christian Spect., Dec. 1835, p. 605: "The ideas {i. e., of 
 right and productiveness of happiness) are identical, or rather one is explanatory 
 of the other." "The tendency to produce the greatest amount of happiness is 
 what makes or constitutes a thing right." Br. Dwight is quoted to the effect 
 that the tendency to produce happiness is "what constitutes the value or excel- 
 lency (or as Dr. D. uses the word — wrongly — the " foundation ") of virtue," 
 
 2 Dr. Dwight says it is hardly necessary to answer this objection. But why 
 not? He says: " A smattering philosophy knows that voluntariness is necessary 
 to virtue." Here we have a new statement. It is not usefulness alone, but vol- 
 untary usefulness, which constitutes virtue. But here we must ask, if the ten- 
 dency of a thing being useful does not make it happiness, how does its becoming 
 voluntary give it a new character? My choosing a thing does not make it right 
 or wrong; it simply brings in accountability. The statement will be reduced to 
 this: Tendency to happiness in a being not moral, is not moral: but in a being 
 who is moral, it is moral. This is acknowledging a difference in the nature of the 
 act: it is th<» moral element in the nature of the act which we are inquiring for, 
 and we must go somewhere else than to the tendency to happiness to find it. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. U09 
 
 2. If that which makes the essence of virtue be a tendency 
 to happiness, we cannot say that anything is virtuous until we 
 see that it has this tendency. We of course do not deny that 
 we can see that virtuous acts have this tendency to a very great 
 extent; but the question is, whether our judgments that such 
 and such things are right are dependent on our thus seeing. 
 Before I can say that it is right to speak the truth, must I see 
 that my so doing will produce the greatest amount of happiness ? 
 Love to God will undoubtedly tend to promote the greatest hap- 
 piness: but is the seeing of that necessary to the judgment that 
 the love of God is right. 1 
 
 3. This position confounds two things which are entirely 
 distinct: the nature of a thing with its tendencies, the essence 
 with the manifestation. These are everywhere else kept dis- 
 tinct. The tendency of sin is to misery, but misery does not 
 tell us what sin is : it shows us what it deserves, but does not 
 define its nature. The tendency of all matter is to gravitate, 
 but gravitation does not describe the nature or essence of matter. 
 That is only one of its modes of manifestation. So the tendency 
 of all virtue may be, and doubtless is^ to promote the greatest 
 good, the highest happine ss of the universe: but this very ten - 
 dency is a result of its excellent nature, and does not constitute 
 that natur e. Such is the inherent excellency of a virtuous dis- 
 position that it makes him who has it most happy, that it con- 
 tributes most of all to the general happiness: but this tendency 
 to happiness does not describe the act as it is in itself. The 
 nature and the tendencies are different. We may judge of the 
 nature, to some extent, by the tendencies, but we cannot, with- 
 out gross confusion, identify them. 
 
 1 Dr. Wayland here is explicit and right. When Utilitarians assert that -virtue 
 is the tendency to general happiness, they say that their meaning is not, that we 
 must see beforehand this tendency {as a distinct motive) in order to the virtue of 
 the act: but, that upon inspecting every virtuous act, we find in it (afterwards) 
 this tendency; i. e., the perception of such utility is not necessary to the subjective 
 virtue of the act, but we must see (objectively) this tendency to such utility before 
 we can pronounce, judge, any act to be virtuous. Examination of Utilitarianism, 
 by the late John Grote, Lond. 1870. Bentham, the extreme Utilitarian: Murder 
 is wrong "because (1) the evil to the murdered man far outweighs the pleasure 
 reaped by the murderer," etc. " Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as 
 good as poetry." His Deontology repudiated by Mill. See West. Rev., Jan. 1871, 
 defending Mill. 
 
210 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 4. This doctrine is further exposed to the difficulty which 
 comes from the following consideration: Its advocates say 
 that virtue is the best thing, and that virtue is tendency 
 to happiness. Then the tendency to happiness is better than 
 happiness itself. 
 
 It is allowed on all sides that virtue does tend to produce 
 the highest happiness: the position here taken is that virtue 
 cannot be resolved into a tendency to happiness. 
 
 § 3. Subjective Happiness or Self-Love Scheme. 
 
 This is a scheme of more refined character than those which 
 have been considered, and on that account is often misunder- 
 stood. Of the various happiness schemes, we regard this as 
 the only consistent one. It resolves all moral action into the 
 pleas ure or happiness which is found in such action, 1 The 
 system allows that benevolent action is the highest good, but it 
 eays the reason why any one is benevolent is for the pleasure 
 there is in it — the happiness in it. Our highest pleasure is in 
 lo ving God, and the rea son why we love God is because our 
 hi ghest happiness is found in it. So our highest pleasure is in 
 doing good, and this is the ultimate motive for doing good. 
 There is happiness in obeying conscience, and the reason why we 
 obey is the happiness which is in it. This is a very different 
 theory from the previous one : instead of making happiness objec- 
 tive, and virtue a tendency to promote that happiness, it puts the 
 virtue in the happiness itself, as subjective; yet one will hardly 
 
 1 This scheme is most distinctly advocated by the late Dr. N. W. Taylor. He 
 began the discussion in an essay on ^Regeneration in the Christian Spectator, 
 1835. He laid hold of the instinctive desire for happiness as the lever by which 
 a sinner might be renewed with what is in him, and he professed to start from 
 the position or ground of Dr. Dwight, the Utilitarian scheme, that Utility or Pro- 
 ductiveness of Happiness is the essence of Virtue. But in the subsequent debate 
 Dr. Taylor was led to take the view that the essence of virtue is not in the pro- 
 duction of happiness, but in the happiness found in benevolent action. The ul- 
 timate motive in virtuous action is not a regard to one's own future happiness; it 
 is not a regard to the highest good objectively; but it is the pleasure which one 
 experiences in benevolent activity. That pleasure is the ultimate motive and con- 
 trolling element. The difference between this scheme and Paley's can perhaps 
 be briefly indicated by emphasis: Paley says, My happiness is the object of virtuous 
 action: this theory, My happiness is the motive of such action. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 21 1 
 
 find in the discussions a separation between this and the grosser 
 forms of the happiness schemes. 
 
 Now in reference to this view, we grant the whole fact 
 alleged: that our happiness is found in benevolence; but we 
 deny the inference: that this happiness is the ultimate motive 
 for right action, or the ultimate basis of an ethical system, and 
 for the following reasons: 
 
 1. This theory gives us no radical distinction between right 
 and wrong actions. The difference is simply and only a differ- 
 ence in the greater or less degree of the same thing, i. e., of 
 happiness. In s in there is some happiness, in virtue there is 
 more. In the wicked and the good man there is the same 
 ultimate motive, love of happiness. 
 
 We grant the existence of this motive in all men: it is 
 constitutional: but we say, it is not this self-love which gives 
 the difference in our actions as right and wrong. And if it be 
 made the ultimate thing in ethics, the ethics is not founded on 
 any distinct ultimate conception, whereby it is distinguished 
 from any other branch of science. The difference of right and 
 wrong is not explained by this theory, and if anything else is 
 brought in to explain it, then that something else will be the 
 foundation of ethics. 
 
 2. Closely connected with the above is another objection to 
 the theory, viz., that it confounds a purely psyc hological phe- 
 nomenon with a proper ethical fact or theory. It is a fact that 
 we are happy in, that there is a gratification attending, the 
 exercise of our moral powers: but this fact is not confined to 
 our moral powers. We are happ y in the exercise of all our fac- 
 ulties. We are happy in reasoning, in eating, in talking, in 
 seeing, in doing anything. A necessary condition of the exer- 
 cise of all our powers is that there should be pleasure in doing 
 it. Now if this pleasure, this happiness, is what constitutes 
 morality, then there is morality in all our acts in their natural 
 operations. If a distinction is made, and it is said that only cer- 
 tain kinds of such gratification are moral, then we say, what are 
 these kinds, what distinguishes them from others? and the very 
 thing that distinguishes them from others will be the moral ele- 
 
212 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 plenty That is, happiness is common both to the instinctive and 
 the moral action of our powers : and therefore, being common to 
 them, it cannot be the thing which distinguishes them; happi- 
 ness is common both, to the virtuous and vicious exercise of our 
 powers, and therefore it cannot be the thing which distinguishes 
 virtue from vice. The difference between black and white is not 
 that they are both colors. This we take to be an absolute refu- 
 tation of the theory, as an ethical theory. 
 
 3. M oreover, such is the nature of virtue that, even if it did 
 not confer happiness, it would be binding on us. The sense of 
 the binding nature of virtue is in no degree connected with the 
 view that it is the means of our happiness. We can abstract 
 the one from the other. And if we did not feel happy in vir- 
 tue, we should still feel obliged to do right. 
 
 4. This theory proposes, as a basis of ethics, that which when 
 fully and fairly presented to the mind is acknowledged to be 
 sinful. This is a singular anomaly in the scheme. If one keeps 
 his own happiness before himself objectively, making it his su- 
 preme aim, that is sinful, if anything is: he must keep before 
 himself God, the good of others. The theory says, if one acts 
 simply in view of his own happiness, he sins, while yet it says 
 one's own happiness is th^ ultimate spring and source of all 
 moral action. So that the theory frames for ethics a subjective 
 basis which cannot become objective. It says: All moral action 
 resides in something which is pure ly pprnitanftonH g, pd voluntarv T 
 and something which we ca nnot use as a si mple integral motive , 
 without committing Kin. 
 
 5. Self-l ove, in the sense defined , viz., as happiness in the 
 general happiness, cajxno^Hje^even (as is often alleged in de- 
 fence) the sprin^o^theTSotive to our benevolent acts, (a.) It 
 cannot exist before the benevolent impulse itself exists: for it is 
 said to be the happiness which is found in that benevolence it- 
 self. Hence, the benevolent impulse must be there before the 
 happiness therein can exist, and therefor e the happiness canno t 
 be th e spring ; or source of th e benevolence . The benevolence 
 must be at least contemporaneous with the happiness. The sun 
 must be there before the shining. (&.) The mere general desire 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 213 
 
 of happiness cannot be the reason for any of our special acts: 
 that is a mere vague abstraction. Edwards: 1 "Whatever a man 
 loves, that thing is grateful or pleasing to him, whether it be 
 his own peculiar happiness or the happiness of others; and if 
 this be all they mean by self-love, no wonder they think all 
 love may be resolved into self-love." This is calling self-love 
 that which is only a general capacity of loving and hating. 
 This may be a general reason why men love or hate anything 
 at all, but it can never be a reason why man's love is placed on 
 such and such objects. 2 (c.) The position involves a vicious cir- 
 cle : An apt is virtuous because it gives the highest happiness, 
 and it gives the highest happiness because it is virtuous. 
 
 § 4. General BemarJcs on all the Happiness Theories. 
 
 1. It is conceded on all sides that in virtue there is happiness. 
 
 2. It is also conceded that just as there is in virtue the high- 
 est present conscious happiness, so in like manner virtue tends 
 to the highest objective happiness, and that only virtue does 
 this. 
 
 3. Happiness, or the highest happiness, is an indefinite phrase : 
 it tells us nothing of the specific character of our acts: it attends 
 all our acts, and is not confined to those which are moral. In 
 no other department, except ethics, would it be used as a means 
 of explaining what the specific characteristics of a subject are. 
 Who would describe the characteristics of the intellectual acts, 
 or of the nerves, or of the passions, or of duties, as different 
 forms or degrees of happiness ? What is music? Suppose it de- 
 fined as that which confers pleasure, and the best music as that 
 which confers the highest pleasure. That would be the state- 
 ment of a fact, but it would tell us nothing about music. The 
 fallacy is just as great in ethics. 
 
 4. As with happiness so with " the highest happiness." This 
 latter phrase, as employed to modify the theory, is indefinite in 
 
 1 Nature of Virtue, vol. ii. of Works, p. 278. Edwards had this whole theorj 
 before him, and refuted it. 
 
 2 As to the philosophy of love and self-love, Tennyson puts it just right: 
 
 " Love took up the harp of Life and smote on all the chords with might; 
 Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight." 
 
another way. It may mean (and covertly does mean) the same 
 as the whole system of things with its resultant good, and so it 
 constantly includes distinctive moral ends, i. e., it means the 
 
 highest good : 1 the love of that is doubtless virtuous; but tho 
 theory assumes that the highest good and the highest happi- 
 ness are identical, while in fact happiness is subjective and the 
 good is objective. 
 
 5. The happiness theories must all ultimately run into the 
 self-love theories. All happiness, in the last analysis, must be 
 a subjective delight or pleasure. When we speak of the highest 
 happiness of God and of the universe, we must mean the sum 
 of all the various forms of happiness that anywhere exist. Hap- 
 piness is in its ultimate nature subjective. The general good 
 is only the sum of self-loves. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE HOLY LOVE THEORIES. 
 
 The other class of the theories which define virtue not form- 
 ally, but by some common characteristic of all virtuous acts and 
 states, may be comprised in these two: (1) Virtue is the love of 
 moral excellence; (2) Virtue is love to being, benevolence to 
 being in general. 
 
 I. — Virtue is the love of moral excellence. This is the defi- 
 nition given by the Princeton Review and by Dr. Alexander. 
 Against this we think Edwards's objection holds, viz., that it 
 supposes virtue before virtue. What is moral excellence ? It 
 is virtue. Then, virtue is the love of moral excellence, is — the 
 love of virtue. Edwards, ii. 263: "If virtue be the beauty of an 
 intelligent being, and virtue consists in love, then it is a plain 
 inconsistence to suppose that virtue primarily consists in any 
 love to its object for its beauty: either in a love of complacence, 
 
 1 The proper self-love scheme insists that, in the last analysis, r ny happiness 
 in the general happiness is the greatest good. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 21 5 
 
 which is a delight in a being for his beauty, or in a love 
 of benevolence which has the beauty of its objects for its 
 foundation." 
 
 II. — The theory of President Edwards. Virtue is love, is 
 love to being, is love to intelligent beings, is love to intelli- 
 gent beings according to their worth. The best statement in 
 respect to his school is not found in the writings of his son. 
 He misapprehended his father, saying that his father's theory 
 makes virtue to have respect to the happiness of being. In' 
 Bellamy's Works there is a much better statement. In a letter 
 (Introd. to his Works, p. 29) dated Bethel, 1764, he says: "The 
 whole of virtue consists in conformity to the divine law ; love is the 
 sum of the virtue required in the divine law ; benevolence, compla- 
 cence, and gratitude are the whole of love; the object of benevo- 
 lence is being ; of complacence, virtue ; of gratitude, a benefactor. 
 The divine law [which commands this] is a transcript of the di- 
 vine nature: and therefore love is the sum of virtue in God as 
 well as in the creature." He grants the objection that this makes 
 the good of being the chief good, but says: "The good of being 
 in general, which is the object of benevolence, is not the partial, 
 but the complete good of being in general, comprising all the 
 good being is capable of, by whatever name called: natural, 
 moral, spiritual ; than which there is nothing of greater worth in 
 the universe. Nay, 'tis the sum of all good." Bellamy then in- 
 terprets the theory thus: that virtue has respect to all good, of 
 course including moral and spiritual good, taking these to be, 
 not the whole of what virtue has respect to, but a part, in fact 
 the very height of the good. Love is then the affection of 
 the soul, and all the good of being is the object on which this 
 love fastens: and that is virtue. Edwards's definition is: "that 
 consent, propensity, and union of heart to being in general, 
 which is immediately exercised in a general good-will." 1 He 
 says also, "Virtue is the love of intelligent beings according to 
 their respective worth," and then distinguishes it into two main 
 points: the love of benevolence and the love of complacency. 
 
 1 He distinguishes between consent, propensity, union of heart, and — exercises, 
 which i» decisive against those who say that he makes virtue consist in exercises, 
 
216 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 " The love of benevolence is that which has special respect to 
 the whole ; the love of complacency is the highest form of vir- 
 tue, and which has respect to the virtue of others." Some say 
 that his theory is this: that virtue consists in the love of benev- 
 olence, and that that consists in seeking the happiness of crea- 
 tures, and then complacency does not belong to virtue but is an 
 offshoot. To us it is plain that the theory makes complacency 
 to be just as much a part of virtue as benevolence is, and not 
 only so, but makes it to be the height of "the love of benev- 
 olence " and of virtue. Edwards also argues that the highest 
 virtue is love to God, because He has the highest being and 
 beauty; next, virtue is love to men according to their capacity 
 for good and holiness. 
 
 There are some objections to this view. 1 
 
 1. It is objected that we cannot h ave such love to being , as 
 a dir ect act on our part. But this objection arises from not 
 comprehending clearly what Edwards was aiming at. He is 
 not describing virtue as it exists in our direct consciousness, 
 but is stating it in its abstract form, in the philosophical form, 
 and not in the form of experience. All particular affections 
 come under this general idea, under all particular affections 
 there must be this general love, if the particular affections are 
 virtue: but it is the particular affections which come within 
 the sphere of consciousness, so that we are not conscious of 
 purely abstract love, but only of the forms of this affection. 
 We suppose that Edwards came to this theory in this way: 
 The law of God commands us to love God and to love men, and 
 that is the sum of virtue. Now here are two statements, but it 
 is cumbrous to use both. He asks then for a formal statement 
 which will embrace both. Taking God and man together as 
 including all intelligent being, if we say love to being, we have 
 the statement which comprises both. 
 
 2. It is objected that this theory destroys private affections. 
 The answer to this is, that the relations to which these private 
 affections belong are a part of the system of being to which our 
 love has respect. The private affections respond to the demands 
 
 1 The acutest are those of Boberfc Hall. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 217 
 
 for particular degrees and forms of love, and it is not incon- 
 sistent with, the theory to suppose such response to be made. 
 The relations which call forth the private affections make the 
 particular "worth" of the object. 
 
 3. The theory is said to be Utilitarian. It is difficult to 
 know what some people mean by this word. Generally, in phil- 
 osophical speech, Utilitarianism means, those theories which make 
 virtue culminate in happiness, or in the "general good," viewed 
 as haviug respect ultimately to happiness either objective or sub- 
 jective. If Edwards had made virtue to have ultimate respect 
 to happiness, his theory would hare been Utilitarian; but as we 
 understand him, this is in no wise the case. 
 
 4. It is also objected that the theory does not allow for rec- 
 titude being a simple idea, but that it resolves the idea of right 
 into something else. This objection comes from not distin 
 guishing between right and virtue. The idea of right is a 
 much broader idea than that of virtue. All that Edwards says 
 is this: that rectitude, subjective as it is found in moral beings, is 
 this love to being, and that that is what is right in a moral 
 being. The theory presupposes that right is a simple idea, and 
 that it can be applied to this love of being. 
 
 5. It must be admitted that there are some difficulties in 
 Edwards's mode of stating the theory, (a.) The phraseology 
 "love of being" is too abstract: readers, taking from this the 
 notion of this love being independent of God, are likely to run 
 into a pantheistic view: though as respects Edwards himself, 
 this was fully guarded by his idea of God. Concretely and in 
 consciousness, "being" is not the object of love: God must be 
 the object of love, (b.) In Edwards's writings, the discussion 
 of the nature of virtue is perhaps not sufficiently connected 
 with the " end of God in creation," or with the plan of God, or 
 with the whole system of things. The objective ground does 
 not seem to be sufficiently stated, (c.) Another difficulty arises 
 from difference of usage as to the word " benevolence." In 
 common usage, it is taken for a lower form of virtue: that which 
 has respect to human beings, and to happiness simply as distin- 
 guished from holiness. But Edwards defines benevolence for 
 
218 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 himself, and means to include holiness in it or to make it equiv 
 alent to holiness. If " benevolence" be taken in the lower sense, 
 the statement, the essence of virtue is in benevolence, is liable 
 to very grave objections. The interpretation of Edwards as taking 
 benevolence in the lower sense, making it to have respect to 
 happiness ultimately, is followed up by Dr. D wight, and leads 
 to what, in our judgment, is the great defect of his system. 1 
 
 [A later statement than the above by the author] : The true sense of Edwards's 
 Theory of Virtue. Love, in its extension, has respect to all sentient, intelligent 
 being, seeking its good: this is the love of benevolence. Love, in its intension and 
 concentration, has respect to, seeks, the best good or holiness: this is the love of 
 complacency. These are not two kinds of love: true, genuine love will, must, take 
 these two forms. Cannot the categories of quantity and quality be here applied 
 with advantage ? 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SOME HINTS AS TO A THEORY OF THE NATURE OF VIRTUE. 
 
 § 1. Preliminary Statements. 
 
 1. Limitations and specific sense of the inquiry as to the na- 
 ture of true virtue or holiness. The inquiry is not as to the 
 whole of rectitude, but as to the prime excellence of a moral 
 being, or as to rectitude, concrete and subjective, rectitude as 
 existing and exemplified in a moral being; and the inquiry is, 
 as stated before, for some common element or principle in all 
 virtuous acts: whether there be any such. 
 
 2. Validity of this inquiry. This may be argued: (a.) From 
 tlie analogy of the other sciences: all strive after unity; (b.) From 
 the conscious sense of the distinctiveness of the moral sphere: 
 the kingdom of holiness, kingdom of evil ; (c.) Historically: there 
 have been constant attempts at such theories. The inquiry, 
 are there many virtues or one? is as old as the Greek philosophy: 
 (d.) The inquiry after one common principle of all that is virtuous, 
 
 1 In Remarks on Pres. Edwards's Dissertations, etc., by Eev. Wm. Hart Say 
 brook, New Haven, 1771, some points are acutely stated. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 21 9 
 
 is also justified by what may be called, the unity of our moral 
 consciousness: we are conscious that here is a distinct sphere. 1 
 
 Even if we cannot arrive at a satisfactory solution, this should 
 not lead us to deny the validity and possibility of the inquiry. 
 
 It is better to pause and say, we cannot meet the inquiry, 
 than to be content with a theory which undermines our moral 
 convictions. 
 
 3. The special difficulties of the inquiry. 
 
 (a.) Since almost all terms, expressing moral states and acts, 
 refer to concrete cases, to specific acts, the chief difficulty is in 
 rescuing some terms from their partial signification and giving 
 them a general meaning. E. gr., benevolence, as already stated, 
 is commonly used to express mere general good-will, a kind 
 regard to our fellow-beings, a desire of their happiness. Now 
 if this term be taken to express the essence of virtue, it is very 
 likely to be interpreted in a partial sense, — as it often is in Ed- 
 wards's system, and made to be the basis of a the jry at war with 
 the whole spirit of his system. It is even used in the sense of 
 good- will to creatures, not including love to God: and even as 
 implying a regard for happiness in distinction from a regard to 
 holiness. So if justice or holiness, love of the general happiness 
 or good, or love of rectitude, be taken to express the fundamental 
 moral state, we have similar difficulties. Any term which is 
 taken to express the common principle of all moral states must 
 be somewhat deflected from its partial use for scientific purposes. 2 
 This is the case in all the sciences. 
 
 (&.) A second difficulty about the inquiry is this: Common 
 speech makes a specific difference between what is moral and 
 what is religious, so that a man may be "virtuous" without 
 being religious, and it is also alleged, may be religious without 
 being virtuous. Hence the advocates of mere morality as tho 
 sum of human duty, are apt to insist upon a definition of virtue 
 
 1 Different from what is stated under (5.), a3 that refers to the objective uni- 
 verse, which we view and must view, as issuing in moral " kingdoms." This ro- 
 tates to our subjective necessity of putting all things under a moral point of view- 
 
 2 Virtue was used by the ancients for manly courage; it is used by us for oui 
 lower relationships ; and if we enlarge its meaning, the word becomes liable to 
 constant misapprehension. 
 
220 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 which will allow this sundering. Modern Philanthropy rests 
 very much here, seizing upon a definition of virtue which will 
 only apply to morals, and leave out love to God. But if there 
 be no real difference, so that where religion is not, there cannot 
 be true virtue, there is special need of making this evident. 
 And here, in fact, is one of the fundamental antagonisms of the 
 times, of Christianity with philosophy. If true virtue can be 
 justly defined without bringing in the religious element, there 
 is a vantage-ground for scepticism. 1 
 
 (c.) Another difficulty is that if we reduce all that is virtuous 
 to some common principle, there is danger of making it so ab- 
 stract that one cannot verify it from experience, and it becomes 
 worthless in fact, and not only worthless but mischievous, play- 
 ing into the hands of infidelity, as, e. </., the pantheist may say: 
 I have such generic love of being as is said to be the essence 
 of virtue, and hence I am truly virtuous. 
 
 (d.) Another difficulty — akin to the second stated above — may 
 be suggested by the contrast between the terms, holiness and 
 benevolence, as commonly used: holiness being the love of, and 
 delight in, all moral perfection, and benevolence being a general 
 regard to happiness. Now it is said, these two things are so 
 distinct that we cannot reduce them to any common principle. 
 E. g. y When we speak of a holy and then of a benevolent God, ideas 
 so different are suggested that we cannot bring them into union 
 under any one conception. 2 The same is the case with the two 
 terms, rectitude and happiness or good. Some insist that in 
 ethics, all that we can do is to say that rectitude is a simple 
 idea, and that the love of rectitude is virtue, and that if the 
 idea of happiness is brought into ethics, it is vitiated, and the 
 radical distinction between virtue and vice is denied. 
 
 § 2. The Scriptural Vieio of the Nature of True Virtue. 
 
 The Scriptures do not discuss abstract questions of specula- 
 tion, either metaphysical or ethical; and therefore it might seem 
 irrelevant to refer to them ; but we may proceed here precisely 
 
 1 * 'All morality without piety is as a goodly statue without a head " (Lactantius), 
 Q Dr. McOosh, on the ground of this difficulty, holds to both unanalyzed, as 
 ultimate and necessary. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 221 
 
 as we do in respect to doctrines, i, e., in the way of deduction 
 and of using Scripture as a test. What cannot be derived from 
 the Bible cannot be a true ethical theory: what cannot be tested 
 by the Bible cannot be a true ethical theory. Scripture does 
 not give us the general abstract form of statement, but it gives 
 the data from which that statement, if it be true, must be de- 
 rived. And in fact the Scriptures not only enforce all specific 
 duties, but they also give some general summaries, which make 
 the work of deduction and of test comparatively easy. Such a 
 summary is given us in the law; the principle which runs through 
 that, or rather, the principle which secures obedience to that, 
 must be the principle of all true virtue. " How love I thy law ! " 
 Besides the law in the Old Testament, we have the re-affirmation 
 of it, and the reduction of it to two principles, by Christ, and in 
 other passages of the New Testament which enforce and apply 
 it. The chief passages bearing on the point are the following: 
 Matt. xxii. 37-39 (parallel, Mark xii. 29-31), where love to God 
 and love to men are the sum of the law, and where Christ says 
 of love to God: "This is the first and great commandment"; 
 1 Pet. i. 16, where holiness is the word used for the sum of 
 moral excellence in the creature; Matt. v. 48; — then in a spe- 
 cific relation, Matt. vii. 12; Gal. v. 14; 1 John iv. 20-21, where 
 it is argued that love to man and to God are the same principle 
 (also in 1 John iii. 17); 1 John iv. 8, where love is set forth as 
 the supreme excellence in God, insomuch that it can be used 
 for God himself; Rom. xiii. 8, 10; 1 Cor. xiii. ; Gal. v. 13-15; vi. 2; 
 Col. iii. 14; 1 Tim. i. 5; 1 Pet. ii. 21-25, where following Christ 
 is set forth as the sum of duty. 1 
 
 The General Results from these passages: 
 
 1. Love must be the common principle — love to God and 
 love to men. 
 
 2. Love must have chief respect to personal beings, God and 
 men, although it would not exclude some regard to animals. 
 
 i Rothe says (i. 196): There are five principles: (1) Likeness to God; (2) "Be 
 ye holy"; (3) Follow Christ; (4) Have love to God and man; (5) "What ye would 
 that men should do," etc. Miiller (i. 140) says— and justly: Not so; none of the 
 others, in dignity and importance, are equal to what Christ so solemnly declares 
 in Matt. xxii. 37 (Mark xii. 29). 
 
222 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 3. Love to God is and must be the highest form of virtue. 
 
 4. Men must be loved under the aspects and for the ends 
 for which God made man. 
 
 5. These aspects, or ends, or this end, is: Mans relations 
 to the kingdom which God has revealed in Christ his Son. 
 
 6. Hence, Love to God and to God's great end in creation, 
 and to men in their relation to this end, is the comprehensive 
 sense of "Love" in the Bible. 
 
 7. This love is essentially the same in God and man : Matt. 
 v. 48; 1 Pet. i. 16. It is also essentially the same in respect 
 both to God and to man. Love to God will bring love to 
 man with it, and true love to man presupposes and involves 
 love to God. Subjectively and objectively (£. e.,-as respects the 
 "good" on which it fastens) the love is essentially the same in 
 God and man. 
 
 8. It should be observed, that love to men is not (a.) love to 
 men as holy, primarily; for if this were so. there could be no love 
 of sinners: yet it is love to men as capable of holiness; (6.) It 
 is not love to men as capable of happiness alone, though this is 
 included; (c.) It is such a love to men as leads one to seek 
 their whole good, in the system of things which God has estab- 
 lished, and in ultimate relation to the great ends of the system. 
 Love to man, and even to sinners, will view them in respect to 
 God's kingdom, as capable of holiness, although not yet holy, 
 and will lead us to strive for their holiness. (This is another 
 objection to the definition of virtue as the love of moral excel- 
 lence. It is a love which would lead one to seek the whole good 
 of man.) 
 
 9. Love to God is not — love to the divine happiness: it is love 
 to God as the highest and best of beings. 
 
 § 3. Statement of the Principle of True Virtue in the abstract 
 There are two modes of statement: the abstract and the con- 
 crete. The abstract is the mode for the intellect, for science, in 
 the form of general truth, and so as to cover all virtue or holi- 
 ness, that of God as well as of the creature. The concrete is the 
 real mode, the description of virtue in its vivid, living traits, the 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 223 
 
 statement of it as it consciously exists in moral beings, as it is 
 in the real system of things, as it is to be preached and practiced, 
 and specifically, of virtue as it exists in men. 
 
 1. The principle of all virtue in the abstract must be found 
 in love, that being the highest form of activity of our moral na- 
 ture. All the powers of the mind concentrate in love. Love is 
 union of heart to other beings, involving delight, and prompting 
 us to seek all their good in the relations in which they are placed. 
 
 2. It is not, however, love as a mere internal emotion, as a 
 subjective state alone. The character of love is that it demands 
 an object: it is defined and characterized by its objects, and only 
 thus. The character of holy love can then only be defined by 
 stating its proper objects. All love is not virtuous. There is a 
 doctrine of final causes in ethics. There are instinctive forms 
 of affection, and natural affections which have not the element 
 of true virtue in them. Our affections chiefly have respect to 
 personal beings, to moral beings, beings having moral capaci- 
 ties and ends. 
 
 3. The definition of Holy Love or True Virtue. There are 
 various forms of statement, in the way of general description, — . 
 the object being to give a general statement which shall em- 
 brace all the modes of virtuous love. 
 
 (a.) General and indefinite: True Virtue is love (the highest 
 subjective state) of the highest good (the greatest objective well- 
 being). It is described sometimes, as love of the whole system 
 of things, and of each part in its due relation to the whole. 
 
 (p.) More particular: It is, love of intelligent and sentient 
 beings, in relation to the great ends of the system. Or, it is 
 love of the good of intelligent beings, with ultimate respect to 
 their, and to the, highest good. 
 
 (c.) A definite statement : True Virtue is, love of all intelli- 
 gent and sentient beings, according to their respective capacities 
 for good, with chief and ultimate respect to the highest good, or 
 holiness. 
 
 We have here: (1) love, the subjective affection; (2) the ob- 
 ject of love, intelligent and sentient beings; (3) the variety of 
 love : it varies according to the relative capacities of its objects 
 
224 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 for good; (4) the main, supreme object of the love, that which is 
 chiefly and ultimately in view, the holiness of beings. 
 
 True Virtue has thus respect to all good, and to all beings as 
 capable of good (including capacity for happiness), but in its 
 very nature it has chief respect to the highest good or holiness. 
 According to this, it would follow that virtuous love in reference 
 to each individual who may be the object of it, can only consist 
 in loving him according to his place in the system ; and this is 
 determined by three considerations: (1) The inherent dignity 
 and capacity of the individual himself; (2) The relation of the 
 individual to the great ends of the system ; (3) His special rela- 
 tions to us in our relations to the whole system. (This last point 
 gives the elements which are necessary to vindicate the private 
 affections.) There must not only be capacity of being, but also 
 relation to the ends of the system} Satan has more capacity of being 
 than many saints. 
 
 {d.) Some further explanations. True Virtue is love of the 
 whole system, of all its ends, yet chiefly its highest end. The 
 distinction between the primary and the ultimate object of vir- 
 tuous love is important. Virtue has respect to all good, to all 
 beings as capable of good, but it has, in its very nature, chief 
 respect to the highest good or to holiness. Virtue regards each 
 one according to his relative dignity and value : it loves most, it 
 must love most, the most excellent of beings; this is also of its 
 nature. Virtue seeks the good of each, all the good, chiefly the 
 holiness, of each, and delights most in holiness. The chief, high- 
 est form of virtue is conceded to be the love of holiness, the love 
 of beings for their moral worth, and in proportion to this. Vir- 
 tue is not the love of moral excellence alone; some forms of 
 virtue are not contained in this. 2 It is not the love of abstract 
 being, but of being as it exists. Virtue is not the love of the 
 Good exclusively (as distinguished from the True and the Beau- 
 
 1 This does not appear to have been sufficiently insisted npon by President 
 
 Edwards. 
 
 3 [The remainder of this paragraph consists of hints which the author appears 
 to have noted down for his future consideration.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 225 
 
 tiful). All being, as it is known to, and appeals to, us, may be 
 comprised in the objects of the love which is virtue. Virtue, as 
 the highest subjective moral state, may be said to be the love 
 of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, according to the re- 
 spective and relative value of each and all, — being highest in 
 love to God, as the supreme Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Is it 
 not partial and arbitrary to restrict virtue to the sensibilities, to 
 the love of good as a sensitive state ? Is not love of the truth 
 equally essential to its nature ? It is, love of the True and the 
 Good ; also of the Beautiful, in its measure. 
 
 § 4. Arguments for the above Definition, 
 
 1. It is comprehensive. It is the union of the highest sub- 
 jective state with all, and with the highest, objective weal. 
 
 2. It includes morality and religion both, and puts morality 
 in its proper place as subordinate to religion. 
 
 3. Unless virtue be thus defined as having ultimate respect 
 to holiness, the definition is not complete. Any other view of 
 virtue would fail to bring us into relation to the real end of God's 
 kingdom, which is, as regards the creature, his holiness in union 
 with himself. Therefore we must include the statement of this. 
 
 4. Unless so defined, the definition does not include the very 
 highest form of virtue, which is conceded to be the love of holi- 
 ness. This would not then be shown to belong to the essence 
 of virtue, but would be merely one of its manifestations or pro- 
 ductions. Can any love to a moral being be holy, which has 
 not ultimate respect to his holiness, i. e., to his highest and best 
 state as, love to a child? If true virtue have respect to the 
 good of moral beings, it must have chief respect to their highest 
 good : from this there is no escape. And that which true virtue 
 or holy love chiefly seeks must be a product of the very essence 
 of virtue, though it be not the whole thereof. The love may 
 show itself in doing good in a thousand ways, but the highest 
 love must be shown with reference to holiness. No definition 
 of the intellectual operations would be sufficient, which did not 
 
226 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 cover their highest exercise, the intuitive discernment of truth. 
 We cannot show that virtue must have supreme regard to holi 
 ness, unless in our definition we make it such that it will. If 
 virtue, both primarly and ultimately, is regard to happiness, then 
 there is no reason in its*very nature why it delights in holiness. 
 5. As defined, Virtue includes all the forms of virtue, all the 
 different virtues in their place, and it shows why the virtues of 
 the impenitent are not truly such, (a.) It includes the animate 
 tribes, according to their place: although that form of virtue 
 which has respect to the holiness of the object of love is not 
 applicable here, yet that same temper of love which most delights 
 in holiness will have kind regard to their well-being. (To alter 
 all our definition for their sake alone would hardly be wise : some- 
 thing must be understood in every definition.) (b.) It includes 
 love to the impenitent, seeking their good, yet ours is not vir- 
 tuous affection unless it regards their highest good, (c.) It 
 includes gratitude, for all good, while it demands the highest 
 gratitude, for the" highest good, to our highest Benefactor, 
 (d.) It includes self-love, in its proper place, loving ourselves 
 according to our place in the system, yet so that we have chief 
 respect to our holiness: there is no true self-love without that. 1 
 (e.) It includes justice: treating all as conformed or not con- 
 formed to the great end of the system; and truthfulness: acting 
 and speaking according to the real relations of things in the 
 spirit of love. (Eph. iv. 25, " Speak ye truth each one with his 
 neighbor: for we are members one of another") (/.) It includes 
 the love of rectitude, of all that is right, especially of the highest 
 forms of what is right: the love of complacency in all moral ex- 
 cellence, (g.) It includes justice in the form of punishment, as 
 upholding holy ends. It is difficult to get warrant for punish- 
 ment from theories which make virtue to be the love of happi- 
 ness; it may be said, Punishment is the infliction of misery on 
 those who are opposing the highest happiness : but how is that 
 right, if virtue has regard only to happiness? (h.) It includes 
 faith, which is "nothing without love," and true repentance, 
 which springs from holy love, and is a mode of its manifesta- 
 1 Aristotle says: The wicked ought not to love themselves, but the good may, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 227 
 
 tion. Thus all the other virtues are included in it. (i.) The 
 definition also shows why the virtues of the impenitent are not 
 truly such. It is because they have not the main element of 
 true love, a supreme regard to God and his glory, and the greaf 
 end of the system. 
 
 The form of statement given above for the abstract nature 
 of virtue, is intended to meet the difficulties suggested by the 
 contrasted terms: holiness and benevolence, or rectitude and 
 benevolence (love of happiness.) The tension of the ethical 
 problem is in these two contrasted terms. The real problem is 
 to find a -statement of the nature of virtue which shall give its 
 just place to these. This we have attempted. 
 
 In all true virtue there must be both holiness and benevolence. 
 But if virtue be made the love of holiness, it is exposed to the 
 objection already recited, that virtue is the cause and effect of 
 itself. Again, if, to avoid this difficulty, we say, virtue is (both 
 primarily and ultimately) the love of beings as capable of hap- 
 piness, we are exposed to the difficulties attending the happi- 
 ness theories; we have no real ethical end as the object of 
 virtue. The former seems to banish good-will as a real form 
 of virtue, and the latter to resolve all virtue into good-will. 
 
 There is a real difficulty here, as already expounded, and 
 whether it is successfully met in our statement, is the question-. 
 In point of fact, when men put all holiness in the love of the 
 highest happiness, do they not really suppose, that in the high- 
 est happiness, in that which makes the highest happiness of God 
 and the universe, there is a distinctive moral element or end ? 
 
 § 5. Some Objections to the Theory. 
 
 1. The definition is too abstract. We cannot have such love 
 to all good, or to "being." It has been already granted that 
 this is true, if the definition is understood to imply that we are 
 to have this public affection as a specific, distinct exercise. But 
 in fact we are simply inquiring for the common quality of all 
 our virtuous acts, of our specific exercises. 
 
 2. The definition supposes virtue before virtue. This objec- 
 tion lies only against the position that virtue has exclusive re- 
 
228 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 gard to moral excellence ; that this is its primary ground as well 
 as ultimate end; that virtue not only essentially consists in, but 
 is wholly made up of, love to moral excellence in the concrete: 
 or, in other words, that the whole of virtue is in complacency, 
 or a delight in beings for their holiness. Our statement seeks 
 to avoid this by saying that virtue is love to all good, yet chiefly 
 and ultimately to all in Us relations to the highest good, to holiness* 
 In other words, virtue has primary reference to beings as capable 
 of good, ultimate, to their highest good. The ultimate object 
 of virtue, that which it ultimately seeks, must be a state of 
 things in which holiness abounds, in which holy love rules all. 
 But virtue includes also the love of other things, of inferior 
 ends and beings, and of all inferior ends and beings in their 
 proper degree and in their due subordinations and relations 
 to the highest end or good. Love chiefly respects: (1) per- 
 sons; (2) the value of persons; (3) their capacities for good; 
 (4) their highest good or virtue; or: personal being — which has 
 variety and gradation — which in all its gradations has capacities 
 for different kinds of good — and which has in all capacity for 
 the highest good or holiness. As the sentiment of the beauti- 
 ful has ultimate respect to beauty objectively, so love seeks 
 ultimately to beget love. In short, our definition makes virtue 
 to be, subjective love to an objective system, which includes in 
 itself both happiness and holiness, yet holiness as ultimate. 
 Virtue, abstractly considered, is a generic affection embracing 
 both these. 
 
 3. Such a view of virtue, as the definition gives, destroys the 
 private affections. This has been already considered. The fact 
 is, that the definition simply puts the private affections in their 
 place. The natural relation is a part of the capacity or worth 
 of the object. 
 
 4. Every definition of virtue is utilitarian, which does not 
 make it to be, strictly and exclusively, the love of rectitude. 
 This also has been considered. The definition of virtue as 
 consisting exclusively in love to moral excellence, if strictly 
 carried out, would leave no room for love to sinners. 
 
 5. Eesolving virtue, as this definition does, into the love 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION 229 
 
 of all good, makes virtue as compared with vice to be simply a 
 matter of degrees: love to the minor forms of being is sin, and 
 to the highest forms, is virtue. The reply is in the repetition 
 of the theory. Virtue consists in the love of the whole, and 
 the love of each is virtuous, only as it is based upon and ex- 
 presses this love of the whole. Sin is found in the less 
 love where a greater good ought to have been loved. Sin is 
 the love of the less, and virtue is the love of the whole; and thus 
 the distinction between virtue and vice is not resolved into a 
 matter of degrees. In the love of the whole, there is an element 
 which is not in the particular love. 
 
 § 6. Statement of the general Principle of aU Virtue in the 
 concrete. 
 
 1. The real moral system, 1 that in which we live and act, 
 is a system which has God, a personal being, for its author and 
 end. To live for and to promote the great ends of that system 
 is our real virtue. 
 
 2. Even in this world, our chief if not exclusive relations are 
 with personal beings, in their relations to the great ends of the 
 system, and in respect thereto. Our affections primarily, and 
 of course ultimately, have respect to personal beings. The love 
 of animals, flowers, etc., is transient and subordinate. 
 
 3. The highest relation, which we sustain as personal beings 
 in this system, is our relation to a personal God, whether we 
 regard his inherent dignity, or his relation to the whole system 
 and its ends. God's glory is the objective end of the system. 
 That glory is chiefly shown in promoting holiness — holiness in 
 the creature — and in making this supreme. 
 
 4. If all virtue, then, consist in love, its fundamental, its 
 highest, its most comprehensive form must be in love to God. 
 This is the reality of virtue, virtue as it exists in the concrete. 
 
 5. But love to God is not only the chief form of virtue: it 
 may also be said to include in itself all forms of virtue, to be 
 the common, real principle thereof. 
 
 All agree that love to God and love to man include all the 
 
 * Compare Mtiller on Sin, vol. i., The Real Principle of Holiness. 
 
230 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 virtues. The question here is of the reduction of both thes6 to 
 the common principle of love to God. It is favored by the 
 following considerations: (a.) "God is in effect being in gen- 
 eral" (Edwards); all that is, is from Him and for Him: He 
 is the author and end of the whole system, (b.) "The real 
 primary ground of virtuous love to man," as Miiller says, is 
 perhaps to be found in the fact that he is made in the divine 
 image. " And this commandment have we from Him, that he 
 who loveth God love his brother also." 1 "Therewith bless we 
 the Lord and Father; and therewith curse we men, which are 
 made after the likeness of God." 2 (c.) Holy love to man must 
 have ultimate respect to him in his relations to God, and to his 
 place in the system which God has established, (d.) May not 
 all our private affections be brought under this? God has 
 established in his system these relations : of family, of brother- 
 hood, of society, of the state, in which all our lesser affections 
 move. Are any of these virtuous except as they respect the 
 whole end of the system? Is not that end the union of God 
 and men in holy love ? Moreover, it is God who has made us 
 capable of loving in these connections, and therefore all love 
 is to be traced to Him. (e.) In short, from supreme love to 
 God it will result, necessarily and naturally, that we love the 
 whole system He has ordained, that we shall love all in the 
 system ultimately in its relation to Him, and to the ends which 
 He proposes to produce by means of the system. Love to God 
 is not properly the co-ordinate of love to man, but is the cause 
 of love to man. Loving God, we shall love the system which 
 He has established. Our own holiness is manifested, through 
 doing this: in seeking and doing all things for the sake of God 
 and his kingdom. This is the reality of the moral sphere. 
 This gives us the proper end or object, as well as the highest 
 motive: the end, that of God — God himself and the end which 
 He proposes in his system; the motive, love to Him. This at 
 any rate is the reality in conscious Christian experience, and 
 not love to any abstract ends. And this best agrees with the 
 position, that all real love moves in the personal sphere, all 
 1 1 John iv. 21. 2 James iii. 9, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 231 
 
 moral affection moves there. The highest form of it is in love 
 to the highest Person and to his ends and objects. 
 
 6. This, which is the highest and most real and philosophical, 
 is also the simplest, form of statement for the reality of virtue. 
 Is there any true virtue which has not its root and ground in 
 love to God ? If there be, a pantheist may have real virtue. 
 
 7. This best agrees with the Scriptural views of the moral 
 law and of holiness. Our Saviour teaches: "This is the great 
 and first commandment." Holiness in the Bible, is obedience 
 to the divine law, from love to the Lawgiver. The law is from 
 Him; we are to obey from love to Him; He commands this love 
 first of all. Transgression is against God, not against an ab- 
 stract system. " Against thee, thee only. 1 ' Retribution is from 
 God's hand. 1 
 
 8. The real statement, then, of the fundamental principle of all 
 true virtue would be, that it consists in love to God, and to all 
 other beings in their relations to, and as parts of, the divine 
 system of things. 
 
 9. The connection between § 3 and § 6 — the deduction or 
 mode of deducing this principle, as the real one — may be stated 
 in this way: The essence of virtue is in "love to being," i. e., 
 is in love to all beings, according to their relative place in the 
 whole system of things, and with ultimate respect to their high- 
 est ends. But this system in its reality, is from and for God; 
 and its highest ends are, the divine glory in the holiness of the 
 creatures. Hence, true virtue, as real in the system, must be 
 love to God. Or again: Virtue is love to all good, with an ulti- 
 mate respect to the highest good. But this only in per- 
 sons, only in a system of personal agents. Virtue then is love 
 to this system. But this system is from and for God. Hence, 
 virtue is love to God, essentially. Or, again : Virtue must con- 
 sist in having the soul accordant with Rectitude. This Rectitude 
 is embodied in the law: love to God and man. This law is di- 
 vinely given, completely in revelation: it is the disclosure of 
 God's Nature, the expression of God's Will. Hence, obedience 
 to the divine law, from love to the Lawgiver, is true virtue. 
 
 1 See Tayler Lewis, Bibl. Ethics, in Bibl. Eepos., July, 1848. 
 
232 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 of man's personal relations to the law of god. 
 
 The subject of consideration now is, Man as a Moral Agent in 
 a more specific sense. It is, The Seat of Moral Character in Man: 
 The Will and Affections in relation to Moral Character. 
 
 We have considered, What Man is in the constituents of his 
 being; what is the Law for which he was made; what it enjoins 
 and has respect to, viz., True Holiness, which we have attempted 
 to describe and define: we come now to consider more particu- 
 larly, The Relations of Man to this Law. 
 
 Wecome here upon the more difficult subjects of Anthropology, 
 where there has been the greatest diversity of opinion and stress 
 of conflict; and also, as a result of the conflict and to increase 
 the difficulty, the greatest diversity in the usage of terms. We 
 have no doubt that there has been, in point of fact, a greater 
 unity of -real belief, among the orthodox, than would appear from 
 their conflicts. In respect to the facts of the case, there has been 
 more harmony than in the use of terms by which the facts are 
 expressed, or in the definitions by which the respective ideas are 
 set forth. The differences are, in many instances, rather philo- 
 sophical than in matters of real, substantial faith. Although 
 the tendencies of one set of opinions may be to fundamentally 
 false views, yet those who have advocated the opinions may not 
 have been aware of these tendencies. 
 
 Remarks as to the Terms used and' their Definitions. 
 1. The terms used in respect to moral government, moral 
 quality, human action, the law of God, the administration of 
 justice under that law, have in common parlance, in theology 
 and in philosophy, a two-fold sense: an abstract and a concrete, 
 a general and a specific, an objective and subjective, (some 
 say, a proper and an improper) sense. We prefer the phraseology, 
 general or specific. The general (equivalent to the abstract) sense 
 is applied in all our judgments about laws, institutions, govern 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 233 
 
 ments, etc., according as these are conformed or not conformed 
 to moral ends or objects, and according as they tend to produce 
 or not to produce a state of things which is truly moral. The 
 standard of judgment here is their conformity or non-conformity 
 to a moral standard viewed in relation to its ends or objects. 
 It is not like a mathematical judgment: it is essentially a judg- 
 ment as to conformity to a moral idea and a moral end. It 
 differs from an aesthetic judgment, which has respect simply 
 to beauty. On the other hand, the specific application is simply 
 to moral beings, considered as the subjects of the divine govern- 
 ment, as under the divine law, considered as conformed or not 
 conformed to that law, as their state corresponds or does not 
 correspond with the law, as their state has or has not a tendency 
 to bring about, or a harmony with, the ends of that law. 
 
 2. Again: all the terms used in respect to these concrete 
 cases, to this subjective conformity or non-conformity to the 
 law, have at least a three-fold sense and application, in common 
 life, in philosophy, and in theology, which causes the perplex- 
 ity and difficulty about them, to wit: (a.) These moral terms are 
 applied to a disposition, tendency, or bias, which precedes and 
 is the ground of the personal activity, preference, or choice. 
 Some call this a state of the will, and some a state of the affec- 
 tions, (b.) They are sometimes applied to a spontaneous outgo- 
 ing of the soul in respect to moral objects or ends. This again 
 is called by some an act of the will ; by others, an act or action 
 of the affections. 1 (c.) They are applied to a deliberate choice, 
 where the soul elects between two objects, knowing the two, 
 judging between the two, and deciding " with full power to the 
 contrary choice." This, in the great question of choice between 
 God and an inferior good, is called by some, prime preference, 
 generic choice, governing purpose. (Moral terms are also ap- 
 plied to specific choices, and to external acts even ; but, when 
 so applied, it is only, with any tolerable thinker, as the external 
 act and specific choice are supposed to contain and express an 
 antecedent, already existing, general preference or affection of 
 the soul.) Those who hold to the legitimate use of moral terms 
 1 Edwards considers this to be of the wilL 
 
234 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 in the first sense, of course hold to their proper use in the other 
 two senses. A man may hold to their use in the second sense, 
 and deny their proper use in the first, at the same time holding 
 to their proper use in the third ; while others may say that their 
 only proper use is in the third sense. E. g., Take the word Sin. 
 Some say that it can be applied to a state which antedates all 
 conscious acts; that there may be a state, properly sinful, of 
 human nature, before even the spontaneous movement of the 
 soul: a sinful state by nature; and they say that the word sin 
 can be properly applied to that state before any action; and 
 that we can apply moral judgments to that state, and can say 
 that it exposes the being having it to the divine, displeasure 
 and renders liable to eternal condemnation. Others say, No; 
 we cannot use the word in reference to any previous state, but 
 it can be applied to the first activity of the soul, although this 
 may be purely spontaneous, although it be an affection or feel- 
 ing, although there be no deliberate choice, and this first act 
 is a moral act, and is a sinful act. (The old doctrine of Hop- 
 kinsianism and of Emmons.) Then, another class say that the 
 word sin is improperly used in reference to a native condition or 
 spontaneous preference. It can be used only where there is de- 
 liberate choice, only where the person has before him the two 
 ways, and has full and equal power to decide for the one or the 
 other, and only to such acts can any moral judgment be applied 
 by God or man ; and if we apply a moral term to any other cases, 
 we do it by metaphor and not strictly. The word Holiness has 
 similar variations of meaning. Some say holiness may have 
 been concreated in Adam; others say, No; there can only be 
 holiness in activity, either spontaneous or voluntary (this is the 
 old Hopkinsian view) ; others again say, No ; we can only speak 
 of holiness where there has been choice on the part of an indi- 
 vidual. Of course those who hold this position cannot consist- 
 ently hold that holiness is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The same 
 three-fold usage, in respect to moral ends, obtains with the terms, 
 "disposition," "desire," "affection," "feelings," propensity, prin- 
 ciple, consent of heart; but the discussions have turned most 
 upon the question as to how man's state before the law of God 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 235 
 
 is to be viewed. The law commands love to God; supreme non- 
 conformity in a moral being is such a state as implies preference 
 for something else, some inferior good, and of course the absence 
 of love to God. Now this state is one of non-conformity to the 
 demands of the law, and taken as a state — of destitution of love 
 to God and preference of something else — it is viewed: (1) as 
 connatural, (2) as spontaneous preference, (3) as deliberate choice, 
 or as the result of such choice. 
 
 3. The definitions of the terms relating to moral states differ 
 according to the ultimate points of view taken in making the 
 definition. There are three such current points of view, vary- 
 ing according to what is assumed as the terminus ad quern. 
 
 (a.) Some say that the point to be had in view, or the last 
 standard to which all definitions are to be referred, is Personal 
 Choice, an act of the Will. Nothing is moral, moral predicates 
 can strictly be applied to nothing which is not an act of choice, 
 viz., of choice to conform or not to conform to the requisitions of 
 the law. All that is moral, religious, holy, is essentially an act 
 of the will, nothing else can be such. The ultimate respect here 
 is to the causality of the state or act: it is caused by choice; its 
 being so makes it moral. Whatever — in disposition, tendency, 
 or state — does not come strictly under personal choice, belongs 
 simply to the physical sphere. In this view the two ideas, moral 
 and choice, are inseparable; it is choice — of a moral end — and 
 that alone which confers moral quality. That in this sphere 
 the moral is found, nobody denies: the question is, is this its 
 exclusive sphere ? 1 
 
 (b.) Another point of view is, not the choice as the cause of 
 the state, but the desert of the choice; the desert of an act under 
 the law; its worthiness of punishment under the law. For ex- 
 ample, sin is defined as that which is worthy of everlasting 
 
 1 Assuming the point that aU that is moral is in personal choice, and framing 
 all our definitions accordingly,— clean work can be made. There will be strictly 
 no original sin, only a physical state ; atonement will be not under the law, strictly ; 
 justification will be pardon simply, with a figurative representation attached; 
 God's moral government will be simply over individual, personal agents, — will 
 have no other direct sphere; all else will be sovereignty merely: according to laws 
 and for ends not distinctively moral. 
 
236 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 punishment, and if you find anything of moral abnormity which 
 is not worthy of everlasting punishment, it is not sin. This 
 conclusion of course comes because you have limited yourself 
 in the definition. 
 
 (c.) The ultimate point of view or standard is taken, not in 
 the sphere of personal choice, or in the desert simply, but from 
 the internal nature of the state of a moral being, considered as 
 conformed or not conformed to the ends of the law. This is 
 Edwards's maxim or canon: "The virtue or vice of a disposition 
 of the mind lies not in its cause but in its nature." Holiness is 
 holiness, not because I produce it by an act of the will, nor 
 because God produces it, but because of its inherent excellency, 
 and its tending to produce the highest good of the universe. 
 Sin is sin, not because it exists through my volition, but from its 
 own nature, and because it runs counter to, and if left to itself 
 would annihilate, God's moral government. Therefore we should 
 define sin and holiness, not by what produces them nor by what 
 they produce, but by their own nature. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE SEAT OF MORAL CHARACTER. THE WILL. 
 
 General Proposition. What is moral in man, as a subject of 
 the divine government, is not found in his external actions, pri- 
 marily or strictly; nor in his instinctive desires and affections, 
 considered in and by themselves in respect to their appropriate 
 objects. Nor is it found in his intellectual activities exercised 
 on their appropriate objects. Nor, again, is it found ultimately 
 in the executive acts of the will considered as the choice of means 
 to an ultimate end; nor in any single native disposition, which 
 does not imply a respect to a single ultimate end. 
 
 All of these acts and dispositions may be exercised in a moral 
 way; they may become moral; perhaps they are never exercised 
 when there is not a moral aim included in them, determining 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 237 
 
 them: but they are not by themselves moral; the seat of the 
 moral quality is not in them. What is moral in man is only to 
 be found in the affections or the will, or both, considered as con- 
 formed or not, to some one ultimate end, to the highest good. 1 
 (E. g., I give: there is the external act, — not moral; the percep- 
 tion of the object, an intellectual act, — not moral; — from natural 
 sympathy, as impulse, — not moral; — from choice to give, the act 
 being determined upon from this impulse, — not the ultimate 
 seat of what is moral in the proceeding; — from love to man, — if 
 it stops there, no true virtue ; — from a love to man which is ex- 
 pressive of a general love to all good and ultimately to the best 
 good, — this is "true virtue.") 
 
 In moral states and actions giving rise to moral character, the 
 soul, the man, or the person, is considered as having relation to 
 moral ends, to the ultimate moral end. All the soul is brought 
 under view; what is moral resides in that which is and must be 
 a central, definite tendency or act; all of the power of the soul 
 must be in it, converging upon it. What is moral in man is, in 
 short, the condition of a moral being, in relation to the great end 
 of his being, as conformed or not conformed thereto; and that 
 condition must be in the affections or the will, one or both. 
 
 § 1. Of the Idea of the WiU. 
 
 The position of the Will, psychologically, in man is this: 
 There is (a.) human nature, (b.) with its state, its general 
 condition, its generic biases and tendencies: or, (1) the en- 
 dowments of reason, feeling, conscience, and affections, (2) in a 
 certain connatural condition, i e., having a constituted relation 
 to certain ends (the "tendencies" of man), (3) centering in a 
 distinct individuality or person — an ego. This person, now, with 
 these general constituents, which he has in common with the race, 
 considered as having capacity of choice, or as putting forth power 
 especially in the form of choice or choosing, is what we mean by 
 Will, in its most general sense. ("The conative powers," Ham- 
 
 1 Query. Is the seat of moral quality in the affections ? 
 
 Is the seat of personal responsibility in the will ? 
 In Immanent preference there is union of will and affections. 
 
238 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ilton.) The man choosing, the person choosing — is Will. The 
 will is not anything distinct from the person; 1 it is the person 
 himself, considered as acting or as having the power of acting 
 in a certain way, the way of choosing. The distinctive and only 
 function of the will is choice. Where there is choice there is 
 will, and where there is not there is no will. Choice is a simple 
 ultimate fact, like feeling. We cannot resolve it into anything 
 simpler: if we could, the will would not be a distinct faculty. It 
 implies always some object or end, and of course the object or 
 end chosen is always distinct from objects or ends not chosen. 
 There is always in that sense an alternative. It does not seem 
 to be necessary that there should be conscious knowledge of any 
 other object. The choice may be distinct and perfect with only 
 one object in view. We need not have two objects in view in 
 order to choose God, but might choose Him directly from a per- 
 ception of his glorious character. But the choice of God implies 
 that we do not choose an inferior object, and, as far as the power 
 of choice goes, it implies that there was something else which 
 might have been chosen, or, at least, it implies the capacity for 
 choosing something else. 
 
 § 2. Of the Power of the Will. 
 
 Man, acting as will, choosing, is an efficient cause; among 
 second causes in this world, the chief: a dependent, but real, 
 cause. There is a proper causal efficiency in every act of choice. 2 
 Power is an attribute of cause: it is the distinctive attribute of 
 an efficient cause : it is that in the cause which gives it its effi- 
 ciency in respect to any particular end or object. A man wills 
 to move his foot, and there is an efficiency in the choice. The 
 power of the will is not distinct from the power of the man : but 
 
 1 It is a great misconception, that the will only acts after the other powers: it 
 acts in and through them, putting forth energy. The mistake here arises from 
 the arrangement of topics in popular text-books. See Archb. Manning, Contemp. 
 Rev., Jan. 1871, on the Relation of Will to Thought, in fixing the mind, atten- 
 tion, etc. He conducts the argument against materialists. 
 
 ' Pres. Day, in discussing this point, which is urged by some Arminiane 
 against Edwards, says, that nobody denies that a man is the author of his own 
 acts. Edwards, the same. There is an article in the Princeton Review, Jan. 1857, 
 showing that the highest Oalvinistic view is not inconsistent with this position. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 239 
 
 through the will the power of the man is exerted, so far as 
 power is involved in choice. Power is seen in all conscious 
 energy • attention, fixed feeling, as well as in choice. 
 
 § 3. Of Self-determination. 
 
 This is one of the points in debate between Calvinists and 
 Arminians. Edwards discusses it fully, and with particular refer- 
 ence to the Arminian definitions of his day. 
 
 I. — The self-determining power of the will. By this is meant, 
 a power in the will to determine itself by its own act alone. 
 This is a fiction, an absurdity, involving the contradiction that 
 it at the same time is and is not. Edwards argues against it, 
 showing that if it could be at all, it must be in one of two ways, 
 both of which involve absurdities: (1) By choosing to choose, 
 which implies always a choice before a choice, and requires the 
 assumption of an infinite series of choices. All that the will does 
 is, to choose. The will does not " determine itself by its own 
 acts' , : it simply determines; or (2) The will is determined by 
 nothing at all, and here we have an equal absurdity: pure 
 "liberty of contingence," without motives. 1 
 
 II. — There is another sense in which the phrase, Self-deter- 
 mining Power or Self-determination is used (with which the 
 first is often confounded), in which it expresses a real fact, viz., 
 that the self or person, through and by his choice, is determined, 
 is in a state of determination, to some ultimate end. This is ex- 
 pressive of a fact about the mind which is always true and real. 
 So far as consciousness extends, we know ourselves to be in such 
 a state, in such a moral condition of self-determination (not 
 speaking now of how it came to be, or of how it may come to be, 
 but simply of the fact). There are two forms of such ultimate 
 self-determination of a moral being, viz., for evil or for good, 
 
 2 [See Prof. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in the volume, Faith and 
 Philosophy, p. 369. " We do not contest that motives are the occasional and final, 
 and not the efficient causes of volition." 
 
 Also, p. 368. "Freedom (as defined by some modern Arminians) consists in 
 .... the 'unrestricted power' of 'putting forth a different volition.' And this 
 power is not merely the 'natural ability' conceded by the school of Edwards, but 
 .... a creative energy. Arminianism, .... is coming to represent the will's 
 action as that of pure causality in the form of a creative act."] 
 
240 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 for God or against God, for the ends of the law or against those 
 ends. These are our highest moral states. 
 
 § 4. Modes of the WiWs Action. 
 
 Not to mention others, there are two chief modes: (1) Its 
 agency in the form of single volitions or executive acts; (2) In 
 the form of ultimate preference, or immanent preference, which 
 is internal. 
 
 I. — Of the will as the power of single volitions. In all such 
 cases, the character of the act is this: the will as cause, by its 
 act, which is a single volition, produces an effect outside of, and 
 distinct from, itself. These are executive acts of the will, in 
 relation to something to be done or not done, in relation to one 
 external object or end rather than another; and such executive 
 acts are the common sphere of freedom — of all civil and religious 
 liberty; the term freedom is usually employed with reference to 
 such acts. The liberty of the will here consists in the power of 
 doing as one pleases, the power of carrying out unhindered what 
 one purposes, in freedom from coaction and from necessity. 
 Deliberate and imperative acts terminate in some action, which 
 we believe to be in our power. This is not the best part of free- 
 dom, or true spiritual freedom, but it is the full sense of free- 
 dom in regard to the executive acts of the will. 1 It appears to 
 be a defect in Edwards's treatise that he makes this the whole 
 of freedom. Aristotle (Eth. iii. 2, translated here by Archb. 
 Manning) says: "Deliberate preference appears to be voluntary, 
 but not to be the same as the voluntary, for voluntary is more 
 extensive; because both children and other beings share the vol- 
 untary, but not deliberate choice." 
 
 II. — The will's action as Immanent Preference. Miiller: "As 
 I am, so I will, and as I will, so I am." This is the immanent 
 preference, the wholly internal mode of the will's action : in which 
 direct respect is not had to objects, to doing or not doing, but 
 to some ultimate moral end or object, which is preferred. Im- 
 
 1 See Dr. Bichards's Lectures on the Will, for the distinction between execu- 
 tive and immanent,— upon the whole the best statement. Dr. Woods, in his Lec- 
 tures, uses will almost wholly in the sense of executive volition, and puts into 
 the sphere of the affections the immanent preference. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 241 
 
 man en t preference is the choice of some ultimate supreme moral 
 end. In it the choice and the motive blend. We cannot say 
 here that the motive is the cause and the choice is the effect, 
 nor that the choice is the cause and the state of preference is 
 the effect, — the one to the exclusion of the other. They are con- 
 current and inseparable: the motive becomes the choice. E. g. } 
 God is before the soul, and the soul chooses God. The motive 
 is what is in God: the soul by its immanent preference chooses 
 God, and that motive becomes its controlling principle in and by 
 the choice. This is the sphere of love, of moral love, the love 
 of some moral end. This action of the will, in distinction from 
 executive acts, has not reference to anything external. It does 
 not produce an effect distinct from itself. The choice becomes 
 the state of the will. Such a preference is free in its very na 
 ture, free because it is a choice, free as every one who has it 
 knows. This is the sphere of the spontaneity of the will in its 
 moral acts. The choice here becomes a permanent state of the 
 will. In an executive act, the choice passes away with the end 
 gained. In immanent preference, the choice stays, and is the 
 character: it is the highest freedom, internal freedom. The 
 will, as bare power of choice, cannot beget such a state. 1 
 
 Some further differences between the immanent preference 
 and executive acts are: In the immanent preference are virtue 
 and vice: it is their seat; in the executive acts, virtue and vice 
 are found only derivatively; the immanent preference is spon- 
 taneous, the executive acts are deliberate; the immanent pref- 
 erence includes the affections, the executive acts express the 
 affections, are prompted by them. 
 
 There is both freedom to choose and freedom in choice. 
 The former is the liberum arbitrium. The latter is the real free- 
 dom, voluntas. " We must not merely will to be good, we must 
 have a good will" (Muller). The analysis is ultimate: Imma- 
 nent preference is love: in the love both the motive and the 
 choice are included. Immanent preference is a state of the 
 will: the will can be and is in a state of permanent choice. 
 1 See later, under the head of Motives, 
 
242 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 5. Of the Liberty or Freedom of the WiU. 
 
 I. — The General Notion of Freedom. Freedom is an attribute 
 of the will, essential to it. External freedom is the liberty to 
 do as one pleases; internal or true freedom is found in choice, 
 and in nothing else or less. This freedom is simple, ultimate, 
 and indefinable. It implies freedom to an act, freedom from 
 an act (need not do it), freedom in an act, — exemption and 
 choice, both. "Wherever there is choice there is freedom. Choice 
 cannot be forced, though the external compliance may be. Free- 
 dom in choice is the fact: this is much neglected by Arminians, in 
 their statements as to the will. This freedom is not found in 
 power to the contrary, though we do not say that freedom does 
 not involve this in some important sense, does not imply some 
 residuary power. Freedom is not found in anything we do not 
 do, in any power we do not exert, but simply in the power we 
 do exert in choosing. Those who define freedom as power to the 
 contrary fall into the singular anomaly of implying that freedom 
 is in a power that is never exerted; and of course nobody can 
 know anything about it. As soon as it is exerted, it ceases to 
 be; it is then the power which is exercised. 
 
 II. — This freedom [in reference to what is external, objective, 
 outside, 1 '] implies always the possibility of election between dif- 
 ferent objects, deliberate choice. We do not mean to say that 
 this is all upon which the election depends, but as far as the 
 will goes the freedom is the possibility of a different election. 
 Of this we suppose men are distinctly conscious, and it is only 
 on this supposition that there is the possibility of a change in 
 our moral character, of the regeneration of the soul. Eeal free- 
 dom is attained on the basis of this formal freedom. 
 
 III. — This freedom does not imply what has been called the 
 liberty of indifference, in its technical sense : by which is meant 
 that the will, in order to be free, must be balanced entirely be- 
 tween the two opposite poles of choice, with an absence of any 
 previous inclination. It has been said that the will is like the 
 pivot in the scale-beam, perfectly even between the two scales. 
 But will is different from the pivot, because it is the will which 
 
 1 [Iu some statements by the author the clause in brackets is omitted.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 243 
 
 moves. The will goes down the scale. Some 1 assert that there 
 is no such influence in existence as that of motives, and when 
 we ask " What then determines the will? " the reply is "Noth- 
 ing at all. It begins to be and it comes to pass, and that is all 
 we can say about it." Against such liberty of indifference Ed- 
 wards argues, showing that on such a supposition all free action 
 is taken at random and becomes hap-hazard, 2 and that an act 
 could have no possible moral value if we were indifferent. 
 
 IV. — Nor does liberty involve the contingency of volitions. 
 An event is said to be contingent, (1) when it depends as an 
 effect upon its cause, so that if the cause be absent, the effect 
 will not exist, but in this sense nobody would deny the contin- 
 gency of a volition; (2) in reference to our knowledge and igno- 
 rance, but this sense is not in the discussion ; (3) when there is 
 a real uncertainty in the nature of the case, and this is the sense 
 in which the contingency of volitions is affirmed by Arminians' 
 and denied by Calvinists. We have already considered this 
 under Divine Providence. 
 
 V. — The distinction between formal and real freedom (Mul- 
 ler on Sin, ii. ch. 1). Formal freedom is that freedom which one 
 has as endued with the capacity of bare choice, with the possi- 
 bility of electing between two or more objects. This is given in 
 the abstract nature, in the very idea, of choice, or of the will, as 
 power of choice. It is inalienable from the will ; it cannot be 
 destroyed without destroying will. Power of choice implies that 
 so far as the iviU goes,* in the presence of two or more objects, 
 there is the possibility of selecting the one or the other. Real 
 freedom is found in the choice itself; in any given choice my free- 
 dom is actualized; in the choice, the thing chosen, I am free. 
 
 But in respect to this thei'e is another fact to be noticed, viz., 
 that not in all moral choices is there real conscious freedom. It 
 
 1 As Bledsoe. 
 
 3 ["Choice for reasons lies between caprice and fatalism; it is in contrast with 
 chance, rather than cognate with necessity." Faith and Philosophy, 378. J 
 
 3 Some endeavor to make a fourth meaning for "contingent," viz., that which 
 may take place without a cause. "When the West. Conf. saya, "the contingency 
 of second causes is not thereby taken away," etc., contingency is used in the sec< 
 ond sense in the above enumeration, as is shown by the proof-text cited. 
 
 4 It may not be able to go so far as to procure or attain the objects. 
 
244 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is a part of inward experience that we feel ourselves ready free 
 (" free indeed," John viii. 36), only in loving and serving God, 
 only in love. So, gifted men are " free " in the productions of 
 genius, in acting out the inmost self; still higher is the free- 
 dom of true love. The choice of sin is a bondage. This is un- 
 doubtedly the Scriptural position. If there is no higher freedom 
 than formal, all our religious states, our highest moral states, 
 are excluded from its sphere, and all character. 
 
 Yet, formal freedom always remains. It is not exhausted 
 in, or restricted to, any one preference, any immanent prefer- 
 ence, though the immanent preference may be so strong that 
 we never think of the formal freedom. 
 
 VI. — Of the limits of human freedom. Man's freedom is not 
 absolute: the freedom of none but God can be. As man is de- 
 pendent, his freedom must be consistent with dependence, it must 
 be the freedom of a dependent being. As man is under laws, 
 his freedom must be limited by, and consistent with, that fact. 
 It must be consistent with the divine government and purposes, 
 with the certainty of election, regeneration, perseverance, through 
 the influence of the Holy Spirit, with the Divine Sovereignty in 
 all its modes. We are free from all physical necessity in the 
 mode of the mind's action; but we are not free from the regular 
 laws of the mind's action : we are free in these. We are not free 
 from moral causes and effects, though we may be free in them. 
 
 Another statement of the limits of the power of the will. 
 
 It is not infinite nor absolute. It is not disconnected from 
 the other powers of the mind, nor from God, nor from nature. 
 The will acts in, with, and by all these. More particularly — 
 
 1. It cannot act without a motive. 
 
 2. It cannot choose two contrary or incompatible things at 
 once. 
 
 3. In one sense of "power" — possibility, it may choose either; 
 in another sense — energy, it may be that it may not. 
 
 4. It must always act within the laws of the world, of the 
 body, etc. 
 
 5. It cannot directly control or change the emotions. 
 
 6. Its freedom must be consistent with the prevalence of law, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 245 
 
 and with the certainty of moral acts, and also with the sover- 
 eignty and prescience of God. 
 
 7. Its freedom must be consistent with the fact of its always 
 choosing that which in the view of the mind is most desirable 
 
 § 6. Of theWiU and Motives. 
 
 The position that the will acts according to motives is no 
 other than the position that man acts according to laws ; if man 
 does, the will does: for the will is the instrument of all human 
 activity. On this general basis is maintained the proposition — 
 That the will in its choice, or — better-* — the man in his choice ia 
 effectually influenced by motives. 
 
 I. — The sources of proof of this proposition. 
 
 1 . II' it were not true, there could be no possibility of human 
 government. Human laws, with their rewards and penalties, 
 imply it. It is implied in the whole action and working of hu- 
 man society. 
 
 2. We judge others upon this basis. We ask, why did a 
 man do so and so ? We always state some ground, reason, or 
 motive for the action, and when we want men to take a certain 
 course, we ply them with motives, and knowing what motives 
 influence men, we can sometimes predict what they will do. 
 
 3. The appeals of the gospel presuppose that the mind is 
 effectually influenced by motives. 
 
 4. It is evident from the doctrines of the divine providence 
 and foreknowledge. These imply a plan and regular order of 
 God which is carried on by human agents, which could not be 
 unless they acted according to some general order in the divine 
 plan. Foreknowledge is inconc eiva ble without certainty in th e 
 mode of human action. 
 
 5. We not only believe this of others, but believe it of our- 
 selves. When we want to give a reason for any action, we go 
 back to the motive, the inducement; and we are conscious that 
 we have thus ever been influenced by motives. We have the 
 direct witness of cons ciousness. . 
 
 6. We cannot conceive it to be otherwise. We cannot con- 
 ceive of an action without a motive. Such an action is a mere 
 
246 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 abstraction. It is an action without an object, bare action, bare 
 purpose, and nothing purposed; for if there is anything purposed, 
 that is the motive. 
 
 From these considerations we reach the general conclusion 
 that the will is influenced by motives. 1 The question still re- 
 mains, how far? 
 
 II. What is a Motive ? Motives a re divided ge n erally into 
 two classes, internal and external: all the objects wJTnout, which 
 nave relation to us, which we can know or desire as a good, and 
 all the responses within. Ultimately, however, all motives are 
 internal. They are motives only as they influence some internal 
 susceptibility. Edwards: " Motiv e i s the whole of that which 
 caus es, excites, inci tes the mind, to volition ." Hamilton: "Mo- 
 tive abstractly considered, is no other than end or final cause, 
 that for which, or in view of which, the mind acts. But a 
 motive in its concrete reality is nothing apart from the mind 
 itself. It is a mental tendency." A motive thus in relation 
 
 to this discussion — to bring it down to the point for which we 
 wish to use the word — may be defined: The final state of the 
 man in the indivisible instant before choice, having relation to 
 that choice. 
 
 III. Are motives in this sense the efficient cause of volition? 
 Edwards in discussing this point says: "An appearing most 
 agreeable to the mind or pleasing to the mind and the mind's 
 preferring and choosing seem hardly to be distinct." In our 
 \ view, this is the least satisfactory passage in Edwards's treatise 
 on the Will. 2 In this view the motive would be the efficient and 
 not merely the occasional cause of volition. The real relation 
 of the two is, that the motive js the proper occasional , and the 
 
 1 "If to break loose from the conduct of reason be liberty, true liberty, mad- 
 men and fools are the only freemen; but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be 
 mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already." Locke, Essay, ii. 
 21, 50. Hamilton: "The determination by motive cannot, to our understanding, 
 escape from necessitation. " "How the will can possibly be free, must remain to 
 us, under the present limitation of our faculties, wholly inconceivable." "How 
 moral liberty is possible in man or God, we are utterly unable speculatively to 
 understand." Descartes also thought that a solution of this difficulty lies beyond 
 the reach of the human faculty. 
 
 2 Compare Pres. Day's exposition, pp. 25, 77. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 247 
 
 will is the efficient,, _caua e. If the motive is made the efficient 
 cause, it seems impossible to save freedom. 
 
 IV. Do motives determine the will ? To say that motives de- 
 termine the will, is a different thing from saying that the motive 
 is the efficient cause of the mind's choices. Edwards puts the 
 question in this shape. By "determination of the will" he 
 means, "determining the will to be one way rather than another," 
 " causing that the act of choice should be thus and not other- 
 wise, 3 ' " determining to one act among various acts." Deter- 
 mination, as here used, is direction and not efficiency. Motive 
 is not that which causes the choice, but is that which determines 
 the direction of the choice . The general reason why the mind 
 determines, is that it is an agent: why the mind chooses, is that it 
 has the power of choice; but the reason why the mind chooses 
 one way rather than another, this thing rather than that, is 
 different. We must distinguish here, the efficient, the final, and 
 the occasional cause. The agent, the mind choosing, is the effi - 
 cient ; the final cause is the end or object in view of the mind : 
 and the occasional cause perhaps may be said to be, that objec t 
 as it influences the desires, etc., before the act of choice. The 
 algebraic expression here would be: Will + Motive = Volition or 
 Choice. 
 
 V. — In this sense of the determination of the will, is it a law 
 of the will's action, that it always acts according to the stronger 
 or strongest motive ? By law here is meant, general fact, fact 
 of induction, not an a priori necessity. The question here is 
 one of fact, and not of mere theory. What is the strongest mo- 
 tive? It is not that which is intrinsically the strongest, be- 
 cause then virtue would always be the strongest mot ive: but 
 that was neve r meant in this discussion. 1 But the stronges t 
 motive is that which appears most desirable to the mind at the 
 instant preceding actual cnoi ce. iNot tnat wnicn is the strong-- 
 est objectively, in itself, but m itself in relation to us and our 
 state. Again: the assertion is not that the strongest motive 
 must carry the will, but simply, that it does. It is not an asser- 
 
 > Yet this objection has been often made, e. g., by Dr. Bushnell in Nature and 
 The Supernatural. 
 
248 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 tion as to what it is possible for the will to do, or whether the 
 will as an abstract possibility might make a different choice, 
 but as to what the will actually does. 
 Arguments for this position. 
 
 1. Consciousness . We cannot recall any actual choice which 
 we did not make according to the strongest immediate induce- 
 ment. 
 
 2. In the rational view of choice , in conceiving it as a rational 
 act, this law is necessar y. Leibnitz: "To suppose a man acting 
 from the weaker and against the stronger motive, is to suppose 
 a man acting against himself." 
 
 3. If this be not so, then, so far as we can conceive, there 
 is no certainty of action , there is no conceivable mode of the 
 divine government. We do not say that God could not gov- 
 ern without this, but that we cannot see how He could 
 govern rational beings, unless through this general law. This 
 is the main argument of Edwards. God cannot foreknow 
 what is not certain. Arminianism says : We do not know 
 how God knows. True; but if an event in space and time 
 is wholly fortuitous, by the very mode of statement the divine 
 knowledge is excluded. 
 
 Objections to the position: 
 
 1. Such is the variety of motives that we cannot compare 
 them, so as to say, one is stronger than another. There are mo- 
 tives, e. g., drawn from the s-phere of obligation; and others, from 
 the sphere of desire: and these we cannot compare, as there is 
 no common term. We cannot say that the one is stronger, for it 
 is in a different sphere. The reply is in the consideration that 
 all motives ass ume the form, the gen eral form , of desire : L e., 
 all motives affect the sensibilities and therefore they may be 
 compared. This objection L is merely an evasion of the state- 
 ment that, as matter of fact, the will is as the strongest motive. 
 
 2. The will is not under the law of cause and effect, is out o f 
 space and time. The reply is that neither part of this objection 
 is true: the latter is most certainly not true. To our view, the 
 former is inconceivable. Every event or change of existence im- 
 
 1 It is much dwelt upon by TTpham and others. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 249 
 
 plies a cause: that is an ultimate, rational truth. The will is not 
 under the law of cause and effect, in the sense of physical cause 
 and effect: no one pretends this; but the law of cause and effect 
 must run through the will, because the law covers every change 
 of existence in time: it declares that every such change must have 
 a cause. This is not saying what the cause is, not that it is all in 
 the motives or all elsewhere. That all the cause of its action is 
 not outside of itself, is true. 
 
 3. The position is said to involve reasoning in a circle: the 
 motive is called the strongest, because it prevails: and it pre- 
 vails, because it is the strongest. The reply is, that the objec- 
 tion does not lie against the argument from consciousness, where 
 we put the force of the proof. Consciousness tells us that the 
 motive prevails because it is the strongest. We find out, to be 
 sure, that it prevails by prevailing. But what we find out by 
 consciousness is, that it is the strongest. 
 
 4. It is said that the position is fatalism. We have already 
 considered this. In fatalism, all actions are (a.) under a blind 
 necessity, (b.) are determined by a natural necessity, and (c.) ul- 
 timately by external necessity. Here (a.) actions are determined 
 by a rational law: choice-from-motives; (&.) they occur under a 
 moral certainty; (c.) they have an internal cause. That is fatal- 
 ism in which the action is determined without choice, but here 
 iu every case, it is by and through choice. Until it can be 
 shown that man in choosing from the strongest motives does 
 not choose, the objection from fatalism will not hold. 
 
 5. Instances are alleged against the position . E. g., Adam 
 and his fall; the Angels and their lapse. Here, it is said, the 
 strongesFmouve was not the inducement. It is to be said in 
 reply, that certainly it was not the strongest intrinsically, but 
 Adam must have been less wise than he is reputed, if he sinned 
 for what seemed to him less desirable than something else. It 
 makes, however, no difference whether we deal with this objec- 
 tion in one way or another: because first sins cannot be explained 
 on any theory. 
 
 This is true about the strongest motive: we cannot decide 
 beforehand which is the strongest motive always in view of the 
 
^50 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 mind. A slight circumstance may decide, as far as the mind goes, 
 and it is often in a state where it is nearly equally balanced, 
 and where the mind is not fixed on the strongest motive. 1 The 
 strongest motive is the indivisible state before the choice. There 
 is often not time to think of this: but we see that it was so on 
 looking back. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 
 
 The whole question here has reference to the application of 
 the law of cause and effect to the Will. Ought it to be applied, 
 and if so, in what way ? 2 
 
 I. — Of the terms used. Natural Necessity means the con- 
 nection between events as found in the ordinary course of na- 
 ture, t he con nection of cause and effect in ph ysical events . Here 
 there is in the phenomena invariable antecedence and con- 
 sequence, and our minds compel us to conclude that there is 
 in connection with the antecedent & power adequate to produce 
 the consequent. 
 
 Moral Necessity is the real and certain connection between 
 moral acts and their causes. This phrase Edwards uses, through- 
 out his treatise, in the sense of certainty, and says that the 
 word necessity is applied to it improperly. 
 
 Metaphysical or Philosophical Necessity is used in the same 
 s ense as Moral. Edwards (Inq., Pt. i. § 3): "It is nothing dif- 
 ferent from certainty: I speak not now of the certainty of 
 
 1 Whether intrinsically strongest, or what proves strongest actually. 
 
 2 The chief passages in the Westminster Confession, bearing on this subject: 
 Chap HE., in reference to the Divine fore ordination, " nor ia violence done to the 
 will of the creature"; Chap. IX., "God hath endued the will of man with thai 
 natural liberty that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature 
 determined, to good or evil." The confession does not directly decide the ques- 
 tion. It is not strictly a scheme of philosophical necessity. It can be interpreted 
 in consistency with philosophical necessity, and perhaps better in consistency 
 with that than with any other scheme. It is decidedly opposed to pure self 
 determination of the will. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 251 
 
 knowledge, but the certainty there is in things themselves 
 which is the foundation of the certainty of the knowledge of 
 them: or that wherein lies the ground of the infallibility of 
 the proposition which affirms them." 1 
 
 The term necessity is rather an unfortunate one to use, but, 
 being used, we ought to know in what sense it is employed. 
 
 II. — Statements of the Points in the Case . Schelling says, 
 " That freedom which men try to find in empirical actions is as 
 little real freedom, as that truth which they find in empirical 
 knowledge is real truth. There is no freedom which is no t 
 consistent with necessity." Schleiermacher: " Freedom is per - 
 sonality itself. To ascribe sin to freedom means to reckon to 
 each one his own acts.'' Hegel says: The connection between 
 necessity and freedom is trie most difficult subject in the whole 
 of speculatio n. He gives the following: (1) Essence and prop- 
 erties go togethe r. In the properties we find the essence, and in 
 the essence the properties. (2) Substances act on each othe r. 
 There is a reciprocal action. Each substance is a cause in rela- 
 tion to the other and an effect. Each is active and passive in 
 this reciprocal action. (3) So in respect to necessity and free- 
 dom. In the case of man the substance determines as well as 
 is determined. T here is the activity of the free will and also 
 tha t whic h _determines the_activity — the motive object or end 
 in view of which the mind acts. The necessity consists in the 
 fact that that something, in view of which the mind acts, is 
 something given, and not originated, and that these data are as 
 necessary as the power of choice itself. (4) The net result o f 
 the whole is, that the causal relation does not exclude freedom. 
 when it is considered as reciprocal action. There may be a 
 causal relation and freedom also. What is given, or the influences 
 around us, constitute motives; then the mind, thus acted upon 
 reacts; thus solicited, chooses; but it cannot choose beyond the 
 metes and bounds of the influences brought to bear upon it, i. f., 
 it cannot originate the substance of its choice, but only the fact 
 of its choice. It can give the formula of the choice, but it cannot 
 
 1 The younger Edwards puts it still more sharply, and leaves still less place 
 for a definite act of the will besides the motive. 
 
252 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 fill up the formula. Hamilton : Both "are incomprehensible, as be- 
 } T ond the limits of legitimate thought. Though freedom cannot be 
 speculati vely proved, so neither can it be sp eculatively disproved ; 
 while we" may claim for it as a fact of real actuality, though of 
 inconceivable possibility, the testimony "of consciousness, that we 
 are morally free as we are morally accountable for our actions." 
 III. — Conclusion upon the Question. Volition is an effect . 
 As an effect, it is under the law of cause and effect. As an 
 effect, it must of course be produced by its appropriate cause 
 or causes. This cause or these causes are what immediately 
 precedes the volition. That which immediately precedes the 
 volition is, choosing in view of motives, and the volition is the 
 result. That is, the choosing and the m otives constitute the 
 cause, 1 and the volition as the resultant^ consti tu tes the effect . 
 The motives are the occasional and final cause, the agent — : the 
 man choosing — is the efficient cause. In this statement the law 
 of cause and effect, as applied to the will, is allowed and the free- 
 dom of the will is saved. Thus in the will there may be a union 
 of "necessity" (of moral necessity, of certainty) and freedom. 
 
 [What would be ChaptebXI., OfNatubal Ability and Mobal Inability, will 
 be considered under the head of Ohbistian Hamabtology.] 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OP THE PRIMEVAL MORAL STATE OF MAN. 3 
 
 The main points in man's primitive state are given in the 
 answer to Question 10 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: 
 " God created man, male and female, after his own image, 
 
 1 Edwards does not appear to make this distinction, but Pres. Day thinks 
 that he did not intend to question that man is the proper author of his own acts, 
 and that his statement here was merely analytical. 
 
 2 References: Dwight; Miiller on Sin, ii. 482; Thomasius, i. 178; Hofmann, 
 Schriftbeweis, i. 241; Hutterus Redivivus, 194; Martensen, 169; Ebrard, i. 250; 
 Bretschn eider, i.; B. Tyler's Lectures, i., ii. ; Ed. "Wm. Grinfield, Scriptural 
 Inquiry into the Image and Likeness of God in Man, Lond., 1837; Bishop Bull's 
 Discourse V. : State of Man before the Fall. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 25i 
 
 in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion ove: 
 the creatures." Man was created after the other works, as th< 
 crown of the creation; all the rest centering in him, and he hav 
 ing dominion. First Adam and then Eve, "male and female ere 
 ated He them :" the beginning and center of unity and source ol 
 the whole race was in this one pair. Society began, mairiag* 
 was ordained. The law of God was written on man's heart (Rom 
 ii. 15). He was placed in the garden with liberty to eat of tht 
 fruit of the trees; the creatures were put under his dominion. 
 
 § 1. The Scriptures teach that there was a primitive State oj 
 Innocence. 
 
 1. They do this by describing sin as the consequence of 
 temptation. Therefore man was in a state of innocence before 
 Gen. iii. is the proof. Also, Eom. v. 12, 15. The expression, 
 "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. ii. 17), implies 
 man's innocence at the beginning. He could be in this state 
 only by not knowing evil, and his temptation was to gain this 
 knowledge. All the description of the Paradisiacal state con 
 firms this view, implying a state of entire purity. Sensualitj 
 was not known (Gen. ii. 25, cf. iii. 7). 
 
 2. The Scriptures also make more positive statements Gen, 
 i. 31, All was "very good," after man's creation; Eccles. vii. 29, 
 the expression <fc upright" is general. 
 
 This state is not that of children, still less that of primitive 
 savagery: it is a state of innocence, of moral purity, of simple 
 childlike communion with God. In order to their having com- 
 munion with God in a personal way, there must have been a 
 ripe condition of the powers. Gen. i. 28, 29 ; ii. 16 ; ii. 19, 20, 
 presuppose more than childhood. Dominion, knowledge of the 
 trees of the garden, power to name the beasts, confirm what is 
 implied in the great fact of communion with God as to the com- 
 parative ripeness of man's powers in the primitive state. 
 
 § 2. This original State is described in general Terms as tht 
 Divine Image in Man. 
 Gen. i. 26; v. i. 
 The divine image in man d esignates both something that is 
 
254 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 permanent in human nature and also a state of that natura 
 which was lost by the fall. 
 
 (a.) What is permanent is referred to in Gen. v. 1, 3, where 
 Adam's likeness to God and Seth's to Adam are brought together, 
 so that we naturally conclude that the divine im age remains ; 
 Gen. ix. 6; 1 Cor. xi. 7; James hi. 9. 
 
 These passages imply that the image remains in man, but 
 tne question still might arise, whether they even then refer merely 
 to man's intellectual and moral powers in the abstract, or to 
 what these may become, what it is possible for man still to be, 
 his latent possibilities. 
 
 (b.) What was lost of the original image may be inferred from 
 Eph. iv. 24, where the idea of the " image of God " is expressed 
 by righteousness and holiness; Col. iii. 10, where the image is 
 represented as divine, spiritual knowledge, the term "renewed" 
 implying restoration to a former state. (It is noticeable also 
 that the former state, "after the image," is expressed in lang- 
 uage which might be a reminiscence of the Septuagint version 
 of Gen. i. 27.) These passages show that to the full moral im- 
 age of God^jdKbi^ 01 ! 8 ^^ 8 an d hol ine ss belong . 
 
 How now shall we conceive of the divine image under the 
 two points of view of completeness and defectiveness in man ? 
 That which is permanent is found in man's personality, his 
 being a spirit, his having intelligence and moral capacities, his 
 having a moral destination and likewise, to some extent, domin- 
 ion over the creatures. In distinction from this, the part lost 
 was the holy state of these faculties. They were originally not 
 merely potentialities, but were in a state of righteousness and 
 true holiness. 
 
 To enforce this distinction still further, there is also a meta- 
 physical proof. Man could not be made in the moral image of 
 God, unless he had been made a spirit like God. Man could not 
 be holy as God is holy, unless he had intelligence, feeling, and 
 will, as far as a creature can have them like God. His capacity 
 of hpinn 1$q Qjxl r^maina , although the actual m oral likeness 
 was lost by the fall . 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 255 
 
 § 3. Yet this primitive State was not one of confirmed Holiness 
 but mutable. 
 
 The primitive state is to be conceived as one of comparatively 
 unconscious goodness, rather than of goodness which has been 
 developed and come to full self-possession in conflict with temp- 
 tation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to be 
 the test, the means of bringing man to a full consciousnessdt' 
 the difference between good and evil. It might be to him a 
 source of blessing, by confirming him in holiness. Full, con- 
 scious freedom in good might be the result. We may conceive 
 in Adam, of a spontaneous direction of his powers to God, in 
 love, and yet one not tried, not so high a state as that in which 
 they would be after temptation, if he had successfully resisted 
 it. Besides what we gather from the Scriptures on this subject, 
 ("Blessed is the man that endureth temptation or trial," etc.,) 
 there is an argument of rational probability, from what we might 
 suppose God would do : if He created, He would create what in its 
 measure is perfect, the best. As far as we can conceive of this 
 primitive state in which Adam must have been, it was either: 
 (1) one of total indifference to good and evil, with no knowl- 
 edge or susceptibilities in respect to either, with capacities 
 only; or (2) one of positive inclination to, sense, gradually to 
 come to reason; or (3) one of positive inclination to holiness or 
 good. The latter is the more rational, as well as the Scriptural, 
 position. 
 
 § 4. On the different Interpretations oftJw "Divine Image." 
 The Greek Fathers put the divine imag e 1 in man's general 
 endowments, in reason and freedom, which had an original per- 
 fection, were active in communion with God, with the Logos, 
 constituting the vision of God, a life in God. 
 
 The Western Church, especially as is seen in Augustine, con- 
 strue the primitive condition as one of righteousness, dwelling 
 upon the state of man's will. Man was not made with merely 
 the possibility of a good will (Pelagianism), but with the ac- 
 
 1 They often make a distinction between "image" (the capacities) and " like- 
 ness " (the moral resemblance), which cannot be exegetically carried out. 
 
256 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 tuality. t But though created with a good will, yet not complete, 
 as e ven guguET tin& allo ws. — not in the highest state. He says the 
 image both is lost and remains: there is possibility of restoration 
 only because something of the divine image is still left: he 
 finds in ma n an image of the Trinity: memory, intelligence, will. 
 
 Through the Middle Ages , there was a constant tendency to 
 make the d ivin e image in ma n to consist merely in the rational^ 
 powers , and any positive goodness which was in him at creation 
 to be, not a state of his faculties, but a supernatural endowment: 
 the former being often viewed as the " image," the latter as the 
 '* similitude " of God. It may be said that this has become the 
 Roman Catholic theory of grace: Righteousness is something 
 superadded to the faculties of man, rather than a state of the 
 faculties. 
 
 In the Reformation, this original state of righteousness was 
 one of the sharp points of contest. The Roman C atholic view, 
 as fully developed at that time, was: In man at birth there are 
 s imply para naturalia without any specific tendency . The ten- 
 dency to good, which Adam had, did not belong to human na- 
 ture, but was a supernatural endowment, and was lost by the 
 fall, and this grace is that which is restored by the church in 
 baptism. The ProtestantB__ took the view that the integrity of 
 human nature, in a moral sense, was lost by the fall, and they 
 ran perhaps into the other extreme of making the whole image 
 to be moral likeness, not emphasizing the permanent likeness 
 which man has as a personal spirit, etc. The main point in 
 the view was, that man had not merely capacities for goodness. 
 but that these capacities w ere in a holy state, having a holy 
 bias or te ndency in them . The Protestant Reformers generally 
 would say, that holiness was concreated in man, that there was 
 an original righteousness. Almost all the Reformed symbols, 
 Lutheran and Calvinist, have this view. The divine image is 
 the whole of the primitive perfections, original justice (or right- 
 eousness), the special ethical relations in man: they differ as the 
 whole and the part: the whole man is the image, his moral ten- 
 dencies (wisdom, love, etc.,) the justice. The Roman Catholio 
 objected, that on this view the loss of the divine image was the 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 257 
 
 loss of religious and moral endowments: the reply was, Not so, 
 — only of the original state or tendency of the endowments. 
 But this state or tendency was primeval. This is a much pro- 
 founder view than the Roman Catholic, which makes grace exter- 
 nal The wisdom and holiness, however, were not a perfect state 
 of the soul, but rather predisposition, tendency, etc. The state 
 was one of probation, with consummation over against it. 
 
 This is the general position and usage of language in our 
 American theology. Edward s (sometimes said to have held that 
 all holiness is in exercises) says: u Human nature must be cre - 
 ated with some dispositions otherwise it nrm Rt h^ without 
 
 any such thing as inclination or will;" "the notion of Adam's 
 being created without a principle of holiness in his heart is in 
 consistent with the account in Genesis." By principle he means, 
 "a foundation laid in nature, either old or new, for any partic- 
 ular kind or manner of exercises of the soul, or a natural habit." 
 Bellamy: "As there was a holy principle in Adam before the 
 first holy act, so there is in the regenerate." Smalley*: "Adam 
 was created with an active principle of holiness." Hopkins 2 : 
 "He was made in the moral image of God, with a good discern 
 ing taste or disposition, a rectitude of mind and will, or heart, 
 by which he was perfectly conformed to the rule of his duty, or 
 the moral law." D wight (i. 346): " Adam possessed a sanctified 
 or virtuous mind at his creation;'' (i. 347): " The affections of 
 his soul at his creation were virtuous;" (i. 394): "Man was cre- 
 ated holy without any mixture of sinful affections." 3 
 
 Rationalists view the primitive state as one of savagery , out 
 of which man emerges by gradual cultivation; Pantheists say: 
 Spirit begins in nature, and is g radually developed to r eason 
 and goo dness : Pelagian s argue for a total moral indifference a s 
 the primitive state; Arminians find the image of God mainly in 
 man's immortality and dominion over the brutes : The General 
 
 i Works, ii. 400. " Works, i. 196. 
 
 3 Emmons says: "It is agreeable to the nature of virtue or holiness to be 
 created." Moral exercises "are virtuous or vicious in their own nature, without 
 the least regard to the cause by which they are produced." But he does not 
 recognize in man any power of action before or in distinction from action. 
 His position was overthrown by Br. N. W. Taylor. 
 
258 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 The image consisted in the entire spiritual 
 capacities anippowers of man, which were in a state of positiv e 
 proclivity to holiness and to divine wisdom (or the enlighten- 
 ment from God), which state was to undergo a trial in order to 
 become confirmed. While doubtless there has been much ex- 
 aggeration as to Adam, the substantial truth, nevertheless, is 
 expressed in this last position. To the questions, Could holiness 
 be created ? Can it be created in rae ? perhaps the only answer 
 that need be given is that man may be so created — and new-cre- 
 ated — that the spontaneous bent of his soul is towards a holy 
 end. Sartorius speaks of the original righteousness in relation 
 to man's whole being, as his health in relation to the body. As 
 health is not different from the bodily powers, and is not a spe- 
 cial substance, but only a normal condition of the members, from 
 which the well-being of the body results: so grace is not a spe- 
 cial substance in man, but the normal, unperverted nature of 
 the whole faculties of man in all his impulses, in which is also 
 contained an untried blessedness. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE DESTINATION OF MAN IF HE HAD CONTINUED IN OBEDIENCE. THE 
 COVENANT OF LIFE OR OF WORKS. 
 
 By the Covenant of Life is meant God's destination of man 
 t i "life," if he had not fallen, which is declared or intimated in 
 t .e prohibition with the penalty, Gen. ii. 17. The term " cove- 
 rs ant " is not understood here as implying an actual transaction, 
 ii compact distinctly made and entered into by two parties. 
 What is meant to be set forth by the term is, that if man had 
 continued in his state of original rectitude, if he had stood the 
 trial, the test, he would have had what is here called life % as the 
 reward of his obedience. Or, in other words, if man had con' 
 tinued in his original state, had not transgressed the law, he 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 259 
 
 would have reached the great end of his being; his destina- 
 tion under the divine government would have been complete. 
 What that destination was, may be gathered partly from what 
 we know about the nature and capacities of man, but chiefly by 
 reasoning back from what we know to be accomplished by the 
 redemption through Christ, to wit: 
 
 1. He would have come to a state of confirmed holiness and 
 perfect wisdom and communion with God. 
 
 2. It is possible that the natural body, in the course of its de- 
 velopment and growth, would have come to be what is called 
 in Scripture the spiritual body of the resurrection, — although 
 this is only a speculation from the analogy of what is and is to 
 be done in Christ and his people (his own resurrection and as- 
 cension and 1 Thess. iv. 17). How this would have been attained 
 without death, we of course do not know, — perhaps as the but- 
 terfly from the chrysalis. There is nothing in the so-called laws 
 of nature to forbid the possibility. The resurrection proves that 
 death, as we now know it, is an unnatural state. 1 
 
 3. With Adam would have begun a kingdom of God on 
 earth, and the laws of marriage and increase of population 
 would have been laws of increase to that kingdom on earth. 
 
 4. To man would have been given dominion over the world, 
 subduing it unto himself in the service of God. Man was made 
 to be prophet, priest, and king here on earth. He lost his right 
 by the Fall, and Christ came to be prophet, priest, and king, in 
 order that, standing in man's stead, He might restore what was 
 lost in the fall. 
 
 1 As to the " tree of life," whether through its inherent virtue or "by divine 
 grace, the immortality was to be conferred, is not decided. Augustine calls it 
 a " sacrament." Hengstenberg (Rev. ii. 35) takes it to be a tree of life, " not as 
 conferring, but symbolizing, life." 
 
PART IV. 
 
 CHRISTIAN HAMAKTOLOGY. THE DOCTRINE 
 RESPECTING SIN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FALL HISTORICALLY VIEWED. 1 
 
 Westminster Shorter Catechism, answer to Ques. 13: "Our 
 first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell 
 from the estate wherein they were created by sinning against 
 God." 
 
 § 1. The Temptation: is it Historical ? 
 
 Position: The New Testament treats it as such, and draws 
 doctrinal consequences from its facts: Rom. v. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 
 22; 1 Tim. ii. 13. 
 
 It is said that Moses could not have known it as a history: 
 but he might have known it by tradition, and what he did not 
 know in that way, he might have obtained by revelation. 
 
 It is also said that the form of the narrative is allegorical. 
 The form is rather natural, in conformity with man's condition. 
 It is to be interpreted, we suppose, in the way of a real temp- 
 tation, though we would concede that Satan may be here repre- 
 sented in the form of a serpent, so that "serpent" here means, 
 is the name of, Satan, and that name being taken as the equiv- 
 alent of Satan, the narrative goes under that similitude; and 
 that is all the symbolical element which need be supposed to be 
 in the narrative; the curse being not literally a curse on the 
 serpent, but on Satan, and being represented as a curse on the 
 serpent. It is not necessary to assert that Satan took the form 
 
 1 Edwards on Original Sin; Hopkins, i. 8, a very able development; Julius 
 Miiller, The Christian Doctrine of Sin, the great work of our century. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 261 
 
 of a serpent, though we think it is probable that the Tempter 
 did appear in some form. 1 
 
 To those in the condition of our first parents, God would not 
 probably have given an abstract law, but a specific command. 
 It was the easiest of commands, apparently; and as the obedi- 
 ence was easier, the ill-desert of failure was much greater. In 
 short, if the race were to be tried again, the circumstances of 
 man's condition as here given are as natural 2 as any other sup- 
 posable circumstances, and as favorable to man as any could be. 
 
 So that the temptation is suitable to the condition of our first 
 parents. If that condition was an historical fact, there is no 
 reason why the temptation should not have been. The objec- 
 tion that it is unreasonable to suppose that so much could be 
 made dependent on beings in such a state, is to be met by point- 
 ing out that the state was as good a one as we can suppose. 
 
 Furthermore, the connection in this world between sin and 
 evil spirits, as the Scriptures describe it, is historical fact, and 
 hence the beginning of this connection — in the temptation — is 
 to be viewed as historical. The conflict between Christ and 
 Satan was real, the conflict is real between Christ's kingdom 
 and Satan's. Christ met and conquered Satan and all his host 
 for us, in a struggle of which we have only a partial revelation 
 and a dim conception. It would appear that the power of Satan 
 in the world reached its culminating point in the time of Christ, 
 and has been less ever since. If Christ's t emptation by Satan 
 and victory over him we re histori cal events, there seems to be 
 no ground for s upposing that the first temptation was not an 
 historical event 
 
 § 2. The Features of the Temptation. 
 
 1. Man, as we have said, was in circumstances which were 
 highly favorable to him. In the profuse bounty of the earth 
 only one point was forbidden. The prohibition made a real, 
 
 1 The Serpent of Eden from the Point of View of Advanced Science, by Rev. 
 John Duns, D.D. (Free Church of Scotland), in Bib. Sac, Jan. '64. De Bow's 
 Eev., '60: " The original tempter a black man, — the gardener." 
 
 2 Everything is in concrete form, with depths of truth, such as myths alone 
 could never have. 
 
262 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 practical test, but one where obedience was easy. Dwight (i. 
 398): "No metaphysical or philosophical discussion was de- 
 manded or admitted." The reward of obedience was to be 
 great, and the penalty of disobedience great, more so than they 
 then knew, but it was sufficiently known: they knew that a 
 divine command was given, with a penalty attached. 
 
 2. The temptation was subtle, corresponding to the charac- 
 ter of the tempter and suitable to that of the woman. The 
 first question excited curiosity, the next assertion aroused pride. 
 The heart of the temptation is in the desire to know, and not in 
 the sensual gratification. Knowledge, independence, likeness 
 to the higher beings, were to be gained. First there is. sug- 
 gested the doubt of God, whether He could be trusted, then 
 there is the appeal to pride, the spirit of " affecting deity," 
 which had perhaps first prevailed with the tempter himself, 1 
 then a solicitation through the senses. 
 
 3. As to the Possibility of the Fall. What is here in ques- 
 tion is, the psychological possibility of the fall. Man was made 
 mutable. In his primitive state, he loved God spontaneously. 
 Would he love Him in spite of temptation ? He knew good in 
 direct feeling: he knew his relation, and God's rightful com- 
 mand. The temptation does not give the necessity of sinning, 
 but it gives the necessity of deciding between good and evil, 
 God and the world. The state of the case, as far as we can en 
 ter into Adam's experience, is this: Before the command there 
 was the state of love without the thought of the opposite: a 
 knowledge of good only, a yet unconscious goodness: there was 
 also the knowledge that the eating of the fruit was against the 
 divine command. The temptation aroused pride: the yielding 
 to that was the evil. Taking the fruit was not the sin essen- 
 tially, the yielding to pride was the sin. The change was there 
 The change was not in the choice as an executive act, nor in the 
 result of that act — the eating, but in the choice of supreme love 
 to the world and self, rather than supreme devotion to God. It 
 was au immanent preference of the world, — not a love of the 
 world following upon the choice, but a love of the world which 
 
 is the choice itself. 
 
 1 Tim. iii. 6. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 263 
 
 We cannot account for Adams fall, psychologically. 
 
 In saying this we mean: It is inexplicable by anything out- 
 side of itself. We must receive the fact as ultimate, and rest 
 there. Of course we do not mean that it was not in accordance 
 with the laws of moral agency, — that it was a violation of those 
 laws: but only that we do not see the mode, that we cannot con- 
 struct it for ourselves in a rational way. It differs from all other 
 similar cases of ultimate preference which toe know; 1 viz., the' sin- 
 ner's immanent preference of the world, where we know there is 
 an antecedent ground in the bias to sin, and the Christian's regen- 
 eration, or immanent preference of God, where we know there is 
 an influence from without, the working of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Of course we do not mean that we may not make supposi- 
 tions enough to account for it, both in respect to man's soul and 
 to God's agency. But then the difficulty is only transferred to 
 the suppositions, and remains just as great; and it is better 
 to leave it with the simple fact — as ultimate in the case — of an 
 immanent preference, free, accountable. 
 
 Examples of such suppositions: (a.) That the Divine Spirit 
 left Adam before his choice. This would seemingly account 
 for the fall: but then the difficulty arises, as to the taking away 
 of the Spirit, which we naturally suppose to be the consequence, 
 and not the antecedent occasion of the fall; and if the Spirit re- 
 mained in Adam, how could he have fallen? (fe.) God arranged 
 events so that Adam would certainly fall, yet he fell by his 
 own free choice. 2 But this too drives us to choice, as ultimate, 
 (c.) Natural susceptibility explains the fall: Adam desired the 
 food, had his ambition aroused, and, under such influences, chose 
 
 1 The phrase in the Catechism, "being left to the freedom of their own will," 
 is not intended as a psychological explanation of the fall. It guards against the 
 Supralapsarian view, and also against Necessitarian views. The Supralapsarian 
 says that God decreed the fall after He had decreed election: the Sublapsarian 
 says (in the form preferred by us), that God decreed to permit the fall, and then, 
 in view of his purpose of providing Redemption for the race, elected out of fallen 
 men a people to his praise. 
 
 2 Dr. Emmons has a theory which is certainly not lacking in boldness, the 
 theory of direct divine efficiency. "Satan placed certain motives before hia 
 [Adam's] mind, which, by a divine energy, took hold of his heart and led him 
 into sin." "His first sin was a free, voluntary exercise, produced by a divine 
 operation in the view of motives." Works, iv. 356. 
 
264 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 freely, which was undoubtedly the case. But here is no explana- 
 tion. This is merely a statement of the circumstances, without 
 accounting for them. This choice was made while Adam was 
 still loving God: how then could it have been made? (d.) He 
 chose because he had the power of contrary choice. This also is 
 leaving it an anomalous case, the only case extant, and impossible 
 at that, (e.) If it be said, Pride rose to a certain height, and under 
 its influence man chose to eat, then the pride is the immanent pref- 
 erence itself: if it be said, the pride was merely natural, had no 
 character, and got a character by choice added to it, then pride 
 was chosen, — then that choice of pride was an immanent pref- 
 erence or not: if it was not, we have not reached any character: 
 if it was, we have still an immanent preference to account for. 
 
 We must leave the whole question with the immanent pref- 
 erence standing forth as the ultimate fact in the case, which is 
 not to be constructed philosophically, as far as the processes of 
 Adam's soul are concerned : we must regard that immanent pref- 
 erence as both a choice and an affection, not an affection the 
 result of a choice, not a choice which is the consequence of an 
 affection, but both together. 1 As to the divine agency in the 
 case, that simply runs into the general question of the permis- 
 sion of sin, which we have already considered. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE PENALTY. THE DEATH THREATENED FOR DISOBEDIENCE. 
 
 In consequence of the transgression, sentence was pronounced 
 on all who were concerned in it: on the tempter, the woman, 
 and the man. Gen. iii. 14-19. Of the specific term, the death 
 threatened, nothing is directly said, except "dust thou art and 
 unto dust shalt thou return:" but the evils which were included 
 in the original threat are brought out in the more special assign- 
 
 1 And this is the ultimate analysis of the psychology of the case in every 
 change of moral character. Here is the mystery of the wiU's action, and this 
 is the sphere of moral quality, moral accountability. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 265 
 
 ments: to the woman, pain and sorrow in childbirth and subjec- 
 tion to man: to man, a condition of toil and sorrow closing in 
 literal death. (The literal sentence on Satan is in accordance 
 with his assumed character: enmity between thee and the 
 woman, thy seed and her seed: you seem to have a triumph, 
 it shall prove a discomfiture.) It would seem that we must 
 give such an interpretation to the whole sentence as shall show 
 that it began to be" at once fulfilled. 
 
 Death is usually distributed into a three-fold form: as death 
 spiritual, temporal, and eternal; and almost all expositors agree 
 that u death " here includes these three points. It is questioned, 
 however, whether some of these are not to be considered rather 
 the consequence than the strict penalty of sin. The difficulties 
 are as to temporal and spiritual death; there is no question that 
 eternal death is included in the sentence. The objection to includ- 
 ing spiritual death is that it "makes sin to be the punishment 
 of sin:" to including temporal death, that it brings a penalty 
 upon infants, e. g., as members of the race simply, and so assigns 
 a "penalty" for something which is not strict personal transgres- 
 sion ; also, that Christ has taken away all that really belonged 
 to the original curse, but temporal death is certainly not taken 
 away; and again, on grounds of physiology and modern science 
 in which death is viewed as a purely natural event. On the 
 other hand, if we say eternal death is all that was included, we 
 are driven to say that there is then no instance of the proper 
 penalty of the law being inflicted in this life, and hence there 
 is no moral government which employs punishment, here. The 
 general, the almost universal, interpretation includes all the 
 three forms: the exceptions are very few. 
 
 § 1. As to Spiritual Death. 
 
 By this is meant, the loss of communion with God, the with- 
 drawal of the Divine Spirit, the supremacy of worldly and self- 
 ish affections — and consequent "moral inability" — with whatever 
 misery comes in connection with these. By spiritual death is 
 not meant merely sin in its formal mode of being, as an act or 
 affection, but sin as involving separation from God, the with- 
 
266 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 drawal of the divine life, and as involving in its very nature 
 misery, wretchedness, pain. Now undoubtedly sin cannot be 
 punished by sin, but a part of its judicial consequences may be 
 in bringing with itself, from its very nature, loss of the divine 
 communion, wretchedness and pain. Every passion as it is in- 
 dulged, not only becomes more sinful, but adds to our estrange- 
 ment and misery. It is of the nature of all sinful desires that 
 as they increase in intensity and pass beyond certain limits, as 
 they are sure to do, they give pain, not pleasure. In this sense, 
 the sentence of the law begins at once to be fulfilled. We may 
 say, this is only a consequence of sin, but it is a just and an 
 ordained consequence of sin, and only of sin, under God's moral 
 government; and so it is a part of the punishment of sin, unless 
 Ave arbitrarily limit the term, punishment. All usage is in favor 
 of this view. All in the soul which we mean by spiritual death: 
 the cutting off from the source of life and from our true happi- 
 ness which is in holiness, and the power of worldly appetites: 
 these all are a proper part of the penalty. So too with remorse, 
 which comes in the soul as a part of the spiritual death, and 
 which may be said to be the most significant part of the penalty. 
 If the pangs the sinner feels do not belong to his punishment, 
 what does belong to it ? 
 
 This spiritual death is referred to in the Scriptures, in a 
 variety of strong and vivid representations. Kom. i. 24, where 
 a deeper death in sin is the judicial consequence of certain forms 
 and degrees of transgression ; Rom. vii., where we suppose spir- 
 itual death is described most fully; Kom. viii. 6; 2 Cor. ii. 16, 
 " a savour of [or from] death '' (spiritual) " unto death " (eternal). 
 Eph. ii. 1, where the " death " is distinct from the " trespasses 
 and sins"; Col. ii. 13; 1 John iii. 14 
 
 § 2. Temporal Death. 
 
 The question as to the connection of temporal death with sin 
 brings us into the comparatively uninvestigated region of the 
 relation of the moral to the physical, the relations of sin and re- 
 demption to our bodily constitution : of sin to death, and of redemp- 
 tion to a resurrection. The fact that the resurrection is a part of 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 267 
 
 redemption leads by inference to the position that the death of 
 the body is a part of the evil or penalty which was the conse- 
 quence of sin, and from which redemption is to deliver us. There 
 is a spiritualizing of sin and holiness which abstracts them from 
 all relations with the body, from all our natural ties, giving over 
 the whole of physics to natural science. But the Scriptures do 
 undoubtedly maintain a connection between sin and the death 
 of the body, on the one hand, and between redemption and the 
 glorified body, on the other hand. A mechanical view of nature, 
 and a merely abstract spiritualizing and reasoning about sin and 
 redemption, have led to attempts to explain punishment and re- 
 demption as if they had nothing, or little, to do with our physi- 
 cal constitution. But sin infects and affects the whole man, 
 soul and body: redemption is also equally extensive, — for the 
 whole man, soul and body. Thus only is the full idea of the 
 Christian redemption realized. Through sin came disorder in 
 the fleshly appetites (Gen. iii. 7); the law of death is at work 
 in our members; and in this respect, also, the sentence began 
 to be fulfilled at once. As to the connection of sin with death: 
 Death is undoubtedly natural for the brutes, who have no proper 
 spiritual being, each animal being only one example of his 
 species, with no spiritual powers and aspirations, no personal 
 being. It is not so with man. Death is not natural for man, 
 considering him from his spiritual side: it is unnatural: immor- 
 tality is his proper attribute. The separation of soul and body, 
 as we know it, see it, with its pain, sorrow, suffering, is an 
 anomaly, a mystery, an enigma in our being. We would not 
 say that if there were no sin there would be no separation of 
 soul and body; but it is certainly supposable that the transi- 
 tion to another state might be made, without anything of that 
 which now goes to make up the terribleness of death. Then the 
 power of death over the sinner is another illustration. It is clad 
 in tearfulness to him, and it is natural to consider it as a con- 
 sequence of transgression. Man's body, of course, in a natural 
 sense could have died like that of other animals, but we cannot 
 say that it must have died. 1 The position that temporal death 
 
 1 The "hypothetical" (posse non mora) and "absolute" (non posse mori) 
 immunity from death : distinction asserted against Pelagianism. 
 
268 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is a penal consequence of sin is confirmed by the fact that re- 
 demption contemplates the resurrection, the restoration of the 
 body. This fact serves to make it seem stranger still, more un- 
 natural, that there should be a separation of the two at the end 
 of our present being: why separated, if to be reunited ? It seems 
 — as Muller among others forcibly says — that the only expla- 
 nation of this anomaly is to be found in the fact revealed in 
 Scripture, that the death of the body is a direct consequence 
 and punishment of transgression. This makes the whole Script- 
 ural representation harmonious. Temporal death is not the whole 
 or a chief part of the penalty of transgression, but still it is a 
 part of the same, under certain aspects and in certain relations. 
 The passages of Scripture * which show that this temporal 
 death is included in the sentence, and is a consequence and the 
 evidence of the existence of sin, are such as follow : Gen. iii. 22 ; 
 Job iv. 18, 19; xiv. 1-4; Bom. v. 12 seq.; vi. 23; 1 Cor. xv. 21 
 seq. ; xv. 56; 2 Cor. v. 2, 4, of. Rom. vii. 24; Eph. ii. 4; Col. i. 22; 
 ii. 11; 2 Tim. i. 10. There is an implied reference to this death 
 also (though not exclusively to this) in John viii. 21; xi. 26. 
 In fact, while in the Scriptures " death " is applied to the pen- 
 alty in the future life, yet, in its primitive meaning, it refers to 
 the dissolution of the body. For Christians this death loses its 
 terrors: it is to be conquered finally by the resurrection to life: 
 yet such is the state and power of sin in them, so deeply has 
 it penetrated their whole nature, that they must still die. The 
 evil is changed into a means of blessing through the grace that 
 is in Christ. Redemption extends not only to pardon, not only 
 to deliverance from the second death and the sense of condem- 
 nation, but it also embraces and renovates our whole being. It 
 is to be noted that this death is not merely the separation of soul 
 and body, but includes pain and suffering. It therefore includes 
 whatever may hasten and aggravate the temporal death. 
 
 Objections; 
 
 1. Is all evil and suffering in this life penalty for sin? — 
 
 Most unquestionably not. But that does not touch the real 
 
 ' See Stier, Words of the Lord Jesus, on John viii. 44. Krabbe on Sin; 
 "There is no passage in Scripture in which there is not a lingering allusion t© 
 temporal death." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 269 
 
 point, which is, that there are evils, sufferings, pains, here, 
 which under God's moral government are punishments for sin. 
 Those are such, and only those, which in Scripture or providence, 
 are seen to be connected with sin, naturally or by infliction. 
 And still further, many pains and evils are to one a punishment, 
 because he is a sinner, and are to another not a punishment, 
 because he is a servant of God. Thus, to the Christian, what 
 was punishment is now chastening: his regeneration transforms 
 it into a remedial influence. So far as sin is in him, too, evil 
 and suffering have the nature of punishment ; they are just in- 
 flictions for his remaining sin : but still, triumphant over them 
 is the power of grace, making them a final blessing. Death 
 itself comes, and still with solemn terrors, for sin still dwells 
 within him, yet also deprived of its sting, for grace triumphs. 
 
 2. The exclusive penalty of the law is eternal death, and 
 consequently temporal death is no part of the penalty. The 
 motives for this objection are two. One is, its bearing on 
 original sin. One argument for the reality of a morally evil 
 condition of every human being at birth, which condition in 
 an important sense is properly to be called sinful, is the death 
 of the body: if men die, they are under the curse of the law: 
 if human beings, as such, are liable to death from the begin- 
 ning of their existence, then they are also under a judgment for 
 sin or sinfulness. In order to get rid of this conclusion, it is 
 denied that temporal death is any part of the penalty for sin. 
 It is held to be consequence, but not penalty : for, in that case, 
 infants suffering penalty would have a part in the sin which 
 cleaves to the human race. The other motive for the objection 
 is that Christ has removed the penalty of transgression, has 
 taken away the curse: and if so, nothing which the Christian 
 endures here can be a part of the penalty. Otherwise Christ 
 did not endure it all. Moreover, it is involved in the objec- 
 tion, that nothing which sinners endure here can be part of 
 the strict penalty for transgression. The position is then, that 
 the penalty is eternal death and only that, and that there is 
 no proper penalty inflicted in this life for the violation of the 
 divine law. 
 
270 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Remarhs or, Objection 2. 
 
 (a.) What is meant here by eternal death, it is somewha* 
 difficult to state. It appears to mean: those sufferings which 
 come after the final judgment in execution of the sentence. 
 This involves, of course, the position that at the last judgment 
 will occur the first pronouncing and infliction of the real sen- 
 tence upon the sinner. Whereas, we understand that every 
 sinner is now under the sentence. The great object of the judg- 
 ment is not the pronouncing of the sentence, but the winding 
 up of the present course of things, and the vindication of the 
 divine government. 
 
 (b.) We must note the logical consequences of the position 
 that the only penalty of transgression is eternal death. Then 
 there is no instance of penalty or punishment in this life. All 
 that we suffer here comes under the physical point of view, — it 
 is the appointment of the divine sovereignty, — it comes in 
 the way of consequence: it does not come under the moral 
 point of view, as a just coupling of evil with sin. To carry 
 out the principle, it must be said that remorse is no part of 
 the penalty of sin (while it must be admitted that remorse is 
 a principal part of eternal death); and if remorse is no part of 
 the penalty of sin, what is it, and what can be penalty ? More- 
 over, under the strict application of this principle, we could not 
 find an instance of God's moral government in the whole history 
 of mankind: and how is this to be reconciled with God's punish- 
 ments of men and nations, his threatenings and fulfilment of 
 calamities, his visiting of iniquities, etc., which are broadcast 
 through the Scriptures and in providence? We shall be com- 
 pelled to say that there are two kinds of divine punishment: 
 one for the violation of the law, and another for — something else. 
 The position that the whole penalty of sin is future, if strictly 
 enforced, would drive God's moral government out of the earth 
 for the sake of getting rid of the proof of original sin. 1 
 
 1 Or, is a distinction to be made between God's moral and his legal govern- 
 ment? If any concede, however, that these other evils are just "con- 
 sequences " of transgression under the divine moral government, concede them 
 to be moral and not merely physical — not merely cases of arbitrary sovereignty 
 and yet prefer to reserve the word " penalty" for the second, for eternal, deaths 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 271 
 
 (c.) The difficulty on the ground of the Atonement, as hav- 
 ing taken away the whole condemnation of the law, is removed 
 by considering that the object of the atonement is not simply to 
 give pardon and relief from future condemnation, but to deliver 
 from all the just consequences of sin — though these may not all 
 be taken away at once, on account of the evil state remaining. 
 The atonement not only provides for pardon, but for the re- 
 moval of spiritual death, and also for taking away the chief evils 
 of temporal death. It gives us, moreover, the resurrection of the 
 body. This is a part of the effect of Christ's work. The diffi- 
 culty has come from restricting the atonement to a mere pro- 
 vision for pardon. 
 
 (d.) The physical philosophers resolve all punishment into 
 the natural consequences of transgression: some theologians 
 resolve it all into an external infliction, granting that all the 
 momentous "consequences" are out of the sphere of punish- 
 ment. The true view combines both. The continuation of a sys- 
 tem in which evils were ordained to be peculiarly '"consequent" 
 upon sin, and in which by divine providence such consequences 
 are often specially combined and directed in token of the divine 
 displeasure at transgressions, is a visitation of penalties in the 
 proper sense upon offences. 1 
 
 § 3. Eternal Death. 
 
 The third form of the death is eternal. This is also called, 
 the second death, Eev. ii. 11; xx. 6; xxi. 8. The term, second 
 death, is significant: it refers back to a death already existing; 
 it is an intensified form of what already exists; it is not the only 
 penalty, but is the intense and final form of the penalty. By 
 eternal death we understand this : a continuation through eter- 
 nity of the evils, sufferings, and pains which are the just con- 
 sequence of sin. These are heightened, of course, by all the 
 
 so as to have a more precise usage for this definite case (which certainly has its 
 special circumstances) : though they depart from the general usage, yet it may he 
 allowed, perhaps, as a mere definition for one class of cases. 
 
 1 Denial of this gives a great advantage to such writers as Combe. Temporal 
 evils are made to be only natural consequences of sin, and the moral is banished 
 lrom the present sphere. 
 
272 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 circumstances of the then existing state, by the fact that mercy 
 is lost, that hope is forever excluded, etc. This second death or 
 final condemnation is represented in Scripture as inflicted only 
 in view of actual transgression, and it is there represented not 
 only as punishment for violation of law, but also for the rejec- 
 tion of the gospel. There is a liability or exposedness to it in 
 all the members of Adam's race, but the reality of it comes 
 only to those who are condemned on account of their works. 
 James i. 15; Rom. vi. 21; vii. 6; 1 John v. 16. 
 
 As has been already said, we cannot regard this eternal, or sec- 
 ond, death as a new, an absolutely distinct form of the penalty of 
 sin, so that it may be said to be that penalty in the strict sense, 
 while the other forms are not. The elements of eternity, of 
 hopelessness, of intensified evil, are added, but the very epithet, 
 eternal, implies that it is death continued through eternity. Still 
 further, if the temporal evils can all be regarded as only the 
 consequence of transgression, eternal death might equally be 
 regarded as a consequence: and if the eternal death is a penalty, 
 then the temporal death may be a penalty. We cannot con- 
 ceive of an element in the eternal penalty, of which there is not 
 an analogy or beginning in our temporal lot. The contrary 
 persuasion seems to us to rest on a merely external theory of 
 punishment, taken by figure from human justice. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 Death, in its most general idea, as the penalty of the law, 
 includes all the evils and sufferings which come upon us, justly, 
 under God's moral government, in consequence of the transgres- 
 sion of the divine law. The object of the penalty is to give 
 sanction to the law, testifying to God's displeasure at sin. In 
 a state of probation, these evils may also be means of trial, and 
 may even become only chastisements. They may be internal or 
 external: remorse and pain of soul, or sufferings and death of 
 the body. The loss of the divine favor and of the Divine Spirit 
 is also amongst them. In short, the general notion of death is 
 separation from God and from all good, on the one hand, and 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 273 
 
 on the other, suffering; as the consequences, the penal conse- 
 quences, of transgression. It corresponds to "life," which in- 
 cludes all good, and as the expression of divine approbation, as 
 the award to obedience. More specifically, death is (a.) spiritual, 
 the forfeiture of the Spirit, moral inability, the internal legiti- 
 mate consequence of sin — perhaps including remorse; (Z>.) Evils 
 and pains — perhaps including here remorse — closing in death of 
 the body; (c.) Most specifically, death, as the full penalty of sin, 
 is eternal: it is hopeless misery, all the consequences of sin and 
 wretchedness inflicted in various ways in God's providence, en- 
 during forever. This, in the highest sense, is the penalty of the 
 law. As to Adam, when he sinned, he came at once to a state 
 of spiritual death, the curse of temporal death began to work 
 (we may suppose that the withdrawal of the Spirit gave such 
 supremacy to the bodily appetites that they began to derange 
 the bodily constitution, making it certain that death would 
 ensue), and he was justly exposed to eternal death, from which 
 only grace could rescue him. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL TO THE HTJMAJ^ KACE. 
 
 Answer to Q. 17, Westm. Shorter Catech.: " The fall brought 
 mankind into an estate of sin and misery;" — to Q. 36, "The 
 covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but 
 for all his posterity, all mankind, descending from him by ordi- 
 nary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in hi*3 first 
 transgression." 
 
 The emphasis here is on mankind : the fall affected man as 
 man, every man as a member of the human race. The divine deal- 
 ing was with Adam, not only for himself, but as " a public per- 
 son" : all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, 
 
274 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 are involved in his first act of disobedience. No personal pres- 
 ence of individuals is intended to be asserted. The idea is this: 
 Adam is not only the individual man Adam, but the head of 
 the race: all the race is from him by natural descent: he was 
 created innocent, and fell: his transgression involved us, not in 
 a personal sense, or in our personal relations, but so far as we 
 have the common position and liabilities of the whole race un'der 
 the divine government. In consequence of his first sin, all men 
 come into the world alienated from God, propense to sin, and 
 exposed or liable to eternal death, unless grace interpose. This 
 is the simple fact of the case. It is not so much a theory as 
 the statement of a fact. The Scriptures trace this condition of 
 mankind, this common estate, back to the transgression of Adam. 
 Whether this is viewed as a matter of pure divine sovereignty, 
 or of justice, does not alter the facts of the case. Even if it is 
 sovereignty, it must be in some sense a just sovereignty. The 
 doctrine then does not immediately concern individual responsi- 
 bility as such, but has to do with the common heritage and con- 
 dition of humanity. The question about individual responsibility, 
 desert, and destiny, is distinguishable and to be kept distinct. 
 Although the two run into each other, yet we can draw the line, 
 viz., in personal consent to sin and evil. There personal respon- 
 sibility arises, but whether all that is moral, or all that concerns 
 the divine moral government, begins there — is quite a different 
 question. 
 
 § 1. Sin as knoion by Experience, 
 
 All men, even in their natural state, know that they are not 
 as they ought to be; that they are living in a state of alienation 
 from God. A sense of sin and guilt has always attended the 
 human race. But the full power of sin is known only by the 
 redeemed, to whom the law has been a schoolmaster to bring 
 them to Christ. Grace has taught them in respect to sin. Every 
 Christian knows that there is in him by nature, and in him still, 
 a profound depth of sin: he experiences its power in daily con- 
 flicis, in the necessity of constant self-denial. He knows sin 
 as the state of alienation from God. and as lust for the world, 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 275 
 
 as the higher and the lower forms of selfishness: the higher 
 being pride, independence of God; and the lower, that which 
 leads us to seek the world. He sees that, in his natural state, his 
 heart's affections are perverted, his understanding is darkened, 
 his will is set in him to do evil. Thus no one feels or fully 
 knows the terrible power of sin, until he is renewed or is in the 
 process of renewal. 
 
 This corruption and evil of human nature, reaching to its 
 very depths, the sinner under conviction and the Christian 
 acknowledge and feel to be guilt; it makes the soul guilty be- 
 fore God; God cannot but look upon it with displeasure and ab- 
 horrence, and visit it with his judgments. ' 
 
 It is also — this too is a matter of experience — so deeply 
 rooted and grounded in man that he can be delivered from its 
 power only by redemptive grace; he feels the need of atoning 
 blood. He knows that so far as there is in him anything good, 
 it is from grace alone; in all the course, from the beginning to 
 the end, grace leads, enlightens, renews, sanctifies, and grace 
 alone. " It is a striking fact in Scripture, that statements of 
 the depth and power of sin are chiefly from the regenerate. *' 
 (Thomasius.) 
 
 § 2. The universal Sinfulness of Men as testified to in Scripture. - 
 
 The general position: The whole of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments rest on the presupposition of the universality of depravity. 
 
 I. — The confessions of those who have been renewed. They, 
 speak, in Scripture, of their own experience. 1 Kings viii. 46; 
 Job ix. 2; xiv. 4; xv. 14; Ps. li. 6, 7, 10; Eccles. vii. 20; Prov. xx. 
 9; 1 John i. 8-10; Rom. vii. 15-25, — the two passages Rom. vii. 
 14-25 and viii. 1-11 exhibit the two sides of regeneration: still 
 the sense is to show the terrible power and depth of sin in us; 
 Gal. v. 17, showing that even in good men the power of sin is 
 so strong that all their goodness is from grace: the conflict in 
 them is between grace and nature. 
 
 II. — Passages which speak directly of the universality of 
 sinfulness. Gen. vi. 5, "heart," center of moral life: "imagina- 
 tion" and "thoughts" from that — though this is not to be too 
 
276 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 strongly urged; Gen. viii. 21; Ps. xiv, — this is the judgment of 
 God on man (Paul cites it in Rom. iii. 10-12) for all, Jews and 
 heathen. " The Old Testament has no passage in which the 
 universality and depth of human corruption is so powerfully 
 depicted" (Hengstenberg) ; Ps. cxliii. 2; Eccl. ix. 3; Jer. xvii 
 9; Matt. xv. 19; John iii. 6; Gal. iii. 22. 
 
 It is objected that the passages of the Old Testament, partic- 
 ularly Gen. vi. 5, and viii. 21, treat of those times only. But in 
 the New Testament the writers cite similar passages as univer- 
 sally true: e. g., Is. vi. 10 is cited in John xii. 40 (and elsewhere); 
 and Eom. iii. 10-18 contains citations from Ps. v. ; x. ; xiv. ; xxxvi. ; 
 cxl. ; and Is. lix. 
 
 III. — The assertions of Scripture as to the nature and neces- 
 sity of Regeneration prove the universality of depravity. Only 
 two states of men are known or recognized. The two states 
 in contrast: Eph. iv. 22-24; 2 Pet. i. 4. The nature and neces- 
 sity of regeneration : John iii. 7. The necessity of regeneration : 
 Eom. vii. 14; John iii. 5; Eph. iv. 18; Eph. ii. 1, 5; Col. ii. 13. 
 Compare Matt. xvi. 24; John xii. 25; Rom. vi. 4-6; Gal. v. 24 
 
 IV. — The assertions of Scripture as to the necessity and na- 
 ture of Redemption show a universal depravity of the human 
 race, (a.) If the atonement is general, for all mankind, then 
 all mankind must be in a sinful state. The depravity must be 
 universal, because the atonement is to deliver men from a sin 
 ful condition: Eom. v. 18; Heb. ii. 9; 2 Tim. i. 10. (b.) Man 
 cannot deliver himself, cannot "live" by the law: Rom. iii. 19; 
 iv. 15; vii. 14; Eph. ii. 15. (c.) The gospel is of the forgiveness 
 of sins: Luke xxiv. 47; (d.) No one cometh .to the Father but 
 through Christ: John xiv. 6; Acts iv. 12; Matt. xvi. 16; John i. 
 12, 13; iii. 14, 15; Rom. iii. 9, 19, 20, 23; Rom. v. 12-19; Gal. iii. 27. 
 
 § 3. This universal Depravity is set forth in the Scriptures as 
 total, i. e., as affecting the whole Man. 
 
 The proof of this is, to some extent, the same as the proof of 
 the universality of sinfulness, which shows that man is depraved 
 as far as the affections of the heart and the external acts of the 
 will are concerned. As to the influence of depravity on the iutel- 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 277 
 
 lect, the Scriptures have statements such as the following: Eph. 
 iv. 18 ; 1 Cor. ii. 14, which shows that the gospel first gives true 
 light; Eph. v. 8; 2 Cor. iv. 6; John i. 5; iii. 19; 2 Cor. iii. 18. So, 
 sin is "folly,'' "blindness/' " darkness": Is. xlix. 9; Prov. xiv. 8; 
 Rom. ii. 19 ; 2 Cor. vi. 14. 
 
 By " total depravity " is never meant that men are as bad as 
 they can be; nor that they have not in their natural condition 
 certain amiable qualities; nor that they may not have virtues in 
 a limited sense (justitia civilis). But it is meant that depravity, 
 or the sinful condition, of man infects the whole man : intellect, 
 feeling, heart, and will; and that in each unrenewed person some 
 lower affection is supreme, and that each such is destitute of 
 true love to God. On these positions: as to (a.) the power of 
 depravity over the ivhole man, we have given proof from Script- 
 ure 1 ; as to (6.) the fact that in every unrenewed man some 
 lower affection is supreme, experience may be always appealed 
 to: men know that their supreme affection is fixed on some 
 lower good— intellect, heart, and will going together in it, or 
 that some form of selfishness is predominant — using selfish in a 
 general sense — self seeking its happiness in some inferior object, 
 giving that its supreme affection; as to (a), that every unre- 
 newed person is without supreme love to God, it is the point 
 which is of greatest force, and is to be urged with the strongest 
 effect, in setting forth the depth and " totality " of man's sinful- 
 ness: unrenewed men have not that supreme love to God which 
 is the substance of the first and great command. 
 
 § 4. This depraved State is native to Men. 
 Man has such a nature that he uniformly sins; it is as cer- 
 tain that he will sin as that he will speak or reason. He will 
 
 1 Experience and observation also furnish proof. Aristotle, Eth. vi. 12: " Fox 
 depravity perverts the vision and causes it to be deceived on the principles of 
 action, so that it is clearly impossible for a person who is not good to be really 
 wise or prudent." Quintilian: "The orator is a good man, skilled in speaking," 
 cited from Cato, and adds: " Goodness in a man is the greater and more impor- 
 tant quality." "The pure heart maketh a clear head." Carlyle (on Mirabeau): 
 t4 The real quality of our insight, how justly and thoroughly we shall comprehend 
 the nature of a thing, especially of a human thing, depends on our patience, oui 
 fairness, lovingness, what strength so ever we have; intellect comes from the 
 whole man, as it is the light that enlightens the whole man." 
 
278 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 exercise his mora, powers in transgression as certainly as he 
 begins to speak or act. "Native" is here used in the general 
 sense of what belongs by nature to the human constitution so 
 that it will be acted out. 
 
 I. — The rational grounds for calling this state native or 
 connatural. 
 
 1. We cannot trace it back in experience to any deliberate 
 choice, but only to a spontaneous preference. 
 
 2. Sin begins to show itself, probably as soon as it can, in all 
 children. As soon as sin could be manifested, it is manifested, 
 in all. 
 
 3. This has been the case everywhere, with all men, in all 
 ages, under the most varied circumstances. There have been 
 no exceptions, unless where grace may have been bestowed be- 
 fore moral action has commenced. 
 
 4. This depravity is such that men come into a different state, 
 as a matter of fact, only through and by divine grace. In every 
 case divine grace has been the source of different action, and 
 divine grace acting against, subduing and renovating the 
 nature. 
 
 Now, on rational grounds, it is inconceivable that such should 
 be the state of the case, if there were not a specific bias to what 
 is sinful, somehow, in man as man; There is a determinate rea- 
 son in man's state, why he should sin, rather than not sin. 
 There is as much proof of a spontaneous out-going of the soul 
 in the way of worldliness and selfishness, as of anything spon- 
 taneous in man. This depraved state cannot be accounted for 
 by the mere power of choice: that gives no reason why the 
 acts of choice are sinful and not otherwise. 
 
 Objections. 
 
 1. Adam sinned once without such predisposition, why not 
 all his descendants? 
 
 Answer, (a.) That which may be possible in a single case is 
 not probable for a race. (6.) The Scriptures make a difference 
 between Adam's case and the case of men in general. He is 
 represented as having begun his course in innocence, and his 
 sin of course implies a fall from that state of innocence. The 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 279 
 
 case is not said to be such with any other member of the hu- 
 man race. 1 
 
 2. Sin may be accounted for by bad example. This is the 
 Pelagian view. 
 
 But how are we to account for the universality of the bad 
 example ? This is simply using the effect to account for the 
 cause. How happens it that bad examples have such universal 
 influence, and why do not good examples — as of pious parents — 
 have an equally good influence? 
 
 3. Depravity may be accounted for by the fact that the 
 senses, that man's animal nature is earliest developed. This 
 is the nationalistic ground. 
 
 But in the senses and in man's animal nature as animal, there 
 is nothing sinful in and of itself. There is nothing sinful in 
 any animal propensity taken in its proper place. The difficulty 
 still remains. Why do the senses and the animal part of man 
 always take this form of selfishness and worldliness? Why are 
 these always supreme ? Why is man subject to the world and 
 sense ? 
 
 4. This doctrine of a connatural depravity supposes a posi- 
 tive principle of evil in the soul as a specific thing, and that 
 implanted by divine power or agency. God must create this 
 principle of sin in the soul. 
 
 The common orthodox view is that from the absence of the 
 Divine Spirit, justly withheld, the supremacy of the lower and 
 selfish principles naturally follows, without a specific principle 
 of evil. 3 
 
 5. This doctrine supposes the very nature of man to bo 
 depraved. 
 
 The word, nature, is used in different senses. It is somo- 
 times meant to imply simply the constitutional faculties and 
 endowments. In that sense it is not claimed or said that 
 man's nature is depraved. It is also used in the sense of the 
 bias or bent of human nature, a state of the faculties, their 
 bent, disposition, underlying principle. In this sense the na- 
 
 i See Edwards, Orig. Sin, 261. 
 
 2 On this point Edwards has a noble passage, ii. £77. 
 
280 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ture is depraved; because that bent or bias is the evil principle 
 Perhaps it is not strictly accurate to call it a depravity of nature 
 because nature is more frequently used in the previous sense. 
 According to Calvinistic theology, depravity is of the accidents 
 and not of the substance of human nature; i, e., it is separable. 
 A renewal of the soul does not suppose a change in the physi- 
 cal constitution, but a change in the moral principle that is in 
 man. " Principle " is defined by Edwards as a foundation laid in 
 human nature for a particular kind of exercises. It is not the 
 faculties themselves, but the direction of those faculties. 
 II. — Scriptural Proof that depravity is connatural. 
 
 1. The strongest proof is found in the Scriptural usage of the 
 word ddp$, translated flesh. John iii. 6, here " the flesh " includes 
 the natural birth, but "flesh "is not that which is not spiritual, our 
 material frame, but the principle opposite to that which is spir- 
 itual: the passage contains birth, sinfulness, and derivation. 
 " The flesh" means that which is native to man. The fact that 
 it also means the bodily constitution makes the proof complete 
 that depravity is native. Our evil desires are traced to the 
 "flesh," as our good desires are traced to the spirit. Rom. vii. 
 18: Flesh is here not merely the equivalent of sinfulness, but 
 the whole man in his present sinful condition. Sin is spoken of 
 as dwelling in the flesh. Gal. v. 19-21: The inclusion here of 
 heresies in the works of the flesh shows that the word is not 
 restricted to the physical sphere. Rom. viii. 6 : The mind of the 
 flesh. Eph. iv. 18 : Here to the flesh is attributed understanding. 
 In Gal. v. 17 we also see that the flesh is not a mere state, but an 
 impelling power — kiaSvpfu. The essential thing in this flesh is, 
 then, according to the Scriptures, not merely a sensual condition, 
 or any overbalance of the senses, but the principle of sin. The 
 word designates the whole natural man, in all his movements of 
 heart, mind and will: it is used to describe man as estranged 
 from God, from life, and subject to sin and death: hence its con- 
 stant antagonism with spirit. 
 
 2. Besides this use of tfapS, there are other passages of Script- 
 ure showing that depravity is traced to a native state. Ps. li. 4 : 
 David, in the deepest penitence, is confessing his sin — sin so deep 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 281 
 
 in him that he traces it to his very birth (as the next verse shows). 
 There are only two possible interpretations: (a.) that the sin 
 referred to is that of David's mother. But it is a singular time 
 for him to take to confess his mother's sin. (b.) It refers to his 
 own native state, his condition by birth. It means, my state, 
 as I came from my mother s womb, was a state of sinfulness. 1 
 The only way of escaping this is taking it poetically. Eph. 
 ii. 3: The sense which the term flesh has here has been already 
 defined. The word "nature" is to be considered. Let the con 
 nection be noted: "lusts of the flesh "; words which express the 
 native condition and tendencies as fully as any can do, and 
 " were by nature children of wrath " (wrath 2 must mean wrath 
 divine; the attempt of Maurice to render " children of impulse " 
 is without support). Actual transgressions were already ex- 
 pressed, "among whom also we all," etc. ; he could have said, on 
 account of these active desires we were children of wrath, but 
 what he does is to add another circumstance to these actual 
 sins, ^ and were by nature," etc.* The unemphatic position of 
 q>v6ei {rexva cpvtisi opyrji) is important. " It is an indirect and 
 therefore more convincing assertion ,: of original sin. 4 <pvdei in 
 Gal. ii. 15, means, transmitted, inborn; in Kom. ii. 14, — inherent; 
 in Gal. iv. 8, — essential, nature. The only interpretation by 
 which this conclusion can be avoided is: "we were by nature 
 such that we became through our own act the children of wrath."* 
 But if the apostle had meant this, he could have said so ; there 
 is a proper Greek word for "became": the word which is used 
 can only be rendered " were." There may be discussion as to 
 the full extent of the wrath, and the character of the native 
 depravity; but as to the fact of such a depravity and of its 
 being, in some sense, an object of divine displeasure, there can be 
 
 1 De Wette's translation: "Behold with a sinful nature was I born, yea, m my 
 mother's womb did I possess it." Tholuck: "David confesses that sin begins 
 with the life of man; that not only his works, but the man himself, is guilty he- 
 fore God." 
 
 2 In thirty-four other places in the New Testament the word has only tho 
 usual sense — the punitive justice of God. 
 
 s See Harless on Ephesians. See also Miiller, Sin, ii. 306. 
 
 « Ellicott. 
 
 * Dr. Taylor's "Concio ad clerum." 
 
282 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 no doubt, from this passage. 1 Job xv. 14, shows that sin is 
 hereditary. It is to be viewed in connection with xiv. 1. 
 Objections. 
 
 1. The Scriptures speak of children as innocent: Matt, xviii. 
 3; xix. 13; Luke xviii. 17. 
 
 These passages undoubtedly imply a relative innocence of 
 children, but they do not do away with the depravity or native 
 propensity to sin in us, because the children are to come to 
 Christ, and Christ is a Saviour. The very fact that they are to 
 come to Him proves that they need a renewal. 2 
 
 2. From certain expressions of Scripture, (a.) 1 John iii. 4: 
 This is supposed by some to be the nearest to a definition of sin 
 which the Bible contains. But the rendering should not be "sin is 
 the transgression of the law," but, "sin is non-conformity to the 
 law." 3 This passage is urged to prove that all sin is in exer- 
 cises, but it rather shows, under strict translation, that sin is a 
 state, (b.) James i. 15: This is urged to prove that sin, prop- 
 erly speaking, only exists when it is "brought forth" in con- 
 scious activity, but what it really shows is, that "the lust" is 
 that which produces sin, that like begets like. The sin produced 
 shows the sinful disposition. Instead of proving that such a 
 disposition is not sinful, the passage proves the contrary. These 
 passages confirm the general definition of sin given in the West- 
 minster Catechism, which is probably the best that can be given : 
 " Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the 
 law of God." 
 
 1 Besides these passages, Miiller also cites 1 Cor. vii. 14 (ii. 376). 
 
 2 There is a relative innocence. Ps. cvi. 38: The "innocent blood" is the 
 blood, not of children, nor of innocence before God. So, 2 Kings xxiv. 4. 
 Jonah iv. 11 is a proverbial expression. Kom. ix. 11 simply states that moral 
 quality can only attach to moral existence. 
 
 8 [Revised Version: "sin is lawlessness."] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 283 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 Thus far we have considered the general facts as to human 
 sinfulness, and have traced them back to a sinful, corrupt incli- 
 nation or tendency. This only brings us to the verge of the 
 real problem, which is contained in the doctrine of Original Sin. 
 
 We have here the question of Imputation. T his turns upon 
 t he three terms: sin, guilt, and punishments If we define all 
 these by their relation to personal acts exclusively, we cannot 
 apply them to any native condition or race relation; there can 
 be in no sense a moral oneness of mankind in the sight of God, 
 and no such moral dealing on his part with mankind as is 
 intended to be expressed in the term Imputation: in a word, 
 there cannot be any Original Sin. But we should understand 
 that this result is due purely to the definition we have made, 
 and that we have dismissed the problem, not solved it. 
 
 An important question as to the statements in the West- 
 minster Confession (Conf. vi. 3, Larger Cat., Q. 25, Shorter 
 Cat., Q. 18) may be here briefly considered. In the three chief 
 articles indicated above, the following statement is reiterated: 
 The, sinfulness of man T s__es^tate. or. original sin, consists: (a.) In 
 the guilt of Adam's first sin, (6.) the want of original righteous - 
 ness, and (c.) the corruption of his whole nature. The question 
 is: Are these three statements co-ordinate or successive? Is it 
 meant that the sinfulness of man's estate consists in the guilt 
 of Adam's fi rst sin, which was followed by the want of original 
 righteousness and by the corruption of his whole nature ? If 
 that is the sense then the strict theory of Immediate Imputation 
 has a foothold in the Confession, but if that is not the sense, 
 then it has not. To us it seems plain that these phrases were 
 intended to be co-ordinate, and that no causal relation between 
 them is meant to be expressed. " Guilt " is liability or exposed- 
 ness to penal evil. It does not mean exclusively personal ill- 
 desert. It has in theology a well authenticated meaning, though 
 
284 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 in the modern sense it is applied in strictness only to personal ill 
 desert. But in the Confession guilt is exposure to punishment. 
 The imputation is not said to be of t he sin T bnt nf the guilt of 
 that sin. That is the strict sense. If it were an imputation of sin, 
 then it might be that our natural sinfulness as coming from Adam 
 might be included in the imputation: bnt as imputation here is 
 exposure to punishment, it cannot be said that our sinfulness is a 
 part of the imputation, unless it be also said that sin is a part of 
 the punishment. In the article in the Confession (vi. 3), the nat- 
 ural relationship of mankind to Adam is put first: " they being the 
 root of all mankind." This fa ct that all mankind were contained 
 in them as the_ root appears to be taken as the ground of the proced^ 
 ure of impu tation . This is the view taken in Mediate Imputation, 1 
 i e., that the natural headship comes first, and that the federal 
 headship is grounded upon it. It is not said that the want of 
 the original righteousness, and the death in sin, and the cor- 
 rupted nature, were a part of the imputation ; and this must be 
 said to sustain the strict theory of Immediate Imputation ; the 
 corruption must be a part of what is imputed. 
 
 Another statement. Immediate Imputation, in its extreme 
 form, 2 is the theory of the fed eral headship of Adam in distinc - 
 tion fr om the natural headship. It says, God determined to 
 create a certain number, and He determined that they should 
 fall into sin, and that out of that fallen mass some should be 
 redeemed. As yet it is only a hypothetical possible number of 
 individuals who are thus to fall, and of whom some are to be 
 redeemed. Adam is appointed in the divine pu rpose to be the 
 federal head of all that come into this world, to stand as thei r 
 representative. Adam is to stand for all those supposed and 
 supposable individuals who are to live here, — to stand for them 
 as a federal head, as much as a representative in congress stands 
 
 1 [In its higher form. There is a form, at least one attributed by opponents, 
 which allows no federal headship to Adam, and makes, the corruption in ike indU 
 vidual the only ground of imputation.] 
 
 2 [In this country the most influential advocates of Immediate Imputation— 
 the Princeton theologians— have not urged it in this form. The supralapsarian 
 elements are disavowed by them. See Dr. Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology 
 and Dr. A. A. Hodge's Outlines.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 285 
 
 for the people of his district. What Adam does is to be reckoned 
 to their account, they as yet being by supposition without any 
 character, but as Adam does, so they are to become. Because 
 he sins, they are likewise to come under the penalty of sin. Then 
 in order that that may be carried out, God makes this Adam 
 (who is hypothetical as yet) to be the head of a race, in order 
 that what he does may be transmitted down to all those indi- 
 viduals for whom he stood. The natural headship is instituted in 
 order to carry out the federal headship. And the sinful condition of 
 every member of this race is a punishment for Adam's sin. Each 
 individual is punished for Adam's sin by being made sinful. 
 Adam is said to stand for them all, and what he_doesJB im medi- 
 ately made over to them. The theory of Mediate Imputation 
 on the other hand is, that God makes Adam to be the head of a 
 race: he sins: in consequence of his sin, because he is the hea d 
 of a race, all his descendants are^born in a sinful^ondition^n_ot 
 as a punishment, but in the way_ofa naturaljxmnection, and the 
 punishment of each is on the ground of the sinful condition of 
 each, including as final punishment his own personal acts and 
 ill-desert. Punishment is always based on sin, and each indi- 
 vidual's punishment is based upon what he is as an individual. 
 The infliction of punishment is on the ground of the sinful 
 nature, and just as much in Adam's descendants as in Adam 
 himself. 1 The relation of Adam's transgression to ourselves, ac- 
 cording to the statement in the Catechism, is not to be viewed as 
 that of an individual transgressing for us as individuals. Adam 
 is not only the individual Adam, but the head of the race; all 
 
 1 [It should be remembered that the author is here stating what is commonly 
 understood by Immediate and Mediate Imputation, and is not giving his own 
 view. On the whole he favored the theory of Mediate Imputation, yet not pre- 
 cisely in the form as given above. There is a note in his papers which reads 
 thus: *' Neither Mediate nor Immediate Imputation is wholly satisfactory." 
 There is no further explanation, but it is probable that one point of the theory of 
 Mediate Imputation as it is sometimes urged, which he found unsatisfactory, was 
 the position stated above: "the punishment of each is [exclusively] on the ground 
 of the sinful condition of each." This fixes the divine regard in the matter of 
 imputation upon the isolated individual, viewed as corrupt before personal action, 
 etc., and leaves out of consideration all race liabilities, which the author elsewhere 
 strongly insists upon. It would seem that he intended to assert a proper federal 
 headship based upon the natural; but it is much to be lamented that this note 
 is the only indication of the final statement which he had in mind.] 
 
286 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the race come from him by natural descent; he was created 
 innocent, and fell; his transgression does not involve us in a 
 personal ser_se, immediately, but only so far as we have the 
 common liabilities of the whole race under the divine govern- 
 ment. In consequence of this, all men come into the world 
 alienated from God, propense to sin, and exposed or liable to 
 eternal death unless grace interpose. 
 
 Original Sin means in theology just one thing: not, the first 
 sin of Adam; not, the firsT~iin~o^ea^hjiiaiijbut — the general 
 condition of all the mem bers of the race by birth, before actual 
 transgression, into which they are brought in consequence of 
 the fall of Adam, the head of the race. And the great questions 
 in the debate are, whether this general condition is in some true 
 and proper sense sinful, whether there is an imputation of a sin- 
 fulness which justly calls forth God's moral displeasure, and 
 whether such imputation is of what truly belongs to mankind 
 in its connection with its natural and federal head. 
 
 § 1. General Statements. 
 
 I — N one can apprehend the doctrine of original sin, nor 
 the doctrine of redemption, who insists that the whole moral gov- 
 ernment of God has respect only to individual desert, in the way 
 of personal obedience and disobedience, who does not allow that 
 the moral government of God, as moral, has a wider scope and 
 larger relations, so that God may dispense suffering and happi- 
 ness on other grounds (in his all-wise and inscrutable providence) 
 than that of personal merit and demerit. The dilemma here is: 
 the facts connected with native depravity and with the redemp- 
 tion through Christ either belong to the moral government of 
 God, or not. If they do, then that government has to do with 
 other considerations than those of personal merit and demerit 
 (since our disabilities in consequence of sin and the grace offered 
 in Christ are not in any sense the result of our personal choice, 
 though we do choose in our relations to both). If they do not 
 belong to the moral government of God, where shall we assign 
 them? To the physical? That certainly cannot be. To the 
 divine sovereignty? But that does not relieve any difficulty; 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 287 
 
 for the question still remains, Is that sovereignty, as thus exer- 
 cised, just or unjust? We must take one or the other of these. 
 The whole (of sin and grace) is a mystery of sovereignty — of mere 
 omnipotence, or a proceeding of moral sovereignty. The ques- 
 tion will arise with respect to grace as well as to sin: How can 
 the theory that all moral government has respect only to the 
 merit or demerit of personal acts, be applied to our justification? 
 If all sin is in sinning with a personal desert of everlasting 
 death, by parity of reasoning, all holiness must consist in a holy 
 choice with personal merit of eternal life. 
 
 We say then, generally, that all definitions of sin which mean a 
 sin are irrelevant here. Edwards, vol. ii, p. 309, says: "Original sin 
 .... the innate sinful depravity of the heart" includes not only 
 "the depravity of nature, but the imputation of Adam's first sin ; or 
 in other words the liableness or exposedness of Adam's posterity, 
 in the divine judgment, to partake of the punishment of that 
 sin." This doctrine of original sin in this general shape has 
 come down from the time of Augustine, through all the Re- 
 formed confessions, and is recognized by most of the orthodox 
 schools. Historically, the following points have always been 
 agreed upon: 
 
 1. That the distinction is to be made between original sin 
 and actual transgression. 
 
 2. That original sin belongs to a man as a member of the 
 race, and as the result of Adam's transgression. 
 
 3. That it involves, or is, the corruption of the whole race, 
 in its moral bias. 
 
 4 That it exists in the race in its moral relations to God, not 
 as a mere physical state, nor as a matter of divine sovereignty 
 excluding God's moral government or outside of the same, but 
 that it has to do with the same moral relations in which re- 
 demption is to be viewed. The later German divines, too, react- 
 ing from Rationalism, are all on this general ground: Neander, 
 Tholuck, Muller, Ebrard, Thomasius, Twesten, Dorner, etc. 
 
 Note. — As to whether there is a valid distinction between original sin and 
 actual transgression. The simple facts of the case are to be regarded: (1) Native 
 depravity exists: an immanent preference (not known to be the result of a de- 
 
288 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 liberate choice, but which manifests itself as a choice) beyond and before con- 
 scious memory; which we associate with, and which involves, a sense of guilt} 
 (2) Which we connect with our condition as members of a sinful race, involving 
 us in the common evils of the race; (3) Which the Scriptures assert to be the con- 
 sequence of the Adamic transgression. 
 
 II. — Original sin is a doctrine not, primarily, respecting indi- 
 viduals, in their individual capacity and responsibilities, in their 
 separate personalities; but it is a doctrine respectin g what is 
 common to all men, — their common condition and needs, — what 
 belongs to them as members of the human race. It has its bear- 
 ings on them as individuals, but it has not specific reference to 
 this, — -just as in the atonement of Christ, redemption is not 
 provided, primarily, for this or that man, but for the whole 
 human race. The Scholastic maxim has its abiding truth: " In 
 Adam the person corrupted the nature: in us, the nature cor- 
 r upts the person? " 
 
 III. — In this doctrine it is not pretended, nor is it necessary 
 to give a solution of the problem of moral evil. This is not what 
 we are after in discussing the doctrine. The object of the doc- 
 tri ne as a doctrine is simply to give the general facts of the case 
 on the ground of which the solution of the problem of moral evil 
 i s to be attempted. And as to the solution itself the different 
 ways of viewing human sinfulness do not affect it much. It is 
 no more easy to solve it in connection with the theory of "phy- 
 sical constitution," etc., than with the common orthodox view. 
 The constitution is still to be referred back to God. If we say, 
 there is no bias to sin, but only a world of temptation in which 
 sin is certain for all, yet we must say again, God made the world 
 and man. 1 
 
 IV. — In the matter of original sin there are three problems 
 around whose solution the difficulty turns — 
 
 1. The relation of the race t o the individua l — and of the in- 
 dividual to the race: the old question of the genus and indi- 
 vidual, running back into the Realism and Nominalism of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 2. The relation of our native dispositions to their^manifesta- 
 
 1 The theory of pre-existence only drives the solution back a little farther. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 289 
 
 tionsi whether we can reason back from the manifestation to 
 what is in the constitution ; whether what is expressed in the 
 manifestation can be ascribed to the constitution; whether th* 
 phenomena reveal the substance. 
 
 3. The relation of the moral government of God, in its gen - 
 eral aims and ends, to that government as exercised over indi- 
 vidua ls : whether the moral government is only for individuals 
 or is also for the race. 
 
 V. — And as there are three problems, so there are three 
 terms in the discussion for which definitions are sought: sin, 
 guilt, and punishment. Can these be attributed, in any valid 
 sense, to God's moral government of men as men, in distinction 
 from the government of each individual? Do they have to do 
 with the native dispositions of men ? Does the whole of what 
 is moral, in short, lie in personal choice and personal desert (ot 
 happiness or of misery)? If it does, we have only an ethical, 
 moral system as the sum and substance of Christian theology. 
 
 VI. — In contrast with this mode of viewing man, as simply 
 an individual standing for himself, it seems plain from Scripture 
 that he is there viewed (not excluding his individual responsi- 
 bilities and deserts) under two prime relations, wider than this 
 ( — in respect to God's moral government, — in respect to both 
 sin and holiness): under the relation to Adam as the head of 
 our fallen humanity and the relati on to Christ as the head 
 of our renewed humanity. The headship of Adam and the 
 headship of Christ are the two grand foci of the Scriptural sys- 
 tem respecting man. Man's personal responsibilities, liabilities, 
 and deserts are brought under, included within, subordinated 
 to, or grow out of, these more general relations in which he 
 stands. 
 
 Eunning through the Scripture, there are two relations of 
 man, under the aspects both of sin and of redemption : one, gen- 
 eral; another, individual. There is the sin of the race — a com- 
 munity in sin; the sin of each individual — his own personal acts 
 and responsibility. There is grace for all in Christ, while the 
 faith and obedience of each are also required. We fail of the 
 Scriptural view when we do not emphasize both. If all is in- 
 
290 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 dividualized, we make mere ethics: if all is generalized, we 
 make necessary sin, and redemption without personal holiness. 
 Nor can we draw the line in experience and consciousness be- 
 tween the two. The great fact at the basis of the doctrine of 
 original sin is that of the moral unity of the human race: man 
 is one in the estate of sin and misery : t here is a common guilt 
 a nd ruin (as well as individual sin): — the great fact at the basis 
 of the new life is that pf a common redemption provided for all. 
 
 This same point is further illustrated by the general state- 
 ment that the Scriptural representation makes the headship of 
 Adam on the one hand and the headship of Christ on the other 
 to be the central points in respect to the ruin on the one side, 
 and the recovery on the other, of the whole family of man. 
 Again, — not without the personal intervention and compliance 
 of each individual — his own participation — in the sin and in the 
 redemption. Putting these two over against each other so prom- 
 inently: t he first and second Adam — d eath from the one, life 
 fro m and in the other only : this is the great leading grouping 
 of the whole human race, in respect to its ultimate destiny, in 
 the sacred Scriptures. This is the Biblical view. The notion 
 of the Covenants may be in form a fiction, but it is in fact a 
 fact. It is partly false and wholly true. This is the basis of 
 the whole history, of the Bible, — of its facts, as historic, realized 
 in history. This makes the Scriptural view entirely different 
 from any merely moral view of the human race and of human 
 destiny. Each individual of the race is represented as under 
 the one or the other of these two points of view, either as 
 connected with a race that fell in Adam, or with that race 
 as redeemed by Christ. 
 
 Another Statement There are two points of view about man 
 in the Scripture, on the face of it: one that of personal desert 
 and liabilities, another, that of his condition as man, as a member 
 of the race, in his social liabilities, in his relations to the whole 
 government of God. To the former, belong the practical, the 
 personal, the ground of personal adjudication, the sphere of act- 
 ual transgression: to the latter, viz., man in his general relations 
 and liabilities, belong all facts and statements connected with 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 291 
 
 both the fall and redemption. Neither of these is primarily for 
 each man personally, but each has respect to the race as a whole, 
 to man as man, though both may be in and for each man also. 
 
 There is a sinful condition of the race as such, introduced by 
 the fall: over against this God has set a provision of redemption, 
 for the whole race, covering the whole sphere of sin and its con- 
 sequences. (Limited Atonement, Particular Redemption ought 
 to be held only by those who say, all sin consists in sinning.) 
 These are the two grand primary aspects under which the Bible 
 views man. Now the sphere of personal liability and desert 
 comes in under these conditions and arrangements — of the 
 common sin and the common redemption. That sin in each 
 shows itself as preference (consent): then come his personal 
 liabilities and desert, and not till then. To him, in this state, 
 salvation, grace through Christ provided for all, is offered: which 
 he may accept or reject. (This is to all to whom the gospel comes.) 
 Sometimes the doctrine of original sin is represented as implying 
 that each individual is personally worthy of eternal damnation 
 for Adam's sin. This is not true. The conditions of "judgment 
 
 as to person al desert do not exist u ntil personal t ransgression 
 has occurred. 
 
 § 2. The Facts of the Case, in respect to Original Sin, as given 
 in Scripture. 
 
 We have thus far reached a native depravity, common to all 
 men, the ground and source of actual transgression. The doc- 
 trine of original sin carries us back one step further, viz., to the 
 origin of this depraved condition; original sin refers specifically 
 to that. The inquiry is, What is the connection of the depravity 
 of each individual with the sinfulness of others: what is the 
 origin of our native depravity? We speak here of the facts 
 of the case as given in Scripture. 
 
 I. — The passages already adduced to prove native depravity 
 imply that this depravity is hereditary: Ps. li. 5; John iii. 6; 
 Rorn. viii. 7; Eph. ii. 3; Job sv. 14. Also, Luke i. 35, the An- 
 nunciation of Christ's supernatural conception by the Holy Ghost, 
 and the result, Christ's holiness, 
 
292 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 II* — The Scriptures view the race of man as one, descending 
 from Adam, having a physical and moral unity. This position 
 is at the foundation of the Scriptural doctrines of sin and of 
 redemption. 1 Acts xvii. 26; Gen. i. 26, 28; The Genealogies 
 of the Old Testament: Gen. v., before the flood; Gen. x., after the 
 flood; Matt. xix. 4; 1 Cor. xv. 45; 2 Cor. xi. 3; 1 Tim. ii. 14; 
 Eom. v. 12-19. 
 
 III. — The Scriptures further declare that all men are under 
 sin and exposed to its just consequences. Rom. iii. 9; iii. 19, 
 "that all the world may become" vxodiHos rep Sew subject to the 
 charge of sin before, or by, God; Gal. iii. 2, 3. These passages 
 do not show the connection with Adam, but the state of man as 
 depraved and subject to the divine judgment. 
 
 IV. — The Scripture then carries us one step further. In 
 Eom. v. 12-19, it is distinctly declared that Adam's transgres- 
 sion is the source and root of this guilty, depraved condition. 
 Whether with or without our consent, is not now the question. 
 We have here to consider simply the matter of fact that this 
 passage decides at least this much : that the hereditary depravity, 
 the sinful, guilty condition of the race, is to be traced directly 
 to Adam, the head of the race, as its ground and source. 
 
 (a.) This position does not rest on the interpretation of the 
 obscure clause k<p gS in verse 12, for it is much more explicitly 
 asserted in the following verses: 15, "if through the offence of 
 one [the] many were dead" [or, died]; 16, "the judgment is by 
 [of] one unto condemnation;" 17, "by one man's offence death 
 reigned by [the] one;" 18, "through the offence of one [one of- 
 fence] [the] judgment came upon all men unto condemnation;" 
 19, "through one man's disobedience [the] many were made 
 sinners." Apart from verse 12, these assertions establish the 
 fact that Adam's transgression was the judicial ground of bring- 
 ing all men into condemnation. Whatever else the passage 
 does or does not prove, it undoubtedly represents a moral judg- 
 ment on the basis of Adam's offence on the one hand and of 
 
 1 Science just at present, inclines to favor the position that mankind is from 
 one pair. The unity of the race might be argued from the powerful social in- 
 stinct, the love of the race, which is so deeply implanted in ub. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 293 
 
 Christ's obedience on the other, as the ground of the death of 
 all and of the eternal life which is offered to all. It is utterly 
 inconsistent with the position that all of God's moral dealings 
 have respect ultimately and solely to individual merit and de- 
 merit It is utterly impossible to interpret this passage as teach- 
 ing or implying a merely physical relationship. It sets forth a 
 moral judgment. (At the same time this passage does not teach 
 the way in which this was done; through what intermediate 
 stages it is carried out and takes effect; through, what personal 
 agency of each individual the moral judgment is consummated; 
 and there is room left for further statements. The passage does 
 not assert, nor necessarily involve, the position taken in the ex- 
 treme immediate imputation theory, viz., that the sin of Adam 
 is the judicial ground of making us sinful, or that our native deprav- 
 ity is the punishment of Adam's sin.) The object of the passage. 
 and particularly of the 12th verse, is undoubtedly the contrast 
 between the ruin through Adam and the recovery through Christ. 
 As really as Christ is the ground — and the moral ground — of our 
 restitution — and of our moral restitution, so really is Adam of 
 our ruined condition. The headship of the two is explicit and 
 contrasted. Not that they are in all particulars the same; es- 
 pecially are they different in that the restoration is not merely 
 coincident with the ruin, but ampler, — a superabundance of 
 blessings is given in Christ. 1 
 
 (b.) As to the 12th verse. Some would read: "and so death 
 passed upon all men because all have sinned" [or did sin]. That 
 is, the reason that death passed upon all men is that all have 
 sinned: death (which on this understanding must be eternal 
 death) is the condemnation for sin, and therefore there is no 
 death as penalty where there is not personal sin. (This view 
 does not say: personal death and the ground in each person of 
 personal sin have passed together unto all: death and corrup- 
 tion are interlinked; that might deserve some careful considera- 
 
 1 As men sometimes erect a grander edifice over the ruins of one destroyed, 
 so, it might be said, God has done with the temple of humanity. (See John Howe'a 
 Living Temple.) Here, in Bom. v., is the best intimation which has ever been 
 given of the final theodicy, and given by the divine oracle, not by human 
 speculation. 
 
-294 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 tion.) The advocates of this rendering hesitate or refuse to 
 admit that "death" here includes temporal death (which it cer- 
 tainly does) ; because then it is necessary to say, that all before 
 they die have actually, personally, sinned, and that involves the 
 assertion of a personal transgression in the case of every infant 
 as the ground or reason for its natural death, and also perhaps 
 of its final condemnation. And in saying that the death is 
 eternal death there is an equal difficulty in the implication that 
 the youngest babes have already so violated the law in personal 
 transgression as to be worthy of eternal death. But even if the 
 force of this 12th verse could be annulled by translating k<p <» 
 " because," and making " sinned " refer to personal transgression 
 exclusively, yet the other passages remain, asserting unmistak- 
 ably that the judgment is "of one unto condemnation." 
 
 In our view, the best interpretation of the 12th verse is that 
 suggested by Tholuck and favored by other exegetes: — u and so 
 death passed unto all men as is manifest in this that all have * 
 sinned." The sense of the verse is this: Sin and death came into 
 the world by Adam: from him death has passed as a common 
 lot upon all, as is seen in this, or as is proved by this, that all 
 have sinned — who could sin. h<p <? explains what goes before, 
 "so far as all have sinned," i. e., death has passed to all from 
 Adam, only so far as sin is found in all : inasmuch as it is found 
 in all, the death is universal. 
 
 Another statement as to the interpretation of Kom. v. 12. 
 £<p cp should be rendered: "under which relation." "And so 
 death passed upon all men," under which relation, i. e., of death 
 having passed upon them, all have sinned. It is a clause ap- 
 pended to prove and substantiate the foregoing. 
 
 But whether we can reach a satisfactory interpretation of 
 verse 12 or not, the meaning of the whole passage, Rom. v. 12-19, 
 is plain : it is that through one man sin and death have come 
 upon all, and that there is a divine judgment in this. The ulti- 
 mate ground of the sin and death of all is as much in Adam, as the 
 ultimate ground of the life for all is in Christ. 2 
 
 1 [The author invariably refuses to accept the strict force of the aorist both hero 
 and in the important passage, 2 Cor. v. 14.] 
 
 a [Dorner, Glaubensl. §79, Eng. trans., iii. 15, says: "The result, therefore, of 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 295 
 
 V. — That there is such a sinful condemned condition of the 
 race is still further proved on Scriptural grounds from the pro- 
 visions for redemption and from the need of regeneration. These 
 concern the whole human race. 
 
 1. As to the provision for redemption. Eom. v. 18, showing 
 that so far as death reigns, so far redemption is provided; 2 Cor. 
 v. 14, 15, as far as spiritual death 1 even reigns, so far the re- 
 demption is provided; Heb. ii. 9; 2 Cor. v. 19. The argument 
 here is simple. The redemption of Christ is a redemption from 
 Sin: if it is for all, then all are in a state to need it. The atone- 
 ment is for all mankind, is for children as a part thereof: else 
 there are two kinds of atonement, one for moral depravity, and 
 the other for physical. 
 
 2. So of regeneration. Take only a single passage. John 
 iii. 5, 6 shows that all that are born of the flesh need the regen- 
 eration of the Spirit; else they cannot see the kingdom of God. 
 Hence all as born of the flesh are in a sinful condition ; for re* 
 generation is a spiritual change. Else there are two kinds of 
 regeneration. Either there is moral ruin, needing a moral remedy, 
 or else physical needing only physical remedy. What is the 
 meaning, too, of baptism as applied to children, if it is not sig- 
 nificant of the washing of regeneration? (It is no answer to 
 cite the case of Christ's baptism, for that is always understood 
 as meaning something different.) What things are principally 
 asked for in prayers for infant children? And as to the hope 
 of the salvation of children dying in infancy: which is the best 
 system, one which is able to say outright, Christ died for them, 
 they may be the subjects of renewing grace, or one which is 
 obliged to hesitate and falter on this point ? Otherwise, strictly 
 taken, infants are not saved through the atonement of Christ 
 and the renewal of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 VI. — This Scriptural argument is confirmed by Scriptural 
 
 the Biblical teaching is that all men, from the days of Adam on, stand in need of 
 redemption and that a divine judgment of reprobation rests upon them as sinners, 
 from which Christ alone can set them free. A more intimate explanation of the 
 way and manner in which Adam became a cause of the sinfulness of his posterity, 
 is given neither by Paul nor John."] 
 
 J ["Then were all dead" is the rendering preferred by the author.] 
 
296 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 facts and facts of history in respect to God's moral government 
 here. Under the moral government of God, one man may justly 
 suffer on account of the sins of another. An organic relation 
 of men is regarded in the great judgments of God in history: 
 they are in proportion to the social position of offenders. There 
 is evil which comes upon individuals, not as punishment for 
 their personal sins, but still as suffering which comes under a 
 moral government. 1 The church as a whole has held either 
 natural or spiritual death, or both, to be the just consequences 
 of Adam's sin. The atonement, at the very least, is suffering 
 under a moral government for moral ends, by an innocent person 
 instead of by the guilty ; a substitution ; not indeed the suffering 
 of the penalty of the law for personal transgression, but still, in 
 the lowest view, a suffering justly under the law for the sake 
 of redemption. We have explicit assertions of God's dealing 
 with men morally in view of their connections in the family 
 order ; the descendants of Canaan suffered under the curse 
 pronounced upon their forefather; Reuben's sin affected his 
 tribe; David's misdeeds were visited on the nation; Gehazi's 
 offence was punished in his offspring as well as in his person, 
 2 Kings v. 27; the sin of Jeroboam involved the ten tribes 
 in its penal consequences; the result of the imprecation, "His 
 blood be on us and on our children," who can measure? What 
 is asserted in the second commandment of the law, is reas- 
 serted by the prophets. Jer. xxxii. 18, "Thou showest loving- 
 kindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the 
 fathers into the bosom of their children after them." 
 
 It may be said, all these are merely " consequences" of family 
 or tribal or national or race relations, — " evil becomes cosmical 
 by reason of fastening on relations which were originally 
 
 iDr. N. W. Taylor: "The connection with Adam is stated in such a way, by 
 
 God's sovereign constitution, that the sin and just (not actual) condemnation of all 
 men to bear its penalty must be inferred from their connection with Adam as his 
 descendants.'* But there is no relief in ascribing the evil which comes upon men 
 in their race relations to sovereignty alone, for that leaves the difficulty the same, 
 and adds the element of arbitrariness. Moreover it removes from the moral gov- 
 ernment of God the most important transactions affecting that government. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 297 
 
 adapted to mating good cosmieal : " but then G-od's plan must be 
 in the consequences; — a plan administered by a Moral Being, 
 over moral beings, according to moral considerations, and for 
 moral ends: and if that be fully taken into view, the dispute as 
 to "consequences 1 ' or punishment becomes a merely verbal one. 
 
 § 3. The Facts of the Case as to Original Sin, as argued from 
 Experience, and on other than Scriptural Grounds. 
 
 I. — The testimony of many of the wisest and profoundest 
 philosophers is entirely accordant with, and leads to ; the Script- 
 ural view. Socrates speaks of a general corruption of the best 
 of nations, and calls it a disease for which no human art had found 
 a remedy. Plato ascribes to children an inward pravity even of 
 nature, for, he says, if they learned evil by example as birds learn 
 to sing, then it would only be necessary to seclude them in order 
 to make them good. Xen. Cyrop., vi. 1, § 4: ''It is clear that I 
 have two souls; for surely if it were one, it would not be good 
 and bad at the same time, and inclined to good deeds and evil 
 too, and willing at one time to do certain things and not to do 
 them. But plainly there are two souls, and when the good one 
 gets the upper hand, it does right, and when the evil, it enter? 
 on wicked courses." Sophocles, Antigone, 1 583 seq., 606 seq. : 
 
 " I see the ancient miseries of thy race, 
 Labdacus, arising from the dead 
 With fresh despair: nor sires from sons efface 
 The curse some angry Power hath riveted 
 Forever on thy destined line." 
 
 Of Jove:— 
 
 " Spurning the power of age, enthroned in might 
 Thou dwell'st mid heaven's broad light. 
 This was, in ages past, thy firm decree, 
 Is now, and shall, forever, be; 
 That none of mortal race, on earth, shall know 
 A life of joy serene, a course unmarked by woe." 
 
 Seneca, Ep. 52, ad Luciliurn: "What is it, Lucilius, thai 
 when we set ourselves in one way draws us in another; and 
 i Prof. W. S. Tyler, Bibl. Sacr., Jan. '61, p. 58 seq. 
 
298 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 when we desire to avoid any course drives us into it ? " 
 
 "By what means or when shall we be drawn away from this 
 folly? No man is able to emerge from it by his own energy. 
 Another must stretch forth his hand and lead us out." Cicero, 
 'fuse. iii. 1, 2: " Sunt enim ingeniis nostris semina innata virtu- 
 tum; quae si adolescere liceret, ipsa nos ad beatam vitam natura 
 perduceret. Nunc autem, simul atque editi in lucem et suscepti 
 sumus, in omni continuo pravitate, et in summa opinionum per- 
 versitate versamur.'' Cicero in Hortensius, 1 speaks of sages, 
 "qui nos ob aliqua scelera suscepta in vita superiore, pcenarum 
 luendarum causa natos esse dixerunt.'' 4t These men," continues 
 Cicero, "seem to have had sorne proper perception (aliquid vidisse 
 videantur); and that may be true which we find in Aristotle, 2 that 
 we are punished like those of yore, who fell into the hands of 
 Etruscan robbers, and were slain with elaborate cruelty; their 
 live bodies being tightly bound with corpses placed exactly 
 opposite: thus are our souls linked with our bodies as the living 
 in conjunction with the dead." With these agree the philoso- 
 phers of modern times. Leibnitz; Kant, rationalist as he was, 
 speaks of the radical evil of human nature; Hegel, pantheist as 
 he was, declares that original sin is the nature of every man; 
 every man begins with it. 
 
 In point of fact, the whole of logical and even of pantheistic 
 infidelity confesses all that makes up the substance of the ortho- 
 dox doctrine of original sin : alienation from God, hereditary 
 depravity, constant sinning by all from their youth up: — only 
 they ascribe to it a simple physical character, denying it to be 
 moral; they make it a necessity, and so do not lessen its evil, 
 while they thereby stifle the sense of guilt, and deny the neces- 
 sity of redemption. 3 
 
 1 There are only fragments of this Hortensius. It helped to lead Augustine 
 to faith. 
 
 = Brandis says, "Aristotle would have believed in original sin." (See Peip, 
 Trinitat, in Herzog's EncycL) 
 
 3 Coleridge, Lit. Remains, 3, 324: "One of the main ends and result's o* 
 the doctrine of original sin is to silence and confute the blasphemy that 
 makes God the author of sin, -without avoiding it by flying to the almost 
 equal blasphemy against the conscience, that sin in the sense of guilt docs 
 not exist.'" 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 299 
 
 II. — The hereditary character of the depravity of mankind 
 is also confirmed by the analogies recognized by science and 
 philosophy. The human race is descended from one pair. The 
 descent is by propagation, under the law that like begets like. 
 The law of propagation in the animal kingdom carries down all 
 the peculiarities of the animal, the animal instincts, the animal 
 soul. The same law in the human race brings down national 
 traits, family traits, intellectual peculiarities, strength or weak- 
 ness of the will, moral traits, special moral peculiarities, pride, 
 envy, jealousy, revenge. That is, this law of propagation car- 
 ries with it the special peculiarities of all the faculties of the 
 soul, and therefore it carries the soul also; which is also accord- 
 ing to the analogy of the animal kingdom. Besides these, it 
 carries with it what belongs to the race as a whole, its general 
 bias, its generic moral condition, in relation to moral ends, and 
 this generic moral condition of the race is — original sin. In all 
 other spheres the law of propagation carries everything else 
 down : : it is according to the analogy that it should cany the gen- 
 eric moral bias of the human race. 
 
 III. — The experience of all men, so far as it can reach back, 
 tends to confirm the doctrine of original sin. We do not mean, 
 of course, that our experience traces it back to Adam, but it 
 does trace back the sin in us so far as this: that we cannot de- 
 tect its origin in our deliberate choice. No human being is able, 
 in experience, to go back to the time when he first decided con- 
 sciously and deliberately for self and the world and against God. 
 All men, when moral consciousness is awakened, as a matter of 
 fact, find themselves in the state of immanent preference for 
 some lower good, and this, they all feel and know to be, as it 
 exists in them, a sinful, a guilty condition. This is the solemn 
 and mysterious fact about our experience of sin and our knowl- 
 
 1 [The student will find in Dorner's Glaubenslehre some profound observations 
 on the individuality which is not "carried down/' but which rather perpetually 
 springs up in the intellectual and moral differentiation of the race, and which 
 Dr. D. is perhaps inclined to ascribe to that very special divine eoncursus which 
 attends the propagation of mankind. There is evidence that the author would 
 have agreed with Dr. D., here.] 
 
300 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 edge of its real nature. It is, too, our own sin, our own guilt. 1 
 This state we find as a preference, a direction, a bias of the will. 
 We may speculate about the time when we first came into this 
 state, but we cannot reach that time in experience. Our sense 
 of personal ill-desert is doubtless connected with, based upon, 
 the fact, that this sinful preference is felt and known to be ours, 
 approved and loved by us, to be our love, our choice. But the 
 universality of such a sinful preference, beyond the sphere even 
 of memory, proves that it has its ground in our very constitution. 
 
 Another form of statement. — This state in which we are born 
 is the ground of our first moral choice, of our immanent prefer- 
 ence, so that the latter only expresses in the form of choice, of 
 preference, what was before in this state, in potentia. And this 
 immanent preference was before any present memory of ours, 
 so that we find ourselves in it — as the whole bent and bias of 
 our being — our inmost, profoundest moral reality. And for this, 
 when the light of the law comes, we feel and know ourselves to 
 be guilty before God: it is a state justly subjecting us to the di- 
 vine judgments, from which we can be delivered only through 
 regeneration and application of the atoning blood of Christ. 
 And this is the common state of men, as men, as descendants 
 of Adam, under the divine government. Provided these points 
 be granted, it becomes a verbal dispute whether we call this state 
 sinful or depraved, or not: the mere term is not worth contend- 
 ing for, because such different definitions may be given of it. 
 
 IV. — This is confirmed by Christian experience and by that 
 which usually precedes it: by the light which comes in regener- 
 ation, and the deeper convictions about sin through which souls 
 are led to their conversion. 
 
 Rom. vii. has here its decisive application. A depth of sin 
 and evil is disclosed in us, a greatness of guilt and ill-desert, of 
 which we before had no conception, vs. 23, " I see another law 
 in my members " — there is a laiv of sin in us. By the law is the 
 knowledge of sin. vs. 7, "I had not known sin, except through 
 the law " (yet, the sin is there). This is the voice of all deep 
 
 1 See President Marsh's Essay on Sin, — on some aspects of sin the very best 
 
 Essay that we know of. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 301 
 
 and true religious experience. Sin is profounder in us than any 
 depth to which we have reached before the law comes. It exists 
 in an unconscious state, which must be brought out into the 
 light of distinct consciousness. The sinfulness and guilt exists 
 before the consciousness of it. There is a broad distinction be- 
 tween guilt and the sense of guilt. Under the influence of God's 
 Spirit, we become sensible of a pollution, of a guilty, most sinful 
 condition, from which we know that no power or might of our 
 own can deliver us, but only grace, only redeeming grace, only 
 regeneration applying atoning blood. Just here experience leaves 
 us. It conducts us to the knowledge of a deep-seated depravity, 
 which we know not that we originated, but which is ours by 
 preference: it expresses itself to us in that form. For that we 
 feel guilty and condemned. Reason and Scripture together then 
 lead us one step further — to this point: that before that prefer- 
 ence, there was a bias, a propensity thereto, in our native con- 
 dition. Scripture carries us back one step further, viz., to the 
 knowledge that the human race have come into this condition 
 in consequence of the apostasy of our first parents. 1 
 
 In respect to the problem of original sin, such are the facts 
 to be taken into the account, on the one side : they may be thus 
 summed up: In consequence of the sin of Adam, the head and 
 beginning of the race, all men come into the world, in the way 
 of natural descent, in a state of condemnation, not only without 
 holiness, but with a bias or propensity to sin, subject under the 
 divine government to evils, suffering and death, from which 
 condition they can only be delivered through the redemption 
 that is in Christ. And this native state becomes their irama- 
 
 1 Every profounder view of human life, human history, human character, is 
 compelled to go behind the individual action to its causes and grounds: its 
 grounds in human nature itself: in the connection of each man with all others. 
 "We cannot escape this if we think upon it. All philosophy leads us in this di- 
 rection. Especially does the whole idea and system of redemption lead to this: 
 our union with Christ, the grace of the Holy Spirit. The ground of our holy acta 
 and of our redemption is not in our own wills. The greatest minds, the best and 
 most life-giving theology of the Christian church, the deepest Christian experi- 
 ence, lead us to view men ultimately, not under their individual aspects and re- 
 sponsibilities, but in their connection with the whole race and the whole system 
 of things. 
 
302 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 nent preference, as soon as they act morally. And for this they 
 know themselves to be guilty and condemned before God. 
 
 Here is one side of the problem to be solved: before consider 
 ing the solutions which have been attempted, we must bring 
 into view other Scriptural and .moral positions, in order to have 
 before us all the elements which belong to the question. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE COUNTER-REPRESENTATION AS TO SIN AND ITS PUNISHMENT 
 IN SCRIPTURE AND EXPERIENCE. 
 
 I. — In Scripture. Besides those descriptions and statements, 
 hi the Scriptures, about sin and death, in which they are viewed 
 as the heritage of all men, there is another class of passages in 
 which sin and punishment are spoken of under the exclusively 
 personal aspect, in relation to the words and deeds of each 
 individual : and the same is true of redemption and salvation. 
 
 There are what we may call the generic and the personal 
 classes ot passages, specimens of which may be compared : 
 
 Generic: — Personal: — 
 
 Eyod. xx. 5; Num. xiv. 18, with Ezek. xviii. 20; Gal vi. 5. 
 
 Kom. v. 16, » Rom. ii. 6. 
 
 2 Cor. v. 14, •« Deut. xxx. 19; Rom. xiv. 12. 
 
 Matt. xv. 19, "1 John ii. 16. 
 
 Rom. vii, *« 2 Cor. v. 10. 
 
 Holiness, too, is from the Yet, we are commanded to 
 
 power of the Holy Spirit, be holy. 
 
 waking the dead to life; 
 
 Grace is of God; Yet, commended to our 
 
 choice. 
 
 Yet it is to be noted that while the Scriptures thus put life 
 in our election, it is not in the form that by obedience to the 
 law any human being can be saved. It is only in the form of 
 accepting a grace offered. They thus presuppose the state of 
 sin and the need of redemption in every human being. They 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 6 U 6 
 
 never intimate, they deny, that any member of the race can 
 obtain eternal life by the deeds of the law. Bom. iii. 20; 
 Gal. iii. 21 
 
 II. — In experience as interpreted by moral philosophy. 
 
 1. It is said, that the testimony of our moral nature is, that 
 nothing can be considered sin in us, or as involving guilt, which 
 is not our own free, personal choice. Inherited propensity, bias 
 to the world and self are conceded: but these are not sinful, and 
 guilt attaches only to free acts. We cannot be held morally 
 responsible for a native state which we could not avoid. 
 Conscience condemns us only for our own deliberate choices. 
 Sin, guilt, and punishment can relate only to what we do, inter- 
 nally or externally. All else belongs not to the sphere of moral 
 responsibility, but to the course of nature and providence, external 
 to the proper moral government. 
 
 2. Still further it is said, that justice and right demand that 
 God should not bring new-created beings into a state where 
 the advantages of a safe issue should not be greater than the 
 disadvantages. 1 
 
 Thus, by these antagonisms the question is raised, on the 
 three points already stated: (a.) the relation of the ruined con- 
 dition of the race to our personal guilt; (b.) the relation of our 
 native state to our personal acts; (c.) the relation of God's gov- 
 ernment, so far as it respects the whole race, to the demands of 
 justice in respect to each member of the race. 
 
 Hence the Problem, in its different aspects, is : 
 
 1. To reconcile the fact that through "the one ma,n's dis- 
 ob edience-the many werft ma.Hft Rirrnftra" (Eom. V. 19), with the 
 position that all men b ecome sin ners by the ir ownjtot 
 
 2. To reconcile the fact that we are bornw ith a p ropensity 
 to sin, with the position that guilt im plies also personal ill-desert, 
 and that all such ill-desert_is of our own origination. 
 
 3. To reconcile God's justice to each man, as seen in the rev- 
 
 DUJ—HUOJIIH 
 
 » This is -one of the positions of Dr. Edward Beecher, in his "Conflict ol 
 Ages." He grants that in the present sphere the disadvantages are undoubtedly 
 greater. 
 
304 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 elations of the last judgment, with the fact that He^hasJ^pught^a}[ 
 roen — or allowed all men to come — into_such a state that the y 
 will^certainly sin and perish, unless arrested by grace. 
 
 The two extreme positions, so far as sin is concerned, may 
 be said to be contained in the two formulas : AH raen sinned_and 
 fell in^Adam, — and, All sin ftrmaists jn ^s injfljnff. Each of these 
 plants itself on one side of the dilemma, as containing the whole 
 truth: and each of these, taken strictly by itself, is about as 
 true, for the solution of the problem, as the other: for each neg- 
 lects the other, and leaves unaccounted for about half of the 
 difficulty. 
 
 So, as far as the vindication of God's justice is concerned, the 
 two extreme positions may be said to be these : (a.) God's justice 
 has to do only with our personal acts; but God's inscrutable be- 
 nevolence has put us in a condition in which all those acts will 
 certainly be sinful: (6.) God's justice has to do both with our 
 generic condition and our individual acts; but his justice is 
 inscrutable. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE THEORIES PROPOSED FOR THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM. 
 
 § 1. The Theory of Immediate Imputation. 
 
 The word i mpute means, to set to one's account legally; or, 
 to reckon to one's account ; or, to treat as i'FfnoTmake to beTbut, 
 to treat as if). To impute the guilt of a sin is to treat as if guilty 
 of that sin. To impute a righteousness is to treat as if having 
 that righteousness. The word is not used_injthe sense of a_ 
 transfer £>f moral character from Adam to his posterity, 1 or of an 
 infusion of an evil principle into the soul, but, of a sentence of 
 
 1 Any objection to immediate imputation on this ground is simply an objection 
 to a misapprehension of the theory. The New England interpretation of this 
 imputation, since the younger Edwards, has popularly been, transfer of moral 
 character, which, however, is denied to be possible by both sides. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 3 05 
 
 condemnation passed on all the race for Adam's first sin. Those 
 who hold the position of immediate imputation also hold that 
 there is an innate, human depravity, but they say the innate 
 depravity is not the ground of the condemnation. It is tho 
 consequence of the imputation. The theory of im mediate_im- 
 putation, carried out a little more definitely, is this: Adam_is 
 both the federal and natuj&j^ead^Lth&iiunmn race, but the 
 feder al headship is_first, ^prioxirr-logio-and, thought. Adam as 
 the federal head stood, as an individual, for all other individual 
 men, as their immediate representative. This was by a divine 
 arrangement. And when he fell, they were included in the sen- 
 tence, because he directly represented them. Whatever he did 
 is directly — immediately — made over to them. Then the natural 
 headship is the means of carrying down the consequences of the 
 imputation to his posterity. And so the corruption of the pos- 
 terity is the consequence and not the ground of the imputation. 1 
 Ob jections to this view : i 
 
 1. It is not borne out by Eom. v. 12, which is the great pas- 
 sage cited in its favor. That passage undoubtedly teaches a 
 condemnation of all on the ground of the offence of one, but it 
 does not teach that the condemnation is without respect to the 
 moral condition of Adam's posterity. It asserts the fact, but 
 does not give the media, of the condemnation. This theo ry de- 
 mes that the e xposure of^mankind to ^punishment is made in view 
 of the^orruption^of^eir nature, that the corruption forms any 
 esse ntial part of t^ wjiolejgtate of facts which comes under the 
 divine regard in the_ imputation; the passage in Eomans does 
 not dehyttiis, but is perfectly consistent with it, though it does 
 not explicitly affirm or deny on either side of this particular 
 question. 
 
 2. J^i^J^fojy t en( *s to present the whole matter of sin and 
 its punishment ^jin an external, arbitrary, and merely forensic 
 manner. It is merely an outside form to the whole real order 
 
 i Among the New England divines, Bellamy comes nearest to this statement, 
 Works, i. 223, 224 (Boston ed.) Hopkins also comes very near to it, but he does 
 not throw out an intermediate depraved nature, as having no consideration in the 
 imputation. 
 
306 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of facts. It is simply a scaffolding around a building, and all 
 the facts of the case are inside. 
 
 3 The theory rests upon an unreal and unphilosophical view 
 of the relation of Adam to his posterity: it is a carrying out of 
 the theory of the Covenants in such a way as Scripture does not 
 warrant. The notion is, that Adam, an individual, represents 
 all other individuals, so that his act is representatively their act. 
 The unity of the race, as a moral organic whole, is lost in this 
 theory, just as much as in the ex^emejWieories^on the other side. 
 We have only an individual acting for a great many individuals. 
 (Hence, too, the theory of a limited atonement: a provision of 
 salvation for such and such a specific number of individuals, 
 with no provision, although an incidental sufficiency, for a race.) 
 The theory takes the doctrine of original sin out of its proper 
 place, as the sinful state of the race, and individualizes it. 1 
 
 4. It is also encumbered with all the difficulties of the ordi- 
 nary view: for besides the imputation, it has .to concede ajreal, 
 native corruption, in the way of descent. And it is obliged to 
 view this as a punishment, a punishment without any ground 
 in the individual, without any ground in the race connection of 
 the individual. 2 
 
 5. Nor does it help us in our vindication of the divine gov- 
 ernment. All the truth there is about it is, that we can, in the 
 way of illustration, so represent the relation between Adam and 
 his posterity. But it gives us a structure outside of the real 
 matter rather than the matter itself: a scaffolding rather than 
 the skeleton. It is claimed for this theory that it "explains" 
 the corruption of the race, while that of Edwards, it is said, sim- 
 ply states the fact : but it would rather appear that the theory 
 of immediate imputation neither states nor explains. There is a 
 question of fact: what is the connection between Adam and man- 
 
 1 It also involves creationism as to the origin of individual souls. It is a the- 
 ory no more true to fact than the "social compact*' theory: in fact it is in the 
 same style of thought as that. 
 
 9 [It is doubtful whether any prominent American theologians should be re- 
 garded as advocating the position stated in this last clause. A certain element 
 of mediate imputation is often recognized by those who in the main contend foi 
 immediate. J 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 307 
 
 kind as related to human corruption? This theory says: the 
 connection is primarily one of representation, and secondarily 
 of race-unity: w hich does not state the fact. Then there is 
 another question, viz., How is it just that we should inherit the 
 corrupt nature of Adam ? This justice, it is said, is shown, by 
 the theory of immediate imputation, or representation. But 
 that is no explanation of the justice: it is simply giving an ab- 
 stract statement of the fact. The whole question remains: How 
 is it just that Adam should be our representative ? We are at 
 least helped towards an answer by taking into view our oneness 
 with him on so me real and evident ground. 
 
 6. The argument from the imputation of Christ's righteous- 
 ness doesjQotJ^oljl It is said, the sin of Adam must be imputed 
 to his posterity, without their participation, and in order to their 
 participation, because so the righteousness of Christ is imputed 
 to his people (and if this latter be denied, justification is merged 
 in sanctification). But, to speak of nothing else here, the argu- 
 ment assumes that because grace is given gratuitously, punish- 
 ment may equally be. 
 
 7. The history of the doctrine, or at least the weight of his- 
 toric testimony, is against this view of immediate imputation. 
 Au gustine teaches that Adam stood for , the whole race, that 
 the^whole was seminal ly in him^ but he does not separate the 
 imputation from the propagation of the corrupted condition. 
 The two things go together. With him Adam toas, not, stood 
 for, the whole race. Among the Scholastics, in Anselm and 
 Aquinas, we find the separation first so distinctly made, and 
 carried out by the Eoman Catholic divines, in the service of 
 their sacramental theory. The "guilt" of sin, it was said, is 
 taken away in baptism: and here the guilt is separated from, 
 and made quite external to, the nature, while the concupiscence 
 admitted to be in the nature and to remain after baptism, is de- 
 clared not to be sin. Some such position must be taken by the 
 sacramental system. The earlier Beformers t Ca lvin, Luther, 
 M clancthon, in returning to ...the, position ih.at concupiscence is 
 of the n ature of sin, kept the immediate imputation in the back- 
 ground. TiirTfitin tifiafihfiR it afterwar^ s^distinctly : teaches reatus 
 
308 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 jpoence without a reatus culpce, but, as we read him, he also teachea 
 both theories together. The whole of the French school of Saumur 
 reacted from it; Stapfer in Switzerland, who has the ablest discus- 
 sion on the subject, states the opposite view, which Edwards cites 
 largely ; and Edwards has argued the question in the most thorough 
 and philosophical manner. Edwards in this country first distinctly 
 said, that the sin is not ours because it is imputed to us, but it is 
 imputed to us because it is ours. 1 
 
 § 2. The T/wory of Direct Divine Efficiefncy^ in the Way of a 
 Constitution* 
 
 The theory is: God in his sovereignty established a constitu- 
 tion, in which it was appointed, that by occasion of Adam's sin, 
 all his posterity shouJdLUe.brought into being sinners, or so tEat 
 they should sin in their first moral acts. The capital phrases 
 here are, "a divine constitution," and 4 'the divine sovereignty." 
 Hopkin s (Syst. i. 268) says: "By a divine constitution there is 
 acertairi connection between the first sin of Adam and the sin- 
 fulness of his posterity, so that as he sinned and fell under 
 condemnation, they in consequence of this become sinful and 
 condemned. Therefore when Adam had sinned, by this the 
 character and state of all his posterity were fixed, and they 
 were, by virtue of a covenant made with Adam, constituted or 
 made sinners like him, an<I therj^fqre _ wejre considered as such 
 before they had actual existence." Then the way in which it 
 comes to us is by our consent to Adam's sin in our first moral 
 act. "This," he says, "is the only rational, consistent, and satis- 
 factory account of this most interesting affair that can be given." 
 But again, "Our sin is not the penalty of Adam's transgression; 
 the sin of Adam is not imputed to us, we being innocent/' 
 Adam's posterity are "born in sin," "so as to begin to sin as 
 soon as they begin to exist with a capacity of sinning, as soon 
 as they begin to act as moral agents." "If by their being his 
 [Adam's] children they become corrupt, they must of consequence 
 
 1 See Stuart, Scriptural views of Imputation, Bib. Eep. 1836, against the view 
 that Imputation is transfer of character. 
 
 2 Hopkinsianism, especially as carried out by Dr. Emmons. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 309 
 
 be corrupt as soon as they exist, or become his children. If it were 
 not so, it would not appear from fact that they became sinful by 
 being the posterity of Adam " (p. 274). As soon as the infant 
 exists, he may have moral corruption in sin. Hence we are 
 not to distinguish between original and actual sin (Note, p. 276). 
 Emmons takes substantially the same position. 
 
 Objections to this theory: 
 
 1- jJLJ 8 unnatural. It neglects the unity, the vital moral 
 connection of the race, resolving everything into an arbitrary 
 appointment and decree in the most abstract form. 
 
 2. It supposes the earliest sinful exercises to be the result 
 of an immediate divine efficiency, making God to be virtually 
 the author^gfjjin. 
 
 3. Itjieglects what undeniably exists, a nature or bias be- 
 fore the motion s thereof. It is Berkeleian in its philosophical 
 assumption. It cannot answer the question: What were chil- 
 dren who died before a sinful act — were they moral beings, or 
 little animals? 
 
 Yet, it was a laboring upon a great problem, in a peculiar 
 and original way. The solution is attained by the virtual denial 
 of one half of the problem — the hereditary descent of the evil 
 nature. God — decrees — volitions : that is the whole scheme. 
 It gives an abstract unreal "constitution." 
 
 § 3. The Hypothesis of Physical Depravity. 
 
 This says: In consequence of the sin of Adam, all his de- 
 scendantsjire Jx>rn with disordered susceptibiljties,jwith a_" con- 
 stitutional " derangement, which is not sinful or guilty, which 
 has no character, but which is always the certain occasion of 
 sinning. There is jiojdnjin til sinning takes place, and this sin- 
 ning is the just ground of condemnation. The word constitu- 
 tion has here a very different sense from that of the Hopkinsian 
 theory, considered in § 2. This is sometimes represented as 
 Hopkinsianism, but there is a wide difference, there is a differ- 
 ent psychology. Neither Hopkins nor Emmons would have ad- 
 mitted a nature, however qualified, as innocent or without 
 character. In the old Hopkinsianism, the word constitution 
 
310 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is used for a divine arrangement; in the modern, for what is 
 human, for the physical constitution of man. The older would 
 not grant any soul before act, but the later brings in a soul under 
 the first act, alleging that until it acts it is innocent or neutral. 
 Dr. N. W. Taylor not only reinstated the human soul in its na- 
 tive rights, but he also affirmed the existence of susceptibilities, 
 tendencies, dispositions, antecedent to voluntary action. But 
 as he also held that all that is moral is in voluntary action, he 
 of course said that these tendencies and dispositions have no 
 moral character. 1 Here is a human constitution, the basis of 
 sinful action, securing its certainty, and not a mere divine ar- 
 rangement. This native state may be called vicious, vitiosity, 
 depravity, anything to imply what is odious, but it has no moral 
 character, and the above terms when applied to it must not be 
 understood as having any moral sense. 
 The Difficulties of this theory: 
 
 1. It virtually resolves the whole doctrine of original sin 
 into a physical condition. It is a proper doctrine of physical 
 depravity. 
 
 2. It derives its plausibility from its definition of sin. It 
 defines sin as — an act or exercise, and as that which in its own 
 nature makes the individual worthy of everlasting death. The 
 whole question of original sin is set aside by this definition. With 
 such definitions, all that the theory claims must be conceded. 
 
 3. As it is often carried out, it leads to superficial views of 
 depravity, so that all jp^ta^equ^ feeling, all _that is not_ deliber- 
 ate choice, is excluded from the sphere of sin (some exclude even 
 the affections, putting all sin in a purpose). When thus carried 
 out, hardly any theory can more surely undermine the founda- 
 tions of religion — and of ethics. It tends to low views of the 
 Atonement and of Eegeneration. Denying the real facts of de- 
 pravity, it tends to deny some of the essential things in the .re- 
 demption. It cannot meet, and it cannot do away with, the fact 
 that we feel guilty for our spontaneous preferences, for our na- 
 ture as acted out. 
 
 1 [See Faith and Philosophy, 259. There ia an acute discussion in Beecher's 
 Conflict of Ages, and in MlUler on Sin.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 311 
 
 4. The theory makes an unnatural separation between what 
 has no character and what is moral in us. We cannot draw 
 tn"e~line of accountability and of guilt by this theory. As soon 
 as we attempt to do it by finding acts in which we have full 
 power to the contrary, we na rrow the sphere of our moral acts. 
 
 5. There is made a like unnatural and merely theoretical 
 separation between God's moral and his general or providential 
 government. The theory is compelled to exclude^ from God's 
 moral government all excepting deliberate personal choices. 
 It cannot even allow God's moral government of nations in a 
 distinctive sense. It concedes that if the great facts of human 
 nature are brought under the moral government of God, the 
 theory is indefensible, and so it virtually concedes that God's 
 justice cannot be defended in this matter. But what is gained 
 by this? If God has put the race into this condition, it must be 
 consistent with his justice as well as his benevolence — and in 
 fact, the benevolence is but a part of the justice. The theory is 
 fatal to man's culpability 1 ; for, to account for the universality 
 of sinfulness, it makes the liability to sinfulness very great, 
 but in saying that this is not sinful, it diminishes the sense 
 of guilt. 
 
 6. The difficulty as to the divine government is in fact only 
 carried back one step. God gives a nature which will certainly 
 lead to sin in every child of Adam. But it is no more easy to 
 reconcile that view with the divine justice than the ordinary 
 view. How early does an infant decide? After a month, or 
 six months, or a year of existence? Can this" be reconciled with 
 our views of what justice would demand, more easily than other 
 theories? No real relief is gained in fact, only in terminology: 
 all the advantage is in a word — sinful. 
 
 7. While the theory gives no real relief on this point, it is 
 embarrassed in respect to the atonement and regeneration, un- 
 less it allows to each of these a physical efficacy and physical 
 relations; and if it does allow such efficacy to the atonement 
 and to regeneration, then why not to sin? 
 
 8. The scheme of a divine efficiency producing the sinfuJ 
 
 1 See Prof. Fisher, New Englander, Aug. 1860. 
 
312 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 volition, in the form of a constitution, referred back to divine sov 
 ereignty, outrages all our moral conceptions. It is a merciless 
 system. Against this Dr. Taylor protested with vigor and suc- 
 cess. But his scheme 1 of a neutral state, neutral yet always 
 producing sin, for which state no regeneration or atonement is, 
 strictly, provided, is inferior in its moral appeals to a system 
 which allows that regeneration and atonement may be provided 
 for such a state. 
 
 9. As respects the nature of the decision which is the real 
 beginning of sin in us, and which must be " inferred " from our 
 connection with Adam, it is purely hypothetical; it has no 
 known facts to stand upon. That it was with u full power to 
 the contrary" we may assert but can never prove. 2 To lay the 
 whole burden of the vindication of the divine government on 
 the hypothesis of such a power to the contrary in a child six 
 months or a year old is, to say the least, unwise. 
 
 § 4. The Pelagian and Unitarian View. 
 
 We have here no proper theory for a solution of the problem, 
 but simply a denial that the problem exists. The facts of the 
 universality, the totality, and the native character of sin are set 
 aside. It is claimed that the sin of Adam did not injure his 
 descendants at all, that men are born with a mixture of good 
 and evil, that we cannot use the words depraved, vicious, etc., 
 in respect to the natural condition of. men. Toe ach one is trans- 
 mitted the same^najtuu^ 
 and each stands and falls as Adam did. 8 
 
 1 Dr. N. W. Taylor, on Bom. v. 12-14. Object to show " that all the posterity 
 of Adam became sinners and subject to temporal death in consequence of his sin, 
 and yet in such a way or mode of connection as not to exclude their individual 
 responsibility for their own sin, nor to imply that temporal death was the legal 
 penalty of sin; but in such a way, by God's sovereign constitution, that the sin, and 
 just (not actual) condemnation of all men to bear its penalty must be inferred 
 from their connection with Adam as his descendants." "Such is the constitution 
 or nature [of men] that in all the appropriate or natural circumstances of their 
 existence, they will uniformly sin from the commencement of moral agency." 
 
 2 In Hopkins and Emmons the position taken merely amounts to this, that 
 the soul is morally active from the beginning. Emmons at least leaves it an oper 
 question whether the activities are not the soul. 
 
 3 Eev. Geo. E. Ellis, Chris. Exam., Nov. 1853. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 31 3 
 
 § 5. The Hypothesis of Pre-existence. 
 
 In recent times this theory has been brought forward by 
 Julius Miiller as a hypothesis to explain the facts of human 
 depravity. (Edward Beecher has also urged it as a means of 
 vindicating the divine government, and showing that God acts 
 according to the principles of honor.) The hypothesis is framed 
 to meet two positions: (a.) That all sin is from p ersona l choice; 
 _(&.) Tha t we a re sinful from th^h^gianing .oL.oux exi^e^ce^in 
 tb-i&r lifeu_.„Wp, suppose that those who maintain the theory do 
 not hold it as a fact, but simply as a hypothesis, just as it is 
 held that there is a diffused ether in space, in order to account 
 for a retardation of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 Objections : 
 
 1. The theory assumes that there cannot be injnan a jtrjctly 
 depraved bias, which is not the product of his own free act. It 
 "HTmie that such a bias becomes our choice, and that we feel 
 guilty for it as such; but the assumption is more than this, — 
 that it must have been produced by our choice. 
 
 2. Modern advocates of this theory are inconsequential in 
 cm Tfiftfling ajfio a. kind pf |]ftrgdi fr.fl.ry depravity, of which the 
 punishment^is natural death, and of which we are partakers 
 on account of Adam's transgression. This should have led 
 them to the orthodox view. 
 
 3. The theory cannot be reconciled with the account of the 
 Fall in Genesis and the consequent Scriptural representations, 
 nor with Rom. v. 12, etc. 1 We cannot connect our present being 
 with a former state of existence; thei'e is no evidence; whereas 
 there is evidence of the connection of the race with Adam. 
 Rom. v. 12-19 stands directly in the way of the theory: the 
 state of mankind as ruined is traced directly back to Adam's 
 transgression. 
 
 1 Dr. Edward Beecher says this passage "gives a typical sequence; i. e., 
 there is a sequence given between Adam and his posterity which is typical, stand- 
 ing for a type of what is true in respect to each individual." But Rom. v. de- 
 clares — if anything can declare— that through the offence of one condemnation 
 came upon all. So the interpretation of Rom. v. 12, etc., as "apparent and not 
 real causation " is indefensible. The causation, on the very face of the passage 
 is just as real in reference to Adam as to Christ. 
 
314 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 4 It appears to grant that the divine justice is indefensible 
 so far as the present order of things is concerned, without some 
 such unnatural hypothesis. It will not allow us to take refuge 
 in mystery, and trust in God. If an infidel does not receive the 
 hypothesis, then he may say: you grant, what we say, that the 
 present order of things is unrighteous. 
 
 5. It gives no explanation as to our sense of guilt for our 
 depravity. We cannot very well feel guilty for an act doiue in 
 an unconscious, ante-mundane state: while we may — and do — 
 feel guilty for our sinful dispositions. 
 
 6. It gives really no solution of the ultimate problem as to 
 moral evil. It simply pushes this back. Some facts in relation 
 to our present experience are supposed to be explained by the 
 theory, but the real difficulty of sin is not touched at all. 
 
 7. Those who defend this theory argue against the orthodox 
 view throughout on the ground that it assumes that each of the 
 descendants of Adam is a new created being and is created sin- 
 ful. But this is not the view of the major part. In this country, 
 the propagation theory is more generally held than that of cre- 
 ationism, — although some have argued as though they believed 
 the latter. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF SO-CALLED MEDIATE IMPUTATION. 
 
 I. — Statement of mediate imputation. 
 
 We have given the leading theories proposed for the solution 
 of the problem of sin, with the difficulties about them. One we 
 have not particularly dwelt upon, not considering it a theory, 1 
 which we proceed to state. 
 
 1 [In connection with this clause "not considering it a theory,*' the note 
 already referred to, may be recalled: "Neither immediate nor mediate impu- 
 tation is wholly satisfactory." Understand by "Mediate Imputation*' a full 
 statement of the facts in the case, and the author accepted it; understand by it a 
 theory professing to give the final explanation of the facts, and it was " not wholiy 
 satisfactory.*'] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 315 
 
 The only true course is that which undertakes nothing more 
 than to give the facts of the case, on the Scriptural basis, resolv- 
 ing the chief difficulties into the more general problem of the 
 divine permission of sin in the race as a whole. This will estab- 
 lish the federal headship of Adam, making it follow the natural 
 headship. 
 
 The facts of the case in their bearings on the problem of 
 original sin, have already been indicated. They may be thus 
 summed up: 
 
 1. The human race is not a mere collection of individuals, but 
 an organic whole in the sense of a physical and moral unity: and 
 as such a unity it is considered in the Scriptures, both in respect 
 to sin and to redemption, — in respect to both the first and the 
 second Adam : so that original sin and a general provision for 
 redemption stand or fall together. 
 
 2. Adam was by divine appointment the head and beginning 
 of the race: all men were virtually, potentially, or as some say, 
 seminally, in him. Not that they were in him as individuals, 
 not that they all nestled in him, but rather as the acorns that 
 are in the tree were in the acorns that were planted. And this 
 was determined by a divine constitution which made of one blood 
 all the nations of the earth (in this respect the same as to 
 man as in respect to the animal and vegetable world). Adam 
 at the beginning was the race. 
 
 3. On this basis of fact, the theory proceeds to the further 
 statement of fact: that the fall brought about in Adam a loss of 
 original righteousness and corruption of nature, so that selfish- 
 ness and worldliness became supreme. This general moral cor- 
 ruption becomes the heritage of all men by descent, and it shows 
 itself in all men in a twofold way: negatively, in the absence of 
 holy principle and positively, in a propensity to moral evil. Of 
 course this bias to sin is latent before the act, but still it is a 
 reality in every child of Adam, as is proved by the subsequent 
 facts. 
 
 4. On account of this innate depravity, all men, mankind as 
 such, are exposed, liable, to evils, to sufferings and death here, 
 and if divine grace do not interpose, to eternal death here 
 
316 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 after; and in such exposure or liability consists the Imputa- 
 tion. 1 The common current phrase in theology is not desert, 
 but liability or exposure. This runs through all Calvinistic 
 formulas. For this native corruption before act, we need not 
 say that the person who is the subject of it will receive, or 
 deserves everlasting death. It is a liability, exposure, — justly 
 such ; but not personal desert. The desert of eternal death is 
 a judgment in respect to individuals for their personal acts 
 and preferences. Until such choice there cannot be, meta- 
 physically or ethically, such a judgment. Original sin is a doc- 
 trine respecting the moral conditions of human nature as from 
 Adam — generic: and it is not a doctrine respecting personal lia- 
 bilities and desert. For the latter we need more, and other cir- 
 cumstances. Strictly speaking, it is not sin which is deserving, 
 but only the sinner. The ultimate distinction is here : There is 
 a well-grounded difference to be made between personal desert, 
 strictly personal character and liabilities (of each individual 
 under the divine law, as applied specifically, e. #., in the last 
 adjudication), and a generic moral condition — the antecedent 
 ground of such personal character. The distinction, however, 
 is not between what has moral quality and what has not, but 
 between the moral state of each as a member of the race, and 
 his personal liabilities and desert as an individual. 
 
 5. This original sin would wear to us only the character of 
 evil and not of sinfulness, were it not for the fact that we feel 
 guilty in view of our corruption when it becomes known to us 
 in our own acts. Then there is involved in it not merely a 
 sense of evil and misery, but also a sense of guilt; moreover, re- 
 demption is necessary to remove it, which shows that it is a 
 moral state. Here is the point of junction between the two ex- 
 treme positions, that we sinned in Adam, and that all sin con- 
 sists in sinning. 
 
 1 [In this statement also, it is intended to keep to what are believed to be sim- 
 ple facts. " Imputation," viewed as a matter of fact, is a coupling of evils, suffer- 
 ings, death with a state of moral abnormity; Imputation, viewed as an attempt 
 to state the reasons and all the reasons which the divine mind has for treating 
 moral abnormity thus and not otherwise, is theory, and theory which is perhaps 
 beyond out present power of construction.] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF EEDEMPTION. 317 
 
 i 
 
 6. The guilt of Adam's sin is — this exposure, this liability on 
 account of such native corruption, — of our having the same na 
 ture, in the same moral bias. The guilt of Adam's sin is not to 
 be separated from the existence of this evil disposition. 1 And 
 this guilt is what is imputed to us. Here are to be considered 
 the important statements of Edwards (ii. 482, etc.) " The first 
 existing of a corrupt disposition in their hearts is not to be 
 looked upon as sin belonging to them distinct from their parti- 
 cipation in Adam's first sin; it is, as it were, the extended pollu- 
 tion of that sin through the whole tree by virtue of the consti- 
 tuted union of the branches with the root." Just before, "I 
 am humbly of the opinion, that if any have supposed the chil- 
 dren of Adam to come into the world with a double guilt, one the 
 guilt of Adam's sin, another the guilt arising from their having 
 a corrupt heart, they have not so well considered the matter." 
 And afterwards, " Derivation of evil disposition (or rather co- 
 existence) is in consequence of the union" — but "not prop- 
 erly a consequence of the imputation of his sin; nay, rather 
 antecedent to it, as it was in Adam himself. The first depravity 
 of heart, and the imputation of that sin, are both the conse- 
 quence of that established union, but yet in such order, that the 
 evil disposition is first, and the charge of guilt consequent, as it 
 was in the case of Adam himself." (He quotes Stapfer: "The 
 Reformed divines do not hold immediate and mediate imputa- 
 tion separately but always together.") And still further, ii. 493: 
 41 And therefore the sin of the apostasy is not theirs merely be- 
 cause God imputes it to them: but it is truly and properly 
 theirs, and on that ground God imputes it to them." 2 
 
 1 [The author would no doubt have continued to urge this position, had he 
 written out his system of theology. He always approved the general positions of 
 Edwards given above. But it is a question whether he did not intend to make 
 some final statements which would bring out more distinctly the proper federal 
 headship of Adam on the basis of the natural headship. All that is found, how- 
 ever, is the note, " Mediate imputation not wholly satisfactory." There is no 
 evidence that he meditated any retraction of what he gave in his lectures, but he 
 probably had in mind a statement of the whole subject under some larger point 
 of view. J 
 
 a To the same effect, Dr. John Owens, Works, xii. 249. Dr. Payne (Cong'l Lec- 
 tures) calls original sin " a loss of chartered blessings." And in fact the so-called 
 
318 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 IT. — The bearings of this view upon the three problems which 
 have been stated. 
 
 1. The relation of the race to the individual: of Adam to his 
 descendants. This is stated in the theory. Adam, by divine 
 constitution, was made the head and source of the human race. 
 They share in the consequences of his transgression. At the 
 same time, from the beginning, over against this, redemption 
 was provided. In the divine purpose the sin was doubtless 
 permitted and allowed to be handed down with respect to the re- 
 demption: not for its own sake, nor for the sake of the punish- 
 ment of it, nor for the sake of administering a merely moral 
 system, but — for the sake of the redemption, eternally provided 
 in view of it. Hence "this is the condemnation'' or judgment 
 (John iii. 19). To all that have known of Christ, the judgment 
 — final — to endless ruin — -is for the rejection of Him. Infants 
 are undoubtedly to be considered as included in the covenant of 
 redemption. As to all dying in infancy, and as to the heathen 
 who do not know of Christ, perhaps no better statement has 
 been made than that of the Westminster Confession (Conf., chap, 
 x. §. 3): " Elect 1 infants, dying in infancy" (including all infants 
 dying in infancy according to the almost universally prevalent 
 hope and belief) " are regenerated and saved by Christ through 
 the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. 
 So also are all other elect persons, ivho are incapable of being out- 
 tvardly called by the ministry of the word." 
 
 2. The relation of the common sinfulness of the race to in- 
 dividual sin. The union between these two points and their 
 harmony is found in the fact of experience to which we have ad- 
 verted — our s^nse of guilt in view of this depravity when it be- 
 comes known to us, and the " consent" of which we are conscious. 
 This is a fact above all theory. 
 
 Covenant is no* historically a covenant only, because it is much more than a cov- 
 enant; a system "not of divine equity merely but of rich sovereign grace:" a plan 
 by which, in and through a human race, good might become " cosmical," asDor- 
 ner has nut it. 
 
 1 [ Tb ** author in a certain place of his notes for lectures has referred, with strong 
 approval, to Crawford's statement ("Fatherhood of God," App.): Election comes to 
 this—- that what G-od does in time He purposed to do from eternity."] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 319 
 
 A fuller statement. Question: Is there any common ground 
 to which we may come in the conflict between the two positions 
 — that all men sinned in Adam and that all sin consists in 
 sinning? 
 
 (a.) The sinning and falling in Adam is not of the individuals 
 of the race — else it were, as has been said, a fall of millions and 
 not of one. It is, that human nature thereby came into a corrupt 
 condition, having a bias and propensity to sin, and exposed to 
 evils and death. This each one has by descent. This is the sin 
 and fall in Adam. 
 
 {b.) As soon as each individual acts morally, this corrupt na- 
 ture becomes his own preference, his own immanent bias and 
 preference. It is for this that he feels guilty and condemned. 
 And there is the point of junction in experience between these 
 two views. Were it not for this preference, our whole native 
 condition would wear to each one the character of an evil, and 
 not of a strictly guilty, state. This is a fact of universal experi- 
 ence and the ultimate fact in our analysis, the last point in which 
 the two views come together. (This is what Hopkins and Em- 
 mons insist upon, though they are led — especially the latter — 
 to insist, that this is the beginning of any moral condition in the 
 descendants of Adam, and is coeval with the existence of each 
 individual.) Here is where reatus culpce and reatus poence meet. 
 
 The question is fundamentally of the relation of the generic 
 to the individual, a question between Realism and Nominalism. 
 There is no more difficulty in principle about original sin than 
 about anything that is native. 1 In much of the modern ethics, 
 what is moral is made merely individual; pure individualism is 
 asserted: the existence, the "real" 2 existence of the generic moral 
 
 1 [/. e., in the relation of the moral abnormity of each individual to the moral 
 abnormity of the race, of the stock from which each springs. As regards the di* 
 vine view of the condition of the race, which pronounces this to be strictly sinful, 
 the author of course admits difficulty. He inclines to carry back the difficulty of 
 the permitted perpetuation of sin and of God's moral judgment upon this, into 
 the insoluble difficulty of the permission of the existence of sin, and to leave it 
 there.] 
 
 2 [An elaborate paper by the author on Realism and Nominalism — elaborate, 
 i. c, as a preparation for a work which never was executed — comes out upon the 
 general position of universalia in re, but insists that the universals must be recog 
 nized as realities as truly as the individuals are.^ 
 
320 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is not allowed. Here ethics is in the rear of the advance in the 
 natural sciences. 
 
 3. As to the justice and goodness of God in providing such a 
 constitution for the human race. 
 
 The common view, which vindicates God's justice and good 
 ness on the basis of a scientia media, is not entirely satisfactory. 
 
 The fact is that strictly the question here is not of God's 
 justice in respect to individuals, but to the whole race. Yet 
 as the question is alioays argued with reference to individuals, we 
 will consider it in that relation. 
 
 (a.) If there was to be a race at all, existing by descent, it is 
 difficult to see how it could be under any other condition ; * and 
 it was better to have a race even with such liabilities than not 
 to have a race. 
 
 (5.) As to individuals, it is not improbable that it is better for 
 each one to be in a state where there is a common sinfulness 
 and in which there is a common redemption provided, than it would 
 be for all the members of the race to stand or fall, each by him- 
 self, without such a provision? As we now come into the world, 
 it is under a dispensation of grace offered. With such a consti- 
 tution, there is hereditary depravity : s without it there might, 
 there probably would have been, angelic liabilities. 
 
 (c.) Tet ultimately we must say : The depths of the divine 
 wisdom and sovereignty we cannot penetrate, on any theory — 
 of justice or of physical law. The ultimate reason of the existence 
 of sin is not disclosed, and the question of God's justice and good- 
 ness in "dealing with mankind as the subjects of original sin 
 runs back into that greater problem — the divine permission 
 of sin. 
 
 1 [Any other, i. e., than this, in which advantages and attainments, as well as 
 disadvantages and forfeitures, should be transmitted, and the whole line of trans- 
 mission, so far as it had moral bearings, should be under the divine moral ap- 
 proval or displeasure.] 
 
 2 Some suggest: Adam was in abetter position for deciding than any of hia 
 posterity would have been; could we have had a voice, we should have chosen him 
 to decide for us, etc. ; but this does not reach to the heart of the difficulty. 
 
 8 [Reference is made with approval to Dr. Charles Hodge (Essays, p. 71): *' We 
 believe as fully and joyfully as he [Prof. Stuart] does, that the grace which is in 
 Christ Jesus secures the salvation of all who have no personal sins. to answer for."] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 321 
 
 Another statement. On the question: If no provision for 
 redemption had been intended, would God have continued the 
 race through Adam, after his fall? Would God, i. e., have 
 brought into existence a race, merely that He might show 
 the glory of his justice in punishing forever all that belonged 
 to it? — It is very possible that a general redemption is only 
 possible where there is a race; that the same constitution which 
 involves liability to generic sin makes a general atonement 
 possible. Christ, in order to redemption, must have part in 
 the race, be consubstantial with man. We are apt to spiritual- 
 ize both sin and redemption more than the Scripture does. In 
 the Bible, sin is connected with the death of the body, redemp- 
 tion with the resurrection of the body ; sin is from Adam to the 
 race, redemption from the second Adam to the race. The phy- 
 sical and the moral are here blended. 
 
 The grand relief in respect to the problem of sin is not to be 
 found in the will of man, nor in any real or supposed efficacy 
 of that will against the inroads and might of human sinfulness. 
 Exalt that power as we may, still, all that we can get out 
 of it is a vindication of our feeling of guilt and responsibility in 
 view of the evil and sin that are in us. Its best effect is reached 
 when we have deepened the sense of sin and sharpened the 
 feeling of responsibility. It may thus serve a purpose of vin- 
 dicating the divine justice in respect to our lot. But farther 
 than this it cannot carry us. It is not a power on which we can 
 rely for our moral change ; that change is only, in fact, through 
 divine grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 
 To have that redemption is absolutely essential for pardon. — Nor 
 is that power of the will of any real availability in respect to 
 accounting for our first moral choices in this sphere of being. 
 It only enables us to say they were in some sense avoidable, not 
 necessary, i e., by a merely physical necessity. But still the 
 broad, terrible fact remains, that there is that in human nature 
 which, in spite of this power, always carries the will, and begets 
 our immanent preferences. The real thing in us is this mighty 
 power of sin. To meet speculative difficulties, some such view 
 of the will as that referred to above, has its value: to meet our 
 
322 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 practical difficulties we need more than this. As a matter of 
 fad, to all the human race there is no hope out of the redemp- 
 tion that is in Christ Jesus.— And on the highest question as 
 to God's moral government, the solution must be found not out- 
 tide of, but within the Christian system. The great ultimate 
 ground is this: this world was made, sin was permitted, Christ 
 came, the kingdom of God was established, in view of, and with 
 respect to, Kedemption from sin. 
 
 Perhaps the only position where we can get any real relief, 
 as far as the divine government is concerned (and it is only 
 partial), is this: Adam sinned; God would at once have con- 
 demned to remediless punishment, had He not intended to 
 redeem. Adam would have had no posterity, had it not been 
 for redemption ; our coming into being is under the economy of 
 redemption. Our position is between the two economies — the 
 evils of the one, through natural descent — the hope of the other, 
 through grace. We may be saved through Christ. It is better 
 for us to come into being thus than to come, each to be tested 
 for himself. To all to whom the gospel is offered the last and great 
 condemnation will be that they have rejected grace provided 
 and offered. Then as to those who die in infancy, there is a well- 
 grounded hope that they are of the elect. 1 As to the heathen, 
 and those who have never heard of Christ: doubtless they will 
 be judged finally according to the light that they have had: not 
 
 1 As to the salvation of infants, Clem. Alex, held that they could not be saved 
 without baptism, Augustine, the same (De Anima, lib. 3, c. xiv. ; contra Pel. lib. i. xl. 
 — Pelagius had said: "Quononeantscio, quo eant, nescio");Perrone, in his Manual, 
 defends the proposition: "Infantes ex hac vita sine baptismo decedentes ad seter- 
 nam salutem pervenire non possunt;" Martin (R. C.) in his La Via Futura (Paris, 
 1853, pp. 435-455) cites testimony of the Fathers that unbaptized infants in the 
 Limbus Infantum suffer deprivation only, not pain; Brownson, Quar. Rev., 1862-S, 
 assigns them to " a state of natural beatitude;" — it is noticeable that Arminius ad- 
 mitted the damnation of infants as possible (Works, iii. 368, ed. of 1853) : " I affirm 
 that they rejected the grace of the Gospel in their parents, grandparents, great- 
 grandparents, etc., by which act they deserved to be abandoned of God;" see the 
 debate between Lyman Beecher ("Spirit of the Pilgrims," 1828, i. 42, 78, 95, 149) 
 and Andrev^s Norton (Chris. Exam., 1827, iv. 431; v. 229, 316, 506); also a good 
 article by H. C. Townley, Chris. Rev., July, 1863, p. 418; [also, article by Dr. 
 Prentiss, Pres. Rev., : 
 
A NTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 323 
 
 merely according to and by their nature, but as they have used 
 or not used such opportunities of repentance as have been afforded 
 — and this, too, on the ground of the redemption in Christ, 
 whether they have known it or not. This is not free from 
 difficulties; but it seems to be the utmost that can be said. 
 It makes Redemption enter into the constitution and the final 
 judgment of the world. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 1. It is said that the doctrine of original sin makes sin to be 
 the cause of sin. But this does not hold properly against the 
 doctrine, because: 
 
 (a.) According to the doctrine, the cause of all sin in the 
 world is the transgression of Adam: sin is not the cause of sin, 
 but Adam is the cause of sin. 
 
 (6.) This original sin or native depravity in us is, properly 
 speaking, the source, the ground, the principle of sin rather 
 than the cause. The category to be applied — sin being in the 
 race — is not that of cause and effect, but, of ground and con- 
 sequence, of source and stream. The objection assumes that 
 all sin is a choice, of a person ; but this is not the sense of the 
 doctrine. 
 
 (c.) The objection proves too much. Sin may he the cause 
 of sin. Sinful habits, when formed, are the cause of sin in 
 everyday experience. 
 
 2. It is objected that a propensity to sin is not properly 
 sinful. This has been considered already, but the reasons for 
 calling it sinful may be here summed up. 
 
 (a.) Such is usage. The confining of all terms denoting 
 moral quality to individual acts belongs to a conventional and 
 narrow system of ethics, to the philosophy of individualism. 
 
324 CHKISTEAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (b.) It is sinful in the sense that it is from sin and leads to 
 sin. It is from sin alone, and leads only to sin. 
 
 (c.) It is the same disposition in us latent for which we feel 
 guilty and which we know to be sinful when it comes into dis- 
 tinct consciousness. A propensity to sin is a latent, inordinate 
 love of the world and self. All grant that, after choice, the pro- 
 pensity is sinful. How does it now differ from what it was 
 before? It has become a personal, manifested choice, involving 
 personal liabilities. As soon as we define sin by its real nature, 
 and not by its liabilities, not by its causes and consequences, 
 we have to bring a propensity to sin under it. 
 
 (<£) It is sinful because it exposes all the members of the 
 race to divine judgments under the moral government of God, 
 to evil, misery, death. 
 
 (e.) Because we need regeneration and atonement in order 
 to be delivered from it: and these are moral and not physical 
 remedies. 
 
 Yet, while vindicating the propriety of calling it sinful, we 
 would not dispute about a mere word, if the facts of the case 
 are conceded. Native depravity is perhaps a more unobjection- 
 able term than original sin. If people call it native depravity 
 in a moral sense, and say that it comes from Adam, all that is 
 essential is granted. 
 
 3. It is objected that the doctrine makes two kinds of sin. 
 Of course it does, if sin is to be defined as actual transgression, 
 as specific volition, as conscious preference. Otherwise not. It 
 makes two forms of sin: one the conscious and the other the un- 
 conscious; one the native and the other the active. The objec- 
 tion sometimes is: there cannot be any sin without a knowledge 
 of good: choice of evil, knowing the good, is sin, and only this. 
 But the Apostle Paul says: "I had not known sin but by the 
 law." The sin was there before. The Psalmist prays: " Cleanse 
 thou me from secret faults/' There is a great deal of sin in us, 
 in all Christians, which is only brought out in times of tempta- 
 tion and trial. 
 
 4. Objection is sometimes made to the form which the doc- 
 trine takes in mediate imputation, (a.) This is said to be " Re- 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 325 
 
 alism," 1 involving numerical identity of substance in all the 
 members of the race. But the doctrine does not involve any 
 such speculation. The assertion that the human race is a reality 
 as truly as the human individual is, is not " realism " in the 
 sense of this objection, (b.) It is said that the doctrine in this 
 form involves an act of a nature, — which is impossible. But 
 this only on the assumption of universalia ante rem. Universalia 
 in re is consistent with the position, that "in Adam the person 
 corrupted the nature, in us the nature corrupts the person." 
 There was a nature to be corrupted by an act: there is a nature 
 which furnishes the corrupt ground of the person who becomes 
 corrupt, (c.) For the same reasons, it is said that this form of 
 the doctrine would bring upon us the guilt of all of Adam's sins, 
 and of all the sins of our forefathers. But this would only 
 hold against a form of mediate imputation which should deny 
 the federal headship of Adam, asserting all the evils of sin to 
 be mere consequences of transmission, and denying any righteous 
 judgment of God upon the race as in Adam, the public person, 
 and upon his act, his first sin, as the source of all human corrup- 
 tion and transgression, (d.) It is said that mediate imputation 
 is no imputation: that "impute" means, to reckon to one what 
 is done by another. Waiving the question 2 whether this is 
 accurate, we assert that any tolerable doctrine of mediate impu- 
 tation does " reckon to one what is done by another." The 
 mode or media of- reckoning may be different in different cases. 
 
 In conclusion we say that the definition of sin, which will 
 cover original sin, is our standard definition: "Sin is any want 
 of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God." 
 
 1 See Princeton Review, Jan. 1865. 
 
 * Dr. Charles Hodge, Sysfc. TheoL, ii. 194, says: "So far as the meaning of the 
 word [impute] is concerned, it makes no difference whether the thing imputed be 
 our own personally, or the sin or righteousness of another." 
 
326 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE BONDAGE OF SIN, ITS POWER OVER THE HUMAN WI1L. 
 
 We have here the question of Natural Ability and Moral In> 
 ability. 1 
 
 The inherent difficulty of the inquiry, and of the right mode 
 of stating the exact truth, comes from the fact that the truth is 
 not a simple, but a relative one. We are in danger of taking 
 one half and neglecting the other, of stating the natural ability 
 without the moral inability, or the moral inability without the 
 natural ability, whereas both together make the truth. Here, 
 too, we have to do with one form of the reconciliation of the 
 great facts of dependence and free-agency, and also, of the cer- 
 tainty of depravity with the existence of accountability. Ac- 
 cordingly, the truth must be so stated as to save both sides. 
 Besides, here the greatest interests are at stake: the divine gov- 
 ernment on the one hand, and human freedom on the other; 
 while the discussion also bears upon the most solemn and impor- 
 tant part of preaching — the grounds for the exhortation of the 
 sinner to repentance. 
 
 One way of meeting this difficulty is to assert both truths 
 in an unreconciled way. This is the common sense mode. This 
 is the way in which the truths lie in most minds, each being 
 held to be proved by sufficient evidence, and both being affirmed 
 without the endeavor to reconcile them. God is sovereign, man 
 is free: God's sovereignty extends to all events, man's freedom 
 to all his moral acts. Or, in another point of view, man is de- 
 praved and always will sin, and yet he is always free in doing 
 it. This is the sound, practical way of looking at the subject. 
 Many theoretical attempts do not amount to much more than 
 this. And it is better to leave the question in this shape, hold- 
 ing both positions, each by itself, than so to state and enforce 
 either as to cut the nerve of the other. No theory of freedom 
 
 1 See SmaUey's Sermons, reprinted in Brown's Theol. Tracts, I. Compare 
 also, Dr. Hickok's Science of Mind from Consciousness. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 327 
 
 can be true, which interferes with the divine government, in re- 
 generation, election, etc. ; and no theory of the divine government 
 can be true, which interferes with, or denies, the proper respon- 
 sibility and free will of man. And besides, all concede that it 
 is necessary to preach both in order to make a right impression — 
 both certainty and free-agency : now, if it is necessary to preach 
 both, neither is true by itself alone, neither is true in an ab- 
 stract statement about it, made without respect to the other; 
 no definition of either can be correct which is not made with 
 respect to the other, in view of it, and as balanced by it. An 
 abstract metaphysical inability and an abstract metaphysical 
 ability are both false. 
 
 The problem therefore is, how to state the two facts in their 
 relations to, and connections with, each other. The different ex- 
 treme positions are these : (1) Man has no ability of any hind to 
 repent and turn to God; he is utterly disabled to all good, in 
 the proper strict sense of inability and disability. His con- 
 dition is that of "absolute disability." (2) The counter extreme 
 position is, that man has in the strict sense power to the con- 
 trary in all moral acts; i e., entire adequacy to repentance, full 
 power, all power needful for the act of repentance, is given in 
 the power of contrary choice. The mere fact of power to the 
 contrary choice gives full power to repent, without divine grace. 
 (3) Man has the natural ability to repent, while he is morally 
 unable, and the two are consistent with each other. This is 
 the New England statement, the position of Edwards. 
 
 § 1. Preliminary Definitions. 
 
 1. Natural Inability. By this is meant a want of powers or 
 power of choice, or of physical advantages and opportunities, 
 e. gr., when one lacks the requisite faculties, so that the power 
 of choice cannot apply to the case, as when an impotent man 
 resolves to walk and cannot. This is always applied in connec- 
 tion with the possibility of there being a willing mind. Natural 
 inability means, that one cannot though he will. 
 
 2. Natural Ability. By this is meant, having all the faculties 
 and powers of a moral agent, including the power of choice, 
 
3!48 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 — whatsoever is in the possible compass of one's natural capac- 
 ities, so that, if a man wills to do anything, he can do it, just 
 up to the extent of his natural capacities; e. g., a man wills to 
 jump; his natural ability is the extent to which he can jump if 
 he puts forth all his power. If a man is capable of one hundred 
 and twenty degrees of virtue, and one hundred and twenty-one 
 are demanded, that one hundred and twenty-first is not right- 
 fully demanded of him, because it is not in the compass of his 
 natural capacities. Whatever his physical capacities, all his 
 powers of reason, heart, and will combined, can effect, provided 
 he wills it — that is his natural ability. 1 
 
 3. Moral Inability. By this is meant, such a state of the heart 
 or will as makes continued sinful action certain, such, e. g.> as makes 
 it certain that the sinner will not repent without divine grace. 
 It means — unwillingness, but unwillingness as implying a state 
 of the will supremely fixed on some end or object, a permanent 
 state or habit of the will, the supreme love of the world. It is 
 sometimes said that the older New England theologians meant 
 by moral inability merely unwillingness, and that is true if the 
 word unwillingness is used in its full meaning, as setting forth 
 the fact that the will is in a permanent state of choice. The 
 word meant such unwillingness as is a real and sufficient ob- 
 stacle to actual repentance. 
 
 4. Moral Ability. This means such a state of heart and will 
 as implies a preference for anything, and the ability of doing 
 which results from the preference. It means more than the gen- 
 eral capacity which is involved in free agency or natural ability, 
 it is intended to designate — entire, immediate adequacy to an end. 
 
 Natural Inability is = a man cannot though he will. 
 
 Natural Ability is = a man can if he will, — can if he will 
 not, — he has all that is necessary except the will, but the will 
 is needful to the actualizing of the case. 
 
 Moral Inability is.= a man will not though he can. 
 
 Moral Ability is = a man will. It is, the state of the will itself. 
 
 1 In later schools of New England theology there has been a curious changing 
 of the meaning of these terms, so as to make natural ability signify only the power 
 to the contrary choice. But it is evident that the sense given above was the mean- 
 ing originally, from the terms used as equivalent to it, e. g., "physical ability." 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 329 
 
 Reply to the question: Can a man will? It may mean, Be- 
 sides and above the will, is there a can? Ans. No; this is voli- 
 tion before volition. It may mean, Can a man will tinder the 
 appropriate circumstances? 1 Ans. Yea. 
 
 § 2. The Power to the Contrary. 
 
 This phrase is sometimes used to mean the same as natural 
 ability. It is sometimes employed to designate a distinct power 
 from that which is actually exerted, and such power is regarded as 
 that which constitutes the freedom of the will. But this can- 
 not be. There is only one indivisible power of choice, and the 
 power to the contrary is simply that power of choice viewed in 
 relation to something which is not chosen, but which might 
 have been, had the person preferred. If the will is put on one 
 object, it is metaphysically implied that the will — the same will, 
 not a distinct power — might have been put on a different object. 
 
 In relation to moral action or agency, the term natural ability 
 is better suited than that of the power to the contrary choice, 
 to express the real facts of the case. It is a matter of consequence 
 here, what our words are : a difference in phraseology may cause 
 the widest difference in our mode of apprehending the facts. 
 The reason of using the phrase, natural ability, rather than the 
 simple general phrase, free agency, was, the reference and con- 
 trast in the former to moral inability. It is a phrase which states 
 one of the facts with reference to the other, which is what we 
 must do in all discussion of the subject before us. 
 
 The Difference between Natural Ability and Power to the 
 Contrary : 
 
 1. Natural ability, the power of choice, is exercised in every 
 act — not the whole natural ability, but the capacities according 
 to the degree of them which is demanded — while the power to 
 the contrary is never exercised. It canuot be. As soon as it is 
 exercised, it is not the power to the contrary, but the power 
 
 i " If by liberty be meant a power of willing and choosing, as exemption from 
 co-action and natural necessity, and power, opportunity, and advantage to execute 
 our own choice ; in this sense we hold liberty " (Dr. Edwards, Reply to Dr. West, 
 Works, i. 326). [But with the author, "appropriate circumstances" means more 
 than this, it includes " willingness " in the deeper sense.] 
 
330 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 which is put forth. It is a contradiction in terms to suppose it 
 actually exercised. 
 
 2. The assumption of a specific power to the contrary can- 
 not help us in explaining any acts of actual choice. It is said : 
 Adam could not have sinned or repented, unless he had the 
 power to the contrary. It is true, so far as this: unless he 
 could have willed differently from what he did, he could not 
 have sinned; but he did not use the power to the contrary, he 
 left it behind. So when a sinner repents, he does not use the 
 power to the contrary. 1 We mean by natural ability, or free 
 agency, all the faculties of a moral agent, including the power 
 of choice, whereby the possibility of another than the actual 
 choice is always given. But no new faculties, no new power of 
 choice, no power hitherto unexercised, is necessary, in order to 
 a different result. It is a new choice, i. e., a new exertion of the 
 one indivisible power of choice, that is alone requisite. 
 
 3. The word power, as used in the phrase, "power to the con- 
 trary," is indefinite. It is sometimes used as though "power" 
 were a simple ultimate idea. But that which is simple is "choice"; 
 power has a variety of modifications. The Greek language gives 
 this distinction in Svvajxis and krepyeia: the first is potential 
 power, the second is power in act, power exerted. Now the 
 word, power, in " power to the contrary/' means and must mean, 
 that which is potential, a possibility inherent in the nature of 
 the cause. It can never mean, the power exerted. There is a 
 difference between possibility and power: one is that which 
 may be, the other is that which not only may be, but is, and is 
 put forth. 2 As far as power of choice goes, which must be ex- 
 erted in repentance, the sinner has it, and so has the possibility 
 of coming into a different moral state, and if he had not that 
 power, he could not be brought into a state of repentance. But 
 
 1 He uses the same power that he formerly used in his course of impenitence, 
 but in a different way, on different objects. The contention is against the exist- 
 ence of any power to the contrary distinct from the power which is used. 
 
 3 ["The most elaborate of the Aristotelian distinctions is that between power 
 in possibility and power in act. Man (in potentia) may be viewed as a possible 
 cause of either of several effects; but to pass from power to action requires othej 
 conditions or causes, which help to constitute the effect" (Faith and Philosophy, 
 p. 372).] 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 331 
 
 the result depends upon something more than the power of 
 choice; it depends also upon the motive, the end or object of the 
 choice. There must not only be the efficient cause, but the oc- 
 casional and final cause. 1 So that all that the result depends 
 upon is not given in the power of choice, although an essential 
 element of it is given. 
 
 To say, that a man can repent, actually do so, without grace, 
 is contrary to experience, to the Scriptures, to the certainty of 
 his sinning until regeneration, — to his moral inability. To 
 grant him all the faculties and powers, including choice, as 
 possibilities, in respect to repentance, is consistent with these — 
 and with the facts of the case. 
 
 § 3. The positive Statements as to the Relation of Natural Ability 
 and Moral Inability. 
 
 The First Proposition. Though the sinner has the natural 
 ability (in the sense assigned) to repent and believe, yet, on ac- 
 count of his depravity, for the exercise of that ability, he is de- 
 pendent on divine grace. The whole simple truth is contained 
 in what the Apostle Paul says, Rom. vii. 18, taking his statement 
 in a strict metaphysical sense: "To will is present with me but 
 [how] to perform [I find] is not.'' This, with the context, gives 
 the facts of the case, in a way to reconcile the two truths of 
 moral inability and natural ability. It assigns the ground of the 
 non-exercise; i e., depravity. That is the reason, and the only 
 reason, why his natural ability will not be exerted. The ground 
 is not put in a want of capacity, or of natural power of the will; 
 but it is put where it belongs — viz., in the depravity. That is 
 the only hindrance, but that is an effectual hindrance to repent- 
 ing, without grace. The Apostle does not say, merely, that it 
 is certain that he will not exercise his natural ability, nor simply 
 
 i President Day: "A man may have some power, but not all power; that is, 
 
 he may not have all that on which the result depends If the word 
 
 power be used in its broadest sense, as including not only opportunity, knowl- 
 edge, capacity, but motives of all kinds, it is not true that a man has always 
 equal power to opposite volitions."— The term, power, is simple, but for the 
 exercise of it we need other conditions than its existence. These two points 
 are often confounded. 
 
332 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 that he "will" not exert it: but he gives the ground and reason 
 of the certainty that he will not. Moreover it is not "a gra- 
 cious ability " which is conferred when repentance occurs, but 
 the simple fact is, that an ability is exercised through grace,— 
 with divine aid. The passage agrees with the explanations 
 commonly given of "power to the contrary," viz., "can but will 
 not," but it also gives the grounds of the will not. 
 
 And this also suggests the real point of inquiry and doubt, in 
 respect to some of the misapplications and misunderstandings of 
 the theory of natural ability — and shows its limitations. It is 
 asked, What is ability, but a power which may be exerted? 
 True: it may be: it is possible; and the having this power 
 is perfectly consistent with the position that it can only be 
 exerted under certain conditions, and if the hindrance is a 
 sinful one, with our responsibility for the non-exertion. To 
 illustrate. "God cannot lie"; the meaning is, He cannot ac- 
 tually do it; there is only an abstract, metaphysical, not a 
 real, possibility. 
 
 Why we assert natural ability: Otherwise there is no obli- 
 gation, nor even possibility of change of character. This will 
 appear from 
 
 The Second Proposition: There is no sufficient ground for 
 going further and saying positively, that a totally depraved 
 being has sufficient power to repent, without divine aid. That 
 would be to assert the possession of power in the second sense, 
 in the sense of what one can actually do, in his condition, with- 
 out God. 
 
 1. This is a - position which can never be proved by in- 
 duction; there are no facts on which it can be based: at the 
 best it is but a metaphysical proposition. The facts of the 
 case, the consciousness pleaded in the case, reaches no further 
 than to the possibility of the act: it does, in our judgment, 
 reach to that point, but not beyond — not to the position that 
 man, in his state, without divine aid, can really, fully, and 
 truly turn to God. 
 
 2. Nor does the argument from obligation reach any further 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 333 
 
 than our statement. 1 The argument from obligation is, " I ought, 
 therefore I can." Whence is the ought in the case? It is based 
 on a sense of right, of duty, which is the simple utterance of con- 
 science. It is my duty: hence I ought to do it. This is primi- 
 tive and simple. The " ought" is not primarily dependent on 
 the " can," but precedes it. The feeling of obligation is the first 
 and simplest. But it is said: "I ought, therefore I can:" the 
 ability is the condition, though not the ground of the obligation. 
 True so far as this, that the ought cannot exceed the measure 
 of the natural ability — ail the heart and soul and mind and 
 strength. But it is a different thing to say, ;i I ought, therefore 
 I can — actually — do it." For there is a hindrance, in the sinful 
 self; and that is not a natural, but a moral hindrance, one for 
 which I am guilty and responsible. 
 
 3. Nor does the command of Repentance imply more than 
 our first proposition. " Man is bound to repent, therefore he can 
 repent." Here we have the u ought "and the "can" brought 
 under the point of view of Repentance. Avoiding the ambi- 
 guity in the word "can," we reach the same result as before. 
 (a.) It may be remembered that there is no evidence that the 
 command to repent is ever actually given except in a system in 
 which divine aids are also given. But we do not insist upon 
 this, since repentance is obligatory in any case. But we say, 
 (b.) The command of repentance is also one on a level with man's 
 natural ability. Man can — if he will. He has the power of choice, 
 the capacity of choice, and that is the condition of the possibil- 
 ity * of his repentance. The hindrance is precisely as before, 
 yet it is a real hindrance to actual obedience. Objections: " God 
 commands us to repent actually, does He not?" — Yes. "There- 
 fore we can actually repent, can we not?" 3 Still as before 
 say, Yes, we have the natural ability actually to repent, and 
 what prevents us from doing it is our own evil hearts, but 
 that does prevent. " Is a man responsible for not obeying the 
 command to repent? " Yes, because the reason for not obeying 
 
 i Mliller: " Ich sollte freilich kb'nnen, aber ich kann nicht." 
 
 • — condition in which there is the possibility — 
 
 3 [Hints probably of answers to questions pnt by students in the class-room,] 
 
3 15 4 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is simply our preference for sin. And this is a final statement, 
 we cannot get beyond it. " What is the sense of the phrase, 
 * he can if he wiU ? ' " " Can the sinner repent— if he will ? " Yes, 
 if he choose to do so. He can — if he will : the actual exercise of 
 the will, as power of choice, is necessary to the volition : the 
 doing is dependent on the willing. "Is it the same as when we 
 say, a bird can sing — if it will ?" No; there is no comparison to 
 be made between the cases; the bird has not the faculty of Will, 
 it is not a moral agent with such a faculty. 
 
 The Third Proposition. The position that a sinful, depraved 
 being can actually repent without grace, involves us, when 
 carried out strictly, in inextricable difficulties. 
 
 1. This position sunders in form of statement, what is always 
 united in fact — viz., the divine and human coworking in all our 
 religious acts. 1 Here the two factors are sundered, and then 
 the result is supposed to be achieved by one. In actual human 
 experience, there never has been such a state as religion with- 
 out grace. Those who take the bold ground here do it in pre- 
 cisely the same sense in which they say that God can sin. The 
 doctrine of power to the contrary is applied in a parallel way in 
 the two cases. And we suppose it is just as true that a man 
 can repent without grace, as that God can sin, and no more true. 
 It is a bare metaphysical possibility given in the power of 
 choosing. 
 
 2. Let us carry out the supposition for a moment, and make 
 the hypothesis that a person repents without divine grace. 
 What is the resultant state of mind? Kepentance is turning to 
 God, and supposes the divine presence, but by the supposition, 
 God is not really present in the act. All that the act can 
 amount to is this: I have an intellectual conception or idea 
 of God, and I love or turn to that. It is an abstract love to an 
 abstract idea. It is not a religious reality. 
 
 3. The position is consistent only with the supposition of 
 the self-determining power of the will. 
 
 1 On this all religion depends. It is this which gives the distinction between 
 Religion and Morals. A religious state is one in which a divine influence is felt. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OP REDEMPTION. 335 
 
 4. It implies self-regeneration, because wherever there is 
 repentance there is a regeneration of the soul. The soul is 
 renewed in and by repentance. 
 
 The Fourth Proposition. The Scriptures always conjoin the 
 two truths of natural ability and moral inability, and they 
 should be, conjoined in all preaching. Neither by itself is the 
 truth : both are the truth. The great thing is to keep the two truths 
 together. Matt. iii. 2; Phil. ii. 12, 13; John vi. 44; xv. 5; Jer. 
 xiii. 23; Rom. vii. 18; Rom. viii. 7, 8; Gal. iii. 21. The Scriptures 
 give the truth in a concrete form. God is there addressing man. 
 The relation of dependence, of mutual activity, is presupposed. 
 They do not contemplate man as sundered from divine influence, 
 except by sin. The most characteristic invitations, Matt. xii. 20; 
 John vii. 37 ; Isa. lv. 1, 2 ; on the face of them, imply grace pro- 
 vided. The Scriptures do not know of any repentance, except 
 through and by divine grace. The power which the gospel 
 sets over against the mighty power of sin, is not the might 
 of our own wills, but the power of God's grace through Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 As to Preaching: The best and the only real preaching is that 
 which connects the two truths, natural ability and moral in- 
 ability. The one cannot be set forth truly without the other. 
 If natural ability is preached without moral inability, then the 
 natural ability in its true sense is not preached, and vice versa. 
 Wherever the duty is insisted on without the grace, or the grace 
 without the duty, we are sure to go wrong. The best preaching 
 combines — sovereignty, depravity, and natural ability: all other 
 is jejune and bald. The practicability of immediate repentance can- 
 not be urged on any other ground than the two conjoined: power 
 of choice and grace offered. The question is not, Shall the sin- 
 ner be exhorted to immediate repentance, but — on what grounds? 
 Not — Has the sinner power of choice? but — As to the way of 
 using that power. The obligation is urgent, the duty is full, — 
 how do it ? The answer: Grace is offered in Christ. Immediate 
 repentance is always to be urged on the ground of the two com- 
 bined; the power of choice giving the possibility, and grace of- 
 
336 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 fered giving encouragement; the duty which springs from man's 
 capacities and relation to God, the obligation which binds the 
 soul while its being lasts: man's helplessness in himself, his 
 need of divine grace, and that grace offered in Christ. The two 
 are the perpetual complements of each other. Such preach- 
 ing has been the source of revivals in this country, in their 
 best form. Even in the a cutest essay to vindicate full natural 
 ability which we have, 1 when the author brings the sinner to 
 the point where he suspends his self-love, he makes the Holy 
 Spirit come in and guide, in order to make effectual the choice. 
 And so it must be always, in order to the renewal of the soul. 
 In fact, the most strenuous advocates of unlimited ability say 
 that they preach ability so that a man may feel his duty, try to 
 perform it, find he cannot really do it — so hard is his heart — 
 and then be led to accept the grace offered. But they might as 
 well make the conclusion a part of the theory. 
 
 Summary. The great practical points. 
 
 1. Man has all the powers — perfectly so, which are necessary 
 to moral agency. 
 
 2. All the inability he is under is a sinful inability. This is 
 an unwillingness, which is not merely an act of the will or a 
 lack of action, but is also a state of the will, constituting a real 
 and sufficient obstacle to his actually doing right. 
 
 3. He has the ability in will as the power of choice, to ac- 
 cept or reject the grace offered to him, to obey or disobey the 
 calls, — has the efficiency, though not the sufficiency. 
 
 4. He is under obligation to immediate repentance: he ought 
 at once to repent and turn to God. 
 
 5. Under the offer of the gospel and the command of God, 
 he may comply; no man can say that he has not enough of the 
 influences. 
 
 6. This ability is not gracious merely; it is primarily i» 
 man's will as power of choice: so that to refuse is the 
 greater sin. 
 
 1 Dr. N". W. Taylor's in Christian Spectator. 
 
ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 337 
 
 CONCLUSION OF THE FIRST DIVISION OF THEOLOGY: 
 THE ANTECEDENTS OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 We have considered The Being and Attributes of God; his 
 Works, his End in Creation; Man as made for God, as having 
 endowments to carry out and promote God's great end in crea- 
 tion; Man as fallen, as lying under and exposed to the penalties 
 for sin, and as involved in the bondage of sin. There remains to 
 be considered: The Possibility of Redemption, notwithstanding 
 the sinful, guilty condition of mankind. [This was not treated 
 by the author.] The possibility on God's side is found in the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, which has been considered, — opening to 
 our view personal distinctions in the Godhead, through which 
 the Incarnation and the Eedemption may become actual. The 
 possibility on man's side consists: (1) In the divine image re- 
 maining in him, in his natural capacities and powers, and his 
 immortal destiny: the groundwork of his nature, as a moral, 
 spiritual, immortal being, remains. (2) In the capacity yet re- 
 maining to him, of receiving divine influences, whereby he may 
 be restored. 
 
DIVISION SECOND. 
 
 THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. THE PERSON AND 
 WORK OF CHRIST. 
 
DIVISION SECOND. 
 
 THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. THE PEESON AND 
 WORK OF CHRIST. 
 
 We enter here upon the Second General Division of the 
 System of Christian Theology, which is also the center and 
 key-stone of the whole. The central idea to which all the 
 parts of theology are to be referred, and by which the system 
 is to be made a system, or to be constructed, is what we have 
 termed the Christologio§l or Medi^toml idea, viz., that* God 
 was in Christ reconciling the wprld unto himself. This idea is 
 central, 1 not in the sense that all the other parts of theology are 
 logically deduced from it, but rather that they center in it. The 
 idea is, that of an Incarnation in order to Jfc^ftmptiftTl- This 
 is the central idea of Christianity, as distinguished, or distin- 
 guishable, from all other religions, and from all forms of phi- 
 losophy; and by this, and this alone, are we able to construct 
 the whole system of the Christian faith on its proper grounds. 
 This idea is the proper center of unity to the whole Christian 
 system, as the soul is the center of unity to the body, as the 
 North Pole is to all the magnetic needles. It is so really the 
 center of unity that when we analyze and grasp and apply it, 
 we find that the whole of Christian theology is in it. Thus: the 
 analysis of Incarnation in order to Redemption presupposes the 
 doctrin e respecting the divine nature , the end of God in his 
 works, the_nat^e^ofjaian, and the condition of ma n as sinf ul 
 and this comprised the first division of theology — The Ant jo- 
 dents of Redemption. The same principle, in its concrete wity 
 gives us the doctrines respecting the Person and Work of Chnst, 
 which make up this, our second division of the system. And 
 the same principle, in its applications, gives us the third division 
 
 1 [See Introduction to Christian Theology, p. 58.] 
 
342 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of the system, embracing regeneration, justification, sanctifica- 
 tion, the doctrine respecting the church and the sacraments, 
 and the eschatology. 
 
 The general scheme for the Second Division: — 
 
 _PAitT JL— The_ Incarnation in its general natu re and objects: on Scriptural, 
 historical, and p hilosophical grounds. 
 *-S^JS^2r*fee,P erso » °? the 'Mediator : God manifest in th e flesh. 
 Pabt UL —Of the worklrf the Mediator: in His three offices of Prophet, Priest 
 as4_5ing. 
 
PART I. 
 
 OF THE INCARNATION IN ITS GENERAL NATURE AND 
 
 OBJECTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT IS PRESUPPOSED IN THE INCARNATION. 
 
 Two things are presupposed: viz. — the fact of sin^ and such 
 a constitution of the Godhe ad as ma^ea t f he inca rnation possi 
 
 ble. 1 These we have already considered. In order to redeem 
 man from sin, an incarnate Redeemer, one divine in Himself, 
 having our nature and bearing our sins, was needed. (" Cur 
 Deus Homo?" Why the God-man?) 
 
 § 1. Of the Incarnation in Relation to Sin. 
 
 We do not mean that we can say that only through an in- 
 carnation our deliverance could be effected. But we can say 
 these things: (1) That such a being, one having the div ine ano] 
 the human na tu re, js _ejoinen^^adapted t_Q this wjQrk, (2) That 
 noonecan proye_ that any other being could have performed 
 such a superhuman work. (3) That t here is a more perfect con- 
 gruity between such a person and such a work, than between 
 such a work and any other person that we can conceive to exist. 
 And we may add (4), that on the inductive method of reason- 
 ing from facts to principles, if it be proved historically that such 
 a being has appeared, in the divine administration, for such a 
 work, it is a rational conclusion that such ji being was needed 
 
 '[There is a third point, — such a constitution of human nature as makes the 
 Incarnation possible, which is considered incidentally. The author did not deny 
 the position of certain eminent German theologians: that God and man are to be 
 viewed as "capable of each other," but he would not affirm it as the leading 
 position in Ohristology. He prefers to view the Incarnation always in its relation 
 to sin.'] 
 
344 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 for the work. God does nothing in vain. Such a manifestation 
 of glory and suffering, of glory in suffering, would not have 
 been, unless a necessity for it — at least a moral, if not a phys- 
 ical or natural, necessity had existed. 
 
 Over against the sin of the world, to redeem men from it, the 
 God-man appeared. This is his position. The fact of sin made 
 it necessary, in the above sense, that he should appear for this 
 object. 
 
 And in relation to the human race, He is the second Adam, 
 the Lord from heaven. He assumes the same position in re- 
 spect to the human race as to its redemption from sin and to 
 eternal life, that the first Adam did as to sin and death. This 
 is clearly and fully put by the Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 46- 
 49, * — a wonderful passage : life from Christ as death from 
 Adam, spirit from Christ as soul from, Adam. The parallel is 
 complete: the headship of Christ in relation to redemption is 
 set over against the headship of Adam in relation to sin. We 
 may with advantage make some fuller statements here upon this 
 important point. We can have from this position the best sur- 
 vey of theology; in retrospect as to what we have considered — 
 under the headship of Adam, and in prospect of what is before 
 us — under the headship of Christ. 
 
 Fuller Statement of the Doctrine of the Two Headships. 
 
 In the Scriptures, especially in the two passages, Eom. v. 
 12-21, and 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47, two contrasted economies, making 
 one divine plan, are presented to us. On the one hand is sin 
 and death, and on the other hand, righteousness and life. Sin 
 and death come to the human race from one man — the first 
 Adam: righteousness and life also come to the race from one, 
 that is, Jesus Christ. Condemnation is by the first, Justifica- 
 tion is by the second : we are involved in death by the former, 
 and we obtain resurrection and the reigning in life by the other, 
 that is, by Jesus Christ. 
 
 In these positions is disclosed the grand and striking peculi* 
 
 1 Compare on this: the relation to Philo, and the difference between Paul and 
 Philo, "Jour. Class, and Sac. Philology," No. 1, 1854- 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 345 
 
 arity of the Scriptural mode of viewing human nature and hu- 
 man destiny in relation to God. It is precisely here, on this 
 point, in this way of summing up and stating the matter, thai 
 the Gospel of Christ is distinguished from all other schemes and 
 systems, from all theories and speculations of merely human 
 origin, from any merely physical or moral system, that proposes 
 to explain the facts, and to forecast the destiny of the race. It 
 is in the contrasted headship of the first and of the second Adam. 
 ^ or the whole Sc riptural doctrine of sin runs backjinto our nafc 
 uralunion with the first Adam by descent ; the whole Scriptural 
 doctrine of righteousness runs l)ack into our vital union with 
 the second Adam, which is not of nature but by grace. 
 
 I. — The Scriptural view of the relation of the race to the first 
 Adam, is at once simple and complete. 
 
 1. The human race is not a mere aggregate of units, but 
 rather a physical and moral unity. There is one family of man 
 it is made up of individuals, each one having his personal rights 
 and personal responsibilities; but these separate individuals are 
 also bound together, by the inflexible law of a common descent; 
 and the unity is as real as the individuality; in fact, the generic, 
 in plan and in idea, precedes the individual. It is not meant, 
 or implied, in this, that there is any mystical identity of sub- 
 stance ; but only a real unity, made by the law of propagation 
 and descent, so that we are all truly the children of the first 
 Adam, and have part and lot in his inheritance. 
 
 2. On the basis of this physical unity of the race, the Script- 
 ures still further teach us, that there is also a moral unity. The 
 union comes under the rubric of moral government, as well as 
 under the caption of physical connection. In other words, in 
 the technical language of theology — which is a convenient, 
 though not the only, form of stating the truth, — Acfa m was con- 
 stituted the federal, as well as the natural, head of the human 
 race. In some way, as a matter-of-fact, if not of formal cove- 
 nant, 1 he stood for us, as our representative, so that what he did 
 might be, and was, made over to his descendants, involving 
 them in the consequences, whether of advantage or of liability 
 
 1 It was more than a c( Tenant— a "charter," v. supra. 
 
346 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of his act. And this was not merely a physical sequence, a 
 matter of divine sovereignty alone : it is also represented as a 
 moral, even as a judicial process, in terms too distinct to be 
 evaded. "As by one man sin entered into the world ^and death 
 by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that [or, asjs 
 seen in the fact that] all have sinned;" "through the offence of 
 one many be dead;" "by one man's offence death reigned by 
 one;" "by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to 
 condemnation;" "by one man's disobedience many were made 
 [constituted] sinners." If these statements do not imply a moral 
 union and dependence, a relation not physical, but judicial, it is 
 hardly possible for language to do so. In the technical language 
 of theology, this is represented as the imputation of Adam's first 
 sin to his posterity, that is, as reckoning to their account the 
 penal consequences of his transgression. We sinned in him and 
 fell with him — not as personally present, but through our com- 
 munity of nature. 1 
 
 3. But we are chiefly concerned with the fact itself, that in 
 consequence of Adam's sin we come into the world in a state of 
 ein and death, and liable to penal evils here and hereafter, un- 
 less divine grace intervene. Here is doubtless a great, an awe- 
 inspiring mystery: but, as Pascal intimates, though it is a great 
 enigma, yet the enigma of man's life would be still greater, and 
 still more insoluble, if this were not so. What we assert is, that 
 this doctrine, with all its fearful shadows, is st ill only the read- 
 
 * * W illi i i i .jWM ' uaill, J»pJ«feM=TOF»r J ^ y-- . fW| l'» ** 
 
 ing and rendering of the facts of the case: it is not a mere theory to 
 explain the facts, it is the facts themselves compendiously summed 
 up and stated. 2 And however we may explain the fact of our com- 
 
 1 The older Hopkinsianism of New England, in making the first moral act of 
 all Adam's descendants to be "the consent to Adam's sin," was immeasurably 
 nearer the truth than the more modern Hopkinsianism, which represents our first 
 moral act to be simply our personal violation of the divine law, in full view of the 
 consequences, and with full power to the contrary. 
 
 2 It is a striking feet, that the profoundest infidelity of the age has swept round 
 on this point to the subBtance of the orthodox view,— substituting fate for God, 
 Materialism confesses that man is by nature engrossed in sense and the world, 
 Pantheism makes original sin to be the very substance of human nature. Both 
 systems grant the fact of alienation from God, and explain it by denying God. 
 Christianity in addition brings the facts under God's moral government, — making 
 them a part of the divine plan in respect to the human race. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 347 
 
 raon ruin and sinfulness, it meets us everywhere. No man's con- 
 scious experience reaches back to the beginning of sin within him. 
 When we wake up to a sense of our moral position, it is always 
 with a sense of sin, and never of innocence. When we first 
 know the law, it is as a condemning power. We cannot think 
 of saving ourselves by doing the deeds of the law : for by the 
 deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified. Salvation 
 cannot, for any members of Adam's race, come by the law. The 
 life commended to our choice in the Bible is a life through grace 
 freely offered. We find ourselves exposed daily to penal evils, 
 from our youth up : and the very infant that dies before moral 
 agency is detected, in that death gives evidence to the sentence 
 of the law, and confirms the Biblical statement, that we are by 
 nature the children of wrath. And with this agrees the pro- 
 foundest spiritual experience of the depth and nature of sin. Its 
 roots run deeper than our volitions ; actual transgression is the 
 offspring of original sin. The exercises of the will only reveal 
 the will's immanent state and inmost preference. That which 
 is born of the flesh is flesh ; that is, our native state is a sinful 
 state; and the renewing and sanctifying Spirit works beneath 
 the sphere of direct consciousness and volition, and gives to 
 the regenerate a new heart and a right spirit. And in all this 
 work it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but 
 of God that showeth mercy. 
 
 Such is the headship of Adam in relation to the race, entailing 
 sin and death as the sad consequence of the great, original apostasy. 
 
 II. — But over against this headship of Adam, the grace of 
 God has established another economy, centering in another cov- 
 enant. XhsJieadWbip ^of Christ is or^ of lifeand redemption, as 
 t hat ^of Ad am was of death and condemnation. The divine plan 
 of redemption from the evil and curse of sin centers in the Per- 
 son and Work of the God-man, Christ Jesus. The purpose of 
 mercy antedates the fact of sin : for He is the Lamb of God, 
 slain from the foundation of the world. He is the head over all 
 things to the church. There is (Col. i. 19, 20) an intimate re- 
 lation between Him and all created beings: He is the medium 
 of access for all creatures unto their heavenly Father. 
 
348 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 And this headship of the Lord Jesus is on every point par 
 allel, and contrasted, with that of Adam. What Adam is in re- 
 lation to sin and death, that Christ is in relation to righteousness 
 and life. By man came death, by man came also the resurrec- 
 tion from the dead. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
 all be made alive, — referring here, too, to the resurrection. The 
 judgment was by one offence to condemnation, the free gift is 
 of many offences unto justification. The eternal Son of God 
 assumed our nature, lived in it his sinless life and in it died his 
 sacrificial death: there is that which is human in the second 
 Adam over against that which is human in the first; there is 
 that which endures and stands to perfection over against that 
 which falls and sinks into corruption ; there is that which ex- 
 piates over against that which incurs; that which satisfies divine 
 justice over against that which calls it forth; that which pro- 
 vides for answering the demands of the divine law in respect 
 to the whole race over against that which brought the whole 
 race under the penal demands of that law. The cross of Christ 
 is the link between earth and heaven, and it is the shielTTJe^ 
 tween earth and hell. There converge and commingle the rays 
 of the divine justice and of the divine love — the justice and the 
 love equally satisfied — and thence emerge all these rays only to 
 bless and to save. There the dignity of a divine nature imparts 
 an infinite value to the pangs which only a human nature could 
 endure, and with the cry "It is finished," the second Adam 
 stands forth in the perfection of his obedience and suffering, in 
 the parallel and contrast with the first. 
 
 The contrasted parallel between the first and the second 
 Adam is thus complete in all its parts and relations. The first 
 is our natural head, the second is our spiritual head; the first 
 brought in condemnation, the second, justification ; the first in- 
 volved us in spiritual death, the second is the author of spiritual 
 life; the former made the death of the body to be our mortal 
 heritage, the latter makes the resurrection of the body to be our 
 immortal privilege; the first alienates from God, the second 
 reconciles unto God; the first is the progenitor and head of our 
 fallen humanity, the second is the source and head of our re* 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 349 
 
 newed humanity; from the former we receive that natural life 
 which contains the seeds of death, from the latter, through the 
 Spirit, we receive that spiritual life which is the ground and 
 pledge of our eternal felicity ; the tie that unites us to the one 
 is that of natural descent, the bond that allies us to the other is 
 a union no less real, no less vital, subsisting through faith, and 
 insuring to us all the blessings of the new covenant : for, if by 
 one man's offence, 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. 
 
 Such, set over against one another, are the headship of 
 Adam and the headship of Christ. But they are not only con- 
 trasted with each other, they also run into each other. We 
 therefore proceed to state, 
 
 III. — That the two form one system, one plan, so that the 
 one cannot be understood without .tl^othej:. The two together, 
 and not either by itself, embrace the purpose of God in respect 
 to the human race. Human nature and human destiny cannot 
 be explained without reference to both. God's government of 
 the world cannot be explained except as including both. It 
 would else be like explaining the orbit of a planet with only one 
 focus. God's moral government has the two foci of sin and of 
 redemption. It would else be like trying to explain the course 
 of our earth without both the centrifugal and centripetal force: 
 God's moral government includes the centrifugal power of sin 
 as well as the centripetal force of redemption. 
 
 Here is found the mistake of many theorizers upon the moral 
 government of God, — reducing it to the level and scope of their 
 own speculations. It is very easy to make out some such scheme 
 with a few simple definitions, — and then to substitute the defi- 
 nitions for the facts. But the facts of the case after all are the 
 solid things. Thus, for example, it is easy to construct a sys- 
 tem of natural ethics, to say that the whole of God's govern- 
 ment is by a simple rule or law of right with its appropriate 
 sanctions, of reward or punishment. But this position, logically 
 carried out, would exclude the whole system of redemption. So, 
 too, it is easy to say, that the divine benevolence, in the sense 
 
350 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of a disposition to confer happiness, is the great principle of all 
 God's acts and dealings; but this reduces holiness to a meanB of 
 happiness, and resolves the atonement into a mere means of 
 moral impression. So, too, we may set forth, in theory, the 
 whole of the divine influence upon man as a mere moral suasion, 
 like that of man on man; but in doing this we rob regeneration 
 of its vital element. Or yet again, we may represent our whole 
 relation to Adam as merely natural and physical, and not as 
 moral and spiritual, and may define sin as consisting merely in 
 personal choices and volitions, and thus rule out, by definition, 
 the whole doctrine of original sin; but this is plainly incompati- 
 ble with the inspired statement that by one offence judgment 
 came upon all men unto condemnation : and what we may seem to 
 gain by such definitions in increasing the sense of personal respon- 
 sibility, is more than counterbalanced by the loss of all profounder 
 views of the depth of our corruption, and of the absolute necessity 
 of divine grace for any spiritual good accompanying salvation. 1 
 
 But the evil of such partial theories and explanations does 
 not end here. The divine plan and system in respect to both 
 Adam and Christ is one and the same in its general principles 
 and bearings. The he a dship of Adam in relation to sin, and 
 the headship of Christ in relation to redemption, stand and lall 
 together. Any theory which excludes the former, equally ex- 
 cludes the latter, if logically carried out. Or, in other words — 
 to bring the matter to its test on the two central doctrines, 
 where both headships converge — the doctrine of original sin and 
 the doctrine of justification by faith alone, stand or fall together. 
 If we give up the one we cannot save the other in its essential 
 integrity. One way of testing the truth of our theories of sin is 
 to see whether the principles of our theory will leave justifica- 
 tion by faith intact and complete, 2 in all its evangelical grace 
 
 1 Ifc has been said, in the way of a taunt against the older theology, that men are 
 very willing to speculate about sinning in Adam, so as to have their attention di- 
 verted from the sense of personal guilt. But the whole history of theology bears 
 witness, that those who have believed most fully in oux native and strictly moral 
 corruption— as Augustine, Calvin, Edwards— have ever had the deepest sense of 
 their personal demerit. We know the full evil of sin only when we know its roots 
 as well as its fruits. 
 
 2 Yet many adhere firmly to the Scriptural view of justification, who deny all 
 sin but actual transgression. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 351 
 
 and fulness. We must define sin and holiness by parallel and 
 harmonious formulas. If there be no sin, but personal ill-desert, 
 there cannot be any holiness but personal merit, and heaven ia 
 of debt and not of grace. If there can be no condemnation ex- 
 cepting for personal choices and acts, neither can there be any 
 justification excepting for persona^choices and acts. If Adam 
 cannot involve us in sin and ruin, neither can Christ confer 
 upon us righteousness and life. If the sin of Adam cannot be 
 imputed to us for our condemnation, neither can the righteous- 
 ness of Christ be imputed to us for our salvation. If there can- 
 not be a headship of Adam in respect to our natural death, there 
 cannot be a headship of Christ in respect to our spiritual life. 
 
 But if we take such positions, how contrasted our view is with 
 that divine plan, which consists not in theories but in facts- 
 facts centering in persons and in covenants, which may not be 
 so fully and clearly grasped, which have a background of won- 
 der and mystery, but which are also majestic and simple, and 
 give us fixed points and centers for our theology and our faith. 
 Here on the one hand is Adam, made originally in the divine 
 image, the head of the human family, placed in the garden of 
 Eden, in familiar intercourse with his Maker, receiving the par- 
 adisiacal command, at once intelligible and fitted to his condi- 
 tion; appointed, if he obeyed, to be the head of a holy society 
 through all time; condemned, if he disobeyed, to return to the 
 dust, and to convey to those who were to come from his loins 
 the same death in sin into which he himself plunged. And 
 over against him, in the divine plan for the race, is the God- 
 man, our Saviour; appointed to suffer and conquer for those 
 who were involved in the wreck and ruin of the fall. We be- 
 hold Him, hanging upon the cross, his head crowned with 
 thorns, his hands stretched out upon the accursed tree, that 
 He might both suffer and save. We hear his dying words of 
 unutterable anguish, in their very sharpness of love full of un- 
 speakable blessings for our lost humanity: his dying cry is the 
 watchword of our salvation. 
 
 And in these two contrasted forms, we read the sum of hu- 
 man destiny — its beginning, its center and its eternal issues; in 
 
352 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 these two we see the whole of the Law and the whole of the 
 Gospel, the whole of justice and the whole of mercy, blended in 
 one system. 
 
 § 2. The second point presupposed by the Incarnation is such 
 a constitution of the divine nature as made an Incarnation possible* 
 
 This has been considered in the doctrine of the Trinity : we 
 only refer to it here by way of completeness of systematic view. 
 This constitution is that of the existence of distinct personal 
 agencies in the Godhead, especially of the Son as personally 
 distinct from the Father. 
 
 Here again, we would not say that an Incarnation was pos- 
 sible only on the ground of the essential Trinity: {. e., by a 
 metaphysical necessity: for that we do not quite know. Sa- 
 bellianism is metaphysically possible. But this we may say: 
 (1) The existence of such personal distinctions in the Godhead 
 is most congruous with the fact of the Incarnation, with the 
 personal distinction of Father and Son, as that comes out in 
 the Incarnation. For that such a personal distinction existed 
 when Christ was incarnate, and since then — if Christ still lives 
 — cannot be denied. Nor can it be shown that his personality 
 began with the Incarnation. The contrary can be proved. (2) 
 Any other view makes the personality of Christ at least to seem 
 ephemeral. (3) Passages of Scripture take for granted a pre- 
 existing personal relationship. Gal. iv. 4; John iii. 16; xvii. 5: 
 xvii. 24; xvi. 28. (4) We gain a more intelligible view of the 
 economy of redemption on the basis of the Trinity than on any 
 other. We see the different offices of the different persons in 
 the great work: and all, in every stage and part, divine. 1 
 
 Such are the two chief-points of the connection of the Incar- 
 nation with the whole system of theology. We proceed now 
 to consider the Incarnation in its general nature and objects. 
 
 1 Pascal: "If the world subsisted to teach men of the existence of God, his di- 
 vinity would be reflected from all parts of it in an incontestable manner; but as ill 
 subsists only by Jesus Christ and for Jesus Ohrist, and to teach men both their 
 corruption and redemption, all in it shines with these two truths. That which 
 there appears marks, neither a total exclusion, nor yet a manifest presence of 
 Deity, but the presence of a God who hides himself: all bears this character." 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 353 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE INCARNATION PRIMARILY FACT AND NOT DOCTRINE. 
 
 The Incarnation is to be viewed primarily as a revealed fact. 
 It is a revelation of God in the form of fact and history, and as 
 such has about it the majesty of fact. It is not a mere specula- 
 tion, nor a mere doctrine, nor a mere abstract truth: ^ut_aj;ruth 
 of . f jfoct. It belongs to what we have called the Christian Real- 
 ism in distinction from Nominalism. 1 
 
 Nor yet again, is it a mere fact of an inspired record : it is 
 not merely a truth announced in such a record. So to speak, it 
 lies back of the record, and the record tells us about it. It is 
 an historical manifestation of God in the midst of men. Christ 
 the God-man appears in human history, as a part thereof; be 
 comes a member of the race; lives, suffers and dies for our 
 redemption ; and in all this we have a sublime series of facts, 
 of which the Scriptures give us the record. The first point to 
 be aimed at, then, in respect to the doctrine, is the proof of its 
 historical verity, on the basis of evidence; and not the specula- 
 tive apprehension of it, or an a 'priori deduction of its possibility. 
 This is a far-reaching statement about this truth, and puts it — 
 and this alone puts it — in its just position. This is the way in 
 which it stands in the Bible, as differing from systematic the- 
 ology. The Scriptures enter into no speculation about the two 
 natures and their union, nor into philosophical objections, but 
 they announce the grand and simple truth that God was in 
 Christ. The Proem to John's Gospel is a narration given by 
 a man who has seen a vision of facts: the first act, Creation ? 
 the second, Incarnation. 
 
 J [Introd. to Chris. Theol., p. 5.] 
 
'354 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FACT OF THE INCARNATION IN RELATION TO MAN*S MORA! WANTS. 
 
 It may be said to be demanded by man, in the sense in which 
 need implies demand. 
 
 § 1. It presents us toith the Life of a perfect Man as a Model 
 for Imitation, and so meets Need. 
 
 1. Every being who has a conscience has also the image or 
 ideal of a perfect man and a perfect life. Wherever there is 
 any morality, there is a certain standard, not only of abstract, 
 but also of human excellence. There is an innate loyalty of the 
 soul to what is good and great. Nations will have heroes, 
 though they have to invent their most heroic qualities. Chil- 
 dren must have models for imitation, though they may be 
 models of imperfect men and women. Thus there is in th e 
 human racj^bothj^janiyersal desire for a model and a univer- 
 sal defect in the models. And this universal longing is satisfied, 
 this universal defect is supplied, in the life of Jesus. 
 
 2. The natural longing of the human heart for the view of 
 moral perfection is not met by promulgating law and sharpen- 
 ing the sense of duty, nor by exalting the ideal of morality. The 
 profoundest minds of'every age have given their best thoughts 
 to ethical systems, to codes of righteous laws, to the description 
 of what each man should be as the citizen of a perfect state. 
 And all of us have some vision of personal perfection, some 
 imagination of the harmonious blending and working of our 
 powers, some impulse towards the attainment of purer love and 
 higher holiness. 'W [e all have som e ideal of ex cellen ce. But even 
 though we give to our abstract ideal of excellence the form and 
 features of a man, it does not touch our hearts; it may be as 
 beautiful, but it is as cold as a statue. An imagined excellence 
 is not really human; an ideal man is not a man at all. Ideal 
 virtue has not been diffused through the affections, nor has it 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 355 
 
 emerged from the will, of a moral being. It has passed through 
 no conflicts, has resisted no temptations, has purified no affection, 
 has not been the basis or the result of any choice; it is neither a 
 moral act nor a moral state of a moral being. And hence it is 
 that it has so light attractions upon the affections of a moral 
 being. All praise virtue in the abstract, but the praise is barren 
 of fruit. The voluptuary may not only pant for an ideal beauty, 
 he may also admire an ideal virtue. It may attract everything 
 within him, but — his affections ; may touch all that his nature 
 contains, excepting — his depravity. And even with the best of 
 men it is found that some of the most effectual motives to 
 obedience and a holy life, and especially to the practice of hum- 
 ble and self-denying and daily virtues, are not so much derived 
 from the abstract purity of a holy law, nor yet from the sheer 
 imagination of a possible human excellence, as from some elec- 
 tric excitement of human sympathies, some powerful constraint 
 from the lives and self-sacrificing zeal of one or another around 
 them, from some kindling of holy affections in communion with 
 an unseen friend, and most of all, from some emotion of grati- 
 tude or benevolence or love of virtue that has become an effect- 
 ual motive from the view of the life, the love, the sufferings of 
 the Lord Jesus. 
 
 3. The conformity of such a character as that of Christ, to 
 our moral necessities, is still further seen, if we consider some 
 of the special virtues on which our peace and happiness, the 
 welfare of individuals and of society depend. The fact is that 
 these depend on the practice of the humblest virtues. Pride 
 grows by nature, humility thrives only by culture; self-boasting 
 needs to be excluded, self-denial to be excited; wilfulness is 
 born^with us, a truly ^submissive spirit is a new birth of the 
 soul. Natural kindness is often overcome by spleen, soured by 
 disappointment, made fretful by petty cares and trials; and it is 
 hard to ensure its constancy. Justice is more praised than 
 loved; obedience oftener commanded than practised. It ia 
 easier to hate foes than to forgive them; it is easier to pray 
 that they may be forgiven than to seek to win their good-will. 
 In the business of life, what evils are there which honesty and a 
 
356 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 checking of the inordinate love of wealth would not counteract? 
 Fraud, unjust gains, immense speculations, too great inequality 
 in the distribution of the things of life, the making haste to be 
 rich by which we fall into temptation and a snare: all these and 
 kindred evils can be done away, and can only be done away, 
 by a recurrence to the practice of the simplest, yet hardest vir- 
 tues. And to suffer shame and reproach on account of the gos- 
 pel and of truth, to be mild when reviled, to bear the desertion 
 of friends and the scoffs of enemies, to dare to speak the truth 
 in season: these things are not easy of attainment, though most 
 needful in an evil world. To relieve the wretched, to seek out 
 the wanderers, to help the suffering, to reclaim the abandoned, to 
 sympathize in the sorrows of the poor and minister to their con- 
 solation, to seek the vicious with love when they repel us with 
 contumely: in short, to live in a sinful world and among evil 
 men as children of the light and of the day, redeeming the time 
 because the. days are evil: this is most necessary for the world's 
 welfare, yet difficult even for those who are striving for re- 
 demption. Now of all these necessary and neglected virtues 
 Jesus Christ is the most eminent exemplar. It was not neces- 
 sary that He should be a temporal king, but kings are greatest 
 when they rule their kingdoms as He ruled his spirit. It was 
 not necessary that He should be a statesman, but statesmen are 
 noblest when the favor or frown of the people are to them as 
 they were to Him. (It was not necessary that He should be 
 a husband or a father — this were to degrade his mission, and to 
 class Him with the sons of men — but it is necessary that parents 
 should practise his virtues, and fulfil their duties in the same 
 spirit in which He fulfilled his. It was more needful that He 
 should be a child, that thus to all the race from their earliest 
 years his example might be held up clear and fair.) It was not 
 necessary that He should be to us an example in the virtues 
 which the world loves and honors, for the world rewards its 
 servitors only too liberally, it incites them to wealth and honor 
 only too strongly. But it was needful that He should be an ex- 
 ample of self-denial, of humility, of forgiveness of enemies, of 
 daily endeavor to do good, of patience, of submission, of speak 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 357 
 
 ing against all evil and sin, while He sought to reclaim the 
 sinful, of meekness and forbearance in the midet of reproaches 
 and persecutions, of seeking to do the will of the Father and 
 of perfect submission to that will. In short, it was necessary 
 that there should be a perfect harmony of all his powers, and 
 a harmony created by their entire subjection to the law of love, 
 to the love of God. It was well, it was needful for all mankind 
 that they should see that the highest human perfection, the 
 most potent human influence, is not found in the objects which 
 are of the highest human esteem, not in wealth, nor in power, 
 not in the senate nor on the field of battle, not in literature nor 
 in science, but in love to God and love to man, in a love which 
 can be shown in poverty as well as in riches, when despised as 
 well as when powerful, in daily life more than in the career of 
 statesmen, in the field of the moral conflicts of the race better 
 than on fields of carnage and of blood. That He might be the 
 pattern of the race in all things, this was needful. That men 
 might be incited to the love and practice of these daily and self- 
 denying virtues, it was fitting that a model should be set before 
 them, — one, a man like themselves, exposed to the same, and 
 to greater temptations and trials than they all, living in the 
 same evil world, finding the same foes to duty, and yet living 
 above the world, and overcoming all its temptations and 
 m alice and might — overcoming by yielding to his enemies 
 everything but his virtue, his love to God and love to man. 
 Such an example is Christ to us, to all of us, in all those daily 
 and hourly conflicts we are called to make for the sake of truth 
 and duty. 
 
 4. But the whole effect of such an eminent example is not 
 found — perhaps its chief effect is not found — in the single vir- 
 tues of his noble and ennobling character. The. total impression 
 of such a man, and of such a life, is the grand source of its 
 strong influence upon others. It is the harmony and complete- 
 ness of his spiritual character, it is the consistency of his whole 
 life with our highest standard of perfection, it is because we 
 feel that all He did and said flowed from one pure unfailing 
 source, and that the purity of his life was only an expression of 
 
358 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the spotlessness of his soul — it is this total impression of hia 
 spirit upon us which moves us most strongly, and which makes 
 Him to be a perfect model to us. 
 
 § 2. The Relation of the Incarnation to Human Wants is seen in 
 its giving to Man the most direct Access to, and Communion ivith, God. 
 
 1. Man craves such an imperson ation of De ity. We may 
 say that his religious instinct leads him to seek some visible 
 and palpable representation of God's attributes. This may be 
 to some extent the effect of sin, but it is also congruous with 
 those infirmities of our finite state which are not sinful. The 
 expression of this desire is most palpable in heathenism. It is 
 indeed there disfigured and distorted. Their idols are an abom- 
 ination unto the Lord, as are their sacrifices also. But even as 
 their sacrifices show how deeply the sense of guilt and the need 
 of expiation are seated in human nature ; and as these feelings 
 are true and necessary, though the mode of their exhibition is 
 false and degrading; so in respect to their idols, it may be as- 
 serted that they are evidence of a profound longing in the human 
 mind for some visible manifestation of deity. God and man are 
 at such an infinite distance from each other, that when man 
 would seek God, he will even make an idol that he may thus 
 at least imagine that he has found Him. Between the infinite 
 Spirit and the finite soul there is a space which, when men 
 try to fill, they people with idols; but which God has filled by 
 the person of his Son. So deep-seated is this desire of some 
 visible connection with the invisible God, that even in the 
 church of Christ, when it became Roman Catholic, and when 
 the living sense of a direct personal relation between Christ and 
 his followers had become feeble (and his actual presence was 
 limited to the external order and worship of the church), it was 
 found necessary to accommodate the notions of that church in 
 so far to the wants of man, as to supply the place of the Re- 
 deemer who had been hidden from them, by the winning graces 
 and image of his mortal mother, by crowds of saints and by 
 images of glorified spirits. They banished the Saviour from his 
 immediate connection with the hearts of his people ; but they 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 359 
 
 were obliged to find some substitute to satisfy the cravings for an 
 object of worship which should call Out human sympathies. — Not 
 only in false or corrupt religions is this want experienced : it is 
 also deeply felt whenever there is an unusual excitement of our 
 religious feelings. We long for a closer walk with God than 
 we can have with a being whom we consider only as infinite in 
 his attributes, "removed from us by the whole diameter of be- 
 ing." Almost unconsciously, we make to ourselves an image 
 even of the invisible Father. We think of a throne and Him 
 that sits upon it. We think of a countenance of terrible 
 majesty, severe in justice, or melting into love. We seem to 
 see an eye, fixed upon our path, noting all our ways; a hand 
 stretched out to rescue us, an arm for our defence. All this is 
 indeed imagery, but it is the natural and necessary imagery of 
 the religious spirit. And the stronger the fervor of the religious 
 spirit, the more do such images crowd upon us. In the Incarna- 
 tion we learn that all this imagery has become reality. These 
 scattered images drawn from different members are, so to speak, 
 gathered into one matchless and human form. 
 
 It has been o^ggfe^t hat such a craving of the soul for some 
 visible manifestation of the Godhead hAJfmgaf.n an inferior staff p 
 of religious culture. — But the fact is, that the more enlarged our 
 views of God are, the more do we need such a help to our wor- 
 ship and love. "The difficulty," says Dr. Whately, 1 "of coming 
 near to God and fixing our affections upon Him is increased in 
 proportion as man advances in refinement of notions, in cultiva- 
 tion of intellect, and in habits of profound philosophical reflec- 
 tion. A semi-barbarous people is less likely to think of the 
 vastness and infinity of God, than is a more enlightened age. 
 Hence it is that the religion of those whose speculations respect- 
 ing the deity have been accounted the most refined and exalted, 
 has always been cold and heartless in its devotion, or rather has 
 been nearly destitute of devotion altogether." To counteract 
 the chilling tendency of our abstract speculations about God, 
 nothing is so adapted as that conception of Him which we react 
 through the wondrous doctrine of the Incarnation. In the Per- 
 
 1 Sermon: God made Man, p. 10. 
 
obV CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 son of his Son, God's infinite majesty is transformed into a ma- 
 jestic loveliness; his infinite love is made audible and visible; 
 his rebuke and hatred of sin are indeed revealed most clearly 
 to our conceptions, but his love of the sinner, his willingness 
 to pardon and receive him, are manifested in the whole life and 
 in the death of Jesus, as they could be exhibited in no other way. 1 
 2. What man thus craves is more perfectly given _m4h e In^ ar- 
 nation than in any other conceivable way. God assumes the 
 nature, form, and speech of man; He addresses him as a member 
 of the same race ; He becomes united to him by all the ties of 
 brotherhood. This is the perfection of a divine condescension; 
 and it appeals to man more forcibly than can aught else. Con- 
 sider the difference between Moses and Christ. And all this 
 difference is made by the fact that in Christ we have God In- 
 carnate, the God-man. 2 In the one case, it is an ambassador 
 delivering a message ; in the other, it is the King Himself, con- 
 versing with the subject, pleading with the rebel. The dignity 
 of the Incarnate God arrests and attracts us. 8 
 
 § 3. Especially is the need of an Incarnation manifest when 
 we view it as an TnnarnaHn^in ffyfc.fo .P^ffr and as thus 
 meeting man's moral wants as^ajmmer. Here is a vealjn qral 
 necessity for it. 
 
 1. The effect of sin is to increase, seemingly to the mind, the 
 remoteness of Deity, separation from Him, and this in three ways: 
 [a.) as man's spiritual perception is darkened; (b.) as his heart is 
 3old to the call of God's love; (c.) as he fears chiefly the judg- 
 ment of God against him as a sinner. This sense of remoteness 
 is removed in all these respects: (a.) since Christ in the most 
 persuasive manner brings spiritual truth, with authority, and 
 30 breaks in upon the darkness of the spirit; (&.) since He in 
 the fulness of divine-human love appeals to the human heart; 
 [c) since He testifies by words and deeds that He is come, not 
 bo condemn, but to save. 
 
 1 See a remarkable utterance of Dr. Arnold, Life, p. 212. 
 
 2 *' Thus He stood behind the wall, and showed Himself through the lattice * 
 "Leighton). 
 
 A Chalmers, The Moral Uses of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 361 
 
 2. This moral necessity of an Incarnation in order to Redemp 
 tion is seen more clearly in the light of the great fact, that man 
 himself cannot atone for past sin. Such an incarnate Redeemer 
 was needed to make satisfaction: Rom. iii. 20; Gal. ii. 16. 
 
 Thus does the Incarnation meet man's aeeds as a sinner, the 
 facts of his sinful condition. Its force, its power, its urgency, 
 are in this, that " there is none other name given under heaven 
 among men, whereby we must be saved." 
 
 3. Moreover there is a moral necessity that the moral attri- 
 butes of God be seen to be harmonized in the pardoning and 
 justifying of sinners. The harmonizing of mercy and justice, of 
 maintenance of law and love of the sinner, is accomplished in 
 the Incarnation in order to Redemption, as it could be in no other 
 way. And Christ suffering, dying in our stead, appeals to the 
 human heart, as does, as can, no other spectacle. Here that mani- 
 festation of the divine attributes, which is necessaiy, is made, 
 and in the mode best fitted to the wants of an apostate world. 
 
 Thus, in the Incarnation, we have not only the life of a per- 
 fect man (as we have seen in § 2), but we also have a manifestation 
 of God, in a mode adapted to our human necessities. And our 
 Saviour not only revealed God to us, but was Himself the very 
 manifestation of God in the midst of the world. Not only could 
 He point us upward to the Father, but without presumption He 
 could say, he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. 
 
 Another Statement. — Far be it from our thoughts to attempt 
 to penetrate the depths of the divine counsels in this great matter 
 of which a Father of the church says, " Of things in heaven and 
 earth nothing is so wonderful as that God has become incarnate," 
 excepting as these counsels are made known in his word, as they 
 are seen in the history of his church, and as they are felt in the 
 souls of his children. We may not be able to know all the rea- 
 sons why the Word became flesh: but some of them, and sufficient 
 to engross all our power of thought and feeling, are manifest 
 in the ends actually accomplished, in the revealed and visible 
 and experienced results of the Incarnation. 
 
 These actual results may be thus summed up : The first result 
 
362 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is to give to o ur imitation the life of a perfect man; the second is 
 to bring, not only God's attributes, butjGod Himself^neaEiajlS' 
 the third result (to be considered by and by) is the entire^un^n 
 of the infinite and the finite, the divine and the human natures, 
 in one Person; and the fourth result, to which all the others 
 converge, is the making a propitiation for our sins^ and fur- 
 nishing the headship for that eternal church, in which is our 
 accomplished salvation. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOW FAB MAY AN INCARNATION BE SAID TO BE NECESSARY ON 
 THE PART OF GOD? 1 
 
 Here there are different classes of opinions. Some say: An 
 Incarnation on the part of God is absolutely necessary, is de- 
 manded by the divine nature, apart from sin. Others: It was ab- 
 solutely necessary on the part of God, after man had sinned: the 
 divine attributes unconditionally demand Redemption through 
 an Incarnation. Still others: No Incarnation was needed; men 
 might as well have been redeemed by the proclamation of God's 
 grace in other ways. 
 
 Really there are only two theories: (1) that of me taphy sical 
 necessity: the divine nature demanded an Incarnation as its 
 necessarv complement; God is not complete with out man ; the 
 infinite requires the finite as much (relatively) as the finite the 
 infinite: (2) the theory of a moral necessity; and this is subdi- 
 
 mf,.^ i im i mj p h ii m w u i inn * ' i i mm 
 
 vided into: (a.) moral necessity, in that all the divine attributes, 
 Jll§iis^^-SKall-aaJa£e, demand it; (b.) — in that it is demanded 
 Dv love ? though not by ju stice. 2 
 
 1 Aug. de Trin. : "Alia multa sunt cogitanda in Christ! incarnatione praeter 
 absolutionem peccati." 
 
 2 As to the Incarnation of God, apart from sin, see W. Florke, Luth. Zschrift., 
 2, 1854. "There is only one passage in antiquity for it, Iren. adv. Hser., v. 16 '*; 
 " the doctrine of Irenaeus and the Fathers is, that Christ became incarnate for sin, 
 and not without, and that there are only casual expressions against this I" 
 
 The voice of antiquity is well summed up in Thomasiua, Dogmatik, p. 166. Th« 
 Nicene Creed is against it: "Who for us men and for our salvation/' etc. Au 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 363 
 
 I. — T hejgodern Socinian. Unitarian view. No Incarnation 
 at all was needed: we might as well have been redeemed with- 
 out it, by the proclamation of God's grace in other ways. 
 
 This opinion is as bold on the side of denial, as that of 
 absolute necessity is on the side of affirmation. It is a purely 
 ethical, rathe r than a ChriBtiamiew. The basis of it is the 
 view that all that is needed for man's culture is, teaching, motives, 
 an ethical training ; — and for man's renovation, only a Higher and 
 more impressive degree of teaching and class of motives. God, 
 it says, might as well have announced the fact of his gracious 
 designs, havejrevealed. his love in a way to impress .us; and for 
 all we can see, the same end would have been answered. Bat: 
 (a.) This is a_mere_opim*oTi 1 ^n ^ygift^ So far as we 
 
 know, no mere influence of motives is enough. HisktfjUJiS., 
 against it (b.) From the actual fact of the Inc arnation, we may 
 justly conclude, that, whether we can see it or not f /there is a 
 fitness, a mora l necessity, of such a mode of Eedemption as is 
 ffiven in the Incarnation.! It is, doubtless, the wisest a^nd. best 
 method of restoring fallen man. (c.) While ph ilosop hy may not 
 affirm the absolute necessity of an Incarnation, it is equally in^ 
 competent to affirm that it was not necessary. It may be, that 
 afte r humarTria tur e^hadDecom e degenerate by the fall, it could 
 
 gustine: "Tolle morbos, tolle vulnera, et nulla medecinaa causa." Among the 
 Scholastics, Weasel, Scotus, and the Franciscans favor the position. Aquinas: 
 "Peccato non existente, incarnatio non fuisset." Anselm knows nothing of this 
 view. Servetus favored it. Calvin is against it, Inst. ii. ch. xii. § 4r-7. Socinus 
 (under the influence of the Italian philosophy) : Christ would have come if there 
 had been no sin, to insure immortality. At present, the position is advocated by 
 Liebner, Dorner, Martensen, Kurtz (who gives it up in one of the later editions of 
 his Bible and Astronomy). Julius Mtiller is against it, see Deut. Zeits., Oct. 1850. 
 "The Reformers had too deep a sense of sin to accept this." "The whole of 
 Scripture is for the soteriological point of view." " This view makes the death on 
 the cross a mere accessory, incidental event." In Brit, and For, Ev Rev., Jan. '66, 
 Dorner's interpretation of the passage in Irenseus is disputed. Irenseus: " Si non 
 haberet caro salvari, nequaquam verbum Dei caro factus esset." Dorner: " If it had 
 not been possible to restore humanity to its archetypal form — ." Review: " If flesh 
 had not required to be saved — ." There is a remarkable passage in Aquinas, 3". 
 q. iii., art. 8, " Convenientissimum fuit personam Filii incarnari .... quia .... 
 verbum Dei, quod est seternus conceptus ejus, est similitudo exemplaris totius crea- 
 turse. Et ideo sicut per participationem hujus similitudinis creaturse sunt in 
 propriis speciebus institutse, sed mobiliter, ita per unionem Verbi ad creaturam 
 non participatam, sed personalem, conveniens fait reparari creaturam in or dine ad 
 asternam et immobilem perfectionem." 
 
364 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 not become regenerate in all its parts, except through an Incar- 
 nation, — e. g., as respects the resurrection of the glorified body 
 through Christ. 
 
 II.— The assertion of the absolute qgces^jsj^ Iftftm%tion. 
 
 Here we have the Christian system in the form of metaphys- 
 ics, without its ethics. The metaphysical is substituted for the 
 ethical. It is said that the divine nature demands an Incarna- 
 tion, sin or no sin. , >f lt . ■ * * &j j i i^X *.<&X *w~j 
 
 1. As to the Biblical basis. The passages cited are the four:^ 
 Eph. i. 10; CoL i. 15, 16; 1 Eph. iv. 24; Col, iii. 10, 11. It is said 
 that these teach the vejatinn of Christ, t,o , «■!! the creation,, .aparf 
 from sin. But, contra: (1) The Christ whom f anl had habitually 
 in .jmind jsJjhg^Chnst^ appearing for sin. 2 (2) Christ might have 
 had an intimate relation to all created beings as a mediator (in 
 large sense) without sin, and without an Incarnation. (3) The 
 Bible explicitly represents sin^as^the final cause of the Incarna- 
 tion: Rom, viii. 3; John iii. 16; Gal. iv. 4, 5; Heb. ii. 14-16; 
 i""Tim. i. 15; 1 John iii. 8; Matt. xx. 28. 
 
 l v ,2. As to the-Q ntologica l aspect. This view attempts to sup- 
 port itself by saying that God, for his own completeness, needed 
 to become incarnate: there was a metaphysical need. It is also 
 said that there was a moral need , a need in o_rder _to the perfect 
 exercise of love : his love could not be otherwise fully communi- 
 cated, neither his love to his Son, nor his love to men. 
 
 But, (a.) It is not to be seen why God might not have 
 fullyand spiritually communicated Him self to me n without an 
 Incarnation. He probably does to angels, — why not to men ? s 
 Cf. Heb. ii. 16. Some say: man here is above all angels, greater 
 and higher. 
 
 1 This, which is the most important, is considered a little later. 
 
 2 Cf. also, 1 Cor. xv. 45-7; Eph. i. 21-3; 1 Pet. iii. 22. 
 
 3 Dr. Candlish, Lectures on the Fatherhood of God, 1864: Against Incarnation 
 without Fall, but says: even angels are not by nature sons of God: they became 
 Buch through a probation, like man's essentially: the point being, a demand to be- 
 come subject to the Son of God revealed proleptically as the Word made flesh. 
 (CI Jonathan Edwards's view of the Probation and Fall of Angels, and Owen's 
 view of the Recapitulation of all in Christ.) Against: Brit, and For. Ev. Kev., 
 Jan. 1866: " Candlish's view leads to the position that the Incarnation would have 
 occurred, if no sin." 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 365 
 
 (M The consegu^ncQ ^of this position would be, that the Son 
 of God really ca me for his o wn sake , not for ours. 
 
 (c.) " The" L Mffi' W say^ Godis love: this view, Love is God" 
 (J. Mailer). 
 
 3. The anthropological side. That for the c ompletion of 
 human nature,- to bring it into full union with God, an Incar- 
 nation was necessary. " Man cannot obtain perfection but by 
 the Incarnation of the Logos." Christ is the head of humanity: 
 the first Adam presupposes the second. 
 
 This appears to commend itself to those whose sense of sin 
 is not deep. 1 
 
 But, (a.) This view supposes that in the first Adam the 
 means of obtaining the end of his being did not exist before 
 the Fall. This is against the Scriptures , both in respect to 
 Adam himself and in respect to the restoration of the divine 
 image. 
 
 (b.) How are we to explain, that Christ came only in the 
 midst of history and not at first? 
 
 (c.) Moreover, it is a mere assumption: an abstract, logical 
 assertion, destitute of evidence. 
 
 (d.) All. spiritual influences needed might be otherwise 
 bestowed. 
 
 (e.) This view is defended by saying, if the Logos had not 
 become incarnate, the race would have had no unity, no head: 
 but this supposes that Christ came, not for sin, but for man, that 
 Heisjthe_ ieaj^^pXjhe^ race, njjt_ of the redeemed^jind so it is 
 againstthe^ Scripture, which says that Christ is the head of 
 those only in whom He works by his Spirit: Eph. i. 22; iv. 12; 
 Col. i. 18 ; ii. 19 ; 1 Cor. xii. 3. On this view, all men have eter- 
 nal life in Christ, and thus it runs against the whole soteriology 
 of Scripture. Christ comes, not for human nature in general, 
 but for sinful human nature, to redeem it. He is not the head 
 of humanity, but of redeemed humanity. 
 
 III. The third class of opinions. An Incarnation, was nec- 
 essary, on th^ga^t^ofjGod, ajtexman had sinned. _^ The moral di- 
 vine attributes demanded it, all the attributes, L e., on the scora 
 
 1 Strongly put by Mtiller, in the article cited above. 
 
366 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of justice. 1 They demand it (a) unconditionally; (b) condition^ 
 ally, on the ground of love. There Ts~a truth in this, so far as 
 it does not put a natural, but only a moral necessity in God; and 
 so far as it does not claim that God, on the score of justice, must 
 redeem a fallen world. 
 
 (A.) The unconditional demand. The substance of this 
 view: Metaphysically, there is no absolute necessity. Yet God, 
 in creating a world, must create it to have its end in himself, 
 for his glory, in the good of creatures. This is the only con- 
 ceivable end. Hence, if creatures sinned, and so lost the chief 
 end of their being, God, to promote and achieve this end, must 
 ■orovide redemption. He need not have created, yet, having cre- 
 ated, and for an end, if the creature by sinning is in such a 
 state that the end cannot be attained, there is, on this ground, 
 on the ground of this supposition, a moral necessity of a scheme 
 of redemption. Or, to take the same thing under a different 
 aspect, Godj as love, .must communicate himself freely Jp^his 
 creatures: if they are closed against it, there is a moral necessity 
 of his providing a way thus to communicate himself. 
 
 But, (a.) Even granting what is here asserted, it 4°es not 
 jall^w that in order to communicate himself, there must be an 
 Incarnation, 
 
 And (b.) There is no proo f of such an unconditional demand, 
 excepting on the hypothesis of universalism. The view makes 
 it necessary for God to redeem and save all, on the score of jus- 
 tice, and as a matter of strict right. 
 
 (B.) The conditional demand. The necessity which love is 
 
 ^ Turnup hi 111 i-i i — rf*-- tn~ **" ——•"—»"»**"'' ■*"»—■■»■ 
 
 under to realize^ the end of creation, so far as is consistent with 
 moral government. On the score of divine mercy and love, 
 there is a constraining influence leading to redemption. The 
 question here then returns: How much may be asserted on 
 Biblical and other grounds, respecting the necessity of an Incar- 
 nation in order to Redemption. 
 
 1, Man and perhaps all created.. in telligences are^ createdjbr^ 
 
 ' See Rothe, Ethik, § 626. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 367 
 
 and destined to T union with God, through Christ. The chief 
 passage on this is Col. i. 15-17. 1 Here we have the following 
 points: (a.) Man — and all beings— are destined to, .created for, 
 union with God through Christ, (b.) In order to this some man- 
 Testation of Christ is needed for and by all. (p.) An Incarnation 
 was needed o n account of sin and its consequences, (d.) Only 
 through such an I ncarnation could the end of Redemption i be 
 secured, so far as we know, (e.) What man thus gains in 
 Christ is much more than what was lost in Adam, (f) We 
 come to the general position that man, at any rate, could have 
 reached such glory only through a process; he had it not at first 
 through Adam. 
 
 2. This general position is further illustrated by the fact 
 that Christ is the center of unity, the head, of the race as re- 
 deemed, of the church. The passages in which He is thus set 
 forth refer chiefly to the work of redemption, to Him as head 
 of the church : but in the church God's great plan for the race is 
 realized: Col. ii. 10; Eph. i. 10; i. 22, 23; iv. 12, 15, 16; v. 23; 
 Col. i. 18; ii. 19. fc K^^ ^ ~-<- c J- W-w. a-*— 
 
 3. Accordingly, men — all redeemed men — are really united 
 to Christ, by his Spirit dwelling in them. Through this union, 
 and, so far as we know, only thereby, do men attain to a re- 
 generated state, to the real end of their being, (a.) Passages 
 in which this union is spoken of directly: Eph. i. 23; iv. 16; 
 Col. ii. 19 (Cf. Rom. viii. 9; 1 Cor. xii. 3); John xvii. 21, 23, 26. 
 (b.) Passages in which the fruits of this union, being like Christ, 
 having his image, living and dwelling in Him, are spoken of: 
 John xiv. 23; xvii. 10, 22, 23, 26; Rom. viii. 29; Gal. iv. 19; 
 ii. 20; 2 Cor. iii. 18; Col. Hi. 10. 
 
 From the foregoing heads, (1), (2), (3), it is natural to con- 
 elude that Ch risft w 9 , u „y ( „h i ave_ been in some way the mediator 
 to men, even if they had not sinned; that created beings were 
 made with respect to Christ. So we add: 
 
 1 Col. i. 19, 20, sets forth the reconciliation of all things unto God, through 
 Christ. Calvin thinks it relates to the influence of Christ's work, in confirming 
 angola in their love and obedience; others take it as affirming a relation to all ere 
 ated beings, which is more probable. 
 
368 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 4. That it is probable that some manifestation of _ the Logos 
 is needed by and for all beings, in coming to God. 
 
 To all his creatures God must reveal himself that they may 
 know Him. The Logos, so far as we know, is the medium of 
 such revelations. Only by some revelation could the divine 
 nature and attributes be made known. How is it that God 
 :eveals his attributes ?— We cannot know, no finite being can 
 know, the Infinite One directly: there must be a medium. This 
 nay be (a.) implanted knowledge, as ideas, in the mind. But 
 ;his is complete knowledge only intellectually, and not a com- 
 plete knowledge of fact; (b.) some finite manifestation of himself 
 —in works — or by persons commissioned— or in personal form. 
 It may be that the Son of God appears, as the image of God, 
 n personal, finite form, to the angelic hosts. Hence we say, 
 
 5. The revelation by an Incarnation is imperatively needed, 
 to far as we know, on account of sin and its consequences, if 
 -he race can be_ redeemed. It is needed, not metaphysically, 
 )ut morally and teleologically, if God is to fulfil the end of cre- 
 ition, viz., the most perfect manifestation of his highest attri- 
 butes, his declarative glory. The Incarnation was not needed 
 >y God, but for man. It was a free act of condescension and grace 
 >n God's part. We cannot say that Redemption could have 
 >een secured in any other method. Though a free act on God's 
 )art, and of grace, we know not but that such an act was nec- 
 essary both physically 1 and morally, {/"man was to be redeemed, 
 jod might have left man to perish, and justly; but, if He would 
 lave man, it may be that there is no other way than through an 
 ncarnation. It is very possible that the manifestation of grace 
 o a race of beings, to be redeemed, made up of body and spirit, 
 ;ould be only by an Incarnate Eedeemer. (The ontology and 
 ohysics of Christianity. ) 
 
 1 As relates to the resurrection of the body, «. «;. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 369 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE INCARNATION IN HISTORY. 
 
 The Incarnation on Historical Grounds, including Prophetic. 
 
 [Only the main positions]. 
 
 I. — The ancient Pagan world strives to realize the idea, yet 
 without success. This is seen: (1) In the great religious sys- 
 tems — t he Orien tal and Gxaecfi^Bpjoan, (2) In the aspirations of 
 wise and thoughtful men. 
 
 II. — The Jewish Scriptures gradually unfold the idea, giving 
 elements, adumbrated, prophetic; so that they are seen to be ful- 
 filled in Christ. The Jewish monotheism might seem to be 
 antagonisti c, but running through the whole there is prophecy, 
 promise^ Poi nti£jg,tp n ,^..Ij^Ye.rer 1 of the seed of man, yet the 
 Son of God. 
 
 III. — Jewish and Pagan elements come speculatively together, 
 in the Idea of the Logos. (Philo.) 
 
 IV. — Hence, Christianity fulfils the expectation of the whole 
 an qien t world, yet in a more perfect way. 
 
 V. — All history hp.fn™ r%JRf. p.a.n be grouped only as a pre : 
 
 VI. — The subsequent history of the church and its doctrines 
 is a qpjjgjant testimony' to the reality and central authority of the 
 Incarnation. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF THE INCARNATION AS CONNECTED WITH THE WHOLE OF THE THEO- 
 LOGICAL SYSTEM, AND AS VIEWED BT DIFFERENT PARTIES. 
 
 I. — The lowest view is the Socinian 1 Humanitarian theory. 
 According to this, the Incarnation, if at all acknowledged, is 
 held to have only the design of giving us an example , or 
 (Socinus) to confer immortality! or, to teach that God is f avor- 
 abl e t o m an, i s a Father ? and that immortality is a fact. The 
 
370 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 whole sense and meaning of the Incarnation is ethical, to 
 communicate truth. 
 
 II.— The Eoman Catholic view. The Son of God became 
 man; through the sacraments we receive Him, as grace; we 
 become partakers of his verv^ body a^Jhlood^by the transub- 
 stantiatip_n.of the elements. Thus we are united with, grow up 
 into, his humanity. (Modification in Consubstantiation.) 
 
 III. — The Oxford view. The^ sacrame.ntaj^ sy^em. The sac- 
 raments are an extension of the IncarnaJ^n^hannels ofjjrace. 
 The Holy Spirit is given through them. Neither tran substanti- 
 ation nor consubstantiation is advocated, but a real ; spiritual, 
 mysterious reception of Chr ist's humanity, as much as we receive 
 humanity from Adam in the way of natural descent. 1 
 
 IV. — The Spiritual Life Theory. Discarding sacramental 
 systems, and holding to the fact of union with Christ, this view 
 is distinguished by the position, that we receive through the 
 Incarnation, directly from Christ, through his Spirit, a new 
 spiritual life. And the communication of such a life is the 
 grand object for which Christ came. The Atonement is merged 
 in the Incarnation. T J ife 1 lift* frnm_ Chria£ r r^a] a^ true life ^is 
 the great fact of the Incarnation. So Coleridge, Bushnell, etc. 
 Kedemption is resolved into regeneration. 
 
 V. — The Incarnation simply and chiefly has^resrj^c^pjQln^s^s 
 atojoug^jjejith. The Arminian View. The Exhibition Theory 
 or Governmental Theory. This view denies the reality of the 
 union with Christ, and of justification on the ground of this 
 union. It resolves the union into a metaphor. It says sub- 
 stantially this: The real truth in the case is, that we become 
 like Christ by choosing the same end as He didj^the glory of 
 God and the good of man. We become like Him morally, in 
 having the same states of heart and will. This is all the union 
 
 1 Tracts for the Day. "The Eucharist is the complement of the Incarnation, 
 which began in the union of God with man's nature, and culminates in the 
 union of individual men with God." In the Eucharist there is a "union between 
 the Person of Christ and the elements of bread and wine; so that it may be said, 
 without a metaphor, that there is a renewal or continuation of the Incarnation" 
 (No. 59, Tracts for the Day). "The sacrifice of Christ is not once for all and com' 
 plete, but continuous." Neither Transubstantiation nor Consubstantiation is ac- 
 cepted, for these seem to define the work. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF 
 
 371 
 
 that exists. His atonement removed an obstacle out of the way ; 
 we rely on that atonement — not on Him, but on the atonement, 
 and thereupon God pardons us. J ustification is this: Gad accepts 
 us^as h oly, so far as we are ; .and justifies us becaj^se^HeJs^^^s 
 orjias determined that we shaU become_perfectly^so^ by ,and 
 J>y. All the relation of the Incarnation to us is, that it excites 
 feelings, susceptibilities, more than anything else could well do, 
 and thus incites us to choose right. It presents to us an affecting 
 exhibition of God's love of us and hatred of sin, and so moves 
 us to come to Him in penitence and faith. 
 
 VI. — The general Protestant view. Union^w ith Christ as^ 
 the ground of our Justification and Sanctification. By faith, 
 \ through the operation of the Holy Spirit, we are united to 
 Christ (the mystical union), whereby we are both justified and 
 renewed, all through the direct operation of the Holy Spirit. 
 The great fact in objective Christianity is the Incarnation of a 
 Redeemer: the great fact in subjective Christianity is our union 
 with Him by and through his Spirit. Sacraments are expr.es - 
 sions, primaril y, not vehicles of £>race. To the new life the 
 
 Incarnation has the same relation that Creation has to the old: 
 it is the second great act of the Logos, the center of his spiritual 
 kingdom, for which the whole of the old creation groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain. And the Redemption in Christ has the same 
 relation to our renewed state that the Fall in Adam has to our 
 depraved state. The Incarnation has the same position in Re- 
 vealed, that Creation has in Natural, Theology. 
 
 VII. — Outside of specific Christianity. The Incarnation is 
 true in idea, i. e., the union of the divine and human, but this 
 union is not in one Person^but in the jvhole^race. 1 Divinity 
 and humanity are different aspects of the same substance, the 
 absolute substance. God comes to consciousness in men. Men 
 at death are resolved into this universal substance. 
 
 1 Sometimes pnt in this form: " The divine ideas which had wandered np and 
 down the world, till oftentimes they had forgotten themselves and their origin, 
 did at length clothe themselves in flesh and blood; they became incarnate with tha 
 Incarnation of the Son of God. In his life and person, the idea and fact at length 
 kissed each other, and were henceforth wedded for evermore.'* 
 
!72 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Eemarks on these different theories as to the place and pur- 
 >ose of the Incarnation. 
 
 Every theological system must meet the questions raised by 
 he Incarnation, somewhere and somehow, and must show that 
 t is a necessary constituent of the system. For all religion has 
 espect to the relation between God and man ; its ultimate prob- 
 ems and questions are in this relation, are on this point. And 
 specially must every system meet the question as to this relation 
 ►etween God and man so far as it is affected by sin, and every sys- 
 em must find its center in the point, how the relations between 
 rod and a sinful world are to be restored, to be readjusted. In 
 ther words, religion being essentially union between God and 
 nan, the central inquiry of theology is this: how is the lost com- 
 Qunion between God and man to be restored, how is the reunion 
 o be accomplished. And the different views, as above presented, 
 ,s found in the different and chief theological systems, say in 
 ubstance (adopting a little different order of statement), as fol- 
 ows, in reply to this inquiry. In order to this restoration : 
 
 1. It is enough for God to come and teach men his goodness, 
 ,nd assure them of immortality; 
 
 2. Man is to be restored, only as he partakes of the very flesh 
 ■nd blood of Christ, through the transubstantiated elements; 
 
 3. — only as he partakes of the divine humanity of Christ 
 not his literal flesh and blood) through the sacraments; 
 
 4. — only by partaking of the life of Christ, not necessarily 
 hrough the intervention of the sacraments; 
 
 5. — only through justification before God as a Moral Gov- 
 ernor, on the ground of Christ's atonement, of which justification 
 >y faith is the instrument, uniting the believer to Christ, which 
 aith is the regenerating gift of God's Spirit; 
 
 6. — only (as above) on the ground of our justification, 
 vhich justification is, however, = pardon, which justification also, 
 loes not include a real union with Christ. The Incarnation, in 
 his view, is to exhibit God's hatred of sin and love of the sinner 
 tnd not to effect a real union between God and man. 
 
 (We do not dwell on the naturalistic and pantheistic hypoth- 
 ecs here, because they are out of the pale of Christian theology.) 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 37* 
 
 OP THE INCARNATION ON PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS, AS RELATED TO 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, AND TO THE CONFLICT 
 
 BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 In the question, Has the Son of God become Incarnate for 
 the Redemption of the world, the whole of the Christian system 
 centers. Upon the decision of this question rests the fate of 
 Christianity, as a distinctive religious system, as the absolute 
 and perfect religion, i. e., of Christianity as compared with 
 all other systems of faith, and also its fate, as compared with 
 philosophy. 
 
 Two propositions are to be maintained here : 
 
 I. The question comes up in relation to the philosophy of 
 Christianity, where it is to be shown that the Christian is the_ 
 perfect fo rm of ^Hit? 1 '™ 1 , because it centers and culminates in 
 the Incarnation, i. e., in the position that in the Person of Christ 
 we have an Incarnation of the Son of God for the redemption of 
 the race. 
 
 II. — in relation to the conflict between Philosophy and 
 Faith. The superiority of Christianity to any system of mere 
 philosophy is also found in the same position, since, in Christ 
 and his work, we have a system more complete, better ac^ap t e ji 
 *j° ,ffi*y VF ■■ mo ral, spiritua l anrl ia fcallafli aial w ants than philosophy, 
 without it, can possibly offer. 
 
 The Christian Eeligion is the most perfect religion. 
 It also contains the highest philosophy. 
 
 § 1. As to the Philosophy of Christianity, 
 
 The Incarnation gives us the Philosophy of Christianity, as 
 the most perfect religion. The proof of this position is to be 
 conducted on two grounds: historical and comparative. 
 
 1. Historical . It is to be shown, in the way of historical tes- 
 timony, on the basis of the history of religions, (a.) that the 
 Christian system, under the divine plan, has always existed in 
 
374 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 its elements, as type, etc., in human history; (h) also, on the 
 same historical ground, that the o ther r eJigJaaa* under the di- 
 vine guidance, so far as human history has advanced, h«.ye freftn 
 teudii^ towaw^fcaw^ to the Incarnation 
 
 for Kedemption, as their historic consummation. 
 
 2. The Comparative line of argument. To show (as in Com* 
 parative Philology, etc.,) (a.) that Christianity contains all the 
 truth.^J4-Shja_felt after in oth er religion s, (&.) i g^a mp re_perjbct 
 form^ (p.) and other, most needed, facts anj truths, w hip.h nan. 
 nak be feuad Jbajiny other form, of religion; and, that these are 
 found in the Person and work of Christ, where the superiority 
 of the Christian system is alone fully manifested. 1 
 
 Note. — For the completion of the Philosophy of Christianity, 
 there would also be needed a comparison of the different sys- 
 tems of Christian theology, in the different sects, etc., in order 
 to find which one of them was most complete, most Scriptural 
 and most practical, and so best fitted to attain the ends of the 
 Christian system, the subjugation of man to the service of Christ 
 The Augustinian-Calvinistic-Edwardean. 
 
 § 2. In the Incarnation we have the Means of adjusting tlie Con- 
 flict between Christianity and Philosophy. 
 
 A different question comes up when we come to the conflict 
 between philosophy and faith, between Philosophy and Chris- 
 tianity. It is no longer a comparison of Religions among 
 themselves, as in the Philosophy of Christianity, but it is a 
 comparison of the whole of Christianity with the whole of Phi- 
 losophy, in order to show that the Christian system not only is 
 the highest form of faith, but also contains the highest form of 
 philosophy, that the philosophy of Christianity is the highest philos- 
 ophy. The question here is: Where shall we find the ultimate 
 and complete system, adapted to all man's wants and needs, for 
 time and for eternity, — philosophy as the guide of life ? 
 
 As between philosophy and religion in general, the question 
 reduces itself to that between philosophy and Christianity. 
 
 a [See Introduction to Christian Theology : Philosophical Apologetics.] 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 375 
 
 As between philosophy and Christianity, it is really, ulti- 
 mately, a question between Christianity and Pantheism, "Christ 
 or Spinoza." Deism, atheism, and other forms of infidelity are 
 swallowed up in pantheism. The present tendency is to an al- 
 liance between pantheistic philosophy, extreme democracy, and 
 infidel socialism against the whole Christian system, — fully de- 
 veloped in Europe, rapidly approximating in this country. 
 
 1. T he preliminary..q , u£st^oris . in speculative thought, between 
 Christianity and Pantheism. 
 
 ( a -) Thejact_of sin, as a morajjml^ in opposition to the pan- 
 theistic view, that sin is to be resolved into a mere natural 
 necessity, a stage in the progress of the race. 
 
 (b.) The fact of the Joeing of a personal deity, the intelligent 
 and moral governor of the universe. 
 
 (c.) The possibility and the %2L2LjLSiLE221^ 
 through teachers, authenticated by miracles, and recorded. 
 
 (d.) The fact that in Jesu s Christ, divi nity a nd humanity are 
 united, and the world's redemption is achieved. 
 
 (e.) Th^eJacJ^jjmmortality — that man is to exist hereafter as 
 well as here — that the kingdom of heaven is not to be realized 
 here on earth. 
 
 These are the chief points. In establishing these it is neces- 
 sary to show — as is proved by fact: (1) That the common or- 
 thodox view on these points is the only one which will be of 
 any avail against pantheism: Deism, Pelagianism, Unitarian- 
 ism, cannot make headway against the philosophic vigor and 
 completeness of the pantheistic system; (2) and, that the ortho- 
 dox view of these points gives us a system, centering in the 
 Person and Work of Christ, more rational, more complete, more 
 adapted to man's wants, than any to which the pantheistic phi- 
 losophy can pretend. 
 
 2. Superiority of Christianity to Pantheism. 
 
 The Incarnation, on philosophical grounds, gives us the hi^h* 
 est possible system , one higher than any which philosophy can 
 pretend to. This is to be shown in the following particulars: 
 
 (a.) As to the fun^m^n^) ■ f Yft^TP of all religion and of all 
 philosophy, viz., how can divinity and _humanitybe united, the 
 
376 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Christian system gives us, in the Person of Christ, that union m 
 a more perfect form than can be found elsewhere. Pantheism 
 gives us only the union in idea, of something divine with some- 
 thing human. Christianity gives us the union in fact and com- 
 plete, in a personal form — the best and highest. And through 
 faith in Christ men also are made participants in this union. 
 Such is the philosophical value of the Incarnation, 
 
 (b.) As to the fundamental moral problem, the highest we 
 can conceive, viz., how can_a_sinf ul^ being be reconciled to a 
 holy God, how can a sinful nature be changed : Christianity, in 
 the work of Christ, as applied, gives us the solution of this in 
 the most perfect way (justification and regeneration); meets and 
 solves the problem; and Christianity alone does this; while the 
 Pantheistic system is obliged to ignore the problem, and resolve 
 sin into a necessary stage of development, thus annulling the 
 dictates of our moral nature; and reconciliation into the mere 
 reconciliation between man and nature, or man and his fellow- 
 beings, so that selfishness is lost in good-will. 
 
 (c.) As to the highest question about man as a social being, 
 as made for social fellowship and communion, it may be shown 
 in the same way, that the Christia rL, svjMnx giveg us the most 
 complete vie.w, in„ the J4£a,jQf - the Kingdom l of ^God, established 
 in the world for its redemption, centering in Christ as its Head 
 and Lord. The question raised by all thinkers, giving rise to 
 schemes of republics, to Utopias, to socialism, etc., is met and an- 
 swered in the Christian system, as in no other, wherein men are 
 not merely united with each other, but with God, through Christ, 
 in his kingdom — a moral kingdom, where love reigns. To the 
 possibility and actuality of such a kingdom, the Incarnation has 
 intimate and necessary relations. 
 
 (d.) As to the final jjuestion, in all philosophy as well as in 
 all religion : What is the destiny of each man and of the race ? 
 here, too, Christianity evinces its inherent superiority. The 
 kingdom which it discloses is an eternal kingdom, begun here, 
 perfected hereafter: our aspirations and hopes of immortality are 
 encouraged and fortified, and a future is held out in the endless 
 progression of this kingdom of God in Christ, such as naught 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 377 
 
 else can offer. And this too centers in the truth of Incarnation 
 in order to Redemption. 
 
 Every system of philosophy must meet and solve these four 
 problems: they are fundamental in respect to man and to the 
 universe. Every system must give some answer to the questions 
 which these four raise. The most perfect system is that which 
 gives the completest and most satisfactory answer. 
 
 Our position then is this: that as the Christian system, in its 
 doctrine of the Incarnation in order to Redemption, meets and 
 answers all these four problems, in the most satisfactory manner, 
 it is thereby proved to contain the highest system of philosophy 
 as well as to be the most perfect form of religion. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COMPARISON OF THE INCARNATION WITH SOME OTHER FACTS AS GIVING 
 THE CENTRAL IDEAS OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 I. — Comrjariso n of Divi ne Sovereignty and The Incarnation 
 as central principles. 
 
 Calvinistic theology has had — unconsciously for the most 
 part — two germinant principles : Sovereignty a nd The Covenants ; 
 the former the older, the latter more narrow, but with some ad- 
 vantages. In the Confessions we often see an unconscious T » 
 union of the two. Sovereignty tends to run into supralapsa- , 
 rianism and the assertion of the exclusive divine efficiency ->yill ,^ 
 is made to be all; the ethical is obscured. The objections to it 11 
 are: (a.) Itjs too abstract; (5.) It is liable to reversion, to the 2 ^ 
 construction that God is all Will; (c.) If it is taken concretely, 7t 
 i e., if the Sovereignt y's understood Jxt.stjaJad. for Plan, it_jCAK£s y \ 
 to^much the same with our principle: Incarnation in order to sx 
 Redemption is God's^Plan. 
 
 II. — Comparison of The Incarnation and The Covenants, as 
 the central principles. 
 
 1. The original usage of The Covenant, in theology, as set- 
 
• 78 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ing forth an arrangement, an ordering, on the part of God, ia 
 llowable and true. 
 
 2. As applied in the Covenant of Works: " This do and thou 
 halt live," we may say, It is as if there was such a covenant. 
 
 3. As applied in the Covenant of Redemption, that between 
 he Father and the_.,SQB^ it sets forth clearly, for popular represen- 
 ation, that in the divine plan, Christ performs conditions and 
 is people are given to Him in consequence. (Only in this 
 Covenant there should be included all that Christ's work ac- 
 omplished: Propitiation for the sins of the whole world and 
 he General Offer of Salvation as well as the Provision for the 
 jlect.) 
 
 4 Applied as the central, constitutive principle of theology, 
 b is hardly satisfactory, (a.) In respect to the Covenant of 
 Vorks, there is a lack of historical foundation for anything be- 
 ond the divine announcement and pledge in respect to the con- 
 equences of obedience and disobedience, (p.) In respect to 
 'he Covenant of Redemption (between the Father and the Son), 
 b easily degenerates into the semblance of a commercial trans- 
 ition, (a) In respect to The Covenant of Grace (the Covenant 
 f God with his people), it is not really directly with them, but 
 pith them in Christ, (d.) In respect to both these last, there is 
 , difficulty on account of the confusion resulting; we have to 
 Lse " conditions " in a different sense in the two: in The Covenant 
 f Redemption, C hrist's, sacrifice is th e__,Qgqd itiQn Q_Lfcb& premise ; 
 q The Covenant of Grace, faith and obedjejiceare the conditions, 
 tut in the latter the sense of "conditions" is not the same as in 
 he former: in the former the sense of "condition" is — the pro- 
 uring, meritorious cause, in the latter, it is — the occasional 
 ause, merely a sine qua non, not meritorious. 
 
 5. It is better for theology to state as its central principle, 
 he essential and fundamental fact of the case. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 379 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE INCARNATION AS THE UNFOLDING OF THE POSSIBILITIES 
 OF HUMAN NATURE. THE SECOND ADAM. 
 
 " The secret of Man is the secret of the Messiah." ' 
 
 " The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ " 2 
 
 <( Complete in Him." 3 
 
 Man's nature, need, and destiny are, so to speak, wrapped up 
 in Christ. The secrets of our own inmost being, the enigmas 
 of our destiny, are revealed to us in Christ and in Him alone. 
 Life is a maze; and we do not find the clue to guide us safely 
 through until we find Christ. Life is an enigma, and the word that 
 solves the enigma is Christ, the Word of God. When we know 
 Christ we know what we are, and are made to be; and out of 
 Him we grope in darkness and conjectures. When Christ is 
 revealed to us, we are also revealed to ourselves. Only in Him 
 can we unveil the secret and scan the end of our destiny. We 
 are complete in Him. 
 
 I- — Wejkngwj^§§ly^8.QrjLly as w^know^he end of om: being, 
 and this knowledge is given io, us chiefly in and through Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Socrates was thought to have received from the gods the 
 immortal and searching precept, " Know thyself." He awakened 
 the inquisitive Athenians to self-reflection and moral conscious- 
 ness. But he could not probe the depths of human nature, be- 
 cause he had no definite conception of the great end for which 
 man was made — to glorify God and enjoy Him forever in a 
 divine kingdom. He inculcated at the best only a kind of in- 
 tellectual morality and sincerity: he could not pierce the sky 
 and see the Father of all, nor unveil the future to descry the 
 destiny of man. And so, he could not lead to the highest self- 
 knowledge, because he had not the instruments and truths with 
 which to ply the soul, and extract all its secrets. If we are to 
 have the true estimate of life, we must know the true end of life. 
 
 1 Jewish Proverb. « Eph. iv. 13. * Col. ii. 10. 
 
380 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 And this the great Teacher of our race, and He alone, was 
 able to declare unto us. For he came forth from the Father, 
 and abode in tabernacles of clay, that He might disclose to us 
 the way of coming to eternal life. He revealed God to a sinful, 
 doubting, despairing race as "our Father who art in Heaven." 
 He taught us to pray to Him in those hallowed words which 
 children learn by heart and sages cannot fathom. He told in 
 His own words and taught by his own example, how the suffer- 
 ings, trials, and woes of time may at last but enhance the joys, 
 the peace, and the blessed rest of eternity. He led us to see 
 that this earth is our pilgrimage and heaven our home. And by 
 thus setting before us, in the simplest terms, the greatest end of 
 life, He has taught us the real meaning of life. And in disclos- 
 ing to us this blessed reality He made us to know ourselves. For 
 no man knows himself until he knows what He may attain unto. 
 The glories of heaven instruct us about the things of earth; only 
 in the light of eternity do we rightly read the events of time. 
 
 II. — We know ourselves only as we know the law for which 
 we were made._ This knowledge is given to us most fully in 
 Christ. He is not only the living Gospel : He is also the living 
 Law. He republished the Law of God in all its purity and sanc- 
 tity, and taught us its inmost meaning by His own perfect 
 obedience to it. He came not to destroy, but to fulfil. He un- 
 folded the law in its length and breadth, in its letter and its 
 spirit, in its rewards and its penalties — up to the judgment of 
 the last assize. And He so interpreted that law to the human 
 conscience and the human heart, and He so exemplified it in His 
 whole incarnate life, that it really, in and through Him, became 
 fully known to the human race as the law of life. 
 
 And when this perfect law was unfolded before the vision of 
 the human race, it was like a deeper moral consciousness, pene- 
 trating below the surface of our common thoughts and aims, 
 and disclosing to us our inner, even our inmost selves. For 
 when man comes to know the law aright, then he also knows 
 himself aright; he sees what he ought to be: that he ought to be 
 holy in all his desires and thoughts and acts, and that as long 
 as he is not thus pure he has failed of attaining the great end 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 381 
 
 for which he was made. For the law is made for man's soul as 
 much as light is made for man's eyes; and to let the light of the 
 law upon the soul is a revelation no less clear and distinct than 
 to let the light of the visible sun in upon eyes that may long 
 have had a film gathering over them. 
 
 Our blessed Lord gave us the law, not only in words, but also 
 in His life. He was the embodied law, because He was love in- 
 carnate, obedient even unto death. Sis perfect example was an 
 example of perfect obedience. And thus, in giving to man the law 
 in its highest interpretation, and exemplifying its spirit in His 
 own matchless and perfect obedience, He has revealed to us 
 what we are and ought to be; He has set before us a pattern to 
 show us what it is to be a perfect man; He has taught us to 
 measure ourselves by the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ. 
 
 III. — We j^annot know ourselves truly^unU^we^knoy/ Oi& 
 misery and euilt of sin, of which we are. all partakers. And 
 Christ has also taught us to read this lesson, that He may be- 
 come our great Deliverer. Human misery and guilt were not 
 indeed first disclosed by the Messiah; for the experience of that 
 misery and the consciousness of that guilt are the common heri- 
 itage of all the race. But the knowledge of our wretchedness, 
 which is given by nature, is a knowledge without hope, tending 
 to recklessness or despair. While the knowledge which Christ 
 imparts pierces and troubles the soul that it may purge and 
 purify it. 
 
 One striking fact about human misery and wretchedness, 
 brought out by the Gospel as by no other agency, is, that the 
 sense of our wretchedness is almost always accompanied by a 
 sense of the dignity and grandeur of our nature. "Our grief 
 is but our grandeur in disguise." Along with the conscious- 
 ness of our sinful condition, giving to it its sharpest stings, 
 is an inalienable conviction that this is not our real self, that 
 though it be our common heritage, it is not the end of our 
 being. Brutes may suffer and die, without remorse, without 
 hope, without despair. But so it cannot be with man ; he has 
 remorse for the past, and fear or hope for the future. And this* 
 
382 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is because, made originally in the image of God, that image ia 
 still and ever before the eye of reason and of conscience, 
 though the heart and will be fixed on inferior and transient de- 
 lights. Man is a sinner, condemned to death; and the condem- 
 nation is so terrible because he was made not to die, but to live 
 forever; though he might aspire to a throne, he walks to a 
 scaffold, and the scaffold becomes awful because it has such a re- 
 gal victim ; awful even though, yea because, the condemnation 
 is just. 
 
 And when the divine law, as interpreted and applied by Christ 
 reaches to the very depths of man's consciousness of sin ; when it 
 sets before him its inviolable sanctity and its irreversible obli- 
 gations; when it forces him against his will to test himself by 
 its solemn and searching light; when it reveals the depths of 
 his sin and guilt, far below the careless, worldly thoughts and 
 feelings that usually engross and blind the soul: when sin by 
 the commandment becomes exceeding sinful, and is pictured in 
 all its blackness upon the vivid stainless background of this im- 
 perial rule of rectitude; then it is that man comes to know him- 
 self, to know himself as a sinner, as a sinner not only against a 
 holy law, but also against a holy God, to know the terrible 
 power of his depravity as clinging to the very roots of his being. 
 
 (This certainly is not the only way in which Christ reads to 
 us the lesson of our woe, and of our guilt. We have to look for- 
 ward to the subject not yet considered, His atoning work, to 
 see where it is that He impresses this lesson most vividly upon 
 the soul. If man, at the cross of Christ, will not see his wretch- 
 edness and his doom, then on that cross he cannot see his par- 
 don and his peace. There is no redemption, if there be no 
 condemnation. We must know ou iflfllYfis, t° ha ginnfirR, if Wft 
 wojildkn£wj£^^ 
 
 And so, in the mystery of sin is revealed to us the mystery 
 of our being. In an eminent sense it holds true that the se- 
 cret of man is the secret of the Messiah. 1 
 
 1 It iB related of Pascal, that he always carried with him a paper on which were 
 written these simple and broken words: '* God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, 
 not of philosophers and the learnedr Certainty, certainty, feeling [sentiment], 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 383 
 
 IV. The same holds true, of course, of the final perfection of 
 our human nature, in its completed and glorified state. The^ 
 destiny of man in Christ is to come to the measure of t he sta ture 
 of his fulness. Christ is the very ideal of humanity realized. 
 Even in a human point of view, He is the consummate flower 
 of the human race, a character unique in wisdom, love, and 
 holiness. 1 
 
 V. Not only in the individual life and individual perfection 
 does this relation subsist between man and Christ, but it also ^ 
 holds of man as a whole, of the collective race, of man in his- 
 tory. We are aU to come into the unity of the faith and knowl- 
 edge of the Son of God. 
 
 That which enables us to explain history must be the soul 
 and life of history. History, the life of our race, is also the 
 great problem and enigma of our race. What is the meaning 
 of this mysterious birth of the human race upon the shores of 
 time ? What is to be its future destiny here on earth and in 
 the inaccessible night of eternity? Here is the question of 
 profoundest import to all the members of our race. And to 
 this question the only reasonable and satisfying answer is given 
 us in the revelation of God in Christ. Infidel writers are not 
 able to find any other center to human history than the life and 
 death of Christ. In point of fact, the whole of the ancient Jew- 
 ish history, in type, symbol, and prophecy, pointed to the Mes- 
 siah, while ancient secular history was prepared by Providence 
 for his advent. And since He came, his kingdom has given the 
 law to all other kingdoms; his church has gone on conquering 
 and to conquer. And here is an incomparable and irrefragable 
 
 joy, peace, God of Jesus Christ." And then followed this significant phrase: 
 " Grandeur ofthe human soul!" — And indeed, what must be the inherent dignity 
 of a nature for which God himself puts forth all the resources of his mighty love, 
 for which the Son of God could die upon the cross of- Calvary ? What must have 
 been the guilt that demanded such a sacrifice; what must be the blessedness that 
 could warrant such a sacrifice ? 
 
 1 This is confessed even by those who deny Him to be anything more than 
 man. Thus Benan cannot withhold the confession that "He is the incomparable 
 man, to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of the Son of God. 
 
 and this too with justice Every one of us owes to him that which is best 
 
 in himself ! " "Weigh those last wordSj and make the necessary inferences. Faith 
 In Christ becomes our highest need, life in Him our highest blessedness. 
 
o04 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 argument for the dignity of the Redeemer. He who gives the 
 law to history is the lawgiver of the race. In Him, and in Him 
 alone, the secrets of humanity are hid, its enigmas resolved, its 
 salvation insured. He who redeems the race must be the Head 
 and Lord of the race. The whole human family finds its cen- 
 ter, its crown, its peace, in Him. " Christianity," says one of 
 the Apostolic Fathers, 1 "is not a work of silence, but of gran- 
 deur," and its grandeur is seen in the fact that Christ is the 
 center of history. 
 
 Hence, it appears, that to know ourselves, we must know 
 Christ, and that to know Christ is to know ourselves. Just as 
 one born a poet does not know the full stores of his own imag- 
 ination until he has read Homer, Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare; 
 just as the sculptor does not know his gift in art until he has 
 gazed entranced upon the matchless products of Greek and 
 Roman statuary; just as the young Roman painter, when stand- 
 ing before the breathing canvas that revealed to him all the 
 power of the pencil, cried out in wonder "I too am a painter"; 
 — so the human soul may gaze on all other forms, linger on all 
 other impersonations of thought and feeling, and explore all art 
 and science, but until it stands face to face with the Lord of the 
 race, the Saviour of the lost, it knows not, it cannot know, it 
 feels not, it cannot feel, all the height and depth of human woe 
 and of human love, all the soul's boundless capacities, its su- 
 preme destiny. The hour when Christ is revealed in untroubled 
 splendor to the heart and mind, is the hour when it realizes what 
 it is and may become. In the knowledge of the Son of God, it 
 sees that it may arrive at the perfection of manhood, that it 
 may attain to the measure of the stature of his fulness. 
 
 1 Ignatius. Compare our own Edwards: The work of Redemption is a work 
 carried on in two respects : * ' (1) in its effect on the souls of the redeemed ; this re- 
 mains the same : (2) as it has respect to the grand design in general, as it respects the 
 universal subject and end: this is carried on from the fall of man to the end of the 
 world in a different manner, not merely by repeating or renewing the same effects 
 in the different subjects of it, but by many successive works and dispensations of 
 God, all tending to one great end and effect, all united as the several parts of a 
 scheme, and all together making up one great work." 
 
PART II. 
 
 OF THE PEKSON OF THE MEDIATOE. THE SON OF GOD 
 MANIFEST IN THE FLESH. THE GOD-MAN. 
 
 "The Word -was made [became] flesh." — John i. 14. 
 
 The subject of this Part of the Second Division is, The Doc- 
 trine respecting the Person of Christ. The Proposition: The 
 Mediator was the God-man. Or, In Christ as One Person there 
 is the Union of Two Natures, the Divine and Human. 
 
 There is a full and careful statement of the doctrine in the 
 Savoy Confession of Faith adopted by the Synods held in Bos- 
 ton in 1680, and at Saybrook, Conn., in 1708. This is the same 
 as the Westminster statement: 4 'The Son of God, the Second 
 Person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one sub- 
 stance, and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time 
 was come, take upon Him man's nature, with all the essential 
 properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin: be- 
 ing conceived of the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of 
 the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, 
 and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were in- 
 separably joined together in one person, without conversion, 
 composition or confusion. Which person is very God and very 
 man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man." 
 
 See West. Conf, c. viii. § 2; Larg. Cat., Q. 36-40; Shorter Cat., 
 Q. 21, 22. 
 
 It is a fact which here comes into view, viz. : The Second 
 Person of the Trinity assumed hum an nature, and by t his as- 
 sumption became the God-man, uniting both the divine and 
 human natures in his sacred person. 
 '^'hese^poTnts'are essential: I. Christ is both human and di- 
 
 ^— """^w^— ^— mhjuui ii u ' ihth i rn M»iW»i*rt m ii nrrnn - it rl 
 
 vine ;.. IL. ChrigyLa.g nfi^iMaaQB,;. I.ILJiift^ 
 "Person of the Trinity. 
 
 Chap. I.— The Teachings of Scripture respecting the Person of the God-man, 
 Chap. II. —The Partial and Conflicting Representations: Earlier and Later. 
 Chap. III. — The Objections and Difficulties urged. 
 Chap. IV. — The Result as to the Entire Person of our Lord. 
 
386 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 I HE SCRIPTURAL TEACHINGS RESPECTING THE PERSON OF THE GOD-MAN. 
 
 § 1. The general Impression of the Declarations of [Scri^twe 
 on this Point. 
 
 In the Scriptures Christ is described by a series of the most 
 amazing contrasts. He is called the Son of David — yet David calls 
 Him Lord ; He was understood to claim equality with the Father 
 — as man He had not where to lay his head; He took part with 
 flesh and blood — yet thought it not robbery to be equal with 
 God; He took the form of a servant — yet his proper form was 
 the form of God; He tabernacled in the flesh — yet came down 
 from heaven; He said that He could of his own self do noth- 
 ing — yet He is said to be the Lord of all; His mother is called 
 Mary — yet He is over all, God blessed forever; He was born 
 under the law and fulfilled the law — and yet in his own name gave 
 a new and moi*e perfect law, and brought in a new and everlast- 
 ing righteousness; He was received into heaven out of the sight 
 of his disciples — yet He is still with them, with any two or three 
 of them, always, and even to the ends of the earth; He was found 
 in fashion as a man — and yet is the image of the invisible God; 
 He hid not his face from shame and spitting — though He be the 
 very brightness of the Father's glory; He increased in wisdom 
 — yet knew the Father even as the Father knew Him; He in- 
 creased in stature — yet is the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever; 
 He died at the mandate of a Roman governor — yet is the Prince 
 of the kings of the earth; He could say, The Father is greater 
 than I — yet also say, I and m y Fa ther ar e ong i l^Jfe^i-iiaili™- 
 seen Me hath seenthe Father; He said in the time of his tempta- 
 tion unto Satan, It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
 God, and Him only shalt thou serve — yet He also declared that 
 all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father, 
 and of Him it is asserted that every knee should bow to Him 
 and e very tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of God 
 the Father. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 387 
 
 It is the total impression derived from the amplitude and 
 variety of such expressions as these, which brings the surest 
 and truest conviction to the mind. One and another of the 
 terms may be explained away, but the difficulty is — we have 
 to keep explaining away one, and another, and yet another. 
 The Bible was meant for and is adapted to the average under- 
 standing and religious wants of men. It is fertile and varied 
 in its mode of bringing out the same truth. And the natural 
 and total impression left by the perusal of it will inevitably be 
 — that Jesus Christ is a complex personage, that He was a man, 
 yet is an object of religious worship. (* ^«*jc^> $ & 
 
 § 2. The Proof from Scripture of Christ's Divinity. — This has \ 
 been already given in the discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 It is referred to here only as it bears upon the union of the two 
 natures in his person. 
 
 1. That such a Saviour, Eedeemer (a.) was to come and 
 (b.) did come, is the substance of the Gospel-message; it is 
 to tvayyiXtov. 
 
 " The first annunciation of the New Testament, Luke i. 16, 
 17, was in reference to the highest and last prophecy of the Old 
 Testament, Mai. iv. 5, 6" (Ebrard). 
 
 The second annunciation — to Mary — is in reference to the 
 old Messianic prophecy given to David by Nathan, Luke i. 32, 
 " and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of his father 
 David"; 2 Sam. vii. 12, 13, "and I will establish the throne of 
 his kingdom forever." 
 
 The general announcement — to Joseph — Matt. i. 21, "and 
 thou shalt call his name Jesus: for He shall save his people 
 from their sins." 
 
 And as here the wonderful office is set forth, so immediately 
 following is the evangelist's declaration respecting the wonderful 
 person, as the fulfilment of prophecy, Matt. i. 22, 23. This is pre- 
 sented on the Old Testament basis. Both humanity (" the Virgin 
 shall bring forth ") and divinity ("shall call his name Imman- 
 uel ") are in the Old Testament ; as elements — as we have already 
 Been. (Lectures on the Trinity.) 
 
388 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 2. Titles and Comprehensive Statements as to the Gospel. 
 Mark i. 1. " The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the 
 
 Son' l oTGoT f 
 
 Jo fon^ 1-1 ^ Especially, vs. 14, tC And the Word became m 
 
 flesh." >fj*J u. ^:.^ , 
 
 Rom. i. 1, 3, 4. Especially, vs. 4. 
 
 3. The appellation, Son of Man, 1 originating in the Old Tes- 
 tament, adopted by Christ as the designation of his Messiahship, 
 involving both in the Old Testament and the New, divinity. 
 Meyer: By Son of Man "Jesus means to designate himself as 
 Messiah, — not referring probably to Ps. viii., but to Dan. vii. 13." 
 His divinity as the Son of Man is shown in his coming to judg- 
 ment in the clouds of heaven. 
 
 4. More specifically as to the Old Testament representations 
 of the Messiah. 
 
 (a.) Certainly one peculiarity of the Old Testament religion 
 was its (apparently) almost exclusive national character. The 
 covenant with Abraham ; covenant at Sinai ; the Theocracy for 
 the Israelites. 2 But 
 
 (b.) It had, equally, a universal character. The idea of God 
 as One : the thoroughly ethical conditions between Israel and God ; 
 especially the view and scope of prophecy. 
 
 (c.) The union of these two is the essence of the Old Testament 
 as compared with any other ancient religion. It is characterized 
 
 (d.) This appears most clearly in the fact that the Messiah is 
 predicted not as a national king merely, but as the king ruling 
 from Zion over all nations, and again, not as such a king merely, 
 but also as the prophet and priest for all mankind: Isa. ii. 3; xi. ; 
 liii.; Ps. xl; ex.; Gen. iii. 15; xxii. 8; xlix. 10; Deut. xviii. 18; 
 Mic. v. 2; Hag. ii. 7; Mai. iii. 1; iv. 5, 6. 
 
 1 Keil's Daniel, p. 273, Not, mere humanity. The phrase is used only by 
 Jesus of himself, while on earth. So Bengel on Matt. xvi. 13, "Nemo nisi solus 
 Christus, a nemine dum ipse in terra ambularet, nisi a semetipso, appellatus est 
 Alius hominis." Acts vii. 56; Rev. i. 13; xiv. 14; are passages outside the gospels, 
 and borrowed from Dan. vii. 13. 
 
 2 See Dr. 0. von Orelli, Der nationale Charakter der alt-test. Religion. Zu- 
 rich, 1871. 
 
>^ 
 
 THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 389 
 
 5. The Old Testament as authoritatively interpreted in the 
 New, in respect to this point. 
 
 (a.) Christ himself asserts that He was foretold as Messiah: 
 Matt, xx. 18; xxvi. 54; Mark ix. 12; Luke xviii. 31; xxii. 37; 
 xxiv 27; John v. 39; v. 46; and especially the great office and 
 work predicted for the "Son of Man," Matt. xxvi. 64, and for „ 
 "The King" and "Son of Man," Matt. xxv. 31-46^(1^.^'^^ 
 
 (b.) The Apostles declare the same: Acts "ii. 16; ii. 25; iii. 
 18; xiii. 27, 32; xxvi. 22; 1 Pet. i. 11; 2 Pet. i. 19. 
 
 Hence, — From the Old Testament itself, and from the inter- 
 pretation of it by the New, we learn that the Saviour was to be 
 divine and also of the house of David, — a man, yet of prophetic, 
 priestly, and regal power, beyond all that mere humanity could 
 aspire to or wield. This is fulfilled in 
 
 § 3. The Miraculous Conception, 
 
 (In theological usage, "Miraculous Conception" refers to 
 Christ, " Immaculate Conception " to Mary.) 
 
 I. — The carefulness of Scripture and of the best creed-state- 
 ments, here. 
 
 John i. 14, "T&gjaaaLjfiH&J^^ Heb - "• 
 
 14, "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and 
 blood, He also himself likewise took part of the same;" Matt. 
 i. 18, — "she was found with child of the Holy Ghost;" Luke 
 i. 35, "TheJfoJy^GJlo&t shall come upon thee,, and -the-, power 
 of the Highest shalLpye^shadow. thee : wherefore alsx> that holy 
 thine: which shall be born shall be called the Son of God." 
 
 Keflected in the creed-statements : West. Shorter Cat., Q 22, 
 "Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a 
 true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power 
 of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born 
 of her, yet without sin." Articles of the Church of England, a 
 Art. ii. : " The Son .... took man's nature in the womb of the i 
 blessed Virgin." 
 
 How must we think of this conception ? 
 
 The Saviour must be sinless, free from all taint of original 
 sin. Hence, (a.) No generation in the ordinary sense. The 
 
390 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Second Person of the Trinity assumed human nature in th< 
 womb of the virgin; (b.) Thepassivity at the mother, and as 
 sumption of human nature within t.hft woml^ entirely,, py jjy 
 power of the Most High; (c.) A niira^ulous^ proceeding, it 
 the highest -degree. The Holy Spirit not in the place of ar 
 earthly father; the assumption not to be brought in any wax 
 under the ordinary laws of the production of a human being 
 but to be left in its mystery, as a new creative work of th* 
 Logos enacted through the Holy Spirit. 
 
 II. — As to the Question, Would : nojjChrist have had stair 
 from the mother, if she also had not been miraculousl^renderec 
 
 £ure ? x The question of the Immaculate Conception. Tht 
 question is, Was the Virgin Mary herself conceived without th* 
 taint of original sin? Was she "sancta, non sanctificata" j 
 Gonzalez (Span. Jesuit, 17th cent): "The conception of Marj 
 had three parts: (aA J^J ^ rjft}^ before the infusion of the soul, (6/ 
 natu ra l , the infusio animce superadded, (c.) the_ spiritual concep 
 tion, caused by the infusio sanctificationis. So that, the Virgin, 
 in the second part, might for an instant have been under th* 
 power of original sin." But Perrone and modern writers say 
 there were only two parts: (a.) conceptio activa, the marital act 
 (b.) — passwa, the union of the soul with the seed, which was co 
 instantaneous with the bestowal of grace. 
 
 The question then is, Can it be dogmatically denned tha' 
 the virgin Mary was holy as soon as she had a soul? Tht 
 Roman Catholic Church decided this in the affirmative by tlu 
 decree of Dec. 8, 1854. 
 
 Remarks. (1) The consent of the church cannot be pleadec 
 to this dogmatic decision. This is shown (a.) from the fact tha 
 the Fathers know nothing of immaculate conception. Tertullian 
 Athanasius, Augustine, John of Damascus, teach that all an 
 under sin; (b.) from the fact that the Medisevals were against it 
 Bernard's (1140) doctrine is, that Mary was freed from sins, bi 
 
 1 Schleiermacher says: "We must suppose a supernatural, sanctifying influ 
 ence in the embryo." Mliller's suggestion is better: "Sinfulness is through th 
 propagation, not of the embryo, but of the person, the individual: this not by gen 
 e ration in Christ's case. This holy person would repel aU impurity from the ver 
 start." 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 391 
 
 grace, after conception: " sanctificata in utero," like Jeremiah 
 and John the Baptist, and so for a time under original sin. The 
 church of Spain followed him. Peter Lombard (1150) was against 
 it: "grace to conquer sin" [received by Mary]. Alex. Hales, 
 (13th cent.), a chief authority, teaches that she was " sanctified " ; 
 Bonaventura (13th cent), "Mary needed redemption"; Aquinas, 
 The festival of 8th Dec. [introduced in 1140 by canons of Lyons, 
 as the Festival of her Conception] is for the " sanctification," 
 and not for the "conception" of the virgin; Mary was "sancti- 
 fied," when, we do not know. 1 
 
 2. No proof whatever is offered. Perrone cites Gen. iii. 15 
 (Vulgate: " She shall bruise "), and Luke i. 28, "Hail, highly 
 favored ! " He grants that there is no decisive proof for the 
 doctrine in the Bible; says there is no proof from the Bible 
 against it. But, the passages of Scripture which speak of orig- 
 inal sin and the universality of redemption, allow of no exception. 
 
 3. The argument from consent — even of Papal authorities — 
 fails. Launoy (Jansenist, 1731) gives thirteen citations from 
 
 ** x ' / <^^^^^^ m ^^^ m mj guu tm nt»*.m^aiV mono* . 
 
 seven Popes against the doctrine. At Trent, a decision could 
 not be obtained. 
 
 4. As to the theological argument, (a.) The position, "Only 
 a sinless being could beget [conceive] a sinless," would prove 
 the sinlessness of Mary's parents: (b.) The argument from fit- 
 ness 3 — God would make Mary most fitting for her office, as "the 
 mother of God," as "the bride of the Holy Spirit" — asserts more 
 than we can know, except by revelation. It could not establish 
 fact, but, at the most, only show possibili^^^^^^r^^ 
 
 5. Arguments against the doctrine: jLuke i/47; ii. 43; John 
 ii. 3; 1 Cor. xv. 22; Eph. ii. 3; Rom. v. Urr^if^ ^tT^ ^ ** 
 
 6. The position taken by the church of Some in this decision 
 of 1854. (a.) Deciding by "infallibility" what has against it a 
 large consent of her greatest teachers — thus sacrificing "tradi- 
 tion" to infallibility, (b.) Deciding a point of^faith by papal 
 
 1 Perrone's explanation of Aquinas and Bernard: "The division of parts;' 
 " They refer only to the animal conception, before the infusion of soul, when thej 
 speak of original sin." 
 
 2 Cf. Perrone, p. 113. ? Ibid, pp. 102-111, 148. 
 
392 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 decree — the, ultramontane theory^ of infallibility in the Papacy, 
 carried out as never before so clearly, (c.) Deciding by "infalli- 
 bility," on the ground of mere human consent, a matter of fact, 
 which only omniscience could know — thus stretching infallibility 
 to its utmost, (d.) Carrying to a still higher extent the adora- 
 tion of the creature, making the virgin to have a prerogative 
 which, of all human beings, Christ only can claim ; exalting her 
 worship, and thus becoming more idolatrous, and departing 
 further from the faith, (e.) Giving itself up yet more completely 
 to the control of the Jesuit influence — the most baleful form of 
 Romanism. 
 
 § 4. In the miraculous Conception tJw Loqos assumed a true and 
 complete Humanity. 
 
 Our Saviour was a proper man, possessing a " true body and a 
 reasonable soul." j"** U ^_ ~ ^ ', ,—^ ^^O^t;^ 
 
 I. — A true body. Proved, (a.) From his conception and birth, 
 Matt. i. 25; Luke IL 35 ; ii. 1> (b.) His growth like other children, 
 ;LukeJLi. 52; (c.) Hunger, weariness, infirmities: need of rest, 
 sleep, Luke iv. 2; xxiL_ ft4 : J ohn yy . 6; (d.) Pain, suffering, 
 wounds, John xi. 33, 35; xix. 34; Luke xxii. 44; Matt. xxvi. 37; 
 John xx. 27; (e.) Flesh and bones, Luke xxiv. 39, 40; (/.) Cru- 
 cifixion, death, and burial, Luke xxiv. 39; Heb. ii. 14. 
 
 II. — A reasonable humaj i flonl- (a.) Growth in wisdom, 
 declaration of "ignorance," Luke ii. 40, 52; Mark xiii. 32; 
 Matt. xvi. 21; xxiv. 36; (b.) Temptation, Matt. iv. 1; Luke xxii. 
 42; Heb. iv. 15; v. 2, 8; (c.) Sorrow and sympathies, Matt. xxvi. 
 37 ; Luke xix. 41 ; John xi. 35. (&) Dependence on God, Prayer, 1 
 Matt, xiv. 19; John xi. 41; (e.) Acts ii. 31. (/.) To Christ a 
 human itvev^a belongs, John xi. 33, 38; xiii. 21; xix. 30; Matt, 
 xxvii. 50; Mark ii. 8; Luke ii. 40; x. 21; xxiii. 46; 1 Pet. iii. 18; 
 (g.) To Christ a human j>vxv belongs; Jo hn_ xij 27; Matt. xxvi. 
 38; Mark xiv. 34. W^^ww 
 
 III. — The indispensableness of holding t he complete hu- 
 manityj>f Christ. Denied by Doce tge, not truly held by Arians, 
 
 1 The Prayers of Christ illustrative of his Humanity, Jour. Sac. Lit. and 
 Bib. Kecord, Oct. 1861. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 393 
 
 undervalued by S abellians — " we want only Go d," they say, 
 " not man. " The church has always confessed the need and 
 want of the God-man for redemption, (a.) It is important in 
 connection with the interpretation of Scripture. Clmstj^on^tlio 
 face of the Gospels^. is.inan— proper, true, real — if any ever was. 
 Man is not man without the human soul with all its endow- 
 ments of " spirit " — is only animal. An interpretation which ox- 
 pels the humanity undermines all correct interpretation. (6.) It 
 is important as regards the power and efficacy of his example. 
 We are to be like Him > (c.) In regard to his position as the 
 Becond Adam, (d.) Most of all, in connection with redemption. 
 Accoi'dina; to the Scriptures, the Redeemer must be of the na- r 
 ture of the r edeemed : Hah, ii. 17 1 16, 14; Gal. iv. 4. (e.) Atone - j 
 ment must be effected through his human, nature, the divine 
 could not suffer. The roots of the Scriptural doctrine of redemp- 
 tion are cut off, if we deny the proper humanity of Christ. 
 
 § 5. In the Scriptures both the Divine and Human Natures of 
 Christ are often brought under one View, are referred to in their 
 connection. Rom, ix. 5 ; John i. 1-14, (a.) The Word with God, 
 was God, and the first great divine act — creation — ascribed to 
 Him: (b.) The Word became flesh, dwelt among us, and we 
 beheld his glory; 1 John i. 1, 2; Phil. ii. 6, 11; Rom, i. 3, 4; 
 Heb. i. ; ii. ; 1 Tim/iii. 16 : John i. 18. * 
 
 § 6. The various Modes in which what is said of Christ in 
 the Scriptures is to be interpreted in respect to Ms Person and 
 Natures. 
 
 Whenever we speak of any whole which is made up of 
 different elements, we use the same subject with different predi- 
 cates, which may be applied, which must be applied, to this or 
 that element. The following are the various modes in which 
 Christ is spoken of: (a.) The human nature gives the designation 
 of the subject while the predicates belong to the divine nature. 
 Instances: "As concerning the flesh Christ came, who — is God 
 
 1 "Only-begotten God" as read by some. See Ezra Abbott, Bibl. Sac, Oct 
 1861. 
 
394 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. ,, , v t . 
 
 over all," Rom. ix. 5; "See the Son of man ascend up where He 
 — was before/' John vi. 62. 
 
 (Z>.) The converse of the foregoing. Passages in which the 
 person is designated from the divinity, while the acts are of the 
 humanity. Instances: Rom. viii. 32; 1 Cor. ii. 8; 1 Cor. xv. 47. 
 
 (c.) The whole person the subject with diyins predicates: 
 John viii. 58. 
 
 (d.) The whole person the subject with human predicate s: 
 "I— thirst." 
 
 (e.) The whole person the subject with predicates of bo th 
 the natures. All the passages just cited in § 5 are instances. 1 
 
 § 7. According to the Scriptures, Christ was one Person, and 
 his Personality toasfrom his Divine Nature. 
 
 I. — One Person. There is nothing in Scripture to show any- 
 thing like a two-fold personality — two Christs, a man and a God; 
 but the same undivided person is, as to his humanity, from 
 David — the Son of David; and as to his divinity, the Logos — the 
 Son of God. The Scripture asserts this, or rather, rests on this 
 unity of the person. In his primeval estate of glory, in his ap- 
 pearance in the world, in his resurrection and consequent glori- 
 fication, He is the same — the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 
 There is as much evidence, and of the same kind, that He is one 
 person, as there is in regard to any being or man in history. 
 There are two ways of showing this: (a.) Hejilways jigeja-the 
 first personal pronoun: " Before Abraham ^ was 4 _I . ^jp ," "The 
 glory winch I had with thee before the world was," " I am with 
 you always" ; Hj^ij^.al&Q.jid4ressed as "Thou," and is spoken 
 of as He, Him , etc. (b.) He is n ever spoken of as if the man 
 and the God in Him had personal, relations, or converse with 
 each other (as is the case with the " Persons " of the Trinity). 
 
 II. — This one Person had its personality from the divine jia- 
 ture. 2 It is otherwise logically inconceivable. There was not 
 
 1 Illustrative Parallel, (a.) Man— is a religious animal, (6.) Man— is spiritual 
 and sleeps, (c.) Shakespeare — is a genius, (d.) Chatham — suffers pain, (e.j Burke— 
 delivered an oration. 
 
 2 Usage of person and personality. Person, usually broader: the whole outward 
 manifestation, the same being in all his attributes. Personality, the central point 
 of the person, the indefinable I, Ego. 
 
*-** UUf ' ' uu '* ""the "redemption itself^ S'fj 
 
 a human personality, there was a human nature, perhaps im- 
 personal, or the personality merged in the divine person. 
 "Christ -was not a human person with a divine nature, but 
 a divine person with a human nature." Another view: There 
 may be supposed an embryo, with human personality, yet never 
 coming to distinct being, lost, merged in the divine personality. 
 It is difficult to conceive human nature without potential per- 
 sonality. Some say, personality is in consciousness alone. 
 
 [Some fuller statements on this point arejjiven in Chap. V.] 
 
 § 8. Summary and Conclusion from Scripture Testimony as to 
 the Two Natures and One Person. 
 
 Generally. ChristisveryjGo^^nd^ery jmjyj, yet one Per- 
 son, the God-man. The induction of these points is not from a 
 few expressions, but from, and giving the final expression to, 
 the greatest variety of utterances concerning Him. Omitting 
 either of these points puts us in a false position, suppresses 
 some Scriptural statement. 
 
 Analytically, (a.) Christ is one Person, (b.) A perfect di- 
 vine nature, (c.) United to an entire human nature, (d.) In this 
 the o ^^enatur ^^is^active. the human nature passi ve, (e.) The 
 act is called "personal unition;" the result, personal or hypos- 
 tatic union, kvav$pmitr]6i$. (/.) So Christ is the God-man, Sedv- 
 SpaoitoS, 1 and so abides, (g.) In this union the natures are not 
 confounded or commingled. (7*.) Nor is the Person divided. 
 There is in the one person a commum^nqturarum, so that the 
 properties of either nature may be ascribed to the one person, 
 and there is " one theandric energy." 2 
 
 The Proof, (a.) It is inconcei vable that it should be ojfcher- 
 wise. (&.) The reasons for the union always remain. 3 (c.) The 
 
 1 First in Origen. 
 
 a [But see further on, and especially in Chap. V., for the sense in which this 
 statement is made.] 
 
 a 1 Cor. sv. 24, 28, urged against this. But according to that passage " the 
 Son " remains, only the mediatorial scepter is laid down. The position [advo- 
 cated by Dr. Hickok ?] that when Christ gives up the kingdom, the Man remains 
 Head of the Church, while the Logos goes back to God, is not consistent with 
 such passages as are cited under (c). 
 
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THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 397 
 
 III. — Statement The human nature of Christ never existed 
 out of union with „ his divine nature, and so has no distinct per- 
 sonality. Yet it lacks nothing of complete human personality. 
 The ultimate question here is, Did the two natures manifest 
 themselves as two? Monothelites said: There are two na- 
 tures but only one will — one manifestation. Orthodoxy in- 
 clines, with reservations, to the position of two manifestations. 
 u One theandric energy," proposed by the Emperor Herac- 
 lius, 633. [The author declares neither for nor against this. 
 Would "two manifestations of one theandric energy" indicate 
 his view? See Chap. V.] 
 
 Q*jU^U 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LATER DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES BROUGHT UP IN THE CONTROVERSIES 
 OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 / SvJ^t Kv**o^ v ^^- 
 
 I. — The Calvinistic bodies have iiood on the old foundation- 
 
 II. — The Socinians renewed Ebionitism. or Arianism. 
 
 III. — The Lutherans affirmed communicatio idiomatum, that 
 on& nature partakes of the attributes of the other. The com- 
 munication is of the divine to the human — not the converse. 
 " Finitum capax infiniti." This applied especially to the Lord's 
 Supper. U^Quity^is the word which expresses the most essential 
 thing in the theory. N a,<¥vuw^^^. c^ 
 
 Objections of the Reformed: (a.) C hrist's bo dy, then, is pres- 
 ent everywhere as much as in the sacramental bread, (b.) How 
 can a human nature become omniscient and yet remain^ ignor- 
 ant, etc ? How caKTEs be affirmed without strict logical con- 
 tradiction? (c.) The theory would result in a monophysitic view, 
 annulling the real humanity, (d.) It ought to teach that the di- 
 vine partakes in the human, which it does not. (e.) Generally: 
 transference of properties would annul nature — infinite to finite, 
 finite to infinite. 
 
398 <" CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 IV. — The doctrine of "Kenosis. 1 Phil. ii. 7, havrdv ihevosae 
 iiopq>rjv dovXov X<x/3gqv. The Incarnation was a self-emptying act 
 of the Logos, the laying aside, for a time, of divine powers and 
 prerogatives. 
 
 Objections: 
 
 (a.) This would involve a change, for thirty years, in the 
 Divine Trinity. 
 
 (b.) It is inconceivable that the Godhead should thus become 
 naught. Gess and Reubelt* say, If Christ has life in himself, 
 He may annul it of himself. But The act ascribed to Christ" 
 in Phil. ii. 7 is best understood as a humiliation, a taking of 
 new conditions — not as an annulling of his divinity. 
 
 (c.) It is argued that God the Father might effect the Kenosis, 
 as*He gave life to the Son. But (a.) Phil. ii. 7 says Christ did what- 
 ever was done ; (b. ) The Father could not annul the divine being 
 of the Son any more than his own; (c.) if He could, the Son 
 would not be equally divine; (d.) The doctrine jgads over into 
 the position of the entire dependence of the_Son for nature, be- 
 inglTs well as Sonship) on the Father. 8 
 
 V. — Philosophical views. Schelling: The essence of the In- 
 carnation is in the principle of Identity — the union of opposites. 
 Hegelians: The second Person is the world. Schleiermacher: The 
 truth is that of Divine Humanity; in Christ is found the ideal 
 union, of which we partake. Christ was not personally pre-ex- 
 istent. Dorner: Divinity and Humanity are not diverse. See 
 Hodge. 
 
 1 For it, Thomasius, Liebner, v. Hofmann, etc. Dorner against it (Glaubensl. ). 
 
 2 Prof. J. A. Eeubelt. Two articles in Bib. Sac, 1870-71. Also, Transl. of 
 Gess, Script. Doct. of Person of Christ, Andover, 1870. 
 
 •> Gess says, " Aseity is to be ascribed to the Father only." 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 399 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE OBJECTIONS AND DIFFICULTIES URGED AGAINST THE DOCTRINE 
 OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 
 
 Preparatory Considerations. 
 
 All great truths, like all great men, pass through a protracted 
 struggle before their victory is secure. Though not contrary 
 to reason, they are above it, and reason will assail them. They 
 are above common sense, and common sense will take offence at 
 them. They are revealed to faith, but all men have not faith. 
 They are given to meet our spiritual wants, but sin deadens 
 our sense of the greatness of these wants. They show the rela- 
 tions and reconcile the opposition between God and man, heaven 
 and earth, but many who live on the earth care not for heaven, 
 and many men have little sense of the greatness and the won- 
 derful works of God. They unfold the mysteries of the divine 
 nature, but some can hardly see the difference between a mys- 
 tery and an imagination. 
 
 The greatest truths, too, are those that reconcile the greatest 
 antagonisms, but many do not understand, and many explain 
 away the fearful antagonism there is between a holy God and a 
 sinful world; the great gulf is for them only a narrow stream 
 which they may readily leap over at any time; the vast moun- 
 tain, seen in the distance, seems so like a mole-hill that it 
 appears not at all necessary for God to come down to earth 
 to enable us to surmount it. 
 
 But if we might expect the great truths connected with our 
 redemption to be assailed by man, no less may we expect that 
 they would be defended and made triumphant by the power of 
 God. And so it comes to pass. From conflict they emerge 
 with higher luster, purified and exalted. The attack sharpens 
 the defence. The truth becomes more clear and definite, is re- 
 duced to more precise statements, is guarded against perversion, 
 is seen in its connection with other truths, is adjusted in the great 
 system which sets forth God's dealings with man, is illumined 
 
400 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and not consumed by the fire sent down to devour it Thus 
 has it been, pre-eminently, with the doctrine respecting the Per- 
 son of Christ. No truth has been more fiercely debated, through 
 longer ages ; none has experienced greater opposition from all 
 sorts and conditions of men; none has received more precise 
 and accurate definitions; none has asserted its triumphant claims 
 more successfully against the wit and wisdom of this world. In 
 the early church the doctrine respecting Christ's Person even 
 took the precedence of the doctrine respecting his atoning sac- 
 rifice. With a humble and direct faith, men came to Him, clung 
 to Him, loved Him with a deep personal affection, saw in Him 
 the object of all praise and glory. They believed in Him heartily, 
 before they began to reflect upon their faith. And the first sub- 
 jects of doctrinal discussion were those that grew out of his 
 complex nature. One sect exalted the humanity, another the 
 divinity: the respective attributes of each nature were defined. 
 Council after council, through six centuries, was called, to rebut 
 heresies, or establish and define the faith. Let some see in all 
 this only the jarring disputes of theologians: let them also see 
 that they were disputing about what formed the central object 
 of their faith and spiritual life. Far from seeing in these con- 
 troversies an evidence against, we may derive from them the 
 strongest evidence for, the existence of the most striking elements 
 of contrast in the person of Him to whom all parties equally 
 looked as the engrossing center of their faith. — And where in 
 modern times this doctrine has been assailed with the greatest 
 vehemence, it has come forth again from the assault with greater 
 luster. In the land most boastful of its philosophy, philosophy 
 even came to pay its homage to Jesus Christ. The problems 
 which the church held as articles of faith have come to be most 
 vehemently discussed as questions of philosophy. Around the 
 person of Christ their hosts have gathered, they have assaulted 
 Him with their fiercest questionings, they have been bafHed by 
 his wondrous person, and even when they do not bow to his 
 person, they yet confess that the doctrine respecting Him is the 
 sublimest doctrine to which man has attained; they have taken 
 it and placed it in the very center of their systems, and pro- 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 401 
 
 claimed that the union between what is divine and what is human 
 is the great central and reconciling truth to which all the facts 
 of history and all the speculations of philosophy must bring 
 men's minds. 
 
 And in our own New England, when many wavered in 
 their belief in the divinity of Christ, when most of its litera- 
 ture, its culture, its honored names in church and state, and the 
 predominant influences of refined society were all enlisted in 
 favor of a system which denied the more excellent, though it 
 glorified the more humble, nature of our Lord, how was it that 
 such a cause, with every prestige of success, was suddenly checked 
 in its advancing course? It was not by argument alone, it was 
 not alone by showing its inconsistency with Scripture, but it 
 was also because there was a new outpouring of the Spirit of 
 God, giving a deeper sense of sin, a more thorough longing for 
 salvation ; it was because men's souls were deeply stirred, and 
 came to grapple with the great problems of their destiny ; be- 
 cause they saw their helplessness and sinfulness, and felt the 
 need of an Almighty Deliverer: it was because by the exercise 
 of simple and hearty faith in Him, as the giver of spiritual life, 
 they saw the fitness of such a Eedeemer to all their wants, and 
 experienced the full sense of pardon and peace only when lean- 
 ing on the arm of this gracious Deliverer. And all this was 
 and must have been a wonder to those who felt not the burden 
 of sin, and realized not the full meaning of the law of God, and 
 whose religious feelings were not quickened, so that they could 
 cry out, my heart and flesh long for the living God. But they 
 who sought the living God, perfect in holiness and abounding 
 in mercy, found Him in the person of Jesus Christ, and bowed 
 in adoration before Him as the Lord and giver of their spiritual 
 life. Very like a living power has been the cause of Jesus 
 Christ through the history and changes of his church ; very like 
 a living influence is that which still draws men to Him from 
 the depths of sin, from the heights of human reason; very like 
 a living Being does He still and ever present Himself to the 
 eyes of our faith ; a secret and unseen agency still draws in every 
 clime men's hearts towards Him; they love Him as they cannot 
 
402 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 love a man who has gone to his grave; men oppose Him as they 
 do not oppose a Luther or a Calvin : even when they try to prove 
 that He is not divine, they do it because there is so much to 
 show that He is divine ; they never try to prove that Paul was 
 a mere man, or that John was not a God: they reason against 
 Christ's divinity as they reason against nothing that is unsub- 
 stantial and imaginary — not as men reason against a chimaera, 
 but as they contend against a power which the force of the con- 
 test shows really to exist. 
 
 Such has been the living course of Christ, as the Head and 
 Leader of his church, through its conflicts in this world. No 
 one doctrine has been more impugned, or has maintained its 
 ground more firmly, than that respecting his Person. In the 
 course of the controversy the greatest variety of objections have 
 been made. Some of the chief of these we now proceed to 
 consider. 
 
 I.— It is sa id Jhat we can explain all that the Bible says 
 about the Person of Christ, without assuming his divinity. 
 Some few texts,. it is said, do seem to have a halo of divinity 
 about them, but when we come to examine them closely, the 
 halo is not so distinctly visible. This brings up the subject of 
 
 The right Mode of Interpreting Scripture. [The observations 
 which follow would have been in place in the Introduction, as 
 giving the point of view from which the author would regard 
 the Scriptures in reference to every main doctrine. But the 
 general statements could not well be sundered from the special 
 references to the doctrine now under consideration. Their im- 
 portance with reference to the whole theological system will be 
 the explanation of their being inserted here at such length.] 
 
 There is a strong tendency in men's minds, when dealing 
 with a difficult subject, to banish all difficulties by simply deny- 
 ing them. Many prefer to receive the half of a truth by the under- 
 standing, to taking the whole of it by faith, especially where the 
 truth seems to involve both something mysterious and some- 
 thing intelligible; we are very apt to grasp the intelligible half, 
 and let the mysterious remainder evanesce. Thus, in explain- 
 ing God's moral government, it is much easier to think out a 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 403 
 
 system made up wholly of divine purposes, or to think out one 
 made up wholly of free agency, than it is to combine both these 
 parts of the system into one orderly and consistent whole. So 
 it is not difficult to understand that Jesus was a man — this is 
 simple, there have been many very wonderful men in the world 
 — but to say that He is also God introduces a profound mystery, a 
 somewhat that is quite unfathomable. If now the Bible could 
 be interpreted so as to be consistent with the intelligible half 
 of what is said of Jesus, that would relieve us of a great mys- 
 tery, and to relieve the soul of mysteries is thought by some to 
 be the great end of all interpretation and reflection — one evi- 
 dence of the advance of knowledge and culture. And at the 
 worst — or best — though some difficult passages should remain, it 
 is thought to be better to leave some uncertainty about their in- 
 terpretation, than to leave anything inexplicable in the nature 
 of Christ. And besides, it is very well known that words are 
 used in a great variety of senses, and if the highest sense of a 
 word be mysterious, the lowest sense may be level to our under- 
 standings ; if the highest sense involves in difficulties, the lowest 
 makes all plain. And the great aim in interpreting the Bible is 
 to remove all difficulties. Figurative language also abounds: 
 the Orientals were famous for the use of it; and the Bible was 
 written in Oriental parts. They were not so careful to dis- 
 tinguish between what was divine and what was human as 
 we are. 
 
 A series of rules for the interpretation of Scripture might in 
 this way be easily made out. Prove first, that Christ was a man ; 
 assert next, that He could not be both God and man, that this 
 involves an absurdity; and explain all the Scripture by this rule. 
 Another formula would be, Take any word applied to Christ, 
 which has been interpreted of his divine nature, reduce it to its 
 lowest terms, and show that it can possibly mean something less 
 than absolute divinity; show this of each of the terms so used, 
 and the result will be, that whatever words in whatever variety 
 have been used to unfold the higher nature of Jesus, they could 
 not by any possibility prove that He had that nature — because 
 it is impossible at the outset. All the difficulties will in this 
 
404 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 way disappear. For what is difficult can be explained by what 
 is easy, and what is mysterious by what is natural, and what 
 crosses our feelings by what suits our feelings, and we may make 
 a very perfect man out of one who is called God, a very clear 
 system of natural religion out of an obscure system of revealed 
 truth, an easy system of morals out of a hard system of divinity; 
 and we shall become versed in all the easy parts of Scripture 
 and easy in all the difficult parts; and if we do not understand 
 God's ways with man, we shall at least see clearly what are 
 man's ways with God and with his revelation. 
 
 But against all this we urge the position, that precisely where 
 and when the Bible speaks of the mysteries of the divine nature, 
 if it be indeed the Word of God, we are bound in critical jus- 
 tice to-be most guarded and reverential in our interpretations. 
 Far from seekin g J;p_^lminish_Qr ;., explain away the_ wor ds jwhich 
 announce to us such a wonderful manifestation, we should rather 
 seek to give them their greatest intensity of meaning, and should 
 let them be inves ted with som ething of t he sacrectness and awful- 
 ness of the subject^which they are jneant to announce. In their 
 very best estate, human language and human thoughts are all 
 too poor and meagre to declare to. us the immensity and won- 
 derful works of Jehovah. All language bends beneath the weight 
 of such supernatural themes. What folly, then, in the wisdom 
 which will take all the words and phrases of the Scripture that 
 have been selected to describe God's wonderful manifestations 
 of himself, and give to them their smallest possible amount of 
 significancy, which will take a figurative expression, and give 
 the lowest meaning to the figure — when it would seem as if 
 even natural reason might teach us, that any figure of human 
 language, when applied to the divine works, must be taken in 
 its most eminent and daring sense, in order to conform to the 
 nature of the subject which it is intended to describe. 
 
 We may interpret historical facts in the Bible by the laws 
 which govern us in the interpretation of history; we may write 
 the lives of the great and good men who are there described to 
 us as we would write the lives of other great and good men; we 
 may interpret poetry as poetry, and prose as prose, and many 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 405 
 
 things according to the religious culture and national habits of 
 the chief actors in them — in short, we may interpret the things 
 that belong to men by the standard of men, but we must also 
 interpret what relates to God in a manner conformable to the 
 mysteriousness of his Being and the wonderfulness of his works. 
 And when He unfolds to us, so to speak, his hidden nature, 
 when He unveils his glories to our gaze, and lets us catch a 
 glimpse of the interior economy of the very Godhead; and when 
 He unfolds this in connection with the greatest work in which we 
 can conceive even God to engage, the redemption of an apostate 
 world; what reverence can be too great, what caution unwise, 
 that we do not misunderstand or diminish the full sense of the 
 majestic truths so graciously delivered to us ! 
 
 Against the attempt to show that the language respecting 
 Christ's higher nature can be interpreted in a lower sense we 
 urge again — what has been said in another connection — that 
 the conviction re spe cting: bis, divinity, does not result- from, iso- 
 lated phrases, is not determined by the interpretation of particu- 
 lar words, but is formed from the total representation given 
 of Him in me inspired record. In almost every variety of 
 phrase and image are his wonderful glories depicted. In his 
 relations to God and in his relations to man, both natures are 
 implied, implied when not directly asserted, most naturally in- 
 ferred when not expressly stated. Hence the process of trying 
 not to find his divinity is one of constant explaining, if not of 
 explaining away. The Person of Jesus Christ, so to speak, is 
 inwrought into the very texture of revelation. « Give the New 
 Testament a living form, and the form it takes is that of the 
 God-man, the mediator between heaven and earth, equally 
 allied to both God and man. Now we do not deny but that a 
 skilful anatomist may dissect this book, and not find the divin- 
 ity of Christ which animates it: but the very process of dissec- 
 tion has killed the living spirit, which of course eludes all his 
 future research. 
 
 In interpreting the Bible, something more is needed than 
 critical skill, — a humble acceptance and belief of God's revela- 
 tion to us — an expectation of finding, when God condescends 
 
406 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 to unfold his nature, what may surpass our understanding, 
 though it may claim our faith — a sense and feeling that God is 
 there revealed in his Word, as nowhere else — and a reverential 
 interpretation, and a thankful acceptance, and an implicit belief, 
 of all that is declared respecting the person of Him, whose is 
 the only name given under heaven amongst men whereby we 
 must be saved. And if Christ be really the God-man, if his 
 state of humanity was a state of humiliation, of humiliation for 
 our redemption, what ingratitude to transform all that shows 
 the greatness of his condescension into an argument to disprove 
 the greatness of his majesty, what shame to make his human 
 sympathy and suffering the ground for denying his antecedent 
 and eternal glory ! 
 
 In respect, then, to the objection under consideration, we 
 grant fully, that it is possible to explain the whole of Scripture 
 without proving Christ to be the God-man. This can be done, 
 it has been done. Bat how ? On principles which undermine 
 every rational theory of interpretation; on principles which 
 assert that it is possible for a person to be called God, to have 
 divine attributes ascribed to Him, to have divine works (as 
 creation) ascribed to Him, to be worshipped, to be an object of 
 our highest trust and love, and yet not to be divine. On such 
 principles Scripture can be interpreted so as to do away with 
 the proof of Christ's divinity, and only on such. 
 
 II. — A second objection which is brought against the doctrine 
 that in the Person of Jesus Christ two natures are combined in 
 One Person, is, that the doctrine, in this form, is^not^ found in_the 
 Bible, and therefore cannot Fe aiT Article of Faith. 
 
 This objection, however, brings up to our minds a peculiarity 
 of the Bible in respect to its mode of revealing truth, and also 
 a remarkable fact in the history of the church as to the mode of 
 developing truth. The Bible is not a book of dry, dogmatical 
 statements; it contains no' Confession of Faith; it gives us no 
 system or summary of doctrine. It is altogether a different 
 book from what a mere man would hav<^ written. Its words 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 407 
 
 are spirit and life. It is a book for all times. It states the 
 same truth in a great variety of ways. It involves one truth in 
 another. It is somewhat like the book of nature, where all 
 things seem most strangely blended, in the greatest variety — 
 the larger animals, birds, insects, trees, shrubs, earths, all exist- 
 ing together without any sign of regular classification. Now 
 when any one begins to study nature, he systematizes, he de- 
 scribes accurately, he reproduces, in another form, what he finds 
 scattered so profusely around him: he does not mean to make 
 it over again, or to make a better system, but only to describe 
 what actually is — and that is more than he has ever done yet — 
 and it is a necessary course for him to take in order to get fully 
 acquainted with the laws and harmony of nature. 
 
 So it is in respect to the Bible and to human systems framed 
 uponm^MefTwiinhink about the Bible: it was meant that they 
 should; and they. will set forth what they think: and they may 
 not think to good purpose — but still they think. They cannot 
 produce anything half so living as the Bible; they cannot ex- 
 haust it; it always remains the only source of infallibility, the 
 chief source of sanctifying truth. But as men think about the 
 doctrines there contained, and think more and more, they attain 
 a profounder sense of its wonderful depth and consistency. The 
 doctrines are developed from age to age in new harmony. One 
 set of doctrines after another is taken up by the church and 
 discussed — often vehemently, seen in all their bearings, brought 
 into a definite and consistent whole : and then another series is 
 begun upon : and so the treasures of the Bible are successively 
 poured over into men's minds; but it still remains an exhaust- 
 less fountain. 
 
 If this is true as a general fact, much more will it be found 
 to be true respecting the doctrine of the Person of Christ. He 
 is revealed in the Scriptures as a living Person, full of majesty 
 and grace. JJo^Liiii not .reveal- to us a doctrine, He sent his 
 Son : He does not proclaim a system, which men are simply to 
 understand and assent ""to, He sets before our eyes a Being, a 
 living Person whom we may love and trust. But we not only 
 believe in Christ, we think about Him. And now if any one in 
 
408 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 telling his thoughts about Christ should say, He is a mere man 
 — to meet this statement we may, first of all, quote some texts 
 which show Him to be divine. It will be said in reply, they do 
 not prove that He is divine, and then comes a controversy. 
 And the very substance of the controversy is this, whether what 
 the Bible says about Christ shows Him to have one nature or 
 two natures. No simpler mode of stating it can be framed. 
 And in this statement, He has two natures, we express our faith. 
 Now it is objected, this statement is not found in the Bible. 
 We grant it, but also say that we are compelled to make it, tc 
 refute a notion which has been advanced, which is also not found 
 in the Bible, viz., that Christ is only a created being. Had that 
 assertion not been made, we had probably not made ours. Had 
 some others not expressed their belief about what Christ is, in 
 a way different from that of the Bible, neither had we done so 
 And it is a most extraordinary piece of irrelevancy, after others 
 have led the way, by saying something about Christ which is 
 not contained in so many words in the Scripture, and which we 
 believe to be inconsistent with the Scripture, to find fault with 
 us for doing the same thing. But yet we can thank them for it. 
 Even such objections are not without benefit. They lead us to 
 study more closely the character and person of our Redeemer. 
 To refute the objections, we have had to penetrate more fully 
 into the sense of the inspired word, and to dwell more intently 
 upon the nature of Him who is its living center. We have thus 
 got to clearer views and more enlarged conceptions of what He 
 is in all his relations. And thus it is that heresy sharpens and 
 deepens rfaith. 
 
 III. — This same objection, for the substance thereof, is found 
 in the statement that the doctrine of two natures and onejperson 
 was not_Jield by jthe early church, We grant that the early 
 Christians had not this exact form of stating their faith, but 
 they__ha.d lo p -tha. -most part, what JSW& ^b^ter^he j f aj,th itself , 
 whole and undivided. They were filled with a living sense of 
 their union with Christ: they loved Him so earnestly, and be- 
 lieved in Him so undoubtingly, and served Him so zealously, 
 that they stayed not to analyze what He was, in logical phrase* 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 409 
 
 But when his complex nature was questioned, when doubts were 
 raised and queries put, then the defence was as vigorous as the 
 assault, then the answers were given, always in the form best 
 fitted to meet the objection. Had you asked an early Christian, 
 Was Jesus Christ a man, he would have been astonished at your 
 simplicity: did He not appear upon the earth, and have not these 
 apostles seen Him? Had you asked him, Was Christ very God? — 
 he would have said, There is also God the Father. But, Is Christ 
 divine in his nature? — the word "nature" in this connection 
 would have been new to him, and he would have thought some- 
 what further. Well, was He a created being? — Assuredly not. 
 May you worship Him ? — We do so every day in hymns and 
 doxologies. Do you love Him with your whole heart? — Yea, 
 and try to show this love every day of my life. Do you love 
 Him and trust in Him as much as you can do in any being, in 
 God Himself? — With a countenance full of joy, he would have 
 answered, All I have and all I am, all my faith and all my love, 
 are his now and for evermore. 
 
 And if all this would not substantially prove that he really 
 believed that Christ was a being who united the human and 
 divine natures in One Person, it is hard to see what can prove it. 
 
 IV. — A fourth objection that if Christ be held to be divine 
 his veracity is impeached, would hardly be worth noticing, had 
 it not been put forth with some pretensions, by a certain sort of 
 reasoners. Thus one says, "this doctrine attributes to Jesus 
 deceit, equivocation, and falsehood." And he adds, "we cannot 
 endure to have the name of Jesus, even by supposition, coupled 
 with fraud and dishonesty." " We hold a belief of his integrity 
 among our fondest persuasions, and this belief nothing would 
 tempt us to resign." But he then goes on to show that this be- 
 lief which nothing would tempt him to resign, he must inevita- 
 bly give up if Christ were omnipotent and yet said, I can of 
 mine own self do nothing: if infinitely good, and said, There is 
 none good but one, that is God: if omniscient, and yet asserted, 
 Of that day and hour knoweth no man, neither the Son, but the 
 Father. 
 
 Eager and unskilful disputants are often earnest to resolve 
 
41 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 every question they discuss, if possible, into a question about per« 
 sonal veracity or the moral character of the individuals who are 
 the subjects of controversy. This is an easy way of seeming to 
 settle a difficult subject, which requires from its very nature a 
 prolonged and careful investigation. The question in the case 
 before us is thus transferred from critical to moral grounds; from 
 being a question about natures and persons, difficult to under- 
 stand, into being a question about the truthfulness of Jesus 
 Christ. The argument might be good for one side, if it had not 
 the unfortunate quality of being just as applicable, with a wider 
 extension, on the other. 
 
 This Being of perfect veracity and unimpeached openness did 
 so speak, that He was understood to claim equality with God. 
 He who prayed to the Father, did claim that the Son should be 
 honored even as the Father. H e asserted v irtual omnipresence, 
 when He told his disciples that He would be with them even to 
 tneends of the earth. While He said that He knew not the day 
 nor the hour, He also said that He knew the Father even as the 
 father knew Him. While He asserts that He can of his own 
 self do nothing, to HimTIs also ascribed all power, even crea- 
 tive power— and if the fact of creation does not involve the idea 
 of omnipotence, we confess that it is not in the power of our 
 thoughts to form any conception of it. If creative power can 
 be given to a creature, then the prime distinction between a 
 creator and a creature is at once subverted. If omnipotence and 
 omniscience can be imparted to a being who is by nature finite 
 in power and knowledge, all distinction between the attributes 
 of God and those of his creatures must at once be done away. 
 
 And if the question of Christ's veracity is to be raised in con- 
 nection with the discussion respecting his natures, we may 
 boldly assert that it is more seriously impeached on the supposi- 
 tion that He was not divine than in any other way. His char- 
 acter receives its darkest shade when we try to conceive how a 
 being only derived and dependent could ever use words which 
 even seemed to imply an equality in any sense with the Almighty 
 Father: how such a one could place Himself in the midst be- 
 tween heaven and earth, and claim to fill up all the space between, 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 411 
 
 and say in the most unqualified terms, no man cometh unto the 
 Father but by me : how one who was finite in his knowledge could 
 say, or how it could be said of Him, that He was to be the final 
 Judge of the character and destiny of all who have lived here 
 on the earth. Here is not merely a want of veracity, here is 
 such pride as astounds, such arrogance as confounds us, unless 
 there be such divinity as may claim our homage. We must 
 turn from Him as a usurper, if we do not bow to Him as 
 a Lord. 
 
 V. — Another objection which has been somewhat strenuously 
 urged against the doctrine of The Two JNatures in the One 
 Person is, that it is derived from Gnostic or heathen sources; 
 that the pure, original faith was perverted by foreign elements, 
 tBtTpure fire was mingled with strange fire brought from heathen 
 aTtafsV a dependent being was deified, and idolatry was intro- 
 auceT into God's own church. 
 
 Now "the deification of a man is one of the grossest forms of 
 heathenism : there is no idolatry worse than this. At the same 
 time as a historical fact it is undeniable that Christ has been 
 honored as a divine being in the Church from the earliest ages, 
 and that the number of those who have refused their homage 
 has always been inconsiderable. If this be idolatry, several 
 things follow. It follows that the Jewish religion as a whole 
 was much purer than the Christian, for the Jews worshipped 
 God alone. It follo ws that Mohammedanism, in its doctrine 
 respecting God, has been onjthe whole superior, to Christianity. 
 It follows that in respect to the essential point of all religion, 
 viz., whom and what we shall worship, the church has been in 
 a fatal error or delusion, and that not for a few centuries but 
 "in" "every 'century of 'its course. It follows that Christianity 
 conquered heathenism only by yielding to heathenism, for it 
 adopted one of its grossest superstitions. It follows that what 
 has been taught with the largest and longest consent may yet 
 be only a pernicious error. It follows that the.cb.urch o£X>hrist 
 has erred, fatally erred, not in a matter of outward form, not in 
 a point of ' secondary "and derived significancy, but in a point 
 of vital importance, involving the very substance of its faith t 
 
412 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY . 
 
 has erred, not now and then, but always, through all its centu- 
 ries; that it is in fact heathen and not Christian. 
 
 Does not such a position as this go as far as any can to 
 undermine our faith in Christianity itself, and to leave us with- 
 out any standard of truth, without any settled conviction in 
 the reality of God's government and guidance of his church? 
 It may all be consistent with the position that it is human to 
 err, it is hardly so consistent with Christ's promise that He 
 would give to his followers the Spirit of Truth. It is more 
 in harmony with the notion that a few men in these later 
 times have gained an infallible reason, than it is with the 
 idea that there is infallibility in the body of Christ, taken as 
 a whole. 
 
 But yet, it is said, it cannot be denied that the heathen had 
 incarnations and deifications, and that heathen became Chris- 
 tians — and what" more natural than that they should bring over 
 some of their old faith with them ? But what if they had some 
 presentiment of the truth, some troubled and distorted images, 
 some scattered rays: and what if they found in the Christian 
 faith and in the Person of Christ the reality of that which had 
 so long haunted them like a vision, the perfection of what they 
 strove vainly and idolatrously to depict, the full, concentrated 
 brightness.of what they had before known only in fitful gleams? 
 What if there was, after all, something of truth even in Pagan- 
 ism? Is this so impossible to be believed? If an Egyptian 
 had ever gone from his temples, where grotesque images were 
 piled together in every variety of incongruity and deformity, 
 into a Grecian temple where statues that realized the ideal of 
 mnjesty and beauty met his gaze, might he not at once have 
 felt that here was the visible representation of that which his 
 own misshapen deities only caricatured? Might he not have 
 forsaken his hateful gods to worship at the shrine of these mira- 
 cles of art? May it not have been somewhat thus with the 
 Christian Incarnation in its relation to the heathen deifications? 
 What they grossly imagined was here perfectly realized. What 
 was in them idolatry was purified in the Christian faith into the 
 most perfect form of worship. When Satan cannot create a lie. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 413 
 
 he caricatures the truth. Error is best overcome by showing 
 the highest and perfect form of the truth with which it is com- 
 mingled. The heathen bowed before the Person of Jesus, and 
 for Him renounced their idols, because they saw, that what they 
 ignorantly worshipped was here declared unto them. 
 
 In respect to this objection, then, we say, that the doctrine 
 respecting the Person of Christ was not derived from heathen 
 sources, but that it is the perfect form of expressing a truth 
 dimly apprehended by heathen superstitions. No heathen re- 
 ligion ever contained such a sublime truth as that the human 
 and divine natures were perfectly united in one Person, although 
 there was in heathenism a preparation for such a truth. 
 
 And, besides, we do not find that those who make such an 
 objection are always consistent with themselves. When they 
 would prove the being or the unity of God, the immortality of 
 the soul, a future state of rewards and punishments, they derive 
 some confirmation to their faith in these truths from the general 
 consent of men, from the dim light of heathenism. What then 
 if we call these also heathen doctrines? The reply would be, 
 Yes, but Christian also, clearer and purer in Christianity. But 
 if this argument be of weight in these cases — as it assuredly is — 
 it is still more weighty in respect to the Incarnation. For here 
 is a truth more generally anticipated, most grossly defiled, which 
 arises in the fullest purity and splendor, and commands the 
 homage of the world. In the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, 
 in this union of perfect divinity and perfect humanity, divinity 
 is brought down to earth, and humanity is raised to heaven, hu- 
 manity is ennobled and divinity is made apparent. 
 
 This charge of approximation to heathenism does not lie 
 against the position of those who hold that God became man, 
 but it does lie against the view of those who, while asserting 
 the intrinsic inferiority of Christ to the Father, do yet not scru 
 pie to say that he has become an object of rightful worship. 
 This is deification, this is the making of a god, this is the 
 theory of the person of Jesus which is strictly allied to the 
 notions of heathenism: for to worship any being less than 
 God is idolatry. 
 
414 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 VI. — The last objection we shall notice that is brought against 
 the received doctrine of the God-man is, that it invojvei^coiitra- 
 dictions. It is said that what we assert of Him either wijygjce^ 
 us to acknowledge two persons — and this would destroy our 
 doctrine — or, if we hold to One Person, then that person is made 
 ap of such contradictory traits that He becomes an absurdity, 
 an absolute impossibility. 
 
 It should be observed that this same difficulty, or the sub- 
 stance of it, lies against any scheme which allows to Christ any 
 other than a mere human nature. If we allow a pre-existent 
 and super-angelic state, in which Christ ever derivatively had 
 another nature or other powers than those he had as a man, 
 the same difficulty presses upon us. It is a difficulty which 
 vanishes only with the more difficult assumption of the mere 
 humanity of our Saviour. 
 
 It should also be asked, whether we really know just what 
 a person is, whether we know it so far as to be able to decide 
 just what variety of qualities and attributes any being must 
 have in order that he remain one person and do not become 
 two persons. We know that man is mortal and immortal, spir- 
 itual and material, that his whole character is made up of con- 
 trasts — selfishness and benevolence, pride and humility, thought 
 and feeling, freedom and dependence, that he may be spiritual 
 and worldly, sinful and holy. And t^e higher we ascend in_the 
 scale of being the more do contrasts accumulate. Do these 
 things destroy, or in the least impair, the unity of man's per- 
 son ? Does not his very superiority to the brutes consist in his 
 uniting in one person a great variety of different and almost 
 opposite traits? Is not the unity of his person found in the 
 harmonious operation of the respective powers of a spiritual 
 soul and a material body ? And in the highest point of view, 
 this finite creature, this mortal man can become, is bound to 
 become, a temple for the Holy Ghost, to be in some sense a 
 partaker of the divine nature. And the more completely his 
 finite and imperfect nature is filled with the Spirit of God, the 
 higher is our idea of him as a person. True, we cannot under- 
 Btand how God's Spirit acts upon and in man's soul, but we do 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 415 
 
 know that it does not in the least impair the unity of his person, 
 although it acts in direct and constant opposition to many of 
 his natural tendencies and aims. 
 
 Such a view even of human nature might lead us to be care- 
 ful in our assertions as to what may and what may not destroy 
 the unity of a person. And when we come to think of a divine 
 Person, and to endeavor to conceive the possibility of his unit- 
 ing in himself a two-fold nature, it is at least befitting our ig- 
 norance that our statements should be most cautious. Who 
 can tell what are the possibilities of deity ? We can know 
 them only as they are revealed. If a human being can unite in 
 ^himself such opposite traits as we know that we do, who will 
 dare set limits to the capacity of a divine being, and to set the 
 limits in such a way as to assert the absolute impossibility of 
 his becoming man ? 
 
 * The objection we are considering is one that is meant to de- 
 stroy the very possibility of the doctrine of the God-man, to 
 destroy the possibility of the existence of a doctrine which has 
 been held, age after age, with the firmest faith, by the church of 
 Christ. It is a bold thing to say that anything, not contradic- 
 tory nor sinful in its nature, is impossible with God. We should 
 rather naturally expect that when God engaged in his greatest 
 work, He would manifest himself in a manner beyond our com- 
 mon thoughts. But philosophy and reason here come in and 
 say, that one particular mode of manifestation is an impossibility, 
 that a God-man cannot be. 
 
 Now we conceive that in the idea of Person there is nothing, 
 so far as we know it, which has any bearing upon the objection. 
 A person is — the same conscious being, the same individual, the 
 being who can say I, under every variety of circumstances. The 
 definition of person has nothing to do with the greater or less 
 variety of attributes or qualities which the person may possess. 
 The person is — the same subject under all conditions. This is 
 what we affirm of Christ: He was the same identical PerlsoTTliT 
 h^avenron earth, and in his glorified state. He is the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and forever. He was the same being in dif- 
 ferent states. And why may not the same person assume e 
 
416 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 different nature without loss of identity — who will show it to 
 be impossible V 
 
 But, it is said, that when we assert that Christ assumed a 
 human nature, and united it with a divine, we assert that He 
 united not merely opposite, but contradictory qualities in the 
 same Person. But this is what we deny. A contradiction is to 
 be proved only when it is said that the same assertion is both 
 true and not true in respect „to the same thing in the same sense. 
 If a man says that any act of his is both sinful and holy in 
 the same sense, or that any act of his was both free and neces- 
 sary in the same sense, here is a contradiction. But if a man 
 says of himself that he is white, he is not understood, even by 
 those who interpret everything most figuratively, as meaning to 
 say that his soul is white. When a man says he thinks, he does 
 not mean that his body thinks. This assertion that he thinks 
 cannot be interpreted of the ivhole of his complex nature, and 
 yet it is a person who has a complex nature that does think, and 
 yet again, it is only a person who has a spiritual nature that can 
 say that he thinks. So Christ may say that He is weak and de- 
 pendent and suffering, and He may pray to God, and yet He 
 cannot be understood as affirming what is contradictory to his 
 omnipotence and divinity, unless it be said that He means to 
 affirm that his omnipotence was weak, and his divine bliss was 
 suffering, and his uncreated nature was praying to itself. The 
 two natures, the divine and human, are not contradictory to one 
 another. There is no contradiction between the finite and the 
 infinite: if there were, God could not create anything. They 
 are in startling contrast to each other: they are opposites, but 
 they are not contradictories. If there were a contradiction be- 
 tween a divine nature and a human nature, we should have an im- 
 passable gulf between us and God. And if these are not contra- 
 dictory, who shall say that they may not be united in one Person ? 
 
 But let us narrow the objection down to its directest appli- 
 cation. It is said, the doctrine of the Person of Christ requires 
 the assertion that Christ in the same mental act was conscious 
 of opposite states: that when He was suffering on the cross, 
 He was conscious of the intense felicity of heaven: that when 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 417 
 
 He prayed, He was at the same instant conscious of omnipotence 
 that when He said He knew not the day, He was also conscious 
 at the same instant that He did know the day: that when He 
 was a slumbering infant, He was conscious of being the Lord of 
 all: that while He grew in knowledge, He was conscious of om- 
 niscience* and a consciousness of contradictions is no conscious- 
 ness at all. Reduced to its last terms, the objection resolves itself 
 into the dilemma, that He either had a two-fold consciousness, 
 and so was two persons, oj was conscious of entirely opposite 
 things at the same time in the same act. 
 
 Now what if there be a difficulty here which we cannot per- 
 fectly explain? It is a difficulty like to that we find in respect 
 to other truths, which we are still compelled to admit. For ex- 
 ample, in the act of regeneration God's Spirit works in man, and 
 man is free: and both the operation of the Spirit and freedom are 
 involved -in the same mental act. We cannot see how this can 
 be, yet we know that it must be so. And man, when under the 
 highest influence of this Spirit — an influence opposed to his natural 
 tendencies — remains still the same individual person, and has 
 only a single consciousness. Man may be in as opposite states 
 as those of sin and holiness, and yet have only one consciousness. 
 
 But, it is said, man has after all only one nature : but Christ 
 is affirmed to have had two natures. — Does then a two-fold na- 
 ture demand a two-fold consciousness? We are spiritual and 
 we are material, and have only one consciousness, but that con- 
 sciousness may be at different times of things as opposite as mat- 
 ter and spirit. This consciousness of opposite things does not 
 destroy the unity of* the consciousness itself. And so It' is of 
 Christ, in respect to most of the points alleged. He was con- 
 scious that so far as He was human He was weak, and so far as 
 divine, was omnipotent. He was not conscious that as human 
 He was omnipotent, or as divine, was a sufferer. This would'be 
 a contradiction. 
 
 The strongest case is that in respect to his ignorance of the 
 day and hour of judgment. He said that He knew it not. And 
 the inference made is, that if He knew it in any way at all, 
 whether as divine or human, it was a contradiction for Him to 
 
41 8 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 say that He knew it not. Two things may be suggested here. 
 (1) What if He did not know, as He then was in his state not 
 only of humanity but of humiliation — does this invalidate in 
 the least the evidence of his divine nature? What if his as- 
 sumption of human nature made it impossible for Him to ex- 
 ercise his divine prerogatives, what if his human body did not 
 and could not permit Him to be at the same time and at all 
 times conscious of omnipotence and omniscience, deprived Him 
 of the constant sense of divine bliss and perfections, — would 
 this prove that they were not his, or would it only prove that. 
 when H e came into the jjes. , h + JJe^nlmaii£&(Ii;a^ 
 of the fUsJL? * There are states of the human body in which 
 we cannot and do not exercise the powers and knowledge which 
 we undeniably possess. Is it said that an undying conscious- 
 ness of perfect power, knowledge, and happiness is the pre- 
 rogative of divinity? — it is granted — but that does not prove 
 that it is essential to divinity, when divinity is united to human- 
 ity. So thought and feeling are essential to the idea of spirit, 
 but there is little thought in an infant, and often no thought at 
 all in sleep. It is said that here there is something which no 
 one can understand? That is granted: it is a mystery, but a 
 mystery is not a contradiction. And all that the objection 
 really amounts to is this: that we do not know the exact con- 
 ditions upon which the divine and human natures may be united. 
 And what the objection asserts is, that there must have bee n at 
 every instant in the soul of Christ here upon the earth an equal 
 consciousness of his divine attributes and of his human acts. 
 But this assertion is totally without proof: it is a nassunption : 
 it is a conclusion which we deny to be legitimate from the doc- 
 trine of the two natures; because we can really conceive that 
 it was, if we cannot prove that it must have been, otherwise. 
 
 (2) But there is a second consideration, which is this: A con- 
 tradiction cannot be made out even on the supposition that 
 Christ did know of the day as God, and was ignorant of it as a 
 
 1 [This suggestion is drawn from a source -which was not included in the author's 
 lectures on theology. In these lectures he rejects the entire doctrine of Kenosis. 
 Perhaps, if he had revised what is given above, he would have made some modifi- 
 cations.] 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 419 
 
 man. A contradiction can be established only when it is affirmed 
 that in the same state of mind, He both knew it and did not 
 know it. But if his mind exisied^in^uciie^si^^g^tes---and if* 
 He was a man, it could. notJ),e_oiheri^ 
 been that of the predominance of the human, and another 
 
 state that of the predominance of the divine nature : one state 
 may nave Been that in which the future was hidden, and another 
 state that in which the future was clear: one state may have 
 been that in which He spoke to his disciples, and another that 
 in which He had held direct intercourse with the Father. And 
 the full expression of his state of soul at that moment, when, the 
 weakness and ignorance of humanity predominated, may have 
 been — of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the Son, 
 but the Father only. Perhaps the very attempt to analyze the 
 consciousness of Christ demonstrates that the task is beyond our 
 powers: the only reason for attempting it is to show that no 
 suoh contradiction can be proved to exist as would destroy all 
 possibility of proving the existence of a complex nature in our 
 Saviour. 
 
 We cannot dismiss this objection without remarking that in 
 the highest point of view, so far from being an objection to, 
 it may even become an argument for, our faith. The highest 
 ^ Sfmin^ -those, which reconcile the greatest opposites. The 
 best system^Jsjnp^^one made up of one Idea. Wherever we 
 look we find apparent contradictions, but real harmony. In all 
 great doctrines there is something which to the superficial view 
 seems contradictory. A comprehensive theology combines these 
 opposite elements, and tries to show their consistency. Even 
 where we cannot understand how opposite truths can co-exist, we 
 cannot deny but that they have an equal claim to existence and 
 assent. Predestination's not re^dly, though it may be seemingly, 
 inconsistent ^jtL^^wiJJ^, Ajsystem which denies the divine 
 purposes is a system without a God, a system which denies free 
 fgency is a system without a man. Even in our own minds 
 there is something of tne same sort. Nothing is so free, nothing 
 is so constraining as love. We find our highest freedom in our 
 most perfect submission. The power of law is greatest in the 
 
420 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 freest countries. Calvinists have been most zealous for political 
 and religious liberty. We cannot understand our own acts 
 without bringing in a divine agency. When God acts in the 
 world He employs a secondary agency. We cannot understand 
 history unless we combine a knowledge of the deeds of man 
 and of the providence of God. Even sin itself must be brought 
 into a direct relation with the divine purposes, and has been the 
 occasion of the highest manifestation of divine love. 
 
 Perhaps, if our philosophy could, reach so high, we should see 
 that when sin had separated betweer^ f .God and raan ? when di- 
 vinity and humanity had been sundered, not only by a differ- 
 ence in nature but also in character, it was impossible for^a 
 reunion to be effected by any other person than a God-man. 
 That this was absolutely necessary, it were presumption to 
 assert: it were greater presumption to deny that it was neces- 
 sary. That such a Person alone fitted Him for such a work, we 
 dare not say: that He is eminently fitted for this work, we can 
 even see, and that there is a greater harmony between such a 
 work and such a person than between such a work and any 
 other person whom we can conceive to exist. We may venture 
 to affirm: the God-man, by his two-fold nature, was better 
 fitted to make an atonement, than God alone, than man alone, 
 than any angel or archangel, or than any of the seraphic or 
 cherubic host, or than all the hosts of heaven combined. 
 
 How deeply the doctrine of the Incarnation is involved in 
 the whole Christian system is evident from the fact that the de- 
 nial of this doctrine leads to the denial, one after one, of all the 
 distinguishing doctrines of the Christian faith. A system with- 
 out this doctrine ceases to urge the doctrines of grace. It loses 
 its hold on the strongest feelings of the conscience and of the 
 heart. It relapses into the commonplaces of the most meagre 
 divinity. It refuses to grapple with the great questions of the- 
 ology. It praises the moral virtues: it wonders at all zeal It 
 has lost the feeling of the constant presence of that Captain of 
 our Salvation, who has inspired the faith, quickened the ardor, 
 aroused the intellect, and led forth the hosts of Christendom. 
 " Its relation to Christ," as has been well said, " is a past, a 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSEL*. 421 
 
 dead relation," and so they eulogize him as they do a hero, and 
 venerate him as they do a saint; but such eulogy and such 
 veneration are faint and heartless when compared with the liv- 
 ing energy of the faith of Paul, or with the devoted love and 
 absorbing contemplation of the beloved disciple who ever spake 
 and lived as in the presence of a living Lord. As a matter of 
 fact it is true, that the greatest earnestness, the loftiest faith, the 
 deepest religious experience, the most heavenly spirituality, the 
 most profound systems of theology, the most awful sense of 
 God's majesty, and the most affectionate reliance upon his love 
 have been found in connection with the belief in an Incarnate 
 God. And surely if anything can arouse all our powers, awaken 
 our intensest love, make us self-sacrificing, fill us with the holi- 
 est zeal and the purest enthusiasm, and satisfy perfectly all our 
 wants, it is living faith in such a Lord, who is not only a Lord, 
 but a brother also: in whom all that we can venerate as divine 
 and all that we can love as human are combined in perfect 
 harmony. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE ENTIRE RESULT AS TO THE PERSON OP OUR LORD. 
 
 The Statement. In Him the two natures were uni ted in o ne 
 Perso n. The Analysis, (a.) The natures are to b e distinguished, 
 (k) The natures are to be connected. We are to consider Christ 
 not only as having the two natures, but as having them in entire 
 union, (c.) Each nature remains perfect in the union: The God- 
 head is perfect, the manhood is perfect. (<£) The union bet ween 
 ^m^gerfe^t. (e.) The Godhead is that of the Second Person 
 in the Trinity: the manhood consists of a body and a reasonable 
 souL The Godhead existed from all eternity, consubstantial 
 with the Father: the manhood was assumed in the body of the 
 virgin Mary. (/*.) Thus, the two n atures, united, constitute the 
 One Person of Christ. 
 
422 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Observations. 
 
 1. We are driven to the position of the One Person in oui 
 Saviour in the same way as to the recognition of the two na- 
 tures. The Bible always speaks oJ^JesusjClirist as th e _ same 
 identical subject-— whether in his primeval state, or in hia 
 earthly manifestation, or in his future glory. He who lived on 
 earth as a man was the same being that existed in the bosom of 
 the Father before the world was; and He who came forth from 
 heaven is the one who also ascended to heaven: He who left the 
 eternal glory for a season, entered into it again for eternity. 
 Th^r^J^one^erson, and one only, yet in wholly different states, 
 presented to us in the volume of our Faith. 
 
 And if He was the same Person when in the world, that He 
 was before He came into the world, this necessarily leads to the 
 conclusion that it was the Eternal Word that constituted the 
 Person — that it was He who was, so to speak, the formative 
 principle, it was He who formed and actuated and gave its per- 
 sonal character to this new combination. He is the same person 
 in the world, as before He came into the world. It is the One 
 Person of the Logos in whom the two natures co-exist. If He 
 existed before He came into the world, when He came, He did 
 not part with what He was: He only assumed what he had not 
 before. He took to himself another nature. The Eternal Word 
 was not changed into a man — but He was found in fashion as a 
 man — which of course implies that his fashion as a man was not 
 all of himself. 
 
 2. There was no change in the character of either na ture 
 The divinity remained entire, the humanity remained entire. 
 The humanity, as is most clearly seen from many utterances 
 of Scripture, had the soul as well as the body. The body of man 
 is the smallest part of man. Christ's connection with the race 
 would indeed have been superficial, were He like them only 
 in outward form, but not in the passions and affections of the 
 soul. All that we are required to abstract from our total con- 
 ception of man, in order to have a just and consistent view of 
 the God-man, is a merely human personality. The personal 
 element or character was given to the God-man by the Eternal 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 423 
 
 Word. But the whole nature of man was taken up into this 
 union — not excluding even the Will, if we take that in as in- 
 definite a sense "as it was taken by tlieCouncil which decided 
 that in Christ there were two wills — or energies. 1 
 
 3. The union thus effected must also be conceived of as real, 
 substantial, and permanent — like to nothing else, yet most like 
 among things we know of, to the union between soul and body. 
 There are different kinds of union. There is a mechanical union, 
 as when two distinct things are brought into external relations. 
 There is a magical union — existing only in imagination. There 
 is a union by absorption, as when one substance passes over 
 wholly into another substance. There is a chemical jimon, as 
 when out of two substances a third different from either is 
 formed. There is a natural union, as we may call that between 
 
 ■■mi i >iiiih i mil ii -*i-^.-. 1 *■' 
 
 our souls and our bodies. There is a union between God and 
 man, as when his Spirit dwells in man: and this may be of two 
 kinds — extraordinary, as in his prophets and chosen messengers, 
 where knowledge and power were supernaturally communicated 
 — or, ordinary, in the operations of his Spirit in the souls of 
 believers. But the union of the twonatores L in fihnst was_not 
 mechanical, for their relations were not external, — the natures 
 were not kept separate, as Nestorianism asserted ; nor was i t magi- 
 cal as if by some arbitrary assertion of power or some miracu- 
 lous transformation, as Cyril asserted; itjyas not_natural, as if 
 occurring in the usual course of things; nor unnatural, as if a 
 prodigy were produced; it was not effected, as some pretend, 
 only when the Spirit descended upon Him at his baptism, but 
 began with the beginning of his human existence; it was not- 
 like that in the prophets and inspired men, for this was tempo- 
 rary and " came and went " ; nor was it like the union between 
 the believer and God's Spirit, for this does not impart divinity, 
 but only divine aid and grace. But this wond erful union, so 
 far as we can describe it positively and not merely negatively, 
 was real, wa§ supernatural,, and. remainseternal. It is like to 
 nothing else in the heavens or on the earth, yet it may be im- 
 
 1 That same Council was careful to assert that the human will was always sub- 
 ordinate to the divine in all the acts of this complex person. 
 
424 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 aged by a union of the heavens and the earth. It is not like 
 to anything we can conceive of God in his infinite and inde- 
 pendent existence, nor of man, in his purely human nature — 
 but it is a wondrous harmony and combination of the two, such 
 as may well fill our souls with adoring love ! 
 
 It is like nothing else we know of, yet is most _like t he 
 union between soul and body. For, as in the union of soul and 
 body, neither loses its distinctive character and both conspire 
 to the same ends and form one person, and each part is devel- 
 oped in perfect harmony and fitness with the other, the body 
 not limiting the soul's thoughts and affections, and the soul 
 not acting — in a healthful state — with such intensity as to mar 
 even the most delicate and sensitive of the nerves with which 
 it comes in contact; as the one is attempered to the other in 
 most perfect fitness, so that the soul does not unfold its powers 
 too rapidly for the body to bear their intense activity, and so 
 unfolds them as to heighten and enliven the material organiza- 
 tion in which it is enveloped : — so, we may without irreverence 
 and without detriment conceive it to have been in the Person 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 4. Combining together the whole of the Scriptural represen- 
 tations, we may, perhaps, go one step further in this analogy, 
 and say, that as in the soul and body there is a process of devel- 
 opment, so inja limited sense it may be asserted in respect to^the 
 Person of our Lord, that the union was complet e at the begin- 
 ning, yet there was a process constantly going on before the 
 perfect divinity was united to the perfected humanity, and so 
 ■much only of the divinity was imparted at each stage as was 
 necessary for Christ's mission at that particular stage. There 
 may be a difficulty here, lest we seem to infringe upon the di- 
 vinity; but there is also another difficulty, lest we represent 
 Christ differently from the view given of Him in the Scriptures. 
 
 We are warranted, it would appear, in distinguishing three 
 distinct states of being of our Lord : his primeval glory, his state 
 upon earth as a man, his present glorified condition. In the 
 second of these states, by becoming united to humar, nature, 
 He put Himself under another law, under the law which regu- 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 425 
 
 lates the development of human nature. He came into a con- 
 dition of humiliation and ignorance, and infirmity and suffering. 
 It was indeed the Eternal Word, the equal of God the Father, 
 who came into this state, but yet it is equally true, that into 
 this state He did come, and submit Himself to the change. 
 There is indeed a mystery here, and so we might be content 
 to leave it: but the mystery may be Q.ne_ of two things, and 
 there may be a choice between them. Either^— that as a 
 child, a youth, a man, He was all the time conscious of being 
 also an infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient being, and so united 
 in Himself a double consciousness; oi*, on the other hand — the 
 mystery may be this : how an omnipotent and omniscient being 
 could for a time part with the constant exercise and conscious 
 possession of his divine attributes, and resume them in their 
 fulness only after his humiliation was completed. Between 
 these two forms of stating the mystery it has always been held 
 allowable to make one's choice, and neither of them impairs 
 either the divinity or the humanity, or the union between them. 
 There is a difficulty in understanding how a jDeinjj who is 
 really divine, _c o_ul4 part with the. exercise of any divine attribute, 
 could denude Himself of omnipotence and omniscience. 1 This 
 may be impossible, yet our ignorance might 2 prevent us from 
 denying its possibility. We may perhaps say, that his divine 
 nature was put under the law of human development, was exer- 
 cised moi*e and more in its growth and progress as it was needed 
 — upheld Him oftentimes — often gleamed through in transient 
 rays of brightness — was remembered rather than directly exer- 
 cised — was sometimes increased in its power, as when the Spirit 
 descended upon Him at his baptism — and was expected by him- 
 
 1 [This difficulty seems to have been more deeply felt by the author as he con- 
 sidered it in the later years of his theological teaching. He pronounces emphat- 
 ically against every form of Kenosis. Tet what is given above is, so far as can be 
 found, nowhere retracted.] 
 
 2 [It ought to be said, that these paragraphs form no part of the author's mature 
 theological system. It is thought that readers will have an interest in seeing what 
 turn his speculation took on this point. Moreover, what follows is perhaps the only 
 sketch we have from him to indicate how he would have written a " Life of Christ." 
 It can only be said that the view which follows was neither sanctioned nor repudi- 
 ated in any later utterances.] 
 
426 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 self to be finally and perfectly resumed, only after the travail 
 of his soul had been fully experienced, only after He had triumphed 
 over death, hell, and the grave, and through his humiliation and 
 sufferings purchased our redemption — through his mediatorial 
 cross come to his mediatorial crown. Most certainly this much 
 may be averred — that his divinity was not so fully manifested as 
 to be recognized and believed in until the very close of his 
 earthly career. His disciples did not worship Him until they 
 saw Him ascending to the Heavens. However it may have 
 been in his own soul, whatever may have been the state of his 
 consciousness (and it is perhaps impossible for us to get any 
 clear conception of what this really was) — it still remains on the 
 face of the record of his life, that the divine n ature was not in 
 any degree so united with the human, did not so affect it as to 
 prevent the God-man from being hungry and weary and weak, 
 from bearing all our infirmities, from suffering Tne^Tnf en sest 
 sorrow, from asserting his ignorance, from growing in knowl- 
 edge, from undergoing real and not apparent death. And all 
 this, too, after the union had taken place : for the union occurred 
 with the commencement of the human existence. As a union, 
 it was then perfect and entire, although there was a process of 
 growth on the part of the human being, and a gradual impart- 
 ing of the resources of divinity, according to the progressive 
 power of the humanity to endure them. 
 
 When we compare the Evangelists with the Epistles, we find 
 confirmation of this view. Considered historically, as of an his- 
 torical personage, we cannot fail to see how the representation 
 runs much as though a human being were advanced, through 
 successive stages, even to divine honor and glory. And the, 
 corrective to any idea as though a man were deified is found in 
 the constant assertion of his pre-existent state, as the Et erna l 
 Word, the Creator of all things. Here is the efficient cause and 
 the only source of the divinity which was ascribed to Him. Un- 
 less He had been divine by nature, He could not have become 
 so by any sufferings as a man, or even by any gift of God to a 
 creature. 
 
 But when He assumed our nature He submitted to all ita 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 427 
 
 conditions. When his divinity entered into its alliance with 
 humanity, it became conformed to its unparalleled condition. 
 Gentle must have been the contact between the Eternal Word 
 and the infant child, feeble the assimilation between such a 
 glorious being and such a frail tabernacle. He assumed, yet 
 consumed not, our nature. Flesh and blood could not abide the 
 full pressure and intense effulgence of the undimmed brightness 
 of the Son of God It was a part of the lowly estate which our 
 Kedeemer chose that He should become a very child, an infant 
 in the weakness of its powers, an infant whom its mortal mo- 
 ther might press to her bosom, and love with a most motherly 
 though most hallowed affection. The _EternalJWord ^became a 
 child without speech, who was yet to learn ..to -call Mary, hlesse_d 
 among women, by the name of mother, who had yet to learn to 
 speak the language of men, though He had through eternity 
 spb kerf face "?oTace with God the Father as his co-equal Son. 
 
 And uncter the care of this loving mother and of his Eternal 
 Father, Jesus grew to man's estate, distinguished, we may well 
 believe, for every human excellence, yet not manifesting his di- 
 vine glory, except as a perfect youth and man is all that even 
 God could be when He became man. He felt the greatness of 
 his work ; He knew his mission — what it was — yet entered not 
 upon it — his divine nature fitted not his human nature to enter 
 upon it until he reached the years in which the maturity of 
 manhood has begun — when the body combines freshness and 
 strength, and has by nature the matured harmony and unison of 
 its powers. Then it was that the Spirit of God descended upon 
 Him; that his miraculous powers were exerted; that He spake 
 as one having authority; that He began to unfold truth after 
 truth to his chosen followers, leading them gradually on, step 
 after step, through the recognition of his mediatorship, to a 
 knowledge of his divinity. Then it was that by a word and a 
 look He exercised such gentle and constraining influence upon 
 all with whom He lived. We may well believe that there was 
 that in Him which awed the vicious, and which attracted those 
 who were seeking after the kingdom of heaven ; that a mild yet 
 powerful influence went out from Him to the hearts of all sus- 
 
428 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ceptible of such impressions. Almost might we echo the words 
 of the most eloquent orator of the Oriental church, "that the 
 heavenly Father poured upon Him in full streams that corporeal 
 grace, which is distilled drop by drop upon mortal man." But 
 yet, even among his nearest disciples, He was known only as a 
 perfect man. They were slow to discern his divinity. Some- 
 times it seems to break through the veil, like a hardly suppressed 
 fire, like a light flashing in the darkness, — but it is only in 
 broken words, in sentences that sounded enigmatical, which 
 were best preserved and most fondly pondered by his beloved 
 disciple. And He ever seems to speak of his divine glory as 
 something He remembered, or as something He was still to 
 attain unto, rather than as an object of present and conscious 
 possession. Once, and only once, did it break through the veil 
 of his flesh and irradiate Him wholly — when He was transfigured 
 before the gaze of three of his disciples, and a supernatural bright- 
 ness environed Him. But at other times few, if any, with whom 
 He came in contact were led to say that He was divine, unless 
 indeed they might infer that none but a divine being could be 
 such a perfect man in the midst of a sinful world. And as Jesus 
 Christ comes ever nearer to the termination of his earthly mis- 
 sion, He seems on the one hand to have had a constantly in- 
 creasing sense of his intimate fellowship with God, yet on the 
 other to feel more and more the burden which He must bear all 
 alone. In proportion to his necessities must the resources of his 
 divine nature have been developed — to sustain Him — but, though 
 thus sustained, the agony He endured was beyond all expression. 
 Through suffering was He to be perfected; by passing through 
 death was his humanity to be perfectly united with his divinity: 
 this was the struggle that awaited Him — this the terrific con- 
 flict through which He passed, and when He had passed through 
 it, then was the union between them perfected. It is after his 
 resurrection that his disciples seem to have come to a believing 
 acknowledgment that He was divine. It was when He led 
 them forth at early morning, and gave to them his last words 
 and vanished from their sight, his hands extended over them 
 in a parting benediction, that they knelt down and worshipped 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 429 
 
 Him. The sense and full perception of His divinity had now 
 taken possession of their hearts. He led them on, step by step ; 
 his nature was unfolded to them, degree by degree, until the 
 most incredulous no longer doubted, until they were brought to 
 address to Him their prayers, and look to Him for present and 
 constant aid. They remember Him as a man, they refuse not to 
 call Him God. And while in the Evangelists, who tell the story 
 of his earthly career, the humanity is most apparent, and the 
 divine nature rather hinted at than disclosed; in the Epistles, 
 it is the reverse: there He appears in glory and blessedness, as 
 the Mediator between God and man, as the Head of the church, 
 as the Life of the believer, as the object of direct faith, as the 
 Being in whom all things in heaven and on the earth are brought 
 together and united. There he appears — and is revealed to us 
 — as sitting at the right hand of the Father, as worshipped by 
 angels, as the giver of eternal life, as the Lord of all. There He 
 appears, still having in inseparable union his divinity and his 
 humanity, still the Being in whom all of God and all of man 
 are combined in perfect union, but in whom human nature has 
 become perfected and glorified ; in whom t*he human nature, in 
 its glorified state, is no hindrance to the perfect manifestation 
 of all his divine attributes. No longer, as when He walked the 
 earth, is it a veil to hidden glories: it is a transparent medium 
 by which the glories are attempered to the gaze of those who 
 cannot bear the full splendor of unmitigated divinity. Thus we 
 are permitted to represent Him to us — still a man, ever divine. 
 In Him is the perfect union of all that is divine and all that is 
 human. All things in heaven and all on earth are concentrated 
 in Him. He the center and the sun: there is no need of the 
 light of the sun, for He is the light of the heavenly places as 
 He was the light of this our darkened earth; He who was the 
 central object in earth's history, the source of earth's redemption, 
 is also the center of heaven's glory, and the source of such 
 blessedness as only the redeemed can know. 
 
PART III. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE MEDIATOB. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY STATEMENTS. 
 
 § 1. The General Object of Christ's coming. 
 
 The Scriptures declare that Jesus Christ appeared in the last 
 great dispensation to put away sin, by the sacrifice which lie 
 made for its expiation. 1 This was the great end and purpose of 
 the manifestation of Christ in the flesh. This is the culminat- 
 ing point of the Incarnation. The Son of God assumed our 
 nature that He might bear our sins. Other purposes might be 
 and were answered by his appearing: He may have come to 
 give us the model of a perfect man for our daily imitation; He 
 may thus have manifested the moral attributes of God more 
 clearly to man than they could otherwise have been exhibited; 
 He may have thus presented to our adoring love the perfect 
 union of divinity and humanity in one wondrous Person; but 
 the chief reason why He was apparelled in the flesh and dwelt 
 here upon the earth was that He might suffer and die for our 
 redemption. To this the prophets give witness; and evangelists 
 and apostles conspire in representing this as the one great end 
 of the Incarnation. The Prince of glory came to be humbled; 
 the Son of God came to be dishonored; the Lord of life came 
 to be slain. He lived his sinless life, and so was as a Lamb 
 without spot and blemish prepared for the altar; He revealed 
 God to us more perfectly, but chiefly as a God who had deter- 
 mined to manifest, in the saving of a lost world, the highest of 
 his attributes in their harmonious action; He united in himself 
 the two natures, so that the awful dignity of his Person might 
 
 1 See especially Heb. ix. 26. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 431 
 
 give its full efficacy and value to the work of atonement which 
 He wrought out. 
 
 § 2. Munus Triplex. Christ's Offices as PropJietj Priest, and King. 
 
 I. — Idea of this mode of representing his offices as Mediator. 
 
 Offic e is, all that one is and does in a legitimate public rela- 
 tion ; jy^£g££g2i : the chief or any special object in a public office. 
 Christ's office as Mediator embraces all that He was and did in 
 his public relations as Mediator between God and man. 
 
 The idea of the Three-fold Office : The whole work of Christ 
 is the Redemption of a sinful world : prefaced by .instruction 
 (Prophet), effected bvato n e men t (Priest), carried to comple- 
 tion in the course and cons ummation of his kingdom (King). 
 
 II. — History of this mode of representation. 
 
 The Jewi s h Kabbi ns and Cabbalists ascribed to the Messiah 
 
 a three-fold dignity: " the c rown of the Law, the crown of the 
 
 Priesthood^ and the crown of the Kingdom." 1 
 
 unxt Three passages in the Old Testament are guiding lights: 
 
 [foeut xviii. 15; P s. ex* 4 ; ZecLvjL lB.^Uac^+^^e^^. \ 
 
 The church historian, Eusebius , speaks of it as a common 
 view in the early part of the fourth century. 3 
 
 It is referred to by C h r^ sostom a nd The^QjJacaiiis : less fre- 
 quently employed by the Scholastics , it was used by Ca lvin in 
 his Institutes, 4 and has entered into the current catechisms' 1 and 
 common modes of thought of the Keformed churches. 
 
 The G erman rationalists gave it up as tropical. L yx*AA& *r% 
 
 Later Germans have readopted it. Schleiermacher, Nitzsch 
 Hase, Eothe, Julius Muller, all approve it. 6 
 
 III. — Tfeajanna. fbr retaining; it. 
 
 1. It must be conceded to have strong claims on the score 
 of giving a living; impression of Christ's whole work , in a form 
 
 1 Schoettgen, Horaa Heb. et Taliu., Dresden, 1742, ii 107, 228. 
 
 2 Or, Ps. lxxii. 8. 3 H. E., i. 3. * Lib. ii. chap. xv. 
 
 5 Geneva Cat. (1545), Heidelb. (1562), Westm. Assembly's, Ques. 23, Shortei 
 Cat. — Even Racov. Cat. has it. 
 
 6 Ebrard, Herz. Eneycl., Jes. Christi. dreifaches Ami— Martensen, Dogmatic, 
 p. 332, has some admirable statements.— Krummacher, Prophetenthum, a. s. w. 
 Deutsche Ztschft., 1856.— Diestel, Jahrb. f. d. Theol., 1862. 
 
432 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 at once adapted to popular use and sufficiently comprehensive. 
 It calls up vivid images of the whole of the Mediator's functions. 
 We seem to see Him as the Great Teacher, impartin g^ words oi 
 heavenly truth; as the High Priest, suffering upon jhe grgs sT 
 and as our Prince and King, ruling in divine majesty. 
 
 2. But we are disposed to go still further in urging the claims 
 of these ancient symbols of the wisdom, sacrifice, and power of 
 our Redeemer. They are valid not merely in figure, but also in 
 fact. The real Mediator must be all these: Prophet, Priest, and 
 King; He could not be a full Mediator unless He bore these three 
 offices; by them all his work is defined; in them all his work is 
 comprehended. 
 
 3. To illustrate the sense and need of these three offices, we 
 may refer to the fact that among the most developed, cultivated 
 nations, both before and since Christ's advent, we find them in 
 existence. No mighty people is known in which the re are not 
 classes of teachers, priests, and rulers. The instinct of human 
 nature, in relation to its highest wants, seems to demand this 
 three-fold form of the highest functions. Even in the midst of 
 all the sinfulness and degradation of heathenism, there is this 
 prophetic and typical imaging forth of the grand characteristics 
 of the Messiah. They must have prophets to teach and to fore- 
 tell, though their words were double-tongued; they must have 
 priests to minister at the bloody altars, though no real expiation 
 followed the sacrifice; and in the mighty despotisms of Babylon, 
 of Assyria, of Egypt, in Alexander's power and Caesar's sway, 
 the regal authority reached its height of worldly pre-eminence. 
 These three, and only these three, are found throughout heathen- 
 ism, as the highest forms of official rank. They point, in symbol, 
 to the great offices of the Messiah. 
 
 4. As among the heathen, so also among the people of God, 
 his chosen race, we find the same three offices, yet in a higher 
 and purer form. The whole of the Old Testament is a preparation 
 for the New, its divine type, its historical root; and in the whole 
 of the Old Testament are the institutions of prophecy, priesthood, 
 and royal dominion, divinely established and set forth. The glory 
 of the Israelites was in these three offices. Abraham was taught, 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 433 
 
 and did himself teach, the name of Jehovah ; as a priest he entered 
 into covenant with God; and as a prince he ruled his patriarchal 
 house. The whoJeJugJ&rj.of the Israelites centers into these three 
 words : Moses and the prophets ; Aaron and the priesthood ; David 
 and tu^£o^JJh.ouse. Here were the grand institutes of the the- 
 ocracy. For a thousand years, inspired prophets were commis- 
 eioned to teach, to rebuke, to encourage, to warn, in the name 
 of the Lord. In the most degenerate times of Israel they spake 
 with the greatest boldness; in its lordliest periods they held up 
 visions of brighter days to come. A whole tribe was^set^ apart 
 to the officg of the priesthood : the shadow and symbol of the 
 Great High Priest. Kings, also, Saul, David, and Solomon, ruled 
 in majesty, yet were only types of one who was to come of the 
 stock of David. The history of the Jewish people, in short, can 
 onlyJ)e understood in the light of the three words: Prophet, 
 Priest, and King. 
 
 5. The wide bearings of this three-fold office are further seen 
 in the fact that the Messiah prornigg j, „to^ the Jews from the be- 
 ginning was foretold under t he same grand imagery. As the 
 Anointed One, He was to be clothed with these three offices 
 and none other: He was to be anointed to preach the Gospel to 
 the poor; 1 as King, He was to be anointed with the oil of glad- 
 ness above his fellows; 2 his priesthood was to be through an 
 unction from above, 3 not after the law of a carnal command- 
 ment, but after the power of an endless life. The whole of the 
 last part of the prophecy of Isaiah represents Christ as the ser- 
 vant of God, who was to teach, to suffer and die, and to rule at 
 last in majesty. Not David, but his root and offspring, was to 
 sit upon th* throne in universal dominion. 4 He was to be a 
 priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. He was to bear 
 our griefs; He was to be led as a lamb to the slaughter. He 
 was to teach all nations: to bring in everlasting righteousness; 
 and of the increase of His government there was to be no end. 
 The heathen were to be his inheritance: from sea to sea, from 
 the river to the uttermost parts of the earth, was to be his do- 
 
 ' Luke iv. 18. " Heb. i. 8; Ps. xlv; Isa. hd. 1. 
 
 s Heb. v. 4, 5; yii. 16, 17. •* 2 Sam. vii. 
 
434 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 minion. In such exalted strains did the prophetic word depict 
 the coming glories of the Messiah, and the sum of all this is: 
 Prophet, Priest, and King. 
 
 6. In the New Testament, .also, we find complete warrant 
 for this three-fold view of the offices of the Mediator. The testi- 
 mony here becomes^ if possible, more full and distinctive. The 
 three offices, separated among the Jews, are united in One Per- 
 son. The carnal Jewish mind expected only a temporal prince 
 attended with the pomp of earthly magnificence; but their true 
 king, anointed of old, came first in lowly garb, appeared as a 
 simple teacher, suffered indignity and death — yet showed his 
 regal power by conquering death. He disappointed every 
 earthly hope, and fulfilled every divine prediction, (a.) He 
 was a prophet, acknowledged as such; 1 He spake as never man 
 spake; He foretold his own death, the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 the victories of his kingdom; He reveals God; He is the very 
 Word of God; He is at once the living Law and the living Gos- 
 pel: the Law appears in Him as an example, and the Gospel 
 as the truth. His words are life; they are never to pass away. 
 Never was the law spoken in such purity, never was grace de- 
 clared with such fulness. He speaks in the name of God; He 
 knows and teaches all the divine will. He reveals new truths; 
 the new and perfect revelation has come to the world in his 
 teachings. He declares the future; the vision of the whole 
 course of things is drawn by Him in bold outlines. His words 
 abide ever true and powerful; they are sources of undying life 
 and joy. (b.) That the New Testament also describes the Medi- 
 ator as priest,, the Great High Priest — priest and sacrifice iji one — 
 the only true priest, the only real sacrifice, we do not stay to 
 argue hem He offered himself without spot, unto God, through 
 the eternal Spirit. All other oblations are vain and ineffect- 
 ual. The whole of the Epistle to the Hebrews is one grand 
 proof, not only that Jesus Christ is High Priest and Sacrifice, 
 but that He alone is such; all others are but types and shadows, 
 (c.) And the same Epistle, too, connects his kingly with his 
 priestly functions. We have such an high priest, who is set on 
 
 ' Heb. i. 1; John iii. 2; Luke xxiv. 19. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 435 
 
 the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, 
 John, in the Apocalypse, sees the four and twenty elders cast 
 their crowns before his throne. "Worthy is the Lamb that 
 was slain" is the song of heaven, "to receive power — ." His 
 crown of thorns becomes an imperial diadem. He works the 
 works of his Father; He declares to Pilate that He is a King; 
 God highly exalted Him and gave Him a name that is above 
 every name. All things are put under his feet; He is the Head 
 over all things to the church. 
 
 Thus these th ree offices are ascribed to Christ in the New 
 Testame nt as well as foretold in the Old. And our Lord him- 
 self, in that most wonderful high -prie stlx.rjrAy gr (John xvii.), 
 brings them all together; for He says, that He has^manifested 
 (§is ^J^&&feet) to his disciples the name of God : (as Priest) He 
 mtercedes for them in his bitter suffering and tender love: (as 
 King) He cjuim^Jh^^as^his own, for He has kept them: end- 
 ing, I declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it; that the 
 love wherewith Thou lovedst me may be in them and I in them. 
 
 7. Other titles applied to Christ, e. g., Head, Surety, Pastor, 
 io not so distinctly designate different offices, and are not used 
 with such constancy throughout all the Scriptures. 1 
 
 8. There is an inherent propriety in having these, and only 
 these three, as the offices of the Mediator. If man is to be fully 
 redeemed, his Mediator must have these three functions and 
 none others. For Redemption from sin must include these 
 three things: it must give knowledge of God's plan in the way 
 of revelation; it must provide an atonement for sin; and it 
 must deliver from the power and consequences of ein, in an 
 eternal kingdom. And these three points are the ones met, 
 and precisely met, in the three offices of our Lord. As a pro- 
 phet He reveals; as a priest He atones; as a king He subdues 
 us unto himself. 2 
 
 1 See Note in Ridgeley's Divinity, i. p. 494 
 
 - It might perhaps be also argued that these three offices correspond to the 
 three great faculties of the human mind: to the intellect, the feelings, and the 
 will. As Mediator between God and man, Christ must address and be adapted 
 to the whole man. As a teacher, Christ addresses our intellect; as a sacrifice, He 
 appeals to the deepest moral wants of the heart and conscience; and as a king. 
 He guides and rules our wills, making them conform to his will. 
 
436 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 9. The essential and almost organic quality of these three 
 offices in the Christian system is shown in the fact that they 
 are necessary to each other: just as much as intellect, heart, 
 and will are necessary to each other as well as to man. To 
 feel, one must know ; and to will, one must both know and feel. 
 Even so, Christ could not be a priest, unless He were a prophet; 
 nor could He rule in a kingdom of redemption, unless He were 
 also both prophet and priest. His teachings must prepare and 
 guide his disciples to know the meaning of his atoning death ; 
 and his sacrificial death is the basis of his claim to our supreme 
 love as our Head in his mediatorial kingdom. 
 
 10. It is only by viewing Christ in all these offices, that we 
 can be saved from one-sided and partial notions of his work as 
 a Redeemer. It is true, indeed, that He appears chiefly as a 
 prophet during* his life; chiefly as a priest in the agony of death; 
 chiefly as king, when ascended to the right hand of the Father. 
 But as a prophet, He teaches us even upon the cross, and still 
 and ever, by his Spirit, though He dwells in heaven. His whole 
 life as well as his death, was in his priestly character, suffering 
 shame and humiliation. And He exercised his kingly functions 
 while on earth, yea, in the very grave, conquering death and 
 hell by his mighty power, as truly as He now subdues his other 
 foes. And the grand error, a mong all who do not receive Christ 
 in his fulness, is that they take one of his offices^s if that were 
 the whole, neglecting the rest. They hold to Christ in one or 
 another of his names, but not in the fulness of his character. 
 Thus some take Christ only as the Teacher; others dwell most 
 fondly on his atoning death; and others again view Him chiefly 
 as the Lord of spiritual life. But He is each and all. And we 
 do not know Him fully, nor truly, until we know Him in all his 
 offices — as our Prophet to teach us — our Priest who atones — out 
 King to rule over and in us. 
 
THE, REDEMPTION ITSELF. * 437 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 or Christ's work as the only true priest, op atonement 
 
 AND THE NECESSITY FOR ATONEMENT. 
 
 The Priestly Office of Christ is that office in both natures 
 whereby He makes an atonement. In the same priestly office 
 and in virtue of his atoning work his Intercession is maintained. 
 Intercession belongs to Christ as priest: it includes his constant 
 application of his sacrifice; or, generally, all his agency in re- 
 deeming mankind, in his glorified state. 1 Of the two parts of 
 Christ's work as Priest; — Atonement and Intercession^ -we speak 
 here only of The Atonement. 
 
 I. — Usage of the word, and of certain terms which cluster 
 about it. 
 
 1. Of the terms Eedemption and Atonement. Redemption 
 implies the complete deliverance from the penalty, power, and 
 all the conse quences of sin: Atonement "is used in the sense of 
 the s acrificial work , whereby the redemption from the condemn- 
 ing power of the law was insured. 
 
 2. Of the terms Reconciliation and Atonement. Reconcilia- 
 tion sets forth w hat is t,o fre Honp. ! Atonement , in its current 
 theological sense, likewise involves the idea/of the way , the 
 mode, in which the reconciliation is effected — that is, by a sacri- 
 fice for sin. 2 
 
 I 
 
 1 [This is treated by the author under the Third Division of Theology; as the 
 priestly side of Christ's office as King.] 
 
 2 A writer who became prominent as a controversialist on this subject, wrote, 
 some years ago: " Every tyro in theology knows or ought to know that atonement 
 means nothing more than at-one-ment, that is, the reconciliation of opposing 
 parties.*' But none but a tyro in theology knows that this is its only sense. Even 
 admitting the correctness of this etymology, it must be said that this way of re- 
 ducing the large import of language to the smallest possible dimensions, by means 
 of etymology alone, and of deciding theological controversies by an appeal to the 
 primitive sense of words before they had gained their full signification is one un- 
 worthy of the scholar and the theologian. All the etymology in the world would 
 never be sufficient to show that atonement means only reconciliation — for the 
 very plain reason, that for hundreds of years it has borne in the English language 
 an additional sense, that is, it includes a designation of the mode in which the 
 reconciliation was effected. (Atonement=reconciliation ( in SirThos. More, Shake- 
 
438 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 3. Of the terms Satisfaction, Vicarious, Expiation, Propitiation 
 (a.) Satisfaction. This is the most specific term, in reference 
 
 to the relations between Christ's sufferings and the demands of 
 the law upon sinners as condemning them: Christ sati sfie d ? b v 
 
 ki§ja^.thftj^ word ma y be 
 
 used in a wider sense: Christ satisfied also the divine love and 
 all the divine perfections; but the specific sense is: He so satis- 
 fied the claims of the divine law, in respect to sinner s^ tha tthese, 
 through faith, are freed from its condemnation.. 
 
 (^■) Vicarious. The term to designate substitution. Christ's 
 sufferings were substituted for ours : He suffered in our stead : 
 what He did is accepted as if we did it. — Here, too, there is a 
 wider sense, in which "vicarious" is understood as meaning 
 merely in our behalf, for our benefit. Socinians would make 
 this the only sense. But specifically the word is used to set 
 
 forth that fflrjpt wq-s -n-SJihsdJiiit^ _aja Rfl.nrjfip.ia1 ,viixfcimgj w.ftrjft, 
 
 (a) Expiation. T^^ 4 ogj^^^^j^mg faAffl£ft&.M 
 that in respect Ao the Jaw its guilt is_ CAaGfiJLI&ji. The sense is: 
 removing guilt, removing the reatus; not, the moral defilement, 
 but the exposure and obligation to punishment. Expiation, 
 used in relation to the criminal, " denotes that which is an ade- 
 quate reason for exemption from penalty" (J. Pye Smith). An 
 expiated offence does not demand punishment: the "guilt," i e., 
 the obligation to suffer penalty, is removed. 
 
 (d.) Propitiation. This " relates to the ruler, and designates 
 that which has the effect of causing Him to accept the expiating 
 transaction." The offender is expiated, G.oiLis propitiated^: not 
 that any change in God's essential mercifulness is effected, but 
 •that his holiness no longer demands punishment. 
 
 4. Sacrifice. Here too we find the wider and the specific sense. 1 
 This most important term is reserved for another chapter. 
 
 II. — Of the Necessity of the Atonement. 
 
 The necessity of the atonement (not a natural, physical, or 
 metaphysical necessity) is affirmed most specifically in opposition 
 
 speare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Bps- Hall and Taylor; =expiation, in Milton, 
 Swift, and Cowper. Waterland (Disc, of Fundamentals, v. p. 82): — "the doctrim 
 of expiation, atonement, or satisfaction, made by Christ in his blood.") 
 ] "The Scriptural Idea of Sacrifice," by Alfred Cave. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 439 
 
 to two views: (a.) that mere mercy on God's part, and (6.) mere 
 repentance on man s, suffices to meet all the exigencies of the 
 case. 
 
 1. The necessity may be argued on rational grounds. 
 
 (a.) God is holy, man is sinful: man's sin is the opposite of 
 the divine holiness: to _brjngJzpjLfln d Joan. together, .spjne satis- 
 faction to the divine holiness ^is needed. 
 
 (h) Another form: Sin deserves condemnation: that it may 
 be gardoned, t lj^e , j s neejed^ Home mode T nf xemaving_ tke^Qon- 
 aemnation, of taking away the guilt of the transgressor. 
 
 This mode cannot be the repentance and reformation of the 
 sinner alone: for (1) if he could become holy, his guilt and de- 
 sert of condemnation would remain; (2) in order to his becoming 
 holy, or returning to God, a knowledge of God's righteous favor 
 or holy mercifulness is requisite. The mode cannot be that of 
 mere forgiveness: for this would satisfy neither the claims of 
 the divine holiness nor the necessities of a moral government. 
 It would show that the law was not law — moral law — but only 
 a sequence. 1 
 
 Hence, on rational grounds, presupposing God's holiness and 
 man's sin, there is need of some other way — need of an atone- 
 ment for sin. 
 
 2. This necessity may be argued on the grounds of man's 
 moraXnjy^n^Jiin atonement is eminently adapted to man's con- 
 victions and needs as a moral being. 
 
 (a.) Man's conscience assures him of the supremacy, the 
 absolute supremacy, of righteousness — of holiness, and not of 
 
 This conviction is not responded to by the mere forgiveness of 
 the sinner. If happiness were the greatest good, then a for- 
 giveness insuring happiness would meet all of man's wants. But 
 if holiness be the chief good, then, in the pardon of sin, God 
 must appear as holy, righteous, answering the highest ends of 
 his moral government — in order to meet our highest wants. 
 
 "Mercy ia not itself, that oft looks so; 
 Pardon is still the nurse of second woe." 
 
 Measure for Measure, Act II. ; Scene I. 
 
440 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (6.) Man's conscience leads Him to feel the necessity, undei 
 a moral government, of punishment or a moral equivalent; not 
 always the necessity of the punishment of the offender, but al- 
 ways the necessity of that or a substitute which will answer the 
 same moral end. 
 
 (c.) The satisfaction of man's moral nature in an atoning sac- 
 rifice proves the fitness of it to his moral wants. 
 
 3. The nature of the divine law proves the necessity of an 
 atonement — of a sacrifice for sin. ^ 4 ^ „. ^t. 
 
 (a.) Law implies ^ftndi i. nooo«aafflily sanctions, the punishment of 
 transgressors, or an equivalent, under it. A law without a pen- 
 alty is no law. Penalty _jsj jiot the final end of law, but it is 
 ja means to that end. Hence there must be lor transgression 
 either penalty or what answers the same end — which end is the 
 maintenance of holiness in all its glory. Hence, law from its 
 very nature demands something which will answer this end as 
 well as would the specific punishment of the transgressor. 
 Christ said, " One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from 
 the law." He magnified the law in his teachings and death. 
 Mere pardon virtually annuls the law — sets it aside — declares 
 it needless — says: no law. 
 
 b. Another form. Sin always deserves, merits punishment. 
 The inflicting of this is, the distributive justice of God: render- 
 ing to every man according to his deeds. Holiness, or public 
 justice, demands this or an equivalent, and an equivalent is 
 that which will equally satisfy holiness or general justice. An 
 equivalent cannot be something of a totally different nature, 
 looking to a totally different end, providing for happiness in 
 stead of holiness. 
 
 4. The necessity of an atonement is seen in the fact that it 
 has actually been made. 
 
 (a.) If such a sacrifice had not been necessary, it would not 
 have been made. 
 
 (b.) The necessity is directly asserted in Scripture: Mark viii. 
 31; Luke xxiv. 46; John iii. 14, 15; Acts xvii. 2, 3; Heb, viii. 3, 
 ix. 22. L aj .',..,_/.,;/,•■ : • _. • / ' J'ACfC.*, 
 
 5. An argument for the necessity oi the atonement may alsc 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 441 
 
 be derived from the general consent of mankind: everywhere 
 there are systems of sacrifices. 
 
 The prevalence of sacrifices for sins is one of the most won- 
 derful facts in the moral history of mankind. It is an article 
 of natural religion more universally held than the unity of God 
 or even than immortality. This universality proves the follow- 
 ing points, as the moral conviction of mankind: (a.) That mere 
 repentance is not enough, according to the natural conscience; 
 (&.) That some expiation for sin is needed; (c.) That this must 
 be effected by the offering up of sacrifice — in suffering and blood 
 —instead of, to take the place of, the deserved punishment of 
 the guilty. 1 
 
 6. The grounds of this necessity, under God's moral govern- 
 ment, stated in sum. 
 
 (a.) The ultimate ground of the necessity must bein God^him^ 
 gejjju there is that in the divine perfections which requires the 
 atonement. What is it ? 
 
 (&.) The object of the atonement is to reconcile sinful man 
 with the holy God, under law; or, to remove the penalty from, 
 and restore favor to, transgressors. Then the necessity must be 
 this: GoJ^.^a^pm^ and 
 
 justify (= be.recp^ciled). 
 
 (c.) Why could lie not otherwise? Because the end which 
 would have been answered by the punishment of the real culprit 
 must be in some other way attained. 
 
 (d.) What is that end? Not the punishment of the culprit 
 itself, for its own sake, as a good: but the punishment a s a 
 means of showjnj^tl^di^nne^ abhorrj^nce_pf jsin et&fL sustaining 
 the honorj^f God and-his. law. 
 
 (e.) The atonement, then, has its necessity in this: that the 
 divine holi ness — -justice (not distributive but general) c ould not 
 otherwise_.be satisfied in the pardon of sinners. 
 
 1 Of. Bib. Sac. vol. i. , p. 368 seq. , von Lasaulx. —John Day. Michaelis : ' ' Almost 
 all nations have been unanimous in the idea of bringing to the Deity offerings, 
 particularly with the shedding of blood, as the means of obtaining pardon of sin 
 and a restoration to favor. This awful idea, which is the almost universal im- 
 pression of the human race, even seems to be a product of what the Romans caE 
 sensus communis —a natural dictate of the sound understanding of man." 
 
442 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (/.) An inquiry. Is the divine justice in the way of the par- 
 don of sinners? (1) Justice is — distributive, commutative (not 
 brought into consideration here), and public (or general). (2) If 
 distributive justice be taken as the whole of justice, or as the 
 great end of the system, and as requiring the punishment of the 
 identical offender — his specific punishment, then justice would 
 absolutely forbid pardon. There is no place for mercy. (3) But 
 distributive justice is subordinate to general justice: it is for 
 general justice. General justice demands that the honor of 
 the law be maintained; that the fact that sin deserves suffer- 
 ing be made manifest; that the great end of the system — the 
 manifestation of the divine glory chiefly as a supreme regard 
 to holiness — should be attained. If this end be gained, then 
 distributive justice is not in the way. 1 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE LEADING SCRIPTURAL REPRESENTATION OF THE ATONING 
 WORK OF CHRIST — THAT IT IS A SACRIFICE. 
 
 Preliminary. Terms most frequently used in Scripture to 
 describe Christ's work. 
 
 Redemption — as means of deliverance, and not as an accom- 
 plished work: Eph. i. 14. ojw* Ao7)a<n v, — 
 
 Ransom : Matt. xx. 28 ; 1 Tim. ii. 6. m - - ->' / 
 * Purchase: Acts xx. 28; 1 Cor. vi. 20; vii. 23. /^V°' 
 Offering: Heb. x. 14. i' ,- ;' : 1\ "' ' 
 
 Propitiation: Rom. iii. 25; 1 John ii. 2. -;-■■ - ' 
 Such expressions, figurative as to means, are real as to re- 
 
 1 Upon the question, Is the divine veracity in threatening punishment, in the 
 way of the pardon of sinners ? Dr. Charles Hodge says : threatenings ' ' are not 
 what shall be, but what most justly may be." — This resolves itself really into the 
 above. The divine veracity is pledged, not to strict distributive, but to complete 
 general justice. "It was not only the divine mind that had to be dealt with, bnt 
 also that expression of the divine mind which was contained in God's making death 
 the wages of sin." Cave, Script. Doct. of Sacrifice, pp. 361, 362. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 443 
 
 suits, that is, as to deliverance from the demands of law upon 
 transgressors. 
 
 *'■£**, //U ^:zi - tut ^^/u.^^/2. 
 Proposition. The grand representation of the work of 
 
 Christ is that it isj^ ^Ai^ataa — a sacrifice for sin — a sacrifice in 
 
 our stead. This gives us not merely the result of the atoning 
 
 work, but the means, viz. — by his death as a sacrifice for us. 
 
 To know the sense of Sacrifice, we must go to history. There 
 alone do we get the ideas. The Scriptures also give us history ; 
 the facts which they set forth are part of what has occurred; the 
 terms in which these facts are described have a proper historical 
 sense; such terms are related more or less to the facts and views 
 which stood within the general experience and knowledge of 
 mankind. Hence, in order to deal fairly with this great subject, 
 we must consult four sources. The questions are : What elements 
 were involved- in a sacrifice? and, What are the constituent ele- 
 ments of' the sacrifice which Christ made? The sources from 
 which these elements may be derived, from which — if we are 
 to reason historically — they must be derived, are these: (1) The 
 gj^te^n^f.^acrifices prevalent in the Pagan world; (2) The sys- 
 tem3ppointed for the Jewish worship ; (3) The p_m phecJ£g re- 
 specting the work our Saviour was to accomplish; and (4) The 
 mode in which Christ's sufferings and death are everywhere 
 spoken of in the New Testament. If all these different sources 
 of evidence conspire in representing the same leading ideas, then 
 it would be indeed presumptuous to deny the validity of these 
 ideas, to deny that they are involved in the very notion of a 
 sacrifice. 
 
 § 1. The System of Sacrifices prevalent in the Pagan World. 
 
 The evidence derived from this source is preparatory and pre- 
 sumptive. The sacrifices of the heathen in the form which they 
 always took, and in the reliance put upon them, were indeed an 
 abomination. But if, as some hold, the origin of these heathen 
 systems is to be traced to an original divine appointment, then 
 even in their perversion and decay we may trace s^noe-westiges 
 of the divine original : or, if we do not trace them back to God 
 
444 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, 
 
 but suppose them to be prompted by the instinctive religious 
 sentiments of mankind, when feeling its guilt and sinfulness, 
 still they may be of importance in showing us what ideas the 
 race have always held, as to the mode in which they might be- 
 come acceptable to their offended deities. 
 
 The propriety of deriving an argument from this source may 
 be still further evinced by the fact, that one reason why the gos- 
 pel made such progress was, that by the systemsjdre ady prevail 
 ing men were in a certain sense prepared for the ^xe^Jenc.e_of_ 
 the Gospel. These false religjons^in their corruption, were unable 
 to satisfy men, and therefore they welcomed a new ; but it is also true 
 that some of the ideas which were at the foundation of their 
 false systems were seen fully realized and purified in the religion 
 of the gospel. They recognized the sacrifice of Christ as a true 
 sacrifice, because they saw in it the perfect form of what they 
 had so grotesquely mimicked and superstitiously believed in their 
 own forms of worship. Thej_were_ready_to receive a sacrifice 
 for sin, because they had always believed in sacrifices for sin. 1 
 
 Such being the state of things, the question now comes up, 
 what were the leading ideas which these ancient nations always 
 connected with the sacrifices they offered. 
 
 The basis of j;he sacjifice^was th&fact afiheitvsinfulne^g^ They 
 lived under the constant sense of their being in a state of feud 
 with their gods, and of the necessity of appeasing the wrath of 
 those terrible beings who had the rule over them. T hesacr ifice 
 was the means which they made use of, which they supposed ef- 
 fectual, in averting from them the wrath of their deities, and in 
 procuring pardon and favor. 
 
 And the sacrifice which they offered for this object contained, 
 and was designed to express, the following leading elements. In 
 the first place, it was a substitution of the sufferings of one being 
 
 1 It is noticeable that just those persons who are most ready to derive an argu- 
 ment from the consent of nations for the being of God or the soul's immortality are 
 the ones who assert of the systems of sacrifice prevalent in all the world, that they 
 are simply the product of superstition and priestcraft. To say this, however, is 
 to avoid, and not to meet, a difficulty: for the question still remains, Why did 
 superstition uniformly take this form; why was it that priests found the system 
 of sacrifices the most effectual way of binding the hearts and consciences of the 
 people ? 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 445 
 
 for the sufferings due to another ; in the second place, it was a 
 substitution of the sufferings of a being comparatively fyi $q cent 
 for one that was sinful; and in the third place, this substitution 
 of the sufferings of the innocent, instead of the deserved suffer- 
 ings of the guilty, was supposed to have the efficacy of making 
 an expiation, an atonement to the gods for the sins committed — 
 was supposed to be of such virtue that the deserved punishment 
 might be averted. 
 
 No one at all acquainted with the horrible rites of heathenism, 
 whether in ancient or modern times, will doubt the existence of 
 all these elements in all their bloody sacrifices. And when we 
 find in almost all the heathen nations not only the sacrifice of 
 animals but of human victims also, in offering whom all natural 
 feeling must have been suppressed, who can fail to see, even in 
 this frantic excess of heathenism, that there must have been a 
 mighty power which held them so entranced, that there was at 
 the basis of the whole system an unconquerable conviction of 
 the necessity and efficacy of sacrifices ? However abhorrent such 
 a conclusion may be to the so-called system of natural religion, 
 yet in all the actual natural religions of the world we find a sac- 
 rifice for sin believed in and offered. It is not argued that^Lege 
 sacrifices we r e righ toi- in any way acceptable, but it is argued that 
 we may show from them what means were considered necessary 
 to win the favor of the deities. 
 
 >""**"**CT&i V '-_ 
 
 § 2. In the Old Testament, in tlie System of Sacrifices appointed 
 for God's chosen People, ivefind tlie same Essential Elements as in the 
 heatlien Sacrifices. 
 
 The Jews were to be a distinct people, and yet they retained 
 the rites of heathenism. Well has it been said, that " Moses, 
 zealous as he was to separate his people in all respects from 
 Paganism, still retained those sacrifices which made the most 
 prominent part of pagan worship." The very parts of the 
 old dispensation, too, which were typical of the new, are to be 
 found in the v ictims laid upon the altar. Here are the bloody 
 sacrifices which give purification. They remind one of heathen- 
 ism — they look forward to Christianity. 
 
4:4 6 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 With this system of sacrifices, which had been divinely or 
 dained, the Jews connected the same ideas which we have already 
 found in Pagan systems. The sacrifice was vicarious. In the 
 expiatory sacrifices, the animal was considered as having become 
 unclean, and its remains were to be burned without the camp, and 
 this, as is expressly declared, 1 because it was a sin-offering. When 
 a man was slain, and it was not known who had committed the 
 crime, a sacrifice must still be offered, and by the washing of the 
 hands the guilt was transferred to the victim. 2 The idea of inno- 
 cence or ceremonial purity was also involved in the whole transac- 
 tion. The priests who offered it were not only a separate class, 
 but they must be especially purified before they could present 
 the offering. The animal offered must be without blemish. The 
 paschal-offering was a lamb — the chosen symbol of innocence. 
 But in these sacrifices was the third element — that of an expia- 
 tion for sin — also contained? It was contained, yet symbolically 
 and typically, rather than actually. The peculiarity of the Jew- 
 ish system is just this, that it did not permit its votaries to rest 
 in the rites themselves, but ever bade them look forward to the 
 time of their Great High Priest. Expiation for sin was in these 
 sacrifices, though only symbolically. The solemn rites of the 
 yearly festival of expiation show this : for, while the goat that 
 was killed was the sin-offering, by which the sin was represented 
 as expiated, the sin was laid upon the other, the scape-goat, to 
 make a visible yet symbolical manifestation of the taking away 
 of the guilt. Equally applicable to the same point are the words 
 which, it is supposed, contain the key to the whole system of 
 Jewish sacrifices — the words addressed by Jehovah to Moses, 
 Lev. xvii. 11: " For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I 
 have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for 
 your souls: for the blood maketh an atonement for [or "by 
 means of "\ the .soul." The idea of an expiation for sin could 
 not be more fully expressed than in these words. In all the 
 statutes by which atonement was to be made for sin, we find 
 confirmation of the fact that Subs titution— of _ ike Innocent — 
 in order to Expiation — is a necessary element of the religious 
 
 1 Exod. sxix. 14, * Deut. xxi. 1-9. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 447 
 
 faith of a people which had transgressed the law of God, and 
 would become reconciled to Him. Under the whole of the 
 Old Testament economy, sin was not forgiven except as its 
 desert was exhibited, and its expiation insured, by means of 
 a vicarious sacrifice. 
 
 § 3. Another Argument for the same Position is derived from 
 the Old Testament Prophecies of Christ. 
 
 A distinct argument is drawn from this source, for two reasons, 
 (a.) The prophets often seem Jo speak against sacrifices, to rep- 
 robate th^jreKance^ placed upon them ; but if they foretold an- 
 other sacrifice, then they reprobated only the carnal reliance 
 put upon those which but prefigured the true expiation. 
 (6.) The prophets stand, as it were, in the transition stage 
 between the law and the gospel. T^y^jr^aJ^^f^ perfect re- 
 demption which was to appear. And now if they represent the 
 new dispensation which was to bring in an everlasting right- 
 eousness as containing the same essential elements with that 
 which was to pass away, then they form, as it were, the second 
 premise in the syllogism of which the law is the first, and the 
 New Testament the conclusion. What the ceremonies and rites 
 of the law expressed in symbols, that the prophets expressed in 
 words; and both equally referred to Jesus Christ, who was the 
 substance which the law foreshadowed and the visible fulfilment 
 of the prophecies, and who thus fulfilled both the law and the 
 prophets. 
 
 Lauguage cannot express the elements which we have found 
 to be contained in the very nature of a sacrifice more distinctly 
 than we find them in Isa. liii., and to this, for the sake of dis- 
 tinctness and conciseness, we confine our illustrations. There 
 is first the vicarious suffering: Surely He hath borne our griefs 
 a ^^ arr i&4-PJP^-^ He was wounded for our transgres- 
 
 sions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of oui 
 peace was upon Him, and with his stripes we are healed; all we 
 like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord hath laid on Him the 
 iniquity of us all; He bare the sin of many. There is the inno- 
 cence of the sufferer: He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter 
 
448 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not 
 his mouth; for the transgression of my people (not his own) 
 was He stricken; He had done no violence, neither was any 
 deceit in his mouth. And the sufferings of this innocent victim 
 procured the expiation of the sins of his people: He shall see of 
 the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied ; by his knowledge 
 shall my righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their 
 iniquities; when thou shalt make his soul (or, when his soul 
 shall make) 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. Thus spake prophets of the coming Kedeemer. They 
 described Him in terms taken from the sacrifices appointed under 
 the law. They described Him as they would have described a 
 victim offered upon the altar — only making the victim a mighty 
 Saviour instead of an animal without blemish — only speaking 
 of the substitution, the innocence, and the expiation as real, and 
 not as merely symbolical or typical. 
 
 § 4. The New Testament Descriptions of the Sufferings and 
 Death of Christ repeat the same Ideas, give us in more strict Form 
 of Assertion the same Elements. 
 
 We have seen what were the religious ideas prevailing 
 throughout the world at the time that the Redeemer came — 
 ideas in which Gentile as well as Jew participated. Every - 
 where men believed in the necessity and efficacy of sacrifices. 
 Such was the preparation which God, in his providential govern- 
 ment of the heathen nations, and in his special revelation to his 
 chosen people, had made for the reception of his Son, when He 
 should be sent in the fulness of times to gather together all things 
 in one, and to draw all men unto himself. The sense of sin, the 
 need of deliverance, the belief in a deliverance only through 
 propitiatory sacrifices — -these are the deepest religious feelings 
 which we find impressed upon the whole ancient world — in 
 these men all agreed. Every altar proclaimed them, every vic- 
 tim renewed them. Daily as were the sacrifices, so, every day 
 these ideas were brought before men's minds, in the blood of 
 dying victims, in the agonies of departing life. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 449 
 
 A strange preparation this, for an economy which was to do 
 away with and deny all these things, for a dispensation which, 
 as some suppose, not only overturned the altars, but destroyed 
 all the ideas connected with them. Whether it was so or not, 
 remains to be considered. Whether the essential elements of the 
 ancient religion were abrogated or confirmed in the religion 
 which was to supersede all other forms of faith, we are now^to 
 inquire. 
 
 Did Ch ristianity abolish, or did it confirm, the sentiments we 
 have found existing as to the mode in which a fallen world 
 could become reconciled to its God ? Did it destroy the law and 
 the prophets, or did it fulfil them ? Did it take up the religious 
 sentiments of the race and purify them, or did it introduce en- 
 tirely new conceptions as to the way in which man was to be 
 justified before God? Did it go to a Jew and say, All the ideas 
 you have had as to the way of pardon must be entirely erased 
 from your mind, and you must accept a scheme which in its 
 essential features is wholly different from that which God gave 
 your fathers by the prophets, — or did it present him with the 
 perfect realization of what was at best but imperfectly exhibited 
 in all the ceremonies of the law and the rites of the altar ? Did 
 it go to the heathen, and while it bade him quit his false gods 
 and atrocious rites, also preach to him that he was to look for 
 no sacrifice and quit all hope of a proper expiation, that he need 
 do nothing but amend his life and trust in a mercy which ac- 
 cepted him without a propitiation ? Did it, in presenting Jesus 
 Christ as the way and the truth and the life, and his sufferings 
 and death as the ground of acceptance, carefully abstain from 
 all expressions which would recall the long-cherished views, 
 both of heathen and Jew, as to the efficacy of sacrifices, — or 
 did- it describe Christ and his death in such a way as involved 
 all the elements which they believed to belong to a vicarious 
 expiation ? Did it alter in any essential particulars the views 
 universally prevailing as to the nature of a sacrifice, on the 
 ground of which deity was to be made propitious, — or did it 
 describe the superiority of Christ's sacrifice as consisting pre- 
 cisely in this, that it perfectly realized all that it was believed a 
 
45 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 sacrifice must be and could effect, and that, therefbjs^ll othei 
 sacrifices were vain and worthless? 
 
 To state the case, to one who is familiar with the mode in 
 which the New Testament speaks of Christ, is almost to prove 
 it. It is hardly an exaggeration, when a distinguished apolo- 
 gist for Christianity 1 asserts — "that Christ suffered and died as 
 an. atonement for the sins of the world is a doctrine so constantly 
 infused through the New Testament that whoever will seriously 
 peruse these writings and deny that it is there, may with as 
 much reason and truth, after reading the works of Thucydides 
 and Livy, assert that in them no mention is made of any facts 
 in relation to the history of Greece and Rome." 
 
 Are the sufferings and ..death of- Christ, -then, represented as 
 endured in the place of others, as a substitution^ .. §s vicarious .r 
 — What else can our Saviour mean when He says that He gave 
 his life a ransom for many, 2 and that He lays down his life for 
 the sheep 3 ? What does Paul mean when he writes to the Gal- 
 atians, 4 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being 
 made a curse for us ? Why does the Epistle to the Hebrews de- 
 clare that Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many ? 5 
 Why does Peter preach Christ as the one who his own self bare 
 our sins in his own body on the tree, 6 and also declare that 
 Christ suffered for sins once, the just for the unjust ? 7 (The words 
 used, for, instead of, bearing the sin of others, and the like, ex- 
 press substitution, if any words can do it; and the variety of 
 phrases, all of which concur in the same vicarious significancy, 
 forbids us to suppose it was accidental. Had there been only 
 one word or form of expression for it, it were easier to interpret 
 it otherwise: but the variety of the forms of expression forbids 
 such a violence.) Why are these and similar declarations re- 
 specting Christ's sufferings constantly introduced by the Apos- 
 tles, when they addressed both Jew and Gentile, if they did not 
 mean to teach them the necessity and efficacy of vicarious 
 sufferings? If on this point their previous views had been 
 
 1 Soame Jenyns. • Matt. xx. 28. 3 John x. 15. 
 
 * Gal. iii. 13. * Heb. ix. 28. o 1 Pet. ii. 21 
 
 ^ 1 Pet. iii 18. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 451 
 
 erroneous, would such descriptions of the death of Christ have 
 any other effect than to confirm them in their error ? 
 
 The second element in the idea of a sacrifice is, the innocence 
 of the victim: it must be the fairest of the herd, the gentlest of 
 the flock. We are told that such an High Priest became us, 
 who is holy, harmless, undefiled. 1 The Apostle Peter speaks of 
 Him as a lamb without blemish and without spot. 3 And Paul 
 concurs in this, when He asserts that God hath made Him to 
 be sin for us, who knew no sin. 3 The attribute of blamelessness, 
 which the sacrifice must have, was perfectly realized only in 
 the Lamb of God. His alone was moral guiltlessness; and this 
 was one reason why his alone was the acceptable sacrifice. An 
 animal could only symbolize or typify; it could not possess that 
 moral purity which was necessary in order that the sacrifice 
 might be available and acceptable, might be a true expiation. 
 And this is one of the points in which the sacrifice of Christ, 
 and that alone, realized the full import of the word and the 
 thing. 
 
 These vicarious sufferings of an innocent victim were de- 
 signed tojociake. expiation for sin — to make God propitious, and 
 as a consequence to free man from the overburdening sense of 
 guilt and fear of punishment: for both these particulars are 
 involved in a real propitiation. And in this, in which resides 
 the very vitality of a sacrifice, Christ's alone fulfilled the office. 
 While it was ever held as essential to the idea of a sacrifice, 
 yet it was never realized, whether on Pagan or Jewish altars. 
 It was symbolized by the one, and both symbolized and typified 
 by the other. With Christ came the reality, and this is what 
 chiefly makes his to be the only, the real, the proper sacrifice, 
 beside which none other may be named. Of all the offerings 
 ever made his alone was accepted; others were available only as 
 they spake of his. All others neither purchased the favor of 
 God, nor brought true peace to man: Christ's did both, and was 
 therefore an expiation for sin, in the only legitimate, and the 
 most perfect sense of the words. The sacrifice of Christ, and 
 that alone, satisfied God, and brought peace to the conscience, 
 i Heb. vii. 26. 2 1 Pet. i. 19. 3 1 Cor. v. 21. 
 
452 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 — Testimony on these points crowds upon us — text after text, 
 evangelists and apostles, eager to be heard, while they speak in 
 exulting faith of Him, who hath washed us from our sins in his 
 own blood; 1 in whom we have redemption through his blood, 
 the forgiveness of sins; a whose blood cleanseth from all sin; 3 
 through whom God declares his righteousness in the passing 
 over of sins; 4 in whom God was, reconciling the world unto 
 himself. 5 The whole testimony is summed up in a wonderful 
 passage, which connects the old and new economy, giving the 
 chief defect of the old and superiority of the new, and which 
 contains all the elements of a sacrifice and the whole virtue of 
 an argument: For if the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes 
 of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying 
 of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who 
 through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, 
 purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 6 
 The conclusion to which we are irresistibly led from such 
 passages as those we have cited — and the number of them might 
 be greatly multiplied — can be nothing less than this: that the 
 sufferings and death ofjJesus are represented as containing all 
 the'elements of a sacrifice for sin, and are so spoken of in wnt- 
 ings addressed to people who had always believed in the neces- 
 sity and efficacy of sacrifice; and, consequently, that we must 
 either give up in despair the chief canon for interpreting lan- 
 guage aright, i. e., the sense it would naturally carry to those 
 to whom it was addressed, or we must admit that the Apostles 
 meant to teach an expiation for sin, in the boldest sense of the 
 words. To this dilemma we are reduced: either we cannot find 
 out the meaning of Scripture, or it means to teach expiation ; and 
 consequently, either we believe it and receive the atonement, or, 
 if we reject the atonement, we reject inspiration also. Archbishop 
 Magee says: 7 "The atonement by the sacrifice of Christ was 
 more strictly vicarious than that by the Mosaic sacrifices where- 
 by it was typified." And the substance of this remark may be 
 
 1 Rev. i. 5. 2 Eph. i. 7. 3 1 John i. 7. 
 
 ' Bom. iii. 25. * 2 Oor. v. 19. <* Heb. ix. 13, 14 
 
 i On the Atonement. No. LXXIII. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 453 
 
 still further applied. All the elements which enter into the very 
 nature of a sacrifice are represented as more fully exhibited in 
 the death and sufferings of Jesus Christ, than they are found any- 
 where else. Instead of these elements being any of them weak- 
 ened, they are all confirmed in strength and emphasis, when ap- 
 plied to the death of Jesus. The vicarious suffering was more 
 strictly vicarious, — it was a more real substitution; the substitu- 
 tion of one moral being for another; the innocence of the sacri- 
 fice is in Him alone perfectly realized, — all others were at the 
 best only physically blameless, He alone was morally pure; and 
 as to the propitiation which was intended to be effected by means 
 of a vicarious death, his alone effects that propitiation, his alone 
 gives boldness of access to the very throne of the Eternal. We 
 say, then, still further, that not only are we obliged to admit that 
 Christ's death is a proper sacrifice, but that we are forced to con- 
 fess that his is the only proper sacrifice, and that if no other had 
 ever been known, if men had never heard of the propitiatory suf- 
 ferings of the innocent for the guilty, yet they would have been 
 obliged, if they received the Scriptures of the New Testament, 
 to concede that it was there found and most distinctly expressed. 
 If the points enumerated do indeedconst-itute the elements of a 
 real sacrifice, then does Christ's death, and that alone, correspond 
 thereto. Not only may it be so interpreted, but it must be so 
 interpreted; not only does history lead us so to view it, but with- 
 out history, though we knew of no heathen rites, though we had 
 read of no Jewish altar, we must still confess that the sufferings 
 and death of the Son of God were endured instead of ours; were 
 endured by One wholly spotless; and were of such virtue that 
 they purchased the remission of sins and purged the unclean 
 conscience. 1 
 
 § 5. Consideration of Objections. 
 
 Obj. I. — Why may we not interpret all that is said about the- 
 eacrifice of Christ just as we should interpret the language when 
 
 i " And this I am sure," says Dr. South, " is spoke so plain and loud by the 
 universal voice of the whole Book of God, that Scripture must be crucified as weU 
 as Christ, to give any other tolerable sense of it" 
 
454 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 it IB flajj tW- nnA-mfl.n anffp.rfl for, ajjjjth^ R m"thpr fnr «i frhtH 
 
 a patriot for his country and such like — where all that we mean 
 is, that by the suffering some outward good was attained, or 
 some evil averted — some peril warded off? This would make 
 the doctrine more intelligible, level to our present associations, 
 analogous to what is daily seen in God's providence. 
 
 But what special temporal good was purchased by Christ 
 for his followers: what special temporal evil did his death avert 
 from them ? None — absolutely none. Such an explanation, 
 instead of making the Scriptural representations intelligible, 
 makes them wholly unintelligible. The good He purchased 
 was a spiritual good, a freedom from the condemnation for sin 
 and the sense of guilt. Outward good might follow the inward; 
 but the inward was first. The good He purchased for us had 
 relation to human sin, and not chiefly to the evils which beset 
 humanity. He was a propitiation for our sins, and not for 
 ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. One man 
 may die for another man: but how can the death of the one 
 procure from God the pardon of the sins of the other? Here 
 the analogy utterly fails. 
 
 And besides, this sense of sacrifice so current amongst us, is 
 a derived sense, and not the direct Scriptural sense, — is one 
 which has respect to human relations and not to the relations 
 of man to God. Had the Apostles designed to convey this 
 meaning clearly, the Greek language offered them abundant 
 facilities, without their resorting to terms taken from the altar 
 and its victims. If we would faithfully interpret the New Tes- 
 tament according to the sense of the times in which it was 
 written — times, be it well remembered, in which not only animal 
 but human sacrifices were offered in almost every nation — there 
 remains but the choice between these two things: that when 
 the Apostles represented the death of Jesus Christ as a proper 
 sacrifice, they would either be understood as meaning to assert 
 that He was a human sacrifice, and thus have perpetuated in 
 their teachings that direct abomination of heathenism; or else, 
 that they ascribed to the death of Jesus such efficacy as no 
 death of a mere man could ever possess. To interpret the Ian- 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 455 
 
 guage in the way in which we now speak of one man's being a 
 sacrifice for another, is forbidden by the whole spirit of antiquity. 
 To int erpret it as meaning a proper sacrifice, makes it either to be 
 a human sacrifice — the most atrocious of abominations, — or forces 
 us to attribute to. iLsQm,& peculiar value in consequence of the 
 dignity and relations of the sufferer. 
 
 Obj. II. — Another mode in which this doctrine is sometimes 
 drawn down from its high elevation, and left in an indefinite 
 vagueness, is by saying: it is enough for any man to believe in 
 the sufferings and death of Christ, to trust to that, and leave all 
 theories about expiation and propitiation to the care of dispu- 
 tants. Christ suffere d and died, and for us : so much is plain ; 
 here we can all unite. This is plain fact, revealed TacTJ' but 
 ThTOTtSt" 'about the atonement are not scuplain. 
 
 The sense of this is, that the position that Christ's death was 
 expiatory is a theory, a philosophical explanation of the fact, 
 and that all we need to believe in is the fact that his death was 
 for us. But if the investigation we have instituted be of any 
 worth, if it have taught us one thing more than another, it is 
 this: that the very nature and essence of the sufferings and 
 death of Christ is, that they are an expiation for sin. This is 
 the very idea of a sacrifice. It is its exhaustive definition: it 
 is the thing itself, and not a deduction or inference from it. 
 This is the fact and not a theory about it. If one does not 
 believe in. the ^expiation, _he (Joesunot believe in the sacrifice? 
 We have the shell and not the kernel; we have death ancl 
 sufferings and not life and peace. Th^t ^xpiajjo n cannot be 
 separated from the death without destroying^ t helife tha t is in 
 the d_eath.^ We may form theories about the sacrifice of Jesus, 
 in its relations to the moral government of the world, or to the 
 wants of the human soul: but the very essence of the thing 
 about which we are to form our theory is that it was an ex- 
 piation for sin. And to represent this as a theory instead of 
 being the fact, is to confound the whole relation between theory 
 and fact. Torec[uire us to believe in the necessity of the death 
 of an Incarnate God for our redemption, without making that 
 
456 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 death to be a propitiation for our sins, is to require us Jo believe 
 in the most startling of facts, and to close our eyes to any rea- 
 son or availability of it t is not only to demand an historical faith; 
 but a faith for which no sufficient reason can be assigned — in a 
 fact at once monstrous and enigmatical. 
 
 Obj. III. — It is difficult, if not i mpoBsible ^to see how one 
 being can bear the penalty which others have deserved, how 
 Christ's vicarious sufferings could procure for us exemption from 
 condemnation. — We suppose that those who press this objection 
 will desire to use care in presenting it, so as not to cut off all 
 hope or possibility of salvation from every son and daughter of 
 Adam. If every soul must bear its own sins and penalty, and 
 if it be a true saying that the soul that sinneth it shall die, and 
 if conscience alone is to decide the case, we see not but that 
 conscience demands that the penalty should be carried into full 
 execution. — We also suppose that care will be used not to make 
 the objection so positive as to conflict with the ordinary provi- 
 dential dealings of God, where a kind of substitution is to be 
 seen. It is hard to contest the facts, that the father does suffer 
 for the son and the son for the father, and one generation of 
 men for those that come after. Almost all the civil and re- 
 ligious rights we enjoy have been purchased by the blood of 
 others. Sins are visited upon children. It is possible to carry 
 this individualism of sin and penalty so far as to conflict with 
 the plainest facts in God's every day government, and in man's 
 commonest relations. 
 
 But after all care has been exercised in relation to these 
 points, the objection cannot be conceded to be valid. If the 
 objection means, that we cannot see how the literal penalty of 
 the law can be inflicted on any but its transgressor, — this is 
 doubtless true: but the doctrine of a sacrifice for sin does not 
 involve this necessarily : it says only, that the sufferings and death 
 of Christ were instead of this penalty. Of course the objection 
 does not mean that there can never be any vicariousness of 
 suffering: for this would run counter to plain facts in the ordi- 
 nary providence of God. If it is meant, however, that we can 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 457 
 
 not see just how the sufferings and death of Christ are the pro- 
 curing cause of the pardon of our sin, then we say, that it is not 
 necessary that this should be seen in order to a living faith in 
 Christ as our Redeemer. We do not believe in a bare abstract 
 plan of atonement, which we can see through and round: we 
 believe in Jesus Christ, our High Priest, our Sacrifice. And in 
 his sacrifice there is dqubtlws, q_ffiM$&l^ 
 
 Then in respect to this objection, we say: 
 
 1. Here, as elsewhere in theology, mystery is to be admitted, 
 while facts are to be accepted on their proper evidence; and the 
 suitableness of the facts to illustrate the glory of God and to 
 meet the wants of men is to be fully recognized. Mystery in- 
 vests all reality. It is no objection to a divine proceeding, a 
 divine provision, that while it comes largely within our appre- 
 hension, it also goes largely beyond. If there were no mystery 
 here, we might suspect that there was no divine reality. It 
 would be an objection to the atonement if there were no objec- 
 tions to it. 
 
 2. On the ground ofj mif orm Jphristian experience we are 
 warranted in asserting, that it is a fact of man's spiritual history, 
 as abundantly confirmed as any fact can be, that faith in the 
 atoning death of Christ is the constant and only source of the 
 glad feeling of reconciliation with God; that this is the procur- 
 ing cause of the feeling of redemption from the penalty and 
 power of sin, as much as sin is the procuring cause of guilt, as 
 much as right is the source of tbe sense of obligation. If this 
 be a fact verified by constant experience, then as a fact it stands, 
 whether we>can penetrate to all its grounds and reasons or not. 
 
 3. But further, this objection runs counter, not only to the 
 religious experience of Christians, but to the religious convic- 
 tions of the human race. The assertion that there can be no 
 vicarious sacrifice for sin attacks the religious faith of entire 
 humanity. It is not modern orthodoxy alone that is thus at- 
 tacked, — the uniform consent of the church of Christ is assaulted; 
 it is not the doctrine of the church alone that is assailed,— it is 
 the whole tenor of the New Testament: it is not tbe New Testa- 
 
458 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ment only, — it is the whole sacrificial system and the great pro- 
 phetic burden of the Old Testament; it is not only the old 
 dispensation and the new which is undermined, — it is the 
 belief of every nation, where forms of worship have existed. 
 If we can prove anything from what has always, everywhere, 
 and by all been received, we can certainly prove the necessity 
 of a sacrifice for sin. The heathen altar, the Jewish law, the 
 Christian cross equally proclaim it. It has in respect to the uni- 
 versality of belief an evidence for itself far above any that can 
 be alleged to exist for any one of the articles of the so-called 
 system of Natural Eeligion. How dim the anticipations of im- 
 mortality among the heathen ! — how floating their notion of a 
 divine unity! — how constant their victims on the altar! — how 
 plain their faith in substitution ! 
 
 4. While admitting that the objection is made to that re- 
 lation of the atonement which is veiled in mystery, we assert 
 that we can see, nevertheless, the fitness of such a mode of 
 reconciliation as the sacrifice of Christ, on the one hand to 
 God's character and government, and on the other hand to the 
 wants of men. 
 
 (a.) The expiatory sufferings of Christ are on the one hand 
 conformable to what we know of God's character and govern- 
 ment, as a provision for the pardon of the sins of his creatures. 
 They are thus fitted because they make the most perfect display 
 of the moral attributes of God, showing us his love as it is no- 
 where else exhibited, and his justice in its unchangeable per- 
 fection. The atonement shows how his justice can be immutable, 
 and yet grace abound. It shows how the apparently conflict- 
 ing claims of God's justice and love can both be met, and the 
 being who is the object of a just condemnation can become the 
 subject of a redeeming love. Nowhere else are these attributes 
 so perfectly manifested as in the work of our Saviour. This 
 alone gives it a surpassing glory, and would be sufficient to 
 vindicate it from every objection. Flow can the love of God oe 
 bestowed in its fulness upon any creature, in respect to whom 
 his justice speaks only of condemnation? The justice of God 
 must be satisfied, else his love cannot be imparted. Such satis- 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 459 
 
 faction the atonement of Jesus bestows. As the representative 
 of the race He kept the law, He suffered in our stead its ex- 
 tremest penalties — not the same in kind, as, e. g. 9 remorse and 
 eternal death — but all those which a substituted sinless being 
 could suffer: his infinite nature qualified Him to stand for the 
 race, and made his sufferings available. And all that are united 
 with Him by faith receive the benefits of his sacrifice: God looks 
 upon Him who is their shield, and remembers the face of his 
 anointed, and for his sake spares and adopts them. His justice 
 is here exhibited, satisfaction is made, the sinner is pardoned, 
 and the glory of the redemption is shared by Him who through 
 love gave his Son to die for us, and by the Son who purchased 
 us with his own most precious blood. This satisfaction to the 
 divine justice is involved in the work of atonement, and is nec- 
 essary; yet it should ever be carefully distinguished from the 
 work itself. The work consists in the expiatory sufferings of 
 Jesus, and it is these which do satisfy the divine justice, though 
 it is sometimes represented otherwise, as though the atonement 
 itself consisted in such a satisfaction. — Not only are God's attri- 
 butes thus more perfectly and harmoniously displayed: his 
 moral government also is upheld, his authority as a lawgiver is 
 fully maintained by it. And here again we say that the main- 
 tenance of this authority does not constitute the substance or 
 matter of the atonement: but rather, that the atonement has 
 this for one of its effects, for one of its relations — an important 
 and necessary relation — but still not itself the chief end or ulti- 
 mate purpose of the atonement. That chief end is, the salvation 
 of the sinner. The sinner must be saved, if at all, in such a 
 way as is consistent with the moral government of God, — as will 
 uphold the authority of the law: but still the virtue of the sav- 
 ing act will consist, not in the upholding of the law, but in the 
 expiatory sufferings by which the ransom is effected. Beyond 
 and above all analogies drawn from the relations of men, and 
 the maintaining of a human law, are the awful expiatory suffer- 
 ings of our Great High Priest. Not the son of a king suffering 
 instead of rebels, not a royal father, having the light of one of 
 his own eyes extinguished, that one of his son's eyes might be 
 
460 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 left unhurt, can fully illustrate the relation of our Redeemer's 
 sufferings to the inviolability of God's law. The force and im- 
 pressiveness, and we may add, the logical accuracy of the whole 
 representation is rather weakened than strengthened by resort 
 to such imperfect analogies. We should rather lay the stress 
 upon the fact that Christ by his very nature, by his natural re- 
 lations to God and his assumed relations to humanity was fitted 
 to be the Mediator, to fulfil the whole law and make it honorable, 
 and thus to maintain its dignity in the eyes of the universe. 
 
 (b.) This atoning work of Christ, on the other hand, is no less 
 fitted to man's nature and wants, than it is to God's character. 
 To represent the atonement as designed only to affect man, and 
 not — so to speak — to influence the divine mind, to describe it as 
 a moral spectacle, exhibited chiefly to enlist and arouse the feel- 
 ings of man, his sense of sin, and his need of redemption — is as- 
 suredly unscriptural and defective : yet that it has this effect is 
 scriptural and undeniable. It represents to man the justice of 
 God in the clearest light, and this meets his own sense of jus- 
 tice; and the love of God in its highest form, and this is fitted 
 to awaken a responsive affection. It is adapted to his con- 
 science, so far as it upholds the law, and to all his de*eper, ten- 
 derer feelings, since nothing appeals to them so strongly. 
 
 In sum, then, we say, with reference to Objection III., viz., 
 how can the sacrifice of Christ procure the pardon of sin — what 
 is the rationale, what are the ultimate grounds of the system 
 which centers here: that there is room for a variety of explana- 
 tions, and Jiere is where the theories of the atonement come in. But 
 we should be careful to draw the line between the facts and the 
 theories. We have endeavored to bring out the great revealed, 
 Scriptural fact about Christ and his sacrifice, in its simplicity 
 | and in its integrity. That fact we suppose to be embraced in 
 I the statement, that the death of Christ was a proper sacrifice for 
 i our sins. We suppose that this is revealed in so distinct a man- 
 jj ner that it is a part of the facts of the Gospel. When we say 
 \ that the death of Christ was instead of our punishment, and that 
 } it made expiation for our sins, we are not stating theories, but 
 i revealed facts. We suppose that in this fact is contained an 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 461 
 
 answer to the question, how can a sinner be pardoned, and that 
 answer is, by faith in Christ as the sacrifice for our sins: by a 
 belief in his sufferings and death, instead of ours. We do not 
 suppose that anything which can properly be called a theory is 
 involved in any one of the points that we have presented in re- 
 spect to the doctrine of sacrifices. Theories of the atonement 
 have for their object to show how this fact, viz., that the expia- 
 tory death of Christ is the means of pardon to the guilty, is to 
 be understood in its entire relations to what we know from other 
 sources about the attributes and the moral government of God, 
 and the wants and needs of man. It would be a sufficient an- 
 swer to the objection to show that the fact is proved by evidence 
 which cannot be invalidated ; it is a further answer, that the atone- 
 ment throws a light upon God's character and government, and | 
 meets the wants of man as nothing else does: to show precisely 
 how God construes this greatest and most far-reaching of trans- 
 actions, and to give an account of the whole of its effect upon 
 the divine mind and the divine government, is a task which we 
 do not undertake. / 
 
 CHAPTER IV. /LtL ^Aa4 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE SCRIPTURAL STATEMENTS AS TO CHRIST'S 
 
 SUFFERINGS AND DEATH. fi,V'* Yt= ^ K ^ J 
 
 I. — The height of Christ's atoning work, its center, was in 
 his sufferings and death. These are the matter of the atonement. 
 
 Isa. liii. Death: Heb. ii. 9, 14; ix. 15; g ,pmZ^ Jj ^- Phil, {[ t §. 
 Rev. v. 6, 9, 12. Gross: 1 Cor. i. 23; Gal. iii. 1 ; Eph. ii. 16; Col. i. 
 20; Gal. vi. 14 Sufferings: Luke xxiv. 26; Acts iii. 18; 1 Pet. ii. 
 21; iii. 18; Matt. xx. 28. Blood: Matt. xxvi. 28 (Mark xiv. 24; 
 Luke xxii. 20); Eph. ii. 13; i. 7; Col. i. 14; 1 John i. 7; Rev. i. 5; 
 v. 9. 
 
 II. — Christ suffered and died for others. 
 
 Isa^MiiLJL^; Matt. xxvi. 28; Rom. v. 6; Gal. iii. 13, 14; 
 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. 
 
V 
 
 462 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 „. , ' * , *fjLi. *.*- ''*■ r 
 
 III. — Christ died for ein and sinners. 
 
 Isa. liii. 6, 8; John i. 29; Rom. iii. 25; v. 8; vi. 10; viii. 3; 
 1 Cor. xv. 3; 2 Cor. v. 21; Gal. iii. 13; Heb. ix. 28; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 
 iiL 18; Rev. i. 5. 
 
 IV. — As to the necessity of such a sacrifice. 
 ri Luke xxiv. 26; Gal ii. 21; iii. 21; Heb. ii. 10. 
 
 V. — That in what Christ thus did and suffered, He was a 
 sacrifice for sins — ivas ready what was symbolized under this 
 form in the Old Testament u ^^Jt^ V r ^''^V 
 
 (a.) He was Priest, High Priest: Heb. ii. 17; iii. 1; iv. 14; 
 v. 1, 6, 10; vii. 11, 15, 26; viii. 1; x. 21. ~~ 
 
 (6.) He was also the pure offering. Lamb: rXohn i. 29; 1 Pet. 
 i. 19; Rev. v. 12; vii. 14; xiii. 8. Sacrifice: 1 Cor. v. 7; Eph. v. 2; 
 Heb. ix. 26; x. 12. Offering: Heb. ix. 14, 25, 28; x. 10, 14. Pro- 
 pitiation: Rom. iii. 25; 1 John ii. 2; iv. 10. 
 
 VI. — That Christ is the only sacrifice : He alone makes an 
 atonement for sin. 
 
 Rom. iii. 20-28; Acts iv. 12; Heb. i. 3; ix. 28; x. 10, 12, 14, 26. 
 
 1 Pet. iii. 18; Forgiveness only through Him; Reconciliation 
 through Him alone; Faith upon Him enjoined. 
 
 VII.— That Christ's sacrifice was voluntary. hJ^$LJLD 
 - rj J_ohnx. 17, 18; Gal. ii. 20; Eph. v. 2; Heb. ix. 14 : x. 7-9. 
 ■ VIII. — As to the relations of his atonement to the race. ^' 
 
 (a.) He died to saxaJ^^wn, people: Jfthn x. 11: -xvr-13i; 
 Rom. v. 8; Eph. v. 25; Heb. ii. 13, 14; 1 John iii. 16. fe ( '^ 4 
 
 (b.) For many: Matt, xx. 28 : xxvi. 28; Heb. ix. 28r^~^ * \ 
 
 (c.) To save the lost: Mark ii. 17; Matt ix. 13; xviii. 11; 
 Luke v. 32; xix. 10. '^' ~ '—;■'•■'-■— l ' ; "'\_" ^>W r _ 
 
 (d.) For all, for the world. John i. 29; iii. 16; vi. 51; xii. 47; 
 
 2 Cor. v. 14, 15; 1 Tim. ii. 6; Heb. ii. 9; 1 John ii. 2. 
 
 IX. — That what Christ did and suffered for us was under the 
 law — in some sense, for some object — to meet its claims . 
 
 1. He is represented as a sacrifice: this has no meaning un- 
 less under or in direct relation to demands of law. 
 
 2. He is represented as bearing the curse of the law: Gal. iii 
 13. What is the curse of the law but its penalty ? ^ ^ (1 
 
 3. He is represented as bearing sins : as bearing iniquity and 
 
-\ THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 463 
 
 sin: the measure of these is the law; if Christ bore sin, it could 
 only be under the law: Isa. _liii._6, 12; 2 Cor. v. 21; Heb. ix. 28; 
 1 Pet. ii. 24. It is not enough to say, " Christ bore suffering in 
 consequence of sin:" this is not hermeneutically just. 
 
 4. That Christ's redeeming work was under the law is ex- 
 pressly asserted in GaL iv. 4^5. - - ■* ■-*£ >^' ^ ■'- *v* ■ •» <y u*. A* vt,. f -\.j. 
 
 5. His obedience was a fulfilling of the law : Rom. v. 18, 19 \k 
 x. 4; Phil. ii. 8; Heb. v. 8; Matt, v. 17 (where ic\ripm6a\. means* 
 not "to complete," but fc 'to fulfil"). /l*rv^ o~*"H r<o £*.*&*,&_* 
 
 X. — Effect of what Christ did in relation to man. 
 v? 1. Generally: He came as a Saviour, Deliverer, Redeemer: 
 '■Slatt. i. 21 ; xviii . 11; John iii. 17; xii. 47; Acts iv. 12; Gal. iii. 
 1 3 ; Tit. ii. 13 ; 1 John iv. 14. &- £ *- - — *- - * r *** ' ^— ^ "^ ' 
 
 2. He took away sin: Matt, xxvi. 28 ; John i. 29; Acts v. 31; 
 xiii. 38: Col. i. 14; Eph. i. 7; Heb. i. 3; 1 John iii. 5. £l££V^ A 
 
 S. ^Propitiation for sin: Rom, iii. 25 : 1 John ii. 2; iv. 10. 
 
 4. Cleansing from sin: Eph. v. 25; Heb. xiii. 12; 1 John i. 7; 
 Rev. vii. 14. u^Lk* ^ * P ',j . / Jg / }L 
 
 5. Reconciliation: HekjiJJ. » ' r <*, 
 
 6. Justification: Acts xiii. 39 ; Rom. iii. 24; v. 9; Gal. ii. 17; 
 1 Cor. vi. 11. &^ &i** *M 1&iJ~ Ati-A *ot£iJ£ty. W ^ ^^^ tC^Lj- 
 
 7. The source of blessings to the universe: John xiv, 13; 
 
 XI. — In relation to God. ~ — - 
 
 1. God's love is the ground: John_iii. lG.a^^^ti; <lv*JL<**» it 
 
 2. God's purpose — plan — in it: J.ohn iii. u; Acts ii. 23; Rom. 
 iii. 25; via. 32: 2 Cor. v. 21; Heb. x, 5-9. " * , a L , 
 
 3. the righteousness ot God in it: Rom. iiL 25; 2 Cor. v. 21. i 
 
 4. God gives Him as an offering: Isa^liii^lO; 2 Cor. v. 21. 
 
 5. Christ gives Himself as an offering:: Eph. v. 2. :**£*•* i£^*l» 
 
 6. God reconciles us to himself through Christ: Rom." v. 11 
 (through whom we have now received the reconciliation); 2* 
 Cor, v. 18, 19. wL ^JferuL^^^ £ ,c 3.C. * J 
 
 XII. — Summary from this Scriptural analysis. 
 
 This gives us the reveale d facts as to the nature and rela- 
 tions of Christ's atoning^ work^— no theory, no hypothesis — only 
 an arrangement and array of the chief Scriptural assertions. 
 
 J 
 
464 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 And it amounts to this, viz., that in Christ's death as a sacrifice 
 for our sins, He 
 
 1. Suffered and - died., for sin, mour steadj a f ro ^sacri- 
 fice: that his were the vicarious, substituted sufferings of a 
 representative ; 
 
 2. — under the law, to answer the ends of the law, in some 
 way, in our stead; 
 
 3. — injn;d£rj&jmi£^^ 
 
 4. — which was done by his substituted sufferings, death, 
 obedience ; 
 
 5. — and which had further the effect, of^a.pxppilia^gn, de- 
 claring God's righteousness and reconciling man to God. 
 
 CHAPTEK V. < v _/? " , ^-- 
 
 "*—- ^ — 
 
 THE THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 Proposition. The different (imperfe c t) theories of C hrist's 
 atoning work give di fferent aspects and relations of that work, 
 and are true in these aspects, while false in the implication or 
 assertion that these give the only or the ultimate point of view. 
 
 Classes of Theories. 
 
 1. Those which define the atonement ultimately by its in* 
 fluence in bringing niaa.in.to_a aje^Ky^a-reg ene ra te. stale. 
 
 2. Those which affirm that the essence of the atonement con- 
 sists in the direct satisfaction of distributive justice. 
 
 3. The governmental theory: The atonement is a satisfaction 
 of general justice — in the sense of expediency and Utilitarian- 
 ism—having respect to happiness. 
 
 4. Those which affirm that it consists in the satisfasti oii of 
 general justice — as holiness — and that it incidentally satisfies 
 distributive justice. <uJu^ y\~ - V ^ _ v w- ^ ' * ' i - ** 
 
 J § 1. Theories which define the Atonement ultimately by its In* 
 - Auence on Man, in bringing to a New Life, 
 ^' * I.— Christ's atonement consists in so setting forth, by exam 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 465 
 
 pie and instructions, the purity and excellency of the law, t hat 
 sinners are thereby moved to repentance and obedience. 
 
 Christ did this: this was necessary to the atonement: a high 
 moral end was answered by it. But the atonement did not con- 
 sist in this. 
 
 1. Th is fai ls to account for the emphasis laid on Christ's 
 death and sufferings. 
 
 2. It is mcons^ftent with the representation of his dying for 
 us, in our stead and for our sins: in short, ^j^Jj^JJ^^^^gg^of 
 g&fijififie. 
 
 3. It i s inconsistent with t he included idea, that forgivenes s 
 of sins is procxired by_and throughjghrist. 
 
 4. Christ's example and instruction are never said to redeem 
 and save us: Christ h imself saves us by his, atoning work : the 
 stress of Scripture is not on that, but on this: Scripture says less 
 of his life than of his death, in this relation. 
 
 II. — The the ory that the atonementjs a s ymbolical^ out ward 
 exhibition of what occurs in each man, in^ turning to God. 
 (Kant, McLeod Campbell, in part.) 
 
 III. — r Christ's atonement, is defined ultimately with respect 
 to rege neration, and it consisted in this: by his Incarnation, He 
 brought in a new life — a divine-humanity — which is i mparled 
 to believers in^re^ner^JiaiL Suffering is incidental, and a 
 necessary incident to, an I^rnaiio^^^M^ 
 -qffl r . ld. The world is arrayed against Him, and He suffers in 
 soul and in body, because it could not be otherwise with such 
 antagonisms. So Coleridge 1 and others substantially. 
 
 1 Bobertson resolves the Atonement into a work of love. This law of life and 
 love was adopted consciously by Christ. Christ became voluntarily submissive 
 to this law of suffering. What Christ suffered was the suffering inflicted on Him 
 by sin because He was opposing it. Bushnell Bays, Christ by the law of love was 
 bound to do what He did. Coleridge, however, asserts a Godward as well as a man- 
 ward aspect, says that the Godward side is the essence of the Atonement, but that 
 it "is a spiritual and transcendent mystery which passeth all understanding." 
 Manward, the effect is, regeneration, being born anew: Christ is a quickening, life- 
 giving Spirit: there are four metaphors of this (compare BushnelTs "altar-forms 1 '): 
 sin-offering, reconciliation, debt, ransom; all of which describe the effect, not the 
 nature, of the Atonement. McLeod Campbell: The Atonement is "the vicarious 
 confession of sins:" "To Christ alone Death had its perfect meaning as tha 
 wages of sin— for in Him alone was there full entrance into the mind of God tow- 
 ards sin." Bothe has a peculiar theory. 
 
466 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 1. This theory is true in respect to one effect of the Incarna« 
 tion, viz., regeneration. 
 
 2. It is false, in denying the whole sacrificial chara oter of 
 Christ's mediation. 
 
 3. It is false, in making the death, and _suJfejcmg^,of jGkjaet 
 merely incidental. Scripture makes these necessary and the 
 height of his work. 
 
 4. It is false^Jn making the source of these, sufferings to be 
 the sinfulness and rage of man: Scripture represents them, in 
 part, as from God. 
 
 5. The theory thus fails to explain the Scriptural positions 
 exhibited in the preceding chapter. 
 
 6. It is not a theory of the Atonement, but of regeneration 
 as connected with the Incarnation: it resolves the proper wort 
 of the Spirit into the work of Christ; explains the nature of that 
 work by one of its remote effects — as if one should explain the 
 sun's rays by the processes of germination through heat. 
 
 § 2. Theories which put the Essence of the Atonement in Satis- 
 faction to Distributive Justice. 
 
 L — The Mercantile or Quid pro quo Theory. The fundamental 
 image here is that of a debt and its satisfaction. The theory 
 asserts the strictes t pers onaj^gu^sjbjJaJLi^ It embraces the fol- 
 lowing points: 
 
 1. Christ is the federal Hea<J of 'the elect. 
 
 2. He took their la;w-place, their, place under thejaw. 
 
 3. Sometimes it is said that He became really and personally 
 a sinner. 
 
 4. He paid the debt of the elect, by suffering just what dis- 
 tributive justice demanded*of them. 
 
 5. He obeyed, in the same personal, distributive sense, the 
 law, for the elect. 
 
 6. So that the merits of his active and passive obedience are 
 directly imputed to the elect, over whom the law has no claims. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 (a.) Very few hold the theory in this extreme form. 
 
 (b.) It is thoroughly antinomiap. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 467 
 
 (c.) It is inconsistent with proper pardon and grace. All is 
 legal. 
 
 (d.) Such a substitution in the way of strict distributive jus- 
 tice is morally impossible . 
 
 (e.) nhriat. did not, anrj.c.Qu.ld not__Buffer the penalty as a sin. 
 ner does, for He was not a sinner, and could not have remorse, 
 neither did He undergo eternal death. 
 
 (/.) Upon this theory, the Atonement is not something ' sub * 
 ^i&jgfec j-jfo r the deserved penalty of the individual, but simply 
 thesufferin g of tha^penalty Jb y^a^ot her. 1 
 
 II. — The modified satisfaction theory. This is the satisfac- 
 tion theory with its objectionable features removed. It reduces 
 to general statements what is particular in the mercantile theory 
 It disregards the distinction between distributive and public ius- 
 
 ta I - , -7 . i I ■■■I ■ ■!■ — r T | | 
 
 tice. It insists, most properly, that the atonement is a proceed- 
 ing under the divine law: not a device outside of the law, to 
 exert moral influence, or uphold the authority of government. 
 It has respect to law and to the ethical nature of God, which is 
 the source of law, and so it meets the needs of the ethical na- 
 ture of man. 
 
 This theory maintains that Christ's satisfaction was 
 
 1. Legal: rendered to the law and justice of God. 
 
 2. Complete, a dequate : it had an intrinsic value and suffi- 
 
 ■■Mmri"*""'"""*'""" 1 "' ' '* 
 
 ciency to the end, i. e., to the propitiation of the ethical nature 
 of God, and meeting the law's demands. 
 
 3. That it consisted in the perfect obedience and the suffer- 
 ingsofhis whole life. 
 
 4. That it was strictly vicarious for us and our redemption 
 — was not at any point exclusively for himself. 
 
 1 Anselm was the chief advocate of the satisfaction theory. He considered the 
 last ground of the Atonement to be the divine justice requiring an i nfini te equiv- 
 alent for the infinite guilt of sin,— that there was a necessity for it founded in the 
 infinite nature of God. Abelard. , on the other hand, maintained that the Atone- 
 ment exhibits the free grace of God, which, by kindling love in the breast of man, 
 blots out sin, and with sin its guilt. Baur, VersOhnungsl. 195. His view, as ex- 
 pounded by Aquinas in contrast with Duns Scohis (Redemption not connected with 
 the sufferings of Christ ex insito valore, sed ex divina acceptilat'ione), was main- 
 tained bv the Reformers, and afterwards the mercantile form of the theory was 
 developed. 
 
468 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 5. But the penalty of the law cannot be met as its preceptive 
 demands can. What we owed to the precept was of debt, and it 
 makes no difference who pays a debt, whether the debtor or some 
 one else, — no difference whether we obeyed or Christ for us. What 
 his obedience merited, viewed as rendering what the law demands 
 in respect to conformity, is paid. But the penalty for disobedience 
 cannot be settled by anybody. Distributive justice forbids. The 
 demandjsjaptpnly fora _penaltyjmt tb&Ltbe guilty pej^aa^aUa) 1 
 bear it. How then are we to bring Christ's substituted sufferings 
 under the strictest idea of distributive justice, and show that the 
 law is satisfied in its demand for the execution of the penalty? 
 The theory virtually says, This cannot be done : there must be here 
 ^relaxation of the "law."TEe Sovereign Lawgiver can graciously 
 accept what He sees 1 to be of equivalent value to the honor 
 of the law and the satisfaction of his own ethical nature. Thus 
 antinomianism is avoided. As the Lawgiver is not bound to 
 accept the substitute for penalty as He would be the payment 
 for debt, He may prescribe what terms of acceptance He pleases. 
 The claim of law is not satisfied until the conditions on which 
 the Lawgiver' accepts "substitution are complied with: hence, 
 not until faith and repentance. Moreover, upon faith and re- 
 pentance "parcfon is given, and the believer is brought into a 
 justified state. 
 
 Remark: 
 
 It is doubtful whether the forms of statement of the mercan- 
 tile or extreme satisfaction theory should be retained when so 
 much of its substance has been abandoned. The theory insists 
 that Christ made satisfaction to the law or justice of God, fill- 1 
 ) filling in our behalf all that the law required in order to accept- 
 ance; further, that it is necessary to punish sin in the person 
 -of the offender; and says that this is the only view of divine^ 
 yustice which can be held.\ Yet it also adopts the statement that 
 penalty does not designate either the nature or degree of suffer- 
 ings, but the kind, and explains that it is the design of the suf- 
 
 1 [He does see the equivalent value. Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines (Bev. Ed.), 
 4=14, gives a careful statement: Christ " suffered precisely that kind and degree and 
 duration of pain which divine wisdom, interpreting divine justice, required in a 
 divine person suffering vicariously the penalty of human sin."] 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 469 
 
 ferings — their relation to the law of God — which makes them 
 penal. In this the theory is right, but in putting the matter 
 thus, it makes God's justice to be something other than what is 
 strictly distributive. It brings into view the ends of the law, 
 the deiign of the penalty. In securing that through the sub- 
 stituted death of Christ, the design of the death denounced by 
 the law upon sinners shall be fully attained, God's essential jus- 
 tice is satisfied; but the strictest distributive justice is not sat- 
 isfied, seeing that as regards that, " the law is relaxed." The 
 theory is involved in a degree of confusion by insisting that 
 there are only two positions with regard to the divine justice, 
 that of distributive justice and the governmental view — which 
 is made to have respect to expediency, to happiness. Thus 
 it is said, or implied, that the whole of real, essential justice is 
 seen in distributive justice. 
 
 § 3. Theories which assert thai the Atonement consists in the Sat- 
 isfaction of General Justice, viewing this as having reference to 
 happiness or expediency, in maintaining the authority of the di- 
 vine government. 
 
 The peculiarity of this class of theories is, the assertion that 
 the Atonement meets certain exigencies of moral government, 
 in distinction from satisfying laio. Law is understood in the in- 
 dividual, personal sense, exclusively. 
 
 I.— The atonement is designed to produce a moral impres- 
 sion, not on each individual, but on the universe, — to be a sub- 
 stitute for punishment, — to honor, not satisfy, the law, — to set 
 forth the truths that God is holy and must manifest his holi- 
 ness, — to exhibit his holiness and hatred of sin. In Grotius, De 
 Satisfactione, against Socinus, the Atonement is viewed as de- 
 signed to secure certain governmental — not legal — ends. 1 The 
 Arrainian position: The Atonement is designed to make it consist- 
 ent to offer salvation on easier terms — terms of "evangelical 
 obedience" — there is no proper satisfaction. 
 
 This is usually, now, associated with the expediency or happi- 
 ness theories of ethics. (See II.) 
 
 1 Cf. in Bib. Sac. , April, '52, from Batir. Grotius retains orthodox phraseology, 
 but is claimed on the Socinian side (Bib. Fr. Pol.). 
 
470 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 SemarJcs: 
 
 1. The theory denies: (a.) That satisfaction is rendered to, 
 or made under, the divine law, in any form or way; (b.) That sin 
 deserves punishment. 1 
 
 2. The theory fails: (a.) To give a legitimate sense to Priest- 
 hood, Sacrifice : says, they are figurative ; (6.) To show how Christ's 
 sufferings and death manifest God's love of holiness and hatred 
 of sin; (c.) To give a satisfactory account of justification. 
 
 3. It is not a theory: it is a mere assertion of the facts of the 
 case, in an unsatisfactory form. 
 
 II. — The proper governmental theory. 2 
 
 " Justice ... is ... a benevolent disposition on his [God'sj 
 part to maintain, by the requisite means, his authority as the 
 necessary condition of the highest happiness of his kingdom." 8 
 "Atoning justice" "involves a particular disposition to maintain 
 his authority by means of an atonement." 4 
 
 Remarks: 
 
 1. This rests on the happiness, expediency theory of morals. 
 
 2. God's authority, as the Moral Governor, is maintained by 
 legal sanctions: but how that authority is maintained by an 
 Atonement is not shown. 
 
 3. The atonement, upon this view, has respect to others, but 
 not to God; it is designed to maintain authority for the good, 
 t. 6., the happiness, of the universe. 
 
 § 4. The Atonement, while it indirectly satisfies Distributive Jus* 
 tice, does not consist in this: it consists in satisfying the Demands of 
 Public Justice, meaning by that the divine holiness or the holi- 
 ness of the law, i. e., what the divine holiness sets before itself 
 as the chief end of the universe, or that which is the end of the 
 requirement of the law. 
 
 In the statements which follow, it is not proposed to give a 
 
 1 Not that it is not intrinsically odious and ill-deserving, but if governmental 
 reasons do not require its punishment, there is no necessity of punishing. 
 
 2 X e. , as that term has been employed in the theological controversies of thia 
 country. 
 
 a Dr. N. W. Taylor, Lectures, ii. 282. 
 4 Th_. ii. 283. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 471 
 
 complete theory of the Atonement, but to offer some hints which 
 may show what the extreme theories are, and which may sug- 
 gest some points of agreement. 
 
 I. — Moral Government and Moral Law cannot properly be 
 sundered here. 
 
 In the popular and even in the scholastic discussions, the 
 Law of God is often taken and defined, solely from and in view 
 of its relations to, and its demands on, individuals, and their 
 personal merit and demerit — that is, its whole scope is said to 
 be fulfilled, its end reached, by the infliction of penalty on the 
 disobedient, or the conferring of reward on the obedient. The 
 law — taken in this sense — it is said, must be fulfilled to the 
 letter. On this basis, and with these definitions, many have 
 said, In the Atonement the demands of law are not and cannot 
 be satisfied strictly: the Atonement is not a legal, transaction. 
 Then, because it is seen that if the whole of moral government 
 and moral law is simply the carrying out of distributive justice, 
 the Atonement, which is substitutionary, cannot be brought 
 under such government and law, ground has often been taken 
 which logically results in the position that the Atonement is 
 not under moral government or law at all. Adhering to the 
 position that the whole of moral government is in and by moral 
 law, addressed to each individual's conscience and will, many 
 who would be classed with the " New Schools " of American 
 theology have involved themselves in the position, that while 
 the atonement is an expedient of moral government, while it 
 manifests God's holiness and hatred of sin, it is nevertheless a 
 transaction out of the strictly moral administration of God. It 
 has been said that "the satisfaction of divine justice is merely 
 an established phrase," and that the whole theory of the Atone- 
 ment is that "it satisfies general justice," in the sense that it is 
 the expression of, and provides for giving realization to, God's 
 disposition to secure the highest and purest happiness of the 
 universe. 
 
 In opposition to this the points to be maintained are: (a.) The 
 Atonement is under moral government and under moral law. 
 (6.) A moral government is one which is administered by moral 
 
472 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 law. Moral government is government by moral law. (c.) As 
 there is no procedure on the part of God in his dealings with 
 his intelligent universe that does not come within his moral 
 government— least of all would the greatest of transactions, the 
 Atoning Sacrifice of his Son. (d.) His moral law, which is the 
 expression of what his holiness demands, both in the universe 
 as a whole and in each individual, is* in force at every point 
 of his government, and must be met and (1 satisfied " in its re- 
 quirements. 
 
 II. — But Moral Law has two main ends. 
 
 1. To secure the supremacy of holiness — of holy love 1 — in 
 the universe; this is the generic end. 
 
 2. To furnish the rule for individuals — moral agents — exact- 
 ing conformity to that generic end. 2 This rule is carried out 
 in distributive justice, in rendering to each according to his deeds. 
 Here, only personal obedience with the accompaniment of re- 
 ward, and disobedience, with penalty, can be considered. If it 
 is insisted that the Atonement satisfies, directly, the law and 
 justice of God, in this sense, we are driven either to Anti- 
 aomianism or to "a relaxation " of the demands of law, such as 
 we have in the modified satisfaction theory. 
 
 3. Distributive Justice is subservient to General or Public 
 Justice : only it must always be understood that general justice 
 is the real, essential justice of God, that which requires the su- 
 premacy of holiness in the universe, and not merely that which 
 seeks to procure the greatest happiness. 
 
 4. Hence, if General Justice is fully, directly, gloriously sat- 
 isfied, Distributive Justice is really and entirely, though inci- 
 dentally, satisfied. 
 
 III. — Of the Divine Holiness as related to the Divine Law. 
 
 1. The divine law is an expression of the divine holiness: 
 the securing and maintaining of that holiness is the end of the 
 divine government; the law is given to secure that end: all 
 other divine procedures tend to that end. 
 
 Divine holiness is a mode of the divine love: viz., Love 
 
 1 See Lectures on tlie Nature of True Virtue. 
 
 2 " Be ye holy, for I am holy." 
 
THE BEDEMPTION ITSELF. 473 
 
 seeks to communicate all good : holiness is, and seeks the 
 highest moral good = rectitude, of moral beings. Divine love 
 is, supremely, love of holiness — God's own and that of all 
 others. 
 
 2. To secure this end, viz., manifesting and establishing the 
 divine holiness, the law has its sanctions, chiefly rewards and 
 penalties. These are not its ends, but means to its end. To es- 
 tablish and maintain holiness — moral rectitude — is the final end 
 or object of the divine law, is its grand, ultimate end. In this 
 is the highest good of rational and moral beings. 
 
 The law demands personal obedience, and punishes dis- 
 obedience, in order to holiness. The punishment of the individ- 
 ual cannot be the final object of the divine government, the divine 
 holiness: it is final in the case of the impenitent, as far as their 
 destiny is concerned, but in relation to God, it is not an absolute 
 end, but a mode of manifesting the divine holiness. 
 
 3. Hence, in this discussion, holiness, moral government, and 
 law are three modes of the same thing: the law having a two- 
 fold end in view, or, as we may say, the same end undei a 
 two-fold aspect: the first great end, to manifest and establish 
 the divine holiness ; the second, a subordinate means thereto, the 
 personal demands on individuals — of their obedience, with re- 
 ward — or if disobedient, of their righteous punishment. 
 
 4. Hence, too, the justice which is satisfied in the Atonement 
 cannot be of a different kind from justice in general: it is the 
 true, holy justice of God, that which requires the maintenance 
 of the supremacy of holiness. It cannot be resolved into ex- 
 pediency, nor into Utilitarianism, nor into the good of the whole 
 (as happiness) ; but it is that justice which the Law is designed 
 to enthrone. 
 
 IV. — The Kelation of Christ's Atonement to the End of the 
 Law. 
 
 1. Atonement rests generally on the idea of mediation : its 
 most general aspect is that of a mediation between God and 
 man. The whole mystery of the Incarnation is involved. 
 
 2. It rests on the idea of substitution — in a moral sense: 
 
174 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 under God's moral government, one, such a One, may stand 
 and transact for, instead of, others. Here is the mystery of 
 Redemption by God. If it is not a transaction under moral 
 government, there is no sense in it: if it is not essentially moral, 
 a part of moral administration — then what is it ? And if the 
 whole of moral government be in and by law, then the Atone- 
 ment must be under the law. And if the whole of moral gov- 
 ernment is not by and through law — what is moral government ? * 
 
 3. The Atonement being thus a substitution, from the very 
 nature of the case it is something done and secured under the 
 law — something which is instead of, which takes the place of, 
 what the sinner deserved. This is the very idea of substitution, 
 that not the thing itself is presented, but something else — some- 
 thing which answers the same purpose. 
 
 As soon, therefore, as terms are defined, it is impossible to 
 call the Atonement a matter of pure distributive justice, because 
 that has respect ultimately and solely to personal desert — merit 
 and demerit. (Yet, as we have urged, distributive justice is 
 satisfied in the sense that all the ends which it was intended to 
 secure are met: for the believer, all penal claims are cancelled.) 
 
 But it does not follow from this that the Atonement is not a 
 proper transaction under the divine moral government, under 
 moral law, a manifestation of the demands of the divine holiness 
 and justice — unless all these terms are restricted to the narrow 
 sense of distributive justice. 
 
 That the Atonement is under God's moral government no 
 one will contest, however some may take positions which might 
 lead logically to the denial of it. That moral government is m 
 and by moral law, is certainly true and undeniable. So the 
 Atonement must be under the law, and that, too, has been 
 
 1 [There ia, however, this statement made elsewhere by the author: Moral gov- 
 ernment is to be taken not in the sense of an administration by pure law, but in 
 the sense of— all the means and instrumentalities which are used to secure the 
 ends of that government. "Pure law," here, evidently means: law as the pub- 
 lished rule of action with its sanctions, issuing in strict distributive justice. In 
 the text, "law" rather means: the whole requirement of the divine holiness, cov- 
 ering aU procedures in God's moral government.] 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 475 
 
 proved from Scripture. That it was not under the law in the 
 sense of distributive justice, seems plain: it cannot be, if the 
 standard definitions of that justice be adhered to. What remains 
 then? It is necessary to say — either, that it is out ot the moral 
 sphere altogether — or else, that it is a transaction which answers 
 the same grand ends as are intended to be answered by distrib- 
 utive justice, but in a different way. 
 
 4. What, then, are the ends answered by distributive justice, 
 and how does the sacrifice made by Christ secure these ends? 
 
 (a.) The ends answered by distributive justice are: the sus- 
 taining and showing God's supreme regard to holiness, which 
 He does by demanding the obedience, and punishing the dis- 
 obedience, of each and all his moral subjects. Punishment, i. e., 
 suffering for transgression, is demanded on two grounds: (1) as 
 the just desert of personal transgression ; (2) to answer the ends 
 of public justice: penalty relates to both: Atonement has respect 
 not to the first, but to the second. 
 
 (6.) Christ, in his atoning work, answers these same ends': 
 (1) As He is our Mediator — as by his Incarnation, life, and death, 
 He stands and is in our stead, instead of the whole race; (2) 
 More specifically, as, standing in our stead, in our place, under 
 the law, for us, He obeyed and suffered in our stead; (3) Still 
 more specifically, as his obedience and death in our stead answer 
 the ends of public justice — show God's supreme love of holiness 
 and hatred of sin — since it is thus manifest that only a perfect 
 obedience and suffering for disobedience can answer the ends of 
 the divine government. That is, the obedience of each and all 
 individuals is demanded, in order to the satisfaction of the 
 divine holiness. Instead of this, we having failed in obedience, 
 and being subject to penalty, Christ in our stead, in stead of the 
 demands on each and all, does and suffers what answers the 
 same, the identical ends. What He did and suffered is not the 
 same in kind or degree, but the same in essence, nature, and in 
 its relation to the end or design of the divine government or 
 law. — Are Christ's sufferings penalty, then? — Not in the sense 
 that distributive justice was meted out to Him, but in the wider 
 
47 6 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 sense, in which penalty includes suffering under the law, to 
 show God's displeasure at sin — in the sense in which suffering 
 is demanded to answer the ends of public justice, which is 
 holiness. 
 
 V. — Yet while making these statements as demanded by the 
 Scriptures, and as not against reason, we must still say, that 
 there is a background of mystery in the Atonement, as well as in 
 the Incarnation, and in the Atonement in connection with the 
 Incarnation, which no man can fully fathom, which has not been, 
 and was not meant to be, fully revealed. 
 
 The view given above answers the question, what is the 
 relation between what Christ did and the demands of holiness, 
 which the mere governmental view does not: it does not answer 
 the ultimate metaphysical question, how? 
 
 So to speak, the whole ontology and physiology of the sys- 
 tem of Redemption is not disclosed. It is a theological rather 
 than an ethical system : it is religious — a system of divine re- 
 alities — up to which our theories of moral government do not 
 reach. It is not a merely moral government at all ; ' it is that, 
 and more, profoundly more. 
 
 VI. — In general we may say this: Partial theories of the 
 Atonement give different aspects of the comprehensive truth. 
 
 1. The Atonement of Christ does produce the highest sub- 
 jective moral impression: but the ground of the impression is, 
 that we see in it our guilt and the divine holiness; this is the 
 source of the impressiveness. 
 
 2. It also has one of its ends in our regeneration: but it 
 shows how, in regeneration, sin and guilt are taken away, and 
 God's favor is insured. Regeneration is grounded in our union 
 with Christ. The giving of new life is grounded in the Incar- 
 nation and the Atonement. 
 
 1 [The author elsewhere gives it as his judgment, that an ethical system like 
 that which Edwards had in view, covering all the points of the revealed system, 
 would make ethics and theology to be identical, and he asserts, as is seen in this 
 discussion, that in such a large sense, the divine government is moral throughout. 
 The statement in the text must be taken to mean, that the divine government ia 
 not to be measured and judged in all its scope by any human theory of ethics: 
 that it all comes, in a divinely perfect way, under the ultimate idea of Bight, 
 Would be Btrenuously asserted by him.] 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 477 
 
 3. It also symbolizes the inward transaction — the death to 
 sin and living unto God — in affecting and eloquent language: 
 but the essence of that transaction is in the reconciliation of the 
 soul, its pardon, justification; and that the Atonement sets forth. 
 
 4. A moral impression is made upon the universe, by what 
 Christ does, which God accepts: but the Atonement gives also 
 the means by which this impi'ession is produced. 
 
 5. The Atonement ''renders it consistent for God to pardon 
 sin and bestow infinite blessings upon those who had committed 
 sin." It "satisfies general justice " in the sense of benevolence: 
 it secures the highest "good" of the universe, viewed as true 
 happiness as well as holiness. But the true theory points out 
 the specific mode: it shows the ligament between the two things 
 — sacrifice and pardon. 
 
 6. Also, the view we have indicated shows that God's justice 
 is satisfied. Moreover, all his other attributes are satisfied, in 
 the sense of having here the most glorious exercise and mani- 
 festation. The view shows how distributive justice is satisfied, 
 while it lets grace abound. 
 
 7. It allows fully, for pardon, for grace, to each. Grace pro- 
 vided the way. Each sinner who comes to Christ is pardoned 
 in and through grace. Distributive justice might still take its 
 course: to all out of Christ, it does: it is satisfied only for those 
 in Christ. 
 
 8. It is a view reconcilable with the offers of salvation to all. 
 
 9. It does not make it obligatory to save any but believers, 
 and the obligation to them is of grace. 1 
 
 10. Universalism is not in it: for the simple reason, that it 
 makes union with Christ necessary to salvation. 
 
 Note. — The real difference between the two chief parties to the controversy on 
 this matter is on these points: (1) Is distributive justice the whole of the justice, 
 the law, the holiness, the moral government of God, in relation to man ? (2) Is 
 the end of the divine government holiness or happiness? Or, is it holiness or 
 —something else ? In other words, Does general justice (= public justice, real, 
 essential justice) have ultimate respect to holiness or happiness? If general 
 justice is taken to be, essentially, holiness, and to have supreme respect to that, 
 there is no need of controversy. 
 
 ' The obligation is contracted through grace : the covenant is a gracious "prom 
 iso suspended upon conditions." 
 
478 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 § 1. Statement of ^^jQmstion. 
 
 It is: Did Christ die for all men or onl^ for the elect j Some 
 who contend for the latter position difFer among themselves: a 
 part insisting that the sufficiency and efficiency of the Atone- 
 ment are identical, that Christ suffered what the elect deserved 
 and only that: others taking the ground that the Atonement 
 is sufficient for all, yet made only for the elect, that only the 
 provision for them was in God's design, that the sufficiency for 
 others is simply incidental. There are also differences among 
 the advocates of a General Atonement. Lutherans : Christ died 
 to make such satisfaction that God could offer salvation to all. 
 Election is denied. Armenians: that God might offer salvation 
 to all on the ground of a less strict obedience. This also denies 
 election. Others: to prevent the evils of mere pardon, to sustain 
 the authority of a beneficent government. This allows election. 
 
 There may be points of agreement: 
 
 (1) As to the nature of the Atonement; (2) As to its suffi- 
 ciency and universal applicability; (3) As to its actual applica- 
 tion — to believers only, or, leaving out of view Lutherans and 
 Arminians, — to the elect only. 
 
 To the question, then, Did Christ come into the world, suffer 
 and die, solely for the elect? the theory of Limited Atonement 
 replies: That was the sole design: all other objects effected 
 thereby are not of the design, but incidental; the truth of Gen- 
 eral Atonement says: The Atonement made by Christ is made 
 for all mankind, is such in nature and design, that God can save 
 all men, consistently with the demands of holiness, on condition 
 of faith and repentance. 
 
 Explanations: 
 
 1. The distinction is to be made between Atonement and 
 Hedemption. Atonement is the provision. 
 
 2. The design of the Atonement was toja ve the e lect but not 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 479 
 
 merely to save them ; it was also designed fr o impart some bless- 
 inffs to the whole world, and to jnake.the,offer..of .salvation and 
 the duty of accepting Christ urgent-upon.alL who- hear. 
 
 3. Not that it was actually designed to be applied to all, but 
 to some. 
 
 4 Not that it is consistent with all the interests of the divine 
 government for God actually to save all, but — consistent with 
 the demands of penal justice. 
 
 5. The Atonement, as such, does not save any. 
 
 § 2. Proof of General Atonement 4 , j, , j^ ^^^^^l&i 
 
 1. The key -passage is 1 Tim. iv. 10. p,t*.W-^ ~t&^ •- - 
 
 2. God offers salvation to all men: therefore it has been pro- 
 vided for all. / ^ , ftA/V-tf ■ <:V ^ ■ 
 
 Isa. xlv, 22; lv. 1-3; Matt. xi. 28-30; Rev. iii. 20; xxii. 17. 
 It is sometimes said that the meaning is: "Some among all 
 classes" or "in all lands." But (a.) this is an unscriptural dis- 
 tinction; (b.) we do not know that the offer, in the sense of "ef- 
 fectual calling," is made to "some in all" these cases: (c.) the 
 sincerity of God is here at stake: He offers to all a salvation 
 which He has not provided for all. v^ ( 
 
 S- ^B^skJ.g.uilt is ascribed to those who reject the atonement. 
 
 Matt xxiii. 37; Luke xiv. 17; John iii. 19; Acts vii. 51. 
 
 4 Scripture declares the Atonement to be for all. 
 
 John i. 29; iii. 17; xii. 47: lJTim. ii 6; 2 Cor. v. 14, 15; 
 Heb. ii. 9; 1 John ii. 2. ^ ' "' > 1 ' <*-«lf * -*--*-- /— 
 
 5. An_men j^ce jve^some benefits from the atonement 
 (a.) The offer of eternal life, to many non-elect <« 
 (6.) The knowledge of the divine plan and ways, 
 (c.) The continuance of probation and many temporal bless- 
 ings. 
 
 6. There is an argument for General Atonement — ex concessis. 
 It is conceded to be " sufficient" for all: then it was designed 
 
 to be so: then, it is consistent for God to offer — and if to offer, 
 then to grant, on conditions. To the question, " Is it sufficient 
 then for fallen angels ? " the obvious reply is, Christ did not come 
 for them. 
 
480 , : „ &** C CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. ^{^^ Jt^-'' T/„ 
 \ [„-' '' t l t -i - £«-*-_* ,y • -^ *-£/ -^v 
 
 , r. 7. Some special arguments. <f~v 
 
 (1) The parallel between Adam and Christ, Rom. v. 18 
 
 (2) Christ lays down His life for some not saved. Kom. xiv. 15 ; 
 1 Cor. viii. 11; Heb. x. 29; 2 Pet. ii. 1. 
 
 (3) From the connection of truths, (a.) From the view it 
 gives of the glorious character of the divine government. God, 
 the God of grace, (b.) From the effects of the doctrine on men 
 ■ — the high moral influence, (c.) From the view it gives of the 
 final condemnation of the lost. God's mercy provided a way: 
 they refuse: their condemnation is just — resisting grace, (d.) 
 Christ's relations to the universe are consistent only with General 
 Atonement. 
 
 § 3. Objections to General Atonement. 
 
 1. It supposes different and inconsistent purposes in God. 
 — Not so : one purpose is, to make the salvation of all possi- 
 ble; another is, to save some; what inconsistency ? 
 
 2. God makes provision for an end, which He determines 
 never to effect. 
 
 — Not so : God makes provision to make the salvation of all 
 men possible. 
 
 3. It is inconsistent with the doctrine of election. 
 
 — Not, if election is on this basis. The condemnation at 
 least of some non-elect is, in part, on the ground of refusal. 
 
 4 The divine holiness demands the salvation of all for whom 
 provision is made. 
 
 — Not if other good reasons forbid. 
 
 5. The Scripture says, Christ died to save his people. 
 
 ^ — It also says, Christ died for the whole world. Christ's special 
 design does not exclude a more general design. To say, Christ 
 came to save, redeem, deliver, sanctify his people, is most 
 certainly true, but is, in this argument, a petitio principii; it 
 assumes that Christ in his work had only one design. The doc- 
 trine of General Atonement does not assert that the purpose of 
 God in Christ's death had equal respect to the elect and the non* 
 elect, in the sense that God intended to apply it equally. 
 
 6. From the union of Christ and his people. All that Christ 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 481 
 
 did, it is said, He did for those who are united to Him by 
 faith. 
 
 This is most true, but is irrelevant here. The doctrine of 
 General Atonement does not assert that all that Christ did 
 and does. He does for all mankind. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE INTERCESSION OF CHRIST 
 
 Here we make the transition to the Third main Division ot 
 Theology. The Intercession of Christ has both a Priestly and a 
 Royal side. 
 
 I. — The general view: the super-historical 1 relation of Christ 
 to the world. 
 
 When earthly heroes, patriots, statesmen, poets, orators, phi- 
 losophers, philanthropists, and even saints pass away, from the 
 scenes of their wars, their sacrifices, their counsels, their elo- 
 quence, their wisdom, their beneficence, or their spiritual con 
 flicts, they leave behind them, it may be, a lasting memory and 
 an imperishable renown; but they themselves are taken away 
 from all conscious and direct and living intercourse even with 
 their dearest friends and- their most devoted adherents. Imagi- 
 nation and memory may linger upon their words; their praises 
 may be rehearsed in eulogies and song; their image may be 
 recalled by sculpture, by painting, and in poetry; their deeds 
 may be transmitted from sire to son in a long and grateful tra- 
 dition; their lives may even be depicted as an embodiment and 
 summary of the whole century in which they lived, and thus- 
 handed down from generation to generation. But their living, 
 personal presence is neither felt nor known, unless it be in the 
 mere fancy of some materializing spiritualist, confounding the 
 fiction of a disordered imagination with the facts of a supernat- 
 ural sphere. 
 
 1 See Martensen, Dogm., p. 365. 
 
482 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 But in startling contrast with all others, we find that aj)e- 
 lief in the real and living presence of Christ, after his departure 
 from the world, remains the constant heritage of his church. 
 We come to Him daily, as to a Personal Friend, for succor, for 
 wisdom, and for strength. His Presence, at the right hand of 
 the Majesty on high, greets the eye of faith, as it looks upward. 
 In the hour of contest, of anguish, of death, we see that loving 
 eye, we lean upon that mighty arm. We have not an High 
 Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 
 Our Advocate is not deaf to our petitions. If any man sin, we 
 have an Advocate, a Paraclete, with the Father. In that He 
 suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are 
 tempted. He is able to save to the uttermost all that come 
 unto God by Him, seeing that He ever liveth to make interces- 
 sion for them. B etwee rr- 1 h e Ch ris tian_ an d death— the ..>yj*g e s 
 of sin— is the. diving L^liy. e yQJ^.bQtYggen,t^flhrigtian and God 
 is the divine Mediator: and who then shall lay anything to the 
 "cBarg'eof God's electTseeing it is Christ who maketh intercession 
 for them ? 
 
 It is this loving care and presence of the God-man, this con- 
 stant activity for his kingdom, which is denoted in Scripture 
 and handed down in the faith of the church, as his Intercession. 
 His work of Intercession is that of a King to whom our souls 
 have been committed, as well as that of a Priest by whom our 
 sins have been expiated. 
 
 II.— The Qualifications of Christ for this work. 
 
 His nature is allied to Go-d and knit with ours i& inseparable 
 bonds. 
 
 His sacrifice alone is the basis of his moving petitions. 
 
 His dignity gives them their authority. 
 
 By his rights they are made effectual. 
 
 Only He is qualified so to intercede, that his intercession 
 shall be always effectual, and for all, and for each thing that 
 He may ask. He alone, the only-begotten Son who is in the 
 bosom of the Father, knows the very mind of God, and knows 
 the Father as the Father knoweth Him. 
 
 He, the High Priest, holy, harmless, and undefined, can inter- 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 483 
 
 .cede ,with perfect holiness, so that no earthly desire shall mar 
 the purity of his request. 
 
 He^can stand before the eternal, holy Majesty, as Sponsor 
 and Advocate, having satisfied the divine justice, and thus 
 transferred the sovereignty of justice into a sovereignty of love. 
 
 His work of intercession can be coextensive with the race 
 and with the utmost stretch of history. He can intercede for 
 all men, in all times, for barbarian and Scythian, bond and free, 
 for the lettered and the rude, for the prince on his throne, for 
 the savage in his forest, for the patriarchs and prophets of the 
 old dispensation, for the apostles, martyrs, and heralds of the 
 new. His intercession is as eternal and unchangeable as the 
 priesthood on which it is based, and as the kingdom in which 
 his regal petitions are the sum of all other prayers, and give 
 their virtue to all other forms of interceding. He ever liveth 
 to make intercession. 
 
 There arises from all parts of the world, at the morning and 
 the evening, and through the labors of the day, a perpetual in- 
 cense of adoration and of petition; it contains the sum of the 
 deepest wants of the human race, in its fears and hopes, its 
 anguish and thankfulness; it is laden with sighs, with tears, 
 with penitence, with faith, with submission; the broken heart, 
 the bruised spirit, the stifled murmur, the ardent hope, the 
 haunting fear, the mother's darling wish, the child's simple 
 prayer: all the burdens of the soul, all wants and desires, no- 
 where else uttered, meet together in that sound of many voices, 
 which ascends into the ears of the Lord God of hosts. And 
 mingled with all these cravings and utterances is one other 
 voice, one other prayer, their symphony, their melody, their 
 accord — deeper than all these, tenderer than all these, mightier 
 than all these — the tones of One who knows us better than we 
 know ourselves, and who loves us better than we love ourselves 
 — and who brings all these myriad fragile petitions into one 
 prevalent intercession, purified by his own holiness, and the 
 hallowing power of his work. 
 
 II L— I n what does his Intercession consist ? 
 
 1. His Intercession, in its largest sense, may be said to con 
 
484 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 sist— -inall his agency, at the right hand of the Father, foi the 
 final and complete redemption of man. Whatever He does, on 
 the basis of his sacrifice, now and ever, in the way of mediation 
 between God and man, is comprised in this intercession, taken 
 in its fullest scope. It consists not in ^ wor ds alone, but also in 
 4a e 4tl : bis succor, his pity, his care, his love for each and all his 
 followers; his guardianship in the hour of temptation, his aid in our 
 spiritual conflicts, his grace imparted according to our need, the 
 balm of his consolation, his strength in our weakness, the answers 
 to all prayers put up in his name: all belong to, and make a part 
 of, his intercession. 
 
 2. We need not be embarrassed by the suggestion, that be- 
 cause He is one with God, therefore to talk of intercession is as 
 if we spoke of a man's interceding with himself. For even between 
 the divine Persons of the Trinity, there is doubtless converse as 
 well as community; communion as well as oneness; converse in 
 j&pught and reciprocity in love. Moreover, all these acts of in- 
 tercession are in Christ's human nature and in his mediatorial 
 office; they belong to Him as the God-man, and the federal head 
 of the race ; so that there is no more difficulty about conceiving 
 of the Intercession, than of the Incarnation, in connection with 
 the Divinity of Christ. 
 
 3. From its very nature the Intercession has a two-fold aspect 
 and relation; it looks both Godward and man ward; it is for us 
 and is unto God. It embraces in its comprehensive scope what- 
 ever pertains to the application of redemption. 1 Thereby our 
 imperfect prayers are made perfect; our daily transgressions 
 pardoned; our penitence is made available; our feeble desires 
 for holiness are enlivened; our faith is emboldened; our weak- 
 ness is strengthened; our darkness illumined; our righteousness 
 made blameless; our sanctification insured. And so, in this In- 
 tercession, we have a constant and living access to the Father, 
 by that new and living way. The mere sense of duty disquiets 
 us as we think of our sins; the power of philosophy reaches 
 
 1 Schneckenburger, Christologie, pp. 124, 129, thinks it would not embrace, 
 strictly speaking, the regeneration itself, but all that belongs to the perseverance 
 and sanctification of the children of God. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 485 
 
 chiefly to the discipline of the intellect; we may strive even for 
 sanctification, and if it is in our strength, the striving reveals to 
 us chiefly our sinfulness and weakness. But when we think of 
 Christ as a living and personal Intercessor, duty in Him becomes 
 persuasive, truth vivid to the heart, and sanctification a reality 
 and a power; we know then what He meant when He said, For 
 their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified 
 through the truth. ^,, ^^U^ ^ ^ ^U-i^l 
 
 IV. — How is Christ's Intercession conducted? <*>^ ^.V**^^' 
 
 1. According to Heb. viii. 1, and ix. 24, the eternal reality 
 of Christ's sacrifice is found in the procedures in heaven, and 
 not merely in the transactions, of earth. As a Priest, He offers 
 the sacrifice in the outer court, on this foot-stool of earth, and 
 then goes within, to the Holiest, into heaven itself, there to ap- 
 pear in our behalf before the face of the Father; and this is his 
 Intercession. There is one sacrifice, once for all ; yet also a con- 
 stant Interceder. 
 
 2. He intercedes as our High, Priest, and therefore still 
 clothed upon ^jvi|h_^sJLuman nature. In that very human 
 nature which allies Him with all of us, making Him our elder 
 brother, and the consummation and crown of humanity, — in that 
 human nature, spotless though fiercely tempted, holy though 
 weighed down by the burden of others' sins, victorious though 
 crushed by Jewish hatred and Pagan power and the devil's mal- 
 ice and wiles, most glorious when wearing the crown of thorns, 
 most triumphant when nailed to the accursed tree — in that very 
 nature, raised from the dead and ascended to the right hand 
 of the Majesty on high, He appears as our Advocate before 
 the Father's throne — the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world, making intercession for us. He is an everliving High 
 Priest, though exalted to rule and to reign. 
 
 3. The representation of Him as an, Advocate, is taken from 
 the forms of human tribunals, where the accused appears by his 
 attorney, who, it is supposed, can plead his cause better than He 
 can himself. We have an example of his Intercession in ^Q^£k 
 xviif where we see the objects which are sought, the grounds on 
 which they are asked for, and the confidence with which the pleas 
 
486 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 are made. The plea reaches its culmination in the utterance, 
 Father, I ivill 1 that they also whom thou hast given me be with 
 me where I am. Here the right which He has acquired and 
 which is most freely accorded in fulfilment of the eternal coun- 
 sel of the Father, comes into view; and here, too, He touches the 
 deepest and loftiest aspiration of the redeemed soul: to be with 
 Christ, to see his glory, to gaze upon the reality — the archetypes 
 — of all our hopes, the substance of our faith, the Person of our 
 Lord. 
 
 4 Does He, then, plead and ask in words, in speech — as we 
 do one to another? The only answer that can be given is that 
 He pleads in celestial places and with celestial speech. If it is 
 not like our speech, it is because it is better and truer; if it is not 
 in mortal tones, it is with immortal meaning: if not articulate 
 in the air, it is articulated in the very plan of God; if not ex- 
 pressed in sentences, it is wrought into the counsels of the Fa- 
 ther of all. 
 
 5. Does He plead minutely, for each and every need and 
 gracious blessing? We might ask in reply: Does God's provi- 
 dence feed the ravens; does divine beauty clothe the lilies; does 
 infinite wisdom number the very hairs of our head? And is 
 grace less careful than providence? Does redemption extend 
 to the whole man, and the whole life — to body, soul, and spirit; 
 who then will put limits to the prayers of our Great Advocate ? 
 
 6. Is his prayer limited by ours, repeating only what we utter? 
 This is to ask, Does Christ know us, only as we know ourselves? 
 Alas for us if this be so. He asks for what we need, and not for 
 what we vainly wish. We ask for prosperity, and our Advocate 
 asks that we may have prosperity through adversity. We ask 
 for more light, and He interprets our petition aright and implores 
 that we may be refined in the fire. We ask for day while it is 
 yet midnight, and He gives us not yet day but songs in the 
 night. 
 
 V. — The Fruits of his Intercession. 
 
 These are to be considered in the Third Division of Theology. 
 They consist of Justification, Kom. viii. 33, 34; the Adoption of 
 
 1 John xvii. 24, %e\oo. 
 
THE REDEMPTION ITSELF. 
 
 487 
 
 eons, Rom. viii. 15 ; the boldness of access to the throne of a holy 
 God, Heb. x. 19 ; the daily cleansing from sin, 1 John ii. 2 ; and 
 the whole direction of our affairs unto sanctification and com- 
 plete redemption, 1 Cor. i. 30. 
 
 SuimARY OF THE SECOND DIVISION AND TRANSITION TO THE THIRD. 
 
 We have seen in this Division, that the ancient history of 
 our race pointed to Christ, a nd the modern has received its law 
 from Him ; that the. insignia of divine power and the best human 
 influence attended his earthly career; that He has enlarged 
 and purified our views both of human nature and of God, and 
 of the intimate alliance between the two; that He was fitted as 
 God-man for the solutio n of the greatestjp^ob3^m_of our destiny, 
 and bv his death reconciled us to J&odj that, having cojjqaofij^d 
 death, He now, in his glo rified humanity, gives the most_bl e_sse d 
 
 Will*'!* 1 * ' _-.-.- I. ii ,— Jm— n ,,i n T i ii . mrl •/J—iD.,.. — ii in i mi i . . -»inWMWIia«Bf 
 
 and sure hopes^tp^jl^who^ trust in^. Jj[im, that they too shall be 
 like Him, and thus robs death of its sting and eternity of its 
 awful forebodings, delivering us from the fear even of our last 
 enemy. Jesus Christ, the God-man, is the center of a grand and 
 real economy which is within the world, and above the world, 
 and reaches out beyond the world; all the great points in the 
 history and destiny of the race are made to converge in Him, so 
 that the central truth of his Person is seen to be the center of 
 the whole divine economy. And thus it appears that the In- 
 carnation in its practical bearings is as wonderful as it is in its 
 inherent sublimity: for the most comprehensive of purposes is 
 thus seen to be vitally connected with the most comprehensive 
 of doctrines. These practical bearings are now to be considered 
 in the Third Division of the system. 
 
DIVISION THIRD. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 
 
DIVISION THIRD. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 We have divided Christian theology into three parts: The 
 Antecedents of Redemption; The Redemption Itself; The Con- 
 sequents of Redemption. But there is a better, a more Scriptural, 
 title for this last part, which we here adopt. And before pro- 
 ceeding to the outlines of discussion on the topics which belong 
 to this Division, we shall bring together some statements as to 
 the general nature of that Kingdom of God which Christ is carry- 
 ing forward according to the counsel and will of the Eternal 
 Father, and through the immediate agency of the Divine Spirit. 
 In this last part of theology, we are especially to emphasize the 
 Work of Christ applied by the Holy Spirit in bringing man anew 
 into the union with God which he has forfeited by sin. This 
 part contemplates God in Christ as renewing and sanctifying 
 man and bringing him into a new kingdom, through the work 
 of the Holy Spirit. The general underlying idea of this part of 
 the system of theology is that of a union between Christ and 
 the believer, through the work of the Holy Spirit. By the su- 
 pernatural influences of the Divine Spirit, man is united to Christ 
 and through Christ to God. The union between Christ and the 
 believer is the fundamental conception. 
 
 The whole of this Third Division would comprise three main 
 parts: I. The Union between Christ and the believer as effected 
 by the Holy Spirit; II. The Union between Christ and the 
 Church. The Doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments. 
 III. The Consummation of the Kingdom of Redemption in time 
 and eternity; or The Eschatology of the system. 
 
 Here we have come to the proper place for giving to the 
 
492 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Kingdom of God a fuller consideration than it has previously 
 had in these lectures. 
 
 This general position is to be affirmed and illustrated, in any 
 system of theology which undertakes to meet the wants and 
 questions of our times, viz., — that the Christian system gives us 
 the noblest and most complete and most animating view of what 
 man is and is to be ; and that in that system, and not out of it, 
 the great problems of human destiny are to find their solution. 
 And it does this in what is sublimely called the kingdom of God, 
 a kingdom in which the divine purposes of wisdom and love are 
 to be fulfilled, in which God and man are reconciled, in which 
 the true basis and bonds of a real brotherhood are found, a king- 
 dom in which all men are to be reconciled with each other, by 
 being united to the Father, through the Son and by the Holy 
 Spirit, so that heaven and earth are joined in entire fellowship. 
 
 In contrast with schemes of human device, which look mainly 
 at the temporal, the social, and the political welfare of mankind, 
 this kingdom, while favorable to all these and intended to pro- 
 mote them, puts them also in their just relations. 1 
 
 I. — The fact that Christianity, in its very nature, looks for- 
 ward to the realization of such a kingdom, is one of the striking 
 and grand peculiarities of the Christian revelation. 
 
 1. The lowest view which any religious mind can take of 
 Christianity is, that it is a grand scheme designed to give him 
 personal happiness, to give him hope for the future. The idea 
 of such a one is, that he is in a lost condition, is converted by 
 God's grace, is to go- on trying to improve his heart, is to live 
 that others may be brought into the same condition, and is at 
 last to be transferred to the eternal mansions, where he shall be 
 forever blessed : and that is what religion is given for, for that 
 Christ came into the world. Now this may all be right, as far 
 as it goes; religion is good for this, but — this is not the measure 
 of its real good. There is something that is worthy of regard 
 besides our own salvation. When we become Christians, we 
 
 1 This is in accordance with the spirit of Christ's promise: "Seek ye first the 
 kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall bo added unto 
 
 you." 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 493 
 
 enter into a divine kingdom, where the highest wisdom and 
 the grandest thoughts and the most far-reaching purposes of 
 God Himself are concentrated: we are translated into a sphere 
 in which all onr thoughts and purposes are to find full employ- 
 in their largest measure, and out of which they cannot find such 
 employ. 
 
 2. Nor is the true idea of Christianity exhausted when we 
 conceive of it as limited to our churches and denominations, 
 and working in them for the spiritual building up of their mem- 
 bers. Many stop here. They make the church quite separate 
 from the world, having only external points of contact with it. 
 Its object is to cultivate right internal affections, to indoctrinate, 
 and to gather new members for the same object. And mean- 
 while all the other interests of society move on independently. 
 The church has one object, to convert men and prepare them 
 for heaven: but there are other and almost independent objects 
 in the world likewise. There is not only religion, there are 
 politics and trade and the sciences and the arts and reforms 
 of all kinds, and each one of these makes a separate bat- 
 talion in the march and progress of our race. The main care 
 is the prudential one, not to have them jostle against each other. 
 And what all these separate organizations are for, and whether, 
 and how, they are to unite together, are unvexed or deferred 
 inquiries. 
 
 3. To one having such an idea of Christianity there comes 
 some speculative reformer, who propounds a scheme in which, 
 he says, all these different interests are combined and harmo- 
 nized, and that he can so adjust the desires and passions and 
 aims of man as to make them all concurrent; and though he 
 may neglect man's eternal interests, yet he tries to systematize 
 all his present interests : and though he may not satisfy the in- 
 tellect, yet he inflames the imagination ; and though he may not 
 beget the conviction that his scheme is sufficient, yet he may 
 weaken the confidence of those who give to Christianity only 
 an intellectual assent in the sufficiency of a system which holda 
 itself aloof from such general views of society and the social 
 state. 
 
494 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 But such a view of the nature and intent of Christianity ia 
 essentially erroneous, and such human speculations are in reality 
 only feeble imitations of that more comprehensive view of human 
 nature, interests, and destiny which was prophesied in the Scrip- 
 tures of the Old Testament, and limned with a divine hand in the 
 perfected revelation of the New, and which is to be consummated 
 in the Kingdom of God. It constitutes one of the most striking 
 peculiarities of the Christian faith. 
 
 It is a wonderful fact that, while the wisest men, as Plato 
 and Aristotle, among the most cultivated nations of ancient 
 times, in their conceptions of the true condition of man, never 
 rose above the idea of a single state or community, the Jewish 
 people so unlettered and remote, looked forward under pro- 
 phetic guidance to a divine kingdom, centering in a glorious 
 Head; into which all nations were to flow, and in which all 
 strifes and conflicts were to be adjusted. Their prophets dwelt 
 upon this hallowed vision with inspired exultation — with faces 
 not turned backward to a golden age already past, nor forward 
 only to a ruinous catastrophe — but backward to read the prom- 
 ise made from the beginning, and forward to see its fulfilment 
 in Him who was to bring in a time of freedom and joy, of recon- 
 ciliation between man and God, and man and man, and who 
 was to gather unto himself all the nations of the earth. 
 
 In the apostolic church, the signs and powers of this kingdom 
 of God become still more marked; for here are its conflicts and 
 victories, its establishment and progress among the mightiest 
 nations and to the remotest climes. A few men went forth, and 
 what they did was to preach the words of this kingdom and to 
 seal their testimony with their sufferings: they proclaimed the 
 advent of a realm which was to subdue all nations unto itself; 
 the weapons of their warfare were not carnal, but spiritual; they 
 prophesied the downfall of states — and states have fallen ; they 
 proclaimed that the kingdoms of this world were to become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord — and this proclamation, so daring, so vi- 
 sionary, so utterly unknown to all other nations has been in a 
 course of constant fulfilment even until now. Nation after na- 
 tion has since perished, not one which then had an historic influ 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 495 
 
 ence now remains: but that kingdom continues, wider spread, 
 more diffused in its influence, more penetrating in its power, 
 with every century; and all the changes of its outward form are 
 only illustrations of its inherent spiritual might, are only signs 
 of the expansive and resistless energy of the Spirit that dwells 
 within it. It has subdued nations, reformed institutions, over- 
 turned philosophies, changed the current and the objects of 
 human thought, given to mankind the highest notions of justice 
 and feelings of benevolence, been at the foundation of their con- 
 tests for civil and social rights — and this in a continuous and 
 progressive course. If anything true and real is to be learned 
 from human history; if permanence in spite of the greatest ob- 
 stacles, if victory over the mightiest foes, can give any assurance 
 of divine vitality in that which thus endures and conquers; then 
 has this kingdom of God unrivaled claims upon our faith. 
 
 It is not only the fact that in the idea of such a kingdom 
 the Christian religion stands alone — no other religious system 
 knowing anything about it. But the idea which it contains is 
 more comprehensive and satisfactory than any other scheme — 
 than even those which have borrowed from it their impulse, 
 when not their outlines. 
 
 II. — The contrast of the way in which human nature and 
 destiny are spoken of in this divinely revealed kingdom with 
 that presented by the most ambitious theorists who neglect or 
 would supersede the Christian faith. 
 
 1. They differ in their radical conception of human nature. 
 The Utopias and Republics of human invention take human 
 nature as it is, and show, not the necessity of a renewal, but 
 the need of an adjustment of human passions. One passion is 
 to check another passion, and the passions of one man the pas- 
 sions of others. While the theorist himself acts in daily life 
 just as really on the supposition that men are depraved, as do 
 those who do not hesitate to avow it, yet when he speculates 
 about man's nature and destiny, he becomes unwilling to lift 
 the veil. For were the extent of the evil fully recognized then 
 were also seen the need of a divine aid, of which nothing but an 
 avowed revelation can give to man any assurance. This neg- 
 
496 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 lect of the great fact of human depravity, and the consequent 
 reliance on natural powers and agencies, is a fatal defect in any 
 system, in its adaptation to human wants. Man's general con- 
 dition is one of selfishness and hostility, of alienation from God. 
 To reconcile man with God, in any rational view, must be the 
 first great object. To counteract depravity is the first great 
 necessity. To organize human passions is not to correct human 
 nature. There is not here a force sufficient for the emergency. 
 To put the body in a decent posture does not stay the progress 
 of corruption. But — in contrast with this — in the kingdom of 
 God the depths and nature of our evil are fully disclosed, and the 
 first great object proposed is the reconciliation of man with God. 
 
 2. Equally contrasted are the respective system s in the 
 means to which men's thoughts are directed as the efficient 
 agencies of reform. In the one our attention is first turned to 
 education or the deliberate re-organization of society; in the 
 other, while the influence of human wisdom and education and 
 of all right methods and organizations is not neglected, they 
 are made to be wholly secondary to those spiritual and internal 
 influences which are the gift of God, in answer to prayer, 
 through the energy of the Holy Spirit. The intercourse of the 
 soul with God — this, in the kingdom of God, is the cardinal 
 means of renovation and growth. To work from within out- 
 ward is the law of God's kingdom; to work from without in- 
 ward is the weakness of human schemes. To feed upon eternal 
 and spiritual truths is the first aim of the Christian : to make 
 eternal and spiritual things seem shadowy and distant is the 
 bane of mere human reforms. 
 
 3. The sense of this contrast will be still further increased, 
 if we look at the ends which they respectively propose, as well 
 as at their means of efficiency. The kingdom of God views men 
 primarily as immortal beings, subject to an immutable law, and 
 having an eternal destiny. And so it makes prominent just 
 what in human plans is kept subordinate, 1 and it keeps sub- 
 
 1 Chalmers calls that "the grand practical delusion, the bane and bewilder- 
 ment of our species, whereby eternity stands before us in the character of time, 
 and time wears the aspect of eternity, whereby the substance appears to be tha 
 shadow, and the shadow the substance." 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 497 
 
 ordinate that which man naturally exalts. Nothing is more 
 striking in the history of the best human speculations upon the 
 destiny of man than the limited sphere which is assigned to it. 
 To regulate the material interests of society, the production and 
 exchange of wealth, to bring justice into our social and political 
 relations, to educate in useful knowledge, in sciences and the 
 arts, in short, to promote temporal well-being — these are their 
 highest aims. And they are noble and worthy aims, but not 
 the highest or best. And never can they be pursued with a 
 fitting earnestness, never so without extravagance, and never 
 so without danger, as when they are viewed only as subordinate 
 parts of a grander and more comprehensive economy, by which 
 man is to be carried through the changing scenes of life to the 
 unfolding of all his capacities and the attainment of his enduring 
 well-being in that perfected kingdom of God, of which this life 
 is but the preparatory theater. That which is the very fruit 
 and blossom of human Utopias is but a subordinate scene, an 
 initial act in the sublime unfolding of the kingdom of God. 
 
 4. This divergence in their respective views about human 
 nature, and the means of its advancement, and the ends which 
 are held before it, has its ground in a still more fundamental dif- 
 ference between the two schemes, viz., in their professed origin. 
 The kingdom of God is revealed to us as grounded in the direct 
 purposes of the Most High, and as containing the counsels of 
 infinite wisdom for the Eedemption of a lost world. Its origin 
 and efficiency are from above. It has not its basis in our physi- 
 cal constitution, as has the family, nor like the state is it for the 
 establishment and protection of natural rights, of property, and 
 of temporal justice; but it is established upon the word of God, 
 and upon the deeds of the God-man. It looks at man not as a 
 denizen of this planet, but as an heir of immortal treasures, as 
 subject to a law which shall never pass away. Human systems, on 
 the contrary, profess to be only the result of human speculation, 
 and are restricted to our temporal interests. Whether they put 
 our social condition, or our freedom, or science, or art, as the 
 great end and object — and under all these four points of view 
 speculations have been framed — still, they are for this world 
 
498 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and for this alone, for the seen and temporal, and not for thd 
 unseen and eternal. And the origin of these systems is suffi- 
 ciently attested by the very shape in which they are brought for- 
 ward. They contain deliberate plans of reorganization, carried 
 out in all their minutiae. But something more than a specula- 
 tion or a plan is needed for the reform of the race. That some- 
 thing more is given us in those sublime facts and realities which 
 lie at the basis of the kingdom of God; for this kingdom is re- 
 vealed to us, not as a theory or speculation, but in just the sim- 
 plest way, in just the most unpretending form, as something 
 which God has done and is doing. This simplicity in the an- 
 nouncement of the kingdom of God is one of its most sublime 
 characteristics: just as nature is most unobtrusive in her greatest 
 works, just as great men are most simple in that which consti- 
 tutes their greatness. The kingdom of God came in simple words 
 and energetic deeds. There was much less speculation about it 
 than there is about many a modern plan for reforming the na- 
 tions. To really reform mankind, we need the deepest convic- 
 tion that the mind of no man has fashioned the scheme, and that 
 the power of One more than man is enlisted for its accomplish- 
 ment: that the ends which it proposes are eternal, and that the 
 means it has at its command can reach and rectify the heart of 
 our disorders, and combine all our interests in one harmonious 
 and perpetual kingdom. 
 
 III. — Some of the more prominent characteristics of the 
 kingdom of God, both as to what it is, and what it is to be. 
 
 1. The most striking fact in respect to it is, that this king- 
 dom is described as established and gathered together — central- 
 ized as we might say — in One Person, the person of Jesus 
 Christ. It is one of its prime glories that it has for its head and 
 center a being in whose wonderful person are united the attri- 
 butes both of divinity and humanity, and who is thus fitted to 
 be the Mediator between God and man; a person who laid the 
 foundations of this kingdom in the most stupendous sacrifice, 
 by which the highest moral problem of the race was solved; a 
 
 being fitted to all our human wants — our wants as sinners so 
 
 near and gracious that the vilest and lowliest may come to Him 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 499 
 
 and so majestic and mighty that He can welcome and save aU 
 that come unto Him ; a being beyond the glories of whose per- 
 son and the wonder of whose work, human thought in its lar- 
 gest speculations has never reached, and to whom human love 
 in all its tenderness and trust may ever turn, and who is near- 
 est to us with his richest blessings when our misery is most real 
 and our needs most urgent. Faith in Him is the beginning of 
 the new creation, and glory with Him is its consummation. In 
 such a person is the kingdom of God centralized and knit to- 
 gether. 
 
 2. Another of its peculiar characteristics is, that the truths 
 which center in Christ are described as applied to the human 
 heart by a subtle, mighty, and persuasive influence — that of the 
 Holy Spirit, whose power reaches to the very thoughts and in- 
 tents of the heart, and who subdues our sinfulness by implant- 
 ing new and" higher principles of action, and who so acts upon 
 the soul that its freedom is not impaired, but enlarged. Thus 
 at the very foundation of this kingdom we have the agency and 
 working of God, in his three-fold personality, as Father, Son, 
 and Spirit, and from them go forth the influences which give 
 it shape and perpetuity. The anatomy of this kingdom is found 
 in the Triune Godhead. 
 
 3. This kingdom is one which, from its very nature, is adapted 
 to enter into and remould all other institutions in the highest 
 and best conceivable manner. It does this by its spiritual na- 
 ture, making the laws and principles of all other institutions 
 gradually submissive to its own higher spirit and laws, giving to 
 all that is lower its fitting place and its moral worth. It is able 
 to do this, as is nothing else. When the lower prevails over 
 the higher, it is oppression ; when the higher prevails over the 
 lower, it is law. The kingdom has already done this in countless 
 instances; it is still doing it, in such an increasing extent that, 
 were we not familiar with it, and did we judge it as we judge 
 other things, we could only wonder at it. There is no doctrine 
 of philosophy, no scheme of man,, no other organized influence, 
 which has gone as has the kingdom of God, to all men of every 
 name and degree — from the most brutish to the most civilized — 
 
500 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and found entrance and made conquest. And this is because 
 its principles and influences and teachings are not only most sub- 
 lime but also most simple, simple in the sense of being directly 
 adapted to human nature and human wants, for this is the only- 
 real test of the simplicity of a doctrine. 
 
 4. Not only is it thus adapted to man's most urgent wants, 
 but it also affords the most efficient means for developing the 
 whole of human nature, giving to all our powers their highest 
 energy and noblest motives. It ennobles love and dignifies the 
 very love of self; it opens to the deepest and most luminous 
 knowledge, it gives the strongest incentives to increase in wis- 
 dom. It brings the highest motives to bear upon the perform- 
 ance of all our social and political duties, and to all the virtues 
 of the character it adds grace and strength. 
 
 5. That it is thus fitted to all our relations and institutions, 
 and gives them their highest character, is proved by the fact 
 that a Christian family, a Christian community, and a Christian 
 commonwealth are felt to be the highest forms which the family, 
 society, and the state can assume, i 
 
 6. When we would labor for the reform of the race, what 
 teachings can we put in the very van of the contest in preference 
 to the Christian view of the equality and -brotherhood of man- 
 kind, of the evils of the inordinate love of wealth, of the terrible- 
 ness of war, of the necessity of justice, and to its exhortations to 
 the love of our neighbor and our brethren. All true reforms 
 can only be the carrying out of the spirit and the injunctions of 
 the kingdom of God. Moreover, the safety of reforms is best 
 avgned on the ground of the permanence and victories of that 
 kingdom. And patience in the midst of discouragement and 
 defeat is made more serene by our conviction that this kingdom 
 must finally prevail, that the triumphs of sin and the maxims 
 of expediency are for the day and the hour only, while the tri- 
 umphs of truth and righteousness are for eternity. 
 
 7. Philosophy, science, and art, in their deepest and truest 
 principles, are in harmony with God's kingdom, are advanced 
 by it, and approximate to their perfect form as they receive and 
 enthrone its truths. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 501 
 
 8. That view of our future destiny, which is contained in 
 sure promise and definite description only in the kingdom of 
 God, is the only view which answers perfectly to all man's most 
 enlarged and developed capacities, and to his highest and most 
 hallowed aspirations. 
 
 9. It is for this kingdom that God has been ever laboring, 
 it is his great, his grandest work, it contains the wealth of His 
 wisdom, the crown of his purposes. 1 It will be the very embodi- 
 ment of what is most grand and glorious in divinity, so far as 
 it can be revealed to man. And in it man too has his part. 
 Human achievement in carrying out divine purposes will have 
 its eternal fruit and reward in this kingdom. 
 
 10. How far it will be perfectly realized upon the earth is a 
 question of secondary importance. It is a kingdom the very idea 
 of which when once embraced can stimulate human powers to 
 their highest energy, human love to its noblest self-sacrifice, 
 even to forgetfulness of self. That it will go on until the ful- 
 ness of the seas is gathered in, until on the tops of the mountains 
 the Lord's house shall be established, until every kingdom shall 
 become Christ's, until all war and oppression and unrighteous- 
 ness shall cease, until the very glory and fulness of the nations 
 shall be given to Immanuel — this we know, for it has been 
 declared. Whether its fullest glories are to be revealed on the 
 very theater where sin has so long reigned, or in another sphere 
 — that we know not fully. And whether we know it or not 
 is of little moment compared with what we do know, and that 
 is, that this kingdom of God will be perfectly consummated in 
 glory and beauty somewhere and at some time. 
 
 1 In this light the doctrine of Election should be viewed. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE UNION BETWEEN CHRIST AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 BELIEVER, AS EFFECTED BY THE HOLT SPIRIT. 
 
 This embraces the subjects of Justification, Regenebation, and Sanotification; with the 
 underlying topic, which comes futst to be considered, election. 
 
 BOOK L 
 
 PREDESTINATION, ELECTION, THE EFFECTUAL GALL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 I. — The topics now coming up are known as the doctrines 
 of grace. Grace, in its widest sense, means, any favor bestowed 
 by a superior on an inferior. All our gifts in this sense are 
 grace. But it is here used in a specific sense as favor bestowed 
 upon the individual, fallen man, through the influence of the Holy 
 Ghost. Man's entire sinfulness is presupposed, and Christ's aton- 
 ing work, and here we consider the operation of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 II. — This operation must be traced back to the purpose of 
 God, as part of the decrees of God. These have been already 
 considered in part. It was stated that they included all events 
 in Providence, as they take place. As events are in fact, so 
 they are eternally in the purpose of God. The doctrine of de- 
 crees is simply that of divine providence considered as an eternal 
 plan in the counsels of God. Any objection to decrees is an 
 objection to the course of Providence. These decrees form one 
 decree, one plan. All are connected with the main decree, or 
 the great end for which God made and governs the world. That 
 portion of the divine decrees which has respect to the final con- 
 dition and destiny of moral beings, especially of man, is called 
 Predestination. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 503 
 
 III. — The doctrine of Predestination has to do simply with 
 God's purpose or plan, as that includes the final condition of 
 each individual, just as it comes to be. It contemplates the 
 final condition of each individual as a part of the divine decree; 
 not of course without respect to what has gone before, but in- 
 cluding the whole life of the individuals, of which this end is 
 the consummation. 
 
 IV. — In further elucidation of what is meant by Predestina- 
 tion, we make the following statements: 
 
 1. Predestination is not fatalism. Fatalism views all events 
 and all actions as a mere matter of necessity, springing from 
 natural causes and ultimately from blind causes. But Predes- 
 tination refers all events ultimately to the purpose of a wise and 
 holy God. 
 
 2. The doctrine of predestination is not to be confounded 
 with supralapsarianism. In many objections to it, it is so con- 
 founded. Supralapsarianism views the fall of the human race 
 as directly decreed on the part of God, in order to the divine 
 glory. The sublapsarian view is, that evil was permitted and 
 not efficiently produced, and that in the order of decrees the 
 permission of evil goes before the decree for redemption. 
 
 3. Predestination is not the same as the doctrine of the divine 
 efficiency. This latter doctrine, when carried out strictly, says 
 that each event has for its cause a direct divine agency, — that 
 God by immediate power brings into being every act of moral 
 agents, — that his action in the matter of sin is as distinct as ia 
 the matter of holiness. The doctrine does not give heed to the 
 distinction between what is decreed as part of a plan, and what 
 is decreed by itself. 
 
 4. Those who hold to predestination are not the only persons 
 who hold to the eternity of God's decrees. Many Arminians 
 hold a doctrine of eternal decrees, while they deny predestina- 
 tion. Those who, believing in regeneration, believe also that 
 man's free will goes before, while God assists, can also believe 
 that from all eternity God determined to assist, and therefore 
 they can hold to eternal divine decrees. 
 
 5. Predestination is not arbitrary, in the common usage of 
 
501 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the word arbitrary. The doctrine implies that all the divine 
 purposes have wise and holy reasons. Predestination is arbi- 
 trary in the sense that God is not dependent on any will but his 
 own for his purposes and plans; in the sense that He acts from 
 mere will and mere power, it is not arbitrary. We may not be 
 able to see the reasons: these are for the divine will and not for 
 ours; but God would forfeit his rational nature if He ordained 
 anything without a good and sufficient reason. 
 
 6. The theological systems which include predestination do 
 not differ from other systems, e. g. y the Arminian system in its 
 modifications, in respect to the grounds of God's final judgment 
 upon men as to their final condition. In both cases the ground 
 is wholly moral. It is the relation to Christ, involving the good 
 or bad character of respective individuals, in regard to which 
 this destiny is fixed. 
 
 7. The systems which include predestination differ from the 
 Arminian systems in their view of the nature of divine grace, 
 and of the way in which that grace operates. The latter say, 
 and must say ultimately, that grace only assists, and is depend- 
 ent on the human will for its use, — grace aids human volitions. 
 The former say that grace ever precedes and directs the human 
 will, while the will is free. The term in Arminianism is — assists: 
 in Calvinism — grace precedes and directs. This is sometimes 
 expressed in the formula: Grace is irresistible. This term is not 
 to be approved, because it suggests an idea which is not intended 
 to be conveyed. Irresistible, usually means, that which cannot 
 be resisted or overcome even if the will be opposed to it, e. gr., in 
 the case of natural force: but this cannot be the meaning in this 
 case, because the divine purpose always carries the will with it. 
 
 8. The ultimate principles on which the assertion of the di- 
 vine predestination rests are two: (a.) All events must have a 
 sufficient cause; (&.) Of all true religious life God is the cause. 
 The doctrine of original sin is presupposed, which makes the 
 need of God's causative energy in the new life still stronger and 
 more imperative. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 505 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ELECTION AND REPROBATION. 
 
 The doctrine of Predestination runs into the doctrine of 
 Election. Election is a part of Predestination. Election is the 
 expression of God's infinite love towards the human race, re- 
 deeming man from sin through Christ, and by the Holy Spirit 
 bringing him into this state of redemption, so far as it is consist- 
 ent with the interests of God's great and final kingdom. It is 
 the divine love in its most concrete and triumphant form, It 
 is called in Scripture the riches of divine grace. 
 
 § 1. Statement of the Scriptural Doctrine of Election. 
 
 Westm. Shorter Cat., Q. 20. In Larger Cat, Q. 13, more par- 
 ticular statements are given: that the election is in Christ — that 
 it is eternal — and includes the means thereof. 
 
 1. Election may be said to be: God's eternal purpose, as a 
 part of his whole plan, to save some of the human race, in and 
 by Jesus Christ. Election to eternal life is the end of all the di- 
 vine purposes, including the means. The order of time is in the 
 execution of the decree, and not in the decree itself. The fol- 
 lowing statements form no part of the doctrine of Election: 
 That God created some men to damn them : That Christ died 
 only for the elect; That the elect will be saved, let them do 
 what they will; That the non-elect cannot be saved, let them do 
 what they can ; That the non-elect cannot comply with the con- 
 ditions of salvation through natural inability. These positions 
 we have considered elsewhere: whether in themselves they are 
 true or false is not in question now : what we here say is, they 
 form no part of the doctrine of Election. 
 
 2. The Scriptural statements. 
 
 (a.) The fullest passage is Eph. i. 4, 5, which gives the doc- 
 trine in its connections. 
 
 (b.) Election has reference to individuals and not to nations 
 or classes. Luke xiii. 23: "Few" is individualizing, and so 
 
606 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 in the verses which follow. Mark xiii. 20; Rom. viii. 20-30: 
 "Foreknew" includes a purpose as well as a knowledge. It ia 
 not a mere vision of knowledge. John xv. 16: "Ye" must 
 mean individuals: John vi. 36-39; Acts xiii. 48; Rom. ix. 11. 
 
 (c.) It is to eternal life. The object of the whole plan of re- 
 demption is to bestow eternal life upon the lost: Acts xiii. 48; 
 1 Thess. v. 9, 10; 2 Thess. ii. 13; John xvii. 2. So that it is not 
 a call to external privileges. 
 
 (d.) It is not of works. Although it is through and by the 
 gracious acts of the individual. The works are the election it- 
 self in its carrying out. They are not the basis of it, but a part 
 of it: 2 Tim. i. 9; Rom. ix. 11; xi. 6; Eph. i. 4, 5; 1 Pet. i. 2. In 
 short, the election is to faith and holiness, and is not of persons 
 as holy. 
 
 (e.) The election is ultimately to be referred to God: Matt, 
 xi. 26; Rom. viii. 29; ix. 11; Eph. i. 11; Rom. xi. 5. 
 
 (f.) The election is in Christ: Eph. i. 4; John xvii. 2. 
 
 (g.) The election is eternal and unchangeable: Eph i. 4; 
 Rom. viii. 29; John vi. 37; 2 Thess. ii. 13; Rev. xiii. 8. 
 
 3. Proof of the doctrine from other doctrines. 
 
 (a.) It results from the doctrine of the divine sovereignty. 
 
 (b.) It results from the fact that salvation is of grace: Eph. 
 ii. 5, 8. 
 
 (c.) It results from the doctrines of depravity and original 
 sin. By nature we are in such a state that only divine grace 
 can rescue us. 
 
 (d.) It results from the doctrine of regeneration. 
 
 (e.) It is confirmed by the experience of believers. They all 
 confess that the new life within them is of grace. 
 
 4. Theories of Election. 
 
 I. — The theory of Nationalism. This is, that nations are 
 elected; God sends the gospel to certain peoples; Election is not 
 to eternal life, but is a national call. It is, living among a peo- 
 ple where God's grace is proclaimed. Some non-elect in this 
 sense may finally be saved: in nations where the gospel is not 
 preached, some may be saved through an accidental hearing of 
 the word, or through a special calling of divine providence. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 507 
 
 Bemarks: 
 
 (a.) This theory concedes the principle. God may make a dis- 
 crimination in regard to nations on a large scale, and be just 
 and henevolent in doing it. 
 
 (b.) It is impossible to see or show how God can elect nations 
 without electing individuals. The general demands the specific, 
 the universal the particular. In the order of thought the generic 
 comes first and the specific next, but in the order of history the 
 specific comes first and the general afterwards. 
 
 (c.) The argument of the apostle in Rom. ix., which is relied 
 upon, is against the theory. He has before shown (chaps, v., 
 vi., vii., viii.) that in Christ alone are justification and sanctifica- 
 tion : then he encounters the objection from the Jew as being 
 the seed of Abraham: the promise to Abraham, he says, is not 
 frusti-ated by the calling of the Gentiles, leaving Jews to perish: 
 God has always thus shown his sovereignty: Isaac only was 
 called, 7-9; Esau and Jacob are instanced, 10-14; Pharaoh, 
 verses 15-18. This is not unjust to those whom He condemns on 
 account of their sins. Israel is passed by because they sought 
 righteousness not by faith but by the works of the law. Verse 
 22, vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, gives the substance 
 of the doctrine of Reprobation. 
 
 (d) The arguments already given to show that Election 
 is of individuals, and that it is to eternal life, disprove this 
 theory. 
 
 II. — The theory of Ecclesiastical Individualism: God calls 
 individuals, but only to the external privileges of his church. 
 
 This is advocated by many of the divines in the Episcopal 
 Church, in oi'der to unite Arminianism with their theory of the 
 church. As many of them interpret " regenerated " in the bap- 
 tismal service as meaning, united with the church in an external 
 way, so election is understood as election to the external privi- 
 leges of the church. 
 
 Bemarks: 
 
 (a.) The theory is true as far as it goes. 
 . (&) It includes the principle of election. If God discriminates 
 externally, He may internally. 
 
508 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (c.) It excludes the divine agency from the most important 
 part of the whole work — the internal and spiritual. 
 
 (d.) Scripture testifies to the election of individuals to faith, 
 holiness, and salvation. 
 
 111. — The Arminian, and in part the Lutheran, and in part 
 the Pelagian, theory. 
 
 This asserts that election is not external, nor national, but — 
 is election to salvation: it is, however, an election of those who 
 repent and believe — not of individuals, but of that class of per- 
 sons who repent and believe. It is of all those who comply 
 with the conditions. God foresees that such and such will ac- 
 cept the conditions, and therefore elects them — on the basis of 
 his seeing that they will of themselves repent and believe. 
 Pelagians say that one man repents and believes and another 
 does not, and election and reprobation are based upon these 
 facts. Arminians say that God has given to all men sufficient 
 grace, — that there is no urgency of that grace, no specific effi- 
 ciency of it, but one accepts it and another does not. 
 
 Remarks: 
 
 (a.) This makes God's agency to be dependent on that of man. 
 Man chooses God first, and then God chooses him to blessedness. 
 The Scriptures say: According as He chose us in Him .... that 
 we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love, 
 Eph. i. 4. 
 
 (b.) The doctrines of sin and grace show that there is a moral 
 inability in man which only God's grace can or does overcome. 
 
 (c.) The theory is against Christian experience. No Arminian 
 or Pelagian can pray according to this doctrine, however much 
 he may preach it. 
 
 § 2. Reprobation. 
 
 This includes two parts, Pretention and Reprobation (Final 
 Condemnation). The Pretention is a sovereign act; the Repro- 
 bation is a judicial act. The predestination in this case does 
 not refer to the sinful state as coming from God (the supralap- 
 sarian view), but to the divine act which is consequent upon the 
 sinful state. In the pretention, the divine agency is simply 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 509 
 
 negative — a not interfering. The reprobation is judicial and in 
 that sense positive. If any are finally lost, there must of neces- 
 sity be a divine "purpose in respect to the loss: otherwise there 
 is that in the fact which was not taken into the plan. It is not 
 Calvinistic to say that God created men to damn them, or that 
 He made them on purpose to condemn them, in order to show 
 his justice. That position has never been accepted in this coun- 
 try, and in the school of Edwards it was effectually demolished. 
 The end of God in creation is not to illustrate his justice in con- 
 demning some to eternal torment. The condemnation is sim- 
 ply incidental to the great end of the divine government, which 
 is the securing of the supremacy and triumph of holiness. In 
 regard to those who do not submit to that government, this end 
 is attained, as far as it can be, by their destruction ; but that 
 destruction is not the end or object. The chief objections to 
 this part of the doctrine of Predestination almost all arise from 
 viewing reprobation as something by itself, and not as a part of 
 God's whole plan. The representation often made is that God 
 chose the punishment as though He delighted in it,— but God 
 delights in holiness. Another objection comes from supposing 
 reprobation to be without reference to character or desert: but 
 it is the final condemnation on account of the desert. 
 
 1. The Scriptural proof. 
 
 (a.) The doctrine of Election involves Pretention. 
 
 (b.) All passages that prove the final condemnation of some 
 imply the doctrine of Reprobation. More particularly, Bom. ix, 
 18; 1 Cor. i. 26; 1 Pet. ii. 8; Jude 15. 
 
 § 3. Objections to the Doctrine of Predestination. 
 
 First Class. Objections on philosophical grounds. 1 The ob- 
 jections are to the two main statements: Every event must 
 have a cause, God is the cause of all spiritual life. 
 
 Obj. I. — The more consistent Arminians object that the law 
 of causality does not apply to the production of our religious 
 states. They assert that the law of causality does not apply to 
 all events in time, — that events produced by the power of the 
 
 ' "Well stated in Bledsoe's Theodicy and Mozley's Predestination. 
 
510 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 human will are not under the law of causality, as respects their 
 origination in the will. 
 Remarks: 
 
 1. The law of causality is not, in any consistent thinking, 
 understood to be that for every event there is wholly an external 
 cause. This notion of it is derived from the sphere of mechanics 
 and dynamics, and not from the sphere of life, still less from 
 psychology. A stone cannot move without an external power 
 acting upon it, but everything having life, besides the external 
 agencies which bear upon it, has also an internal energy. So 
 it is in the human soul. There is a principle of spontaneity, of 
 origination. That however does not exclude causality. It is a 
 proper causal power or energy. The law still applies, only we 
 have here a new causal power given in the will itself. Unques- 
 tionably there is such spontaneous force or power in man, so 
 that he is the proper author of his own acts. He is not the sole 
 author, but he is the proper author, and the law of causality 
 covers this spontaneous energy as much as it does the external 
 influences. 
 
 2. But, besides this internal force of the will, there must be 
 some object in view of which the will is exerted; else there can 
 be no choice. Mere will cannot of itself produce choice. Choice 
 implies an end or object, which is as necessary to the choice as 
 the possession of will. It enters into the choice as a part of the 
 whole effect. Volition is made up of two elements: the action 
 of the will and the thing chosen. These two together make up 
 the cause of the volition, as the effect. 1 
 
 Obj. II. — (Mozley.) It is not to be affirmed that God is the 
 p TO p er cause or source of all religious life, because if God be such, 
 
 1 [The above is found only in students' notes. The fuller view is given in Faith 
 and Philosophy, p. 359 seq. Perhaps the author's statements might be thus 
 summed up: Into choices there must perforce enter, not merely the form of per- 
 sonal agency but also its vital substance. The feelings and affections can no more 
 be kept out of the will than out of the man. Self-determination is essential to 
 freedom, but self-determination is a procedure of the man, and not of the will 
 viewed as mere capacity of choice. What is in the man — as affection, etc., as well 
 as what he reaches out to — as object of desire, etc., goes to the self-determination, 
 and hence it is vain to say that human spontaneity is not covered by the law of 
 causality. Like everything else in the successions of time, the originations of 
 the human will have their limitations, their processes, and their laws.] 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 611 
 
 there cannot then be first, i. e., proper and real, causes of the re- 
 ligious life in the action of the human soul. 
 Remarks: 
 
 1. There may be good and sufficient second causes working 
 under the first, and having their proper sphere — not absolute, 
 but relative — not independent, but dependent — yet still proper 
 causes, not mere modifications of the first cause, but having 
 force of themselves. 
 
 2. The very notion of God makes Him to be the author of 
 all religious acts. Religion is inconceivable without divine in- 
 fluence. There may be morality without divine influence, but 
 not religion. 
 
 3. All the more is such influence necessary in the case of de- 
 praved beings, where the moral power is lost. If God must be 
 the source of holiness in the angels, He must be the source of it 
 in human beings where the soul is alienated from Him. 
 
 4. The Scriptures expressly refer holy acts and states to God : 
 Eph. ii. 10; Phil. ii. 13; Rom. xii. 3; John vi. 44. 
 
 5. The Scriptures make a difference in respect to the divine 
 agency as to sin, and as to holiness : making it direct in regard 
 to holiness, and permissive in regard to sin. 
 
 The Second Class of Objections. Objections brought against 
 the divine. justice and benevolence in Predestination. 
 
 Obj. III. — God is unjust, or at least not benevolent, towards 
 the non-elect. 
 
 Remarks; 
 
 1. We have the apostle's reply, in Rom. ix. There is that 
 in the divine dealings which is inscrutable, in this as in other 
 matters. 
 
 2. The objection is one against actual facts; because God 
 does actually bring some to eternal life, while He passes by 
 others, and must have purposed to do what He actually does. 
 
 3. The objection involves the assumption that God ought 
 to treat all men alike, which would apply against discrimination 
 in providence as well as in grace. 
 
 4. If the non-elect are sinners, it is just to treat them as 
 sinners. Sinners cannot establish a claim upon God for the 
 
512 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 highest measures of grace. If they are and continue to be 
 sinners, they deserve punishment as a simple matter of justice 
 
 5. But — is it benevolent to pass them by ? It is, we must 
 say, the procedure of a benevolent being: of course we do not 
 argue that the benevolence is illustrated in the pretention, 
 (a.) If we cannot see how the benevolence is consistent with 
 the prseterition, still we must admit both the facts; God is in- 
 finitely benevolent, and there are some whom He does not bring 
 to eternal life; inasmuch as each is established by its own evi- 
 dence, (b.) Benevolence, in its highest sense, has supreme re- 
 gard to holiness, and not to happiness. Holiness is the ultimate 
 term with God even as a benevolent being, (c.) If it is right 
 for God to leave any to perish as sinners, it is right for Him to 
 purpose to do so, because this is simply the same thing over 
 again, (d.) God shows his benevolence to all men, in various 
 ways. The sparing of their lives in a state of probation, the 
 provision of an atonement for the whole world, the offers of 
 eternal life under the sound of the gospel, are all proofs of be- 
 nevolence, (e.) Perhaps some weight is to be allowed to the 
 suggestion of Bishop Butler, 1 that the election of all might be 
 hazardous to the interests of the divine government. The be- 
 lief of Universalism certainly has no tendency to keep men from 
 sin. (/.) For aught that we know, the amount and kind of 
 divine influence necessary to secure the salvation of all men 
 might be inconsistent with God's moral government. 
 
 Obj. IV. — From the effect of the doctrine upon those who 
 are not yet Christians, i. e., those who cannot be said to be non- 
 elect, their case being not yet decided. The doctrine of election 
 is said to be formidable to them. 
 
 But, (a.) The doctrine of election and prseterition concerns 
 the final state of men, which no man can absolutely know be- 
 forehand. A man cannot know so that the doctrine shall deter 
 him. (b.) The doctrine of election is, still further, that men are 
 elect in Christ. It is on account of a general atonement, of a 
 provision for all men. What a man has to do is not to deter- 
 mine who are the elect, but to come to Christ, (c ) The divine 
 
 1 The suggestion is approved by Chalmers. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 513 
 
 purpose of election runs through the human will, and it is with 
 the conscious action of this that man has to do. The question 
 of salvation comes up in the form, Will a man accept or reject 
 Christ? (&) Election comprehends the means as well as the 
 end, and not the end without the means. It is the whole of 
 God's plan in respect to each individual. Almost all the objec- 
 tions against the doctrine of predestination rest on the hypothesis 
 that God, by a merely arbitrary choice, has consigned individuals 
 to a final state. That is not the doctrine. The objections also 
 rest upon the hypothesis that an individual can and may know 
 that he belongs to one or the other class. But even the elect 
 cannot certainly know their election, or at all events, not until 
 they come to assurance, which is the gift of God in their highest 
 sanctification. 
 
 Obj. V. — The effect of this doctrine on those who sup- 
 pose themselves to be of the elect must be to make them 
 presumptuous. 
 
 But, (a.) It is the saints' perseverance which is set forth in 
 the doctrine of election. If any are living in presumptuous sins, 
 they cannot claim that they are in the course of such persever- 
 ance. The elect are those, too, who persevere. The objection 
 rests on the notion that one can be assured of election without 
 holy exercises, while the doctrine is that he can be assured only 
 in such exercises. The objection assumes that the end may be 
 known without the means; the doctrine is that the end can be 
 attained only by and through the means, and the certainty of 
 the attainment can be judged of only in the light of the means 
 of the attainment. A kindred form of the objection is that the 
 elect are led to believe that they may be saved whatever they 
 do. The answer is that the doctrine has respect to God's pur- 
 pose about the final state of believers. No man can know any 
 thing about the divine purpose regarding his salvation, except 
 as he is practicing the Christian virtues. 
 
 Obj. VI. — God cannot sincerely make the offer of life to all, 
 when He knows that there are some who will not accept. 
 
 The marks of sincerity in any offer are the following: 
 (a.) That the blessing offered is in existence and at the dis- 
 
514 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 posal of the one who offers it. (b.) That lie is willing that it 
 should be accepted, (c.) That it is offered on terms that can be 
 complied with by the individual to whom it is offered, so that 
 all that is needed on his part is willingness. 
 
 Such is the case with respect to the offer of salvation to all 
 men in the gospel. It is a blessing which really exists, because 
 a general atonement has been made ; it is a blessing which God 
 is willing to bestow; He is not willing that any should perish. 
 It is within the compass of man's natural capacities to comply. 
 No addition needs to be made to his powers and faculties, to en- 
 able him to comply. Acceptance or rejection is the action of 
 his own voluntary nature. 
 
 There is an ambiguity in the discussions of this subject in 
 the different uses of the word vtill. It is used sometimes in the 
 sense of a general desire, sometimes of a specific purpose, (a.) It 
 is undeniable on the ground of Scripture that God desires the 
 salvation of every man as, in itself considered, the best thing 
 for him. He offers salvation to all, and pleads with them to 
 accept it. He offers that which is provided, and which they 
 may accept, and urges it importunately. (6.) God's decree of 
 prseterition is not that some shall not believe, but is simply not 
 to use certain means of moving them to belief. All things con- 
 sidered, He has chosen to pursue his purpose of having a people 
 to his praise, to the extent of insuring belief in some instances, 
 but not in all. (c.) All of God's reasons for this course we do 
 not know. Some reasons are intimated. Blindness of mind, 
 hardness of heart, resistance of light, of grace offered, of the 
 influences of the Spirit, are given as characteristics of many of 
 those who are not included in God's purpose of election. It may 
 be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than 
 many who are saved. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 515 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GOSPEL CALL. 
 
 Election is carried out through the proclamation of grace, 
 through the call to repentance and faith, issuing in the effectual 
 calling of those who are finally saved. This call is both external 
 and internal. The external is in the preaching of the gospel, 
 and the internal is the call to the spirit or soul. This internal 
 call, considered in its results on the elect, is called efficacious or 
 effectual grace. The election results in the call, both external 
 and internal, and in the formation of the elect into the church. 
 Some of those who are opposed to the doctrine of election, e. g., 
 the Lutherans, make the call to be universal, and make it to 
 consist in the whole of divine providence towards all nations. 
 The Lutheran formula asserts very strongly that a special call 
 addressed by the Divine Spirit to the soul must be maintained 
 to be universal, even though experience seems to run counter 
 to it. 
 
 § 1. Of the External CaR 
 
 This is an invitation on the part of divine grace to sinners 
 to accept through grace the blessings offered to them in Christ, 
 addressed generally through the preaching of the word, al- 
 though it may also be by the printed page or personal conver- 
 sation. It is as wide as the proclamation of- the gospel in any 
 form. It includes the announcement of the fact of salvation in 
 Christ, an invitation to accept that salvation, an invitation which 
 rises to a command, including a promise and a threat — John 
 iii. 16, 18. This external call is to be addressed to all. It is 
 part of the function of the church to see that it is addressed to 
 all men — Rom. x. 14, 15. Still further, this call, as thus ad- 
 dressed, is binding upon all men. Men are bound to accept 
 this gracious invitation. Not to comply is the great sin. In 
 a state of ruin, invited to accept of everlasting life, their guilt 
 is heightened if tbey reject. It is not addressed to the elect 
 
516 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 alone, but is addressed to and binding upon all men. 1 This ex- 
 ternal call has for its characteristics — that it is sincere on the 
 part of God — that it may be resisted — and that it is adapted to 
 lead to conversion. 
 
 § 2. The Internal Call 
 
 The internal call of God to eternal life is a call of divine 
 grace made by the word, applied by the Spirit, in part by his 
 direct agency, upon the soul. This divine influence upon the 
 soul is not exercised upon one of its faculties, but upon all the 
 faculties of the mind, illuminating the understanding, rousing 
 the feelings, and leading to right acts of the will. Still further, 
 this call is made under these influences in view of two grand 
 facts: on the one hand, the condemnation of law and knowl- 
 edge of sin under the law; on the other hand, the presentation 
 of Christ as the Eedeemer from sin. 
 
 § 3. Under this general Statement, some Questions and Difficul- 
 ties are raised. 
 
 I. — Is the knowledge of the word, the Scripture, the revealed 
 truth, of Christ as the center and source of salvation, always 
 necessary in order to salvation ? 
 
 The extreme positions: (1) Except as Christ is known the 
 soul cannot be included in the electing love of God; there is no 
 salvation except through and by a distinct and explicit knowl- 
 edge of Christ. (2) Under the light of nature alone and with- 
 out Christ, men may be saved by complying with the demands 
 made in conscience and by reason. 
 
 Observations: — (1) It is a matter of fact that the knowledge 
 of Christ is given and is necessary to be given where men are 
 saved. There is, humanly speaking, no probability of salvation 
 apart from such knowledge. (2) It is equally undeniable that 
 such a knowledge of Christ is necessary to full, explicit, confident 
 trust. There cannot be the peace of believing, or a full knowl- 
 edge of salvation, a personal conviction in the case full and 
 
 1 This is one of the great points in the controversy against the Antinomian 
 position. See Fuller's " Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation " and Bellamy's " True 
 Religion Delineated." It was such preaching as this against a dead orthodoxy 
 which led to many precious results in revivals. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION, fil7 
 
 round, unless there be such knowledge of Christ. Without this 
 there must always be doubt in the individual's personal experi- 
 ence. (3) Yet there may be, under the influence of the Holy 
 Spirit, renewal of the soul without this explicit knowledge. 
 That follows from the secret nature of the divine agency, and 
 from the position that infants dying before actual transgression 
 are of the elect. (4) Yet such internal renewal, if it be genuine, 
 will always lead to a belief in Christ as the only Saviour, when 
 He is made known. The test of the reality of the new birth 
 would be, that as soon as Christ is presented -the soul will 
 welcome Him. This is in conformity "with the position in the 
 Westminster Confession, chap, x., § 3. 
 
 II. — Are the Scriptures the only efficacious means of such a 
 renewal? The purport of this question is: whether the Script- 
 ures considered as light and illuminating influence, as addressed 
 only to the intellect — excluding the direct operation of the 
 Holy Spirit on the soul — are the only efficacious means of salva- 
 tion ; or whether, besides the Scriptures there is in the case of 
 renewal a direct influence of the Holy Spirit, which is not re- 
 stricted to the word, which is not simply by and through the 
 word. Whether the entire efficacious influence is the Script- 
 ures and the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit in and through 
 the Scriptures. 
 
 The various forms of opinion: (1) The Pelagian view. Mere 
 truth, a vivid presentation of the truth is enough, and is the 
 only means about which we can know anything definitely. It 
 has been said by some one, that if he was as eloquent as the 
 Holy Spirit, he could so preach as to convert souls. (2) Another 
 opinion. That in some way, to us unknown, the word of God 
 as preached is made clear and mighty by the Spirit, and becomes 
 an effectual motive — yet without the direct operation of the 
 Spirit on the soul. The Spirit operates through the word, so 
 that the word forms the influence and motive, and the Spirit in 
 the word gives it efficacy. The word is the sword, and the 
 Spirit wields the sword. (3) The third view is, that besides the 
 truth and the Spirit in the truth, there is also a direct operation 
 of the Holy Spirit upon the soul. 
 
518 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 As to the first opinion. — It is conceded by this that the Spirit 
 is the author of the truth, that the gospel truth is the highest 
 kind of truth, but it is said that there is no other operation of 
 the Spirit than that which is given in the word through the 
 truth. 
 
 We say: (1) This revealed truth is ordinarily necessary and 
 essential. (2) It is the instrumental cause. (3) But the question 
 remains, Why is this truth so much clearer and brighter at some 
 times than at others ? Why are the feelings roused so strongly 
 by the truth on certain occasions, and left dead at others? This 
 must be attributed to the influence of the Holy Spirit. (4) It is 
 difficult if not impossible to conceive of an operation of the truth 
 without an operation on the soul. Here are the words of Script- 
 ure : at one time they are without influence, at another they be- 
 come effectual. The Holy Spirit is said to work through the 
 truth, but how can He do so without affecting the soul ? 
 (5) The Scriptures distinctly recognize a direct operation of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 As to the second opinion. — This asserts that the truth 'is 
 made clear and potent by some unknown efficacy of the Spirit, 
 yet the operation of the Spirit is confined to this, and is not a 
 direct influence upon the affections and the will. The Holy 
 Ghost is necessary, wherever the word is uttered, to give it in- 
 fluence, yet through the word alone does He operate on the af- 
 fections and will. A modification of this view is seen in the 
 doctrine of moral suasion — that the Spirit operates on men as 
 men do upon each other. 
 
 Remarks: 
 
 (1) The tnith is doubtless the instrumental cause, ordinarily. 
 We are begotten — or brought forth — by the word of truth 
 (James i. 18). (2) The truth is brought to bear upon us in 
 greater light and power through the influence of the Spirit, in a 
 supernatural way — by an operation kindred to moral suasion. 
 (3) But unless the feelings are also enlisted by influencing them, 
 how can the truth affect them ? The sensibilities to religious 
 impressions are dormant through depravity. They are tc be 
 excited and roused, in order that the truth may be felt Through 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 519 
 
 this excitation of the feelings, the truth becomes clearer and 
 more efficacious, and only through this. A supernatural in- 
 fluence must be conceded here. (4) Nobody can deny that there 
 are other kinds of operation besides that through the truth. It 
 is natural from what we know of God's working, that there 
 should be other modes through which the Holy Spirit shall in- 
 fluence the soul. God works in all and through all. In the 
 sphere of divine providence, the divine energy attends the 
 working of all second causes. Much more in the sphere of 
 grace. The divine agency doubtless attends as much the opera- 
 tions of the feelings as the intellect, and as much those of the 
 will as the feelings. It is impossible, in any rational view of 
 the divine agency, to exclude it from any part of the work. The 
 view under consideration excludes it from every part except the 
 intellect. The fact that we do not know the mode of the Spirit's 
 operations should admonish us not to limit them. 
 
 As to the third position. — This is, that besides all that can 
 be put under the head of moral suasion and of supernatural in- 
 fluence through the truth, there is in the renewal of the soul, 
 according to Scripture, a divine, secret, and direct influence. 
 This is shown by the following considerations: (1) The Script- 
 ures distinguish between the two, and assert the need of both: 
 1 Thess. i. 5, 6; 2 Thess. ii. 13, 14; John vi. 44. (2) The Script- 
 ures also speak of the inwar' 1 working of the Holy Spirit: 
 Phil. ii. 13; Heb. xiii. 21; Acts xvi. 14. (3) The descriptions 
 of regeneration imply this. It is spoken of as a new creation 
 and a resurrection to life. The working of the Spirit is com- 
 pared for its might with the working in Christ when He was 
 raised from the dead : Eph. i. 19, 20. (4) The Scriptural view 
 of depravity, of man's natural state and need, makes such an 
 internal working of the Spirit needful : 1 Cor. ii. 14. Depravity 
 leaves the affections dormant. The spiritual affections are 
 asleep. They need to be roused most of all. The most power- 
 ful outward means are resisted until God brings the soul into 
 subjection. (5) Prayer implies more than an operation of the 
 word. We ask God for grace not only to understand the truth 
 but to sanctify the soul, purify the affections, guide the will, and 
 
520 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 change the will. In the struggles of renewal, every soul feels 
 that divine grace working within, and working mightily, can 
 alone save it. We have examples of this in the prayers in 
 Scripture: Col. i. 9-11. To this may be added the good effects 
 of the doctrine, the ascribing to God our holiness, and the 
 cleansing and purifying of the affections and dispositions, and 
 the constant sense of our dependence on divine grace for all 
 advances in sanctification. 
 
 III. — Is there a common, as well as effectual, grace? The 
 affirmative is the correct reply, on the following grounds: 
 
 1. From the experience of the impenitent, and of ourselves 
 while impenitent. The influence of the Holy Spirit is much 
 wider than we are apt to suppose. Probably there is always 
 more or less influence of the Spirit by and with the word. Be- 
 lief in such common grace is the strength and confidence of the 
 preacher, and it is very probable that all moral good in the 
 world is ultimately to be ascribed to this, even in the lower 
 spheres of humanity, i. e., to the influence of God's grace in the 
 course of his providence. It is much more scriptural and much 
 safer to extend the sphere of the Spirit's influence than to ex- 
 tend the scope of human ability. The influence is so wide that 
 probably we cannot extend it too far, i. e., in respect to the com- 
 mon methods in which it is exerted. 
 
 2. The Bible speaks of a resistance of the Spirit, a grieving 
 of the Spirit, which implies that there is a common grace as 
 well as that which effects the conversion of the soul. All that 
 precedes the renewal of the soul — the conviction of sin, any 
 feeling or desire leading towards renewal or a better life, is 
 properly to be ascribed to the influence of the Holy Spirit in the 
 way of common grace. 
 
 3. This common grace passes over into effectual grace in 
 proportion as the sinner yields to the divine influence, — so that 
 the work is God's, not man's. 
 
 IV. — How does effectual differ from common grace? 
 
 1. Effectual grace is the grace which effects that which 
 common grace tends to effect. 
 
 2. Its efficacy, in the last analysis, is owing to the divine 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 521 
 
 influence. It is God's sovereign power, and is applied according 
 to his purpose to save the elect. The pressure of the divine in- 
 fluence is what causes the efficacy. All that man does in the 
 case is removing the hindrance. 
 
 3. In consciousness, psychologically, we cannot distinguish 
 the difference between the two: we can ascertain it only from 
 results. We cannot distinguish the divine grace from the good 
 produced by it, or our own act, because it is only in our act 
 that that divine grace is known. That which is immediately 
 presented to the soul is its own acts, feelings, and thoughts. 
 That these come from God, we say on the ground of Script- 
 ural testimony, and because they are leading to that which 
 is well pleasing to God — renewal and sanctification of the 
 soul. We are conscious of the reality of the influence only 
 after the act. 
 
 4. This effectual grace is irresistible in the sense that it 
 carries the will and affections with it. No counter influence is 
 supposable in the case, because what it does is to engross the 
 affections and change the will. The word irresistible was 
 applied to it first by the opponents of Calvinism, but is ex- 
 plained by Calvinists in this sense — that the will goes with 
 the divine will and influence, and there is no thought cf 
 resistance. 
 
522 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 BOOK IT. 
 
 OF JUSTIFIVATIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 
 
 1. If considered in the historical order, the order of time, tlie 
 justification of the sinner before God comes after regeneration. 
 Our discussions tend to it naturally here. But regeneration, iri 
 the Christian sense, presupposes a possible justification; it in- 
 cludes justification as possible and actual, in the case of each re- 
 generated person. When regenerated, believers are, for Christ's 
 sake, justified. Regeneration is not a mere change of inward 
 state, but of external relations, through union with Christ. 
 Being freely justified for Christ's sake, man is brought into 
 a state of pardon and acceptance with God. The law no longer 
 condemns — the sinner is justified. 
 
 2. The question, How can man be just with God ? is at the 
 heart of all religions. The Pagan systems abound in mortifica- 
 tions, etc., by which a justification is sought. 
 
 3. In the doctrine of justification, the gospel is most radically 
 distinguished from a merely legal system, and from any moral 
 system which rests on merely legal ideas. These make personal 
 obedience, conformity to the law, to be the only ground of accept- 
 ance. In justification, acceptance is on the ground of what 
 Christ has done, of his merits, — of what another has done for 
 us, in our stead. The doctrine of justification is a central one; 
 it modifies all the rest; according to the view taken of this, the 
 entire system is distinguished. 
 
 4. Views of the atonement, determine the views on justifica 
 
 ' References. Owen, one of the ablest treatises in the English literature. The 
 view of the Anglican Church is in Bishop Bull's work on the Harmony between 
 Paul and James. There is a good exposition of the Scholastic view in Dr. Hamp. 
 den's Bampton Lecture, V. One of the best expositions of the subject is in Dr. 
 Richards' Lectures. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 523 
 
 tion, if logical sequence is observed. We have to do here, not 
 with views of natural justice, but with divine methods. 1 
 
 5. Justification by Faith alone is the distinguishing article 
 of the Reformers' position against the Soman Catholic system. 
 Romanists make justification and sanctification to go hand ia 
 hand, personal holiness to be the ground or reason of justifica- 
 tion, and hence works are mixed up with grace. The Reformers 
 insist on the direct relation to Christ, justification for his sake, 
 union with Him, trust in Him. It is " the gift of the giver, and 
 not the reward of the worker." 
 
 6. Nor are justification and pardon the same in Scripture. 
 The view of Emmons (Works, vol. v.) is: that justification "is 
 no more nor less than pardon,' 7 that " God rewards men for their 
 own and not Christ's obedience." 
 
 (a.) But the words as used in common life relate to wholly 
 different things. 2 If a man is "declared just" by a human 
 tribunal, he is not pardoned, he is acquitted, his own inherent 
 righteousness as respects the charge against him is recognized 
 and declared. 
 
 The Gospel proclaims both pardon and justification. There 
 is no significance in the use of the word "justify," if pardon be 
 all that is intended. 
 
 (6.) Certain expressions of Scripture are opposed to the view 
 that justification is simply pardon : Rom. v. 1, 2, 17, 18, 21; 1 Cor. 
 i. 30. 
 
 (c.) Justification involves what pardon does not, a righteous- 
 ness which is the ground of the acquittal and favor; not the 
 mere favor of the sovereign but the merit of Christ, is at the 
 basis, — the righteousness which is of God. The ends of. the law 
 are so far satisfied by what Christ has done, that the sinner can 
 be pardoned. The law is not merely set aside, but its great ends 
 are answered by what Christ has done in our behalf. God might 
 pardon as a sovereign, from mere benevolence (as regard to hap- 
 
 1 If we regard the atonement simply as answering the ends of a governmental 
 scheme, our view must be that justification merely removes an obstacle, and the 
 end of it is only pardon and not eternal life. 
 
 " See on this point a sermon on Justification by J. F. Stearns D.D., before the 
 Synod of New York and New Jersey, 1853. 
 
624 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 piness), but in the gospel He does more — He pardons in con- 
 sistency with his holiness — upholding that as the main end of 
 all his dealings and works. 
 
 (d.) Justification involves acquittal from all the penalty of 
 the law and the inheritance of all the blessings of the redeemed 
 state. The penalty of the law : spiritual, temporal, eternal" death, 
 is all taken away, and the opposite blessings are conferred in 
 and through Christ: the resurrection to blessedness, the gift of 
 the Spirit, and eternal life. 
 
 (e.) If justification is forgiveness simply, it applies only to 
 the past If it is also a title to life, it includes the future con- 
 dition of the soul. The latter alone is consistent with the plan 
 and decrees of God respecting Redemption — his seeing the end 
 from the beginning. 1 
 
 7. Justification is not a merely governmental provision, as 
 it must be on any scheme which denies that Christ's work has 
 direct respect to the ends of the law. 
 
 Neither does it find its ground, where some extreme Prot- 
 estant views would place it, in our internal state of repentance, 
 faith, or love, or any inward works (this being made the distinc- 
 tion from the Roman Catholic ground — external works), as the 
 meritorious basis of our acceptance. That ground is Christ, 
 what Christ has done — faith is the instrument. An internal 
 change is always a sine qua non of justification, but not its meri- 
 torious ground. 
 
 8. Union with Christ is the capital idea here. Edwards : "What 
 is real in the relation between Christ and the believer is the foun- 
 dation of what is legal." Dorner (his own summary of his doctrine 
 in Neue Evang. Kirchenzeitung, 1867, p. 744): (a.) The Actus Fo- 
 rensis in God becomes also transeunt, — seen in the " Friedensruf 
 Gottes," in the believing soul; (b.) By this, peace and joy flow 
 into the soul; (c.) From the consciousness of the forgiveness of 
 
 1 The reason why justification has been taken as pardon is two-fold. (a. ) It does 
 involve pardon: this is its negative side, while it has a positive side also — the title 
 to eternal life, (p.) The tendency to resolve the Gospel into an ethical system. 
 Only our acts of choice as meritorious could procure a title to favor, a positive re* 
 ward. Christ might remove the obstacle, but the title to heaven is derived only 
 from what we ourselves do. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 525 
 
 sins, and the blessedness given therewith, are developed the de- 
 sire and love of the good; (d.) Man becomes partaker of that 
 peace and joy, and conscious of his justification, in that Christ is 
 laid hold of by faith, and thus the union or the marriage of God 
 and man is completed; (e.) The renewed man, even in his sanc- 
 tification, can never derive (deduce) his gracious estate from 
 the sanctification, but only and always the sanctification from the 
 grace. 
 
 9. The statement of the doctrine in the Confession, Q. 33, 
 Shorter Cat. : " Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein 
 He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his 
 sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and re 
 ceived by faith alone.'' 
 
 Observations: 
 
 " Imputation '' means, reckoning to one's account that which 
 he has not — treating one as if he were that which he is not. 
 It does not mean, transferring of personal righteousness. 
 
 The relation to God consists in his exercise of "free grace," 
 his "pardoning" and " accepting as righteous.'' 
 
 The relation to Christ is seen, in his righteousness being that 
 41 for the sake " of which the justification is made. The right- 
 eousness is " imputed," what is his is set to our account. And it 
 is "righteousness" which is imputed: the transaction is a moral 
 one. 
 
 The relation of justification to ourselves is seen, in the fact 
 that it is received by " faith alone.'' ("Yet is it not alone in 
 the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other sav- 
 ing graces." Confession, chap. xi. § 2.) Faith is the instrument 
 by which justification is received, and it is the only instrument. 
 
 A further statement in the Confession of Faith, chap. xi. § 4: 
 14 God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect; . . . 
 nevertheless, they are not justified until the Holy Spirit doth, in 
 due time, actually apply Christ unto them." 
 
626 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE TERM AND IDEA: JUSTIFY — JUSTIFICATION; THE GENERAL 
 AND SCRIPTURAL SENSE. 
 
 1. The general term dixaiotivvt}, righteousness, means, (a.) 
 The righteousness which the law demands, holiness. It applies 
 to the internal state. It is, the state of man as corresponding to 
 the divine law — not merely the outward relation, but also the 
 internal state. This is not justification. But the Scriptures 
 distinguish — (b.) That righteousness which is the ground of 
 our justification, not of works, but of God, through faith: Eom. 
 i. 17; iii. 21, 22, 26; iv. 3, 5, 6, 9; Gal. iii. 6. 
 
 The classic sense of Sixaiotivvrj is, state of righteousness, jus- 
 tice (without reference to what is due to a personal God), whereas 
 the general Christian sense of the word is, the state of a man 
 corresponding to the divine will (or law). 
 
 AixaiotivvTj is the general term for conformity to law: the 
 property of those who belong to the kingdom of God. It is, 
 their whole state as conformed to the divine law; it is sus- 
 ceptible of degrees; it also includes sanctification. (That it in- 
 cludes the internal state as well as the objective relation is seen 
 from Kom. ix. 30; Gal. v. 5; Rom. vi. 16; xiii. 1 seq. ; xiv. 17; 
 1 Cor. i. 30; Gal. iii. 21; Cf. Gal. v. 5.) 
 
 Aoyi&6$ai eis Sixaiodvvqv (Rom. iv. 3, 5, 6, 9, 22; Gal. iii. 6; 
 James ii. 23, all from Gen. xv. 6) designates the contrast to the 
 personal Sixaiotivv?? (that Hepyaov); and means that righteousness 
 which, without merit of ours, is declared to be ours by God, for 
 Christ's sake. 
 
 2. The terms Sixaiow, dixaiaofas, are always used of the actvs 
 forensis, the declaration of righteousness, whether made in view 
 of the present state or of the future, of Sixaiodvrr? rov Seov, or of 
 full personal righteousness. They set forth Justification in dis- 
 tinction from Sanctification. (The only exception is Rev. xxii. 
 11, " He that is righteous, let him be righteous still," dixaioo^toa 
 £rz; but the best reading is, Sixaiodvv^v Ttoi7}6otxm en. Which- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 527 
 
 ever be adopted, the variation shows that SiHaiao^'rco in the 
 sense of: let him make himself or continue to be righteous, was 
 "intolerable to a Greek ear.") 
 
 SiuaiGDjia is used in both senses: as a righteous deed, Rom. 
 v. 18 ( = rift vit ocHorjs, v. 19); and as a justifying act, Rom. v. 16 
 (where it is opposed to Haraxpi/ja). 
 
 3. The whole question about the Scriptural terms rendered 
 "justify," "justification" is — do they mean, declare righteous, or, 
 make righteous. 
 
 (a.) In common speech, to justify one's self, to justify God, etc., 
 is not — to make just. " Ye are they which justify yourselves 
 before men " (Luke xvi. 15) is, Ye are they which assert your 
 righteousness before men; "he, willing to justify himself" (Luke 
 x. 29) is, wishing to make it appear, to have it declared and ad- 
 mitted, that he had not put an unnecessary question. 
 
 (b.) The whole reasoning of the Epistles to the Romans and 
 the Galatians proceeds on this understanding. 
 
 (c.) It is the concession of Biblical scholars, that — to use 
 Wieseler's language 1 — "leaving out the contested passages (such 
 ae Rev. xxii. 11), there is not a passage in the New Testament, 
 where dixaiovv means aught but declare." 
 
 Wieseler says: " Sixaiovv in the Septuagint means 'make 
 just' only in Dan. xii. 3, Isa. liii. 11, Ps. lxxiii. 13, (Sirach xviii. 
 22)." " In Rom. iii. 20, 'by the deeds of the law shall no flesh 
 be justified before Him,' Gal. ii. 16 (same as Rom. iii. 20, omit- 
 ting kvcoxiov ocvrov, and both from Ps. cxliii. 2,) and Gal. iii. 11, 
 'and that by the law no man is justified before God/ the 
 meaning cannot possibly be, make just." 
 
 "So too, Sixaiovv is declared to be the same as \oyi6$rjvai eis 
 6iK<xio6vr7?v in Rom. iv. 3, 5, 9, 23, 24; Gal. iii. 6; i. e., justitia 
 imputata, non infusa." 
 
 "Even in James the two phrases are used as equivalent: viz. 
 diKoaovtiSai in James ii. 21, 24, 25; and XoyitiSrjvax sis 8ixaio6vv??r 
 in James ii. 23." 
 
 i Galaterbrief, 1859, pp. 176-204. He cites Clem, of Rome in 1 Cor. ch, 32; 
 Chrysostom, as so interpreting Rom. viii. 33; Theodoret, Rom. iii. 24, and Au- 
 gustine, De Spir. et Littera. c. 16, "justum habere," though afterwards "justum 
 facere" (Cf. on this, Nitzsoh, Theol. Stud. u. Kritik., 1834, p. 481ffJ. 
 
628 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 "Again in 1 Cor. i. 30, vi. 11, dyia6jx6<; and yytda^rs are 
 named with and distinguished from 8iKa\o6vv7f and kSxHaiooSrite" 
 
 Justification involves acquittal from all the penalty and 
 inheritance of all the blessings which come under the law. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Justification (SzxazWi?) involves a righteousness (SiKaiodvvr?) 
 as its ground. 
 
 This is the reasoning of Paul in Eomans and Galatians. 
 That it does so is evident: 
 
 1. From the nature of the case, (a.) If justification be not mere 
 pardon; (&.) if the believer is declared just and admitted to the 
 favor of a holy God; (c.) if God is a moral Governor, having 
 supreme regard to holiness as the end of the law; (d.) if no one 
 can be saved unless as righteous in God's sight. 
 
 2. From Scripture. If it is not so, there is no significance 
 in the term dinaiovv, the Scripture need only have said "pardon." 
 Eom. x. 4; Phil. iii. 9 ; Rom. iv. 6; 2 Cor. v. 21; Rom. v. 18, 19; 
 Rom. iii. 26. 
 
 " God will not justify without a righteousness, nor without 
 a righteousness which does honor to his law and sets its author- 
 ity high in the sight of the universe " (Dr. Richards, p. 390) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 This righteousness which is the ground of justification is not 
 that of the sinner, personally fulfilling the demands of the law. 
 It is not a legal justification, by which each is treated according 
 to his personal deserts — not a legal justification in the sense of 
 distributive justice. 
 
 1. It cannot be so, on account of the sinner's moral state. 
 (a.) As a matter of fact, he is in a sinful, guilty condition, liable 
 
THE KINGDOM OP REDEMPTION. 529 
 
 to the just condemnation of the law. All men know this, (b.) If 
 he should repent, he could not wipe out the past, the condemna- 
 tion remains, (c.) So great is the power of sin in him that he 
 lies morally unable to turn, — his natural ability does not avail 
 for this, on account of the strength and power of sin. (d.) God 
 cannot consistently merely pardon, (e.) Men cannot justify 
 themselves by any denial of guilt. * God accuses them, and 
 God's law demands perfect holiness of them. (/.) Nor can 
 man's faith, as evangelical obedience, be taken, on lower terms 
 than those which demanded obedience in full. For if so, the 
 obedience would still be our righteousness. 
 
 Man is in such a state, then, that he cannot merit heaven by 
 the deeds of the law. (Even Pelagius could say, "lex ita mittit 
 ad regnum coelorum ut evangelium," only upon the understand- 
 ing that the works of the law were external works.) 
 
 2. The Scripture declares that the personal righteousness of 
 men cannot be the ground of their justification. The Law is 
 always the same, always binding in its full extent. " All have 
 sinned and come short of the glory of God." (a.) The Scripture 
 declares that all are under condemnation, (b.) The "works of 
 the law '' of which the Apostle speaks are, the whole obedience 
 which the law requires. They are contrasted with justification 
 by faith alone, and not with mere legal performances, (c.) Ex- 
 press statements of Scripture: Kom. iii. 20, 28; Titus iii. 5, 7; 
 Eph. ii. 8; Eom. iii. 24; Rom. iv. 5, 6, 7; Phil. iii. 9; Gal iii. 10, 
 22; Rom. xi. 6. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GROUND OF JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 Our justification can rest only upon one of two grounds. 
 Ultimately, there are .only two religions: that of works and that 
 of faith in Christ. 
 
 The ground of justification must be a righteousness. It can- 
 not be ours. Where and what is it ? 
 
53 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Or: There must be a meritorious ground, under God's moral 
 government, for our justification. It cannot be our merits. 
 Whose merits, then ? 
 
 Or: Justification is a procedure under God's moral govern- 
 ment, not of his mere sovereignty. It is not a procedure rest- 
 ing on the personal merit of the justified person. It must be 
 something taken instead o*f that, answering the same ends. That 
 something is — the Atonement of Christ, his work for us. 
 
 / § 1. Statements of Scripture as to the Ground of Justification. 
 t (a.) General Statements. — 
 
 Rom. v. 18. "Even so through the righteousness of one 
 .... upon all men unto justification of life." 
 
 Rom. v. 19. "So by the obedience of one shall many be 
 made righteous." 
 
 Rom. x. 4. "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to 
 every one that believeth." (This is the most decisive statement 
 of Scripture.) 
 
 2 Cor. v. 21. " 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." 
 
 Phil. iii. 9. "And be found in Him, not having mine own 
 righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through 
 the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by 
 faith." 
 
 (b.) Justification is spoken of as an imputation. 
 
 Rom. iv. 6. — "the blessedness of the man, unto whom God 
 imputeth righteousness without works." 
 
 Cf. Rom. v. 18, 19, above. 
 
 Rom. iv. 5. "To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him 
 that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for (Xoyt^svai) 
 righteousness." 
 
 The meaning of impute is seen most distinctly in the usage of the 
 compound kXXoyeoo. As in Philemon, verse IS, "if he hath wronged 
 ;thee in anything . . . tovto kfxoi SXloyei,) put that on my account." 
 So, Rom. v. 13, " but sin is not imputed (kWoyEirai) when there 
 is no law." 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 531 
 
 "To impute" does not involve the idea of a transfer of per- 
 sonal righteousness. 
 
 The imputation concerns the laying of our sins to the account 
 of Christ as well as of his righteousness to our account. 
 
 (c.) Justification is spoken of as the result of Christ's obedience. 
 
 (The distinction sometimes made between his active and pas- 
 sive obedience is not to be commended. It is said, that by his 
 active obedience Christ satisfied the demands of the law for holi- 
 ness; and by his passive, its demands for suffering. This dis- 
 tinction has not a Scriptural basis. The obedience of Christ's 
 whole life, all that belongs to his work, is imputed, reckoned to 
 our account for righteousness. It is thus that we " become the 
 righteousness of God in Him.'") 
 
 § 2. How Christ can he the Ground of our Justification. 
 
 1. We are justified by what He did in, and in view of, a con- 
 stituted relationship to us. 1 
 
 2. The doctrine of union with Christ is fundamental as to 
 the mode in which He can be the ground of our justification. 
 
 The Doctrine of the Vital or Mystical Union. — Larg. Cat., Q. 66: 
 " The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of 
 God's grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet 
 really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and hus- 
 band ; which is done in their effectual calling." 
 
 Short. Cat., Q. 30. "The Spirit applieth to us the redemption 
 purchased by Christ, by working faith in us, and thereby uniting 
 us to Christ in our effectual calling." 
 
 This is the mystical union in the Calvinistic sense; it is found 
 similarly expressed in other Confessions of the Reformation. It 
 is something real, and not a mere figure; as real as the union 
 between the branch and the vine. Though the branch and the 
 vine be only a figure, yet the fact illustrated by the figure is 
 not figurative. 
 
 The discussion proposed will state, I, The Scriptural Proof, 
 II. The Proof derivable from other Doctrines and Analogies, 
 
 1 This relationship is involved in a divine plan and is sometimes called t^e 
 covenant of redemption. " 
 
532 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 III. The Nature of this Union, IV. The Difference between 
 the Calvinistic and other Modes of Viewing this Union. 
 
 I. — The Scriptural Proof. 
 
 The term " mystical," by which this union is denoted, is from 
 Eph. v. 32. "This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning 
 Christ and the church." Verse 31 closes with "and they two 
 [husband and wife] shall be one flesh," and then follows the 
 above, declaring that the union between Christ and his church 
 is as close, as intimate as that between husband and wife; that 
 the union between husband and wife is but the image, the lower 
 realization, of the union between Christ and his people. 
 
 John vi. 56. *' He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my 
 blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." The reference is not to 
 the sacrament to be instituted. The meaning is more than 
 sacramental, viz., real. 
 
 John xiv. 23. "If a man love me, he will keep my words; 
 and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and 
 make our abode with him." 
 
 John xvii. 22, 23. "And the glory which thou gavest me I 
 have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in 
 them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." 
 — The union between Christ and his people is like that between 
 Christ and the Father. If the real union between Christ and 
 his followers is denied, then that between Christ and the Father 
 must be denied also. 
 
 1 John ii. 5. "But whoso keepeth his word, in him- verily 
 is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in 
 TRm" Verse 6 : "He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself 
 also so to walk, even as He walked." 
 
 1 John iv. 12. " If we love one another, God dwelleth in 
 us, and his love is perfected in us/' 
 
 The assumption of our nature is also part of the proof. John 
 i. 14: " The word was made flesh." 
 
 Paul, as well as John, sets forth the mystical union. 
 
 Eph. v. 23-32, referred to above. 
 
 Rom. viii. 10. "And if Christ be in you, the body is dead be- 
 cause of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." (It 
 
THE KINGDOM OP REDEMPTION. 533 
 
 is also shown, from the context here, that the union with Christ 
 is mediated by the Spirit: verse 9, "if any man have not the 
 Spirit of Christ "—verse 11 : " But if the Spirit of Him that 
 raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you.") 
 
 Col. i. 27 — " what is the riches of the glory of this mystery 
 among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 1 '' 
 
 Eph. iii. 17. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by 
 faith." 
 
 Gal. iii. 27. " For as many of you as have been baptized 
 into Christ have put on Christ." 
 
 1 Cor. vi. 14, 15. " And God hath both raised up the Lord, 
 and will also raise up us by his own power. Know ye not that 
 your bodies are the members of Christ?" Also, v. 17: "But he 
 that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." 
 
 There may also be cited: 
 
 2 Peter i. 4: "that by these ye might be (y£v?}6%e) partakers 
 of the divine nature." 
 
 The figure of the branch and the vine, John xv. 
 
 Results from the Scriptural Evidence. 
 
 (a.) As a matter* of fact and reality, there is as truly a union 
 between Christ and his followers, as between Christ and the 
 Father, the husband and the wife, the trunk and the branches. 
 
 (&.) This union is not sacramental but spiritual: not imme- 
 diate, but through and by the Holy Spirit uniting us to Christ 
 our head. This makes the distinction between the Calvinistic 
 view and that of the mystics and of the Sacramentarians. 
 
 (c.) The union extends to the body, so far as this — that through 
 the life-giving Spirit, we, like Christ, are to be raised from the 
 dead: because He lives we shall live also. 
 
 (d.) This union is on the basis of the covenant of grace, and 
 through it the blessings of that covenant are imparted to us. 
 
 (e.) The life given by this union is none other than the life 
 which the Holy Ghost imparts — yet it is a life, not of mere gen 
 eral divine influence, but in union with Christ. 
 
 (/.) This life is given through faith as the instrument of 
 our justification; it is a life not excluding, but including 
 justification. 
 
534 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 II. — Proof from other sources of doctrine and analogy. 
 
 (a.) From the doctrine of Justification by faith alone. In 
 our effectual calling, by the Spirit through faith, we are 
 justified; i. e., on the ground of what Christ has done, we are ac- 
 cepted in Him, "elect in Christ" There must then be some 
 peculiar bond or tie, on the ground of which we can be thus 
 received and accepted in another. 
 
 (b.) From the parallel between our death in Adam and our 
 life in Christ: Rom. v. 12 seq. The race is one in Adam, and 
 hence could sin in him and fall with him; human nature be- 
 came corrupt in him. We are condemned thereby: the natural 
 union with Adam is the ground of this procedure. In like man- 
 ner, the spiritual union with Christ is the basis of our being 
 accepted, and justified in him. 
 
 (c.) From the truth of the intimate, secret, unseen, yet i-eal 
 influence of the Holy Spirit in regeneration — in our effectual 
 calling, uniting us to Christ by these sacred influences, reinstat- 
 ing us in the moral image of God. These influences are confess- 
 edly mysterious; they are the bond of our union with Christ. 
 This union is at the ground of regeneration- and justification. 
 
 (d.) From the nature of love to Christ, faith in Christ, im- 
 plying the closest personal relationship between Christ and 
 ourselves — a union. 
 
 (e.) From the analogy of other works of God, and facts in 
 our other relations. 
 
 Through all nature, if we are theists, we believe in a per- 
 petual presence of God, everywhere, not merely in power, but in 
 reality. Through all second causes the great First Cause is ever 
 at work. Acts xvii. 28. 
 
 In each of the several tribes of creation there is a special, 
 common character, whereby the tribe is made one, though also 
 each individual is distinct from every other. There is a mystery 
 and a fact here. The common nature and descent from one pair 
 have a background of mysterious union, which is a background 
 of fact also. 
 
 It is natural then to conclude from analogy, that in the new 
 and higher kingdom of God's grace, for which all other things 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 535 
 
 were made, there would be a real union in one head. This is 
 given us in our union with Christ, through the influence of the 
 gracious Spirit. 
 
 Thus, through the influences of the Holy Spirit, we are led tc 
 faith in Christ: to trust in Him; and in consequence of that we 
 become partakers of all that Christ has done for us — are justified, 
 i. e., are both pardoned and adopted. 
 
 Now, as in the family there is a union of members, parents 
 and children, so that all have the same liabilities, on the ground 
 of the union ; as in the race having its headship in Adam there 
 is a union, with the same liabilities; so in our union to Christ 
 through love and faith, a like union is implied. 
 
 III. — The nature of this union: (rather negatively than 
 positively). 
 
 A general union with God is at the basis: Acts xvii. 28. 
 
 It involves also a union with the whole Trinity: John xiv. 23; 
 xvii. 23; xvii. 21. 
 
 (a.) The union is not physical but spiritual. 
 
 (&.) It is not through the sacraments, but by the Spirit, 
 through faith. 
 
 (c.) Not that the substance of Christ passes over into us, so 
 that our natures are made divine with his divinity (Cf. Calvin's 
 Instit. III. xi. 10). 
 
 (d.) Not that his theanthropic life, considered as his specific 
 substance, or nature, is infused into us. 
 
 (e.) But, it is a vital, personal union: — mystical, because it 
 cannot be further defined than as a fact, and by the consequent 
 benefits. But though mystical, yet real 
 
 (/.) Hence it is more than 
 
 (a 1 .) Union of affection and aim. This is included, but this 
 is the consequence of the union and not the union itself. 
 
 (ft 1 .) Than a merely external, constituted, arbitrary relation 
 — than a mere union of compact; though this is also included. 
 Just as with Adam the moral headship is based on the physical, 
 the covenant is carried out through the natural relationship, so 
 is the covenant of grace through this spiritual union. 
 
 (q.) The effect of faith in uniting to Christ is thus stated by 
 
53 G CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Augustine (Serm. 144): "Qui ergo in Christum credit, credendo 
 in Christum, venit in eum Chrietus, et quodummodo unitur in 
 eum, et merabrum in corpore ejus efficitur." (The credere in 
 Christum he shows to be very different from, credere ipsum esse 
 Christum, and, credere de Christo, — devils may do this). Further: 
 "Ille enim credit in Christum, qui et sperat in Christum et dili- 
 git Christum. Nam si fidem habet sine spe ac sine dilectione, 
 Christum esse credit, non in Christum credit." 
 
 IV. — Classification and criticism of opinions as to the nature 
 of our relation to Christ. 
 
 The great difference of theological systems comes out here. 
 Since Christianity is redemption through Christ, our mode of 
 conceiving that will determine the character of our whole the- 
 ological system. 
 
 1. The humanitarian (Socinian) view. Christ is an example 
 and a teacher. There is no other relationship than there is be- 
 tween us and other examples and teachers, excepting that He 
 is the highest and best. There is between Him and us no living 
 bond or tie. (Socinus admits that Christ confers immortality.) 
 This is a bare, ethical, natural system, with no supernatural 
 elements. 
 
 2. The other extreme is, Transubstantiation: through the 
 sacraments, by transubstantiation of the elements of bread and 
 wine, the very body and blood of Christ are received. (This 
 view has a greatly modified form in the Lutheran doctrine of 
 Consubstantiation.) 
 
 3. The Sacramental Theory (particularly of the Oxford 
 School). The Sacraments are an extension of the Incarna- 
 tion, and vehicles of grace. Through the Sacraments we re- 
 ceive, not the very body and blood, but the theanthropic life 
 of Christ. The Holy Spirit works in the bestowal of this life, 
 but — works through the Sacraments. There is a real, spiritual 
 reception of the very substance of the Logos. (See Mercersb 
 Rev., Oct. 1854). 
 
 4. The Spiritual Life Theory. This drops the Sacraments 
 We receive from Christ a new, spiritual life; the communica 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 537 
 
 tion of such a life is the great end of the Incarnation. The 
 Atonement is merged in the Incarnation ; the object of the In- 
 carnation is the giving of life, rather than making atonement 
 (Sch'leiermacher, Coleridge). 
 
 5. The general Calvinistic view. The union with Christ is 
 mediated by his Spirit (it is not direct, not through sacraments), 
 whence we are both renewed and justified. The great fact of 
 objective Christianity is, Incarnation in order to Atonement: 
 the great fact of subjective Christianity is, Union with Christ, 
 whereby we receive the Atonement. The Sacraments are ex- 
 pressions, not vehicles of grace. 
 
 Our new life is hid with Christ in God. The Incarnation 
 has the same relation to the new life that Creation has to the 
 old. Yet this new life is by the distinct operation of the Holy 
 Spirit. We stand in as close a relation to the second as to the 
 first Adam — though it be spiritual and not natural. 
 
 Calvin (Works, Brunswick ed., 1870, vol. ix. p. 30, on the De- 
 fence of the Doctrine of the Sacraments) says: "The flesh of Christ 
 is life-bringing. . . . We coalesce with Christ in a sacred unity, and 
 that same flesh (caro) breathes life into us. ... by a secret virtue 
 of the Holy Spirit, we have, implanted into.the body of Christ, a 
 common life with Him. For from the hidden fountain of Deity, 
 life is wonderfully infused into the flesh of Christ, that thence 
 it might flow to us " 
 
 6. The Governmental Theory. This denies the reality of 
 such union with Christ, takes the expressions of Scripture re- 
 lating to it as metaphors, and denies also the reality of justifi- 
 cation on this basis. We become like Christ by choosing the 
 same end that He did. His atonement removed the obstacles, 
 so that we can now go directly to God. Justification is pardon 
 only, for Christ's sake: or, if more, we are justified on the ground 
 of our inherent state of love, or, because it is foreseen by God 
 that we shall become wholly just by and by. Christ presents 
 to us an exhibition of God's hatred of sin and love of holiness; 
 and this moves us to be and do right more than anything else. 
 
 1 [If any one hesitates over this expression, there may perhaps be substituted 
 for the term "flesh" the term "humanity," with no detriment to the force of the 
 argument.] 
 
538 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 All this is true enough as far as it goes. But it condemns 
 as a figment, as visionary and unreal, the grand fact of personal, 
 vital union with Christ, through faith, as the basis of our justi- 
 fication, and the beginning of our new life. 
 
 In fine and sum — the question being, How can the lost favor 
 of God be restored ? — 
 
 The first theory says: It is enough for God to come and help 
 us somewhat. 
 
 The second says : We are restored by partaking of Christ's 
 very flesh and blood. 
 
 The third says: We are restored by partaking of the divine 
 humanity — though not of the literal flesh and blood — through 
 the Sacraments. 
 
 The fourth : by partaking of the life of Christ, not necessarily 
 through the Sacraments. 
 
 The fifth : only through justification and regeneration, effected 
 by the Holy Spirit, uniting us to Christ. 
 
 The sixth: through justification, i. e., pardon, not including 
 a real union with Christ, to produce effects, influences on us. 
 
 § 3. In what Way does what Christ has done avail to the Believer 
 
 through this Union, for his Justification as a Righteousness? 
 
 How does it avail ? 
 
 1. Not legal justification in the sense of distributive justice 
 
 as defined Not under the law in the restricted usage 
 
 that it demands works as the condition of life. "The ungodly" 
 are justified (" Legal justification occurs when one accused is 
 vindicated by showing either that he did not do the act or had 
 a right to do it.'' Barnes, p. 74). 
 
 Justification is contrasted with this expressly. The law 
 requires uniform obedience: Rom. iii. 21. The law, of itself, 
 has no provision for justification. Not as excluding all right- 
 eousness or merits, as the ground of justification. Proved in 
 Chap. III. 
 
 2. Not a transfer of personal righteousness — Christ's right- 
 ousness to the believer: the believer and Christ being consid- 
 ered as separate. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 539 
 
 3. But that Christ having satisfied the end of the law for 
 righteousness, in man's behalf (made an atonement as already 
 explained) i e., secured holiness, we, through union with Him, 
 become partakers of all the benefits of his work. Here is the 
 mystery of the work. 
 
 4. Though the demands of distributive justice are not di- 
 rectly met (I e., as the ultimate point of view in our justifica- 
 tion 1 ), yet the end to be gained by distributive justice, i e., 
 the maintenance of holiness, is secured. 
 
 Considered in themselves, out of Christ, men are guilty, 
 deserving condemnation. 
 
 5. For Christ's sake — because we are one with Him — we are 
 treated "as if" righteous: but we could not be so treated un- 
 less there were in Christ a sufficient ground for this **asif": 
 his merits. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE INSTRUMENTAL CAUSE OF JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 § 1. Faith, and Faith alone. 
 
 The Roman Catholic view is that justification is through 
 the sacraments as well, i, e., by baptism and by penance 
 as restoring the forfeited grace of baptism. The Arminian 
 view: the means of justification is faith as including love 
 and future holiness. God perceives, in the act of faith, love 
 and holiness following, and declares the person just, not ou 
 the ground of Christ's merit, but of the foreseen merits of 
 the believer. 
 
 The Scriptures declare faith to be the only act of the soul on 
 which justification is conditioned. Rom. i. 16; v. 1; Gal. ii. 16; 
 
 ■ If tenpence is due a man and he is paid a dollar, the tenpence is more than 
 satisfied. Christ's work more than satisfies distributive justice, while directly and 
 in the strictest sense, it does not and cannot "satisfy" it. Its end is more fully 
 reached— holiness is made supreme and triumphant. 
 
540 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Phil. iii. 9; John iii. 18 asserts that faith is necessary to the ob- 
 taining eternal life. 
 
 § 2. The Idea of Faith. 
 
 (a.) In a loose popular sense, Faith is belief in any truth on 
 any ground. 
 
 (b.) In a general and somewhat abstract sense, it is belief in 
 what is beyond the sphere of the senses. 
 
 (c.) It is belief, on the ground of testimony, in what we have 
 not ourselves seen or known — belief on the ground of authority. 
 The same truth may be known in different ways — by reason 
 and by testimony too, e. g., immortality. 
 
 (d.) More particularly, in a general Scriptural usage, Faith 
 is trusting in God's testimony — receiving all that God has re- 
 vealed to us. Koman Catholics say: It is belief in God's testi- 
 mony, as witnessed by the church: it merits grace, of congruity, 
 through the sacraments; being "formed" by love, it is directly 
 meritorious and accumulates merits. 
 
 (e.) The special sense of Faith, the sense in which it is used 
 in the doctrine of justification is, the receiving, resting in, and 
 trusting upon Christ. Not mere abstract truth, but Christ is its 
 object. It is not merely relying upon what God has testified in 
 regard to all truth, but trusting in and receiving Christ as our 
 Saviour— relying upon Him. 
 
 As such — 
 
 1. It is an act of the whole soul — not of the intellect, nor 
 ■will, nor sensibilities, alone, but of all combined. The whole 
 soul goes out in the act of faith in Christ. Faith is one of the 
 most concrete of acts, yet in direct consciousness is an act per 
 fectly simple. 
 
 2. It also includes in germ all other graces. It does this 
 because it is an energy of the whole mind. " Worketh by love," 
 Gal. v. 6. It involves repentance. "Show faith by works, 1 
 James ii. 18. 
 
 3. It is itself a holy act, involving trust and love, yet it is 
 not as holy that it is the means of justification, but as being 
 the act in which we receive Christ. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 541 
 
 4. Thus it is properly called the instrumental cause of justi- 
 fication. The meritorious ground is Christ. Faith is not the 
 highest of the virtues, but love is. Justification is not without 
 works, yet not by works, — not without love, yet not by love, 
 — not without assent, yet not as though the assent were 
 meritorious. 
 
 § 3. Some Questions in regard to Faith. 
 
 I. — Does faith always involve explicit, in distinction from 
 implicit, knowledge? Must there always be a full and denned 
 knowledge of what Christ is? 
 
 Some degree of knowledge is involved in every conscious act 
 of faith. This is essential to it. Roman Catholics contend that 
 faith may be implicit to a large extent, L e., a man may have 
 saving faith without knowing specially anything about the work 
 of Christ. Faith may be simply general trust in God and be- 
 lief in the Bible — and especially in the church. Thus a man 
 may say he believes what the church says, even if he does not 
 know what that is, and he is to be considered as having faith in 
 what the church holds. 
 
 But (1) We really assent only so far as we know the meaning 
 of the statement which we accept. We may be ready to receive 
 whatever else can be shown to rest upon the same authority. 
 (2) The Scriptures interchange faith and knowledge. 
 
 II.— Whether the act of faith be a moral or intellectual act? 
 The question here is between those who affirm that it is solely 
 intellectual, and those who affirm that it involves the affections 
 and the will (in part) as well as the intellect. 
 
 (1) It is an act of the soul in respect to moral and religious 
 truth, accepting it, trusting it, and resting in it. If so, it must 
 have a moral character. It is not mere perception, but involves 
 assent. (2) Hence, it cannot be exercised without the affections. 
 There is no possible element of trust entering into an act where 
 the affections are not involved. It involves something of love. 
 It is giving the soul to that which is presented. (3) A mere 
 traditional or historical faith cannot be enough. As an intel- 
 lectual act, it would be historical faith or receiving what came 
 
542 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 down in the way of tradition. But we have to do here with 
 something more than historical evidence. There is the influence 
 of the Holy Spirit, the assent of the soul to divine truth. The 
 Scriptures speak of those who believe, as taught of the Spirit. 
 All the effects of faith are such as to show it to have a moral 
 character as well as historical. They impose an obligation in 
 respect to it, and this implies a moral, spiritual character belong- 
 ing to it. Unbelief would not be a sin unless it involved that 
 which is immoral. 
 
 III. — (Involved in the preceding.) Does trust belong to 
 faith? This is denied by Romanists. 
 
 (1) Not, as applied to abstract doctrines, e. g., the divinity of 
 Christ. (2) But saving faith rests ultimately in persons, in God, 
 in Christ. Most specifically, it is a direct reliance on Christ for 
 salvation. 
 
 IV. — Does faith involve the assurance of personal salvation ? 
 Does such assurance belong to the essence of faith, — to the es- 
 sence in distinction from the products of faith? 
 
 Sir Wm. Hamilton (Discussions, p. 493), arguing against Arch- 
 deacon Hare on Luther's doctrines, has affirmed very boldly that 
 the doctrine of assurance — the feeling certain that God is propi- 
 tious to me — that my sins are forgiven, was long held by the 
 Protestant communities to be the criterion of a saving faith. 
 Luther says, "He who hath not assurance spews faith out," and 
 Melancthon makes it a distinction between Christianity and 
 heathenism. Hamilton further says that this position was main- 
 tained by Calvin, by Arminius, and by all the Protestant Con- 
 fessions down to the Westminster, when assurance was for the 
 first time declared to be not of the essence of faith. He adds 
 that then one of the great distinctions between Protestants and 
 Eoman Catholics was obliterated. These statements show that 
 a great philosopher may be mistaken in departments where he 
 is not well acquainted. By some of the earlier Reformers, as by 
 Luther, it was undoubtedly asserted that faith involves assurance, 
 and this was urged in part against the Roman Catholic view, 
 which leads to the conclusion that no one can be assured of his 
 salvation in this life, because salvation is dependent upon sancti- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 543 
 
 fication; in opposition to which Protestants argued that in faith 
 itself was the ground and assurance of our salvation, and that 
 we might have from the simple act of -faith assurance of personal 
 salvation. Calvin speaks guardedly. He says that there are 
 doubts and difficulties, and that it is not necessary to have as- 
 surance in order to be a believer. Even the Synod of Dort did 
 not include this among its decrees. It is not explicitly asserted 
 in any of the Eeformed Confessions, except in the Heidelberg 
 Catechism, — not in the French, nor in that of Basel, nor in the 
 Helvetic. The Westminster Confession, c. xviii. § 3, says, "This 
 infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, 
 but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many 
 difficulties before he be partaker of it." Turretine draws the dis- 
 tinction clearly. It is said to be not the essence of faith but its 
 ripest product. This doctrine of assurance has been revived in 
 Switzerland through Dr. Malan, whose tract has been published 
 by the Reformed Dutch Board. He makes assurance to be not 
 merely necessary to gospel peace, but to belong to faith, so that one 
 cannot have faith without having assurance of faith. President 
 Edwards met this point in a letter to Ebenezer Erskine of Scot- 
 land, where the controversy had been started in connection with 
 the publication of the "Marrow of Divinity." He puts it sub- 
 stantially in this form: "Faith is belief, in its general sense, of 
 what God has revealed to us in the gospel. He has revealed to 
 us that all who believe will be saved, and we must believe that 
 on the ground of the gospel assertion : but He has not revealed 
 to us in the gospel that I, Jonathan Edwards, of Northampton, 
 shall be saved, and therefore that does not belong to the essence 
 of faith. The essence of faith consists in receiving what God 
 has revealed." 
 
 § 4. Is Man responsible for his Belief— I e., for his Unbelief? 
 
 Those who assert that man is not responsible, do it because 
 they hold that faith is a merely intellectual act, and depends on 
 the amount of evidence which is brought before the mind, so 
 that if a man has sufficient evidence, he cannot help believing: 
 and if he has not, he cannot attain to belief. They argue the 
 
544 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 question on the ground of a general definition of faith — assent 
 to testimony: and say, where the testimony is present, assent ia 
 compelled, and where it is not, assent is impossible. 
 
 The general position to be taken in respect to the matter is, 
 that man is responsible for his unbelief so far as sin in any form 
 or way keeps him from believing. If there is a want of oppor- 
 tunity or of natural capacity, he is not to be held responsible. 
 But so far as any selfishness, any worldliness, any pride, any 
 evil desire, any wrong affection, keeps him from submitting to 
 the righteousness of God, just so far he is responsible. This is 
 applied as follows: (1) To the evidence for the being of God. 
 Faith, reliance, trust in the divine existence, is not a merely in- 
 tellectual act; it is an act of the whole soul turning to God. 
 Wherever there is atheism, the fact shows that the moral nature 
 is benumbed. (2) To the evidences of Christianity. These are 
 addressed partly to the intellect, but chiefly to man's moral 
 wants, because Christianity presents itself as a remedy for man's 
 moral disorders, and all that prevents any from receiving it is 
 the absence of the sense of need of salvation. It is a moral hin- 
 drance. (3) To faith in Christ. This is essentially a moral act, 
 an act of the whole soul. It is not merely an act of the intel- 
 lect, but it is from a conscious need of redemption; and that 
 which keeps any one from trusting in Christ is his lack of a 
 proper sense of his sinfulness and need of a Saviour. (4) To the 
 final condemnation of the sinner. In perhaps almost all minds, 
 that which keeps from the acknowledgment of this, is the want 
 of a proper sense of sin and of its just desert. 1 
 
 § 5. Why is the high Office assigned to Faith of being the instru- 
 mental Cause of Justification ? 
 
 1. It is not because faith is the highest of the virtues: 
 1 Cor. xiii. 13. 
 
 2. It is because faith is the only way in which man can 
 receive Christ. The act of the soul trusting Christ is the only 
 mode in which the soul can be saved. Faith is the only con- 
 
 1 Wardlaw, in reply to Brougham, has written on the question, Is man re- 
 sponsible for his belief? See Princ. Rev., vol. xviii. p. 53. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 545 
 
 ceivable act by which the sinner can be united to Christ. It 
 brings ns to rest in God, to renounce self, to turn from self to 
 Christ, and it is the only act of the mind by which this can 
 be achieved. Both the simplicity and the power of faith are 
 to be taken into consideration. 1 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 
 VIEWS OF JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 They agree in holding that justification is the consequence 
 or result of the sinner's return to God under the influence of 
 the Holy Spirit. They differ in their notion of justification, in 
 their view of the point at which justification takes place, 
 in their "view of the nature of faith, of good works, and of 
 works of supererogation. 
 
 1. The difference in the notion of justification. The Eoman 
 Catholic says, that this includes not only forgiveness and adop- 
 tion, but also sanctification, that it involves the internal change 
 of the sinner into a just person — an infusion of divine justice as 
 the property of the soul. Sometimes they call it a physical act. 
 This is connected with their view of the primitive endowments 
 of man. They hold that man was endowed with all the capacities 
 of human nature, and that in addition grace was imparted or 
 infused — superadded to the primitive endowments ; that by the 
 fall, superadded, infused grace was lost; that the object of the 
 gospel is to restore that lost grace, and that this is effected 
 through the sacraments — baptism, penance and the Lord's 
 Supper. It is restored substantially — physically — to man, and 
 it is on account of this restored grace that man is justified, and 
 this grace includes faith and sanctification. The Protestant view 
 
 1 Faith in relation to Justification, Edwards, ii. 628. Faith in relation to 
 Perseverance, Ibid. iii. 510. Sermons on Justification, Ibid. iv. 64, cf. 36 (N. T. 
 Edition, 1868). 
 
546 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is, that justification in its essential notion is not the making 
 just, but the declaring just, on the ground of faith alone. It is 
 a forensic act, ?". e., an act in the form of a declaration before a 
 judicial tribunal, and not in its first aspect declarative of 
 character. 
 
 2. The difference as to the point at which justification occurs. 
 They agree that justification is grace "per Christum," but the 
 Roman Catholic says that God is moved by the faith, repent- 
 ance, good purposes, and good works of man to make him just; 
 that God makes him capable of doing good works, and in pro- 
 portion to the amount of good works he does, justification ad- 
 vances, so that the justification is gradual, is constantly 
 increasing, is never completed until sanctification is complete. 
 The cause of justification is admitted to be Christ's merits, but 
 the necessary condition is man's acts, man's works, man's sancti- 
 fication. The Protestant view is that justification is in and by 
 a simple act of faith. Man trusts in the pardoning grace of God 
 through Christ, and good works are the fruit of that. 
 
 3. The question whether justification is by faith alone. Ro- 
 man Catholics deny this. In doing this they give a different 
 idea of faith. Faith, they say, is the assent by which we receive 
 those things which are divinely revealed and promised, espe- 
 cially that the wicked are justified by the grace of God and the 
 redemption of Christ. This is necessary to justification, but is 
 not all that is necessary, — it must not be found alone. The 
 Roman Catholic ground is: (1) God is the efficient cause of jus- 
 tification. (2) Christ is the meritorious ground. (3) Inherent 
 righteousness, or our sanctified state, is the formal cause — the 
 necessary condition of it. (4) Merit of condignity, in repentance, 
 penance, good works, is necessary to justification. (5) The 
 means by which all this is applied are the sacraments of the 
 church, especially baptism. The Protestant view is, that the 
 faith by which we receive Christ involves no mixture of our 
 own works, that the simple faith and trust is the sole instrument 
 of justification. In the Protestant view, justification is a single 
 act of trust; in the Catholic, it is a process, and a long one. 
 
 4. The difference as to the relation of good works to justi 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 547 
 
 fication. They agree that good works are not to be separated 
 in re from justification, but differ as to their relation to it. The 
 Protestant view is, that good works bring no merit or desert in 
 respect to salvation or the title to eternal life. In every other 
 point of view they insist upon good works, which are the fruit 
 and consequence of justifying grace. Eoman Catholics hold 
 that good works bring an increase of grace, an increase of title 
 to eternal life and heavenly felicity, and that in proportion to 
 the amount of good works is the strength of the title to eter- 
 nal life. 
 
 5. The difference as to the so-called works of supererogation. 
 Roman Catholics hold that the regenerated may not only keep 
 the commands of God entirely, but that they may keep more, 
 — not only what is enjoined in the law but also the "evangeli- 
 cal counsels," things recommended but not binding — poverty, 
 vows of chastity, etc. They may attain to a higher moral per- 
 fection and merit before God by these works. This is carried 
 out in the whole system of monasticism, which has here its 
 theoretic root — that in it a higher degree of religion 1 can be 
 practiced. These monastic saints in this way go through life, 
 obeying their voluntary vows and laying up a treasury of merit, 
 which is committed by Christ to the keeping of the church. 
 These are the works of supererogation, the merit of which is 
 dispensed by the church in dispensations, etc., from the treasury 
 of grace laid up from its departed supererogatory heroes. The 
 general Protestant view is, that so far from there being any works 
 of supererogation, not even the renewed can perfectly keep the 
 commands of God, and the whole monastic life is rejected so far 
 as it claims a higher perfection and special degree of merit. 
 
 1 This goes so far that in the Roman Catholic system the word religion is 
 restricted to the monastic life. 
 
548 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HISTORICAL STATEMENTS RESPECTING THE DIFFERENT THEORIES OF 
 JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 Each theological system and party must have its view of 
 justification, and that view is modified by the fundamental pe- 
 culiarity of each system. In the early Christian church, to the 
 time of the Augustinian and Pelagian controversy, there was 
 for the most part a simple Scriptural statement of the doctrine. 
 It had not yet been brought out through controversy. The ele- 
 ments of it were not analyzed. In the anthropological contro- 
 versy, between Pelagius and Augustine, the doctrine was 
 brought to a statement, in connection with the doctrines of 
 grace. The Pelagian view was, that our moral state is the only 
 ground of justification, — corresponding to the general ethical 
 tendency of Pelagius. * In the Medieeval theology, among the 
 Scholastics, originated the theory that justification, means to 
 make just — in distinction from its being a declarative act — based 
 in part on the etymology of the word justification, as used in 
 the Latin language. This continued to be the prevalent doc- 
 trine until the Eeformation controversies. It was then that the 
 doctrine first came to a full discussion and articulate statement. 
 Some of the Reformers speak of justification as equivalent to 
 pardon, and use the terms pardon and justification as synony- 
 mous. But that was not in view of controversies like ours; it 
 was with reference to the Roman Catholic position. This was, 
 that justification consisted in pardon and sanctification. Luther, 
 Melancthon and Calvin said, justification consists in pardon, but 
 without ever denying that it likewise includes the title to eternal 
 life. This is involved in the doctrine of assurance which they 
 held, though statements which seem to make it merely pardon 
 may be extracted from the writings of Calvin, etc. In the 
 course of the Arminian controversy in Holland, at the beginning 
 of the seventeenth century, coming to its consummation at the 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 549 
 
 Synod of Dort, 1618-19, the doctrine of justification was thor- 
 oughly debated, and the position of the Arminians was substan 
 tially as follows: Justification is declarative, the sinner is not 
 made just inherently or relatively in the eye of the law, but is 
 restored to his standing through God's favor; that, however, the 
 ground of justification is not Christ's righteousness imputed, but 
 is personal faith, including what was called evangelical obedi- 
 ence — a lower obedience than that required by the law, which 
 is accepted instead of legal obedience. While asserting that 
 faith, as including this evangelical obedience, is the proper ground 
 of justification, they had no scruple in saying that the justifica- 
 tion was gratuitous, on the ground that God for Christ's sake 
 was willing to accept this imperfect, instead of perfect, obedi- 
 ence. This included the position that faith holds in its grasp 
 all the future good works of the justified person. According to 
 this system, it is quite apparent that the law of God in its strict- 
 ness is virtually set aside. Christ does not act under that law, 
 but outside of it, and the sinner does not obey that law, but 
 renders an evangelical obedience; so that the law is simply set 
 aside as far as Christ is concerned in his obedience, and the 
 sinner in his obedience. Under this system sinners were told 
 to do as well as they could, and trust God's mercy. 
 
 There have been some modifications of the doctrine in the 
 discussions in our own country. The elder Edwards held to the 
 doctrine of justification in the sense of the Protestant symbols 
 The only modification which he made — which is not a departure 
 from the symbols but simply from one form of Calvinistic the- 
 ology — was in emphasizing the statement that our real union 
 with Christ is the basis of the justifying process, that our 
 union with Christ is the ground of the legal procedure. The 
 younger Edwards, in a sermon before the Conn. Association, 1786, 
 on the subject, " Christ our righteousness,' 7 enters into an expla- 
 nation of the nature of the union with Christ as vital in affection, 
 making us one with Him or causing us to be treated as if one, 
 on the ground of that union, and then he proceeds to consider 
 the notion of justification itself. Of this he makes pardon to be 
 an essential part, not limiting justification, however, to that, and 
 
550 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 then he goes on to say that it is the act of the sovereign, beside 
 and above the law, and not the act of the judge, which latter 
 position, lie says, subverts the grace of the gospel. He is ex- 
 plicit in the statement that the satisfaction and obedience ol 
 Christ is the meritorious cause of justification. When he denies 
 that it is the act of a judge, he must be understood to mean that 
 it is not under the law in the strictest sense of distributive jus- 
 tice. He should not be taken as meaning that justification has 
 not respect to the great ends of the law. By the act of a judge, 
 he means simply a legal declaration as to the personal desert of 
 each individual, and then of course justification cannot be the 
 act of God as a judge. This subject has entered into later dis- 
 cussions, and by some writers of the so-called New School bodies, 
 justification was made to be simply equivalent to pardon. Dr. 
 Richards, however, (p. 389 seq.) takes a different ground and 
 the ground on which the New School in general may be said to 
 stand. He also says that the law is not made the rule of judg- 
 ment, ajid the declaration of justification is not according to 
 law, that God acts above the law: but he evidently takes law 
 and judicial proceeding in the same sense with the younger 
 Edwards: law means simply what is incumbent on each and 
 what may be demanded of each. There is another modification 
 in respect to the ground and the conditions of justification, in 
 Mr. Finney's lectures on theology. (1) From the ground of 
 justification he excludes Christ's obedience in our stead and 
 our own obedience — whether under the law or the gospel, and 
 anything and everything in the Mediatorial work, including the 
 Atonement. The Atonement itself is not the fundamental rea- 
 son of justification. The simple ground is the disinterested and 
 infinite love of God. All Calvinists say that the soui*ce of justi- 
 fication is to be found in God's infinite love. By the ground of 
 justification is usually meant, the specific reason of pardon and 
 acquittal. (Mr. Finney uses the word ground in the sense of 
 source.) (2) As to the conditions of justification, he holds that 
 the Atonement is one condition, i. e., is a sine qua non, and that 
 faith, repentance, and sanctifi cation are all conditions equally. — 
 In making these to be just as important as the work of Christ, 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 551 
 
 he destroys justification as a specific doctrine. His position re- 
 solves justification into sanctification or regeneration, and leaves 
 it no validity of its own. He is consistent in requiring entire 
 
 sanctification. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 Obj. I. — It makes good works unnecessary. — But good works 
 are excluded only in one aspect, i. e., in relation to justification. 
 Tliey are as much as ever necessary in our holiness and Christian 
 life. We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. 
 
 Obj. II. — Justification makes salvation to be a matter of right 
 and debt, on the ground of Christ's obedience in our stead; and 
 this excludes it from being an act of grace. — But this can be 
 maintained only on the ground of the mercantile theory of the 
 Atonement — that Christ, in dying for the elect only, paid for them 
 an exact quid pro quo. The fact is that salvation comes entirely 
 from grace. It is God's grace which is made glorious by the 
 Atonement. 
 
 Obj. III. — Justification is a merely external transaction. — But 
 we are justified by faith, and faith is not external but internal. 
 
 Obj. IV. — There is a conflict in this matter between Paul and 
 James. — But James commends faith as holy. What he is speak- 
 ing against is a dead faith — merely intellectual — and he enjoins 
 upon the disciples to show their faith by their works, so that 
 faith is the primitive thing even with him. He starts (ii. 24) 
 from morality to find its roots: if there is no morality there is no 
 root. Paul goes from the faith to the works. With him the sap 
 is first, with James, the fruit. James reprobates a dead faith, 
 Paul urges a living faith. 1 
 
 Obj. V. — Eighteousness is not transferable. — We assent, and 
 
 1 See Dr. Woods, and his citation from Wardlaw, that Paul is speaking of the 
 justification of the sinner, and James of the justification of the believer. 
 
552 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 say that Christ's personal righteousness is not transferred. On 
 account of his righteousness we are treated as if righteous. 
 
 Obj. VI. — Christ's obedience can be no part of our justifica- 
 tion, because He owed his obedience for himself. — But Christ 
 did not owe an obedience for himself unto death, and He did 
 not owe for himself to take the place which He took in the 
 moral administration of the world, but He took it in our stead. 
 
 Obj. VII. — Believers although justified are still punished. — 
 They are not punished in the strict sense, but in the sense in 
 which punishment is necessary for reformation. Their punish- 
 ments become chastisements. 
 
 Obj. VIII. — The Scriptures declare that in the Last Judg 
 ment, works will be made the basis of adjudication. — But there 
 must be a proper conception of the Last Judgment. It is not 
 the declaring of the sentence of the law, but is the final sentence 
 itself. It is for the manifestation of character and state. It has 
 not to do with our condemnation under the law immediately, 
 because we are condemned under the law all along. That view 
 which makes the Judgment parallel with a human tribunal, 
 where the guilt or innocence is first pronounced, is not the view 
 of Scripture. It cannot be reconciled with the view that all the 
 world is already under condemnation. The Last Judgment is 
 the winding up of the present sphere of things. It is the as- 
 signment of all who have lived to their final condition, and 
 what that is to be is manifested in their works. 
 
 Obj. IX.— The Scriptures speak of other grounds of accept- 
 ance, besides the merits of Christ — such conditions as our for 
 giveness of others, our repentance, etc. But they do not speak 
 of these in the same relation that they do of Christ's work. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 553 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 REGENERATION AND REPENTANCE* 
 
 We combine these, because they give us respectively the 
 divine and the human side of the new life. The original usage 
 of the term regeneration is of the new life as ascribed to Christ. 
 Eepentance refers to the new life as it comes into human con- 
 sciousness. The new life is a life in Christ, and regeneration 
 involves union with Christ and not a change of heart without 
 relation to Him. In this doctrine we come into the sphere of 
 the direct influences of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is the 
 Spirit's work in man, turning him from sin to holiness, from 
 self to Christ. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY STATEMENTS. 
 
 § 1. The Doctrine as held in some of the different Systems. 
 
 Each ecclesiastical and theological system has its doctrine 
 of regeneration, the statement of which is determined by the 
 fundamental principles of each system. The central point of 
 each system will define the doctrine of regeneration. Each 
 system must have it in some form, because it is contained in 
 the Scriptures so plainly. 
 
 1. The Roman Catholic system makes regeneration to be 
 through the church and sacraments. It is effected by sacra- 
 mental grace, which can be conveyed only through the channels 
 of the church. Baptism has an inherent efficacy in removing 
 moral pollution. It infuses what is called in the technical lan- 
 guage of theology a new habit, 1 what we now call a new state. 
 
 2. In the Church of England, in conformity with the liturgy, 
 the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is maintained. In the 
 order for baptism, the minister, after the service is performed, 
 is to say: "this child is regenerate — ." This, however, is 
 
 1 Habitus, something which one has. 
 
554 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 inconsistent with the XXXIX. Articles. Accordingly the evan- 
 gelical portion of the church define regeneration in an external 
 sense. They distinguish it from conversion, and define it as a 
 change of external state, as an introduction into the church as 
 an external body, as we put a cadet into West Point. This 
 takes from it its spiritual import, and substitutes the outward 
 for the inward. 
 
 3. The Pelagian view puts regeneration solely in an executive 
 act of the human will. It makes regeneration to be the result 
 of an act of choice. Holiness is conferred by the choice or 
 preference of the individual. This runs into 
 
 4. The rationalistic theory, which reduces regeneration to 
 a conformity to moral requirements, and chiefly to those which 
 concern our relation with our fellow beings. The change is 
 a natural one, is explained by the laws of the human mind. 
 Moral improvement is regeneration. 
 
 5. Some theories of parties in this country. 
 
 (a.) The strict exercise scheme, as held by Dr. Emmons. 
 Regeneration is an act or choice or volition, one of a series; 
 of such series a moral being is made up, there being nothing 
 behind these. Moreover this volition is in every case, whether 
 it be sinful or holy, by direct divine efficiency: God creates it. 
 It is an exercise, but the product of an immediate divine change. 
 The later exercise scheme is different. It makes the exercises 
 to be not the result of the divine efficiency, but of the man's 
 agency. It puts in a soul behind the volitions, which is their 
 source, and a will which brings the exercises into being. 
 
 (b. ) The taste theory. Hopkins, Bellamy, Dwight and Bur- 
 ton make regeneration to consist not in an exercise, but in a 
 new relish implanted. The heart, the affections are essentially 
 involved in it. 
 
 These two opinions divided the older Hopkinsianism. 
 
 (c.) The theory that regeneration consists in a change in the 
 governing purpose. This asserts that all that is moral is found 
 in the governing purpose. The change in this is what makes 
 the renewal of the soul. It is a choice. There may be motives 
 and feelings and the action of the heart, but the renewal is ir 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 555 
 
 the governing purpose. This theory takes two forms: (1) That 
 this governing purpose involves essentially an affection, and is 
 not an act of bare will, — not a mere purpose, but a purpose 
 which includes an affection, so that it is a combination of the 
 sensibilities and the will. The purpose is a preference or love. 
 (2) Others hold that the governing purpose may be without 
 the affections, — that the affections lead to it, but are not com- 
 prised in the purpose. Psychologically, the difference would 
 be this: Man is made up of intellect, feeling, and will. All agree 
 that there must be presentation of truth to the intellect, that 
 there must also be an awakening of the susceptibilities, and that 
 this must lead to a new governing purpose. They differ as to 
 whether this purpose takes the affections with it, or whether it 
 may have the affections outside of it. Those who hold this lat- 
 ter position have always said that that purpose may be formed 
 without any affection appearing in it, — that all the affections 
 may be towards the world, while the purpose is towards God. 
 And this is the logical result of the system. 
 
 (d.) The "self-love" theory, presented in an article in The 
 Christian Spectator, 1829. It advocated the self-love theory of 
 morals in connection with the subject of regeneration. The 
 object of the article was to show how the sinner is regenerated, 
 as far as this is psychologically possible. It says that in self- 
 love is the prompting to all action, meaning by this our natural 
 desire for happiness. There cannot be any moral action which 
 is not from and for self-love, because such self-love is instinctive, 
 and enters into all our moral acts. We are happy in loving 
 God, and that is the ultimate subjective motive for loving Him. 
 We love the world because we are happy in the world. On this 
 basis, the article proceeds to the theory of regeneration. The 
 first thing is to arouse in the mind this desire for happiness, 
 and to fix it on some future good, on heaven, — to represent the 
 Christian scheme as the only one which can confer happiness, 
 and to make that the radical motive. Then all the doctrines 
 and motives of the gospel are brought up — the feelings are 
 aroused — the aroused feeling produces a sharper view of truth — 
 that again stirs the feelings more and more, and thus the play 
 
556 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is between the intellect and the feelings, until the sinner is 
 brought to the point where he suspends the rushing tide of evil 
 desire, and then the Holy Spirit comes in and renews the soul. 
 
 Bemarks on this Theory. (1) Why would it not be as well to 
 introduce the operation of the Spirit just before — and indeed all 
 along before — as well as at the nodus ? Why is it not more 
 Scriptural to say that at all the points the Spirit operates ? (2) 
 Self-love, presented here as the ultimate motive and that which 
 is to do the work of renewal, can never account for regeneration. 
 If the ultimate decision be made in view of self-love — exalt that 
 to what height we may — if that be the ultimate motive, then the 
 soul is still in sin, because the ultimate motive has been the de- 
 sire after its own happiness, and that is of the essence of sin. 
 (3) It is equally difficult to see how this suspension of sinful 
 activity is brought about or can be. How can the sinner, with 
 his heart still unrenewed, be induced to suspend the tide of evil 
 desires ? He must do this, in order to get a chance for the put- 
 ting forth of a holy volition. Suppose it suspended: it was from 
 a motive good, bad, or indifferent. If the motive was good, the 
 thing had been done already; if bad, it involves sin; if indif- 
 ferent, there could be no suspension. (4) There is another sup- 
 posable case: the person decides without a motive. Then the 
 decision could not have any moral character. To suppose that a 
 man can for a moment suspend his sinful nature, and remain 
 for an instant without any character, is an inconceivability. 
 (5) It might be added that even in unrenewed human nature 
 there are better elements than self-love or desire for happiness: 
 conscience, spiritual and moral susceptibilities, which are ap- 
 pealed to. 
 
 6. The general evangelical doctrine of regeneration. We 
 give here the several heads which are to be debated in what 
 follows. 
 
 (a.) Regeneration is a supernatural change of which God is 
 the author, which is wrought by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 (b.) In its idea it is instantaneous, although not always so in 
 conscious experience. 
 
 (a) In adults it is wrought most frequently by the word of 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 557 
 
 God as the instrument. Believing that infants may be regen 
 erated, we cannot assert that it is tied to the word of God 
 absolutely. 
 
 (d.) It involves the renewal of the whole man — not merely 
 of one of his faculties. It gives a new direction to all his 
 faculties. 
 
 (e.) There is no antecedent co-operation on man's part in the 
 change itself. The efficiency in the change is not human, it is 
 in the Holy Spirit. The act of the will on man's part does not 
 produce, but indicates the change. 
 
 (/.) Eegeneration, in the New Testament sense, is on the 
 basis of Christ's work, and consists essentially in the application 
 of what Christ has done, to the human soul, through the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 (g.) This new state shows itself in faith, repentance, and good 
 works. 
 
 Negatively — 
 
 (A.) Eegeneration is not a physical change but a change in 
 the moral state. It does not impart new faculties, it gives di- 
 rection to our faculties. 
 
 (i.) It does not consist in the executive acts of the will as 
 distinguished from the immanent preference, but it is essentially 
 found in the latter. Nor is it in the conscious, as distinguished 
 from the unconscious, moral states of man. We know it in its 
 results, not in its essence. 
 
 § 2. Of the Terms employed. 
 
 1. Eepentance is used often as synonymous with conversion. 
 It implies a change of mind as conversion also denotes an act 
 of turning. Eegeneration is usually employed most strictly to 
 denote that divine agency, in and upon the human soul, which 
 insures a certain mode of action in man's powers in the direction 
 of holiness. Eegeneration is thus the divine side of the whole 
 event, and if the divine agency alone is regarded, man may 
 be said to be passive; but when it is viewed as upon the soul, it 
 involves an activity of the soul. It cannot be said that man is 
 passive in the change, because if there is a change it implies an 
 
658 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 activity; but in the origination of the change, in the efficient 
 cause, man is not the agent. The Holy Spirit is the agent, but 
 as soon as the Holy Spirit acts, there must be activity in the 
 bouL If regeneration is confined to the divine agency simply, 
 without including its effect in the soul, man is said to be passive, 
 because he is not the author of the act; but so soon as that agency 
 is exerted there is activity in the soul, which is usually called 
 conversion or repentance. The controversy in respect to activ- 
 ity and passivity is really one without much significance when 
 explanations are made, if the parties are agreed on this point — 
 that the Holy Spirit is the dominant cause and factor. The 
 controversy is of importance if the agency of the Holy Spirit 
 is denied. 
 
 2. The term Kegeneration, in its strictest sense, may be said 
 to signify or have reference to an instantaneous act, an act of 
 the Holy Spirit in a moment of time, whereby the soul is re- 
 newed, changed from the love of sin to the love of holiness; and 
 as such an instantaneous work of the Holy Spirit, it is distinct 
 from conversion and repentance, and also from sanctification, 
 which is the continued development of what is begun in 
 regeneration. 
 
 3. Regeneration is often used in a much wider sense. In the 
 writings of the Fathers it is equivalent to baptism — the sign 
 being taken as equivalent to the thing signified. This was easier 
 to be done at a time when the profession of Christ required of a 
 person to forsake everything in the world, and when willingness 
 to be baptized constituted a good evidence of true regeneration. 
 The term is also used, as we have seen, by evangelical Angli- 
 cans, but by a forced interpretation, made to enable them to 
 accept their liturgy. It is also used as designating the whole 
 Christian life in its beginning and effects, including sanctifica- 
 tion and the final glorified condition. 
 
 4. Some Scriptural representations of this renewed life: It is 
 described as a renewal after the image of God; a being in Christ; 
 a new creature or creation; a resurrection from the dead; light 
 in contrast with darkness; life in contrast with death; a transla- 
 tion into a new kingdom, into the kingdom of God's dear Son; a 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 559 
 
 being born again of the Spirit; a new heart. Ezek. xxxvi 26; 
 John iii. 3; Deut. xxx. 6 in connection with Rom. ii. 29; Eph. 
 ii. 1-10; i. 18; 2 Cor. v. 17; Gal. vi. 15; Eph. iv. 23, 24 
 
 § 3. Connection of the Doctrine of Regeneration with other Truths 
 
 1. The term regeneration is often used in an abstract way, 
 as designating the general element of the renewed life. Some- 
 times it is reduced to a single affection or purpose or feeling. 
 There is undoubtedly such a general element, which can be 
 stated in an abstract form. We can single out the term holiness 
 as expressing the nature of the new state— as contrasted with the 
 term sin as expressing moral evil — and can then say that regen- 
 eration is a change from the love of sin to the love of holiness. 
 But in doing this, we ought to be careful not to sever regenera- 
 tion from the other truths, so as to leave the way open for the 
 inference that there can be a real regeneration which does not 
 involve faith in Christ, a belief in his atoning work, and the 
 renewing agency of the Holy Spirit. 1 
 
 2. Regeneration includes, and in a Christian sense cannot be 
 used without reference to, the relation to Christ, to the union of 
 the soul by faith to Christ. The union with Christ is vital, and 
 is what constitutes the new life. The Spirit which effects the 
 change is the Spirit of Christ. There need not always be a 
 conscious apprehension of Christ at the time. Calvin defines 
 regeneration as coming to us by participation in Christ. The 
 Scriptural statements are such as the following: 1 Cor. i. 30; 
 Col. iii. 9, 10; Eph. ii. 10; Rom. viii. 2; 2 Cor. v. 17. 
 
 1 Dr. Samuel Hopkins, who was one of the most orthodox of men, defined the 
 new state resulting from regeneration as disinterested benevolence. He held 
 strongly to the Trinity, the Atonement, and indeed to the highest and most pun- 
 gent Calvinism. Dr. Charming, who was brought up under him, took his definition 
 of the new life. Channing's mind worked upon it thus : That which is essential to 
 a Christian is to have such benevolence. If I have that, of course I am a Christian. 
 What essential need is there then for my believing also in the Trinity, Atonement, 
 and Justification? — With any other abstract definition of regeneration such a re- 
 sult might be reached. It has been defined as the choice of the highest good. 
 But the pantheist makes choice of the highest good from his point of view. Such 
 statements may be taken as good abstract statements, but not as including the 
 whole truth. 
 
560 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. 
 
 1. The doctrine of depravity proves the necessity of regener- 
 ation. If the depravity of man be such as we have seen it, then, 
 in order that he may attain to a holy state, he must be born 
 again. There is no way of his coming into this new condition 
 except by regeneration of the soul. 
 
 2. Regeneration is necessary if men are to enjoy what is per- 
 fectly holy here and hereafter. To be in the presence of the glo- 
 ries of heaven with a depraved heart, would.be no joy to the sinner. 
 
 3. It is necessary in order that the atoning work of Christ 
 be applied and received. This takes effect upon us only through 
 regeneration. The receiving of his atoning work is the renewal 
 of the soul. 
 
 4. It is necessary for the exercise of the specific graces of the 
 Christian character. All the graces of the Christian life flow 
 from this birth, — all true happiness, peace, and humility. 
 
 5. The Scriptures assert emphatically the necessity of re- 
 generation: Matt, xviii. 3; John iii. 3. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF REGENERATION. 
 
 1. Regeneration is not a physical change. The term phy- 
 sical, as used in respect to regeneration, is differently defined. 
 It may mean what belongs to the external material world, or 
 what belongs to the essence and faculties of man. Regenera- 
 tion is not physical as implying a change in the essence or fac- 
 ulties of man. There is no dispute about this. Besides the 
 essence and faculties, what else is there in man ? Where does 
 regeneration come ? Those who hold strictly to the exercise 
 scheme reason thus: There are in man, (1) the essence, (2) the 
 faculties, (3) the acts or exercises of the faculties. Regenera- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 561 
 
 tion is not in the 1st or 2d, therefore it must be in the 3d. — A 
 better analysis gives this statement: There are in man, 1st, the 
 essence, 2dly, the faculties, 3dly, the generic tendencies, 4thly, the 
 actions. The regeneration then will take effect in the 3d and 
 4th, — not merely in the specific acts, but in the ground or source 
 of those acts. Take, e. #., the case of Adam before he acted. 
 He had the substance or essence of humanity in all the faculties 
 of human nature. He acted. We will suppose that his first 
 act was an act of trust in God. Now was there in him anything 
 between the faculties and the choice of the acts ? Advocates of 
 the exercise scheme would say, No; but it is more Scriptural 
 and philosophical to say, that before any act there was a bias or 
 principle on the ground or basis of which his choice was made; 
 and that this principle or tendency is not a faculty, but a state 
 or direction of the faculties; and that was expressed in the first 
 holy act or choice. In the child now there is not merely the 
 essence with its faculties, but also a bias or tendency. 
 
 2. Regeneration does not have to do with the executive acts 
 of the will, merely. The executive acts of the will are the de- 
 termination to do something. They have respect to something 
 to be achieved. They carry out the underlying preference. 
 The freedom in these acts is the freedom from constraint, but 
 they all presuppose a motive or bias or tendency. They are not 
 the true seat of character, but express character. 
 
 3. Nor does regeneration consist in an immanent preference 
 as the product of an executive act. This seems to be impossi- 
 ble, although many of the exhortations to repentance appear to 
 imply the possibility of forming an immanent preference by an 
 executive act. A man is told that he can repent as easily as 
 he can walk. A man walks because he has made a determina- 
 tion to walk and the walking follows the choice, but the act of 
 repentance cannot follow a choice. It is in the choice itself. 
 There is as much difference as between love and the motion of 
 the hand. The change is the choice and the choice the change, 
 
 4. Regeneration does not have to do with the heart, to the 
 exclusion of the will and the other powers of man. It is not 
 merely in the sensibilities. 
 
562 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 5. Regeneration has to do with the immanent preference. 
 We have seen that the will has two main and very different 
 functions: (a.) The immanent preferences, (&.) the executive 
 volitions. In the immanent preference is the seat of true mor- 
 ality, spirituality, and it is this which when brought into a right 
 state discloses the great end of man. In order to its renewal, 
 there are necessary the vision of divine things, and then the 
 love for divine things as the ruling principle. Love, which is 
 the immanent preference, itself includes both the affections and 
 the will. In love to God, for instance, there is the strongest 
 current of affection and the most undoubted preference or 
 choice. This of course has for its result the living for the end 
 chosen, and the highest delight in it. In short, regeneration in 
 its full measure and extent involves a new direction of all the 
 human powers from the world and towards God, — an illumina- 
 tion of the understanding, a current of the affections, and a 
 choice of the will. This position is fully sustained by the 
 Scriptures: Jer. xxiv. 7; xxxi. 33; Ezek. xi. 19; Eph. iv. 24; John 
 iii. 6; Eph. iv. 22, 23; 1 Cor. ii. 14; 2 Cor. iv. 6; 1 John ii. 10; 
 John xiv. 15. The Scriptures also represent this renewal as 
 shown in all the life as well as in all the faculties: John xiv. 23. 
 
 6. According to the Scriptural statements and what Ave de- 
 rive from experience, it is evident that the deepest ground in us, 
 on which the influence of the Holy Spirit is exerted, does not 
 come into immediate consciousness. The work can be known 
 by its fruits and results; and not by immediate consciousness: 
 John iii. 8. 
 
 7. It is still further apparent that this work must be instan- 
 taneous, — not in conscious experience, but as the work of the 
 Spirit. In conscious experience it may be far from instantaneous. 
 The reason for insisting upon its being instantaneous, is the utter 
 difference between sin and holiness. We cannot make the tran- 
 sition from the one to the other, because they are opposed to 
 each other. There must be some point in the movement of the 
 soul where it turns from darkness to light. We may not be 
 able to discern it, but from the nature of the case there must be 
 such a time. This alone is conformable with the Scriptural 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 563 
 
 statements: the account of the conversion of Paul, the expres- 
 sions, "new life," "new creation," "being born again," and the 
 like. The reasons why other views have been held are: (a.) The 
 word regeneration is used by some in a broad and loose sense, 
 as including all that God does in bringing man to himself — 
 prevenient grace, providence, — but this is not the Scriptural 
 sense of regeneration, (b.) What precedes is sometimes taken 
 as a part of the renewal, e. g., the conviction of sin, which may 
 be very deep where there is no renewal of the soul, which may 
 be conviction from a sense of fear rather than from a sense of 
 holiness, (c.) There is sometimes an unwillingness to ascribe the 
 work in its utmost essence to God. There is a tendency to the 
 viewing it exclusively in its human relations, and as it comes 
 out in man's experience, (d.) Regeneration is made to be en- 
 tirely analogous to changes in moral character, which are often 
 gradual. But in the renewal of the soul, there is more than a 
 moral work, there is a spiritual process. There is more than 
 the operation of man's faculties, there is a divine agency. From 
 the sphere of morals we can derive only a partial analogy, in- 
 complete as to the central point. Mere prudential motives are 
 enough to produce a moral change, but they cannot produce a 
 spiritual change. They do not reach the heart, the root of the 
 matter. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF REGENERATION. 
 
 The Scriptural representation is that regeneration is the work 
 of the Holy Spirit, a proper efficient cause, setting in motion all 
 other occasional influences and causes. 
 
 1. The positive Scriptural statements: Ps. li. 10; Jer. xxiv. 7; 
 Eph. ii. 10; John i. 13; James i. 18. 
 
 2. Scripture represents that in this God acts not arbitrarily 
 but as a sovereign: Rom. ix. 16; 1 Cor. i. 30, 31; iv. 7. 
 
 3. Scripture represents that a special power of God is exer 
 cised in the renewal of the soul, a power which is supernatural 
 
564 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 rather than miraculous. A direct agency of God is implied in 
 the whole phraseology of a new heart, new birth, and the as- 
 cription of the holiness in man to God: 1 Cor. ii. 14. 
 
 4. To confirm this the doctrine of divine providence leads to 
 the inference that all the circumstances and influences, in respect 
 to regeneration, are under the divine agency and control. The 
 whole of providence, so far as that has to do with the work, is 
 the work of God. 
 
 5. It is rational that God should be the author of regenera- 
 tion. This highest work in man is most naturally ascribed to 
 Him. The analogy of all the other works and ways of God leads 
 to the inference. His power works in all nature, much more in 
 the spiritual realm. Here is the highest good, the chief blessing, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HOW DOES THE SPIRIT REGENERATE THE SOUL ? 
 
 All God's modes of action are mysterious in the kingdom of 
 nature and providence, and it is especially probable that there 
 will be mystery in his highest and deepest work, in the realm of 
 grace. Any theory of regeneration which explains it all must be 
 false, because it assumes that the finite can compass the ways of 
 Omnipotence. As far as any statements can be made with proper 
 reserve, the following are probably most in accord with Scripture : 
 
 1. In all regeneration, whether of infants or adults, there 
 must be essentially the same operation of the Spirit. There 
 cannot be two kinds of regeneration, although there may be a 
 diversity of modes. 
 
 2. The work of the Spirit is properly called supernatxiral 
 rather than miraculous. Miraculous implies a divine interven- 
 tion against the ordinary methods of God's working, both in the 
 kingdom of nature and of grace. A supernatural work implies 
 that the cause is above nature, but that it may and does work 
 through natural channels in the order of providence, according 
 to appointed methods in the kingdom of grace. In a super- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 565 
 
 natural work there is a use of means through which the su- 
 pernatural element courses. Although the influence itself is 
 beyond means, yet it is through and by means. In the king- 
 dom of God's grace there are ordinary methods or channels 
 through which that grace courses. 
 
 3. These means may be various as far as consciousness ex- 
 tends: the course of providence, crises of life, sorrow, even joy. 
 Often some of the means least valued are those which God uses. 
 In many cases, perhaps in almost every case, of the revival of 
 God's work, the means used for bringing it about are what were 
 not anticipated. This has been exemplified in the history of re- 
 vivals in our own country. 
 
 4. The ultimate act in regeneration is without instrumental- 
 ity. That is, it is a direct influence of the Holy Spirit. If there 
 be renewal of infants, this must be the- case. Infants are saved; 
 therefore they must be regenerated by an act which is without 
 any apparent instrumentality. And if regeneration be always 
 the same, there must be the same essential element in all other 
 cases. It is sometimes made a test question whether a person 
 can be regenerated in his sleep. If it is made a question whether 
 God can renew a soul when that soul is unconscious, we should 
 say, Yes, and any other view than that would imply that the hu- 
 man element is the prime factor. But we also say, that while 
 the divine influence may work upon a mind which is uncon- 
 scious, it will express itself when the mind becomes conscious 
 in a change of preference, and that that will be the first con- 
 scious act of the individual. 
 
 5. The ultimate regenerating act is not properly to be called 
 resistible, because it secures the will. The will is with it The 
 very word resistible implies that the will is undecided. All that 
 precedes the renewing act can be called resistible, and so can 
 what most persons call regeneration. But if we come to the 
 central point — the influence of the Spirit securing the will — we 
 cannot speak of its being resistible any more than we can speak 
 of the possibility of a person making a different choice from one 
 which he is making. He might do it the instant before, but 
 now the will is secure. 
 
566 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 6. The nature of activity and passivity. Both active and 
 passive elements are involved in regeneration. The active ele- 
 ments, however, are to be viewed as the result of the Spirit's in- 
 fluences. The great law of action and reaction applies here. 
 The activity of the sinner is the result or manifestation or the 
 index of the influence of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE MEANS OF REGENERATION. 
 
 § 1. External providential Means. 
 
 There is, in God's providence, a large mass of external means, 
 including the church and the ministry — their instructions and 
 all their influence. 
 
 § 2. Acts of tlie Sinner as among the Means. 
 
 There are also certain acts of the sinner himself, to which he 
 is to be exhorted, as coming among the means. 
 
 I. — He is to be exhorted to fix his attention upon the truth 
 as it is presented to him in the Scriptures, religious books, or 
 preaching. In the essay in the Christian Spectator to which we 
 have referred, this and similar exhortations are drawn out so as 
 to give the whole conscious process of the soul in renewal, and 
 the matter is there stated thus: There are certain acts in them- 
 selves neither right nor wrong. The sinner is to be exhorted to 
 make use of certain parts of complex acts, particularly to fix the 
 mind upon those motives which come from self-love or the ia- 
 stinctive desire of happiness, and that is to be the main working 
 element. The attention is not to be mainly on the truth, but on 
 the truth as related to the sinner's happiness; and the love of 
 happiness being instinctive, the sinner can feel the force of that 
 motive and make use of it. That motive is neither holy nor sin- 
 ful; it is indifferent, because from it either a holy or a sinful be- 
 ing may act. Out of all his other acts, the sinner is to single 
 this one — desire of happiness, self-love, and the mind is to be 
 
THE KINGDOM OP REDEMPTION. 567 
 
 fixed upon it until the future life with all its weal and woe ia 
 brought into vision. In order that this may be done, one other 
 point is necessary, viz., that the tide of evil desires be sus- 
 pended, and the sinner is to do this in order that he may fix his 
 attention on his future happiness so that it may act properly. 
 
 On this representation we make the following remarks: 
 (1) The proposal that one part shall be separated from the 
 mind's complex acts would cause the acts to cease to be com- 
 plex, and would present a single motive before the mind. That 
 would be all that the mind had in view. The desire of happi- 
 ness will be a single motive, not a part of the complex acts of 
 the soul. (2) When thus singled out and separated as the sup- 
 posed effectual motive, it must have either a holy or sinful char- 
 acter. It is inconceivable that it should remain indifferent. As 
 it is in his mind, it must be either holy or sinful, because his 
 own mind is in a certain moral state all the time, and we cannot 
 single out a motive from the mind's activities, and say that that 
 motive in the mind shall remain indifferent, any more than one 
 can cast a stick into a current, and say that it shall remain sus- 
 pended. The accompanying project, therefore, of suspending 
 this sinful current, so that we may get an indifferent motive, is 
 impossible to be achieved. No one ever did or can do it. 
 (3) The proper exhortation in the case is, that the mind fix its 
 attention not upon its own act at all, but upon God, and so turn 
 to Him. Attention is to be fixed not on what the soul is doing, 
 but upon God; not upon one's own interest, but upon the divine 
 command ; not on one's own will, but upon that to which the 
 Holy Spirit influences; and so alone can the effectual and suffi- 
 cient motive be found. The thoughts must be upon the object. 
 
 II. — Another mode of exhortation used is, that the sinner 
 shall perform certain acts, which are in themselves indifferent, 
 with his present motives: shall read the Bible, attend church and 
 religious meetings, etc., with the motives which at present influ- 
 ence him. — This is an exhortation which cannot be consistently 
 allowed. These acts are right, but with sinful motives and de- 
 sires one cannot perform them aright. All that can be said is. 
 that in doing this he is more likely to be brought under the in 
 
568 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Jluences of the Holy Spirit. These acts may be urged, not 
 as if they themselves would lead to regeneration, but simply in 
 the view that possibly by these acts the soul may come under 
 renewing influences. 1 
 
 III. — The exhortation to the sinner then should be this: to 
 perform any and all acts with a right spirit. He should never 
 be led to feel that he can be content or at peace, or that he is 
 not in great and increasing guilt, until his acts are performed in 
 a right spirit. Thus almost any of the acts, to which it is 
 natural to exhort him, may be the turning-point. Any act per- 
 formed in the right spirit is the turning-point. It may be the 
 reading of the Scriptures, but it is more generally prayer, and 
 this is the safest exhortation, because there the soul is brought 
 face to face with God. The two elements — the divine and the 
 human — coalesce : the human element turns to God. 
 
 § 3. Of the Truth as a means of Regeneration. 
 
 The representations respecting the truth as a means of re- 
 generation apply in their strictness to adult regeneration, or to 
 the regeneration of those who have come to an age to under- 
 stand the truth. 
 
 1. The truth is almost always the means, the occasional cause, 
 of regeneration, in what precedes and leads to the regenerative 
 act. The Spirit employs the truth in the previous processes. 
 
 2. It is also the fact that the truth is before the mind as mo- 
 tive in choosing, in the act of choice in which the conversion is 
 consummated — yet it is not there as merely abstract, intellectual 
 truth, but as truth in the Scriptural sense, in its fulness and 
 power. It is not truth as belonging to my intellect alone, but 
 as revealed by God and accompanied by the divine illumination. 
 
 1 There was a long controversy between the old Calvinists and the Hopkin- 
 sians on this point. The former were in the habit of exhorting the sinner to read 
 the Bible, go to church, etc.— and there the exhortations stopped, with the im- 
 plication that God might come to hia aid. The Hopkinsians made the staple of 
 their exhortation to be, the call to immediate repentance on the ground of imper- 
 ative obligation. They did not say that a person should not employ these means, 
 but that he should not rely upon them, and that the exhortation should be as to 
 the right spirit in which they should be performed. This, more than anything 
 else, was the source of the success of the Hopkinsians at the beginning of the 
 present century. It had also formed a part of the discussion which led to the 
 first schism of the Presbyterian church in 1740. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 569 
 
 3. The truth then may be called the chief occasional cause 
 of regeneration in the ordinary course of divine providence. 
 
 4. The Scriptures thus represent it: James i 18; 1 Pet. i. 23; 
 1 Cor. i. 18; Eph. vi. 17; Heb. iv. 12. 
 
 5. Eegeneration by the truth does not make truth the efficient 
 agency. God is the ultimate efficient agent in the case. It is 
 the truth as wielded by the Spirit leading to the choice. 
 
 6. Truth in itself, bare and abstract, except as the instrument 
 of the Spirit, cannot have moral efficacy sufficient to regenerate 
 the soul. In the unrenewed heart there is no love for the spe- 
 cific truth of the gospel, but rather opposition to it. Truth as 
 moral suasion is inadequate, as we have seen. As a general 
 fact men resist the truth and life. 
 
 7. In speaking of the truth as a means of regeneration, we 
 should be careful to use it in its specific Scriptural sense. The 
 Scriptures never disjoin it from Christ and God and the Holy 
 Spirit. Christ is the Truth. It is truth in the sense that truth 
 and reality are one — the truth proclaimed and enforced by the 
 Spirit as a living power unto salvation. To talk of man's being 
 renewed by the truth without the Spirit, is the same as to talk 
 of a man's being killed by a sword when the sword is in no- 
 body's hands. There is this connection between the divine and 
 human agency, and we cannot separate the two. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE exhortation: make to yourself a new heart. 1 
 
 1. It is obligatory. It is an enforcement of the command 
 or injunction of the divine law, that each one should love God 
 with all his heart. 
 
 2. It is within the possible extent of man's natural capacities. 
 It is no more than what his capacities may reach unto. It is 
 within the compass of natural ability, using natural ability in the 
 
 ' Ezek. xviii. 31. 
 
570 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 sense of the possible extent of man's natural capacities, — not as 
 what the will of man itself may do without the other faculties, 
 not as power to the contrary, but what is in the possibility, as 
 to extent, of man's constitution and faculties. 
 
 3. The only obstacle in the way of obeying the invitation 
 and command is in the sinner's depraved heart. 
 
 4. The exhortation does not assert or imply that the sinner 
 can comply without divine grace. It no more implies that a sin- 
 ner can do this without divine grace, than that a Christian can. 
 
 5. The exhortation must be interpreted in harmony with the 
 petition, " Create in me a clean heart, God; and renew a right 
 spirit within me." These two are counterparts. 
 
 6. The injunction must be preached so as to make men feel 
 the obligation, the necessity, and the reasonableness of it. 
 
 7. It must be so preached that men shall feel that their re- 
 liance is not to be upon their own act, but upon divine grace, for 
 the doing of what is enjoined, — so that they shall yield to divine 
 grace, and not attempt the work without it. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CONSCIOUS PROCESSES OF THE SOUL IN REGENERATION. 
 
 These vary somewhat according to the particular state of mind 
 and the previous education, and some changes will be more 
 marked and violent, and others more gradual. There will be, 
 usually, serious meditation on the truth of God ; the thoughts 
 will be called in from the world and fixed upon divine truth; 
 then there will be a feeling of want, of need, a feeling that the 
 soul lacks that which is most important to it, — the sense of the 
 need of coming into a different moral state, of turning from the 
 world and unto God. Accompanying these there will be a 
 conviction of sin, coming from the view of the sinner's own na- 
 ture and character as opposed to the divine holiness, a wrest- 
 ling of the soul under that conviction, and that conviction rising 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 571 
 
 to a sense of moral pollution. Then, in almost all experience, 
 there will be found the endeavor to renew one's self, to trans- 
 form one's self into a righteous and holy condition by one's own 
 strength and power. The result will be a feeling of helplessness, 
 running back into the main points on which it is grounded, viz., 
 (a.) The impossibility of atoning for the past by one's own works, 
 which will continue to be a ground of condemnation. The help- 
 lessness there is entire and absolute. (&.) The conviction of 
 moral helplessness. What he would that he does not, and what 
 he would not that he does. This is what is known as the work 
 of the law, the law as a schoolmaster leading to this condition, 
 and in this condition Christ is offered as all that the soul wants, 
 the call to turn and yield is made, and the turning-point will be 
 the yielding to Christ, receiving Him as the personal Saviour, 
 so that the object before the mind is Christ. 
 Practical Eemarhs: 
 
 1. The preacher should always be careful not to intimate that 
 anything which precedes giving the whole soul to God is right, 
 or can be rested in, or affords any ground of hope. I. e., in the 
 language of the old controversy between the Presbyterians and 
 Congregationalists, " unregenerate doings are not to be allowed."- 
 
 2. The preacher should likewise never say that any or all 
 the acts the sinner can perform can be rightly performed with- 
 out the aid of the Holy Spirit. It must always be claimed that 
 all that is good is from the moving of God. We must ascribe 
 all that tends to renewal to the working of the Divine Spirit in 
 the soul. This is the great point of relief in the preaching of 
 regeneration. It is the hope we have, that if there are any good 
 influences within the soul, this is the work of the Holy Spirit, 
 and that if the sinner will yield to them he may be saved. 
 There is a co-operation of the human and divine elements, and 
 religious safety lies in exalting the divine influences, and saying 
 that what the sinner has to do is to yield to those influences. 
 This gives a stronger basis to press an exhortation than the 
 exaltation of human ability or of the power to the contrary. 
 
 3. The guilt of remaining in a convicted state should also ba 
 enforced. The helplessness which the sinner feels is the proof 
 
572 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of his guilt. The greatness of this helplessness shows the great- 
 ness of his guilt. This was the chief service of the Hopkinsian 
 preaching — to insist that the helplessness was guilt. 
 
 4. The ability of the sinner should be preached and pro- 
 claimed so far as to show his guilt and the greatness of it, but 
 not as the ground of his reliance internally. That reliance 
 must be on God and on divine grace. 
 
 5. In preaching there should be a constant observance of, 
 and reference to, the great psychological law, that the mind is 
 not to be fixed upon its own acts, but on the object in view 
 of which it acts. 
 
 6. No precise order of experience should be insisted upon as 
 absolutely necessary — no one emotion or experience as the turn- 
 ing-point. This may be different in different minds. The re- 
 ceiving of Christ and resting in Him will be, after all, the 
 grand test. 
 
 7. The exhortation to the sinner should be, to yield, to sub- 
 mit to the divine influences, to come to Christ, to yield to the 
 grace that comes from Christ. How he can do this is the last 
 question, and the answer is, he can do it by yielding. As to 
 the how, it is in the act itself. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 REPENTANCE. 
 
 This is the human side. The principal word translated re- 
 pentance in our version {uerdvoia) signifies change of mind, the 
 process of renewal viewed from the human side, and culminat- 
 ing in the human act. Accompanying it there is a feeling of 
 the evil of sin and godly sorrow, but these do not make it. It 
 is the act of renouncing the old and putting on the new. 
 
 One of the great differences between the Roman Catholics 
 and Protestants is on this article of repentance. The whole of 
 Protestant theology makes it an inward work. In the Roman 
 Catholic system it is combined with external works, and repent- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 573 
 
 ance comes to have the significance of doing penance. The 
 sacrament of penance is instituted to restore the grace of bap- 
 tism lost by subsequent sin. In baptism the guilt of original 
 sin is taken away. If a person sins after that, falls, i. e., into 
 "mortal sin," the sinful state must be amended by the sacra- 
 ment of penance. In this, different parts are distingirished: Con- 
 trition, which with most is the imperfect antecedent purpose; 
 Confession, which must be to the priest and must be a partic- 
 ular confession of mortal sins; 1 Satisfaction, 2 which is to be by 
 meritorious works, giving money to the church, saying prayers, 
 etc. The works of supererogation of deceased saints can be 
 made over to help in this satisfaction; then, finally, Absolution, 3 
 as the act of the church, the judicial declaration that the soul 
 is free from the guilt of these sins. So that the simple Scriptural 
 doctrine of repentance runs through all these processes, binding 
 each sinner to the church and to its sacraments. 
 
 § 1. Some general Statements of the Protestant Vieiv. 
 
 1. Repentance is an internal change. 
 
 2. As the human side of regeneration, it implies regeneration, 
 whenever it is real and true. It implies that there is in it the 
 regeneration of the soul. To say that a person can repent 
 without grace who cannot be regenerated without grace, is to 
 state an anomaly; for if there be real repentance there is regen- 
 eration, and if a person may repent of himself he may regener- 
 ate himself. 
 
 3. Some of the elements which are reckoned to repentance — 
 as conviction, sorrow for sin — may exist before there is actual, 
 conscious renewal of the soul : though if the conviction be real 
 and godly, the soul in that conviction is renewed although not 
 conscious of it, and there is doubtless often a renewal before 
 there is peace in the soul. 
 
 1 The confession of venial sins is "useful.'* 
 
 * Christ does not free from temporal punishment. Meritorious acts are coun- 
 seled, not absolutely required. 
 
 3 Absolution is (a.) not merely declaratory, but judicial and effective, (6.) not 
 a prayer, (c.) not conditional as to the future, {d.) in it the priest represents God. 
 — In what goes before, however, if there is not contrition, at least in the form of 
 attrition, natural sorrow, "the matter of the sacrament of penance is wanting/ 
 and the form— absolution— does not avail. 
 
574 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 4. Repentance, in the common usage of the term, is the ex* 
 ercise of the soul in view of all sin, — turning from it and unto 
 God; and hence, Christians should daily repent. Here, of course, 
 it is not used in its highest, strictest, central sense. 
 
 § 2. Repentance should be immediate. 
 
 1. This is implied in the Scriptural exhortations. 
 
 2. It is an immediate inference from the impossibility of a 
 neutral state. 
 
 3. It is involved in the obligatory character of repentance. 
 Duty obliges at every point always. 
 
 4. The contrary supposition would allow a man to continue 
 in sin, more or less. 
 
 5. As the turning from self to God, it must be immediate. 
 Insisting upon repentance being immediate does not imply 
 
 that it can be without grace. On the contrary, the most effect- 
 ual preaching should ever imply the present grace of God's 
 Spirit. Even if there were no grace, repentance would still be 
 a duty, because it does not surpass the extent of man's natural 
 capacities, because the only hindrance to it is man's sinful heart. 
 
 § 3. Some special Works and Signs of Repentance. 
 
 1. It is in view of the divine law, — acknowledging its justice 
 and holiness and thajustice of the sinner s condemnation under it. 
 
 2. It is not only in view of the law, but of God: Ps. li. 4. 
 
 3. There is a sense of the futility of all the sinner's pleas in 
 extenuation of his guilt. 
 
 4. It includes the sense of moral pollution which comes from 
 the conviction that the sinner as a sinner loves the worst thing 
 in the universe. 
 
 5. It includes the sense of one's helpless condition, of which 
 we have spoken. 
 
 6. It includes confession of sin, with petition, under the sense 
 that our only help is in God and in his sovereign grace. 
 
 7. It issues in, and is, the turning to God, in view of his sov- 
 ereignty and grace. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 575 
 
 BOOK IK 
 
 SANCTIFICATION AND PERFECTION. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SANOTIFIOATION. 
 
 Sanctification is the carrying to completion the work begun 
 in regeneration. It is the completed union of the soul with 
 Christ, so that as face answereth to face, the renewed soul an* 
 swers to Christ. Christ is said especially to be made unto us 
 sanctification: 1 Cor. i. 30. In short, sanctification is the work 
 of overcoming the old man by the new. 1 It is the victory of 
 the spirit over the flesh, of grace over sin. It is putting on 
 Christ, becoming wholly like Him. 
 
 § 1. The Nature of Sanctification according to the Scriptures. 
 
 There are two general descriptions in Scripture: the reinstat- 
 ing of the divine moral image, and the becoming like to Christ; 
 and these two are one, the perfection of our moral being. The 
 divine image in man was lost by the fall, so far as the divine 
 image involves holiness, righteousness. The whole of the di- 
 vine image is lost, because that image comprehends our spirit- 
 ual capacities as our spiritual perfections. The capacity, the 
 possibility of perfection remains, notwithstanding the fall. But 
 in the strict and complete sense of the divine image, it was lost 
 when original righteousness was lost, and it is the reinstating 
 of this which is the work of sanctification. 
 
 But apart from these general statements the Scriptures have 
 more explicit positions. 
 
 1. They represent sanctification as a work upon and in the 
 human heart: Ps. li. 10. There is a continued dependence on God. 
 
 2. As far as the Persons of the Trinity are concerned, sancti- 
 fication is the special work of the Holy Spirit, as regeneration is, 
 although the whole Trinity is concerned in it. 
 
 1 It is "the expulsive power of a new affection " (Chalmers). 
 
576 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 3. It is of God's free grace, still and ever, not by our merita 
 or deserts. 
 
 4. Yet it is through our agency: Phil. ii. 12. 
 
 5. Sanctification differs from merely moral reformation (a.) in 
 that it is from God, and in a peculiar sense, of grace, (b.) in that 
 the whole course of sanctification implies our constant depend- 
 ence on Christ. 
 
 6. Sanctification is of the whole person, — intellect, heart, will; 
 the body also becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost, and, through 
 union with Christ, is raised again glorious and incorruptible. 
 
 7. All the means of grace are means of sanctification : Faith, 
 the Word, Prayer, the Sacraments. 
 
 § 2. The Difference between Justification, Regeneration, and Sano 
 tification. 
 
 L — Justification precedes: 
 is judicial: 
 is an act: 
 is once for all: 
 causes change of 
 state: 
 In ' ' sins are pardoned : 
 
 is equal in aU: 
 is from guilt: 
 In " Christ's righteous- 
 
 ness is imputed: 
 " gives title to hea- 
 
 ven: 
 
 IL — Regeneration gives 
 
 spiritual life: 
 
 the seed: 
 
 the babe in 
 
 Christ: 
 
 Sanctification results; 
 " is moral; 
 
 " is a work; 
 
 " is gradual; 
 
 " causes change of 
 
 character; 
 In " sins are subdued; 
 
 " is unequal; 
 
 '* is from defilement; 
 
 In " inherent righteous- 
 
 ness is given; 
 4 ( gives fitness for hea- 
 
 ven. 
 
 Sanctification gives 
 
 spiritual growth; 
 the development; 
 the perfect man in 
 
 Christ. 
 
 § 3. Of good Works and Sanctification 
 
 (a.) Good works are involved in sanctification: Eph. ii. 10, 
 (b.) They are both internal and external, (c.) Good works are 
 relatively such ; they are not perfectly good, unmixed with sin. 
 (d.) They are necessary: (1) As the proof of faith. They are 
 not necessary to justification, but necessary to the working out 
 of the faith which justifies. (2) They are necessary to the ac- 
 complishment of redemption in us. If there are no good works, 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 077 
 
 there is no evidence of our being Christians. (3) They are ex- 
 pressly commanded to believers, in the Bible. (4) But eternal 
 life is not merited by them. Eternal life is given for Christ's 
 sake. Good works fit us for eternal life. This again is in con- 
 trast with the Roman Catholic view, which makes the merit of 
 good works to be a part of the title to everlasting life. 
 
 § 4. The Means of Sanctification. 
 
 All the means of grace are likewise means of sanctification. 
 (1) The Word of God. Truth controls and guides the sanctifi- 
 cation. This position is in contrast with the pretentions of fa- 
 natics and mystics who make their inward light to be above the 
 Word. (2) Prayer. In its most general aspect, prayer includes 
 praise to God, confession of sin, petition for grace, and supplica- 
 tion for benefits, with submission to the divine will. "Not my 
 will, but thine be done" is the essence of every petition. In a 
 more restricted sense, it is the utterance of holy desires before 
 God. No prayer is possible except to a personal God. Those 
 who pray otherwise are in a state of reverie and not of prayer. 
 Some say that all prayer is in works. While it is true that there 
 is no right prayer which does not lead to works, and that in 
 works there may be petition, yet the two things are entirely dis- 
 tinct, and those who find prayer in works are without prayer. 
 
 (3) The exercise of the virtues of the Christian character. 
 
 (4) Works of beneficence and charity. (5) The observance of 
 the ordinances of the church, especially the sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper. 
 
 As to the Objections to Prayer. These are two. (1) It is 
 said that as we cannot stay the course of nature, which is uni- 
 form, prayer is needless in respect to all external objects. There 
 is a settled order in regard to all physical cause and effect, with 
 which prayer cannot interfere. — In regard to this: (a.) What is 
 meant by the course of nature? It is a certain order of natural 
 phenomena, antecedent and consequent, in the natural world. 
 The formula for the natural world is : The same causes, in the 
 same circumstances, will produce the same effects. But when 
 prayer comes in, then, besides the causes in external nature, there 
 
578 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 may be another cause introduced. The course of nature haa 
 reference simply to facts. If new influences come in, the course 
 of nature is no objection, as far as these influences may go, be- 
 cause a new influence may produce a new consequence, even in 
 the arrangement of the physical order, as the mere external con- 
 sequences of phenomena may be interrupted by our actions. 1 
 (&.) This position is still further strengthened by considering 
 that nature is under and for divine providence. Nature is not 
 ultimate. It is guided by divine providence for the ends of that 
 providence, and the natural world is made subservient to the 
 moral world. Divine Providence may use the same laws and 
 give them different combinations and directions, in order to se- 
 cure moral ends. This must be admitted if God and his provi- 
 dence are admitted, (c.) Any given prayer in the course of 
 that providence may be a part of that series of causes which 
 will issue in certain effects. It may have been appointed by 
 God in his plan. If man can interrupt the course of nature, i. e., 
 can make new combinations, so that what nature would have 
 done is not done, much more God may. And if God may in his 
 plan embrace the prayer of any individual as one of the causes 
 leading to certain effects, then there is no objection at all, from 
 the course of nature, to the possibility of prayer and the answer 
 to prayer. (2) The second objection is made on the ground of 
 the unlimited promises of Scripture. This objection is sometimes 
 in the form of an assertion as to the prayer of faith. Many in- 
 terpret the prayer of faith as unlimited, on the ground of the 
 promises, and then the objection comes, that such prayer secure 
 of the answers would interfere with the divine order. A strong 
 poetic way of stating it is, that prayer moves the hand that moves 
 the world; but the theological order would be, the hand that 
 moves the world moves prayer. The promises in question are 
 such as that in Luke xvii. 6, which probably refers to miracu- 
 lous works, and John xiv. 13, 14. In respect to such assurances, 
 we need to make a distinction between a merely personal private 
 desire and prayer as it is the matter of the promises. The prom 
 
 - If there were not a roof to a house, the rain would come in, and in thif Bens* 
 the course of nature is interrupted. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 579 
 
 iees of Scripture are to be understood in harmony with all the 
 rest of Scripture. Promises are not to give what each individual 
 may ask for himself, but what is asked in faith and in the name 
 of Christ. The question then is, What is real prayer? Ami 
 here it must be said: (a.) The soul of prayer is the desire for the 
 union of man's will with God's, (b.) It is based on God's word 
 and promise, (a) It is of the whole soul, expressing its inmost 
 desire, (d.) It is and must be in trust and submission. — The 
 prayer to which the promise is given is not the mere individual 
 wish, desire, and petition, but that wish, desire, and petition as a 
 part of the plan of God, with ultimate respect to God's will and 
 kingdom. " In the name of Christ " includes the meaning, In the 
 spirit of Christ. " In faith " includes, In submission to God. 1 
 
 Practical Suggestions. (1) The habit of prayer should be that 
 which leads lis to engage in it daily and hourly. I. e., the state 
 of mind, in which we are as Christians, should be one of constant 
 supplication, looking to God for his guidance and blessing. 
 While there should be stated seasons for prayer, prayer should 
 go with us all the day. (2) It is well to cultivate a habit of 
 ejaculatory petition ; i. e., in any pauses of intercourse or of study, 
 to look up to God with petition for guidance and blessing. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PERFECTIONISM. 
 
 The question here is not whether it is conceivable that a 
 man might become perfect. It is not what is the possible ex- 
 tent of our natural capacities, aided by grace — whether they might 
 not attain unto perfection ; for that theoretically must be con- 
 ceded. Nor is it on the point of our obligation to be perfect. 
 
 1 In the well-known case of Monica, the mother of Augustine, whose prayer 
 that her son might not go to Borne on account of the dissipation there, was an- 
 swered by his going to Rome and being converted, we have a striking instance of 
 the answer to the soul and purport of prayer. Spiritual blessing is the soul and 
 ultimate aim of every particular prayer. 
 
580 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 The question is simply this: Are we authorized by experience 
 and the word of God to expect perfection in this life? Perfec- 
 tion is nothing less than the complete sanctification of the whole 
 man — in the intellect, heart, and will, so that he is in all his 
 powers perfectly conformed to the will of God, so that even the 
 spontaneous desire for what is sinful is excluded. It may be 
 denned positively and negatively, i. e., as entire conformity to 
 the will of God, and as entire freedom from sin. 
 
 § 1. The older Theories. 
 
 1. The Pelagian. This asserts that man's native capacities 
 and powers are not injured by the fall. They may be weakened, 
 but are not morally injured. There is no sin but actual trans- 
 gression, and man is fully able to keep the divine law. The 
 existence of divine grace is granted as a matter of fact, but it is 
 made to be external rather than internal. Though it is not the 
 general fact that men do it, yet it is true that they may live free 
 from sin. In respect to the prayer, " Forgive us our debts," 
 Pelagius said it did not apply to saints. 
 
 2. The Arminian. This makes perfection or complete sanc- 
 tification to be loving God as much as He requires us to do in 
 the gospel. It is a perfection which is simply proportionate to 
 our present powers, and to the present demands of the law upon 
 us under the gospel. Under the gospel dispensation, the demands 
 of the law are relaxed. It does not demand perfect holiness, 
 but as much as man can attain to, with his present powers in 
 their pi^esent state. The older Arminians do not claim absolute 
 sinlessness, but a state in which there should be no voluntary 
 transgression. Imperfections may remain, but these they call 
 infirmities. 1 
 
 3. The Roman Catholic. This is connected with their gen- 
 eral view of the sacraments and of sacramental grace. That 
 original sin, which is the heritage of the human race, is taken 
 away in baptism. The demand made upon those baptized and 
 
 ' Fletcher disclaims perfection as demanded by the Paradisiacal law, and views it 
 as only love to Christ constantly in the soul; whatever else comes up in the soul 
 being regarded as imperfection simply, because it is not of the nature of the ruh 
 tag principle in the heart. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 581 
 
 thus received into the church is, obedience to all external moral- 
 ity. There is also a higher grade of virtue which may become 
 the possession of some elect ones. That higher grade is found 
 in yielding obedience to the " evangelical counsels " in the New 
 Testament. Voluntary poverty, separation from the world, etc., 
 are declared to be a higher degree of virtue and to be, in the 
 eminent sense, religion. And by such obedience not only may 
 perfection be reached, but also works of supererogation may be 
 performed. 
 
 § 2. The modem View of Perfectionism. 
 
 Some forty years ago this was the subject of earnest discus- 
 sion among our Western churches. This view differs from the 
 Pelagian, in allowing for a depravity of nature, though it is not 
 decided whether that shall be called a moral state or a physical 
 condition. It differs from the Arminian view, in denying gra- 
 cious ability. The ability relied upon is not gracious, but man's 
 natural capacity. The perfection to which man can attain con- 
 sists in this : the choice of the highest good, and, as the result 
 of that choice, the full and perfect discharge of all our duty. 
 The perfection, however, is ultimately to be resolved into the 
 choice. It is a choice which is according to our ability, in the 
 present circumstances, as we now are. The perfection is not an 
 absolute, but a relative perfection, a perfection which is just on 
 a line with our present ability, so that the ability becomes the 
 measure of our obligation, instead of the obligation being the 
 measure of the ability. The main point in the theory, how- 
 ever, is this, that there is no moral character in anything in 
 man, but the choice of an ultimate end, — that all except that 
 does not come under the sphere of what is moral. The whole 
 of character is in the governing purpose. In the discussions in 
 respect to obligation and ability, matters have taken a singular 
 turn at different periods of the controversy. The old New Eng- 
 land position said that man had both natural ability and moral 
 inability, that the obligation is the prime thing in the case, 
 and that the obligation is to the full possible extent of our natu- 
 ral capacity. In the later speculations, natural ability is taken 
 
582 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 to amount to this : what a man can do in his depraved, diseased, 
 and corrupt condition, just as it is; and the view carried out 
 comes to the position that there is no moral inability at all, that 
 that is a vicious phrase, and the perfection is that which man 
 can attain by his natural powers. 
 I. — The Arguments for this View. 
 
 1. On the ground of ability. The command to be perfect 
 implies the ability, and not only the possibility but the actuality 
 of perfection. We are as much bound, on the ground of the 
 command, to preach perfection as we are to preach repentance 
 to the sinner. Perfection is as much attainable by the Christian 
 as repentance by the sinner. — If the doctrine of natural ability 
 be held without the check of moral inability, we do not see but 
 that this argument is valid. Those who hold that the sinner 
 can repent without divine grace must, on the same ground, 
 preach absolute perfection, and that it is attainable in the case 
 of every Christian. The only escape from this conclusion is 
 by modifying the statement of natural ability in regard to 
 repentance. 
 
 2. From the promises of God. It is said that God promises 
 the perfection of his children. — But it is to be considered that 
 the promises of God are conditional, and run through all time. 
 They are not fixed to any particular time, or to this life dis- 
 tinctively. They relate to complete and final sanctification. 
 
 3. From the provision of the gospel. It is said that this 
 is such for sanctification or entire holiness, that we may expect 
 it in this life. — The argument proves too much. The fulness of 
 the provision would not be our warrant for expecting entire 
 sanctification, any more than the general atonement is a warrant 
 for expecting a universal redemption. The provision in the 
 divine order is always beyond what it is applied unto. 
 
 4. From prayer. We are to pray for entire sanctification. — 
 Our prayer, however, is to be with trust. We are warranted, on 
 the ground of the promise, in expecting entire sanctification, but 
 that does not involve that it will come to us in this life. 
 
 5. An appeal to facts — as certified by Scripture. — This is tc 
 be viewed as part of the statement under the next head. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 583 
 
 6. From Scripture. 1 John ii. 5; iv. 17; iii. 5 and seq. ; Col. 
 li. 10. — These passages however set forth what is the true nature 
 or character of Christians, what it is they are regenerated for, 
 i. e., for entire perfection, and do not declare or announce the 
 fact that Christians themselves are at the present time perfect, 
 although they ought to be so. The declaration is in respect to 
 the idea of the Christian, rather than of the actual Christian life 
 or experience. The Apostle John says, " If we say that we have 
 no sin, we deceive ourselves" (1 John i. 8), and the other pas- 
 sages are to be interpreted in harmony with this. He proceeds 
 to give the true idea of a Christian, but he does not say that 
 Christians are actually conformed to this. The case in which 
 perfection would be most likely to be found, if anywhere, is that 
 of the Apostle Paul, and it is said that he claims perfection for 
 himself in such passages as Acts xx. 26; Gal. ii. 20; 1 Cor. ii. 16; 
 2 Cor. i. 12; 1 Thess. ii. 10; 2 Tim. i. 3.— But these are to be 
 taken as statements of Paul's general position and character. The 
 "holily and justly and unblameably " of 1 Thess. ii. 10, isin reference 
 to his conduct in the world, and not to his inward sanctification. 
 The same Apostle says, Phil. iii. 12: "Not as though I had already 
 attained, either were already perfect." Advocates of perfeo- 
 tionism interpret him as speaking here of the resurrection, and 
 understand him to say that he had not yet attained unto the 
 resurrection of the body. But that was a very needless thing 
 for him to say. Other passages cited are: Phil. iii. 15 — but 
 here "perfect" means, thoroughly instructed in divine things; 
 1 Cor. ii. 6 — but here again "perfect" means, having knowl- 
 edge of divine things. Luke i. 6 would be a much stronger 
 passage. If any one was perfect, Zacharias was; but even per- 
 fectionists interpret this of outward conformity, because it was 
 a perfection under the old economy. 
 
 II. — Objections to Perfectionism. 
 
 1. On the ground of the radical theory of this modern per- 
 fectionism, if any Christians are perfect, all are perfect. Perfec- 
 tion, they say, consists in the choice of the highest good, and 
 whatever else there may be in man is not of a moral sort. Then, 
 as all Christians have chosen the highest good, and as all else 
 
584 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 that is in them is not moral and has nothing to do with the ques- 
 tion, it follows that all are perfect. 
 
 2. Even if anybody was perfect, he could not prove the fact. 
 Who knows his own sinfulness? Who can know his secret 
 sins ? The one fact of secret sins alone should prevent any one 
 from asserting that he is perfect. There may be sins which are 
 sinful in the eye of God, which are not disclosed to us in their 
 vileness. 1 
 
 3. The effect of the doctrine, as held and preached, is to lower 
 the standard of the divine law. In order to make the doctrine 
 consistent, it is necessary to bring down that law to our present 
 actual capacities, and in doing this it is lowered and made to be 
 different in its demands upon each one. 
 
 4. The doctrine has, in the same way, a tendency to lower 
 our view of the nature of sin. Its constant tendency is, to lead 
 us to look for sin only in deliberate acts, in volitions. 
 
 5. The Scriptural argument against it is very strong: Job ix. 
 20; Ps. xix. 12; James iii. 2; John iii. 7, where a process is indi- 
 cated; Phil. iii. 12; 1 John i. 8; Gal. v. 17-23; Heb. xii. 7; Ps. xvii. 
 15, showing where perfection is to be looked for; and especially, 
 Rom. vii., throughout which chapter Paul speaks in the present 
 tense, and has for the object of his argument to show that un- 
 der and by the law no human being can be justified or obtain 
 peace or salvation. Even to such a Christian as Paul, the law is 
 such a condemning power as is set forth in verses 13, 14. We 
 judge that in this chapter neither the regenerate nor the un- 
 regenerate is distinctively and exclusively in view, but that 
 the chapter contains this general position, that no member of 
 the human family, even one who is saved by Christ, can, when 
 judged by the divine law, obtain peace by conformity to its 
 requirements. 
 
 6. The manifest faults of Christians in this life are arguments 
 against this doctrine. The tendency of those who hold it is 
 to palliate these faults, and to say that they do not come under 
 
 1 It may be supposed that if ever any one approached perfection, it was the 
 wife of Jonathan Edwards, yet her holy exercises were mingled with the strongest 
 wrestlings with sin. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 585 
 
 the term sin — they are excusable imperfections. Some who have 
 been wild and fanatical have said that for them, as Christians, 
 there is no sin. Some perfectionist communities have run riot 
 in the indulgence of fleshly lusts, on this ground. 
 
 7. The tendency of the doctrine is still further to lead to re- 
 liance upon conformity to law, and not upon the pure grace of 
 God as the ground of peace and hope. The very claim of per- 
 fection implies that we measure ourselves by the law as a 
 standard, and that withdraws us relatively from simple trust in 
 Christ. 
 
 8. The doctrine rests in theory upon a delusive psychology, 
 viz., that in one act or one governing moral state is the whole 
 of character, and that everything else which is in us does not 
 belong to character, and does not come under the categories 
 either of sin or holiness. This is against Christian conscious- 
 ness, and is practically delusive and false. 
 
 9. Christian experience, as a whole, is opposed to it. Wc 
 have the confessions of the best men in the church, that they 
 have had to struggle with sin. 
 
 10. Opposed to it likewise are the prayers for perfection which 
 are enjoined upon us in Scripture as our duty : 1 Thess. iii. 10-13 ; 
 v. 23; Heb. xiii. 21; Matt. vi. 12, in respect to which it may be 
 asked, Into what state in this life can a Christian come in which 
 the prayer "Forgive us our debts" may not be repeated ? 
 
 11. The Scripture represents Christ as the only perfect man. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 The doctrine of the saints' perseverance is this: that those 
 who have been really and truly renewed will persevere unto the 
 end through a progressive sanctification. This sanctification is 
 the work of God. The perseverance is through divine grace, 
 The doctrine expresses a fact and not a mere theory. Persever 
 
586 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ance is presented in Scripture as a duty incumbent on the saints 
 There is also contained a promise, on condition of the perform- 
 ance of the duty, and the promise culminates in the assurance 
 of the fact that all true saints will perform the duty, and so per- 
 severe to the end. 
 
 § 1. Arguments in favor of the Doctrine. 
 
 1. The promises of God to Christ as our Head : John vi. 37, 
 39; xvii. % 12. 
 
 ' 2. God's promises to his people : Ps. xxxvii. 28 ; Jer. xxxi. 31 ; 
 xxxii. 40; 1 Pet. i. 5. 
 
 3. From the nature of grace. It is implied in grace that 
 there is an everlasting covenant, and is so described: Isa. lv. 3; 
 Jer. xxxii. 40. It is exhibited as showing God's great love to 
 the human race, and a gift which, from its nature, He would not 
 be likely to withdraw. There is a union with Christ on the 
 ground of the covenant, and from his love who shall separate us ? 
 
 4. From the nature of the eternal life which is promised. 
 Christ is to give eternal life to as many as the Father gives Him. 
 Now what is eternal life? It is the continuance to eternity of 
 what is given here in the seed and the germ. The life already 
 begun is an eternal life: 1 John v. 11-13; John iii. 16. 
 
 5. From Christ's intercession: 1 John ii. 1; John xvii. 24, 
 where the " I will " is emphatic, implying Christ's purpose. 
 
 6. It is implied in the doctrine of decrees as including elec- 
 tion. Heb. vi. 17-19. "The immutability of his counsel." 
 
 § 2. Explanations of the Doctrine. 
 
 It involves two elements: on the one hand, God's agency in 
 preserving; on the other hand, the saints' agency in perse- 
 vering. Neither of these by itself is the doctrine, but both to- 
 gether constitute it. It does not imply that salvation is given 
 without conditions, but that the conditions of salvation are 
 to be fulfilled. It is not meant that true believers shall be 
 saved at any rate, without their own continued activity. The 
 doctrine is that of the perseverance of the saints, that their 
 activity shall be continued. It does not imply that true be* 
 
THE KINGDOM. OP REDEMPTION. 587 
 
 lievers may not fall into sin. — It asserts that though they may 
 fall into sin, they will not abide therein and be lost: Matt. xxiv. 
 24, — if possible, the elect, — but it is not possible. Phil. i. 6. — 
 Believers are not to be saved because they deserve salvation: it is 
 of grace. — Nor yet is the doctrine that those about whom it ia 
 doubtful whether they are Christians will be saved, but that 
 those whom God has truly renewed will be. — In order then to 
 disprove the doctrine, it must be shown that some real saints 
 have apostatized, — not that some church members have, or some 
 apparent saints, but some whom God has called. 
 
 § 3. Objections to the Doctrine. 
 
 Obj. I. — From passages of Scripture representing apostasy as 
 possible. The argument here is unsound, in that it infers a reality 
 from a possibility. Ezek. xviii. 24 is a statement of possibility 
 and consequence. John xv. 2 is to be understood of such as 
 are united to Christ simply externally, and do not receive of the 
 sap of the vine. Their not bearing fruit is a proof that they are 
 not really united to Christ. The sense of Gal. v. 4 is, that any 
 who depend on the law for justification cannot rely upon grace. 
 Their depending on the law shows that they have not a part in 
 the grace which alone can save them. In the parable of The 
 Virgins, the five who were foolish probably represent those who 
 make false professions, rather than apostates. The strongest pass- 
 age is Heb. vi. 4 seq. This is a statement of an impossibility. In 
 case those once enlightened should fall away, there is no possibility 
 of their being brought again to repentance. This is to be taken 
 as literally true. If any one does that, he cannot be saved. The 
 door of salvation will be shut to him entirely. But the passage 
 does not declare what is needed in order to prove the objection, 
 and so disprove the doctrine, — that any who have been thus en- 
 lightened have actually fallen away. 1 Heb. x. 29; 2 Pet. ii. 20, 21, 
 are general warnings, and do not include the point necessary to 
 refute the doctrine. In Kev. xxii. 19 "taking away his part 
 
 1 In the sense in which the Methodists hold to falling away and subsequent 
 restoration, this passage is directly against them, for it says that if any do thus faU 
 away, they cannot be renewed. 
 
588 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 out of the book of life " is to be understood of the part which 
 he would otherwise have had — not of what he actually had. 
 
 Obj. II. — On the ground of free agency. Man, being free, 
 may fall away. But here, again, all that can be deduced from 
 free agency is possibility, while what must be proved in order 
 to refute the objection is actuality. It is admitted that falling 
 away is possible so far as man is concerned: the doctrine is that, 
 through God's faithfulness, it is certain that the falling away 
 will not occur. 
 
 Obj. III. — On the ground of the effects of the doctrine. It 
 is said that it tends to make Christians careless. But the doc- 
 trine is that of the perseverance of the saints in a holy life, and 
 if Christians are over confident and careless, it is in spite of the 
 doctrine and against its precise terms. It is a perversion of the 
 doctrine to put it in the form which Cromwell is said to have 
 done — that he knew he would be saved because he was once 
 a Christian ; because if a man lose present evidence, it casts a 
 doubt on his previous experience. 
 
 Obj. IV. — That Adam and the angels fell, although holy. 
 This is no objection to the doctrine, for we do not know that 
 any promise was made to them that they should be kept. The 
 promise is to those who are redeemed and regenerated out of 
 a sinful state. 
 
 Obj. V. — On the ground of certain instances mentioned in 
 Scripture, as Hymeneus and Philetus, Alexander, etc. The 
 probability is that these were not real Christians. 
 
 Obj. VI. — The instances of David and Peter are cited. But 
 these prove the doctrine: in spite of their sins they persevered, 
 so far as we know. 
 
 Practical Remarks. (1) No past experience of the Christian 
 can be taken as absolute, as giving him the unqualified certainty 
 that he will be saved. (2) The evidence of any one being in 
 a gracious condition must be found chiefly in his continuous 
 sanctification, in his growing in grace and in the knowledge 
 of Christ. (3) The doctrine calls upon us in preaching to em- 
 phasize the danger of deception in relation to one's being in a 
 gracious state. (4) The doctrine is a source of great comfort 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 589 
 
 to those who are in spiritual despondency. It may be the means 
 of raising up those who are bowed down. (5) The ground of 
 the doctrine is in God's promise and grace, and not in what 
 man of himself can be or do: and therefore the application of 
 the doctrine, or our right to apply it, will be in proportion 
 to our reliance upon the divine promise and grace. (6) Warn- 
 ings to Christians are useful and necessary. The doctrine does 
 not prevent our uttering the most solemn warnings on the dan- 
 ger of falling away. (7) The assurance of perseverance can be 
 had only by those who persevere. The perseverance itself is 
 the only ground for putting ourselves individually under this 
 doctrine. Rom. ii. 7; 2 Pet. i. 10; 1 Cor. ix. 27; Heb. iv. 1. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE UNION BETWEEN CHKIST AND HIS CHURCH. 
 
 [The author gave no lectures upon this part of the theolog- 
 ical system. His general view, however, can be seen in the 
 following statements, which are drawn from other parts of his 
 manuscripts.] 
 
 § 1. Of the fundamental and germinant Idea of the Church of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 We derive this most fully from Eph. i. 22, 23. The church 
 is the body of which Christ is the soul, the organism of which 
 He is the life, the outward form of which He is the inward and 
 formative principle. It is said to be the fulness of Him who 
 filleth all with all things. That is, the church is filled up by 
 and with Christ, with all his blessings, all his grace, and all his 
 glory. And Christ being the one who in the universe filleth all 
 things with all things, being the Word, the Creator, the Head 
 and the End of all, His church filled with Him is filled with all. 
 The plenitude of spiritual being and beatitude is poured forth 
 from the eternal throne where He ever reigneth in regal do- 
 minion, and vitalizes, shapes, and guides that church, wherever 
 found, in heaven or on earth. The church is the veritable mys- 
 tical body of Christ. The union of soul and body is at once the 
 most mysterious and the most patent fact about man's own na- 
 ture. The sacred image of God is not only appareled in, but 
 united with, the fragile vestments of mortality, and the immortal 
 soul doubtless shapes, fills, and governs the transient tabeiuiacle. 
 And even thus it is with Christ in relation to his church. He 
 who filleth all things — who made, preserves, and governs the 
 universe, also, and in an eminent sense, fills his church, replen 
 iBhing it with the abounding riches of his grace, and imparting 
 to it that spiritual life which is the source and pledge of a bliss 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 591 
 
 ful immortality. This is indeed the divine side of the church, 
 but then the divine side is the real side. 
 
 This intimate alliance of the church with its Head is set forth 
 and reiterated in varied modes throughout the Scriptures, and 
 always in images that express the closest espousal, the most 
 tender and yearning love: Tsa. xliii. 1-7; xlix. 15; John xv. 5; 
 Eph. v. 25, 29. Expositors in all ages have taken the Song of 
 Songs, which depicts as does no other lyric the intense longing 
 of the most chaste earthly affection, and applied all its oriental 
 luxuriance in a supereminent and spiritual sense to celebrate the 
 hymeneal union of the celestial Bridegroom and the terrestrial 
 bride, whom the Bridegroom himself ransomed and clothed in 
 white raiment, that she might share in his ineffable and divine 
 love. And of earthly wedlock itself, the most logical of the 
 apostles tells us that it is only a fugitive image of the eternal 
 union between the Kedeemer and the redeemed. And this is 
 the real basis, and so gives us the true formative, organic idea 
 of the Christian church : it is the body of Christ, the fulness of 
 Him that filleth all with all. 
 
 § 2. Of the Nature of the Church as seen in the Light of this 
 radical and central Idea. 
 
 I. — The distinction between the invisible and the visible 
 church. This distinction is not Protestant alone, but essentially 
 Christian. The vital union of the soul with Christ is the forma- 
 tive element of the church. Wherever that is found, there the 
 church is; where that is not, the true church is not. And this 
 union is essentially spiritual, and so invisible. The invisible 
 church is the true church — the only church to which belong 
 prophecy, promise, victory, and full and final redemption. This 
 and this alone has the three grand marks or notes of the church 
 of Christ — catholicity, infallibility, and sanctity. 
 
 II. — The unreal and nugatory character of all prelatical claims. 
 The church is made up of believers; the visible church is made 
 up of all who are baptized; the invisible church of all who be- 
 lieve, whether baptized or not. The indwelling Spirit of Christ 
 alone makes, alone can make, a Christian. A bishop cannot dc 
 
592 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 it; a minister cannot do it; baptism cannot do it. They may 
 help in it: but the work itself is God's work, his divine preroga- 
 tive. If man could do it, there would be no need of God-, and 
 if God does it, man is only an instrument and not the real agent. 
 The pretence that anything external, outward, and visible can 
 make the internal and spiritual, that any outward form and 
 means can directly impart inward and spiritual grace, is, in the 
 last result and anal} T sis, a materialistic hypothesis. It amounts 
 to saying that mind can be the product of matter. The believer 
 must always be left in the position of coming directly to Christ 
 for salvation. What is external may be a means, a help, a stim- 
 ulus, but can never be that mystic bond which unites the soul 
 with its Lord and Master. This principle cuts deep and sharp, 
 but it is the irresistible logic of the Divine Logos — that Christ 
 may be all in all. 
 
 III. — This principle must shape our theory as to the nature 
 and functions of the visible church organization. Any attempt 
 to locate the essence of the church in bishops or even in the minis- 
 try, or in presbyteries or associations and the like, is utterly in- 
 consistent with the radical idea and fact of the Christian system. 
 The Spirit of God does not dwell peculiarly or exclusively in bish- 
 ops, ministers, or presbyteries; and where the Spirit acts, there 
 is the true church-building power. Any particular visible church 
 is a company of believers (and their baptized children) united 
 by covenant, where the Word is truly preached, and the Sacra- 
 ments, as occasion serves, are duly administered. As to its 
 particular constitution, much is left by the Word of God to 
 the fitness of times and places — the general principles being 
 duly cared for. These points are not finally settled by anyjwre 
 divino warrant. The local church is doubtless the unit of the 
 system; and the principle of unity, among those who have the 
 same faith and order, must aisc in some way be secured. But 
 when any such organization calls itself, by way of emphasis, the. 
 church, it emphasizes the wrong word, and so changes the vital 
 sense of the other word. It is an arrogant claim, without Script- 
 ural warrant, especially when it puts the essence of the church 
 in some figment of an apostolical succession, which no texts can 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 593 
 
 prove or history verify. The church is made by Christ and not by 
 man. Where Christ dwells, there and there only is the church — 
 for it is his body. 
 
 IV. — From the same principle — that the church is the body 
 of Christ — it follows, that the church has and guards his truth, 
 that it jealously preserves and defends whatever is essential 
 and fundamental in Christian doctrine, as well as what is need- 
 ful for the Christian life. For in Him are hid all the treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge. He is the King of Truth. The 
 doctrines that center in Him are not mere theories, abstract 
 opinions, but they express the essential facts about his person 
 and work. The church can no more thrive without them, than 
 morality can prosper without precepts and prohibitions. The 
 attempt to separate Christian doctrine from the Christian life 
 is vain. The two are as vitally connected as are the principle 
 of life and the formative principle in the case of every seed or 
 embryo. In the last analysis, perhaps, the truth is a reflex of 
 the life, because the life is a manifestation of the truth. The re- 
 lation is akin to that of the Scriptures and the Spirit; the Spirit 
 works through and by the word; we are begotten of the truth. 
 
 Hence all churches have felt the need of public, authorized, 
 and authentic confessions of faith, as a declaration of truth, a 
 protest against error, a bond of union, and a means of instruction 
 and growth. And in the midst of the incessant conflicts of mod- 
 ern denominations, especially in our own land, and of the insur- 
 gent pressure of all forms of error and infidelity — to call upon 
 us to strike down our symbols is like calling on an army to strike 
 down its flag in the face of the foe. No one can overestimate 
 the influence of such a document, for example, as the Westmin- 
 ster Assembly's Shorter Catechism. It has made our church 
 members strong in definite thought upon the weightiest themes. 
 It has given them a consistent body of divinity in the midst of 
 the fluctuations of opinion. It has been a spiritual and catholic 
 bond of union, especially in connection with the theological 
 treatises of the elder Edwards, between two of the most intelli- 
 gent and powerful bodies of Christians in our country, the Con- 
 gregational and Presbyterian, differing indeed on sundry un- 
 
594 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 essential points of church order, but radically one in the common 
 professed faith. It has done more to shape and train this land 
 for its high evangelical mission than anything else except the 
 inspired Word of God, which is the only divine rule of faith and 
 practice. 
 
 The church, as the body of Christ, has the deposit of divine 
 truth as its most sacred charge to keep, defend, and propagate. 
 Its very life depends upon its faithfulness. To yield it is apostasy. 
 
 V. — The principle that the church is the body of Christ in- 
 volves also this: that the church contains within itself the law 
 and the means of its own growth. As a body, an organized so- 
 ciety, in the midst of the human race, if it is to live, it must also 
 grow. And unless it is to remain virtually stationary, its growth 
 must be always gaining upon its loss. And there are two modes 
 in which, in the divine order, this growth is to advance ; it grows 
 from within, by birth and infant baptism, and from without, by 
 conversion of the unbaptized (or by reclaiming those who have 
 forfeited the grace which baptism was designed to signify and 
 seal). Apart from the Scriptural and historical argument for in- 
 fant baptism, its fitness and necessity result from the very idea 
 and nature of the church, as a form of human life, of human 
 history, of human society. In a sinful race, the church is an 
 exotic. That it may take root and thrive, it needs to make use 
 of the strongest ligaments that bind man to man. The closest 
 earthly bond, uniting the physical and moral, is found in the 
 parental and filial relation. The family is the native root of the 
 state; no less should the church be rooted in it. It is fitting 
 that the mightiest human ties should be enlisted in the service 
 of the church, — that the church should begin in the household. 
 And this is one reason for infant baptism. — We must consider 
 also the fact, that by their natural descent from the first parents 
 of the human race, all mankind are involved in the penal evils 
 of the first apostasy. The law of sin and death, which rules in 
 the race, is mighty and universal because it takes in the law of 
 birth. If now an economy of redemption is to be provided, it is 
 eminently fitting that, so far as is possible, the same law should 
 be turned into the service of redemption. Why should sin have 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 595 
 
 all the advantage in appropriating the deepest instincts of the 
 human soul ? Why may not redemption, as well as sin, be con- 
 nected in some way with the family constitution ? Why may 
 not the church receive the full benefit of those native and hal- 
 lowed ties by which the successive generations of men live one 
 life ? Your children were unclean, argues Paul, if you were un 
 believing, but because you believe now are they holy. And 
 here is the profound meaning of the Abrahamic covenant. 
 
 The children of a believing parent or parents are to be bap- 
 tized. Baptism is the sacrament whereby the subject of it is 
 received into and made a member of the visible church. Bap- 
 tized children are members of the church even as all children 
 belong to the country in which they are born; they are under its 
 watch and care, to be trained for its service. The name of God 
 has been named upon them. They are included in the cove- 
 nant. The covenant antedates and is the ground of the bap- 
 tism; and this baptism makes them members of the visible, 
 not necessarily of the invisible, church. Baptism incorporates 
 into the external form and order of the body of Christ. Re- 
 generation is not external but internal, so that there is no 
 proper baptismal regeneration, any more than there is a material 
 soul. Regeneration may or may not accompany the rite which 
 is its sign and seal; it is not tied to it. 
 
 There are three theories on this point. One, the Baptist^ 
 view is, that baptism is to be applied only to the regenerate; a 
 person must be regenerated before he is baptized. Another, the 
 saoramental theory, says, that baptism is, or involves, regenera- 
 tion; baptism regenerates and so admits into the visible church. 
 The third view, that of the Reformed churches, neither confounds 
 baptism and regeneration, as does the latter, nor sunders them, 
 as does the former; it recognizes the fact, that baptism, on the 
 groind of the parental relation, admits the child into the externa] 
 order of the church, and that it is also a sign and seal of the in- 
 grafting into Christ, who said, Suffer little children to come unto 
 Me. And many of the Reformed Confessions expressly admit, 
 that the grace of baptism is not tied to the moment of time when 
 it h administered ; but that whenever conversion takes place, it 
 
596 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is connected with the grace signed and sealed in the baptismal 
 covenant. 
 
 The church is to grow from without as well as from within. 
 By the faithful preaching of the Word and all other duly ap- 
 pointed and wise methods, it is to strive to win those that have 
 wandered from it, or thos3 that never knew it. 
 
 VI. — The church, being the body of Christ, is rightfully in- 
 dependent of the civil power or the state, in respect to its proper 
 spiritual functions, whether these concern doctrine, order, or dis- 
 cipline. The true relation of the church to the state is the un- 
 solved problem of human history. The Hebrew nation identified 
 the two ; for it was a theocracy. The early Christian church had 
 no recognized relation to the state; for it was a church in the 
 catacombs, though in the catacombs it undermined the throne 
 of the Csesars. The mediaeval Eoman church tried to solve the 
 problem by so enlarging the spiritual power as to bring princes 
 and nations under its domination; but in doing this, it became 
 corrupt, despotic, and anti-Christian. Modern Protestant Europe 
 has tried to solve the problem by establishing national churches; 
 but this brings the church into pecuniary and political depend- 
 ence upon the powers that be. The heart of the present con- 
 flicts of Europe is in this struggle; England is now passing 
 through it: Scotland's Free Church Presbyterians have done 
 manful battle against this Erastianism. In this country our 
 Puritan fathers attempted in some sort a revival of the old Jew- 
 ish theocracy ; but the course of events and our Revolution dis- 
 solved this unchristian marriage, by which the church lost its 
 inherent rights, while the state had too much to do. And the 
 influence of this separation is seen and felt in the beneficent and 
 increased activity and power of both church and state, each 
 having its specified and proper functions. 
 
 VII. — The principle that the church is the body of Christ 
 leads to the position that his kingdom must have ultimate uni- 
 versality and supremacy. He who filleth all with all must needs 
 fill his own body with all the riches of wisdom, grace, and glory. 
 The vision of the redeemed church as the body of Christ and of 
 the resplendent glories of its final consummation is at once tho 
 
THE KINGDOM OP REDEMPTION. 597 
 
 most ideal and the most real of all the hopes and prophecies of 
 the future. That to which the church is destined is a fulness 
 of "wisdom, of faith, and of love. Of wisdom: for when we know 
 the truth as it is in Jesus, we know all other truth aright. Rea- 
 son and faith are at one. Of faith: that faith which allies the 
 soul to God, that justifies the soul, that gives the victory over 
 the world. Of love: such as binds together all holy beings and 
 makes auniversal brotherhood, an eternal kingdom, the love which 
 is the sum and last name of all the virtues, and abideth forever. 
 And because this fulness of the church is a fulness of wisdom, 
 faith, and love, it also must be a fulness in power and dominion. 
 The most inspiring hope for the human race is in the sublime 
 victories of Christ's kingdom. All power, said our Lord, has 
 been given unto me, in heaven and on earth, and this imperial 
 claim to universal dominion has been going into fulfilment ever 
 since. In comparing the church with other forms of organized 
 social life, we see that every human empire, state, republic, shall 
 and must at last pass away, and that the church of Christ is the 
 only institution which is to pass undissolved through the gates 
 of death. This church is the only form of human society that 
 has existed in the world from the beginning: it has seen the 
 downfall of the hoary despotisms of the East; it witnessed 
 the youthful glories of Greece and also its decline; it was in 
 being when Romulus built the walls of Rome, and was mightier 
 still when the last Roman Emperor was driven from the eternal 
 city; it assisted in the formation and also in the destruction of 
 the Germanic Empire ; it laid the foundations of the civilization 
 of France, England, Russia, and America; it has given all the 
 strength they have to all these nations: they have prospered in 
 proportion as they have served Christ's kingdom, and if they 
 will not obey the law of Christ, they are like to be dashed in 
 pieces or crumble in decay. — All this is not theory but historic 
 fact. The prophecy is on the basis not only of God's word, but 
 also of all the past facts of the annals of our race: it is of the 
 consummation of what has been going on from the beginning, 
 the complete outworking of the one principle, that the church 
 is the body of Christ, the fulness of Him that filleth all with all. 
 
PART III. 
 
 THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION 
 IN TIME AND IN ETERNITY. THE ESCHATOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF DEATH AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 § 1. Death 
 
 As waking and sleeping mark our temporal life, so death 
 and the resurrection are spoken of in regard to the eternal life: 
 John xi. 13; Ps. xiii. 13. The departed are called souls in Scrip- 
 ture: Rev. vi. 9; xx. 4; Ps. xlix. 19. Hence, death is, separation 
 of soul and body. The violence of the rupture is the fruit of 
 sin. 1 Yet it is introductory to another state. 2 Its chief terror 
 for man lies in its being the symbol of future penalty. 3 
 
 § 2. Of Immortality. 
 
 I. — Scriptural Arguments. 
 
 1. The Old Testament view. Some Socinians interpret the 
 Old Testament as denying immortality, or as not containing the 
 doctrine. Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, endeav 
 ored to construct the system on that basis. His argument is that 
 Moses had and must have had a divine mission, because he did not 
 enforce his religion by the rewards and sanctions of a future 
 life. The intimations of immortality are undoubtedly less full 
 and definite in the Old Testament than in the New; but they 
 increase in definiteness in the progress of the Old Testament 
 dispensation. Christ against the Sadducees, Matt. xxii. 23-33, 
 uses an argument which implies, if it implies anything, the 
 
 1 "Der Tod ist nicht der rein negative abstracte Gegensatz des Lebens,, er ist 
 der positive, concrete Gegensatz desselben: . . . . er ist Auflosung des gottgesetzten 
 Sein." (Delitzsch, Apologetik, s. 133.) 
 
 2 " Appropin quant e morte anima multo est divinior." (Cicero.) 
 
 3 The fear of death, when dying, is rare. (Sir Benj. Brodie, Psychol. Inq's* 
 L 132.) 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 599 
 
 revelation of a future life in the Old Testament. " God is not 
 the God of the dead, but of the living." That alone would be 
 sufficient. The translation of Enoch, Gen. v. 24, supposes a 
 continued existence. 1 
 
 There are the taking away of Elijah, 2 Kings ii., and the 
 miracles of Elijah and Elisha, restoring the dead, 1 Kings xvii. ; 
 2 Kings iv. Whence could the soul return ? The vivification 
 of the dead, Ezek. xxxvii., "implies knowledge of the resurrec- 
 tion." Isa. xiv. 9; Ps. xvii. 15; xlix. 15; lxxiii. 24, recognize 
 immortality. There are also passages which imply and involve 
 the notion of a resurrection, which of course implies immortality. 
 Isa. xxvi. 19; Dan. xii. 2; Job xix. 25 (this is a contested pass- 
 age; some refer it to the resurrection; the least that can be made 
 of it is confidence in God's vindication, not merely in the present, 
 but in a future life) ; Eccl. xii. 7. 
 
 2. The New Testament view. Here there is no doubt about 
 immortality. Matt. x. 28; John xi. 25; 2 Cor. v. 8, are specimens 
 of the testimony. 
 
 II. — Philosophical Argument. 
 
 [Only the heads of argument are given.] 
 
 (1) The consensus gentium. It is the presumption among all 
 nations. (2) The simplicity of the soul takes away any counter 
 presumption. (3) The moral argument: (a.) Ketribution, which 
 is not completed in this life. (&.) The educability of man: his 
 powers are not completely unfolded. His highest powers as a 
 moral being are not reached in this life. His is an incomplete 
 destiny, if there is not an immortality. He has been made in 
 vain as to the ultimatum of his existence, (c.) In the distinct 
 conscious personality of man. there is the strongest metaphysi- 
 cal ground for the position of his immortality. Brutes have not 
 that personal moral being. They have individualized existence, 
 but not moral personality. And so far as analysis can reach, 
 this is absolutely simple. To this may be added the natural 
 longing of mankind for the continuance of existence, which is 
 inexplicable if man is not to live forever. (4) There is a moral 
 
 1 "Warburton finds difficulty in disposing of this case. He suggests that Moses 
 knew about Enoch and kept it veiled from the people. 
 
600 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 system; tnere is a God; He will bring the system to its complete- 
 ness: hence, immortality. 
 
 § 3. Annihilation. 
 
 The theory of annihilation has been brought forward in mod- 
 ern times, especially in connection with the theory of future 
 punishment. It has been supposed to do away with some of 
 the difficulties of that doctrine. The position has been taken 
 that the impenitent dead are annihilated, and that death spoken 
 of in relation to them means a literal cessation of being. As far 
 as the Scriptures are concerned, the whole plausibility of the 
 position arises from the use of the word, death. It sometimes 
 means a cessation of conscious being in a certain condition. 
 This is applied analogically to future existence. There is no 
 instance, however, in which any other word can be found which 
 implies this absolute cessation of being. And against this rep- 
 resentation, and in favor of the ordinary view of death, in the 
 future life, — that it implies suffering, all the passages that prove 
 distinct future punishment stand. Matt. xxv. 31-46. The parallel 
 in verse 46 implies the continued existence of both righteous 
 and wicked, and what is asserted is, bliss for the one and pun- 
 ishment for the other. The parallel would not hold at all. if, 
 with the wicked, it were to be a cessation of all being. More- 
 over, the very notion of punishment and suffering which is in- 
 volved in the use of the word fire, verse 41, implies continued 
 consciousness. So the description of the judgment, 2 Cor. v. 10, 
 implies perpetuity of being. In Eom. ii. 6-11, the expressions, 
 tribulation and anguish, cannot be taken at all for annihilation. 
 In Rev. xxii. 11, the continuance of moral pollution implies the 
 continuance of conscious being. 
 
 Other arguments adduced for annihilation are simply theo- 
 retical and metaphysical possibilities: e. gr., that the soul is not 
 naturally indestructible, that God could annihilate it. That 
 may be granted, but the question is not one of possibility, but 
 of fact; and there is nothing better settled in Scripture than that 
 death means penal suffering. 1 
 
 1 See Pres. Bartlett, Theory of the Extinction of the Wicked, New Englander, 
 Oct. 1871. Also, Life and Death Eternal. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 601 
 
 § 4. Objections to Immortality. 
 
 Obj. T. — From the analogy of the vegetable and animal 
 world. Vegetables die; they lose not only their present form, 
 but the distinctive principle of life is apparently evaporated, 
 when they cease to be. So of the animal creation. There is no 
 evidence of the continued existence of the animal soul. On this 
 basis an analogy is framed; if other living beings thus die, man 
 may. — The analogy, granting it the fullest application, would 
 hold only in respect to the material portion of man — what might 
 be called the animal soul in man. The power of the analogy as 
 to any further application is broken by the fact that man is also 
 a moral, personal, spiritual agent, which the brutes are not, and 
 it is entirely unwarrantable to apply from a lower to a higher 
 sphere an analogy which has place only in the lower. 
 
 Obj. II. — From the decay of the faculties in old age. 
 
 As we come to the term of being here, the faculties appar- 
 ently decline in vigor. — On this point what is said in Butler's 
 Analogy is fair and conclusive. The faculties of the bodily 
 constitution decay, i. e., the body decays. The means of exer- 
 cising the soul in this world die out. That is all that can be 
 proved. As far as the higher faculties of the soul are concerned 
 — its spiritual discernment, its reasoning powers — all that most 
 concerns man as a spiritual being, the facts are not according to 
 the statement. That decays which is to be laid aside. Still 
 further, most of the human race die before any such change is 
 at all apparent. The large majority die in infancy; very few live 
 to the decline of their faculties; and any such argument would 
 at the best have a very limited application. 
 
 Obj. III. — Immortality is a fact, and cannot be proved by mere 
 reason. — All that we attempt to do by the use of reason is to 
 attain a probability and moral certainty. Everything looks that 
 way as far as reason is concerned. We do not establish it as a 
 fact by reasoning, but as a moral certainty, in view of which we 
 are to act. As far as it is a question of fact, we appeal to that 
 which establishes the fact, the testimony of Christ and his apos- 
 tles — the revelation of God. 
 
 Obj. IV. — It is said that as far as the moral argument goes, its 
 
602 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 demands are met by the continued existence of the race, — that 
 it would only prove the continued existence of a race of moral 
 beings here, and does not reach to the conclusion of a personal 
 immortality, and that any judgment upon individuals is not 
 fair. Judgment upon men is simply their character handed 
 down. This is the general pantheistic position of Fichte, Strauss, 
 etc. A moral argument for immortality is granted, but is re- 
 solved into the immortality of the race. The judgment is made 
 to be the moral judgment of posterity upon those who have gone 
 before. — But this is doing away with the proper sense of moral 
 retribution, which, in its specific form, is the rendering to each 
 according to his deserts. To resolve it into the retributions of 
 human opinion is to do violence to the utterances of conscience. 
 The righteous deserve more thon a good name, and the wicked 
 more than a bad name. 
 
 Obj. V. — It is said that the longing for immortality is satis- 
 fied by such continued fame among men. — But that is to dis- 
 connect the lougiug for immortality from personal being and 
 personality, and when this is done, the essence of the longing 
 is destroyed. What men desire and long for is, continued ex- 
 istence, not that they may be spoken of after death. This sug- 
 gestion is from the pantheistic policy of resolving specific 
 doctrines into general ideas. 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 By the intermediate state is meant the state of departed 
 souls between death and the resurrection. That there is such a 
 state, all believe who believe in the resurrection and final judg- 
 ment. The differences of opinion are as to the character of the 
 
 1 This is the whole of the skill of the pantheistic reconstruction of Christian 
 truth. As it deals with the Christian doctrine of immortality, so it does with the 
 doctrine of redemption. That is, the doctrine of the redemption of the individ- 
 ual soul. The pantheist says, it is the redemption of the soul from its lower and 
 sensual form of existence, bringing it into its higher spiritual relations, etc. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 603 
 
 state itself: chiefly, in controversy with the Romanists, whether 
 it is of a purgatorial character ; also in part in controversy with 
 those who maintain the sleep of souls; and also in part there is 
 involved the question of the possibility of repentance for those 
 who die impenitent. 
 
 § 1. Historic Facts as to the Doctrine. 
 
 In the Old Testament the general name for the place of de- 
 parted souls is Sheol; in the New, Hades. It is represented in 
 other forms of expression as the place to which the fathers are 
 gathered, and 1 as the under- world. It is sometimes used in con- 
 trast with heaven. The departed are in a state where the dead 
 are not yet in a blissful condition, but one of comparative dark- 
 ness and silence. In the later Jewish speculations, after the 
 Maccabees, we find a division of this under-world into the two 
 abodes of Gehenna, a place of torment, and Paradise— or being in 
 Abraham's bosom — a place of happiness. 2 In the time of the early 
 Christians, next after the Apostolic age, we find in Marcion the 
 first definite statements, with the avowal of the position that 
 Christ went to the under-world and preached. Subsequently, 
 Irenasus and Tertullian began to say that the object of Christ's 
 going to the grave was to preach to the just patriarchs, etc., who 
 had not known fully of salvation, but had died with only a dim 
 knowledge of Christ. These views are soon connected with the 
 phraseology, limbus patrum, limbics infantum, i. e., a restricted 
 abode of the fathers who died not having known Christ fully, 
 and of infants who died, not being yet redeemed, but in a con- 
 dition in which they would receive Christ when offered to them. 
 The object of Christ's going was to reveal himself to them. 
 That going was not yet connected with the notion that those 
 who died in iniquity could be redeemed by Christ's labors among 
 them. The simple view was, that there were those who did not 
 know Christ, but awaited the proclamation of Him. Clement 
 of Alexandria and Origen extended the doctrine so as to include 
 the Gentiles and Christ's announcement of himself to them m 
 
 1 As in the Egyptian mythology. 
 
 s See Dr. Geo- Campbell, "The Four Gospels," Prelim. Diss. VI., PartlL 
 
604 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Hades. 1 In the process of development in the third century, 
 the doctrine becomes somewhat enlarged; it is extended so as to 
 represent Christ descending into the grave in order to have a 
 personal contest with Satan, and to rescue souls that were held 
 captive. Some thought that Satan did not yet know about 
 Christ's having made satisfaction for sin, and that Christ an- 
 nounced it in the contest. Augustine, in the fifth century, 
 though receiving the opinion that Christ goes to the under- 
 world, makes no reference to the possibility of any repentance 
 there. Punishment and reward in his view begin at death. 
 Some of the arguments for the doctrine are framed to account 
 for what Christ did between his death and resurrection : to show 
 that He was not in an unconscious state. Another reason was, 
 that they might hold to the view that those who depart without 
 conscious faith are saved, and yet connect their salvation with 
 Christ. The clause in the Apostles' Creed, He descended into 
 hell — or the world of departed spirits — came into the creed in 
 the fourth century. It has received a variety of interpretations. 
 Some, as the Westminster Confession, understand by it, simply, 
 death: others connect with it the whole doctrine of the interme- 
 diate state. In the development of the Eoman Catholic system 
 the doctrine assumed the further form of the complete purgato 
 rial system. Luther in several passages seems to imply a literal 
 conquest over the realm of the dead by Christ in his entering 
 Hades. The view of Calvin is peculiar. He says, Inst. II. xvi. 10, 
 that the descent into hell means that Christ suffered the torments 
 of hell really and truly, — that his object was not to deliver others 
 but himself, — to suffer the full extent of the divine wrath. 
 
 § 2. Proposition. There is no sufficient Scriptural Warrant for 
 stick an Intermediate State as described, i. e., a state in which des- 
 tiny is not yet decided, and is to be decided. 
 
 The only Scriptural passages are: 
 
 Eph. iv. 9, 10; but the object here is simply to show that 
 
 1 They cited Ps. lxviii. 18. Origen is the first Christian writer who quotes 1 Pet 
 iii. 18-21 as setting forth Christ's work in the under-world. The appearing of tha 
 eauiU at the time of Christ's crucifixion, Matt, xxvii. 52, is also applied to this 
 
 view 
 
THE KINGDOM OP REDEMPTION. 605 
 
 Christ is Lord of all — of the realm below as well as the realm 
 above, — that He conquered death in death. Nothing more can 
 be fairly deduced from the passage. 
 
 Eph. iv. 8 (Ps. lxviii. 18) ; but this means nothing more than 
 taking his enemies captive, not, delivering others from penal 
 suffering. 
 
 Matt. xii. 40. This merely expresses the fact of death. 
 
 Acts ii. 27 (Ps. xvi. 10). This simply declares that death 
 should not prevail over Christ, but that He should prevail over it. 
 
 1 Pet. iii. 18-21. "Being put to death in the flesh;" there 
 is no doubt about that. "Quickened in the spirit;" this, with 
 the foregoing clause, asserts in respect to Christ a fleshly state 
 and the beginning of a spiritual state: "in the spirit" sets forth 
 the complete domination of the spiritual and cessation of the 
 fleshly as far as connected with this life. "In which" spirit, 
 i. e., "He went and preached unto the spirits in prison." When? 
 The passage does not imply that He did it while in the state of 
 death. "When they were sometime disobedient." Not that 
 He preached to them in the interval of his death, which is not 
 asserted. It is only said that it was "in the days of Noah." If 
 the preaching referred to was the preaching at this time in 
 Hades, why are Noah's times mentioned ? — The object of the 
 passage is, to connect the two facts that Christ, the Being who 
 is now put to death in the flesh and quickened in the spirit, by 
 that same spirit has been always preaching. He preached even 
 in the days of Noah. "Those who were disobedient:" the mass 
 rejected his preaching, but he preached so as to save eight souls. 
 "And by the like figure, baptism, we are saved now." The ob- 
 ject is, to connect the work of Christ with the whole mediatorial 
 scheme. The other view compels us to say that the reason why 
 Christ preached in Hades to these persons was because they re- 
 fused to obey in Noah's time; which is a very singular reason for 
 Christ's going to preach to them. Even if this other interpreta- 
 tion were allowed, all that could be got from it would be merely a 
 proclamation of truth to them, without any mention of its effect. 1 
 
 i [This interpretation of 1 Pet. iii. 18-21 is found only an a note-book. There 
 are no hints in the manuscripts to aid in making a fuller statement of the author** 
 new.] 
 
606 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 § 3. Of Purgatory. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church has built up a doctrine of purga* 
 tory on a few passages of Scripture. As fully developed in 
 the later dogmatic statements, the doctrine is as follows : That 
 before Christ no one was in heaven. All were in an intermedi- 
 ate state. This had two regions: Paradise or Abraham's bosom 
 for the perfect, Purgatory for the imperfect, including the dif- 
 ferent divisions of the limbus patrum and the limbus infantum. 
 The doctrinal position connected with this is, that though 
 Christ made full redemption for man so as to deliver from eternal 
 woe, yet there is a class of sins from which persons are to obtain 
 deliverance and pardon by means of ecclesiastical satisfactions; 
 that the church has laid up a treasury of grace from the merits 
 of Christ and the saints, which she may dispense; and that she 
 dispenses these in order to relieve men from the temporal pen- 
 alties of sin, the eternal penalties, as they grant, being taken 
 away by Christ. During his life a man may accumulate hundreds 
 of thousands of years of suffering, by his sins. The church may 
 deliver him, by passing over to his credit merits from the store 
 which she has in charge. 
 
 The only Scriptural basis which is suggested for this doctrine 
 is Matt. iii. 11; 1 Cor. iii. 15; Jude 23. None of these has any 
 bearing upon the doctrine. Newman presents this doctrine as 
 one of the clearest instances of "development" from a slight 
 Scriptural germ, but it is really an instance of the development 
 from a germ of what was never in it, as if from a mustard seed 
 one could develop an apple. 
 
 § 4. The Sleep of Souls. 
 
 In the early church there were some who held the doctrine 
 of the sleep of souls. Origen is said to have refuted certain ad- 
 vocates of this opinion at a council in Africa. Tertullian argued 
 against them. One of the earlier works of Calvin, 1534, was 
 against this doctrine. Many of the earlier Anabaptists and 
 Socinians maintained the view. Luther shows a proclivity to it 
 in some of his writings, but is undecided upon the whole. In 
 later English literature, a somewhat simJiar doctrine has been 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 607 
 
 taught by Isaac Taylor and by Archbishop Whately, — that be* 
 tween death and the resurrection there is a semi-conscious or 
 semi-unconscious state of the soul, and that only at the resurrec- 
 tion are the full powers of the soul called out. Time, they say, 
 is all annulled between death and the resurrection. The phil- 
 osophical attempt to defend this has been on the ground that the 
 soul cannot act without the body, and that therefore it must wait 
 for the body. 
 
 Against the doctrine lie such considerations as the following: 
 (1) The nature of the soul, implying constant activity. Sleep 
 is in connection with the exigencies of the bodily constitution: 
 when the soul is delivered from these, we should expect a more 
 intense activity. (2) The doctrine has a cheerless aspect. It 
 makes the future to be a blank and would cause a total loss in 
 the instances where persons are taken from the earth in the 
 height of their career, — from a condition where they are per- 
 forming good service, and carried to a state where there is no 
 activity. (3) Christian experience in the article of death is 
 opposed to it: the bright visions of the future, apparent converse 
 •with the forms of the blessed, ardent expectations of immediate 
 bliss. All Christian experience, as far as it reaches, is of an 
 immediate entrance into a state of higher activity than mere 
 slumber. (4) The Scriptures are against it. The representa- 
 tions of the life of the Christian here, — John v. 24, everlasting 
 life is already begun ; Phil. iii. 20, we are partakers already of 
 the heavenly citizenship. The passages which speak of an im- 
 mediate blessing, — Acts vii. 59, i. e., Receive it now; Phil. 
 i. 23, If he was to depart and be in unconsciousness, he would 
 not be willing to give up his glorious labors for Christ; 2 Cor. 
 v. 8, "Absent from the body" and "present with the Lord" are 
 equivalent, and "present with the Lord" is not unconsciousness. 
 To these may be added Heb. xii. 23, Luke xxiii. 43. 
 
608 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SECOND ADVENT. 
 
 L — The Millenarian Hypothesis. 
 
 Some advocates of this include more particulars, some less; 
 the Millenarians best known as such, maintain substantially the 
 following: 1 (1) Christ's personal advent precedes the millennium, 
 (2) the resurrection of saints occurs at this advent, (3) the saints 
 are to reign with Him, while mankind is still in the body, subject 
 to disease and death, (4) this dispensation is to continue one 
 thousand years, in which Jews and Gentiles are to be converted. 
 — The doctrine involves these positions: (a.) The millennium is 
 not an expansion of the present, but a new dispensation; (&.) It 
 is not to be introduced by present agencies; all will wax worse 
 and worse: the gospel will not convert the world; (c.) The Son 
 of God will have a visible reign and majesty in the world. 
 Christ and his saints will dwell in a new Jerusalem, of which 
 Rev. xxi. gives the description, over and on the earthly Jerusa- 
 lem; the temple will be rebuilt, the Jews restored, the center of 
 worship will be at Jerusalem; (d.) There are two resurrections, 
 one, of the holy dead, at the beginning, — another, of the wicked 
 dead, at the close of the millennium; (e.) There will be no gen- 
 eral Judgment; the Judgment is in two parts, one before, and 
 one after, the millennium; (/.) Then the world is to be refitted 
 and forever inhabited. 
 
 The Scriptural basis is Eev. xx. 4. — A period between the 
 Ascension of Christ and the Second Advent is intercalated and 
 said to be overlooked in Old Testament prophecy. 
 
 II. — Objections to this hypothesis. 
 
 1. The end of the world is not viewed as near in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 2. Christ remains in heaven till the end of all Acts iii. 21; 
 Heb. x. 12, 13; Luke xix. 13. 
 
 1 Lord, Lit. and Theol. Journal, July, 1850; see also Princ. Eev., Jan. 1853. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 609 
 
 3. The Bible brings into view only one final Judgment. Matt, 
 xiii. 39; xxiv. 36; xxv. 31-46; 2 Thess. i. 6-10 (—the judgment 
 of the righteous and of the wicked simultaneous). 
 
 4. The connection of the coming of Christ, the resurrection, 
 and the judgment, is too explicit to admit their separation by the 
 millennium, (a.) The connection of the second coming with 
 the end of the world: Matt. xxiv. 3; 2 Pet. iii. 3-7. (b.) The 
 connection of the second coming with the resurrection: 1 Thess. 
 iv. 16, 17; John v. 28; Phil. iii. 20, 21; 1 Cor. xv. 22. (c.) The 
 connection of the second advent with the judgment: Matt. 
 xvi. 27; xxv. 31; 2 Tim. iv. 1; iv. 8; 2 Thess. i. 6-10; 1 Cor. 
 iv. 5 ; Kev. i. 1 ; xxii. 12 ; Jude 6. (d.) The connection of the end 
 of the world with the resurrection. John vi. 39 ; xi. 24. (e.) The 
 connection of the end of the world and the judgment. Matt. 
 xiii. 36-43; xiii. 49; John xii. 48. (/.) The connection of the 
 resurrection and the judgment. Dan. xii. 2; John v. 28, 29; 
 Eev. xx. 13. 
 
 5. The resurrection is to be of a spiritual body, 1 Cor. 
 xv. 44; but the pre-millennial resurrection is to a reign in the 
 world as now constituted. 
 
 6. The kingdom of Christ has already come. Acts ii. 30, 31 ; 
 iii. 15; iv. 26; v. 30, 31; Heb. x. 12; Rev. iii. 7; Matt. xiii. 31. 
 (" Comings" 1 are (a.) General exertions of God's power: Isa. 
 xix. 1; Dan. vii. 13; (6.) End of age or 83on: 2 Matt. xxv. 28; 
 2 Thess. ii. 8; (a) Death: Phil. i. 6; 1 Thess. v. 23; (d) The 
 final coming to judge the world and end the present state.) 
 
 '[This remark on " Comings " is fonnd only in the author's papers; it was not 
 given in the lectures in class. There is some doubt whether it contains his view 
 or a view which he reserved for consideration.] 
 
 2 Three aeons reckoned by the Jews: before the law — under— and the time of 
 Messiah.] 
 
610 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RESURRECTION OP THE BODY. 
 
 The words translated resurrection — to awake from the dead, 
 to raise up — are sometimes used to denote coming to life after 
 death, but they are used distinctly with reference to the resur- 
 rection of the body. The doctrine was a common one among 
 the Jews at the time of Christ. The Pharisees believed, and the 
 Sadducees denied it. The doctrine is of prime importance in 
 connection with the system of redemption in its wide applica- 
 tion. Redemption is completed with the resurrection. Redemp- 
 tion is of the whole man, body as well as soul, and is not merely 
 pardon or deliverance from spiritual suffering. 
 
 I. — In the Old Testament, the doctrine is anticipated rather 
 than clearly defined. There is an intimation of it in Isa. xxvi. 
 19, where the restoration of the Jewish people is compared 
 to a resurrection from the dead. Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14, implies a 
 conviction of a resurrection. Dan. xii. 2 asserts the doctrine. 
 From Job xix. 25, the Vulgate, Luther, and the English version 
 teach the doctrine. The difficulty about it is in connection with 
 the history of its interpretation. The Jewish teachers and Christ 
 did not refer to this passage. 1 Perhaps the rendering in our 
 version makes the reference more distinct than the Hebrew will 
 warrant, but in our judgment the passage at least looks forward 
 to a resurrection. Otherwise it would refer only to Job's recov- 
 ery from sickness, which makes it rather tame in its connection. 
 
 II. — The New Testament. There is here a general and a 
 specific recognition of the doctrine. 
 
 1. The general recognition. Matt. xxii. 23; Luke xx. 27; 
 Acts xxiii. 6, speak of the opposing beliefs of the Pharisees and 
 Sadducees; John xi. 24; v. 21, 25; 1 Cor. xv. 22; Acts xxiv. 15. 
 
 2. The specific statements. These lead to the definition of 
 the modus, as far as that is possible. 2 Cor. v. 1-4; 1 Cor. xv., — 
 
 1 Some of the later Jewish interpreters explain it of the resurrection. Sea 
 Notes and Queries, 1854, p. 428. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 611 
 
 here the resurrection of the body is compared with Christ's 
 resurrection; this is the most important point in the whole doc- 
 trine; the doctrine is to be constructed in view of that compar- 
 ison; 1 Thess. iv. 14; Acts iv. 2; Acts xxvi. 23; 1 Cor. xv. 20; 
 vi. 14. 
 
 III. — As to the modus of the resurrection. 
 
 The Scriptures treat this in the way of comparison and anal- 
 ogy, which is perhaps the only way in which it can be treated. 
 There are only two passages — and a third one illustrative — from 
 which anything in regard to the mode can be derived. Phil. iii. 
 20, 21, — here the comparison is with the resurrection of Christ. 
 If He arose with the same body, we shall arise with the same 
 body, but changed by the working of a mighty power; John xii. 
 24, — this suggests the analogy which is further carried out in 
 1 Cor. xv. 35^-49, — here the question, How ? is directly put and 
 met. The response is, Death is necessary in order to this resur- 
 rection, and as the seed though the same is raised in a new form, 
 so is it with the resurrection of the dead. From this passage all 
 that can be stated is this: That it is the same body which is put 
 in the grave which shall be raised, but it shall be raised in a dif- 
 ferent form, — not necessarily with identity of particles any more 
 than there is identity of particles in the plant which grows from 
 the seed. The difference is described by the difference between 
 corruptible and incorruptible, between that which is a natural 
 body and that which is a spiritual. — -The objection which may 
 be raised is on the question of identity. What is the identity ? 
 What is identity in any living and organized being? It implies 
 a comparison of the being in one state with the being in another 
 state. The identity consists in the following particulars: (1) The 
 same central, identical principle of life remains. (2) There is, 
 connected with this, the same formative principle. In connec- 
 tion with the principle of life, there must always be supposed the 
 nisus formativus, that which makes the particular individuality 
 of any particular plant or animal. These two gather about 
 themselves v r hatever may tend to develop or nourish the body. 
 The identity c> ;/ plant or human body is thus entirely different 
 from that of a ( i »vs. which is the identity of the same particles. 
 
612 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Therefore the principle of life and the formative principle may 
 remain the same, and yet gather around them other particles 
 which may serve to form the new spiritual body. This view 
 avoids the grossness of the merely sensuous view of the res- 
 urrection, and also avoids evaporating the doctrine into the 
 simple statement that the same person continues to live after 
 death. 
 
 IV. — Remarks. 
 
 1. The whole doctrine of the resurrection is resolved into the 
 doctrine of immortality by the Swedenborgians. 1 This is refuted 
 by two points: (a.) The Scriptural assertions that the resurrec- 
 tion is future, is to be at the Last Day, in connection with the 
 Judgment. Immortality is immediate, but the resurrection is 
 future, (b.) All the illustrations given in Scripture imply that 
 it is the same body that is raised, and that Christ, to whose 
 resurrection ours is compared, was raised with the same body. 
 
 2. The doctrine of the resurrection meets a deep-seated long- 
 ing in human nature, — the identity as to form as well as in re- 
 spect to soul. 
 
 3. It is on the basis of this doctrine that we may look for a 
 renewal of our knowledge of the persons we have known, in the 
 personal aspects. 
 
 4. The doctrine gives us a more living view of our eternal 
 state than we should otherwise have. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE LAST JUDGMENT. 
 
 The Scriptures teach that there is a resurrection to judgment. 
 Socinians and Swedenborgians view the last judgment as figu- 
 rative, as equivalent merely to the final awards to each, with no 
 scene, no congregation. Millenarians generally teach a judg- 
 ment of nations, before the particular judgment of individuals 
 1 See also the later writings of Bush. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 61 3 
 
 According to the Scriptures, the judgment follows the resurrec- 
 tion and is contemporaneous with the end of the world. 
 
 Scriptural passages on which the doctrine rests : Rev. xx. 12 ; 
 Acts xvii. 31; 2 Thess. i. 7-10; Matt. xi. 24; xxv. 31-46. In 
 2 Pet. iii. 7-13 the judgment is connected with the end of the 
 world. 
 
 The circumstances of the Judgment: (1) Christ is to be the 
 Judge: John v. 22-25; Acts xvii. 31; Matt. xvi. 27. (2) The 
 time is not known: 2 Pet. iii. 10; 1 Thess. v. 2; Matt. xxv. 13. 
 (3) The sentence is to be passed on all: Matt. xxv. 32; Eom. ii. 
 6-; 2 Cor. v. 10. — And even the angels are reserved for their 
 doom. (4) The judgment is final: Rev. xxii. 11. 
 
 This Judgment is not the first passing of judgment, but the 
 final manifestation of it. It is the end of a mediatorial kingdom, 
 the consummation of an economy. The position that at The 
 Judgment the first passing of judgment will occur, uproots the 
 Scriptural doctrine of sin and of the penalty of death which has 
 already begun to be inflicted upon men. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE AWARDS OF THE LAST DAY. 
 
 Eternal blessedness is to be assigned by Christ to the right- 
 eous, and endless punishment to the wicked. 
 
 The first marked controversy on the doctrine of endless pun- 
 ishment was between Doctor Chauncey and the younger Edwards. 
 The reply of Edwards is one of the ablest metaphysical discussions 
 we have on the subject. Joseph Huntingdon, settled for a time 
 in Rhode Island, left a work which was published after his death, 
 entitled Calvinism Improved. The improvement consisted in 
 denying the endlessness of future punishment. Almost all the 
 earlier Universalists were of Calvinistic stock. Such were Mur- 
 ray and Winchester, under whom began the Universalist move- 
 ment in this country. In later times Universalists have tended 
 
614 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 to become Unitarians, and to say that the Scriptures do not 
 reveal anything at all about the future state, that all the expres- 
 sions about it refer to the aeon or age which is now existing. 
 This, by the way, is the only defensible position on the Univer- 
 salist side. 1 Maurice — to Jelf — argues that eternal implies a 
 moral condition, and not a future state. Theodore Parker ac- 
 knowledges that Christ taught the doctrine of endless punish- 
 ment, and makes this one of the arguments in proof of the 
 position that Christ was not perfect, but still had the Jewish 
 prejudices lingering about him. 
 
 The question here is primarily one of fact and not one of 
 theory. It is a fact about which our only means of knowing is 
 the declaration of One who knows the future and what will be 
 man's condition hereafter. It is a solemn, alarming, fearful 
 truth: but to hold it is essential to the integrity of the whole 
 system of faith, and also to the taking Scripture as the rule 
 of faith. The denial of it leads to the undermining of the 
 whole doctrine of sin and redemption. Universalism, in its 
 theoretical grounds, all runs back into the ethical position that 
 happiness is the great good and suffering the great evil in the 
 universe. This is its proper philosophical basis. As soon as 
 holiness is made to be the great good and sin the great evil, the 
 basis of Universalism is undermined; because where there is 
 sin there must be punishment, for the maintenance of the divine 
 holiness. In fact, the chief objections to the doctrine of endless 
 punishment are made on theoretical and not on exegetical 
 grounds. The chief effort has been to show that Scripture may 
 possibly be so interpreted. 1 
 
 § 1. The Scriptural Testimony as to Endless Punishment. 
 
 We do not now argue of future, but of everlasting punishment 
 
 I. — The doctrine of endless punishment is a natural inference 
 
 1 Prof. Stuart's EsBays, 1830, republished in 1867, give the best philological 
 reply to the Universalist positions. Article also by Prof. Barrows, Bib. Sac, July, 
 1858. Andrew Fuller's tract on Endless Punishment is a good discussion. 
 
 1 K g., John Foster's famous letter: it contains no Scriptural argument, but 
 is a general statement on the ground of the divine benevolence. See Woods, in 
 his Lectures; Cheever, in Bib. Sac, viii. 471, x. 544. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 6 15 
 
 from the fact that in the Scriptures there is not a hint of the pos- 
 sible future salvation of those who die impenitent. 
 
 II. — It is involved in the awards of the Last Day, as final: 
 Matt. xxv. 41-44. 
 
 III. — It is an inference from the position that Christ's medi- 
 atorial kingdom is described as coming to an end, when of 
 course all hope and possibility of recovery must cease. 1 
 
 IV. — There are also special declarations. 
 
 1. The class of positive declarations as to the duration of de- 
 struction and torment: 2 Thess. i. 8, 9, where we have oXeQpov, 
 destruction, aiooviov, eternal, and died itpotioaitov rov nvpiov, from 
 the presence of the Lord; Rev. xiv. 11. 
 
 2. Descriptions of suffering. Mark ix. 43; Luke xvi. 19-26; 
 
 3. The case of the devil and his angels. If a condition of 
 endless punishment by suffering is established in their case, the 
 theoretical argument against its possibility is overthrown. Rev. 
 xx. 10; Matt. xxv. 41. 
 
 4. The description in Rev. xxii. 11, where the history of the 
 world is carried to its consummation, and the last scenes are in- 
 troduced. This involves the position that in the consummation 
 pf the whole order of things there is a final separation between 
 the just and the unjust. 
 
 5. The second death is spoken of — an intensive way of de- 
 scribing the penalty. 2 
 
 6. To these positions and statements must be added what 
 is said of the sin against the Holy Ghost, Mark iii. 29 3 (Matt. xii. 
 31, 32 ; Luke xii. 10). The argument from what is said of the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost is perhaps one of the most conclusive. 4 
 Forgiveness is excluded in the world to come from those who 
 sin against the Holy Ghost {ovre hv tgq fieXXovn, Matt. xii. 32). 
 The force of this statement does w>t depend upon what we may 
 
 * Prof. Stuart regarded this as one of the very strongest Scriptural arguments. 
 2 [Rev. Vers. : "This is the second death, even the lake of fire." Rev. xx. 14.] 
 3 [d/i<xpr?jit<xroS accepted as the reading. Rev. Vers. — "hath never forgive- 
 ness, but is guilty of an eternal sin."] 
 
 4 Tholuck, who once was inclined to accept the doctrine of restitution, came 
 nack to the Scriptural faith in wrestling with the passages in regard to the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost. 
 
616 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 say the sin against the Holy Ghost is. (There are four leading 
 views. (1) It is a single sin, an impious word which bias 
 phemes the Holy Ghost, implying that the sinner has come 
 to a state in which he resists God's last influences. Doderlein, 
 Cramer, Reinhard, Michselis, Bretschneider, Harless, etc. (2) 
 Any actual sin against a conscience which is illumined by God's 
 Spirit. Weiss. — This is making it too general. (3) Some one, 
 in the general class of "mortal sins." Liicke, Bohmer. (4) The 
 most common and perhaps the best view: it is an internal state 
 of the highest sinfulness which cannot be changed and which 
 shows itself in speech or action, resisting or deliberately setting 
 the soul against the influences of the Holy Ghost. Stier, Tholuck, 
 Olshausen, Hahn, J. Muller, 1 Hofmann. 2 ) 
 
 Also there must be added what is said in 1 John v. 16, 
 e6nv djuapria rtpds Odvoczov. There is sin for which prayer can- 
 not avail. 
 
 7. It is to be noted, that these strong passages as to eternal 
 perdition are in the New Testament and not in the Old. 3 
 
 V. — The doctrine of final condemnation and eternal punish- 
 ment is implied in other Scriptural doctrines. The theoretical 
 possibilities here : 
 
 1. The doctrine of the nature and desert of sin includes the 
 position that the punishment is to be everlasting. Sin as the 
 worst thing is to be accompanied by that which will show it to 
 be the worst. If there is any case of continued sin, it is a just 
 inference that there will be continued punishment. Hence, in 
 order to disprove the doctrine of eternal punishment, it must be 
 shown that sin will be extirpated absolutely. Unless this is 
 done, it cannot be shown that punishment will cease. The final 
 Judgment shows the continuance of sin. 
 
 2. The doctrine of repentance as necessary to salvation in- 
 volves theoretically the possibility of final and everlasting con- 
 demnation. If there is no repentance, there cannot be safva- 
 
 i SUnde, ii. 598, ed. 5. 
 
 2 Sehriftb., ii., 2, 315. — Augustine: "Duritia cordis usque ad finem hujus yitse, 
 vel impoenitentia finalis, qu® ipsa cum irremissibilitate necessarie conjuncta est." 
 So, Luther. 
 
 3 Urged by Dr. John Owen. — See Maurice, Essays, p. 336. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 617 
 
 tion. If any remain impenitent, they cannot be finally saved, 
 and must be punished forever. Those who preach the neces- 
 sity of repentance also preach that if men do not repent, their 
 final and everlasting condemnation will be just. 
 
 3. The same is the case with respect to the kindred point — 
 salvation through Christ alone. If any do not believe, they must 
 be lost. The necessity of believing in Christ in order to salva- 
 tion implies the position that if any continue unbelieving their 
 everlasting punishment is just and right. In order to escape 
 from the theoretical possibility, we must escape from the abso- 
 lute necessity of repentance and of faith in Christ. Admitting 
 these to be absolutely essential, the inference is clear that in 
 case there is not repentance and faith, there must be punishment 
 as long as the absence of them continues. — Consequently, the 
 Universalists come off these Scriptural grounds. 
 
 There is, in fact, no sense in salvation, as the bestowal ot 
 eternal life, unless it be a fact that without the salvation there 
 would be eternal death. If the eternity of future punishment 
 is not rational, eternal life as a gift of grace is irrational. If it 
 be not just to condemn men to everlasting death for sin, it is 
 not an act of grace to confer upon them endless blessedness. 
 No one can believe in redemption unto endless beatitude, unless 
 he believes in a state of condemnation which must be eternal, 
 were it not for that redemption. 
 
 § 2. Objections to the Doctrine of Endless Punishment 
 The objections, being mostly on theoretical grounds, are not 
 adequate to overthrow the testimony as to fact. 
 
 Obj. I. — That the word aiooviot does not signify time, but in- 
 tensity. It designates a state rather than continued being. 1 — 
 The position cannot be sustained from the usage. 2 A state is 
 included, but duration is implied. If we do not infer from the 
 word the endless punishment of the wicked, we cannot infer the 
 endless blessedness of the righteous. 
 
 1 Maurice's position. 
 
 2 Stuart, p. 46, enumerates the cases in which aicavio% occurs. The propet 
 translation is everlasting, not "seonian." 
 
618 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Obj. II. — To the eternity of punishment, as if that were a 
 particular kind of punishment. — It is simply the continued ex- 
 istence of what is already begun. If penal suffering for trans- 
 gression now is justifiable, it is justifiable as long as sin exists. 
 If it is not justifiable hereafter, it is not justifiable here. 
 
 Obj. III. — From the power of God: his power is adequate to 
 take away evil and suffering, and therefore He will ultimately 
 exclude them from the universe. — But the power of God is not 
 mere omnipotence, but power in connection with a moral gov- 
 ernment. It is in the service of his wisdom and holiness: to 
 promote the holiness of his subjects is his great aim. Besides 
 the argument would prove too much: it would prove that He 
 should exclude sin and suffering now as well as in the future. 
 
 Obj. IV. — From the divine benevolence. — As we have already 
 shown, God's Benevolence has ultimate respect to holiness, and 
 not to the production of happiness. It is shown in providing a 
 way of salvation. If this be rejected, no impeachment of the di- 
 vine benevolence can remain. 
 
 Obj. V. — That sin is a negation, an imperfection, which will 
 be thrown off in the progressive development of mankind. This 
 is the Pantheistic view, and is the heart of all objections to the 
 doctrine, i. e., that sin is not the violation of a known law of 
 holiness, but that it is a part of education. We have already 
 considered this. If carried out, it overthrows the whole doctrine 
 of sin and redemption and the entire Christian scheme. All be- 
 comes a mere process of development. 
 
 § 3. Of the Restitution of all Things. 
 
 Some who deny everlasting punishment, rest their denial on 
 the assertion that the Scriptures teach the restitution of all 
 things, and the final reconciliation of all moral beings to God. — 
 The previous argument refutes this. It only remains to consider 
 some of the passages quoted in favor of this particular view. 
 The position to be taken here is, that all these passages can be 
 interpreted in harmony with the doctrine that there are some 
 who will be forever punished, while, on the other hand, the pas- 
 sages which teach final condemnation cannot be interpreted in 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 619 
 
 harmony with the position that there is to be such a restitution 
 of all things. Some of the passages taken alone and without 
 their connections might teach restitution ; but we have to inter- 
 pret the Scripture harmoniously. 
 
 Eom. v. 18. This is to be interpreted as a comparison of the 
 two systems — as systems. As by the one system judgment 
 comes upon all, so by the righteousness of One (or by one right- 
 eous deed) the free gift comes upon all. It satisfies the connec- 
 tion to interpret this of a superabounding provision in Christ 
 for all, a provision generally for the whole human race. 
 
 Rom. viii. 19-24. Here all that is created is represented as 
 looking forward to a time of redemption. The economy of re- 
 demption is contrasted with the economy of sin. " Creation '' is 
 most naturally interpreted, not of Christians, nor of moral be- 
 ings, but of the whole creation, in consequence of sin, appointed 
 in regard to a redemption, which is the grand issue. It is not 
 inconsistent with the fact that some will not come under these 
 provisions. 
 
 Col. i. 19, 20. — This also is general; it brings into view the 
 grand effects and results ; it does not deny that there may be ex- 
 ceptions. Christ's triumph is also said to consist in "putting 
 under foot," destroying, punishing. 
 
 1 Tim. ii. 4. Here we must understand, not the "will" of 
 efficient purpose, but — of benevolent desire, as shown in pro- 
 vision, plan, and arrangements. 
 
 Heb. ii. 9. Universality of provision x is asserted. 
 
 Phil. ii. 9. This is one of the strongest passages, because it 
 is distributive: "Every knee," etc. We think it is a fair inter- 
 pretation that the passage describes the issue of Christ's kingdom 
 generally, and has respect to the honor to be paid to Him, the 
 glory to accrue to Him rather than to the universality of hearty 
 and loving allegiance. The burden of the passage is that He shall 
 be glorified. It is fairly interpreted of — those who are under 
 his dominion. Especially is this true when we take with it 
 1 Cor. xv. 24, which, describing the end of his mediatorial king- 
 
 1 If all for whom Christ died are to be saved, then this passage would teach 
 universal salvation. It does teach — a general atonement. 
 
620 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 dom, speaks of the enemies under his feet, implying that there 
 are those who are in a state of punishment. 
 
 It follows that the interpretation of Acts iii. 21, an ouat adrd- 
 6EQDS Tcavroovy as teaching universal salvation is not sustained by 
 the Scriptures. 
 
 § 4. Position and Relations of 'the Doctrine of Future Punishment 
 
 1. The principles in the case are not made or altered by the 
 fact of the eternity of the punishment. If proper strict punish- 
 ment be admitted — punishment not as reformatory or disciplinary 
 but penal — the principle is admitted. And then 
 
 2. The question is one of fact, of Scriptural interpretation: 
 Whether the Bible really teaches that all will be saved. 
 
 3. The denial of the doctrine leads to other denials, and ulti- 
 mately, if those who deny are logical, to doing away with the re- 
 demptive system; because the redemption is from eternal death; 
 and if so, eternal death was right and righteous, as redemption 
 is of grace. Hence 
 
 4. Denial of the doctrine leads to the denial of strict moral 
 government as well. Sin is taken as negative, punishment as 
 corrective. Naturalism is the consequence. These practical 
 effects are seen as a matter of fact. 
 
 5. As to the numbers of the saved and lost we have no 
 revelation. 
 
 6. The orthodox evangelical system exhibits much more of 
 God's benevolence and mercy than does this universalism. It 
 sets forth a system of grace, to all that hear the gospel offer. If 
 any such are lost, it is because they refused the proffered grace. 
 
 7. The doctrine is to be preached always with solemnity and 
 awe; and so as to give the strongest motives and power to the 
 offer of salvation, which it is the office of the preacher to make 
 to all. 
 
 § 5. The Award of Eternal Blessedness to the Righteous. 
 
 The King shall say unto them on his right hand, Come ye 
 blessed of my Father. The gates of the Paradise of God are 
 opened wide to the redeemed and reembodied soul. Christ 
 
THE KINGDOM OF REDEMPTION. 621 
 
 sees then of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. Those who 
 suffered with Him shall also reign with Him. They are heirs 
 of God and joint-heirs with Christ. 
 
 This blessedness is in the vision of God; 1 Cor. xiii. 12; 
 2 Cor. v. 7 ; Matt. v. 8 ; 1 John iii. 2. God will then be revealed 
 to the soul, as now the world is to the senses. 
 
 It is in the fellowship with Christ. Phil. i. 23. 
 
 It is in the complete indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The creation will be transformed into its final condition of 
 glory: Rom. viii. 19-32; 2 Pet. iii. 13; Rev xxi. 1. 
 
 The glory of human nature will be fully attained : the image 
 of God will be perfectly realized, as it cannot be here on earth: 
 1 Cor. xiii. 12; 1 John iii. 2. 
 
 All created spirits will be united in one vast spiritual empire- - 
 a harmonized universe. As Jew and Gentile were brought into 
 the unity of the Christian church, so human and angelic beings, 
 all ages and all histories, are brought to a headship and eternal 
 unity in Christ. 
 
 Of this the new song is the testimony and expression. 
 Rev. v. 13: And every created thing which is in the heaven, 
 and on the earth, and under the earth and on the sea, and all 
 things that are in them, heard I saying, unto Him that sitteth 
 on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the 
 honor, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever. 
 
 In the eternal melody of that song, resounding for evermore, 
 making heaven vocal with praise deeper and tenderer than any 
 other, — in and with that melody, Christian Theology forever 
 closes. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, Ezra, 393. 
 
 Abelard, 21, 467. 
 
 Ability, natural, 326-336; moral, 328. 
 
 Adam, his headship, 344-347. 
 
 Advent, Second, 608, 609. 
 
 Alexander, Dr., 214. 
 
 Ambrose, 167. 
 
 Angels, 98, 99; evil, 99-101. 
 
 Annihilation, 600. 
 
 Anselm, 307, 363, 467. 
 
 Antecedents of Redemption, 3 et seq. 
 
 Anthropology, Christian, 160 et seq. 
 
 Anthropomorphism, 9. 
 
 Anthropopathism, 9. 
 
 Apollinaris, 396. 
 
 Apologetics (vol.) 3, 4, 8. 
 
 Aquinas, 82, 83, 104, 143, 174, 180, 307, 
 363. 
 
 Arian objections to Divinity of Christ, 
 63-65. 
 
 Arianism, 73, 74, 77, 397. 
 
 Arians, 5, 392. 
 
 Aristotle, 162, 196, 205, 226, 240, 277, 
 298, 307, 363, 494. 
 
 Armmian controversy in Holland, 548; 
 position on justification, 539, 549. 
 
 Arminianism, 239, 242, 243. 
 
 Arminians, 198; question between them 
 and Calvinists, 119. 
 
 Arnold, Dr., 360. 
 
 Assurance of salvation, 542, 543, Sir 
 Wm. Hamilton, Luther, Melanc- 
 thon, Calvin, Arminius, on, 542. 
 
 Athanasius, 74, 390. 
 
 Atonement, the, 437-477 et seq. ; usage 
 of the "word, and terms clustering 
 round it, 437, 438; its necessity, 
 438-442; represented as sacrificial; 
 442-461; theories of, as a moral 
 influence, 464-466 ; a satisfaction 
 to distributive justice, 466-469; to 
 general justice, 469, 470; to public 
 or essential justice, 470; remarks 
 on these theories, 471-476; views 
 of Kant, Robertson, Bushnell, Cole- 
 ridge, Campbell, and Rothe, 465; 
 of Anselm, Abelard, 467; of A. A. 
 Hodge, 468; extent of, 478^81. 
 
 Attributes, divine, 12-47. 
 
 Augustine, 6, 167, 255, 256, 259, 298, 322, 
 
 350, 362, 363, 390, 536, 604, 616. 
 Austin, Samuel, 127. 
 Awards of the last day, 615-621. 
 
 B. 
 
 Baptism, 595 ; of infants, 594, 595. 
 
 Bartlett, Pres. , 600. 
 
 Beecher, Edward, 7, 303, 310, 313. 
 
 Beecher, Lyman, 322. 
 
 Beings, created, different orders o£ 
 
 98-101. 
 Bellamy, Dr., 215, 257, 305, 516, 554. 
 Benevolence, divine, 38-43; definition 
 
 of, 38-40; sources of proof of, 40; 
 
 objections to and theories, from 
 
 existence of evil, 40-43. 
 Bengel, 388. 
 Bentham, 205. 
 Berkeley, 5, 103. 
 Bernard, 390. 
 Birks, 158. 
 
 Bledsoe, 124, 240, 509. 
 Blessedness, Eternal, of the Righteous, 
 
 620, 621. 
 Boethius, 18, 82. 
 Bonaventura, 143. 
 Brandis, 298. 
 Breckinridge, Dr., 16. 
 Bretschneider, 127, 144, 252. 
 Brodie, SirBenj., 598. 
 Brown, 179. 
 Brown, Bishop, 5. 
 Brown's Theol. Tracts, 126, 191. 
 Brownson, O. A., 322. 
 Bull, Bishop, 252, 522. 
 Burke, Edm., 178. 
 Burton, Dr., 127, 554. 
 Bush, Dr., 612. 
 
 BushneU, Horace, 48, 194, 247, 465. 
 Butler, Bish., 179, 180, 512. 
 
 C. 
 
 Cabbalists, 431. 
 
 Call, the gospel, 515-521; the external, 
 
 515, 516; the internal, 516. 
 Calvin, 11, 23, 29, 102, 124, 143, 307, 
 
 350, 363, 367, 431, 543, 548, 606. 
 Calvinistic bodies, 397; theologians, 
 143; theology, 31; its two princi 
 
624 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 pies, 377, 378; view of our union 
 
 with Christ, 537. 
 Calvinists, their questions with Armin- 
 
 ians, 119, 239, 243; with Hopkin- 
 
 sians, 5G8. 
 Campbell, Br. George, 98, 603. 
 Campbell, McLeod, on Atonement, 465. 
 Candlish, E. S., 89, 364. 
 Carlyle, 277. 
 
 Cartesian philosophy, 104, 164. 
 Catechisms, Westminster, see Westmin- 
 
 Cave, Alfred, 438, 442. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr., 360, 496, 512, 575. 
 
 Channing, Dr., 559. 
 
 Chase, Prof., 113. 
 
 Chauncey, Dr., 613. 
 
 Chemnitz, 396. 
 
 Christ, his divinity, 53 et seq. ; his di- 
 vine attributes, 53-56; designated 
 as divine, 56-60; the object of re- 
 ligious worship, 60-62; Arian ob- 
 jections, 63-65; his person and 
 work, 341 et seq.; the perfect man, 
 354-358, teachings of Scripture 
 concerning, 386-396; his divinity, 
 387-389 ; miraculous conception, 
 389-392; complete humanity, 392, 
 393; both divine and human, 393, 
 394, 421 ; one person and his person- 
 ality from thedivine nature, 394, 395, 
 421, 422; early heretical views con- 
 cerning, 396; later objections and 
 differences 397— 421; general object 
 of his coming, 430 et seq. ; Prophet, 
 Priest and King, 431-436; his suffer- 
 ings and death, sacrificial, 447-461, 
 vicarious, 450-453; Scriptural state- 
 ments of, analyzed, 461-464; his In- 
 tercession, 481-487; union between, 
 and the believer, 529-538; union 
 between, and the church, 590-597. 
 
 Christian Cosmology, 91-159. 
 
 Christianity, superiority of, to Panthe- 
 ism, 375. 
 
 Chrysostom, 431. 
 
 Church, the, fundamental and germi- 
 nant idea of, 590; visible and in- 
 visible, 591 ;prelatical claims unreal, 
 591, 592; nature and functions of 
 its organization, 592, 593; preserves 
 and defends the truth, 593, 594; 
 law and means of its growth con- 
 tained within itself, 594-^6; inde- 
 pendent of the state, 596; its ulti- 
 mate universality and supremacv, 
 596, 597. 
 
 Cicero, 26, 298, 598. 
 
 Clark, Adam, 26. 
 
 Clarke, Samuel, 16. 
 
 Clarke, 199. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 603. 
 
 Coleridge, 179, 182, 298, 465, 537. 
 
 Conception, miraculous, its proof from 
 Scripture, 389-392; in it the Logos 
 assumed a true and complete hu- 
 manity, 392, 393. 
 
 Confessions of Faith, importance of, 
 593. 
 
 Conscience, 178-190; definitions of, 178, 
 179; elements of, 179, 180; Scripture 
 testimony concerning it, 180, 181; 
 proof of a moral law, 181 ; implies 
 an immutable morality, 181, 182; 
 feeling of obligation, 183; involves 
 moral approval or disapproval, 183; 
 personal accountabihty, 184; its do- 
 main, 184-186; is it right in its de- 
 cisions, 186-190; its possession does 
 not confer personal righteousness, 
 190. 
 
 Consciousness, 171. 
 
 Consequents of Redemption, 491 et seq. 
 
 Continued Creation, theories of, 103-105, 
 
 Continuity of the mental states, 172. 
 
 Cosmology, Christian, 91-159. 
 
 Cosmos, the divine, 54, 91, 92. 
 
 Covenant of Life, 258, 259; of works, 
 378; of redemption, 378; of grace, 
 378. 
 
 Covenants, the, 377, 378, 388. 
 
 Crawford, 318. 
 
 Created beings, different orders of, 
 98-101. 
 
 Creation, theories in regard to, 93-95; 
 relation of God to, 95; a plan not 
 a development, 95, 96; preservation 
 of, 102-105; continued, 103, 104. 
 
 Creationism, 167, 169. 
 
 Creator and Creation, 91-96. 
 
 Cudworth, 5, 164, 199. 
 
 Cyril, 167. 
 
 D. 
 
 Day, Pres., 124, 126, 133, 138, 178, 
 238, 246, 252, 331. 
 
 Dalgairns' Theory of the Soul, 165. 
 
 Death, 598; temporal, 266, 267; spiritual, 
 267-271; eternal, 271-273. 
 
 De Bow, 261. 
 
 Decrees of God, 114-126; characteristics 
 of, 117-119, proof of doctrine of, 
 120-122;. objections to considered, 
 122-126. 
 
 Delitzsch, 598. 
 
 Depravity, universal, 275, 276; total, 
 276, 277; native, 277-282; objec- 
 tions to, 278-280; physical, 309-312. 
 
 Descartes, 246. 
 
 Designations, Scriptural, of divine na- 
 ture, 10, 11; Theological, 11, 12. 
 
 De Wette, 281. 
 
 Dichotomy, 163. 
 
 Distinctions in the Godhead, 50-73 
 these essential, 73-90; personal, 
 79. 80. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 625 
 
 Divine, Benevolence, 38-43; Efficien- 
 cy, 103; Holiness, 34-36; Image, 
 255-258; Justice, 44-47; Knowledge, 
 objects of, 24, 25; Love, 37^3; Na- 
 ture and Attributes, 3-47; Pre- 
 science, 26-28;Pro violence, 106-114; 
 Keason, 28, 29; Unity, 50-53; Ve- 
 racity, 43, 44. 
 
 Divinity and Distinct Personality of the 
 Father, 51-53; of the Son, 53-65; 
 of the Spirit, 65-72. 
 
 Divinity of Christ, cumulative proof of, 
 53-63; Arian objections to, 63-65. 
 
 Docetse, 392. 
 
 Docetism, 396. 
 
 Dorner, 59, 287, 294, 299, 363, 524. 
 
 Dort, Synod of, 117, 543, 549. 
 
 Douglass, James, 107. 
 
 Duns, John, 261, 
 
 Dwight, Pres., 127, 134, 208, 210, 218, 
 252, 257, 554. 
 
 E. 
 
 Ebionitism, 396, 397. 
 
 Ebrard, 66, 127, 144, 252, 287, 387, 431. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 6, 350, 364; on 
 Adam's primitive state, 257; divine 
 benevolence, 38, 39; divine decrees, 
 120, 123; end of God in creation, 
 126, 128, 131, 132, 133, 138, 140, 141, 
 145; imputation, 308, 317; justifica- 
 tion, 524, 543, 545; natural ability, 
 327, 329; nature of virtue, 127, 141, 
 198, 206, 213-218, 230; necessity, 
 250, 252; original sin, 259, 260, 277, 
 280, 287, 317; redemption, 384; the 
 will, 120, 124, 174, 233, 236, 238-240, 
 2 1-3, 246-248, 250, 252. 
 
 Edwaiis, Jonathan, Jr., 39, 123, 124, 
 14-s 251, 304, 545, 549, 550, 613. 
 
 Efficiency, divine, theory of, 308, 309. 
 
 Elect infants, 318, 322. 
 
 Election, doctrine of, 501, 505-514; 
 thecries of, 506-508. 
 
 Ellicott, 281. 
 
 Ellis, George E., 312. 
 
 Emmons, Dr., 103, 234, 257, 263, 308, 
 309, 312, 319, 523, 554. 
 
 End of God in creation, 126-146. 
 
 Epicurus, 146. 
 
 Episcopius, 85. 
 
 Eschatology, 598 et seq. 
 
 Essential Trinity, 73-90. 
 
 Eutyches, 396. 
 
 Eusebius, 431. 
 
 Evil angels, 99-101. 
 
 Exercise scheme, 554. 
 
 F. 
 
 Faith, the idea of, 540; questions con- 
 cerning, 541-544; the only way of 
 receiving Christ, 544, 545; Is man 
 responsible for want of? 543, 544. 
 
 Faith and Philosophy, (vol.), 239, 243, 
 310, 330, 510. 
 
 Fall, the, historically viewed, 260-2S±. 
 
 Father, the, divinity and distinct per- 
 sonality of, 51-53. 
 
 Finney, Dr., 206, 550. 
 
 Fisher, George P., 311. 
 
 Fletcher, 589. 
 
 Flint's Philosophy of History, 109. 
 
 Florke, W., 362. 
 
 Fonseca, note, 25. 
 
 Foster, John, 614. 
 
 Franciscans, the, 363. 
 
 Free-agency, does it account for sin? 
 149-153. 
 
 Fuller, Andrew, 516, 614, 
 
 G. 
 
 Gennadius, 167. 
 
 Gerhard, 29. 
 
 Gess, 398. 
 
 God, knowledge of, 3-6; definition of, 
 7; mode of our conc-jotioii of, 7-9; 
 Scriptural designations of, 10, 11; 
 theological definitions of, 11, 12: 
 attributes of, 12-16; as Pure Es- 
 sence or Being, 16-23; as the Su- 
 preme Reason or Understanding, 
 23-29; his Will, 29-32; his Omnipo- 
 tence, 32-34; his Holiness, 34-37; 
 his Love, 37-^3 ; his Veracity, 43, 44; 
 his Justice, 44^48 ; Trinity of, 48-90 ; 
 as Creator, 91-96; his Providence, 
 106-114; his Decrees, 114-126; his 
 end in Creation, 126-146; his Law, 
 and its requirements, characteristics 
 and ends, 191-195. 
 
 God-man, the, Person of, 385 et seq. 
 
 Gonzales, 390. 
 
 Good, the highest, 195-198. 
 
 Governmental theory of our union with 
 Christ, 537, 538; of Atonement,469, 
 
 Grace, effectual, 520, 521. 
 
 Greek Fathers, 255. 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen, 143. 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa, 167. 
 
 Grinfield, E. W., note, 54, 92, 252. 
 
 Grote, John, 209. 
 
 Grotius, 469. 
 
 Giider, 180. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hahn, 12, 16. 
 
 Hall, Robert, 216. 
 
 Hamartology, 260 et seq. ; the fall, 
 260-264; its penalty, 264-273; its 
 consequences, 273-283; original sin, 
 283-302, 323-325; counter repre- 
 sentations in Scripture and experi- 
 ence, 302-304; theories for solving 
 the problem of sin, 304-325; power 
 of sin over the human will, 326-336. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir Wm., 237, 246, 252, 542. 
 
626 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Hampden, Dr., 522. 
 
 Happiness theories, 205-214. 
 
 Karless, 281. 
 
 Harris, John, 127. 
 
 Hase, 16, 431. 
 
 Havernick, 10. 
 
 Headships, the two, 344-352. 
 
 Hegel, 4, 15, 136, 162, 251, 298. 
 
 Hegelians, 398. 
 
 Hengstenberg, 10, 259. 
 
 Heraclius, 397. 
 
 Hickok, Dr., 203, 326, 395. 
 
 Highest good, 195-198. 
 
 Hilary, 167. 
 
 Hodge, A. A., 468. 
 
 Hodge, Charles, 284, 320, 325, 398, 442. 
 
 Hofmann, 252. 
 
 Holiness, 234, 236; divine, 34-36; defi- 
 nitions of, 34; questions raised, 
 35-36. 
 
 Holy Ghost, sin against, views concern- 
 ing, of Doderlein, Cramer, Rein- 
 bard, Michselis, Bretschneider, 
 Harless, Weiss, Liicke, Bohmer, 
 Stier, Tholuck, Olshausen, J. Miil- 
 ler, Hofmann, 616. 
 
 Holy Love, theories of, 214^218. 
 
 Holy Spirit, the, divine and » distinct 
 Person from the Father and the 
 Son, 65-72; objections, 69-71. 
 
 Hopkins, Dr. Samuel, 308, 309, 312-319, 
 554, 559. 
 
 Hopkinsian School, 31, 103. 
 
 Hopkinsianism, 234, 308, 309, 346, 554. 
 
 Bortensius, 298. 
 
 Howe, John, 293. 
 
 Huntingdon, Joseph, 613. 
 
 Hutterus Redivivus, 252. 
 
 Hypostases, 79. 
 
 I. 
 
 Idealism, 1C4. 
 
 Ignatius, 384. 
 
 Immaculate Conception, 390-392. 
 
 Immediate Imputation, theory of, 304- 
 308. 
 
 Immortality, 598-600; Scriptural argu- 
 ments for, 598, 599; philosophical, 
 599; objections to, 601, 602. 
 
 Imputation, 283-316; immediate, 2S4- 
 286, 304-308; mediate, 284, 285, 
 314-323. 
 
 Inability, moral, 326-336; natural, 327, 
 328. 
 
 Incarnation, the, 341 et seq. ; in its re- 
 lation to sin, 343-352; possible, 
 from the constitution of the divine 
 nature, 352 ; fact and not doctrine, 
 353; its relation to man's needs, 
 354-362; gives us the model of a 
 perfect man, 354-358; gives us ac- 
 cess to God, 358-360; in order to 
 redemption, 360-362; on the part 
 
 of God, 362-368; different views o£ 
 369-372; Socinian or Humanitarian, 
 369; Roman Catholic, 370; Oxford, 
 370; Axminian, 370; general Prot- 
 estant, 371; outside of Christianity, 
 371; historical, 369-372; philosophy 
 ical, 373-377; related to divine sov. 
 ereignty and the covenants, 377, 
 378; as unfolding the possibilities 
 of human nature, 379-381. 
 
 Infants, elect, 318, 322; salvation of, 322. 
 
 Intercession of Christ, 481-487; both 
 kingly and priestly, 481, 482; his 
 qualifications for it, 482, 483; in 
 what it consists, 483-486; its fruits, 
 486, 487. 
 
 Intermediate State, 602-607; historic 
 facts as to doctrine of, 603, 604; 
 no scriptural warrant for, 604, 605; 
 purgatory 606; sleep of souls, 606, 
 607; views of Marcion, Irenaaus, 
 Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, 
 Origen, Augustine, Roman Catholiu 
 Church, Luther, Calvin, 603, 604. 
 
 Interpreting Scripture, right mode of, 
 402, 406. 
 
 Introduction to Christian Theology, 
 (vol.), 341, 353, 374. 
 
 Irenteus, 362, 363, 603. 
 
 J. 
 
 John of Damascus, 79, 390. 
 
 Jerome, 167. 
 
 Judgment, the last, 612. 
 
 Justice, divine, 44-47; general idea of, 
 44, 45; proofs of, 45; distinctions 
 in respect to, 45; punitive, why ex- 
 ercised, four theories, 46, 47. 
 
 Justification, 522-552; preliminary ex- 
 planations, 522 -525; general and 
 scriptural sense of the term and 
 idea, 526-528 ; involves a right- 
 eousness, not personal, as its 
 ground; 528, 529; Christ its ground, 
 529-531; how, 531-538; through 
 faith, 539-545; difference between 
 Roman Catholic and Protestant 
 views of, 545-547; historical state- 
 ments of 548-551; objections to 
 doctrine of, 551, 552. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 143. 
 
 Justinian, 167. 
 
 Kant, 127, 128, 137. 144, 179, 187, 203, 
 298, 465. 
 
 Kenosis, 398, 418, 425. 
 
 Keil, 388. 
 
 King, Arch., 150. 
 
 Kingdom of Redemption, 491-621; its 
 consummation in time and in eter- 
 nity, 598-621. 
 
 Knapp, 26. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 627 
 
 Knowledge, divine, objects of, 24. 25. 
 Krabbe, 268. 
 Krurcmacher, 431. 
 KnrU, 3P3. 
 
 L. 
 
 Lactantius, 146, 220. 
 
 Lasaulx, 168. 
 
 Last Judgment, 612. 
 
 Launoy, 391. 
 
 Law, moral, its two main ends, 472; 
 in relation to divine holiness, 472, 
 473; to Christ's atonement, 473-476; 
 of God, its requirements, charac- 
 teristics and ends, 191-195. 
 
 Liebner, 363, 398. 
 
 Leibnitz, 150, 154, 164, 248, 298. 
 
 Leighton, Dr., 360. 
 
 Leo the Great, 167. 
 
 Lewis, Tayler, 231. 
 
 Liberty and Necessity, 250-252. 
 
 Limborch, 102. 
 
 Locke, ^46 
 
 Logos, the, 28, 73, 74, 75, 87, 88, 392, 
 393. 
 
 Love, divine, 37-43; definitions of, 37; 
 proofs of, 37: divisions of, as to its 
 objects, 38; modifications of, 38; as 
 benevolence, 38-43. 
 
 Love, Holy, Theories of, 214-218. 
 
 Luther, 11, 124, 167, 307, 542, 548, 606, 
 616. 
 
 M. 
 
 Mackintosh, 179. 
 
 Maclanrin, John, 206. 
 
 Magee, 452. 
 
 Malan, Dr. Cfesar, 543. 
 
 Man, as a moral being, 161-191; his re- 
 lation to the Creator, 161; to the 
 rest of the material creation, 161; 
 to the spiritual realm, 161, 162; 
 to his race, 162; his individuality, 
 163; union of his body and soul, 
 163, 164; his soul's origin, 166; his 
 personality, 170; powers and facul- 
 ties of his soul, 173-176; its original 
 tendencies, 176-178; his conscience, 
 178-190; his highest spiritual ca- 
 pacities, 190, 191; as a moral agent, 
 his personal relations to the law of 
 God, 232-236; his primeval moral 
 state, 252-258; his destination if he 
 had continued obedient, 258, 259; 
 as fallen, 273 et seq. ; his redemp- 
 tion, 341 et seq. 
 
 Manning, Archb., 238, 240. 
 
 Marcion, 603. 
 
 Marsh, Pres., 300. 
 
 Martensen, 169, 252, 363, 431, 481. 
 
 Martin, (R. C.,) his Via Futura, 322. 
 
 Martin, John, 127- 
 
 Martyr, Justin, 167. 
 
 Materialism, 164, 346. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 171, 614, 617. 
 
 McCosh, Dr., 220. 
 
 Mediate Imputation, 284, 285, 31^323, 
 
 Mediator, the, person of, 385 et seq. ; 
 
 ■work of, 430 et seq.; three-fold 
 
 office of, 431 et seq. 
 Melancthon, 167, 307, 543, 548. 
 Messiah, the, 379, 381, 382, 383, 431-434. 
 Methodists, 26. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 209. 
 Millenarian hypothesis, 608; objections 
 
 to, 608, 609. 
 Modalism, 73. 
 Molina., 25. 
 Monophysites, 396. 
 Monothelites, 396, 397. 
 Moral, ability, 328; character, seat of, 
 
 236-250; inability, 326-336; law, 
 
 472^76; Science, Wayland's, 179, 
 
 193. 
 Morell, 164. 
 Mozley, 509, 510. 
 Midler, JuUus, 124, 192, 194, 221, 229, 
 
 240, 241, 243, 252, 260, 268, 281, 
 
 282, 287, 310, 313, 333, 365, 390, 
 
 431, 616. 
 
 N. 
 Natural ability, 326-336. 
 Nature and attributes, divine, 3-47. 
 Neander, 287. 
 
 Necessity, Natural, 250; Moral, 250; 
 Metaphysical or Philosophical, 250 
 Nestorianism, 396. 
 New Platonists, 93. 
 Newton, note, 19. 
 Nicene Creed, 362. 
 Nitzsch, 431. 
 Norton, Andrews, 322. 
 
 O. 
 
 Omnipotence of God, 32-34; idea of, 
 32; definition of, 32; proof of, 32, 
 33; limits of, 33; Schleiermacher's 
 definition of, 33, 34; objects of, 34. 
 
 Orders of created beings, 98-101. 
 
 Origen, 143, 167, 395, 603, 606. 
 
 Original sin, 283-323; objections, 323- 
 325 ; Tendencies of man's scul, 
 176-178. 
 
 Owen, John, 317, 364. 522, 616. 
 
 Paley, 40. 206. 
 Pantheism, 136, 346. 
 Parker, Theodore, 614. 
 Pascal, 89, 352, 382, 383. 
 Payne, Dr., 317. 
 Pelagian, views, 279, 312, 517. 
 Pelagianism, 255, 267. 
 Pelagius, 167, 322, 529; his controversy 
 with Augustine, 548. 
 
628 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Penalty of sin. 264-273. 
 
 Perfectionism, 579-585; Pelagian theory 
 of, 580; Arminian, 580, Roman 
 Catholic, 580; modern, 581-583; ob- 
 jections to, 583-585. 
 
 Perrone, 322, 390, 391. 
 
 Perseverance of the saints, 585; argu- 
 ments for the doctrine, 586; expla- 
 nations of, 586-587; objections to, 
 587. 
 
 Person of Christ, 341 et seq.; (See 
 Christ) ; Savoy and Westminster 
 Confessions concerning, 385; here- 
 sies, objections, and difficulties con- 
 cerning, 396-421; entire result as 
 to, 421-429. 
 
 Personal distinctions in the Trinity, 
 79-90; identity, 171, 172; relations, 
 man's, to the Law of God, 232-236. 
 
 Personality, 170. 
 
 Philo, 4, 167, 344, 369. 
 
 Philosophy of Christianity, 73, 373-377. 
 
 Plato, 4, 11, 93, 167, 168, 297, 494. 
 
 Power to the contrary, 329, 330. 
 
 Powers and faculties of the soul, 173-176. 
 
 Prayer, 577-579. 
 
 Predestination, 501-504, objections to, 
 509-514. 
 
 Pre-established harmony, theory of, 164. 
 
 Pre-existence, 167; hypothesis of, 313, 
 314. 
 
 Prentiss, George L., 322. 
 
 Preservation of Creation, 102-105; 
 sources of proof of the doctrine, 
 102; its purport, 102, 103. 
 
 Primeval state of man, 252-258; of in- 
 nocence, 253; of the divine image, 
 253, 254; not of confirmed holiness, 
 552. 
 
 Principia, Newton's, 19. 
 
 Prophet, Priest, and King, 431-436. 
 
 Providence, divine, General statements 
 in regard to the doctrine, 106, 107; 
 proof of, 108-110; distinction as to 
 general and particular, 110, 111; 
 modes of, 111-114. 
 
 Prudentius, 167. 
 
 Punishment, endless, 614-618 ; rela- 
 tions of doctrine of, 620. 
 
 Quenstedt, 127. 
 Quintilian, 277. 
 
 R. 
 
 Realism and Nominalism, 288, 319. 
 
 Realists and Nominalists, 13. 
 
 Reason, divine, 28, 29. 
 
 Redemption, antecedents of, 3-337; it- 
 self, 341 et seq. ; Kingdom of, 491- 
 501; Christianity looks forward 
 to its realization, 492-495; con- 
 trast between this and human in- 
 
 ventions, 495-498; some of ita 
 characteristics, 498-500; its glory 
 and beauty, 500. 
 
 Reformation, the, 256. 
 
 Reformed Confessions, on assurance of 
 faith, 543. 
 
 Regeneration, 553-574; Roman Catholic 
 view of, 553; Church of England,553; 
 Pelagian, 554; Rationalistic, 554; ex- 
 ercise scheme, 554; taste theory,554; 
 change in governing purpose, 554; 
 self-love, theory of, 555, 556; evan- 
 gelical view of, 556, 557; Scriptural 
 representations of, 558, 559; its 
 connection with other truths, 559; 
 its necessity, 560; its characteristics, 
 560-563; its author, 563, 564; its 
 method, 564^566 ; its means, 566-569 ; 
 obligatory, 569, 570; conscious pro- 
 cesses of the soul in, 570-572. 
 
 Relations, personal, of man to the law 
 of God, 232, 236. 
 
 Renan, 383. 
 
 Repentance, difference between Roman 
 Catholic and Protestant views of, 
 
 572, 573; Protestant view stated, 
 
 573, 574. 
 Reprobation, 508, 509. 
 Resurrection of the body, 610-612. 
 Reubelt, 398. 
 
 Richards, Dr., 240, 252, 528, 550. 
 
 Ridgeley, 435. 
 
 Robertson, 465. 
 
 Roman Catholic view of faith, 541, 542, 
 
 548; of grace, 256; of justification, 
 
 539; of regeneration, 553. 
 Rothe, 26, 221, 366, 431, 465. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sabellianism, 73, 74; remarks on, 77-79. 
 
 Sacramental view of our union with 
 Christ, 536. 
 
 Sacrifices, pagan, 443-445; vicarious 
 446 et seq. ; Old Testament, 445-447 
 Old Testament prophecies of sacri 
 ficial sufferings of Christ, 447, 448 
 New Testament witness to, 448-453 
 objections stated and answered 
 453-461; Scriptural statements of. 
 analyzed, 461—464. 
 
 Sanctification, 575-585; its nature, 575, 
 576; its means, 577-579. 
 
 Sartorius, 258. 
 
 Satan, 99-101. 
 
 Saumur, 308. 
 
 Saybrook, Wm. Hart, 218. 
 
 Schelling, 251, 398. 
 
 Scheme, selfish, 206, 207; of tendency 
 to greatest happiness, 207-210; self 
 love, 210-213. 
 
 Schleiermacher, 13, 14, 15, 33, 100, 251 
 390. 398. 431, 537. 
 
 Schoettgen, 431. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 62S) 
 
 Scholastics, 104, 167. 
 
 Sclmeckeiiburger, 484. 
 
 Sehvveizer, 127, 144. 
 
 Scientia Media; 25, 26. 
 
 Scotus, 363. 
 
 Scripture, right mode of interpreting, 
 402-406. 
 
 Second Advent, 608, 609. 
 
 Self-existence of God, 16, 17. 
 
 Selfish scheme, 206. 
 
 Seneca, 297. 
 
 Sensibilities, the, 176. 
 
 Servetus, 363. 
 
 Sin, permission of, 146-159; is it the 
 necessary means of the greatest 
 good, 147-149; does free agency ac- 
 count for it, 149-153; reasons for 
 its permission are beyond our 
 knowledge, 153-156; definitions of, 
 234-236; doctrine concerning, see 
 Hamarlology, 260 et seq. ; original, 
 283-325 
 
 Smalley, 191, 257, 326. 
 
 Smith, Henry Boynton, reference to, 
 his Christian Apologetics, 3, 4, 8; 
 Faith and Philosophy, 239, 243, 
 310, 330; Introduction to Chris- 
 tian Theology, 109, 341, 353, 374; 
 Bealism and Nominalism, (art.), 
 319; Rev. of Whedon on the Will, 
 239 
 
 Smith, John Pye, 24, 438. 
 
 Socinian view of our relation to Christ, 
 536. 
 
 Socinians, 397, 598. 
 
 Socinus, 363. 
 
 Socrates, 297, 379. 
 
 Son, the, Divinity and distinct person- 
 ality of, 53-65. 
 
 Sophocles, 297. 
 
 South, Dr., 258, 453. 
 
 Sovereignty, divine, 377. 
 
 Spinoza, 4, 14, 375. 
 
 Spiritual Life theory of our union with 
 Christ, 536, 537. 
 
 Spring, Dr., 126, 133. 
 
 Stapfer, 144, 308, 317. 
 
 Stearns, J. P., 523. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, 180. 
 
 Stier, 268. 
 
 Strauss, 127. 
 
 Stuart, Moses, 308, 320, 614, 615, 617. 
 
 Sublapsarian view, 263. 
 
 Supererogation, 547. 
 
 Supralapsarianism, 117, 263. 
 
 Swedenborg, 9. 
 
 Swedenborgians, 612. 
 
 Synesius, 167. 
 
 Synod of Dort, 543, 549. 
 
 T. 
 
 Taste theory, 554. 
 Taylor, Isaac, 607. 
 
 Taylor, N. W., 149, 150, 210, 281, 296, 
 
 310, 312, 336, 470. 
 Temptation, the, 260, 264. 
 Tendencies, original, of man's soul, 
 
 176-178. 
 Tennyson quoted, 213. 
 Tertullian, 9, 167, 390, 603, 606. 
 Theodicy, the, 146-159. 
 Theodoretus, 167, 431. 
 Theology, Christian, Introduction to^ 
 
 (vol.), 341, 353, 374. 
 Theories, Holy Love, 214-218. 
 Tholuck, A., 281, 284, 287, 615. 
 Thomasius, 170, 252, 287, 362, 398. 
 Townley, H. C, 322. 
 Traducianism, 168, 169. 
 Tran substantiation, 536. 
 Trichotomy, 166. 
 Trinity, 48-90; preliminary remarks on, 
 
 48-50; outline of course on, 50; 
 
 manifested, 50-73; permanent, 72; 
 
 essential, 73-90. 
 Turretine, 543. 
 
 Twesten, 22, 101, 127, 131, 287. 
 Tyler, B., 252. 
 Tyler, William S., 297. 
 
 U. 
 
 Union between Christ and the believer, 
 502 et seq., 531; its proof from 
 Scripture, 532, 533; from other doc- 
 trines and analogies, 534, 535; its 
 nature, 535, 536 ; opinions con- 
 cerning classified and criticised, 
 536-539. 
 
 Unitarian view of depravity, 312. 
 
 Unitarians, 56. 
 
 Unity of God, 48-51. 
 
 Universalism, 613, 614. 
 
 Universe, the, created, as set forth in 
 Scripture, 96-98. 
 
 Upham, Prof. T., 248. 
 
 Utilitarianism, 209, 210. 
 
 V. 
 
 Veracity, divine, 43-44. 
 
 Vestiges of Creation, 95. 
 
 Vicarious sufferings and death of Christ, 
 450-453; objections to considered, 
 453-461. 
 
 Virtue, nature of, formal theories con- 
 cerning, 198-218; acting according 
 to fitness of things, 198, 199; pro- 
 moting the end of our being, 199; 
 conformity to relations of things, 
 199, 200; conformity to the Will 
 of God, 200, 203; Kant's theory, 
 203; Hickok's, 203, 204; happi- 
 ness, 205-214; holy love theories, 
 214-218; hints as to a theory of, 
 218-231. 
 
 Von Lasaulx, 441. 
 
 Von Orelli, 388. 
 
630 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 W. 
 
 Warburton, 598, 599. 
 
 Wardlaw, 544. 
 
 Waterland, 438. 
 
 Wayland, 179, 193, 199, 208, 209. 
 
 Wendelin, 144. 
 
 Wessel, 363. 
 
 Western Church, 255. 
 
 Westminster standards, on assurance, 
 542, 543; divine providence, 106; 
 elect infants, 318; election, 505; 
 the fall, 260, 263, 273; foreordina- 
 tion, 250, 252; Hades, 604; justifi- 
 cation, 525; liberty of choice, 243; 
 mystical union, 531; new birth, 
 517; person of Christ, 385. 
 
 Whately, Arch., 150, 359, 607. 
 
 Whedon on the Will, Review of, 239. 
 
 Wieseler, 527. 
 
 Will, the, 176, 230-250; idea of, 237, 
 238; power of, 238, 239; its self-do- 
 termination, 239; its modes of ac- 
 tion, 240, 241; its liberty or free- 
 dom, 242-245; motives, 245-250 
 Divine, attributes of, 29, 32; idea 
 of, 29; definitions of, 29, 30; distinc 
 tions of, as to its objects, 30; othei 
 distinctions, 31, 32. 
 
 Wisdom, divine, 28; proof of, 28; defi- 
 nition of, 28, 29. 
 
 Wisner, W. C, 126, 127, 130. 
 
 Wolff, 11. 
 
 Woods, Leonard, 101, 240, 551. 
 
 Xenophon, 297. 
 Zwingle, 113. 
 
 X. 
 
INDEX OF SC^IPTU^E PASSAGES 
 
 Genesis. 
 
 i- i 55>9 2 
 
 i. 26 161, 167, 253, 292 
 
 i. 27 162, 254 
 
 i- 28 162, 253, 292 
 
 '• 29 253 
 
 *• 3' 253 
 
 ii. i, 2 104 
 
 ii. 2". 167 
 
 ii. 16 253 
 
 "• 17 253, 258 
 
 "• 19-20 253 
 
 ii. 25 253 
 
 i»- 7 253, 267 
 
 iii. 14-19 264 
 
 lii - »5 3S8,39' 
 
 in. 22 268 
 
 v 292 
 
 v - J 253 
 
 v - h 3 254 
 
 v- 24 599 
 
 vi. 2 , 99 
 
 X 1 - 5 275, 276 
 
 viii. 21 (2) 276 
 
 ix. 6 254 
 
 x .... 292 
 
 xv. 6 526 
 
 xvii. 1 23 
 
 xxii. 8 388 
 
 xxxv. 18. . 166 
 
 xlix. io 388 
 
 Exodus. 
 
 VII. 
 XX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 xxix. 14, 
 
 xxxii. 14. 
 
 xxxiii. 23. 
 
 xxxiv. 6.. 
 
 Numbers. 
 
 xiv. 18. 
 
 xxxfli. ig. 
 
 57 
 
 21, 50, 6l 
 
 ...... 302 
 
 446 
 
 Deuteronomy. 
 
 iv. 35 2r '5° 
 
 "'. 39 5 1 
 
 vi. 4 21,50 
 
 xviii. 15 43 1 
 
 xviii. 18 388 
 
 xxi. 1-9 446 
 
 xxix. 29 31 
 
 xxx. 6 559 
 
 xxx. 19 302 
 
 xxxii . 6. . . . , 5 l 
 
 I Samuel. 
 
 ii. 7. 
 xxiv. ic 
 
 II Samuel. 
 
 v 1 1 . 
 
 vii. 12, ii 
 
 II Kings. 
 
 v. 27. 
 xxiv. 4. . 
 
 II Chronicles. 
 xix. 7 
 
 Nehemiah. 
 
 ix. 6 
 
 - 5i 
 
 44; 
 
 JOM. 
 
 , 302 I 
 ..44 1 
 
 1. 21 
 
 iv. 18, 19. 
 
 viii* 3 
 
 ix. 2 
 
 433 
 -387 
 
 I Kings. 
 
 ii. 44 180 
 
 viii. 27 21 
 
 viii. 38 180 
 
 viii. 46 275 
 
 xvii , 599 
 
 xvii. 21 166 
 
 599 
 
 ■ 599 
 
 296 
 
 282 
 
 -45 
 
 .167 
 
 .268 
 
 ■ 45 
 275 
 
 ix. 
 
 12, 
 
632 
 
 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 IX. 20 584 
 
 xi - 7 5> 2I 
 
 xii. 6 28 
 
 xii. 10 167 
 
 xii. I 3 23 
 
 xiv. 1-4 268 
 
 xiv. 4 275 
 
 xiv. 5 122 
 
 xv - 14 275, 2S2, 291 
 
 xix. 25 599j 610 
 
 xxvii. 6 180 
 
 xxxvi. 26 18 
 
 xxxvii. 23 45 
 
 xxxviii— xh 108 
 
 Psalms. 
 
 »• 7 85 
 
 v. . _ 276 
 
 viii 388 
 
 vih. 1 131 
 
 viii. 5 132 
 
 x 276 
 
 xiii. 13 598 
 
 xiv (2) 276 
 
 xvi. 10 605 
 
 xv »- 15 5 8 4, 599 
 
 xix. 12 584 
 
 xxii. 30 167 
 
 xxxi. 5 166 
 
 xxxii 180 
 
 xxxiii. n 118 
 
 xxxvi 276 
 
 xxxvi. 6 102 
 
 xxxvii. 2S 586 
 
 xxxviii 180 
 
 *1 388 
 
 xiv 433 
 
 xiv. 6, 7 57 
 
 xiv. 7 65 
 
 xiv. 8 57 
 
 xl ix. 15 599 
 
 xlix. 19 598 
 
 li 180 
 
 li. 4 280 
 
 li. 5 168, 291 
 
 li- 6, 7 275 
 
 li- 10 275,563,575 
 
 li. 12 70 
 
 lxvi. 9 102 
 
 lxviii. 18 604, 605 
 
 lxxiii. 13 527 
 
 lxxiii. 24 599 
 
 lxxiii. 26 166 
 
 lxxvi. 10 108 
 
 lxxxii. 6 57 
 
 xc 18 
 
 xcvii. 7 61 
 
 cii. 24 57 
 
 eii- 25 57> 5 8 
 
 ciii. 13 5 1 
 
 ciii. 19 , 108 
 
 civ 1 32 
 
 civ. 27 108 
 
 cvi. 38 282 
 
 cvi. 45 19 
 
 ex 388 
 
 «. 4 431 
 
 cxiv 17 
 
 cxv - 3 33, US 
 
 cxix. 64 132 
 
 CXXXV 21 
 
 exxxv. 6 108, 115 
 
 exxxvi. 1-9 131 
 
 exxxviii. 5 131 
 
 exxxix. 21, 23 
 
 exxxix. 14, 15 ( 2 ) 167 
 
 cxl 276 
 
 cxliii. 2 276 
 
 cxliii. 10 70 
 
 Proverbs. 
 
 iii. 19 28 
 
 vii. 22 180 
 
 viii. 22 (seq.) 28 
 
 xiv. 8 277 
 
 xvi. 1 108 
 
 xvi. 4 131 
 
 xvi. 9 108 
 
 xvi. 33 no 
 
 xx- 9 275 
 
 xxi. 1 108 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 vii. 20 275 
 
 vii. 29 253 
 
 ix. 3 276 
 
 xii. 7 166, 599 
 
 Isaiah. 
 
 ii. 3 388 
 
 vi. I 58 
 
 vi. 8 67 
 
 vi. io 276 
 
 vii. 14 58, 85 
 
 viii. 13 58 
 
 ix. i~7 58 
 
 ix. 6 55 
 
 x. 5 10S 
 
 xi. 388 
 
 xi. 2 6, 70 
 
 xiv. 9 599 
 
 xiv. 27 118 
 
 xix. 1 609 
 
 xxv. 1 44 
 
 xxvi. 19 599 
 
 xl. ■ 17 
 
 Xl. 2 56 
 
 xl. 3 58, 76 
 
 xl. 9, 10 76 
 
 xl. 13 28 
 
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 633 
 
 xli. 4 1 8, 65 
 
 xlii. 1 70 
 
 xlii. 5 T 67 
 
 xliii. 1-7 591 
 
 xliii. 7 131 
 
 xliv. 6 56, 65 
 
 xliv. 8 61 
 
 xliv. 24 55 
 
 xlv. 5 6i, 108 
 
 xlv. 22 62, 479 
 
 xlvi. 10 121 
 
 xlvi. II 31, 118, 121 
 
 xlviii. 12 65 
 
 xlix. 9 277 
 
 xlix. 15 591 
 
 liii 388, 461 
 
 liii. 5 461 
 
 liii. 6 461, 462, 463 
 
 liii. 8 462 
 
 liii- 11 132,527 
 
 liii. 12 463 
 
 lv - J > 2 335 
 
 Iv- 1-3 479 
 
 Iv. 3 5*6 
 
 lix 276 
 
 l x - 9 131 
 
 Ixi. 1 7o> 433 
 
 Ixi. 3- I3 2 
 
 Ixiii. 10, 11 70 
 
 Ixiii. 16 51 
 
 lxv. 2 70 
 
 Ixvi. 1 21 
 
 Jeremiah. 
 
 xii'. 23 335 
 
 xvii. 1 180 
 
 xvii. 5 62 
 
 xvii. 9 276 
 
 xvii. 10 56 
 
 xx. 9 180 
 
 xxiii. 23 21 
 
 xxiv. 7 5 62 >5 6 3 
 
 XXX. I 67 
 
 xxxi. 31 586 
 
 xxxi. 33 67, 562 
 
 xxxii. 17 33 
 
 xxxii. 18 # 296 
 
 xxxii. 40 (2) 586 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 xi. 19 562 
 
 xviii. 20 302 
 
 xviii. 24 587 
 
 xviii. 31 569 
 
 xxi. 27 108 
 
 xxxvi. 26 Ejtjg 
 
 xxxvii 599 
 
 Daniel. 
 
 "■ 44 396 
 
 iv. 34, 35 108 
 
 vii. 13 3 88 » 6o 9 
 
 vii- 14, 18 396 
 
 xii. 2 599, 609 
 
 xii - 3 527 
 
 HOSEA. 
 
 vii. 2 181 
 
 xi. 8 19 
 
 Joel. 
 
 ii. 28-32 66 
 
 Jonah. 
 
 iv. 11.. 2S2 
 
 MlCAH. 
 
 '• 2 388 
 
 Haggai. 
 
 ii. 7 3*8 
 
 Zechariah. 
 
 ii. 10 76 
 
 vi- 13 43' 
 
 Malachi. 
 
 *»• * -S9. 388 
 
 ^ 5-6 387,388 
 
 Matthew. 
 
 i. 18 : 389 
 
 i- 21 58, 463 
 
 i. 21-23 387 
 
 i- 25 392 
 
 m - 2 335 
 
 iii. II 606 
 
 iii. 16 68, 72 
 
 iv- 1 392 
 
 iv. 4 177 
 
 iv. 10 (2) 61 
 
 iv. 16 58, 70 
 
 v. 8 5, 621 
 
 v. 17 463 
 
 v. 17-19 194 
 
 v " 45 37 
 
 v. 48 221,222 
 
 vi. 12 585 
 
 vi. 25 166 
 
 vi. 26 108 
 
 vi- 33 '77 
 
 vii. 12 221 
 
 ix. 13 462 
 
 x. 28 166, 599 
 
 xi. 24 613 
 
 xi - 25 5 
 
 xi. 26 .506 
 
 xi - 27 5.54,56 
 
 xi. 28-30 479 
 
 xu - 20 335 
 
634 
 
 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 xn. 
 xii. 
 
 xiii. 
 xiii. 
 
 xiv. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 xvi. 
 
 xvi. 
 
 xvi. 
 xviii. 
 xviii. 
 xviii. 
 
 xix. 
 
 XIX. 
 XX. 
 XX. 
 
 xxii. 
 xxi i . 
 xxii. 
 
 xxii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 
 XXV. 
 XXV. 
 XXV. 
 XXV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 xx vi. 
 
 xxvi. 
 
 xxvi. 
 
 xxvi. 
 
 xxvi. 
 xxvii. 
 xxvii. 
 xxviii. 
 xxviii. 
 xxviii. 
 
 Mark. 
 
 3i» 32 68, 615 
 
 40 605 
 
 3i» 39 6o 9 
 
 36-43> 49 6o 9 
 
 19 392 
 
 10 276. 302 
 
 10 (2) 86, 276 
 
 21 ■ 392 
 
 24 276 
 
 27 609, 613 
 
 3 282, 560 
 
 .99 
 
 vn. 
 viii. 
 
 ix. 
 
 ix. 
 xii. 
 
 xii. 
 xii. 
 xiii. 
 xiii. 
 xiv. 
 xiv. 
 xiv. 
 
 11. 
 
 4-- 
 13 ■ 
 18. 
 28. 
 
 -3- 
 
 2 3- 
 
 37 
 
 37- 
 
 37. 
 
 24 
 
 3> 
 
 36 
 
 13- 
 
 28, 
 
 3i- 
 
 3 2 - 
 41- 
 28 
 
 37- 
 38 
 39 
 
 54: 
 
 50. 
 18. 
 
 J 9 
 20. 
 
 .462, 
 
 .442, 450, 461, 
 
 ■33- 
 39- 
 
 36- 
 
 3i. 
 ■46., 
 
 64, 
 
 .389, 600, 609, 
 
 44 ■ 
 
 .461, 462, 
 
 64- 
 
 .68, 7: 
 
 4 6 3 
 .292 
 ,282 
 
 389 
 462 
 .610 
 598 
 
 193 
 221 
 
 479 
 .587 
 ,609 
 
 392 
 
 6i3 
 609 
 613 
 
 613 
 615 
 
 463 
 39- 
 39 2 
 .64 
 389 
 392 
 .604 
 ■•54 
 :, 86 
 
 ■ 55 
 
 1 . . 
 10. 
 
 '7- 
 29- 
 *5- 
 3i- 
 
 43- 
 
 . 68 
 
 .392 
 
 462 
 .6.5 
 .177 
 .440 
 
 ■ 3S9 
 -6k 
 
 28-34 193 
 
 29 21, 51 
 
 29-3 1 221 
 
 20 506 
 
 32 64,392 
 
 24 4 61 
 
 34- 
 36. 
 
 •392 
 ..64 
 
 Luke. 
 
 6 5f3 
 
 16, 17 ...60,387 
 
 28 391 
 
 32 387 
 
 33 - ■■■396 
 
 35 8 5> 291, 389, 392 
 
 391 
 
 38 
 
 39? 
 
 vi. 
 
 viii. 
 
 xi. 
 
 xii. 
 xii. 
 
 xiv. 
 
 xvi. 
 
 xvi.. 
 
 xvi. 
 
 xvi. 
 xvii. 
 xviii. 
 xviii. 
 
 xix. 
 
 xix. 
 
 xix. 
 
 XX. 
 
 xxi. 
 
 xxii. 
 
 xxii. 
 
 xxii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 xxiv. 
 
 John. 
 
 47 
 
 72 
 
 7 
 
 11 58 
 
 4o (2)392 
 
 43 39" 
 
 47 5 6 
 
 52 39 2 
 
 22 68 
 
 2 
 
 18 
 
 32... 
 
 35- 
 55- 
 
 21. 
 
 27. 
 29. 
 
 13- 
 
 6.. 
 10. 
 
 17- 
 10. 
 
 392 
 
 70, 433 
 462 
 
 •37 
 
 166 
 
 39 2 
 177 
 • 5 2 7 
 ..66 
 no 
 615 
 479 
 177 
 
 15 2 3> 5 2 7 
 
 19-26 615 
 
 2 7 97 
 
 n s 
 
 282 
 
 389 
 462 
 608 
 
 39 2 
 610 
 . 66 
 . 461 
 .389 
 -39 2 
 607 
 
 392 
 434 
 462 
 
 .3 8 9 
 •39 2 
 . 44° 
 . 276 
 ..6r 
 
 17. 
 
 3 1 - 
 
 10. 
 
 13- 
 
 41. 
 
 27 
 14. 
 
 37 
 
 4 2 , 44 
 
 43 — -97? 
 
 46 64, 1 bo. 
 
 19 •■■ 
 
 26 - 461, 
 
 27 
 
 39. 4o 
 
 47-.. 
 5 1 . 52. 
 
 1 55, 57, 61 
 
 *> 3 53 
 
 i- J 4 74, 388, 393- 
 
 3 54, 9 2 
 
 5 277 
 
 12, 13 27^ 
 
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 635 
 
 m. 
 
 iii. 
 iii. 
 iii. 
 iii. 
 iii. 
 
 in. 
 
 iii. 
 
 VI. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 
 vi. 
 vii. 
 vii. 
 \iii. 
 vi i. 
 viii. 
 viii. 
 
 ix. 
 
 m. 34. 
 
 13 563 
 
 14 53, 76, 86, 385, 532 
 
 i, 18 86 
 
 18 .- -5 8 >393 
 
 23 53 
 
 29. ...... ......(3)462, 463, 479 
 
 3--"...- 39i 
 
 19 - 6 4 
 
 24 -5 6 
 
 2 -..-434 
 
 3 559, 5^0 
 
 5 66,276,295 
 
 6 168, 276, 2S0, 291, 295, 562 
 
 7 276. 584 
 
 8 562 
 
 n 53 
 
 14. 15 276, 440 
 
 16 58, 75, 86, 352, 462, 586 
 
 16, 18 515 
 
 l 7 -.463, 479 
 
 18 540 
 
 l 9 .277, 318, 479 
 
 28 59 
 
 3i 54, 76 
 
 ..70 
 ■39 2 
 .71 
 
 6 
 24 
 
 17 . .60, 86 
 
 18 ,....52, 59, 86 
 
 19 60 
 
 21, 25 610 
 
 22-25 613 
 
 23 52, 61 
 
 24 607 
 
 26 17,65,88 
 
 28, (2) 29 .609 
 
 39, 46 .389 
 
 33, 3 8 75 
 
 3 6 -39 5° 6 
 
 37 5° 6 
 
 37, 39 5 86 
 
 • 53 
 
 38. 
 
 39 • 609 
 
 ■44 335, 5 1 *, 5*9 
 
 51 462 
 
 56 532 
 
 62 53, 74, 394 
 
 69 86 
 
 37.-^. 
 38,39- 
 21 
 
 42 
 
 JO J 
 
 ..70 
 268 
 
 • -74 
 
 44 26S 
 
 58 53,74,394 
 
 2 167 
 
 /* 159 
 
 ii 462 
 
 15 53, 54, 45o 
 
 17, 18 462 
 
 30 0D 52^ 60 
 
 x. 33 •• S9 
 
 xi. 4 J 59 
 
 xi. 13 59 s 
 
 xi. 24 609, 010 
 
 xi. 25.... 599 
 
 xi. 20 . ... 26S 
 
 xi. 29 86 
 
 xi. 33- 35 - ( 2 )39 2 
 
 xi. 38, 41 - 39 2 
 
 xii. 24 611 
 
 xii. 25 . 276 
 
 xii ° 27 ....64, 392 
 
 xii. 2S , 132 
 
 xi '- 37-41 . 58 
 
 xii, 40 „ 276 
 
 xii- 47 .....462, 463. 479 
 
 xii. 48 609 
 
 x'i- 49 75 
 
 xiii. 21 392 
 
 xiv. 3 70 
 
 xiv. 6 276 
 
 xiv. 13, 14 578 
 
 xiv. 14 ■ 62 
 
 xiv. 15 562 
 
 xiv. 16 , 71 
 
 xiv. 16, 26. . 66, 67, 63 
 
 xiv. 18. . . , 70 
 
 xiv - 23 .. 367, 532, 535, 562 
 
 xiv. 28 65 
 
 XV. 2 . . .587 
 
 xv ° 5= 335, 59 1 
 
 xv. 8 131 
 
 xv. 13 462 
 
 xv. 16 506 
 
 xv. 26 68 
 
 xvi. 7 ..66 
 
 xvi. 13. 14 68 
 
 xvi. 16, 22 70 
 
 xvi. 28 74, 76, 352 
 
 x vn 435 
 
 xvii. 1 52 
 
 xvii. 2 506, (2) 586 
 
 xvii. 3 21, 44, 52, 64 
 
 xvii. 4 132 
 
 xvii. 5 .53, 74, 35 2 
 
 xvii, 10 60, 367 
 
 xvii. 12 586 
 
 xvii. 19. „ . 132 
 
 xvii. 21... 367,535 
 
 xvii. 22 367, 532 
 
 xviu 23 3 6 7( 2 ), 535 
 
 xvii. 24 352, 486, 586 
 
 xvii 26 ...5, 367 (2) 
 
 xix. 7. • - • 59 
 
 xix. 30 392 
 
 xix. 34 392 
 
 xx. 17 65, 86 
 
 xx. 27 392 
 
 xx. 28 57 
 
 xxi, 17 ........ ,..,. 56 
 
636 
 
 WD EX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 Acts. 
 
 *• 24 ... 0>5 6 
 
 ii .0. 66 
 
 ii. 16. 66, 389 
 
 ii- 23 108, 122 
 
 "• 2 5 389 
 
 ii. 27 605 
 
 ii. 3°> 3 1 609 
 
 ii. 31 392 
 
 ii. 33 69, 76 
 
 ni. 15 609 
 
 111. 18 389, *6l 
 
 iii. 21 69, 60S, 620 
 
 iv. 2 C 61 1 
 
 iv. 8 66 
 
 iv. 12 276, 462, 463 
 
 iv. 15 92 
 
 iv. 26 609 
 
 iv. 27 122 
 
 v. 3. 4 67 
 
 v 3° 64 
 
 v. 30, 31 609 
 
 v. 3* 463 
 
 vii. 50 92 
 
 vii. 5 1 70, 479 
 
 vii. 56 388 
 
 vii. 59 166, 607 
 
 vii. 59, 60 6i 
 
 x. 38 70 
 
 xiii. 2, 4 69 
 
 xiii. 27, 32 389 
 
 xiii. 33 8 5 
 
 xiii. 38 463 
 
 xiii. 39 4 6 3 
 
 xiii. 48 (2) 506 
 
 xiv. 117 . . „ „ 108, 132 
 
 xv. 26- . . o 166 
 
 xv. 28 69 
 
 xvi. 14 519 
 
 xvii. 2, 3 „. 440 
 
 xvii. 24 132 
 
 xvii. 24-26. , 162 
 
 xvii. 25. 92, 108 
 
 xvii. 26 ic8, 292 
 
 xvii, 28 102, 161, 534, 535 
 
 xvii. 30, 31 146 
 
 xvii. 31 (2) 613 
 
 xix. 2 69 
 
 xx. 10, II 166 
 
 xx. 26 583 
 
 xx. 28 57, 58,442 
 
 xxiii. 1 181 
 
 xxiii. 6 610 
 
 xxiv. 14 610 
 
 xxiv. 16 181 
 
 xxvi. 22 389 
 
 xxvi. 23 611 
 
 xxviii. 25 ......... 67 
 
 Romans. 
 
 i. 1,3,4 388 
 
 ». 3,4 393 
 
 i- 4 76 
 
 i. 16 539 
 
 i. 17 5 2 6 
 
 i. 20 18, 33, 9* 
 
 i. 24 266 
 
 ii. 4 38 
 
 ii. 6 302, 613 
 
 ii. 6-1 1 600 
 
 ii. 7 S89 
 
 ii. 14...., 181, 281 
 
 ii. 15 lSl ( 2 )253 
 
 ii. 19 277 
 
 ii. 29 559 
 
 iii. 9 276, 292 
 
 iii. 10-12 276 
 
 iii. 10-18 276 
 
 iii. 19 276,(2^292 
 
 iii. 20 276, 303, 361, 527, (2) 529 
 
 iii, 20-28 462 
 
 i". 21 526, 538 
 
 iii. 22 526 
 
 "i- 24 463, 529 
 
 111. 25 442, 452, 462, (2) 463 
 
 "i. 26 ....45. 5 26 > 5 28 
 
 iii. 28 529 
 
 iv. 3 526, 5 2 7 
 
 iv. 5 526, 527, 529, 530 
 
 iv. 6 526, 528, 529, 530 
 
 iv. 7 5 2 9 
 
 iv. 9 5 26 » 5 2 7 
 
 iv. 15 276 
 
 iv. 22 526 
 
 iv. 23, 24 527 
 
 v 293, 507 
 
 v. 1 523, 539 
 
 v- 2 523 
 
 v. 6 461 
 
 v. 8 37, 462(2) 
 
 v. 9 463 
 
 v. 10 461 
 
 V. 12. . . . I59, 162, 168, 305, 39I, 534 
 
 v. 12-14 312 
 
 V. 12, 15 253 
 
 v. 12-19 276, 292, 294 
 
 v. 12-21 146, 344 
 
 v. I2,seq 268,313 
 
 v- 13 530 
 
 v. 14 260 
 
 v. 16 302, 527 
 
 v. 17 5 2 3 
 
 v. 18 276, 463, 480, 523, 527 
 
 [528, 53°, 6l 9 
 
 v - r 9 -463, 5 2 3, 5 2 7, 5 2 8, 53° 
 
 v. 20. 119 
 
 v. 21 523 
 
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 637 
 
 vi 507 
 
 vi. 4-6 276 
 
 vi. 9, 10 76 
 
 vi. 10 462 
 
 vi. 16 526 
 
 vi. 21 272 
 
 vi. 23 159, 268 
 
 vii 266, 300, 302, 507 
 
 vii. 6 272 
 
 vii- 13, 14 5 8 4 
 
 vii. 14 (2) 276 
 
 vii. 14-25 275 
 
 v 'i- 15-25 275 
 
 vii. 18 280, 335 
 
 vii. 22, 23 177 
 
 vii. 24 268 
 
 via 507 
 
 viii. 1-1 1 275 
 
 VIII. 2 559 
 
 viii. 3 462 
 
 viii. 6 266, 280 
 
 viii. 7 291, 335 
 
 viii. 8 335 
 
 V1,i - 9 367* 533 
 
 viii. 9-1 1 69 
 
 viii. 10 532 
 
 viii- 11 533 
 
 viii. 14 66 
 
 viii. 15 487 
 
 viii. 16 68,69 
 
 viii. 18-25 J 59 
 
 viii. 19-24. , 619 
 
 viii. 19-32 621 
 
 viii. 20-30 506 
 
 viii, 20, 21 97 
 
 viii. 21 159 
 
 viii. 26 68, 69 
 
 viii. 27 .68 
 
 viii. 28 159 
 
 viii. 29 120, 367, 506 (2) 
 
 viii. 3 2 86, 394 
 
 viii. 33-34--.-- 486 
 
 ix (2) 108, 511 
 
 ix. 5 57 (2), 393- 394 
 
 ix. 7-1S 507 
 
 ix. 11 282, 506 (3) 
 
 ix. i" 5 6 3 
 
 ix. 18 119, 509 
 
 ix. 22 38. 507 
 
 ix. 30 526 
 
 a. 4 463^ 528, 53° 
 
 x. M, 15> ( 2 )5i5 
 
 x. 21 70 
 
 xi. 5, 6, 11 506 
 
 xi. 6 529 
 
 xi. 8 119 
 
 xi. 22 .38 
 
 xi. 32 .108, 119, 146 
 
 xi. 33 2 3> 3h 149 
 
 : i- 34 5 
 
 xi. 36 92, 115. I3 1 
 
 xii. 3 511 
 
 xiii. 1 10S 
 
 xiii. 1, seq 526 
 
 xiii. 5 181 
 
 xiii. 8, 10 221 
 
 xiv. J2 302 
 
 xiv. 15 480 
 
 xiv. 17 526 
 
 xv. 6 52 
 
 xvi. 27. 21, 23 
 
 Corinthians. 
 
 i. 2 62 
 
 i. 18 569 
 
 i. 21 63 
 
 i- 23 461 
 
 i. 26 509 
 
 i- 30 487, 5 2 3, 5 26 > 528, 559, 575 
 
 i- 3°, 31 5 6 3 
 
 »■ 6 583 
 
 »• 8 394 
 
 ii. 10, ci , 67, 68 
 
 "■ J 4 277, 519, {2) 562, 564 
 
 11. 16. .„„ 583 
 
 iii. 15 606 
 
 iii. 16 67, 69 
 
 iii. 21-23 177 
 
 iv. 5 . 609 
 
 iv. 7 5 6 3 
 
 v. 3. 5 166 
 
 v. 7 462 
 
 V. 21 451 
 
 vi. II 463* S 28 
 
 vi- 13 177 
 
 vi. 14 611 
 
 vi - J 4> I5» 17 533 
 
 vi. 20 131, 442 
 
 vii. 14 282 
 
 vii. 23 442 
 
 viii. 4 21, 51 
 
 viii. 6 51, 71, 92 
 
 viii. 7 (2) 181 
 
 viii. 10 181 
 
 viii. 11 480 
 
 vin. 12 (2) 181 
 
 ix. 27 589 
 
 *• 4 76 
 
 A. 25 l8l 
 
 X- 31 131 
 
 xi. 3 65 
 
 xi- 7 - 254 
 
 xii 66 
 
 xii- 3 -• ......66, 365, 367 
 
 xii. 3-6 72 
 
 xii. 4-ii...„ 68 
 
 xii. 11 68 
 
 xi" 221 
 
G38 
 
 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 xni, 
 
 xiii. 
 xiv. 
 
 xv D 
 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 
 XV. 
 XV, 
 XV. 
 XV, 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 XV. 
 
 12 5, 621 (2) 
 
 *3-.- 544 
 
 66 
 
 610 
 
 3 462 
 
 20. 6ll 
 
 21, seq 2t'S 
 
 22 260, 391, 609, 610 
 
 24 619 
 
 28 65 
 
 35~49 611 
 
 38 96 
 
 44 
 45- 
 
 609 
 292 
 
 45-47 344, 364 
 
 46-49 
 
 344 
 
 47 53, 394 
 
 56 268 
 
 II Corinthians. 
 
 VI. 
 
 xi. 
 
 xi. 
 
 xii. 
 
 xiii. 
 
 12 I8l (2), 583 
 
 20 132 
 
 l6 266 
 
 17 70, 71 
 
 >8 146,277,367 
 
 2 (2) 181 
 
 6 277, 562 
 
 1-4 610 
 
 2, 4 268 
 
 7 621 
 
 8 „599, 607 
 
 10 302, 600, 613 
 
 11 (2) 181 
 
 14. . . . 294, 295, 302, 461, 462, 479 
 
 1 5 295, 461, 462, 479 
 
 J 7 (2) 559 
 
 l 9 295,452 
 
 21 462,463 (4), 528, 530 
 
 J 4 277 
 
 3 , 292 
 
 3i 52 
 
 8 61 
 
 14 68, 71 
 
 Galatians. 
 
 i. 
 
 m. 
 iii. 
 
 iii. 
 
 !•••■• ■ 63 
 
 3,4 51 
 
 15 281 
 
 16 361, 527, 539 
 
 x 7 463 
 
 20 69,367, 583 
 
 20, 21 462 
 
 1 461 
 
 2, 3 292 
 
 6 526 
 
 10 529 
 
 n 527 
 
 13 450*462,463 
 
 I3s 14 461 
 
 iii. 19 ■ - 119 
 
 i-i. 21 303, 335, 462, 526 
 
 iii. 22 119, 276, 5 2 9 
 
 iii. 27 276, 533 
 
 iv. 4 ,... 53, 75,86, 352,393 
 
 iv. 4, 5 463 
 
 iv. 4-6 69 
 
 iv. 8 281 
 
 iv. 19 . 367 
 
 v - 4 587 
 
 v. 5.. 526 
 
 v. 6. .540 
 
 V. I3-I5 ....221 
 
 V, 14 221 
 
 V- 17 177,275,280 
 
 V- 17-23 584 
 
 v. ig-21 280 
 
 v. 24 276 
 
 VI. 2 221 
 
 vi. 5 302 
 
 vi. 14 461 
 
 vi - >S 559 
 
 Ephesians. 
 
 i- 3 52 
 
 '■ 4 117,506(2), 508 
 
 '■ 5 "5» I3 2 ,5 6 
 
 ] - 7 <45 2 , 461,463 
 
 i. 9 121 
 
 i- I0 364, 367 
 
 i. 11 108,115,121,506 
 
 i. 14 442 
 
 i- 17 65 
 
 i- l8 559 
 
 1. 19-. 33 
 
 i. 19, 20 519 
 
 i- 21-23 364 
 
 >• 2 2 3 6 5,3 6 7» 59° 
 
 *■ 23 367 (2), 590 
 
 ii. 1 266, 276 
 
 "• 1-10 559 
 
 ii. 2 99 
 
 ii- 3 281,391 
 
 ii. 4 26S 
 
 ii- 5-...- 276, 506 
 
 ii. 8 506, 529 
 
 »■ 10 5ii, 559*563,576 
 
 ii. 13 461 
 
 ii. 14. 58 
 
 ii. 15 .276 
 
 ii. 16 61 
 
 iii. 9 92 
 
 iii- 17 ' 533 
 
 iv. 5, 6 52 
 
 iv. 6 21, 52 
 
 iv. 8 605 
 
 iv, 9, io 604 
 
 iv- 12 -365, 36- 
 
 1V - O ....■-• 146, 37g 
 
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 639 
 
 iv. 15, 16 367 
 
 iv. 18 276, 277, 280 
 
 iv. 22-24 ■ ■ 276, 562 
 
 iv. 23, 24 559 
 
 iv. 24 , 254, 364 
 
 iv. 25 226 
 
 iv. 30 68 
 
 v. 2 (2) 462 
 
 v. 5- ■ 57, 60 
 
 v. 8 
 
 14.. 
 23 ... . 
 
 23-3 2 - 
 25 ... . 
 29.... 
 3', 3 2 
 
 17. 
 
 277 
 
 58 
 
 ■ • 69, 307 
 
 532 
 
 .462, 591 
 
 59i 
 
 532 
 
 99 
 
 569 
 
 I. THESSALONIAiNS. 
 
 1. 
 
 5,6. 
 
 Philippians. 
 
 i. 6 587, 6o9 
 
 i. 10, 11 132 
 
 i. 23 607, 62I 
 
 i'i- 6 53, 393 
 
 »■ 6-8 59, 74 
 
 ii. 6-11 T32 
 
 ». 7-..- S^ 39 8 
 
 ii. 8 461, 463 
 
 ii. 9 619 
 
 ii. 10. , , 61 
 
 "• 11 393 
 
 ii- 12 335, 576 
 
 ii 13 ii5, 335, 5H 9 5'9 
 
 iii: 9 • 5 28 > 5 2 9> 53°, 54° 
 
 iii. 12 583, 584 
 
 iii- 15 5 8 3 
 
 iii. 20 -.'. .607, 609, 611 
 
 iii. 2i 55, 609, 611 
 
 ^OLOSSIANS. 
 
 11. 
 
 iii. 
 iii. 
 iii. 
 iii. 
 
 9-1 1 520 
 
 14- 461, 463 
 
 15" 54(2), 75,92,364 
 
 i5- x 7 3 6 7 
 
 16 54, 97, '3 1 , 364 
 
 17 53>54, 102 
 
 18 54, 3 6 5, 367 
 
 19 347, 3 6 7, 619 
 
 20 ■ 347, 367, 461, 619 
 
 22 268 
 
 27 533 
 
 9 60 
 
 10 99, 367, 379) 5 8 3 
 
 IT 268 
 
 13 266, 276 
 
 19 ■ 365, 367 
 
 9 559 
 
 10 254, 364, 367, 559 
 
 11 3 6 4 
 
 14 221 
 
 519 
 
 ii. 10 583 
 
 iii- 10-13 585 
 
 iii. 11, 12 62 
 
 iv. 14 .611 
 
 iv. 16. 17 69 
 
 iv. 17 259 
 
 v. 9, 10 506 
 
 v. 23 ib6, 585, 609 
 
 II Thessalonians. 
 
 i. 6-10 (2)609 
 
 i. 7-10 613 
 
 i. 3, 9 " 615 
 
 i. 10 132 
 
 i- 12 '..". 57 
 
 ii. 8 609 
 
 ii- 13 ( 2 ) 5° 6 , 5 r 9 
 
 u. 14 5*9 
 
 ii. 16, 17 62 
 
 I Timothv. 
 
 i. 5 181, 221 
 
 i. It 92 
 
 i- 17 21, 51 
 
 19 181 
 
 4 3 r > 6 *9 
 
 5 21 
 
 6 442, 4 62 , 479 
 
 ii. 13 260 
 
 ii. 14 292 
 
 ii. 6 262 
 
 9 181 
 
 16 .' 99- 393 
 
 2 181 
 
 3 177 
 
 IO - ■ 479 
 
 * 6 5 
 
 II Timothy. 
 
 i. 3 „ 583 
 
 i- 9 117, 5°6 
 
 10 268,- 276 
 
 1 60 
 
 1, 8 609 
 
 18 61 
 
 1. 
 
 11. 
 
 111. 
 
 iii. 
 
 iv. 
 
 vi. 
 
 1. 
 iv. 
 
 iv. 
 iv. 
 
 Titus. 
 
 i. 15 .- 181 
 
 ii. 13 57, 5 s , 6o > 463 
 
 iii- St 7 5 2 9 
 
 Philemon. 
 
 18 •- 53o 
 
 Hebrews 
 i, ii. , 
 
 393 
 
 i- 1 ■ 434 
 
 i. 2 ...55, 92 
 
 i. 3- ■ ■ -55; ( 2 ) 59* 75, i«2» 462, 463 
 
fi40 
 
 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES, 
 
 i. 4-6 54 
 
 i- 5. 6 *5 
 
 i. 6 (2)61 
 
 i. 8 57, (2) 6i, 65,433 
 
 *• 9 .-57 
 
 1. 10 54,57, 5 8 ,9 2 
 
 i. 12 92 
 
 ii. 9. . ..276, 295, 461, 462, 479> 6l 9 
 
 ii. 10 ■•-•55> ^ 462 
 
 ii. 13 462 
 
 ii. 14 3 8 9> 39 2 > 393> 461, 462 
 
 ii. 14-16 364 
 
 "• 16 393 
 
 ii- 17 ' 393,462,463 
 
 iii. 1 462 
 
 iii. 4 55 
 
 iv. 1 5 8 9 
 
 iv. 3 96, 104 
 
 iv. 12 ■ 166, 569 
 
 iv. 14 . .. .. 462 
 
 iv. 15 392 
 
 v. 1 462 
 
 V. 2. 392 
 
 v. 4> 5 433 
 
 v. 5 86 
 
 v. 6 462 
 
 v. 8 392, 463 
 
 v. 10 462 
 
 vi. 4, seq 587 
 
 vi. 5 97 
 
 vi. 17-19 586 
 
 vi. 20 396 
 
 vii. 10 168 
 
 vii. 16 396, 433 
 
 v». 17 433 
 
 vii. 21 396 
 
 vii- 25 ....69, 396 
 
 vii. 26 451 
 
 vii. 28 396 
 
 viii. 1 462, 485 
 
 viii. 3 440 
 
 ix. 13 452 
 
 ix. 14 »8x, 452, 462 (2) 
 
 ix. 22 440 
 
 ix. 24 485 
 
 ix. 25 462 
 
 ix. 26 430, 462 
 
 ix. 28 45 ,462, (4)463 
 
 x. 7-9 462 
 
 x. 10 (2) 462 
 
 A. 12 462, (2) 608, 609 
 
 *• 14 442, 462 (2) 
 
 *• 15 67 
 
 x. 19 487 
 
 X. 21 462 
 
 X. 22 l8l 
 
 x. 26 462 
 
 x. 29 480, 587 
 
 xi. 3 9 2 
 
 xii. 7 584 
 
 xii. 23 l66 » S°7 
 
 xiii. 8 76 
 
 xiii. 12 463 
 
 xiii. 18 181 
 
 xiii. 21 5 [ 9» 585 
 
 James. 
 
 i. 2-4 159 
 
 i. 13 108 
 
 i. 15 272, 282 
 
 i. 18 518*563,569 
 
 ii. 18. 540 
 
 ii. 21, 23-25 527 
 
 ii. 23 526 
 
 iii. 2. ... 584 
 
 "i. 9 2 54 
 
 I Peter. 
 
 i. 2 71, 506 
 
 i. 5 586 
 
 1. n 70, 389 
 
 i. 12 69 
 
 i. 16 221, 222 
 
 i- 19 45 1 , 462 
 
 i. 20 117 
 
 \- 2 3 5 6 9 
 
 ii. 8 509 
 
 ii. 19 181 
 
 ii. 21 461 
 
 ii. 21-25 192,221 
 
 ii- 24 450, 462, 463 
 
 iii. 15 58 
 
 iii. 16 181 
 
 iii. 18.... 167, 392, 450,461,462,(2) 
 
 iii. 18-21 604, 605 
 
 iii. 19 98, 166 
 
 iii. 20 38 
 
 iii. 22 364 
 
 v. 7 no 
 
 v. 8 99 
 
 II Peter. 
 
 i. 1 57, 60 
 
 i. 4 276,533 
 
 i. 10 589 
 
 i- 19 389 
 
 ii. 1 480 
 
 »■ 4 99» *5 8 
 
 ii. 20, 21 587 
 
 iii. 3-7 609 
 
 iii- 7-13 613 
 
 iii. 8 18 
 
 i". 9 31 
 
 "i- 10 97, 613 
 
 "I. 13 621 
 
 iii. 18 6l 
 
 I John. 
 
 \- 1, 2 393 
 
 l * 7 452, 461, 463 
 
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES. 
 
 641 
 
 in. 
 
 iii. 
 
 in. 
 iii. 
 iv. 
 iv. 
 iv. 
 iv. 
 iv. 
 iv. 
 
 JUDE. 
 
 s 583, 584 
 
 8-10 275 
 
 1 586 
 
 2 442, 462, (2) 479, 487 
 
 5 5 8 3 
 
 5-6 532 
 
 10 562 
 
 16 108, 302 
 
 1 37 
 
 2 69, 146, 621 (2) 
 
 4 282 
 
 5 463 
 
 5, seq 583 
 
 14 .266 
 
 16 37, 462 
 
 17 221 
 
 8 221 
 
 10 462, 463 
 
 12 532 
 
 14 463 
 
 16 37 
 
 17 5 8 3 
 
 20, 21 221 
 
 n-13 586 
 
 16 272 
 
 20 , ... 44, 57> 64 
 
 6 99, 158, 609 
 
 7 i5 8 
 
 ! 5 509 
 
 Revelation. 
 
 5 54. 65, 452, 461, 462 
 
 7 609 
 
 8 55>56,65 
 
 " 65 
 
 13 388 
 
 i. 17. 18 c6, 65 
 
 ii. II -71 
 
 ii. 23 56 
 
 iii. 7 609 
 
 iii- H 54 
 
 iii. 20 479 
 
 iv. II 9 2 ( 2 )» ^^ J 6l 
 
 v 6 46 1 
 
 v. 9 461 (2) 
 
 v. 11 54 
 
 V. 12 461, 462 
 
 v. 13 6l 
 
 vi. 9 166, 5q8 
 
 vii. 14 462, 463 
 
 vii. 16, 17 159, 396 
 
 x. 6 92 
 
 xi. 15 396 
 
 xiii. 8 462, 506 
 
 xiv. 11 615 
 
 xiv. 14 388 
 
 xix. 6 33 
 
 xx, 4 166, 598, 608 
 
 xx. 6 271 
 
 xx. 10 615 
 
 XX. 12 613 
 
 xx. 13 609 
 
 xx. 14 615 
 
 xxi 97, 60L 
 
 xxi. 1 62: 
 
 xxi. 4 159 
 
 xxi. 8 271 
 
 xxi. 22, 23 396 
 
 xxii. I, 3 396 
 
 xxii. 4 r; 
 
 xxii. 7 76 
 
 xxii. 11 526, 527, 600, 613, 615 
 
 xxii. 12..-..,.. 609 
 
 xxii. 13 56 
 
 xxii. 17 479 
 
 xxii. 19...., „ 587 
 
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