■ .'-: ■ . ' 
 
 ■ ■/■>■' 
 
 ___^. 
 
 Hi 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Alfred C. Barnes 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BT201 .W18 
 
 Ch 1in! l ii,!t!?,S.,.9rS3 ,ive ideal i studies in Co 
 
 3 1924 029 375 288 
 olin 
 
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/cu31924029375288 
 
CHRIST THE CREATIVE IDEAL 
 
WORKS BY 
 
 THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE SPIRIT AND THE INCARNATION. 
 
 In the Light of Scripture, Science, and Practical 
 Need. Third Edition, 9/-. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF RECONCILIATION 
 
 or At-one-ment. Post 8vo, 5/-. 
 
 THE CROSS AND THE KINGDOM 
 
 as viewed by Christ Himself and in the Light of 
 Evolution. Second Edition, 9/-. 
 
 CHRISTIAN THEISM AND A SPIRITUAL 
 
 MONISM. 
 
 God, Freedom, and Immortality, in view of 
 Monistic Evolution. Second Edition, 9/-. 
 
 WHAT ABOUT THE NEW THEOLOGY? 
 
 Second Edition, 2/6 net. 
 
 THE TEACHING OF CHRIST IN ITS 
 PRESENT APPEAL. Second Edition, 2/6 net. 
 
 T & T CT ATJK Edinta s h 
 
CHRIST 
 THE CREATIVE IDEAL 
 
 STUDIES IN COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 
 
 Rev. W. L. WALKER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE SPIKIT AND THE INCARNATION* 
 
 "CHRISTIAN THEISM AND A SPIRITUAL monism" 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 Edinburgh : T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 
 
 I9 1 3 
 
S.ao T 2. 
 
 Printed By 
 
 Morrison & Gibb Limited, 
 
 for 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON I SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. 
 NEW YORK I CHARLES SCRIBNER'S EONS. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE motive of this book is the same as animated 
 the writer's previous publications, viz. the 
 desire to present Christianity in such a way as is 
 in harmony with our modern knowledge, and so as 
 to commend it to those especially who are at present 
 in doubt or difficulty concerning it, or wholly 
 indifferent to it. The teaching of Colossians and 
 Ephesians seems to offer a basis for such a presenta- 
 tion of the great Christian truths, because, in 
 Colossians especially, Christ and all that was done 
 and is yet to be done in and through Him, are 
 carried back to the Creation of the World and to 
 God's Eternal purpose therein. An endeavour is 
 therefore made to show how we have thus in Christ 
 the revelation of the mystery of human life and 
 destiny; how Christ appears on the lines of the 
 creative and educative action of God in Nature and 
 in man ; what Christ is to us to-day ; what the Church 
 is meant to be to Him ; what the Christian " Hope 
 of Glory " is ; and how the Eternal Purpose of God 
 in Creation and Redemption shall yet be completely 
 fulfilled. The last chapter of the book has not been 
 lightly written. It gives expression to that which 
 seems the necessary conclusion from the teaching of 
 these Epistles as well as from the conception of God 
 as the Infinite Reason and Love and the Father of men. 
 
vi Preface 
 
 While there is at present much earnest and effective 
 Christian life and action amongst us, and most 
 laudable endeavours are made for the enlightenment 
 and conversion of those in non-Christian lands, there 
 is also on the part of all classes a serious falling off 
 from the Christian faith and from all interest in 
 religion, a state of matters which demands more 
 attention than it receives from the Christian 
 Churches. 
 
 If Christianity is to be placed on the securest 
 foundations, its oneness with the Creation must be 
 shown, and all suspicion of disharmony with Science 
 removed. If religion is to be revived, God as 
 Creator and Father, as well as Redeemer, must be 
 seen in such a character as shall attract men's interest 
 and inspire their love and devotion to Him and His 
 cause — which is really our own ; and the religion to 
 which we are called in Christ must be recognised 
 as Divinely natural — that which at once manifests 
 our Ideal and makes its attainment possible for all, 
 individually and socially, for time and for Eternity. 
 
 Of course, with respect to some things we can 
 only see "in a mirror darkly," we can only "know 
 in part " ; yet we can know sufficient for practical 
 purposes, and it is for each of us to try to see as 
 clearly and to report as truthfully as he can. 
 
 W. L. W. 
 
 Fernihirst, Shettleston, Glasgow, 
 September 191 3. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory i 
 
 II. The "Revelation of the Mystery" . . n 
 
 III. How the Revelation was made . . .19 
 
 IV. Man's Destiny revealed in Christ— Belief 
 
 in Christ's Resurrection, and our Pre- 
 sent Relation to it— The Revelation 
 given in the Life 28 
 
 V. The Person of Christ: The Cosmic Christ 45 
 
 VI. How the Ideal was realised— Christ and 
 Ourselves — Advantages of the View 
 suggested — Note on Theories of 
 Heredity 68 
 
 VII. The "Reconciliation of all Things" in 
 Christ — Of Man to God and of Man 
 to Man — Freedom through the Cross . 98 
 
 VIII. The "Fulness of God" in Christ: Present 
 Relation of Christ to God and to 
 Ourselves 119 
 
 IX. The New Life 140 
 
 X. "The Church" as the Body of Christ . 158 
 
 XI. The "Hope of Glory" 182 
 
 XII. The Wider Reference : Fulfilment of the 
 
 "Eternal Purpose" 204 
 
 Index 232 
 
 vii 
 
CHRIST 
 THE CREATIVE IDEAL 
 
 ERRATA. 
 Page 66, fifth line from bottom, He should be Him. 
 
 Page ioo, ninth line from bottom, katallasso should 
 be katallasso. 
 
 ana Wiatn or tneir tettcriing. mm icjjicatiiiauun ui 
 
 Christ has seemed too high, and the cosmical rela- 
 tions affirmed of Him too wide, to apply to One who 
 appeared in human flesh. The Eternal Purpose of 
 God declared in them has seemed too great to be 
 realised. A reason also for their neglect in recent 
 i 
 
CHRIST 
 THE CREATIVE IDEAL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians 
 contain the loftiest and widest conceptions of 
 Christianity, resting at the same time on such a basis 
 as suggests how these may be effectually commended 
 to the modern mind and be made helpful to all 
 Christian believers. These Epistles — which are mani- 
 festly closely related — have been too much neglected. 
 Perhaps this has been partly due to the very height 
 and width of their teaching. Their representation of 
 Christ has seemed too high, and the cosmical rela- 
 tions affirmed of Him too wide, to apply to One who 
 appeared in human flesh. The Eternal Purpose of 
 God declared in them has seemed too great to be 
 realised. A reason also for their neglect in recent 
 I 
 
2 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 times has been the doubts entertained with respect 
 to their authorship. Various indications — especially 
 what seemed references to Gnosticism in Colossians 
 — have led many scholars to doubt or deny their 
 Pauline authorship, and to bring down the date of 
 their composition to a later time. 
 
 Into the critical question it is not necessary for 
 our purpose to enter. The real question concerning 
 these and other writings is not so much, Who wrote 
 them? as, Are they true? Do they state what we 
 can to-day confidently receive as Truth? No doubt 
 in St. Paul we see a man specially inspired. But his 
 special inspiration was due to his special susceptibility 
 for such inspiration, and to the particular experiences 
 through which he passed. The Spirit was not given 
 to some men exclusively, but to the Church at large. 
 In these Epistles prayer is offered on behalf of all 
 Christians, that they may be filled with spiritual 
 wisdom and understanding. If there were others 
 besides St. Paul who possessed a special capacity for 
 such illumination, spiritual truth could be conveyed 
 through them as well as through him. It would only 
 show how real were the Spirit's influences, and how 
 divinely wide their distribution. It is admitted on all 
 hands that we do not know for certain the authors of 
 several of the New Testament books, e.g., Hebrews 
 and the Fourth Gospel, and it would be a serious 
 loss to the Christian Church if the spiritual value of 
 
Introductory 3 
 
 these writings depended on certainty as to their 
 authorship. 
 
 At the same time, the present tendency of scholar- 
 ship is to regard these Epistles as being Pauline, at 
 least in substance, and to look upon their Christology 
 as a natural development of that which we find in 
 the earlier Epistles. With respect to Colossians, 
 recent criticism goes farther and tends to ascribe 
 this letter more directly to St, Paul. Better know- 
 ledge has shown that the supposed references to later 
 Gnosticism may be fully met by relating them to 
 certain Jewish beliefs, influenced to some extent by 
 non-Jewish thought, or to the beginnings of what found 
 later fuller development (see Colossians, by Williams, 
 in Cambridge Greek Test.). Its connection with the 
 undoubtedly genuine letter to Philemon also makes 
 for its genuineness. 
 
 It must be admitted that there is a real difference 
 in the style and tone of these Epistles from what we 
 find in the other acknowledged writings of St. Paul 
 (there is a considerable number of new words in 
 both) ; but this may be accounted for by the employ- 
 ment of another hand in their actual composition. 
 The words at the close of Colossians : " The saluta- 
 tion of me, Paul, with mine own hand," show that 
 Paul did not actually write that letter. But the 
 thoughts may be his, and if so, they are probably 
 his latest, which gives them a special interest for us, 
 
4 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Ephesians seems to have been a kind of circular 
 letter sent to various Churches in Asia Minor ; it is 
 therefore more general in its terms. This was 
 probably "the Epistle from Laodicea" which the 
 Colossians were to read. But "whether our 
 Ephesians is this companion letter or only a deutero- 
 Pauline production, formed on the basis of some 
 genuine letter written on this occasion, is a disputed 
 point among critics" (Prof. Bacon, The Making of the 
 New Testament, p. 98). The references to the Church 
 in it show that it belongs to a period when there was 
 as yet no such ecclesiastical institution as we find in 
 the Ignatian letters. This fact points to an early 
 date ; but as a whole it is less certainly the direct 
 production of St. Paul than is Colossians. 
 
 We shall, provisionally at least, speak of St. Paul 
 as the author of both Epistles. But we would repeat, 
 that what we are most concerned for is not the 
 question of their authorship, but that of the truth of 
 their contents. Whatever authority may be ascribed 
 to St. Paul, the want of absolute certainty as to their 
 authorship shows this to be the really important 
 thing. 
 
 In these Epistles, proceeding most probably from 
 his Roman prison, St. Paul gives full and exultant 
 expression to that " wisdom of God," or, as we should 
 say to-day, "Divine Philosophy," which he had 
 informed the Corinthians he possessed, but was 
 
Introductory 5 
 
 unable to impart to them because of their low 
 spiritual condition (1 Cor. ii. 6f., iii. 1-3). What he 
 had heard of the Colossian and other Christians to 
 whom these letters were sent, made him feel that they 
 were better prepared to receive this higher teaching, 
 and, in the false teaching that was being introduced 
 amongst them, occasion had arisen for impressing 
 this higher knowledge on them : " Having heard," he 
 says to the Colossians, " of your faith in Christ Jesus, 
 and of the love which ye have towards all the saints 
 (the people of God), because of the hope which is laid 
 up for you in the heavens " (i. 4, 5). The questions 
 which had unsettled and divided the Corinthians, 
 keeping them on a lower spiritual level, were evi- 
 dently settled amongst those to whom he now writes ; 
 the unity of the Church was to some extent at least 
 realised by them ; Jew and Gentile met on equal 
 footing ; their love went out to all the people of God, 
 and their minds were fixed on heavenly things. In 
 like manner, he tells the Ephesians how he had heard 
 of " their faith in the Lord Jesus, and the love they 
 showed toward all the saints," which led him to pray 
 for their complete illumination through the Spirit 
 (Eph.i. 15 f.). 
 
 He evidently felt that he could not only speak 
 freely to them, but exult in that " Mystery of the 
 Gospel " which he had mentioned in his previous 
 letters to other Churches, but had never yet fully 
 
6 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 expounded in all its Divine breadth and length, and 
 height and depth. It is the revelation of this mystery, 
 with all that is involved in it, that is the leading 
 theme of both Epistles. In Colossians it is stated 
 with special reference to Christ's relation to God and 
 the Creation, and in Ephesians, to His relation to the 
 Church. Their author is carried beyond the temporal 
 into the realm of the eternal. He has a vision of the 
 great Divine Thought and Purpose to which the 
 creation itself is due. In these Epistles we have 
 presented such a Divine Philosophy of the Universe, 
 such a reading of its " riddle," such a conception of 
 Christ in relation to God and man, and of the unity 
 of mankind in that higher humanity which was 
 eternally conceived " in Christ," and in due time 
 manifested in Him, and such a picture of the ultimate 
 goal of the creation, with the power that dwells in 
 Christ for its realisation, as gives to those who can 
 receive it a satisfaction, a peace, a hope, an inspira- 
 tion, which neither science, dealing only with material 
 things, the real nature, essence, or origin of which 
 it does not even profess to know, nor a philosophy 
 based on merely human speculation, continually met 
 by contrary reasons, can ever give. 
 
 While we do not confine our consideration of those 
 Epistles to an apologetic interest merely, we would 
 keep specially in view, in dealing with this Pauline 
 teaching, the question whether we can see it to be 
 
Introductory 7 
 
 true in substance for ourselves to-day. The subject, 
 as will appear, is one not of theoretical interest 
 merely, but of great practical importance. We may 
 find, indeed, in these Epistles such a conception of 
 Christ and Christianity, and of the Divine purpose 
 in the creation, as shall go far to provide that larger 
 Gospel for which many Christian hearts are yearning, 
 which it is felt must be contained in Christ if only 
 we can grasp it ; one in harmony with all scientific 
 truth, and one which seems to be so necessary for 
 that revived interest in religion which is such a 
 desideratum of the present time. 
 
 The need is very great, if we will but face the 
 facts. The times are critical for the Faith. "The 
 majority of thinking people in the Christian 
 countries," it has been said with only too much 
 truth, "are at present without a philosophy. The 
 heavens are as brass. They look down impatiently 
 on "the fool at his devotions," yet they feel the 
 inadequacy of a materialistic science to satisfy the 
 soul's demands. They have been driven from the 
 ancient moorings and are adrift on dark and stormy 
 waters, with no glimmer of a friendly harbour-light in 
 sight. Many of them wish, with an intense longing, 
 that they could return to the faith in which they 
 were nurtured" (J. Arthur Hill, in Religion and 
 Modern Psychology). With not a few, Christianity is 
 regarded as "played out." They tell us they are 
 
8 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 weary of " mythology and metaphysics," and of 
 doctrines that seem to be all in the air. " Dogma," 
 the writer just quoted affirms, " is being not so much 
 disproved as outgrown. The Zeitgeist has set its 
 face in another direction, and those who cling to 
 dogmatic formulations will be left behind." The 
 life has gone out of the movement and only the 
 shell is left. "The Spirit moves on." For some, 
 morality and humanity have taken the place of 
 religion. Both essentially belong to religion, but 
 neither, nor both together, can ever form a substitute 
 for it. With some, Socialism or Social Service is 
 made a religion ; with others, Spiritualism. Some 
 are seeking refuge in various forms of non-Christian 
 Mysticism ; withdrawing into themselves, they think 
 they find God ; while others fly to Theosophy, 
 Christian Science, or to some of the varieties of the 
 " New Thought," or of the Occult. We have even 
 agencies for the spread of Mohammedanism and 
 Buddhism. The greater number of Christian people 
 are quite content to take their religion without 
 troubling themselves about its present-day adequacy 
 or its foundations. They are " practical believers," 
 and, doubtless, many of them give a good account 
 of their faith by their works. But this indifference 
 cannot last. It may do for them, and possibly for 
 some of their children, but unless something effective 
 be done to show the reasonableness and sound 
 
Introductory 9 
 
 foundations of our Faith, the drift away from 
 Christianity will continue, and future generations 
 will find themselves in increasing unsettlement. 
 The hope of many earnest Christians is placed in 
 a fresh spiritual revival. This is needed. But, as 
 Isaac Taylor has said : " There is an outer-work that 
 must precede an inner Christian movement. There 
 must be a clear ground of reason on which the 
 convictions of the few who think must be made 
 to rest" {Essays, etc., p. 338). Of the present, the 
 Principal of Mansfield College, says : " Men are 
 casting about them on every side for some standing- 
 ground. They have no strong convictions . . . our 
 present distress is ultimately due to theological un- 
 settlement" (Paper read to National Free Church 
 Council, 191 3). By some it is deemed impossible 
 to harmonise our Christian Faith with the view of 
 the world which modern knowledge gives us. But 
 unless this can be done, unbelief or want of con- 
 fidence will deepen and extend till, for a time, a 
 practical Agnosticism will hold the field. This 
 must be the result if Christianity and Science cannot 
 be seen to be at one; for, in the conflict between 
 Science and religious beliefs, Science has always 
 proved the stronger. It is true that this conflict 
 is not being waged to-day as it once was, but the 
 effects of it remain. There is an underlying feeling 
 of want of harmony. 
 
io Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Of course, the heart is greater than the intellect, 
 and we may find "reasons of the heart" by which 
 to hold when those of the Intellect are failing us. 
 But this is a one-sided and insecure state of matters. 
 The tendency to belittle the Intellect or the Reason 
 is a most ominous sign of the times. Surely the 
 thing to aim at is 
 
 " That mind and soul according well, 
 May make one music as before, 
 But vaster." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE REVELATION OF THE MYSTERY 
 
 LET us begin with " the revelation of the 
 mystery" which has such a prominent place 
 in these Epistles. In this we shall see that we have 
 the great mystery of human life itself revealed, — the 
 meaning and mode of the " revelation " will appear 
 immediately. St. Paul says (Col. i. 25 f.) that his 
 mission was "to fulfil the word of God, (even) the 
 mystery which hath been hid for ages and genera- 
 tions : but now hath it been manifested to his saints." 
 " Mystery " means here, clearly, something that had 
 been hidden but was now made known. We are 
 familiar with the word in its modern sense ; we say 
 truly that we are surrounded by mystery on every 
 hand. Wherever we look, into whatever we pene- 
 trate, with the utmost skill we possess, and with our 
 most efficient aids for exploring the distant or the 
 minute, we find ultimately insoluble mystery. Man 
 is a mystery to himself, and equally so to him is the 
 universe to which he belongs ; he cannot give an 
 ultimate explanation of even the simplest thing 
 
12 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 therein. There were also Greek religious " mysteries, 
 into which men had to be initiated. But there need 
 be no special reference to these here, although there 
 are expressions in Colossians which may indicate an 
 acquaintance on Paul's part with these. Jesus had 
 also spoken of " the mysteries of the kingdom," which 
 were only understood by those belonging to it. 
 There are other particular mysteries mentioned in 
 the New Testament. But when the mystery is 
 spoken of, " the mystery of the Gospel," the mystery 
 that had been hidden from all the ages, the great 
 mystery of the Divine Eternal Purpose now made 
 known — the immediate reference is to the calling of 
 the Gentiles to membership in the kingdom of God, 
 with all that is implied in this, the extension to them 
 of the blessings of the Gospel, the constituting them 
 the people of God as truly as the Jews, who believed 
 themselves to be exclusively such, the extension to 
 the Gentile nations of that Divine Election which had 
 hitherto been held to embrace only the seed of 
 Abraham, their interest in the Christ, which had 
 been deemed a specially Jewish possession. 
 
 This appears very clearly in the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians. There, in chap. iii. i f., St. Paul describes 
 himself as " the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of 
 you Gentiles," to whom "by revelation was made 
 known the mystery — the mystery of Christ — which 
 in other generations was not made known unto the 
 
The Revelation of the Mystery 1 3 
 
 sons of men, as it has now been revealed unto his 
 holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit (to wit) ; 
 that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs and fellow-members 
 of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in 
 Christ Jesus through the Gospel." To him was the 
 grace "given to preach unto the Gentiles the un- 
 searchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see 
 what is the dispensation of the mystery which for 
 ages hath been hid in God who created all things — 
 according to the eternal purpose which he purposed 
 in Christ Jesus our Lord." In almost identical words 
 (already partly quoted), we have in Colossians the 
 mystery described as "the dispensation of God 
 which was given me to you-ward, to fulfil the word 
 of God, (even) the mystery which hath been hid for 
 ages and generations : but now hath it been mani- 
 fested to his saints, to whom God was pleased to 
 make known what is the riches of the glory of this 
 mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, 
 the hope of glory'' (Col. i. 25-27; cf. Eph. i. 9, 
 vi. 19; Col. iv. 3; Rom. xi. 25, xvi. 25, 26; 1 Cor. 
 ii. 5 f, etc.). 
 
 The mystery now disclosed, therefore, was the 
 Divine purpose concerning the Gentiles, and as the 
 world was divided into Jew and Gentile — the latter 
 term embracing all who were not Jews — it is the 
 revelation of the purpose of God concerning the 
 ■world — all mankind, and so, the revelation of the 
 
1 4 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 mystery of human life. Prior to Christ the Jews 
 were believed (by themselves at least) to be the only 
 people of God, the only people for whom God had a 
 purpose ; if others were to share in His purpose they 
 must become Jews. What the relation of the rest of 
 mankind — the great mass of humanity — was to God, 
 what was their fate or destiny, was a great mystery : 
 it was something as yet unrevealed. It must have 
 seemed such to thoughtful minds even among the 
 Jews, although they had their theories concerning it ; 
 and the revelation that came in Christ would be 
 gladly hailed by minds freed from the national ex- 
 clusiveness. When the Gentiles as well as the Jews 
 were seen to be embraced in an eternal good purpose 
 of God, there shone forth the revelation of the mystery 
 of the Divine meaning and purpose in human life at 
 large — of the meaning and purpose of the creation. It 
 came therefore to St. Paul as a great revelation. It 
 was this that he so gloried to proclaim as the uni- 
 versal good news. It was this that made him feel 
 that he was a '' debtor to the Greek and the Bar- 
 barian." It was for this that he evoked the enmity 
 of his Jewish co-religionists, who followed him with 
 persecution all his days. It was for this that he was 
 now, as he says, " an ambassador in bonds," praying 
 " that he might be able to speak boldly as he ought 
 to speak," in spite of all opposition. We see in this 
 light what a great apostle was St. Paul, with what a 
 
The Revelation of the Mystery 15 
 
 message of glad tidings for the world he felt himself 
 charged, and how self-sacrificingly he pressed on to 
 deliver it. It is a message the full import of which 
 we have scarcely yet apprehended. 
 
 Apart from the revelation in this Gospel, there is 
 no greater mystery than that of human life as a 
 whole. It was one that the greatest minds of the 
 pre-Christian world could not penetrate, before which 
 all their powers were baffled : it is a mystery still to 
 every mind that turns away from the revelation given 
 in Christ. It is the sealed Book that only one could 
 open. We do not perhaps think so much about it as 
 we should : we are kept so busy with our immediate 
 personal concerns. But if we do ponder it seriously, 
 the vision of humanity that arises before us is a 
 perplexing one, in some aspects an appalling one; 
 it is one before which we stand dumb. Here we are 
 all Agnostics. We see generation after generation of 
 human beings appearing on this earth, passing across 
 it, as it were, with mingled experiences of joy and 
 sorrow — often with more sorrow than joy. To not a 
 few life seems something to be endured rather than 
 enjoyed ; to some it is dark with tragedy, and to all 
 it seems to end in the cold grave or silent tomb. 
 Some move along cheerily and thoughtlessly, recking 
 nothing of the future; others trudge on slowly, 
 stooping under heavy burdens of care : to some life 
 seems an opportunity to grasp all they can get, to 
 
1 6 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 others it is a dull round of hopeless toil, costing a 
 struggle even to exist. And we witness all this 
 great procession, constantly succeeding those who 
 have gone before, marching on whether they will 
 or not, and passing at length into the utterly un- 
 known as if they dropped into a deep unfathom- 
 able chasm on the outermost verge of the world. 
 Where do they go? We can follow them no 
 farther. What becomes of them ? What does it all 
 mean? What sense has there been in their exist- 
 ence ? What purpose in their creation ? The 
 mystery is deepened when we remember that not 
 only for the individual is death inevitable, but for 
 the race. No light on the ultimate meaning of 
 human life can be found from its contemplation on 
 the earth merely. We may conceivably reach at 
 some far distant time the perfection of Humanity 
 on the earth; but what of the myriads who have 
 passed away? What of the millions more who must 
 follow them before this ideal perfection can be 
 attained ? The perfect world we labour for can 
 only be enjoyed by a mere fraction of Humanity. 
 Not only so : it cannot last. The race itself must 
 die. The earth must become cold, unfit to be the 
 scene of human life. What meaning, what ultimate 
 reason is there in it all, since all must perish at last ? 
 Even were the cycle to be renewed in some way, it 
 would bring us no relief. This mystery of human 
 
The Revelation of the Mystery 17 
 
 life faces us to-day, and, with our more developed 
 sympathies, presses more heavily than ever on our 
 hearts. If it be indeed revealed in Christ, no revela- 
 tion, no discovery, can be so welcome, and He in 
 whom it is made surely stands in a unique relation 
 to the human race. If this be revealed in the Gospel, 
 — that indeed which makes it the universal Gospel — 
 we may well feel as Paul felt concerning it. 
 
 What, then, is the Christian revelation ? What 
 light for all comes from that disclosure of the hidden 
 purpose of God which so fills and uplifts the mind 
 and heart of Paul, which made those early Christians 
 sing for joy and brave torture and cruellest death 
 without fear? What solution of the great mystery 
 of life has Christianity to-day to offer the world? 
 Wonderful it is, if true. It may seem incredible, but 
 it is this, that man's Divinely intended destiny is 
 " glory " ; that all were created by God for Sonship to 
 Himself and for an inheritance in His eternal and 
 perfected Kingdom. Not for merely earthly joy or 
 sorrow, not to be the mere sport of circumstance, or, 
 rising higher, to be crushed at length under the 
 unbending necessities of the laws of matter ; not for 
 death and nothingness, or for any dark doom, but 
 for "glory." " God," says the Apostle, " was pleased 
 to make known what is the riches of the glory of this 
 mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, 
 the hope of glory l' 
 
1 8 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 This, of course, is in itself nothing new ; but what 
 we wish specially to bring out is its truth and 
 certainty, with its implications. We must ask next, 
 therefore, on what ground does this affirmation rest? 
 for on the reply to this depends our ability to accept 
 it as true. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 HOW THE REVELATION WAS MADE 
 
 HOW was the Christian revelation of this 
 mystery made? How did the illumination 
 come to the Christian mind — whether of Paul or of 
 any other ? There is the greater need for consider- 
 ing this because of the false conceptions of the nature 
 and mode of " revelation " that are current. With 
 some the distinction between " natural " and 
 " revealed " religion is so sharply made, and the 
 evidences of revealed religion deemed so inadequate, 
 that the latter is ruled out of consideration, or left 
 to those who are supposed to lack the courage of 
 applying reason to religion, who walk with half- 
 closed eyes " by faith." This is specially noticeable 
 in discussions concerning the future of Humanity; 
 any light that Christianity may have thrown on the 
 subject is ignored because it belongs to that uncertain 
 thing " revealed religion." It seems to be supposed 
 that the " revelation " is believed to have come only 
 by a voice from another sphere, by the direct speak- 
 ing of God or of Divine or angelic Beings, as 
 
 19 
 
20 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Mohammed claimed for the Koran; or else that it 
 came by means of some quite exceptional kind of 
 inspiration; which, while it may give the recipient 
 a certainty that cannot be questioned, has only an 
 individual value (see James' Varieties of Religious 
 Experience). 
 
 But these are all misconceptions so far as the 
 revelation which we have here to do with is con- 
 cerned. Paul, indeed, says to the Ephesians, " by 
 revelation was made known unto me the mystery." 
 But how did that revelation come to Paul ? No 
 doubt it was through spiritual illumination. But 
 the source of that illumination, the centre from which 
 it proceeded, was Jesus Christ in His life on earth in 
 human form. That is to say, the revelation came 
 through one belonging to our Humanity. It was 
 given in terms of human life. It was spoken, not by 
 words from Heaven, or in words at all, but in actual, 
 living, human deed. It was a normal expression of 
 a human life under the influence of that Power which 
 has ever been deepest of all in the world, carrying 
 onwards and upwards mankind. It is Divine revela- 
 tion, " supernatural," if we choose to use that some- 
 what confusing word, but none the less " natural," not 
 to be distinguished from what is the Divinely natural 
 manifestation in Humanity. When in other great 
 Personalities in history we see qualities manifested 
 which are beyond the common, we do not separate 
 
How the Revelation was made 2 1 
 
 these Personalities from the rest of mankind, but see 
 in them something belonging to man. Similarly, 
 whatever is manifested in Jesus Christ, however 
 marvellous it may seem, however much above what 
 is witnessed in other men, and in whatever way we 
 may describe His Person, was all done in and by the 
 man Jesus Christ. 
 
 What Christians were led to see in Jesus was the 
 true life of man represented for all men. These 
 Epistles show this very plainly. For them there 
 was no longer " Greek and Jew, circumcision and 
 uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, free- 
 man, but Christ is all and in all." The true man 
 appeared in Christ, man according to the mind of 
 God, man as he existed in the Divine Eternal Thought 
 and Purpose, man no longer " after the flesh," but 
 after " the Spirit." This was " the new man that is 
 after God created in righteousness and holiness of 
 truth " (Eph. iv. 24). It was this new man that the 
 Apostles preached and called on all men to become 
 conformed to: "whom we proclaim, admonishing 
 every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, 
 that we may present every man perfect in Christ" 
 — complete in that true manhood revealed in Him. 
 For this the various ministries of the Christian 
 Church were constituted ; " for the perfecting of the 
 saints (and all might now be embraced in that once 
 exclusively Jewish term), unto the building up of the 
 
22 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Body of Christ (which "the Church" is, to membership 
 in which all are now called), till we all attain unto the 
 unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of 
 God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. iv. 9-14). It 
 was Christ in them — His true life living in them and 
 conforming them to Himself — that was "the hope 
 of glory.'' Hence the many exhortations to "put 
 off the old man " and " put on the new man," to 
 seek earnestly to realise the same kind of life as 
 was revealed in Christ, and the assurances that there 
 was a sufficient Divine Power within them to enable 
 them so to live. 
 
 This is the great, primary, and outstanding fact in 
 Christianity — the revelation of the true life of man 
 in Christ. All else stands in the closest relation to 
 this. And the way in which this revelation came to 
 men, and the ground of our confidence in it, is simply 
 the fact of Christ as the manifestation of man in his 
 true, Divinely-intended life. The knowledge rests on 
 that which was realised and manifested in an actual 
 human person. 
 
 One cannot help feeling that it is much to be 
 regretted that Christ has not always been primarily 
 viewed and presented as the true man. As we shall 
 see, it is in this true manhood that His Deity is 
 revealed. It is in this, too, that His claim on our 
 attention and for our reception of Him consists. It 
 
How the Revelation was made 23 
 
 is as " the man Christ Jesus " He appears before us 
 and claims our following. His Messiahship is seen 
 by Paul ultimately to resolve itself into His Sonship 
 to God, and the reconciliation of all men to God 
 therein. But He has been too frequently presented 
 first on His Divine side, and for that reason the real 
 ground of His unique relation to man, and of the 
 " revelation " made in Him, has been obscured. The 
 consequences have also been evil practically. Because 
 the call to the true life of man as manifested in Him 
 has not been made primary, men have often failed to 
 see clearly what the Christian Salvation means, or 
 why they need it. They have been called upon to 
 be " saved," without its having been made plain to 
 them that what they needed to be saved from was 
 "the old man" — the lower self — in us all. What 
 Christ has done to reconcile us to God has been 
 dwelt on, without its being shown that to be indi- 
 vidually reconciled to God is to be brought to the 
 true life which God means for man. Men have been 
 asked and pleaded with to "believe in Christ," to 
 " receive Christ," without any clear understanding of 
 what believing in or receiving Christ means. Hence 
 the comparatively poor representation of life in its 
 truth that has been made in general, and the failure 
 to commend Christ to the world at large, the effects 
 of which are manifest in present-day indifference to 
 all religion. Christ did, as we shall see, represent 
 
24 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 man as reconciled to God, through which we receive 
 the forgiveness of sins ; but it was by standing before 
 God as man in his truth and representing on His 
 Cross the death of " the flesh," that we " should no 
 longer live to ourselves, but to Him Who died for 
 us." To receive Christ is to receive Him as our life 
 — as manifesting man's true life and as reconciling 
 us to God in His own life and death. Hence the 
 exhortation : " As ye therefore received Jesus Christ, 
 the Lord, (so) walk ye in Him, rooted and built up 
 in Him and established in your faith." And again : 
 " Be ye therefore imitators of God as beloved children, 
 and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and 
 gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice 
 to God for an odour of a sweet smell" (Eph. v. i, 2). 
 This alone is Christianity— living in love as Christ 
 did ; for this life in love is the true life of man and 
 the life of God in man. 
 
 Let Jesus Christ be held forth as the true man, with 
 all that this means for men, and men called on to 
 receive Him as such ; let it be made clear that this 
 is the Christian call, and such life the only salvation, 
 and we shall be on the way to secure the much 
 needed and long talked of revival of religion. Re- 
 ligion means union with God, and the only possible 
 union with Him is in spirit and life. A man only 
 comes into union with God as he makes God's 
 thought regarding him his own thought and ideal 
 
How its Truth was recognised 25 
 
 in life. It was this that Paul saw manifested in 
 Christ, and he therefore beheld therein the revelation 
 of God's thought and purpose for human life. 
 
 There is more yet to be said ; but this much is 
 clear, that the revelation given in Christ is one that 
 we can receive with full confidence and one that 
 appeals to all ; for it was given, not in any excep- 
 tional or questionable manner, but in a living member 
 of our common humanity expressing the true and 
 Divinely intended life of man. 
 
 How its Truth was recognised 
 
 But it will be asked, How did Christian men know 
 that what they saw in Christ was the true life of 
 man ? They knew it just as we may all know it. 
 The answer may be given in Paul's words : it " com- 
 mended itself to every man's conscience in the sight 
 of God." The truth was only hid from those who 
 were "perishing," because the light that enlightens 
 every man had been quenched within them. Man 
 is so constituted that he recognises the truth of him- 
 self, his ideal, what he ought to be, when it stands 
 before him. His lips may not confess it, nor his 
 practice follow it, but his conscience — his inner sense 
 — responds. Mostly all men recognise that Truth as 
 it shines in Jesus Christ. Amidst all the questions 
 that are raised by criticism, Jesus Christ stands forth 
 
26 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 as the man amongst men. As Dr. Samuel Davidson, 
 one of the most fearless and thorough-going of 
 critics, wrote in the last edition of his Introduction 
 to the New Testament: " A mystic haze encompasses 
 the person, life, and discourses of Jesus ; and sober 
 criticism must set about the task of removing it 
 reverently, respecting tradition without superstitiously 
 adopting it. After this is done, there stands forth 
 in colours more or less distinct, a person such as 
 the world never saw before — the living type of an 
 ideal humanity, pure and sinless, destined to influence 
 all times, to purify all people among whom His 
 name is known, and to ennoble His followers by lift- 
 ing them towards a measure of His stature" (vol. i. 
 p. 314). To which we may add the recent words 
 of a critical theologian. Writing of" Religious Life in 
 Germany," Professor Weinel says : " To us — Jesus has 
 given His life, radiant with goodness and with a 
 love extending beyond all limited human morality, 
 so that for us nothing else remains possible than to 
 live for this ideal and to believe in the God who has 
 made Himself known in Jesus" (Hibbert Journal, 
 July 1909). 
 
 Jesus Christ has impressed Himself on the world as 
 the true man in a way that can never be forgotten. 
 Wherever the Christian truth has reached He is 
 known as such, however little heeded He may be 
 practically. Even those who do not profess the 
 
How its Truth was recognised 17 
 
 Christian faith know what it should mean to be a 
 Christian, and perforce admire the Christ-like char- 
 acter. The Church is criticised by her opponents 
 for her lack of Christ-likeness. In mass meetings 
 men and women who have broken with all forms 
 of religion acclaim the name of Jesus. If we think 
 simply of the life of Christ as one of perfect love, 
 quite apart from all disputed details, we have in it 
 the ideal before which all must bow. It claims us, 
 commands us, and, think as we may, we cannot 
 conceive aught that is higher or better. It is the 
 life toward which we are all being moved even in 
 the course of natural evolution, the life in which 
 alone men can be brothers, or humanity be really 
 that united family which surely it ought to be. 
 
 Here then, we repeat, is the source of the affirma- 
 tion that the mystery of the meaning of human life 
 was revealed in Jesus Christ: it was so because in 
 Him that true life was manifested to which every 
 normal conscience must respond. But in order to 
 be the complete revelation of the mystery of man's 
 life, it must also be that of his ultimate destiny— 
 beyond bodily death — and we must now show how 
 that was given in the truly human life of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MAN'S DESTINY REVEALED IN CHRIST- 
 BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION, AND 
 OUR PRESENT RELATION TO IT— THE 
 REVELATION GIVEN IN THE LIFE 
 
 AS we shall see, the life that was manifested in 
 Christ necessarily implies a high destiny for 
 man beyond time and sense. Such a destiny is 
 implied also in the "glory" that sums up the 
 Christian hope : " Christ in you the hope of glory." 
 This glory is, of course, something to be attained in 
 a life beyond the present. Let us ask now how 
 this consummating revelation came to those first 
 Christians, and how it comes to ourselves. How 
 did those Christian believers gain this assurance? 
 In these Epistles, as elsewhere, it rests on a twofold 
 basis: (i) Belief in the resurrection of Christ; (2) the 
 consciousness of a present living relation to Christ. 
 
 Belief in the Resurrection of Christ 
 
 As is said in Ephesians i. 20, their hope had its 
 strength in the manifestation of " the might of God 
 
 a8 
 
Mans Destiny: Belief 'in Christ's Resurrection 29 
 
 which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him 
 from the dead and made Him sit at His right hand 
 in the heavenly places " ; they were " made alive 
 together with Christ," " raised up with Him, and 
 made to sit with Him in the heavenly places" 
 (ii. 5-7). And in Colossians we read that they 
 were "raised with Him through faith in the work- 
 ing of God who raised Him from the dead " (ii. 1 2 ; 
 cf. ver. 13 and chap. iii. 1). The resurrection of 
 Christ had thus a very important place in the faith 
 and hope of these Christians. 
 
 Belief in the resurrection of Christ is still the chief 
 ground of confidence with the generality of Christians, 
 and although, for our present purpose, we cannot 
 build on the " Resurrection " as that term is commonly 
 understood, we are far from having any desire to 
 belittle that confidence. It is a way of appre- 
 hending a great fact which, amidst all criticism, 
 remains unshaken, namely, the continued life and 
 activity of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. But 
 confidence in this fact is supposed to rest on the 
 narratives of the resurrection which we have in the 
 Gospels ; and, while many are still able to receive 
 implicitly these narratives — although they may not 
 always kindle in their hearts the glow of our earlier 
 Easter hymns — with an increasing number it is very 
 different. These narratives have been so criticised 
 that — although they may not have been discredited — 
 
30 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 the old confidence in them has been largely lost, and 
 the resurrection has become a subject for question 
 and discussion rather than a luminous revelation. 
 Whatever may be the truth concerning these narra- 
 tives, it is necessary to show that our Christian faith 
 and hope do not depend on them. 
 
 Much labour has been given to the endeavour to 
 elucidate the actual facts belonging to that which we 
 commonly speak of as "the resurrection of Christ." 
 All are agreed to-day that the first disciples were 
 firmly convinced of its reality, and that this convic- 
 tion was, largely, the foundation of that which we 
 know as the Christian religion. They must also 
 have had what was for them adequate grounds for 
 a belief that carried so much and that had such an 
 uplifting influence upon them. But as respects the 
 nature of the grounds of their belief and of the 
 resurrection itself — whether it was a bodily or a 
 spiritual one, with perhaps some kind of personal 
 manifestation to His disciples, investigators who 
 must be credited with equal honesty are far from 
 being agreed. While some still maintain that the 
 resurrection was in the body that had been laid in 
 the tomb, through, perhaps, the power of that Divine 
 Spirit that so fully possessed Christ and was mani- 
 fested in exceptional ways during His life; others 
 hold that He passed immediately into a higher life 
 in God — quite irrespective of the earthly body, and 
 
Man's Destiny: Belief inChrist'sRestirrection 31 
 
 that either He was able to manifest Himself to His 
 disciples in a spiritual body, or that they had visions 
 of Him alive (as St. Paul had), whether of an objective 
 or a subjective origin. By some it is held that the 
 narratives of the appearances, instead of representing 
 the grounds of their faith, were the results — the 
 materialisations of their faith, which itself rested on 
 their experiences of contact with the great Personality 
 of Christ, and that, whatever visions they may have 
 had were valid for themselves only. As Dr. Martineau 
 remarks : " Not only do I conceive that the disciples' 
 visions of him as risen depend on their entrancement 
 by his transcendent Personality, and could never 
 have visited them had he been of lower spiritual 
 stature; but I also admit that for us these visions 
 cannot in themselves serve as objective proofs of 
 his immortal life — their validity is simply for the 
 persons to whom they were present" {The Seat of 
 Authority in Religion, p. 376. See also Harnack's 
 What is Christianity f and other recent writers). 
 
 It would do no good to discuss the subject here, 
 because we wish to affirm only what can be universally 
 received. If we must go into an examination of the 
 evidences, and of the reasons for and against the 
 various positions adopted by modern scholars re- 
 specting the resurrection — matters filling volumes 
 of what is often intricate discussion — before we can 
 come to a properly sifted conclusion, we could scarcely 
 
32 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 speak of the Resurrection as being a revelation of man's 
 destiny for ourselves to-day. We cannot found upon 
 it as the first disciples may have done. We may 
 hold with personal conviction any one of the various 
 theories ; but we cannot say that others ought to 
 believe as we do. We may believe that certain of 
 the first disciples and St. Paul beheld such " appear- 
 ances" as were to them convincing proofs of the 
 continued and exalted life of their Lord, and that 
 they were meant to be such; but we have no such 
 visions, and it was not till Paul saw, as he believed, 
 Christ for himself that he was convinced. It is said 
 that the Resurrection was God's way of convincing 
 the disciples of the Messiahship of Jesus after the 
 crucifixion, which seemed the refutation of it. It 
 may have been so. But was it the only possible 
 way? May it not have been through spiritual 
 illumination? While we put away from us all 
 presuppositions as to what may or may not have 
 been possible, yet, with the narratives of the event 
 which we possess, it may be impossible for even the 
 most unbiassed seeker to come to a positive conclu- 
 sion ; and, so far as external proofs are concerned, it 
 may be purposely meant to be so. We cannot place 
 ourselves in the position of these first disciples : 
 what was evidence for them might not, even could 
 we know it for certain, be evidence for us. They 
 breathed a different intellectual atmosphere. They 
 
Mans Destiny: Belief inChrist' s Resurrection 33 
 
 believed, not only in the resurrection of Christ, but 
 in His coming again to earth in manifested " glory," 
 when they should also be " manifested with Him in 
 glory.'' The Resurrection had thus for them a 
 significance which it does not have for us. 
 
 Belief in a Hereafter for man does not rest on the 
 resurrection of Christ, although to the Christian 
 disciples it may have been a manifestation of it. 
 To many amongst ourselves to-day it would be a 
 welcome proof even of survival. Psychical research, 
 on the other hand, hopes by means of the evidences 
 of survival which it gathers to make the resurrection 
 of Christ more credible. The belief in survival grew 
 up in men's minds under various influences. It was 
 held — although perhaps loosely — by the main portion 
 of the Jews in our Lord's time, and by many of the 
 Greeks and Romans. He Himself affirmed the 
 survival of the soul, and faith in that fact was, so 
 far, the ground of His confidence in His return 
 after death. " Fear not,'' He said, " them that can 
 kill the body, but cannot kill the soul," and to the 
 dying robber He gave the assurance, " This day 
 shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." The Pharisees, 
 and apparently the most of the people, believed also 
 in a "resurrection at the last day." Our Lord 
 affirmed this in His answer to the Sadducees, and 
 spoke of it as the prelude to the inheritance of the 
 Kingdom of God. The disciples shared in these 
 3 
 
34 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 beliefs, and to them the resurrection of their Master 
 was not the return to life of one who was wholly 
 dead, but the re-appearing in bodily form of one 
 who had survived death and entered on a higher 
 life, such as became the Messiah, one in which they 
 should in some measure share. Jesus in His 
 Personality did not die, — the death was that of the 
 body of flesh merely : the question of the Resurrection 
 really affects only the appearances of Christ after 
 death, and it had, as we have said, a special signifi- 
 cance for those who looked forward to an immortal 
 life on a renewed earth in glorified bodies with 
 Christ as their Lord. 
 
 The fact just mentioned — that the Personality of 
 Jesus did not die when His body ceased to fulfil its 
 vital functions, seems sometimes to be strangely 
 forgotten or obscured in discussions concerning the 
 Resurrection. When it is said that " He could not 
 be holden of death," it is surely forgotten that no 
 spiritual being can be so. Besides, to Christian faith 
 Jesus Christ was Divine as truly as human, God as 
 well as man, in one undivided Person. Is it not 
 incongruous to suppose that one who was God as 
 truly as man ever really entered the sepulchre as 
 a dead person ? It could only be the man : where 
 then was the God? The truth is, that Christ as 
 a Spiritual Personality in no form entered the 
 sepulchre. If the Personality of Christ could again 
 
Mans Destiny: Belief inChris? s Resurrection 35 
 
 in some way re-unite itself with the dead body — 
 re-vitalising it — that Personality must have existed 
 in an effective form quite apart from the body. The 
 representation in the New Testament generally is 
 that " God raised Him from the dead," but if this 
 be taken to mean the re-vivification of His earthly 
 body, — a body which never "saw corruption" — we 
 should fall into such a materialistic conception of 
 the relations of soul to body as would leave no 
 hope for those whose bodies did " see corruption " or 
 were reduced to ashes in the fire, or otherwise dis- 
 solved. Such a bodily resurrection could give no 
 promise of ours. 
 
 The main question for ourselves to-day is not, 
 How did the first disciples come to believe in the 
 manifestation of man's destiny in Christ? but, How 
 can we see it? In one sense, of course, we cannot 
 see it. We have no visions of the risen Christ 
 granted us. We are thrown back upon faith, and 
 it is meant that we should be so. Even if the Gospel 
 narratives furnished such adequate proofs as would 
 gain our confident belief, we should still be amongst 
 those who "believed because they had seen," — 
 believing what we could not help believing — and 
 not among the blessed who " have not seen and yet 
 have believed." Our belief would be one compelled 
 by evidence: there would be no place left for the 
 action of faith — not faith in a narrative of external 
 
36 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 occurrences, but in God and in Christ. A merely 
 intellectual belief in the Resurrection would still leave 
 us far in spirit from Christ, into union with whom 
 faith is meant to bring us. Even though St. Paul 
 believed that he had seen Christ, he has still to say, 
 "We walk by faith, not by sight." The appeal 
 must be to something deeper than bodily or in- 
 tellectual sight, even to that faith which is the 
 deeper insight of the soul or spirit in man, while 
 it is, at the same time, the highest exercise of the 
 reason, as distinguished from mere ratiocination. 
 
 The Life Itself is the Revelation 
 
 If we see the true life of man as manifested in 
 Jesus Christ to be that of Sonship to God, if we see 
 Jesus Christ to be the Son of God (not to anticipate 
 what we may yet find to be the full truth concerning 
 His Person), how can we believe for a moment that 
 His crucifixion by His enemies extinguished His 
 Personality or ended that Divine-human life that 
 showed itself in Him? To doubt the permanency 
 of the life of Sonship to God is to doubt the 
 permanency of the Divine Life itself. How can we 
 believe it possible that the Personality in whom the 
 Ideal of the creation has been attained can, after all 
 that God has wrought for its realisation, pass into 
 nothingness, or be merely absorbed in the Divine, as 
 
The Revelation given in the Life t>7 
 
 if a separate personal life had never been lived at all ? 
 Unless we are to regard the creation as having no 
 ultimate meaning for the Personality that crowns it, 
 and no lasting value for the Creator Himself, we must 
 believe that those at least in whom the true life has 
 been realised (even if only in principle) do not only 
 survive death, but find the fruition and fulness of 
 their life in God. To fail to believe this is really to 
 fail to believe in God. 
 
 Besides, if the true life of man is life in union 
 with God, if it be the actual Divine Life in human 
 form, it cannot but be Eternal, and, according to its 
 measure in men, enter into the "glory" which 
 belongs to the Divine Life distinctively. It is even 
 now " Eternal Life." As those Epistles teach, those 
 who are united to Christ are already " made alive 
 with Him " in a life over which death has no 
 power. 
 
 If we are God's spiritual children, why should we 
 seek a sign? If we see the life of Christ to be 
 the Divine life in man, why should we, in the presence 
 of His personality, require some further proof through 
 the senses ? Do we not then lay ourselves open to 
 the reproach of Christ : " Except ye see signs and 
 wonders ye will not believe " ; or to that which their 
 mysterious Companion said to the two disciples on 
 the way to Emmaus : " O foolish men and slow of 
 heart to believe in all that the prophets have 
 
38 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 spoken : Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these 
 things and to enter into His glory?" We might 
 have what we should deem a "sign'' and yet be 
 mistaken. It is faith that is wanted. And if we 
 will not believe without some external evidence, 
 shall we not feel ashamed when we find how real 
 it all is, and see how we ought to have trusted and 
 believed ? The refusal to believe unless we see may 
 place us on a lower level in relation to God, and 
 prove our unfitness for higher trusts. It is not the 
 child-like, but rather the childish spirit that seeks 
 for " signs," and if we rest on these, then, whenever 
 doubt is cast upon them, our confidence is shaken. 
 It is this necessity for faith that draws our hearts 
 out to God and keeps us in such communion with 
 God in Christ as brings to us that experience which 
 those early Christians found, and which we have 
 said was a farther ground of their confidence. 
 
 In this way, whatever we may believe concerning 
 the Resurrection, and whatever evidences may have 
 been granted to the disciples in adaptation to their 
 mental states, for those who believe in God, and see 
 the true life of man to be, as shown in Christ, that of 
 Sonship to God, the revelation of man's destiny is 
 included in that of the true life as manifested 
 in Christ. Even apart from all re-appearances 
 to His disciples, after His death, the Personality 
 of Christ was such, and His disciples' confidence in 
 
The Revelation given in the Life 39 
 
 Him up to the crucifixion had been so strong, that 
 what they had seen in Him, and found Him to be to 
 them, may have been sufficient, after their recovery 
 from the shock of the crucifixion, to create in them 
 such a conviction of the glorification of their Master 
 as was (as we shall see immediately) verified in their 
 experience by communion with Him, though unseen 
 by them. 
 
 Belief in the Resurrection, and even the narratives 
 which record the event, have been most powerful 
 influences in the spread and progress of Christianity. 
 Apart therefrom, most probably it could never have 
 extended itself to people in all mental conditions and 
 of low spirituality as it has done, so that we can see 
 a providential ordering in the matter. Very few of 
 us would desire to part with these narratives, even 
 though we cannot lay the same stress on them as 
 formerly. It would be an unwarranted negation to 
 say that there was nothing objective in the experiences 
 of the disciples. Even though the conviction of the 
 continued life and exaltation of their Lord had a 
 spiritual source, it is psychologically possible that it 
 might become manifest in the form of a vision. But 
 we seem now to be called to a more spiritual faith, 
 one more in keeping with the belief we profess to have 
 in the Personality of Christ, one that ought to throw 
 us more on personal communion with Him and on 
 the present evidences of His Presence and Power. If 
 
40 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 criticism be driving us to this, we may see here also 
 a Divine providential ordering. 
 
 In view of the uncertainty which for many over- 
 hangs the Resurrection narratives, and of the opposing 
 critical opinions concerning them, it may be helpful 
 if we quote part of Dr. Martineau's concluding 
 remarks on the subject in his Seat of Authority in 
 Religion, which shows a high estimate of the Personality 
 of Jesus. " From this view of the early Christian 
 traditions we issue with one indisputable historical 
 fact, — the intense belief of the personal disciples of 
 Jesus, and of their quondam persecutor, Paul, that in 
 spite of the cross and the sepulchre he had passed 
 into a heavenly life whence he would visit or whither 
 he would lift those who were his by the pure power 
 of faith and love. That belief was the essence of 
 their message, the inspiration of their labours, the 
 creative energy out of which Christendom was born. 
 If we find that it did not come to them by physical 
 experience, — is it stripped of its validity and dropped 
 out of the religion? If we find that of no one else, 
 under like external conditions, would they have had 
 this belief, that it was contingent on their state of 
 mind towards him alone, that it was due to a person- 
 ality of unique power to enshrine itself in reverence 
 and love and render death itself conceivable only as 
 a new birth, do we on this account turn it into an 
 illusion ? On the contrary, no physical fact, simply 
 
Union with the Living Christ 41 
 
 as perceived, touches the essence of religion ; but 
 lies within the knowledge of the seen ; while all 
 faith in the unseen, inseparable from trust in the 
 Divine Perfection, is born out of the inner experiences 
 of the soul in looking up to one who at once lifts and 
 humbles it, out of the infinite moral ideality of the 
 human affections " (pp. 375, 376). 
 
 Union with the Living Christ 
 
 But the faith of these Christians in a risen and 
 glorified Lord, their Head and Representative, did 
 not rest merely on what they may have been told of 
 His resurrection. Their faith was, as we have said, 
 verified in their experience. The faith of the first 
 disciples had already over-passed the boundaries of 
 the seen. If the unique Personality of Jesus had that 
 power which Dr. Martineau attributes to it, He had 
 already lifted them into a fellowship with Himself in 
 the unseen and eternal. It was not a new thing they 
 had to rise to. And this faith was an essential 
 element in Christianity. It was this risen and 
 exalted Christ that was preached to men ; it was in 
 Him they were asked to believe, to Him they were to 
 look ; and if there had been no reality in it, how long 
 would Christianity have continued to exist ? 
 
 We find, therefore, those Christian believers living 
 as those who were in vital union and communion with 
 
42 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 a living and glorified Christ. He was their Lord — 
 not a dead, but a living Lord — whom they were 
 called to obey and follow, "in whose name" they 
 should do everything, " giving thanks unto God, the 
 Father, through Him," " doing all things heartily as 
 unto the Lord," knowing that " from the Lord they 
 should receive the reward of the inheritance, for they 
 served the Lord Christ." The Lord Jesus was a very 
 real Presence with them. He was the Head of whom 
 they held, and from whom the whole body received 
 its requisite nourishment (Eph. iv. 15, 16; Col. ii. 19). 
 Christ was their very life ; in Him was the fulness, 
 and they were made full in him ; it was for them to 
 have "Christ dwelling in the heart through faith"; 
 it was Christ in them was " the hope of glory." 
 
 The reality of the continued life of Jesus was 
 thus something that was verified in their daily ex- 
 perience. They not only believed the witnesses of 
 His resurrection who testified that they had seen 
 Him alive after His crucifixion : they lived in con- 
 stant communion with Him as their risen Lord. 
 Although invisible to bodily sight, He was present to 
 faith. As another Christian writer put it: "Whom, 
 not having seen, ye love ; on whom, though now ye 
 see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with 
 joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end 
 of your faith (even) the salvation of (your) souls." 
 True, they may have looked for that salvation to 
 
Union with the Living Christ 43 
 
 come to them in its fulness at the re-appearing of 
 Christ on earth. But in a deeper sense they were 
 constantly " receiving " it, as their thought and love, 
 fixed on Christ, lifted them more and more above 
 themselves and conformed them to the Divine Ideal 
 manifested in Him. There was a spiritual power 
 proceeding from Christ in God which " wrought 
 nightly " in them, becoming, in short, their very life, 
 possessing them with a vitality higher than that of 
 nature, and working in them the sense of a union 
 with Christ such as bodily death could not sever. 
 In this union with their Lord they felt themselves 
 raised into the sphere of the Divine and Eternal, and 
 in their glorified Lord they beheld the image of that 
 which they should thereafter be. 
 
 The conviction of the living presence of Christ in 
 God, and of a life and glory beyond the earthly, did 
 not depend merely on belief in the Resurrection, but 
 was bound up with and inseparable from the whole 
 of early Christianity. Without it there could have 
 been no enduring Christianity. The Christian con- 
 sciousness of salvation was not that of a completed 
 salvation, but that of one begun in principle, and to 
 be completed for them and in them by Christ. Jesus 
 was the Saviour, not merely on account of what He 
 had done for them, but also in virtue of that which 
 He was yet to do. It was to a living Lord and 
 Saviour they looked, and they found that they did 
 
44 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 not look to Him in vain. And wherever the same 
 faith has existed, the same experience has been found. 
 Christ's presence is not remote to the believing soul. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that although these first 
 Christians believed in, it may be, the bodily resurrec- 
 tion of Christ, which we have seen had an important 
 bearing on the form in which they entertained " the 
 hope of glory," these Epistles show sufficient grounds 
 for our confidence in the revelation in Christ of man's 
 destiny beyond death, apart from any particular 
 belief concerning His resurrection. That Christ 
 now lives in God is the essential truth for us. 
 Further reasons for this confidence will appear when 
 we have considered the Christian conception of the 
 Person of Christ. To the nature of the Christian 
 " Hope of glory," and to the question of the ultimate 
 destiny of mankind, we shall have to return, in which 
 connection the difficulty which some entertain as to 
 any survival by man of bodily dissolution will be 
 considered. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PERSON OF CHRIST: 
 THE COSMIC CHRIST 
 
 THE perception of the revelation of the true life 
 of man in Christ does not depend on any 
 theory of His Person, but is open to all men to 
 behold. Yet the fact that we do have in Him the 
 realisation of the Divine Ideal of man leads to such 
 a conception of His Person as has most important 
 bearings on His present relations to us, and on the 
 realisation of the true life on our part. It was largely 
 in this connection that the early Christian interest in 
 the Person of Christ had its origin, and it is in this 
 connection that the exalted conception of His Person 
 in these Epistles stands and is dwelt on in them. It 
 is as enforcing what Christ is to us for the spiritual 
 life, not for the mere assertion of a metaphysical idea 
 concerning Him, any more than for the Idealisation 
 of the Saviour. It has all a sober, practical bearing. 
 Further, if it be asked, why should the Ideal of our 
 life come to be so completely manifested in Christl 
 the question can only be answered by the Christian 
 
46 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 doctrine of His Person. Realising this, we shall also 
 find in that answer strong confirmation of what has 
 already been said. 
 
 The Conception of Christ in these Epistles 
 
 In the opening chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Colossians the highest position is ascribed to Jesus 
 Christ, not only in relation to the Church, but to the 
 universe and to God. In view of the false teaching 
 that had been introduced among the Colossians, 
 advocating the worshipping of angels, the concilia- 
 tion of unseen powers supposed to have influence for 
 good or for evil, legal scrupulosities, and an asceti- 
 cism believed to recommend men to God or to those 
 unseen powers, it was necessary for Paul to show 
 them that in Christ they had all they needed for the 
 spiritual life. And he did this, as the occasion 
 required, by setting forth Christ's relation to God 
 and the universe in such a way as might convince 
 them that they could not possibly have anything 
 more than that which they had in Christ. In relation 
 to God, He is " the Son of His love," " the image of 
 the invisible God." He is "the first-born of all 
 creation " ; " in Him were all things created in the 
 heavens and upon the earth — all things (the uni- 
 verse) have been created through Him and unto Him ; 
 He is before all things, and in Him all things con- 
 
The Person of Christ : the Cosmic Christ 47 
 
 sist " — hold together. " It was the good pleasure of 
 the Father (or of God) that in Him should all the 
 fulness (the entire Pleroma) dwell " ; and in chapter 
 ii. 9, 10 it is said that "in Him dwelleth all the ful- 
 ness of the Godhead bodily-wise " — who (as had been 
 stated in chap, i.) " is the Head of all principality and 
 power." 
 
 These assertions undoubtedly lead up to what we 
 usually speak of as " the Deity of Christ." Yet it is 
 to be observed — 
 
 (1) That it is not supreme or absolute Deity that 
 is affirmed of Christ. In Colossians and Ephesians 
 He is clearly distinguished from " God" God the 
 Father, " the God and Father of Christ," " the God of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory " (Eph. i. 
 17). The apostolic formula is "God our Father and 
 the Lord Jesus Christ " (Eph. i. 1). It is God who 
 does everything in and through Christ. It was God 
 who "raised Him from the dead and set Him at His 
 right hand, — far above all rule and authority and 
 power" (Eph. i. 19, 20). In relation to God, He is 
 " the image " and " the Son 0/God." In relation to the 
 creation, while all things were created in, through and 
 unto Christ, "who is before all things," still it was 
 "God, who created all things" and formed "His 
 eternal purpose in Christ Jesus our Lord " (Eph. iii. 
 9, 11). Thanks are to be given to "God the Father 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Col. i. 3, 12, iii. 17). 
 
48 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Christ is " seated at the right hand of God " ; " our life 
 is hid with Christ in God" (Col. iii. I, 3), etc., etc. 
 This is the general representation in the Apostolic 
 writings. In 1 Cor. viii. 6, Paul says, "There is 
 one God the Father, of whom are all things, and we 
 unto Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom 
 are all things and we through Him " ; and in another 
 "Epistle of the Imprisonment" — Philippians — of 
 about the same date as Colossians and Ephesians, 
 he speaks of Him " who existing in the form of 
 God," yet " emptied Himself," etc., and was in con- 
 sequence exalted by God and " given the name which 
 is above every name — that every tongue should con- 
 fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the 
 Father." We must give full recognition to these 
 representations. They are open to all and carry 
 much weight with some. But — 
 
 (2) What is thus said of Christ does not admit of 
 an Arian any more than a Humanitarian interpreta- 
 tion. The " first-born (irpurdrox.og) of all creation " 
 cannot, in the connection in which it stands, mean 
 that He Himself belongs to the creation. For He 
 is said to have been " before all things," and all 
 things were created in Him (as their Ideal), through 
 Him (as instrumental cause), and unto Him (as final 
 cause), hence also in Him the universe " holds to- 
 gether " (consists) — is a definite consistent whole — a 
 Cosmos. He cannot therefore be regarded as a 
 
The Person of Christ : the Cosmic Christ 49 
 
 creature, however high, but must participate in the 
 Deity. He is " the Son " in distinction from all 
 created beings. It is manifestly the same doctrine 
 practically as we have in the Prologue to the Fourth 
 Gospel, in the opening verses of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, and in other writings of St. Paul and St. 
 John. In the Apocalypse, also, Christ is "the Alpha 
 and the Omega " — " the beginning of the Creation of 
 God," " the first and the last, the beginning and the 
 end." 
 
 Christianity is bound to affirm that in Jesus Christ 
 we have not only man, but God in one undivided 
 Person, that in the life and death of Christ we behold 
 a Divine Being expressing Himself in human form. 
 It is bound to affirm this, not as a belief to be 
 accepted for some dogmatic reason, but because it 
 is vital to Christianity as a living religion. It is 
 only thus that we can think of Christ as holding 
 that present relation to us in which the supreme 
 value of the Christian Faith is centred, which we 
 find to be true in experience. It is only in Christ 
 that we can find God manifested as God, although 
 in human form. Neither in nature nor within our- 
 selves can we so find Him. It was the experience 
 of what they had in Christ — such at-one-ment with 
 God and such new Spiritual life — and what they 
 saw revealed in His life, that led the ultimately 
 surviving and dominant section of Christians to 
 4 
 
50 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 affirm His Deity. They did this, of necessity, in 
 the forms open to them at the time, chiefly in those 
 belonging to the Logos doctrine, so that for most 
 Jesus Christ was the pre-existent Divine Logos 
 (meaning originally the Reason or Thought, and 
 Word of God and the centre of all Divine powers) 
 conceived as personal, as we have it most fully 
 set forth in the Fourth Gospel. To St. Paul, 
 however, as to the Author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, Christ is the Divine "Son." But this 
 designation (Hebrew in its origin), and the other 
 terms which are applied to Christ in Colossians, 
 belong also to the Logos doctrine. Our concern is 
 not with the forms in which the early Christians 
 expressed their faith, but with the substance of that 
 faith. The Logos doctrine, although containing 
 important truth, is strange to us, and, carried back 
 to its original meaning, it scarcely gives what 
 Christian theology seeks to affirm. 
 
 The doctrine of "the Deity of Christ'' requires 
 more careful and discriminating statement than it 
 has often received. We must beware, when affirm- 
 ing what is truth for ourselves, lest we create 
 unnecessary barriers in the way of the acceptance 
 of the truth by others. We must remember the 
 multitudes of educated people everywhere who are 
 standing aloof from Christianity, many of whom 
 are honestly unable to accept this doctrine as it 
 
The Person of Christ ; the Cosmic Christ 5 1 
 
 has been commonly stated, or, at least, as they 
 understand the statement. Not only the Jew and 
 the Unitarian, but, as has been recently said< — only 
 too truly — there are "thousands of educated men 
 in every country of Western Europe who no longer 
 believe, in any old orthodox sense, in the full 
 Divinity of Christ" (C. G. Montefiori in Hibbert 
 Journal, January 7th, 1913). This fact should give 
 us pause, and lead us to reconsider seriously our 
 theological definitions and modes of statement. 
 
 We ought surely to be as anxious to see all 
 these increasing numbers brought to accept the 
 faith as we are for the conversion of the heathen, 
 — more anxious should we not say ? for (as we 
 have said elsewhere), if all these at home were 
 really brought to Christ, the outlying heathen world 
 would be speedily converted. Especially should we 
 have regard for those whose minds have been formed 
 under the influence of Modern Science, whoread history 
 and observe the actual happenings in the realm of 
 Nature, to many of whom, therefore, " the (physical) 
 miraculous " (however true for ourselves) is a serious 
 difficulty. The difficulties that many feel are not 
 being diminished, but rather increased, by the better 
 knowledge which criticism is supposed to give us 
 of the historical Christ, as He was conceived or 
 understood and reported by the Synoptists, who 
 viewed Him, as they could see and understand 
 
52 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Him, through what was largely a Jewish atmo- 
 sphere. The very phrase " the Deity of Christ" 
 although it cannot well be avoided, is apt to be 
 confusing. For Christ, in one aspect of His Person 
 — that which first presents itself — was certainly man. 
 To say simply, without explanation, " Christ was 
 God," tends to be misleading. But if we add the 
 qualifying words, " in human form," we state a great 
 Christian truth which can be vindicated to reason, 
 and which is all that we really mean to affirm, 
 namely, that God was truly present, incarnate in 
 that man, expressing His Divine Life through Him. 
 It was a Divine as truly as it was a human life. 
 While it is true that "we must distinguish the 
 Divine Principle even from the Person in whom 
 it may first have become manifest," yet if that 
 Person was wholly possessed thereby, so that the 
 Divine was actually formative of His Personality, 
 He was as truly Divine as human; we have in 
 Him God in that human form. So again, in answer 
 to the question, How does God come to be there? 
 How did God become man ? we must show the 
 Incarnation to be involved in the Creation, and as 
 coming in the continuity of the Divine working in 
 Nature and in man. Otherwise we leave an un- 
 bridged hiatus between science and religion. 
 
 It is thus also that we shall be able to get light 
 concerning the pre-existence. There seems to be a 
 
Christ the Ideal and Goal of the Creation 53 
 
 tendency at present to lay less stress on this. But 
 apart from pre-existence in some real form in God 
 expressing itself in Christ, we cannot have a truly 
 Divine Lord and Saviour and Revealer of God. 
 The Divine cannot begin to be : it must be Eternal. 
 We must see God manifesting Himself in the 
 humanity of Christ, and that humanity as having its 
 source and origin in God. 
 
 Let us now, without further preface, turn to the 
 doctrine of Christ as stated in the Epistle to the 
 Colossians, and see if we cannot find therein that 
 which will approve itself to our reason as well as to 
 our faith. 
 
 Christ The Ideal and Goal of the Creation 
 
 The special feature here is that Christ is repre- 
 sented as the Ideal and Goal of the Creation. Not 
 only does Redemption centre in Him, but the World, 
 the Universe. He is not only "the Head of the 
 Church," but of Humanity ; not only " the first-born 
 from the dead," but " of all Creation." Redemption 
 through Christ is not an after-thought of God, but 
 the outcome of an "eternal purpose" in which the 
 world itself was founded. If we believe in God at 
 all, we must believe in a Divine purpose in the 
 Creation and in a Divine Ideal for it. That Ideal 
 was He " in whom all things were created," and it is 
 
54 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 as the realisation of that Ideal that Christ appears. 
 There are not two separate Divine movements, one 
 represented by Creation and the other by Redemp- 
 tion ; there is but one Divine movement, natural and 
 spiritual, issuing in both. The Christ who appears 
 as Redeemer existed eternally in the thought and 
 purpose of God. He does not enter the world for 
 the first time in what we know as " the Incarnation " ; 
 His appearance is the outcome of a Divine creative 
 process in its fulness, not to be separated from it: 
 the Incarnation is the fulness in manifestation of the 
 Divine creative act, and at the same time of the 
 Creator. 
 
 Bishop Lightfoot, in his Commentary on Colos- 
 sians, emphasised the importance of seeing " the 
 mediatorial function of Christ in the Church as 
 flowing from His mediatorial functions in the 
 world, an idea which," he said truly, "has with 
 ourselves retired very much into the background. 
 Though in the creed common to all the Churches 
 we profess our belief in Him as the Being ' through 
 whom all things were created,' yet in reality this 
 confession seems to exercise very little influence on 
 our thoughts." The loss, he pointed out, is serious, 
 "both as affects the breadth and fulness of our 
 theological conceptions and our sympathy with the 
 revelations of science. Through the recognition of 
 this idea, with the consequences that flow from it as 
 
Christ the Ideal and Goal of the Creation 55 
 
 a living influence, more than in any other way, may 
 we hope to strike the chords of that ' vaster music ' 
 which results only from the harmony of knowledge 
 and faith, of reverence and research." These words 
 are as true for to-day as they were for the time when 
 they were written. It is only, we think, on the lines 
 of the presentation of Christ in the opening chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Colossians that we are able to 
 gain such a conception of His Person as shall satisfy 
 reason as well as faith and make our theology at 
 one with science. We have indeed a similar repre- 
 sentation in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel ; but 
 the ground of the assertion is not so manifest as it is 
 here. Let us ask, What is the foundation on which it 
 rests ? 
 
 Like " the revelation of the mystery " to which it 
 belongs, it rests on what was actually seen in the life 
 of Christ, — on the fact that the true Divinely- 
 conceived life of man was realised and manifested 
 in Him. In this we have the highest expression of 
 God that can be given us in this world ; it is all that 
 we can know of God. It is for this reason — the 
 manifestation of the true life of man in Christ — that 
 the Apostle can go back to the Eternal and speak of 
 Christ as "the image (likeness and revelation) of 
 God," " the first-born of all the creation," in whom, 
 through whom, and unto whom all things were 
 created, and in whom they hold together, and as 
 
56 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 such the Head of all powers and persons, whether 
 in the heavens or on the earth. Let us take first, 
 Christ in His relation to man and this world of 
 humanity, leaving aside for the moment the wider 
 relations affirmed of Him. 
 
 Christ in Relation to this World 
 
 If man's life in its truth was manifested in Christ, 
 then it was certainly in Him, as the Divine Ideal, 
 that man was conceived and created. We see the 
 Ideal of anything when we witness its realisation. 
 And, since man is the crown, and, as far as we can 
 see, the final end of the creation, the world, and all 
 things in it had their origin in Him. We see in Him 
 the realised, and materially expressed, Ideal of the 
 Creation. In this view Jesus Christ, even as the man 
 in whom the Divine Ideal of man's life should be 
 realised, had at least an ideal pre-existence in God, 
 and was in this sense clearly "before all things," and 
 He in, through, and for whom all things were 
 created. 
 
 But the Ideal was also something in God. If 
 Christ was "the first-born of all the creation," yet 
 not belonging to the creation, or a creature, His 
 birth before the creation must be regarded as a 
 Divine Conception. It was a Divine Thought; it 
 had existence in the Divine Mind ; it was something 
 
Christ in Relation to this World 57 
 
 efficiently present to God. It was ideal, but not 
 what we commonly mean when we say that a thing 
 is " ideal merely." It was a very potent Reality in 
 God, so much so that the whole creation proceeded 
 from it. It was God as He conceived the Creation 
 and became the Creator. Not thought merely, but 
 Life also — the life-potency of the world, the source 
 of its existence, the power of its evolution or 
 development. The thought which was the begin- 
 ning of the Creation was the most Real of all things 
 — that which gave Reality to all else — living, Divine. 
 As the Ideal and Potency of the Creation it was 
 something of God, passing out of God to be the life 
 of the world. 
 
 The conception which modern science gives us of 
 the world is that of a great organism, which, like 
 any of the smaller organisms it contains, gradually 
 realises and expresses its ideal. We see the be- 
 ginning revealed in the end. That ideal of the entire 
 creation which was Christ in the Divine Thought 
 must find ultimate realisation in the Creation of 
 which it was the ideal, along the lines of the Divine 
 working therein. All throughout the world's history, 
 throughout all human history, it had been moving 
 onward towards its full expression. It found partial 
 expression in the " matter " which became its instru- 
 ment, higher expression as life appeared and rose in 
 character, higher still in the first human form, rising 
 
58 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 continually as man developed under various in- 
 fluences, including the spiritual (as we shall see 
 farther on), and in Jesus Christ it found complete 
 expression. It was God immanent becoming gradu- 
 ally emanent, becoming so fully at length in Christ. 
 The Divine creative Thought and Power that formed 
 the world found expression in Him in human form. 
 Therefore the Apostle can say truly, " It pleased the 
 Father (or God) that in Him should all the fulness 
 dwell." 
 
 The Ideal in God as it was manifested in its 
 realisation in Christ, was that of Sonship to Himself — 
 it was therefore the realisation and expression in 
 human form of that which was eternal in God. If 
 we may take the meaning of the description of Christ 
 in Col. i. 14 — "the Son of His love" — as being that 
 which Augustine, Olshausen, and Lightfoot, amongst 
 others, adopted, viz., as referring to His generation of 
 the essence of God, which is Love, we have here " the 
 Son " in God and of God as the Ideal of the world, 
 who can therefore be described as " the image of the 
 invisible God " ; and we see why " sonship " was the 
 distinctive character of the consciousness of Christ. 
 We see also that that which was working itself out 
 into full expression in the creation was the Love which 
 God is, in which man who should crown the world is 
 conceived as His son, which sonship finds its full 
 human expression in Christ. Viewed thus — simply 
 
Christ in Relation to this World 59 
 
 as expressing the true life of man — we see in Christ 
 the eternal Divine in its full Divine-human ex- 
 pression. 
 
 It is only in human form — as man — that God can 
 be manifested in this world in which man is the 
 highest production. And along the whole line of 
 human history we never see God till we come to 
 Jesus Christ. Only in Him does the heart find that 
 which it seeks, or the reason that which satisfies it. 
 Only then do we witness the ideal that shines within 
 ourselves realised. Only then is the theistic affirma- 
 tion completely warranted. Up till then, power was 
 manifested, but its highest character as ethical life 
 only reached its adequate expression in Christ. 
 There can be no higher manifestation of that ethical 
 life which is the Divine Life than the Perfect Love 
 which lived in Christ. Before He appeared, its 
 character as ethical life had indeed been shown. We 
 see men all over the world rising in some measure 
 into it and gradually advancing therein. We witness 
 in Israel, in particular, a more or less constant 
 onward and upward movement (as will be more fully 
 referred to after), till it culminates in Jesus Christ. 
 Scientists are discussing to-day how life originated, 
 but through whatever medium it appeared, it was a 
 manifestation of what is contained in the creative 
 potency. As it rose in character, its nature was 
 revealed in increasing fulness, till at length in Christ, 
 
60 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 life in its highest, even Divine form was seen — " that 
 eternal Life which was with the Father and was 
 manifested unto us." Before the appearance of 
 Christ men believed in God — more or less imperfectly- 
 conceived — but there was no God fully manifested. 
 But in that life of Christ we " see God " ; we feel that 
 the words which the Fourth Gospel ascribes to Him 
 are warranted : " He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
 Father"; and we join in the Christian rejoicing: 
 " the darkness is past and the true light shineth.'' 
 
 Jesus Christ, therefore, while truly man, born, living, 
 learning, and dying as man, looking up to God as 
 His Father and doing His will, as He also taught 
 His disciples to do, was at the same time, as that 
 man, God in human form. In Him God had become 
 " manifest in the flesh." He is present in that true 
 man as He has entered the world. The Divine 
 principle and potency of the creation which had a 
 real personal existence in God, attained in Him full 
 expression in the world. We are all doubtless the 
 product of that same Divine principle, but in 
 Christ complete ethical and personal expression was 
 reached. But it was in human form, under the 
 conditions and limitations of humanity. It was a 
 gradual growth or development. There was no non- 
 human consciousness of pre-existence, any more than 
 the possession of omnipotence, omnipresence, or omni- 
 science, which are attributes of God in Himself, but 
 
Christ in Relation to this World 61 
 
 not of man, nor of God as incarnate in man. But 
 there was in Christ a unique consciousness of Sonship 
 towards the Father : this was His distinctive Divine- 
 human consciousness, as we should expect it to be. 
 
 For the Ideal, let us repeat, was that of Sonship — 
 
 a Sonship which was real in God, but ideal as 
 
 destined to find expression in man. It existed in 
 
 God and for God; it was in God the motive and 
 
 power of the creation. In His infinite Love, in this 
 
 ideal, God went out from Himself (if we may so 
 
 speak) to be the principle of the creation, in order 
 
 that this life of Sonship to Himself should be realised 
 
 by the beings who should crown His working. In 
 
 other words, God in that " Mode " or " Person " 
 
 (again to use imperfect human terms) of " Son," 
 
 became Creator in order that this Sonship should be 
 
 shared by beings capable of rising into it. It was 
 
 the only divinely worthy conception of the creation. 
 
 For God cannot seek what is ultimately lower than 
 
 the diffusion of His own life of love. And it is the 
 
 only satisfying thought of the purpose of the creation, 
 
 with its struggle and suffering. In Christ the Ideal 
 
 was realised, and therein God as Son — God in that 
 
 Sonship which is eternally real in Himself — was 
 
 incarnated. The ethical Sonship manifested in 
 
 Christ is identical in character with the Sonship 
 
 eternally in God. As Dr. Garvie remarks : " It is to 
 
 a false metaphysic that we owe the assumption that 
 
62 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 ethical Sonship, Sonship revealed and realised in the 
 entire personal development, is something else and 
 less than an ontological Sonship might be. If Spirit 
 be the ultimate reality, then there can be nothing 
 more real than the Sonship of Jesus as expressed in 
 His self-consciousness. In this personal union of 
 God with man there is essential union" {The Chris- 
 tian Certainty and the Modern Mind, p. 1 66). 
 
 As we have seen in these Epistles, it is not God 
 in His absolute, unconditioned Deity that becomes 
 incarnate in Christ, not " the Father " but " the 
 Son " ; and it is " the Son " as man. But still it is 
 God in the essential ethical and ontological truth of 
 His Being, God as He has entered the world and 
 communicated Himself to man, God actually present 
 in Christ as He had moved towards His Self- 
 expression in human form, God, as in the evolution 
 of the world and of man, " natural " and " spiritual," 
 He is enabled to come to us, as He continuously 
 imparted Himself to Christ, and as through Christ 
 He seeks to communicate Himself to us all. 
 
 At the same time, in the humanity of Christ 
 realising the Divine Ideal, we behold the true man 
 and Representative of men. If contemplated from 
 above, we see the Deity becoming incarnated in 
 Him ; regarded from below, we see man in Him 
 rising to the truth of his manhood. If, on the one 
 
Christ in Relation to the Universe 63 
 
 hand, all the Divine working and self-impartation 
 culminates in Him ; on the other hand, all the 
 advances of man Godwards also culminated in Him : 
 He is man in his truth. And for this reason, just 
 as His Divine-human consciousness in relation to 
 God was that of Sonship, so, in relation to man, it 
 was that feeling of identity and representativeness 
 which found expression in that name by which He 
 always called Himself the Son of Man. 1 
 
 Christ in Relation to the Universe 
 
 It may seem more difficult to vindicate, on the 
 ground laid down, the universal relationship which 
 the Apostle ascribes to Christ. Yet we may gain 
 some light here also ; we may see reason to believe 
 that the wider relation is necessarily involved in the 
 establishment of the narrower. For the Creation is 
 one, the Universe is one — not to be divided into parts. 
 
 Of course, to the Apostle the universe was much 
 less than it is to us, and anthropocentric. For us it 
 seems to be infinite. An endless vista of worlds in 
 all stages of their history is opened up to our view : 
 creation is continually and universally proceeding. 
 Yet we can imagine no worthier Ideal or motive for 
 the great process in the wondrous whole than that 
 
 1 This term is discussed in the writer's The Cross and the 
 Kingdom (2nd ed„ T. & T, Clark). 
 
64 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 which we have seen manifested in Christ as the Ideal 
 of man. Perhaps on other grounds we cannot say 
 positively that man is the highest created being in the 
 universe. But, so far as we know, there is no higher 
 life than the ethical human, and there may be no 
 higher kind of ethical life possible in created beings. 
 The spectroscope has shown that the entire material 
 universe is composed of the same elements as the 
 earth and solar system, and it is by no means 
 improbable that life also, wherever it may appear, 
 is of the same essential type. We cannot conceive, 
 indeed, of any other type of ethical life than that 
 which is the ideal of human life as we see it realised 
 in Christ. For it is the very life of God in man, Son- 
 ship to Himself. In whatever varied forms of being 
 that life may find expression, it must be in itself the 
 essential life of all personal beings. As has been 
 well said by a recent writer, in view of the question 
 of Immortality: "There is little reason to suppose 
 that the course of evolution in other systems has 
 been materially different from that in our own solar 
 system. Thus man, at the culmination of his evolu- 
 tion (which is not yet), might easily represent the 
 highest development of any creature in the universe 
 as visibly constituted " (H. B. Marriott Watson in 
 N. American Rev., August 1912). In the above 
 quotation it is said that the culmination of human 
 evolution is not yet reached. This is true, of course, 
 
Christ in Relation to the Universe 65 
 
 of the race as a whole. But if the Christian belief 
 is well founded, that the highest point has been 
 attained in a human Personality who represents 
 the race, then the relation of that Person, not only 
 to the human race, but to all who share in the same 
 kind of life, stands fast. And if we ask what the 
 highest point in human life is supposed to be even 
 by those who have not the Christian faith immedi- 
 ately in view, we shall find the answer, that it is 
 Perfect Love. Towards this the whole evolution of 
 Humanity has been, and still is, moving on. To 
 quote again the writer referred to : " In reviewing 
 the history of the human race there emerges clearly 
 above all else the continuity, irregular continuity it 
 must be admitted, but still the continuity, of a pro- 
 gressive movement from barbarous passions and 
 tastes and acts toward a greater refinement of 
 feelings and manners and a clarified loving-kindness. 
 So far as history in the past is any guide in inferences, 
 we are entitled to assume the progress at an increasing 
 rate of humanity toward an ideal of universal and 
 perfected benevolence." As this writer says, "this 
 seems to be the reading of history ", and if his words 
 are here given an application which he may not have 
 had in mind, they are none the less true, and they 
 bear out what is affirmed in this Epistle of the 
 universal reach of that Divine Ideal of Life which 
 was eternally conceived by God and realised and 
 5 
 
66 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 manifested in Christ. As Dr. Du Bose remarks: 
 "Christianity has been the first to recognise the 
 spiritual as well as the rational ground of the 
 universe. According to it, the Divine Logos, by 
 which is meant the eternal reason, meaning, and 
 ground of all creation, is one. If Jesus Christ is 
 the Logos of man, then He is the Logos of all 
 creation — of what we should now call all evolution — 
 of which man is the final cause and crown. And if 
 He is the Logos of these, then He is the Logos of 
 God Himself; that is to say, the full account of man 
 is the account of the universe, so far as it has 
 significance for us, and the truth of the universe 
 and of man as its end and crown expresses all the 
 account God can give us of Himself. Outside of 
 that is outside of our limit of experience" {The 
 Reason of Life, p. 253). 
 
 Therefore we conclude that in Jesus Christ as 
 manifesting the true life of man — in whom we see 
 the Divine Thought of man realised — we have Him 
 " in whom all things were created," the " Son of 
 God's Love" appearing in human form, the all- 
 creating " Word " become flesh, He " who existed 
 in the form of God " — that is, as an element in the 
 Divine personal life — appearing as the Son of man 
 and becoming the servant of men, stooping even to 
 the death of the Cross, " the Eternal Life which was 
 
The Person of Christ : Conclusion 67 
 
 with the Father and was manifested unto us." The 
 personal life of Christ was the expression in time 
 of that which is eternal in God. And, of course, for 
 such a life bodily dissolution must mean, not cessation 
 of being, but liberation. The Divine-human Person 
 did not die. He lives and operates for ever in that 
 Divine Life and Glory in which He had His origin. 
 The Creative Thought and Potency which went 
 forth from God in creation has in Christ returned 
 to God in the realisation of the Divine Ideal ; while, 
 of course, it continues also to work on in the world 
 in the forms in which it has conditioned itself in and 
 for the creation. 
 
 Man is also thus revealed in Christ as being 
 (however unlike it he may often appear) in his 
 ideal and origin and destiny Divine — of God and 
 for sonship to God, with a life that can only be 
 realised in God, and which shall be, in its measure, 
 a manifestation of the life of God, in the likeness 
 of Him who is " the first-born of all the creation " 
 and " the first-born of many brethren." 
 
 But since we are viewing Christ as the Ideal of 
 the Creation, and regarding the incarnation of God 
 in Him as the necessary outcome of this, we must 
 devote a chapter to the endeavour to show, more in 
 detail, how the Divine comes to appear as the human, 
 in harmony with what science teaches concerning the 
 process of evolution in humanity. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 HOW THE IDEAL WAS REALISED— CHRIST 
 AND OURSELVES— ADVANTAGES OF 
 THE VIEW SUGGESTED— NOTE ON 
 THEORIES OF HEREDITY 
 
 AT present there are many who are unable to 
 understand how we get the Divine Christ. 
 For in Christ we must see, not merely a man raised 
 to the Godhead, but a Divine Being expressing His 
 life in human form. By Incarnation, it is said. But 
 what does this mean ? How is it effected ? In what 
 way does a Divine Ethical Being enter the world 
 and be therein a true man? It is not the old 
 question, How can the Infinite find expression in 
 the finite ? for it is now generally recognised that the 
 infinitude of God is not quantitative, but qualitative, 
 and that the greater the Personality, the greater is 
 His power to go out from Himself. Many believing 
 Christians have only the vaguest ideas on the subject. 
 It may be said that we do not need to know. 
 Certainly we do not in order to salvation, or for 
 practical devotion to Christ. But for an intelligent 
 
How the Ideal was Realised 69 
 
 conception of Christianity, for its acceptance by the 
 mind of to-day, and for its permanence in the world, 
 it is necessary to have some reasonable view of the 
 mode of the Incarnation, even though something 
 may remain unexplained. We need at least to see 
 the truth to be in such harmony with the rest of 
 our knowledge that it shall be to us a vital belief, 
 one that we can hold with confidence, and not some- 
 thing which we merely accept. 
 
 The early Christian writers, such as Paul and John, 
 do not seem to have formed any theory as to how 
 the Divine Son of God came to appear on the earth 
 in human form. Paul speaks of God " sending forth 
 His Son," and says of Christ that He "emptied 
 Himself, taking the form of a servant." John says 
 of the Logos "who was in the world," that He 
 "became flesh," and elsewhere makes Jesus speak 
 of Himself as "coming down from Heaven," which 
 is manifestly a figurative expression. Although the 
 narratives of the " Miraculous Conception " or " Virgin 
 Birth " are early attempts to account for the Person- 
 ality of Jesus, they do not give us the incarnation of 
 a pre-existent Person, but the conception and birth, 
 through " the Holy Spirit," of an entirely new Being, 
 without human paternity, to be called,/*?/- that reason, 
 " the Son of God." 
 
 But if we are to see science and religion one, as 
 Dr. Lightfoot thought we might do were we to adopt 
 
yo Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 more seriously the thought of Christ as the Ideal 
 of the Creation ; if we are to see the continuity of 
 Creation and Redemption, and both as issuing from 
 the eternal purpose of God, we must be able to 
 comprehend all that was realised in the appearing 
 of Christ as having been brought about through the 
 operation of those laws of life and development by 
 means of which the Creation has been carried onwards 
 by its Creator, immanent and transcendent, towards 
 its goal. 
 
 The realisation of the Creative Ideal means that 
 God as He thought the world crowned by man as 
 His Son, and as His creative power went out into 
 the Creation and was effective therein, reached 
 the culmination of His working in Nature and 
 in man in that organism which formed the basis 
 of the human life of Jesus ; and in the conscious 
 Person arising thereon, found such continuous and 
 complete receptivity to Himself as enabled Him 
 fully to express the Divine life in the form of 
 human Sonship. 
 
 The first requisite for the realisation of the Divine 
 Ideal in man was the production of such an organism 
 as should be the adequate ground for the expression 
 of the creative God. We rightly speak of "the 
 gradual Incarnation in Christ," of the "progressive 
 self-communication of God, or the Logos, to Him " ; 
 but the first requirement is such a human organism 
 
How the Ideal was Realised 7 1 
 
 as shall be capable of being the organ of the Divine. 
 This is what the theology that does not see the 
 Incarnation to be continuous with the Creation fails 
 to find, except through some such external Divine 
 act as to the modern mind in general remains at 
 least dubious. The continuity of the pre-existent 
 Divine with the Divine in Christ is apt also to be 
 lost sight of, and Christ is in danger of becoming 
 only a God-filled man in the same way as others 
 may be, only in a higher degree. The real unique- 
 ness of His Person and of the presence of God in 
 Him (while He remains truly human) is thus lost, 
 and pre-existence tends to become more or less a 
 matter of indifference. Christ, thus regarded, is 
 " Divine " as others may be ; but we cannot say that 
 He is " God manifest in the flesh." 
 
 In every man there are two constituents — the 
 organic and the personal. Each human life has its 
 basis in an almost invisible germ which develops into 
 the human child. And each human child possesses 
 both the general human instincts and capacities, and 
 special tendencies and capacities, which distinguish 
 it individually. Both are matters of inheritance, the 
 product of the original germ-plasm with the various 
 influences which have operated on it in the lines of 
 ancestry. Hence we see some born with a low or 
 even a degenerate type of organism, and others born 
 geniuses, intellectual and religious. There is no 
 
72 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 question here of the inheritance of acquired external 
 bodily modifications. 1 But there could be no such 
 thing as evolution or development apart from the 
 inheritance of such elements as make for progress. 
 We could not find a Plato or a Shakespeare in the 
 Stone-age; he can only appear as the product of 
 long ages of intellectual and moral development. 
 And it is not alone the creation of what is termed 
 " tradition " — or an ever-rising environment — in which 
 each succeeding race makes a better start, that is 
 requisite ; there must be development of the organisms, 
 so that the persons they represent may be capable 
 of taking advantage of the improved environment. 
 Man is not merely body but soul as well — personality. 
 It is the evolution of souls we have to think of 
 rather than of bodies ; and although body and soul 
 are inseparably connected, it is not the body that 
 forms the soul. Rather is it the soul that forms the 
 body, as appears most manifestly in those portions of 
 the organism — in the brain — which minister to the 
 intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. It is there, in 
 what is deepest in man and most formative of him, 
 that we must look for the chief means of human 
 development, — whether or not we can explain how 
 
 1 Or, indeed, of actual modifications of any kind ; rather of 
 tendencies, or increased capacities. See " Note on Theories of 
 Heredity" at end of chapter, and reference to E. S. Goodrich 
 on Evolution therein. 
 
How the Ideal was Realised 7$ 
 
 the influences come to affect the germ-plasm. It 
 matters not whether we can tell how in any case 
 mind and body interact or act in unison. As Dr. Orr 
 remarks, dealing with this question of heredity : " A 
 single life pervades it (the body), every part is en 
 rapport with every other part; probably no vital 
 change takes place in any part which is not attended 
 by changes in other parts which defy physical 
 explanation" {Sin as a Problem of To-day, p. 210). 
 Indeed, in all evolution the spiritual is first and 
 deepest and determinative. " Progressive evolution," 
 says W. M'Dougall, " has been primarily an evolution 
 of mental structure, and only secondarily one of 
 bodily structure. Mental evolution leads the way, 
 and evolution of bodily structure is in the main the 
 consequence of it ; and this remains true, no matter 
 what theory of the conditions of evolution we adopt" 
 {Psychology, pp. 174, 175). See also the present 
 writer's Christian Theism and a Spiritual Monism. 
 
 Unless we are to revert to the idea of the instan- 
 taneous creation of man with full-blown powers, we 
 must believe in the gradual development of his 
 higher powers and capacities, which implies their 
 organisation in his system and some form of here- 
 ditary transmission. Even the " Creative Evolution " 
 of Bergson requires preparation for the next step in 
 it. This does not imply that the results of merely 
 external acquirements, or those gained by one 
 
74 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 individual merely, will always be effectually trans- 
 mitted. Christian parents, e.g., may have religiously 
 indifferent children; but where there are successive 
 generations responding to similar stimuli, the char- 
 acters become fixed and are inherited. There was a 
 time when man was not the rational and moral 
 being which in the leading races he has become — a 
 time when he did not possess the organised reason 
 and conscience he now possesses. As the intellectual 
 and moral qualities and faculties have been developed, 
 so has the religious, God-tending faculty, till in Christ 
 we see it (along with other highly developed qualities) 
 appearing as dominant. All this is the gradual pro- 
 gressive working of God in man, as truly Divine 
 working as if it were an instantaneous act. 
 
 This is just what the Old Testament shows us God 
 was seeking to produce by means of the spiritual 
 education and development of Israel. The Old 
 Testament, we commonly say, had Christ for its goal. 
 But too often we think of this only in respect of 
 teaching or knowledge. But it was the creation of 
 personalities that God was aiming at, and it was 
 through their creation mainly that the work was 
 carried forward. Personalities have always been the 
 most efficient media of higher influences — special 
 personalities, men of the prophetic mould or stamp. 
 But, like poets, prophets are born, not made. There 
 must be an organic, inborn quality which fits them 
 
How the Ideal was Realised 75 
 
 to be the bearers of the "Word of God." And it 
 was not prophets merely God was seeking, but saints 
 also — men in whom His Word should dominate the 
 life, in whom it should at length become the deepest 
 principle of the life ; He was aiming at the produc- 
 tion of an organism in which " the Word " itself could 
 " become flesh," that is, man ; and the Divine Ideal of 
 man be realised. In the heart of Israel there came 
 to be created a craving for and expectation of the 
 coming of one who should be the ideal King and 
 " Son of God "; on whom the Spirit of the Lord should 
 rest : the desire, the earnest longing for his appear- 
 ance became one of the strongest influences in the 
 national life. 
 
 In Jesus Christ " of the seed of David " there came 
 to birth that which God had been all along working 
 out, not only in nature, but in man by His Spirit, 
 viz., the complete ascendancy of "the Spirit" over 
 " the flesh," or that animal nature in which man must 
 first stand — the Divine, God Himself, as the prin- 
 ciple of the life. To state the process in terms of 
 science: Each organism is the product of the com- 
 bined working of two factors : (1) the ideal type, and 
 life-potency somehow contained in its ideo-plasm ; 
 and (2) the environment in which it stands. The one 
 is as essential as the other. Apart from a suitable 
 environment — which is transcendent to the organism 
 — there could be no growth or development. A seed 
 
J 6 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 will not grow withont moisture, etc. Now, the 
 " natural " environment in which life was placed was 
 adequate to the production of man as the highest form 
 of animal life. But if the Ideal of man is something 
 higher, if it be "spiritual" as distinguished from 
 " natural " merely, if he is to become a son of God 
 and be the expression of the Divine Life itself, then a 
 new spiritual environment must operate on him. We 
 rise here from nature to history and to specifically 
 religious history. It is historical fact that at a certain 
 stage of his development man awoke to the reality of 
 a Divine, spiritual environment — a Reality above him- 
 self — with which he sought by various means to come 
 into contact. As he was enabled to do this more and 
 more truly ; as he was led to know God in His truth 
 and to seek the higher life that called him, new 
 spiritual influences operated on him, a spiritual life 
 became superimposed on the " natural " and was 
 gradually developed in his experience. As with 
 every organism, the transcendent united itself with 
 what was already immanent, becoming a new Divine 
 immanence in man. 
 
 In Israel we witness the main line of this Divine 
 spiritual operation and answering development till 
 it culminates in Christ. This was the meaning of that 
 long continued, sometimes strange and painful dis- 
 cipline of Israel — the "chosen people" truly, but 
 chosen with a world-wide end in view. And just 
 
How the Ideal was Realised 77 
 
 as the long intellectual development of a people 
 comes to expression in some man of genius who 
 towers above his fellows, and, it may be, remains 
 above them, so the spiritual development of Israel 
 reached its fruition in the birth of Christ. Or, just 
 as a certain line of lower life culminated in man, 
 so a certain human line culminated in Christ — man 
 wholly after the Spirit — man as the Son of God, 
 the Divine man, the God-man. As in the movement 
 of life manwards, countless animal forms were left 
 behind, and the goal reached along one line only ; 
 so in the further movement Godwards, it was along 
 one special line that the realisation of the Ideal was 
 attained. Much in the surrounding world gave no 
 indication of special Divine working; but there, in 
 Israel, it was steadily moving onward, and its goal 
 was reached in Christ. From the first, even in the 
 constitution of His organism, the Spirit was supreme 
 in Christ. This is the essential fact in His being 
 described as the Child of the Holy Spirit. Since the 
 Spirit is the Divine in man, God was immanent in 
 this organism as He had increasingly imparted Himself 
 to man, or had been able to enter the world's life. 
 
 It was, of course, this organism that was the 
 ground of the personal life of Christ. From the 
 innate qualities of the organism the movements 
 that find expression in the personal life take their 
 rise. Out of this arose His unique filial consciou.s- 
 
78 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 ness, and equally unique sense of oneness with 
 humanity, becoming clarified and strengthened in 
 the personal life. This inner spirit, along with His 
 religious environment — the Old Testament Scriptures, 
 the indications of the Will of God that came to Him, 
 the presence of the Father and communion with Him 
 — was followed out freely and fully in the personal 
 life, so that there was an increasing incarnation and 
 manifestation of God in Him, and expression of man 
 in his truth, crowned by the self-sacrifice of the Cross. 
 In this way in the life of Christ the Divine Sonship 
 found complete human expression, and we have in 
 the one indivisible Person both God and man. We 
 see in His whole life and work, and in that death 
 for our sakes which was the highest expression of 
 both the Divine and the human, the manifestation 
 of God in human form — of God as man. And all 
 this is, as we have seen, simply the realisation of 
 the Divine Ideal of man. 
 
 It is worth pointing out also how Israel was 
 brought into close contact with the leading peoples 
 of the ancient world. To the original Semitic stock 
 there may have been thus added elements from 
 (i) Egyptians, (2) other Semites and Assyrians, 
 (3) Babylonians, (4) Persians, (5) Greeks, (6) Romans. 
 That such was the case would be in keeping with 
 the universal action of God in the world, making 
 towards one end, and it would help us to realise 
 
Christ and Ourselves 79 
 
 the truly representative character of Christ's humanity, 
 the " recapitulation " of man in Him. 
 
 Identity and Difference of Christ and 
 Ourselves 
 
 The identity of Christ with ourselves consists in 
 the fact that He was truly human, and, as such, 
 receptive of a Divine life. The difference between 
 Christ and ourselves is that He was so constituted 
 that the Divine could find its complete expression 
 through Him, and that He, in His personal life 
 as man, so responded and acted that such complete 
 expression was actually given. The ideal realised 
 in Him is the same for us all; but it was in His 
 organism that the results of the Divine education 
 and development of man, as it had proceeded along 
 a definite line, found such organic expression as 
 made it possible for Him to become in His personal 
 life that organ of the Divine that He was. 
 
 This did not make His personal life less free, or 
 save Him from temptation. He had a personal 
 human will which had to be tested in its loyalty 
 to the Father. He wore the flesh that we wear, 
 and had a self of His own, so that He could be 
 "tempted in all points like as we are, yet without 
 sin." It is God as man that we behold in Him. 
 To the Divine Ideal of human life that was mani- 
 fested in Him the Ideal as it shines within ourselves 
 
80 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 answers. It is to the life of sonship to God that 
 we are all called, after Christ. But the Divine work- 
 ing had reached its destined goal in His organism, 
 as it has not done in ours. In this the uniqueness 
 of Jesus consists, and this is why there cannot be 
 another Christ. It is just this difference between 
 Christ and us, — not in respect of the ideal of our 
 life, but of its attainment; it is because in Him 
 the Spirit was from the first, even organically, or 
 as His birth-endowment, supreme over the lower 
 elements of the nature ; and because of the remaining 
 strength of the lower nature in us, with the sinful 
 tendencies we have inherited, which too often find 
 their expression in actual sin, or tend to do so, 
 that we stand in need of the redemptive and 
 perfecting influences which come to us from Christ. 
 It is therefore that He is " our Life." The Ideal, 
 as spiritual, had first to be realised in an individual 
 who should represent the race in the truth of its 
 life, and through spiritual influences become the 
 source and power of the same life in its fulness to 
 others who stand in need of spiritual reinforcement 
 and fulfilment. It is thus that Christ is presented 
 to us in these Epistles. 1 
 
 1 For fuller treatment of some of the matters dealt with in 
 this chapter the writer may be permitted to refer to his book, 
 The Spirit and the Incarnation (3rd Edition ; T. & T. Clark, 
 Edinburgh), 
 
Advantages of the View 81 
 
 Some of the Advantages of this View 
 
 i. The conception of Christ and of the presence 
 and operation of God in Him to which we are thus 
 led avoids the difficulty felt by many in view of the 
 assertion of such Divine intervention in the world's 
 history and in the course of Nature as seems out of 
 keeping with our modern idea of the relation of the 
 Divine creative Power to the world in which it is 
 operative. There is nothing gained for a wholesome 
 faith by this idea of intervention. What is supposed 
 to be thus gained for faith may surely be more 
 worthily gained by belief in constant Divine progress- 
 ive action, culminating in Christ and His Cross. It 
 is more like God to think of His increasing presence 
 and action in the world than to think only of inter- 
 vention at a particular time. How are we to conceive 
 of such intervention in the order of the world — of 
 the coming, as if from without, of the Divine into the 
 human? Must not the entrance of God into our 
 humanity be in the line of the continuous Divine work- 
 ing, natural and spiritual? God is Spirit, and He 
 can only increasingly enter our humanity by means 
 of spiritual impartation, which must take effect in 
 human personality and character. His incarnation 
 in man must be a gradual one, proceeding along the 
 lines which He has laid down for Himself in the 
 
 constitution of Nature and of man. In the Prologue 
 6 
 
82 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 to the Fourth Gospel the Divine Logos is said to have 
 been already " in the world," which " became through 
 Him." 
 
 But, indeed, the idea of intervention, in the sense 
 often affirmed, is precluded by the statements in 
 these Epistles. What was done in Christ belonged 
 to the eternal purpose of God, formed before the crea- 
 tion of the world. Creation itself was conceived in 
 Christ, and it was " in the fulness of the times " in the 
 Divine ordering of the world that He appeared. We 
 see the whole, therefore, eternally conceived by God 
 and realised in the normal continuity of the Divine 
 working in Nature and in man. Not, indeed, as a 
 process of " natural " evolution merely. God is tran- 
 scendent as well as immanent, although, since He is 
 in Himself Spirit, His transcendent action can only 
 take effect where there is spiritual being. We are 
 also led thus to see how real, and how truly directed 
 to a special world-embracing end, was that working 
 of God in Israel which the Old Testament records, 
 and which was completed by the later experiences of 
 that people. Some modern critics place certain of 
 the most advanced passages of the Old Testament 
 much nearer the time of Christ than was formerly 
 done. 
 
 2. The difficulty felt by Theology, or that may 
 well be felt by it, How can we conceive of a Divine 
 Being becoming man through a kenosis in time, 
 
Advantages of the View 83 
 
 especially when we remember that God is an ethical 
 Being — a Being with an ethical character? is also 
 obviated. Of course, our inability to conceive it is 
 no sufficient reason against it ; but we have little 
 need to create difficulties in the way of belief if they 
 can be avoided. There must be, indeed, a Divine 
 kenosis as the presupposition of the creation itself. 
 God, in order to create, must limit or condition Him- 
 self so as to become the immanent Ideal and Potency 
 of the world's life. He must begin at the lowest so 
 as to reach again the highest. This is why there is 
 an evolution. Creation involves such sacrifice on the 
 part of the Perfect Love, which seeks thereby to 
 impart itself to others. But this is a very different 
 thing from the idea of a Divine Ethical Being 
 expressing Himself in human form in a moment of 
 time. To those who breathed the atmosphere of the 
 early Christians, with their Scripture records of 
 Divine theophanies behind them, it may not have 
 been difficult for many of them to conceive of a 
 Divine Being coming into the world as a man. Yet 
 the earliest heresies, denying the actual "flesh" of 
 Christ and the rise and power of Doketism, show that 
 the difficulty was felt by not a few even then. To 
 those who do not think seriously, or who simply say, 
 " All things are possible with God," with no thought 
 of the how — for they are possible only in God's way 
 of working — there may still be no difficulty in the 
 
84 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 belief. But to such as know something of the laws 
 of life, and of how each human being originates (in a 
 microscopic speck of matter which contains implicitly 
 all future potentialities), the difficulty is a very real 
 one. Not because they have ruled out "the 
 miraculous " beforehand — for what may happen 
 cannot be foretold with certainty — but simply 
 because of the inherent difficulty arising from the 
 fact that God is an Ethical Being. To be really man 
 we must be born into the world, and an ethical char- 
 acter can only be gained by obedience to ethical 
 principle. An Ethical Being, already such, cannot 
 clothe himself right away in a human form ; God can 
 only appear in humanity as the result of the inwork- 
 ing in man of that ethical character in which alone 
 He can be manifested. 
 
 In no other way either can we see Jesus Christ 
 appearing as man in the continuity of human life- 
 experience. Only so coming would He be truly man. 
 It is quite true that we must think of the redemption 
 of our humanity as being effected by the presence of 
 a higher ethical and spiritual life within it — even a 
 Divine Life. We are thereby raised to a higher 
 grade of life : it is " a new creation." But we must 
 see this higher life entering the world, not by inter- 
 vention from without, but in the normal way of the 
 Divine working in humanity, and coming into 
 manifestation in the normal course of human 
 
Advantages of the View 85 
 
 development under the various Divine influences 
 which have been operating on man. Theologians 
 hold that sinfulness and bad qualities are transmitted 
 from generation to generation in, it may be, increas- 
 ing power. Why not believe that good is also trans- 
 missible in like manner. Surely the human system is 
 not a vehicle for the transmission of evil only ! And 
 what else was the meaning of all God's working in 
 man? While the new man must transcend us all 
 and be the Fountain of new life for all — a " second 
 Adam," a new Head to our humanity — He must at 
 the same time be really human ; for otherwise the life 
 revealed in Him would have no relation to us. We 
 must, in other words, see the redemption in Christ as 
 flowing out of the Divine creative relation to the world. 
 3. In this conception of the Person of Christ, and 
 of the Incarnation of God in Him, we have one 
 which is wholly in keeping with scientific concep- 
 tions. It crowns the universe which science studies. 
 There is no " breach of continuity," but a constant 
 process of development in which we see, " first the 
 natural, and after that the spiritual." We witness 
 that which stands forth as the highest conception of 
 human life as being eternal in God, as being that 
 principle and potency of the universe which alone 
 can explain its appearance therein, when the world- 
 organism reaches its highest development in man. 
 We see that it is one God who is working in Nature 
 
86 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 and in man, who, because of His immanence therein, 
 appears in due time in human form. It brings to 
 science, not something which it apologetically begs it 
 to accept, but that which it needs to complete it, a 
 first reason, motive, and meaning for the Creation, a 
 satisfactory reading of " the Riddle of the Universe," 
 that solution of " the mystery of the Creation " which 
 can only come from the revelation of its original 
 Ideal and ultimate Goal. It enables us to see the 
 aim of the Divine working in the present, the 
 divinely meant continued evolution of man, as a 
 spiritual Being, with his destiny beyond that grave in 
 which otherwise all our scientific knowledge and work 
 get hopelessly buried at last, and all our material and 
 social advance appears to have no ultimate meaning. 
 
 We cannot help feeling that the view of the 
 Person and coming of God in Christ here set forth 
 ought specially to commend itself to the open- 
 minded Jew. We cannot forget that it was along the 
 line of Jewish ancestry that the Divine working took 
 such effect as to lead to the birth of Jesus as its 
 culmination. He loved His own, and shed bitter 
 tears over what He foresaw should be the conse- 
 quences of His rejection. We cannot but earnestly 
 desire that the causes which perpetuate that rejec- 
 tion should be removed. This is surely supremely 
 desired by Christ, and it ought to be more seriously 
 
Advantages of the View 87 
 
 laid to heart than it is by Christians. We cannot 
 help asking, what should hinder even a Jew from 
 accepting the conception of God in Christ set forth 
 in these Epistles? The new feeling of respect for 
 Christ and appreciation of His teaching and life on 
 the part of not a few modern Israelites is matter 
 for great thankfulness. What hinders their further 
 advance ? If it be the definitions of theology, ought 
 not these definitions to be re-considered. They are 
 human only, and as such imperfect and fallible. Not 
 a few Evangelical Christians believe that they may 
 be better stated without losing anything essential. 
 It is a serious thought that human modes of state- 
 ment may be keeping any from entering the Kingdom 
 of God, as that Kingdom has in its spirituality been 
 revealed in Christ. God is surely more anxious that 
 His " ancient people " should be " saved " than that 
 they should be compelled to accept certain definitions 
 of His Person. In Christ the Jew may see the 
 culmination of his own Hebrew faith and ancestry. 
 He can see the same God as gave Israel the Law, as 
 spake to his fathers in the prophets, and as was 
 trusted in by saints of his race, (whose faith the 
 Christian of to-day can only seek to emulate), coming 
 to them in one of themselves who was a Son, and 
 transforming the religion of form, whether legal or 
 ceremonial, into that of spirit and truth. If this 
 Christ ends " the Law," it is only as it was " written 
 
88 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 on tables of stone " that it may be " written on the 
 heart." The Law for both Jew and Christian is all 
 summed up in Love. He may see Him as coming 
 truly to "redeem Israel" — and as willing to die to 
 accomplish it — from a materialism of mind which led 
 to His rejection, and which, persisted in, issued in 
 national ruin. If Judaism still expects the Kingdom 
 of God to come, apart from Jesus Christ, the ex- 
 pectation is a fallacious one. It can never be 
 fulfilled, because towards any Kingdom of God on 
 this earth distinctly Christian influences will have 
 contributed more than any others. It is in the 
 acceptance and spread of these influences alone that 
 the hope can find fruition. To its coming a Christ- 
 ianised Judaism would be perhaps the greatest 
 contribution. Paul looked forward to the time when 
 " all Israel shall be saved " ; let us hope and work for 
 the dawn of that day. It is in no " superior spirit " 
 that we say this, but because we believe that in 
 Christ we have the final revelation of God and of 
 man — in its essence, apart from all questions oiform 
 — the universal and final religion. 
 
 Again, we may remark that it is when we see 
 Christianity to be founded in and issuing from the 
 Eternal Purpose of God ; when we see how " all 
 things " were created " in Christ," and how Christ 
 Himself is the highest expression of the creative 
 
Advantages of the View 89 
 
 Power in human form, that we understand how it is 
 necessarily the universal and final religion. It is 
 because it gives us, not some limited or racial ideal, 
 but the creative-human ideal of life, that it can appeal 
 to all, adapt itself to all peoples and all times, and 
 find reception everywhere. As Eucken has said : 
 " Christianity, more than any other religion, seems 
 to be the concern and product of the whole of 
 humanity rather than of any particular part of it," 
 and when it seeks to extend itself it does not retain 
 the typical features of original habitat as other 
 religions do. That which makes " Christianity 
 before all else a religion for the whole of mankind " 
 is "its power to attract to itself the diverse aspira- 
 tions of different races and nations and focus them 
 all upon one common task " {Christianity and the 
 neiv Idealism, pp. 93, 97). It is because it is the 
 creative Ideal that is revealed in Christ, and be- 
 cause the Redemption in Him belongs also to the 
 Divine creative Purpose, that Christianity stands 
 forth as the religion for all men, and that it has as 
 its central principle the very Love that God is — a 
 principle which cannot possibly be transcended. 
 
 Finally, it is when we realise the cosmic relations 
 of Christ and the unity of Creation and Redemption, 
 when we see how " all things " were created in Christ, 
 so that He is " before all things " and " the Head over 
 
90 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 all things/' that we are enabled to understand how 
 all things are made to serve His cause. It often 
 seems otherwise for the time; but in the long-run 
 this fact becomes manifest. The way in which many 
 different lines were all converging towards one centre 
 when Christ appeared, and the reality of the Divine 
 " preparation of the world for Christ," have frequently 
 been set forth. It was truly " in the fulness of the 
 times" that He appeared. And although His fate 
 seemed outwardly the complete contradiction of a 
 Divine over-ruling interest, we know how " the pre- 
 determined counsels of God" were thereby served, 
 and how that which seemed the defeat of Christ 
 was the means of His permanent triumph. Similar 
 lessons may be learned from the pages of Church 
 History. And if to-day there seem to be strong 
 human forces opposing the Divine, there are also 
 Christian influences operating more effectually than 
 ever before. The Power that is over all will in due 
 time manifest itself, and the material advances by 
 means of which men seem to be only serving them- 
 selves and furthering their own ideals quite irrespective 
 of Christ, will be made ultimately to serve that 
 cause of humanity in its highest form, which is 
 that of God in Christ. But the results intended by 
 God can only be brought about by the fidelity of 
 His people to all truth, and by their earnest co- 
 operation with the Master-Spirit. God works for 
 
Theories of Heredity 91 
 
 man through man ; while the work is Divine, the 
 agents in it are human. Here is the importance of 
 " the Church " which is such a prominent conception 
 in these Epistles. 
 
 Note on Theories of Heredity 
 
 All theories of Heredity hold that mental and 
 moral, as well as physical, qualities are inherited : 
 the question that has recently arisen is whether 
 " acquired characters " — individual acquisitions — are 
 handed on, and it has been discussed chiefly with 
 reference to bodily characters — " mutilations, modifi- 
 cations due to disease and to use and disuse of 
 special organs." But it is held to apply to mental 
 and moral acquisitions also, and may therefore seem 
 opposed to what has been said of spiritual or religious 
 development. 
 
 Darwin and Spencer held that all qualities were 
 transmissible, and that this alone could account for 
 Evolution. The possibility was explained by Darwin 
 by his theory of pangenesis, according to which all 
 parts of the body gave off contributions to the germ- 
 plasm, which were therefore inheritable. Spencer 
 explained it somewhat differently, but bringing out 
 the same result, and he held firmly to the theory 
 till the last. 
 
 But in recent years a new theory has been 
 advanced by Weismann and is now widely accepted, 
 
92 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 although it has also been severely criticised and 
 rejected by several, chiefly German, biologists. His 
 theory is that of the continuity of the germ-plasm 
 which is not affected by changes in the body, 
 but is transmitted unchanged, except it may be 
 in certain ways within itself, from generation to 
 generation, so that only congenital or inborn 
 characteristics are transmitted. " Body-plasm " and 
 " germ-plasm " are held to be quite distinct. Hence 
 no external conditions acting on the body can have 
 effects which are transmitted unless the germ-plasm 
 itself is altered. Variations arise from combinations 
 of different germ-plasms. (See a brief statement in 
 Doncaster's Heredity?) 
 
 Now, of course, there cannot be any transmission 
 of new qualities unless the germ-plasm is altered. 
 But, apart from strictly biological criticism, one 
 naturally asks how these various germ-plasms which 
 characterise and distinguish races and individuals, 
 differing so greatly among themselves, came origin- 
 ally to exist, and how they gained their distinctive 
 characters. Man differs from the animals, and 
 animals and men differ widely amongst themselves, 
 in respect of this germ-plasm, although their typical 
 characters remain unchanged. They cannot have 
 become what they are except by modification of 
 what was originally less differentiated, and if the 
 germ-plasm was modifiable in the remote past, why 
 
Theories of Heredity 93 
 
 may it not be so, to some extent at least, continuously ? 
 " At some point in Evolution new factors must have 
 been introduced into the inheritance, and the process 
 is still presumably going on '' (E. S. Goodrich, quoted 
 below). Weismann himself holds the possibility of 
 modifications by influences which act directly on 
 the germ-plasm, so that their effects will be trans- 
 mitted. Nourishment, for example, may favour 
 some units more than others. The question is, Wliat 
 determines such variation of nourishment? It is held 
 that "there may be competition for nourishment 
 among the different units (' determinants '), so that 
 some increase at the expense of others, and if this 
 process should be continued through a series of 
 generations, certain characters would show a steady 
 increase, while others correspondingly decrease'' 
 (Doncaster, as above). 
 
 But this seems all that is wanted in order to 
 maintain such gradual development and progress 
 (as well as degeneration) as Evolution shows to have 
 taken place, apart from which there would be no 
 Evolution. We do not know all the influences that 
 may affect the germ-plasm, but it seems certain that 
 it cannot remain unchanged. The progress of the 
 human race is sought to be accounted for by what 
 is termed "tradition" — the increasingly heightened 
 character of the environment, which each succeeding 
 child enters owing to the acquisitions of its ancestors 
 
94 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 But this is not sufficient to explain the difference 
 between a child, say, of the Stone-age, and a genius 
 of some succeeding period. There must be, surely, 
 not only the heightened intellectual and moral en- 
 vironment, but the capacity in the organism to 
 receive and respond to the stimuli from it. If we 
 could imagine such an environment to exist in the 
 Stone-age, would it be possible for any child, who 
 inherits simply the inborn germ-plasm of the men 
 of that age, to become a Plato? This should be 
 possible if the inborn germ-plasm alone is inherited 
 unchanged by generation after generation. 
 
 There is also the difference between wild animals 
 and those that have been domesticated. Are not 
 their natural instincts modified and new qualities 
 gained by them ? So also in the case of savages 
 as compared with civilised human beings. Are the 
 offspring of those who have been Christianised for 
 several generations identical with those of their 
 savage ancestors — the environment, of course, con- 
 tinuing for them ? 
 
 It has been acquired bodily characters which have 
 been for the most part in question ; but what of 
 psychical acquisitions? Is the soul of no influence 
 on heredity ? What of these acquisitions which 
 most deeply affect the being, such as the religious 
 feelings? May not these affect that germ-plasm 
 which really represents the individual ? Observa- 
 
Theories of Heredity 95 
 
 tions and experiments have been made mostly on 
 plants and animals, but there is in man a personal, 
 spiritual element which is wholly awanting in 
 plants and exists only to a small degree in animals. 
 The study of seeds and lower organisms can never 
 give a knowledge of all the laws of heredity in man. 
 As has been already said, it is really the spiritual 
 that determines the bodily development. 
 
 Weismann's theory probably contains a measure of 
 truth in its denial of the inheritance of bodily modifica- 
 tions in the way previously supposed. But it has been 
 severely criticised. Quite recently Max Nordau has 
 repudiated it in the strongest terms. He character- 
 ises it as a " monstrous absurdity," and says that 
 " to future historians of science it will be a matter 
 for astonishment that such an extravagant doctrine 
 can have been conceived by a biologist, and accepted, 
 for a time, by serious scientists " ; " it is not a 
 scientific hypothesis, but mysticism of the worst 
 kind " ; " it is not confirmed by one single observed 
 fact ; it is contradicted by all. If acquired characters 
 were not inherited, evolution would be altogether 
 unintelligible and impossible"; for how could one 
 identical germinal substance " produce, one after 
 another, the most divergent forms of life ? " Of 
 course, he says, " Not all acquired characteristics are 
 heritable — only those which influence the quality of 
 the germ." " Every individual forms his own germ- 
 
96 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 plasm — out of his own resources, and transmits to it 
 the morphological and physiological tendencies which 
 he has himself inherited," but which he is able to 
 modify " in accordance with his own character," — 
 so that the result may be either improvement or 
 degeneration (" The Degeneration of Classes and 
 Peoples," Hibbert Journal, July 191 2). 
 
 Besides Darwin's theory of pangenesis, other modes 
 have been suggested of how the modifications of the 
 germ-plasm may be effected. It is by no means 
 deemed impossible. As Professor Ed. B. Watson 
 remarks in his paper on " The Cell in Heredity and 
 Evolution," in Fifty Years after Darwin : " In the 
 present defective state of our knowledge we may 
 well grant that there may be many a thing between 
 the germ-cell and body that is not dreamed of in 
 our philosophy." In the same instructive volume, 
 Professor MacDougal, of the Carnegie Institute, 
 Washington, says that "the modification of heredity 
 brought about by the direct action of various agencies 
 upon the germ-plasm is now safely established." 
 There are other statements to a similar effect. 
 
 The reconciliation of conflicting views may pro- 
 bably be found in the way suggested by the treat- 
 ment of Heredity by E. S. Goodrich, M.A., F.R.S., 
 in his book on Evolution in the People's Books series. 
 While accepting Weismann's refutation of the in- 
 heritance of "acquired characters," he shows that 
 
Note on Heredity 97 
 
 "the popular distinction between acquired and not- 
 acquired characters — is misleading." " In a sense, 
 every character, every variation, is partly acquired 
 and partly inherited, and no character is more 
 acquired or more inherited than another." It is not 
 the modification as such that is transmitted ; " in 
 every case it is the capacity to acquire (Italics ours), 
 to become modified, or to respond, which is really 
 transmitted ; the direction and extent of the modi- 
 fication depends on the stimulus." Hence, " Heredity 
 must be defined afresh as the transmission of the 
 factors of inheritance, and not as the re-appearance 
 of characters in successive generations '' (pp. 33— 38). 1 
 This is how heredity has been regarded in the 
 foregoing chapter. It gives us a common-sense 
 view of evolution as resulting from the interaction 
 of the environment with the germinal inheritance, 
 whereby new capacities may be handed on. In the 
 case of man the environment becomes not only a 
 physical, but also a mental, moral, and spiritual one. 
 Stimuli of the latter kind must have affected his 
 organism, in its inner qualities especially, and the 
 effects been handed on from generation to generation, 
 not as the actual modifications, but as capacities to 
 re-act to similar stimuli in increasing degree. 
 
 1 In the volume on Heredity in the same series, by J. S. B. 
 Watson, B.Sc, the writer distinguishes between " changes on 
 the body of an organism and changes in its germ-plasm " (p. 35). 
 
 7 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE RECONCILIATION OF ALL THINGS 
 IN CHRIST— OF MAN TO GOD AND OF 
 MAN TO MAN— FREEDOM THROUGH 
 THE CROSS 
 
 THE appearance of God in Christ was eternally 
 destined to issue in a great Redemptive or 
 Reconciliatory act. In Ephesians the Divine purpose 
 is said to have been " unto a dispensation (or 
 economy) of the fulness of the times, to sum up all 
 things in Christ" (i. 10). It is the pleroma, the 
 fulness, or ripeness of the times, " when the pre- 
 Messianic ages were made full." The word for "to 
 sum up" {anakephalaioo) means to sum up under 
 one head that which has been separately expressed. 
 It only occurs elsewhere in the New Testament in 
 Romans xiii. 9, where it is said that the Law is 
 summed up in love to our neighbour. Outside the 
 New Testament the word is used for the summing 
 up of the points of an argument or discourse. The 
 article before " Christ " gives us '' the Christ," the 
 Messiah, and shows that what is in view is some- 
 
Reconciliation of all Things in Christ 99 
 
 thing to be done in the incarnate Person. It was 
 something also to be done in Him, not in one 
 moment or fixed point of time merely, but from 
 that point onward. The reference is to "the whole 
 duration of the Gospel times " (see Alford, in loc), 
 as we read in chapter ii. 7, "that in the ages to 
 come He might show the exceeding riches of His 
 grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus." It implies, 
 however, that all were represented in Him — re- 
 capitulated — so that before God He stood for 
 all. Just as the whole preceding creation was 
 summed up in man, in whom at the same time 
 it arose into higher life, so in Christ the whole, 
 including humanity itself and all moral person- 
 alities, was recapitulated, and man in the fulness 
 of a higher ethical life of Sonship to God at the 
 same time appeared. It implies with respect to 
 moral beings a redemption or restoration ; ana pre- 
 fixed to kephalaiod (which might in itself mean simply 
 summation) points, as Meyer remarks, to an original 
 unity — " to sum up again, to gather together again." 
 It is to be noted also that, giving effect to the 
 middle voice employed, we have, "to gather together 
 for Himself into one all things in Christ." 
 
 There is a sense in which, apart from moral 
 considerations, we may think of the universe as 
 being brought back to God. All proceeded from 
 an original unity. In creating, God goes out from 
 
ioo Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Himself, so to speak, — the one becomes so far ex- 
 pressed in the many. The creation comes to have 
 an objective existence — out from Himself, over 
 against Himself — in which it is necessarily imperfect, 
 and we can think of it as being, after the purpose 
 of its separate existence has been served, brought 
 back to its original unity and so raised to com- 
 pleteness. 
 
 But here there is an ethical departure in view. It 
 is not merely a philosophy of Creation the Apostle 
 is setting forth, but the fact of moral and spiritual 
 redemption and at-one-ment with God in Christ, 
 as we read in verse 7, "in whom we have our re- 
 demption through His blood, the forgiveness of our 
 trespasses, according to the riches of His grace." 
 
 This moral reference appears also in Colossians 
 (chapter i. 20), " through Him to reconcile all things 
 unto Himself." The word there is apokatallasso ; 
 the apo prefixed to the common word to reconcile, 
 to make at one {katallasso, Rom. v. 10 bis, 1 Cor. 
 vii. 11; 2 Cor. v. 19, 20) may mean "again" or 
 "back," although it may also denote completeness 
 or thoroughness. As Lightfoot remarks, it corre- 
 sponds to apellotriome'nous , " estranged," in the 
 following verse, "implying a restitution to a state 
 from which they had fallen, or which was potentially 
 theirs, or for which they were destined." But the 
 whole context shows clearly the moral reference. 
 
Reconciliation of Man to God 101 
 
 In man's ca.se the possibility of this moral departure 
 from God lay in that free individuality which alone 
 could constitute man what God designed him to 
 be, and which only could give him value in God's 
 sight, or, in the language of the Apostle, give God 
 an " inheritance '' and " possession " in humanity as 
 the return to His creative love, or the reward of 
 His creative action. God could have no worthy 
 inheritance in a race that was mechanically impelled, 
 or whose relation to Himself was determined for 
 them under laws which left no room for voluntary 
 determination of the Personality. Man may admire 
 beautiful and complex machinery, a tribute to his 
 intelligence or skill, but God looks for moral worth, 
 and even a man thinks more of an animal with 
 some dim approach to real affection than of the 
 finest iron machine. 
 
 Being thus free in order to be human, men could 
 get away from God as that Ethical Being that He 
 is — some of them very far away, like the prodigal 
 in the parable. The actuality of such departure was 
 manifest in the history of the world as that which 
 we familiarly speak of as sin — which means voluntary 
 departure from the true life. Every created, re- 
 sponsible being must have a self of his own, and 
 may prefer that self to the Divine Ideal in the 
 measure in which it shines upon him, or in which 
 he feels himself called to it. In man the self- 
 
102 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 principle was necessarily centred in an animal, or 
 lower, nature, with strong self-assertive and earth- 
 ward tendencies. Such a principle was necessary in 
 order to his very existence and progress on the earth, 
 while any higher or Divine principle could only 
 become strong within him through gradual develop- 
 ment. The lower animal principle had to come first. 
 It is what St. Paul terms "the flesh"; it is the 
 central principle of the " natural " man, and must be 
 transcended if he is to rise into the true Ideal and 
 Spiritual life. It is this nature of " the flesh " (not 
 the body), which is the deepest source of all manner 
 of sin. We all still stand rooted in it ; for, like it 
 or not as we may, man is first of all an animal, 
 although he stands high above the mere animal, and 
 sin in its manifold forms, sometimes very refined and 
 even spiritual in its seeming, is the outcome of that 
 lower self-centred nature to-day as truly as in the 
 days of Paul and of Christ. Probed to the depths, 
 there is no form of sin that does not have its roots in 
 this self-centred nature of " the flesh." So, living and 
 acting for this lower self, instead of yielding himself 
 up to the Divine influences which sought to draw him 
 upwards — going his own way instead of God's — man 
 became morally and spiritually separated from God, 
 and in time, as self-regarding interests strengthened, 
 he became separated also from his fellows. 
 
 These Epistles tell us that God foresaw it all, but 
 
Reconciliation of Alan to God 103 
 
 also that He foresaw the ultimate triumph of the 
 spiritual principle. His spiritual influences did not 
 cease to operate, but became adapted to man's need, 
 and as the result of their operation He foresaw the 
 gradual strengthening of the higher principle, and 
 man, in the fulness of the times, rising entirely above 
 the self-regarding life of " the flesh " into the fulness 
 of that life of Love, which is the Divine Life, and 
 thus returning to Himself. Man was created in 
 Christ, and in Christ he should yet stand approved 
 as God's son. The creative Ideal was conceived, not 
 in man after the flesh, but in man after the spirit. It 
 was not an animal-man God had in view, but a son 
 to Himself. In this true man, realising the Divine 
 Ideal of man's life, it was God's eternal purpose to 
 reconcile all things to Himself. It meant the up- 
 rising in man of the Divine principle of the creation, 
 the life of God Himself in man, taking back, as it 
 were, His world to Himself. 
 
 But this reconciliation of all things to Himself in 
 Christ involved a twofold action on the part of the 
 Divine-human Person — one on the human side and 
 one on the Divine — both, of course, finding expres- 
 sion in the one deed. 
 
 (1) It was in the voluntary self-sacrificing death 
 of Christ on the Cross that the complete at-one- 
 ment of man in Him with God was realised and 
 manifested. Therefore it is said that "we have 
 
104 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 our redemption through His blood, the forgive- 
 ness of our trespasses " (Eph. i. 7), and in Col. i. 
 20 "peace" is said to have been made "through 
 the blood of the Cross " — the phrase, " through the 
 blood," suggesting sacrifice. Of course, there was 
 no literal shedding of blood ; but " the blood " repre- 
 sented the physical life poured forth, as it were, in 
 sacrifice. It was the blood of one who believed that 
 His death would effect what His life and teaching 
 had failed to do — bring God and man into the 
 gracious union which the coming of the Kingdom of 
 God meant essentially. It was in this act of com- 
 plete sacrifice of Himself to the will of God, of final 
 triumph over the separate will of the flesh, in which 
 His bodily death represented the death of "the 
 flesh " or lower nature in man, that all men in Him — 
 just because He was the true representative man — 
 were reconciled to God, made at one with Him, 
 representatively or ideally. Christ as true man 
 stood in "the flesh'' as all men must do in order 
 to live on earth. Although He conquered all its 
 temptations and achieved a sinless life, and although 
 " the Spirit " was supreme in Him from the first, " the 
 flesh" was as real to Him as it is to any man, as 
 Gethsemane and the Cross itself bear witness. His 
 death, which was in itself His complete self-surrender 
 to God, represented " the putting off of the flesh " as 
 the ruling principle of the life for all men, that they 
 
Reconciliation of Man to God 105 
 
 might rise with Him into the fulness of the new life 
 of the Spirit. Man in Him died to sin and rose to 
 righteousness. His sacrifice, therefore, went up to 
 God as " an odour of a sweet smell," the incense of 
 that perfect at-one-ment which was purposed from 
 all eternity. Hence we read that God made us 
 " accepted in the Beloved." In Him we were recon- 
 ciled. It was something done in Christ representat- 
 ively for us all: "You now hath He reconciled in 
 the body of His flesh through death " (Col. i. 22) ; 
 "Ye died (in Him) and your life is hid with Christ 
 in God " (iii. 3) ; " He made us alive together with 
 Christ," etc. (Eph. ii. 1-6). In view of this perfect 
 at-one-ment in Christ, man's sin can be forgiven 
 and even forgotten, as it were, before God ; although 
 that does not mean that the consequences of sin 
 cease to take effect on man as he has been con- 
 stituted by God. It was the sin of a race that has 
 died in Christ to the lower life ; while, of course, sin, 
 as long as man continues in it, will entail all its evil 
 effects. But we are now under " Grace.'' 
 
 (2) All this was done in the one Divine-human 
 Person, and it all proceeded from God. It was all the 
 working out of the Divine eternal purpose. It all 
 followed from the fact that we were " created in Christ." 
 Therefore, although the sacrifice of Christ was naturally 
 interpreted as a propitiatory sacrifice, and although 
 men saw in it the necessary doom of that "flesh" 
 
106 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 which in mankind as a whole is " the flesh of sin," it 
 could not have been to propitiate God (from whom 
 it all proceeded) with a view of gaining His favour. 1 
 It was, Paul says, the result of " His grace freely be- 
 stowed on us in the beloved." On its Divine side 
 it was all the working of God in Christ — of the 
 Divine wholly possessing the human. It was God 
 reconciling all things to Himself, "making peace 
 through the blood of the Cross." " The blood " was, 
 in this aspect, the outward expression of the love of 
 God — of God Himself in Christ. It was God, re- 
 garded as transcendent, who in His love for man 
 gave up His beloved Son so to suffer and die. It 
 implies a great sacrifice made by God in order to 
 bring all things into harmonious relation to Himself 
 — not an atonement made to God, but an at-one- 
 ment that God was making through such a manifes- 
 tation of His Holy Love as should make actual in 
 men the reconciliation represented for all in Christ. 
 The love so manifested is the moving- power in men's 
 hearts to make and keep them at one with God. 
 Therefore the Apostle's prayer that all might know 
 the greatness of that immeasurable love. At the 
 same time, as we have seen, the end of sin in man 
 was here represented. 
 
 1 For a fuller treatment of the Cross in its various aspects 
 the writer may be permitted to refer to The Gospel of Recon- 
 ciliation and The Cross and the Kin?do?n, 2nd Ed. 
 
Reconciliation of Man to God 107 
 
 The reconciliation becomes actual in individual 
 experience as men die with Christ to the lower self- 
 centred nature — as the individual will is surrendered 
 to the will of God. It is that " dying to live " which 
 Jesus in His teaching called men to, the necessity for 
 which philosophy in its own way repeats. 1 
 
 May we not also say that the acceptance of the 
 personally undeserved suffering of the Cross by the 
 Divine-human Christ is God's means of reconciling 
 us to Himself as the source of a world-order in which 
 suffering and sacrifice are universal elements. It 
 shows us how inevitable these are ; so much so that 
 even He in whom God is incarnate in our humanity 
 cannot escape them. And the results prove that the 
 issues are good. Suffering, sacrifice, and death are 
 necessary for the perfecting of our life in God. 
 Their vicarious acceptance is the means whereby 
 good, even in its highest form, comes to ourselves 
 and to others. Hence the call, " Renounce ! " " Re- 
 nounce ! " which Goethe heard on every hand. As 
 one of our own poets has put it — 
 
 "But all through life I see a Cross 
 Where sons of God yield up their breath : 
 There is no gain except by loss ; 
 There is no life except by death." 
 
 Dr. Walter C. Smith. 
 
 1 For a recent interesting statement from a philosophical 
 standpoint, see Bosanquet's Gifford Lectures for 1912, p. 147 ; 
 only, instead of the Absolute, we think of God. 
 
108 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Complete reconciliation with God implies the accept- 
 ance of His Will in the order of the universe and in 
 our own experience under it, however hard it may 
 bear on ourselves individually. In such acceptance 
 we come into that union with the Divine Will 
 wherein alone there is peace. 
 
 It is this act of God "in Christ reconciling the 
 world to Himself" that gives us the universal Gospel, 
 and opens the way of access to God for every sinner. 
 Because of this Paul burst the bonds of Judaism, and 
 went forth, preaching peace to the Greek and the 
 Barbarian as well as to the Jew. It is because of 
 this that Christianity is a purely spiritual religion, 
 with nothing required of man but to respond to the 
 appeal, " Be ye also reconciled to God." 
 
 And, if the reasoning in previous chapters be sound ; 
 if man's ethical life be typical of that of all ethical 
 beings in their relation to God, the reconciliation of 
 man to God in Christ applies to the entire universe, 
 embracing " the things in the heavens " as well as 
 " the things upon the earth " ; or, as more explicitly 
 stated in Colossians (i. 20), " whether the things upon 
 the earth, or the things in the heavens." 
 
 The Reconciliation of Man to Man 
 This Reconciliation of man to God in Christ repre- 
 sented also, and was meant to effect, the Reconcilia- 
 tion of man to man. It contains the principle of the 
 
Reconciliation of Man to Man 109 
 
 restoration of unity to humanity. The Apostle had 
 naturally in view, primarily, the great outstanding 
 division of his day, that of Jew and Gentile. The 
 Gentile who was supposed to stand " afar off" was 
 " made nigh by the blood of Christ." The idolised 
 " Law," which stood as "a middle wall of partition" 
 dividing Jew from Gentile, causing "the enmity" 
 between them, "even the Law of commandments 
 contained in ordinances," He " broke down," " having 
 abolished in His flesh the enmity, — that He might 
 create in Himself of the two one new man, (so) making 
 peace" (Eph. ii. 13-22). To the Colossians he says, 
 " having blotted out the bond written in ordinances 
 that was against us, which was contrary to us, and 
 He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the 
 Cross" (ii. 14). The reference in both passages is to 
 "the Law," and the simplest explanation is, that 
 having made man at one with God, gaining for 
 men that " acceptance " which the Law vainly aimed 
 at, the Law was shown to be unnecessary — something 
 that was now, with all that it might be supposed to 
 have against men, null and void, done away with. 
 As in Ephesians it is said He did this "that He 
 might reconcile them both (Jew and Gentile) in one 
 body unto God through the Cross — for through Him 
 we have both access" — not through the ordinances 
 of the Law, but — "in one Spirit unto the Father," 
 even the Spirit of the great Reconciliation in Jesus, 
 
1 1 o Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Thus the Cross becomes the means of unity and 
 source of peace, not only as between man and God, 
 but as between man and man. The result was seen, 
 so far, in the formation of the Christian Church, 
 wherein Jew and Gentile now met in brotherly 
 fellowship and on equal terms. But it has a far 
 wider application in respect of which it has been 
 only as yet very imperfectly realised. We have 
 failed too greatly to make actual in fact that which 
 was represented and made potential for all in Christ. 
 We have not given due prominence to the fact that 
 the Cross represents, not only the Atonement of men 
 to God, but of man to man. We have given too 
 exclusively an individualistic application to that 
 which is designed to bring about the actual unity 
 of mankind, to " make peace " everywhere amongst 
 men, to create, in short, " one new man," or, collect- 
 ively viewed, one true family of God on earth. We 
 say continually that we believe that in the Cross 
 of Christ was fulfilled the promise of the angelic 
 song over Bethlehem's star-light plain : — 
 
 " But with the woes of sin and strife 
 
 The world has suffered long ; 
 Beneath the angel-strain have rolled 
 
 Two thousand years of wrong ; 
 And man, at war with man, hears not 
 
 The love-song which they bring, — 
 O hush the noise, ye men of strife, 
 
 And hear the angels sing ! " 
 
Reconciliation of Man to Man 1 1 1 
 
 On the Cross it was far more than a love-song. 
 It was an act of sacrifice, carried out through the 
 thickest darkness that can overwhelm a soul, in an 
 agony that proved the will to the uttermost and 
 that found expression in that awful cry, " My God ! 
 My God ! " Yet, so far as concerns the reconciliation 
 of man to man, we have remained practically deaf 
 to both the song and the cry. To-day the most 
 Christian (?) nations continue arming themselves to 
 the teeth, vieing with each other in the building of 
 costly armaments and defences against each other, 
 in the maintenance of huge armies and navies that 
 burden their peoples, in the careful training of men 
 to kill their brothers, in the perfecting of instruments 
 on earth and sea, and even in the air, for mutual 
 destruction. It may be said that as long as one 
 nation continues so to arm itself, others must be 
 prepared to meet it. But is there not something 
 seriously amiss in this warlike state of Christian 
 nations ? What a spectacle it must be to angels, to 
 God, and to Christ, who died to " make peace " and 
 " to make of all one new man ! " If it be economically 
 unwise and morally reprehensible; if war, in the 
 main, proceeds from the lower animal nature, what 
 is it in the light of the Christianity — the religion of 
 Love — in which we profess to believe? Surely it 
 looks as if it may be truly said of Christendom, " this 
 people honours me with their lips, but their hearts 
 
ii2 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 are far from me." If it be said that there is no 
 bad feeling in our hearts towards those with whom 
 we may be locked in mortal strife to-morrow, our 
 warlike state seems scarcely consistent with sanity. 
 It is provocation rather than protection, and is likely 
 to be its own Nemesis. 
 
 It causes one to ask seriously whether our Christi- 
 anity is real or professed only — a matter of churches 
 and theology, but of little real practical influence, or 
 to put to one's self the still more serious question, 
 whether Christianity actually possesses the power 
 we have supposed it to have ? To the last question, 
 fortunately, we can give no hesitating answer. If 
 Christianity were embraced in its truth — if Christ 
 were accepted by men as that which He is — their 
 true life ; if they were to seek in earnest to become 
 what they are represented in Him as being, and what 
 there is power in Christ to make them — at one with 
 God and with each other ; if the spirit of Love that 
 expressed itself on the Cross and that proceeds from 
 it with adequate influence to inspire every soul open 
 to its reception — the spirit in which " we have all our 
 access to the Father " — were received, there would be 
 peace in the hearts of men and peace on the earth. 
 Does not our fault lie in this, that we have too 
 greatly failed to remember what God really is and 
 what at-one-ment with Him must mean ; that we have 
 too often forgotten that God is Love, and really the 
 
Reconciliation of Man to Man 1 13 
 
 Father of us all, and have imagined that we could be 
 at one with Him while we continued to be at war 
 with each other ? 
 
 The same remarks apply, in a measure, to that 
 industrial strife which, since the abolition of slavery 
 and serfdom and the growth of intelligence and of 
 freedom in those who toil, has been characteristic 
 of the relations between Capital and Labour, and 
 has in our own time become so threatening. It is 
 not unchristian for men to seek to obtain what they 
 believe they are justly entitled to, nor for employers 
 to endeavour to hold fast what they, on their side, 
 deem their rights. It is not "a peace at any price" 
 that Christ brings — a peace which would leave 
 oppression or injustice to continue their sway. He 
 said that He " came not to send peace on earth, but 
 a sword." Not a material sword, but that of Truth 
 and Justice searching and dividing the hearts of men. 
 The peace is one which flows from the recognised 
 common humanity of all men, with an equal standing 
 before God. It is the unity of men in the one spirit 
 of love. But if both employers and employed 
 realised the meaning of the Cross as it is expressed 
 in these Epistles, and were animated by the new 
 spirit which proceeds from Christ and which is God 
 in men ; if, in the words of Paul, " Christ dwelt in 
 their hearts," and His Spirit ruled in the life ; if they 
 
ii4 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 were " a habitation of God in the Spirit," there would 
 be on both sides a Divine influence present and 
 operative before which the spirit of strife would be 
 banished, and the things that were just and right and 
 that made for peace alone would be sought and 
 amicably settled. It is the right spirit or feeling 
 that is wanted to make things right. 
 
 In presence of all this warfare and strife the 
 Christian Church cannot be held blameless. We 
 need to come back to the teaching of these Epistles, 
 and think not only of the reconciliation of man to 
 God, but also of man to man. The two must go 
 together, as Jesus also taught personally. In no 
 other way but by the creation of that new spirit, 
 or " new man," which was manifested in Christ and 
 which God sought to create in all through the life 
 and death of the Saviour, can warfare in all its forms 
 be abolished and peace reign amongst men brought 
 into unity with God and each other. It is the want 
 of the Spirit of Christ within us that our present 
 condition proclaims. Material considerations may 
 make men less inclined for warfare, the growth of 
 moral feeling may tend to make them ashamed of it, 
 as something belonging to the lower nature ; but as 
 long as the self-life is the ruling principle there can 
 never be a deep settled peace. It is only God who 
 can create the spirit of universal love in human 
 
Christian Freedom 1 1 5 
 
 hearts, and this is what He seeks to do through the 
 Gospel. It is for the Christian Church, which exists 
 for the furtherance of that Gospel, to take up with 
 greater earnestness this manward bearing of the 
 Divine Purpose, both as respects international 
 disputes and the various causes of dispeace in 
 society. 
 
 Christian Freedom through the Cross 
 
 The Cross also brought to men (if they would), 
 these Epistles teach, freedom from all merely human 
 ordinances, even from such as were contained in a 
 Law believed to be Divine in its origin. These 
 things belonged to " the rudiments of the world," not 
 to Christ. The Christian man was delivered from all 
 such impositions by Him in whom he died to the 
 old life and rose into the new. " Let no man there- 
 fore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a 
 feast day, or a new moon, or a sabbath day : which 
 things are a shadow of the things to come ; but the 
 body (the substance and reality) is Christ's " (Col. ii. 
 16). Dr. Farrar aptly remarks on this: "If after 
 nineteen centuries the Christian Church has not 
 understood the sacred freedom of this language, we 
 may imagine what insight it required to utter it in 
 St. Paul's day, and how the Jews would gnash their 
 teeth when they heard of it." 
 
1 1 6 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 They were also delivered from all mere asceticism 
 and voluntary self-humiliations, as if such practices 
 were aids to the true life. In Christ they had every- 
 thing; in Him dwelt "all the fulness of the God- 
 head," and in Him they were " made full " (Col. ii. 9). 
 Let them cherish His Spirit as the principle of their 
 life, and they would find that within themselves 
 which met all their need. For, as Paul says else- 
 where, Christ was in them. They were freed also 
 from all fancied necessity of propitiating angels and 
 higher powers (to which certain of the Jews appear 
 to have been prone) ; for, whatever these might be, 
 they were all under Christ. Also from all depend- 
 ence on merely human wisdom ; for in Christ were 
 " hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." 
 They could learn of Him and go to Him direct for 
 themselves : " Take heed," says the Apostle, " lest 
 there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you 
 through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the 
 tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, 
 and not after Christ," a warning needed for all time, 
 and never more perhaps than for to-day, when we 
 have so many " new religions " and so much specula- 
 tion regarding religion. Let them "hold fast the 
 Head " and they would find from Him all that was 
 requisite to nourish and perfect them in the true life. 
 
 Finally, Christ on His Cross, by bringing man, in 
 spite of all spiritual opposition, in His perfect sacri- 
 
Christian Freedom 117 
 
 fice to God, freed men, not only from the power of 
 sin in themselves, but also from all those powers of 
 the spiritual world which might be hostile to man. 
 They fought against Him, and sought to invest Him 
 as a garment, but " stripping them off" (the same 
 word as in '"putting off the old man" in chapter 
 iii. 9), He triumphed over them, " making a show 
 of them openly," leading them in triumph as a 
 spectacle, as the conqueror did his captive foes (ii. 15). 
 The reference here is no doubt to the angels and 
 demons, some of them good and some evil, which in 
 the common belief of the time, among both Jews 
 and Greeks, were supposed to surround man's life, 
 the evil powers fighting against him and seeking to 
 thwart him in that which was good. But the real 
 redemption was not from those evil powers outside 
 of man, but from the sinful self. As disease germs 
 cannot easily fasten on the healthy organism, so these 
 evil powers — if they be real, and they may be so for 
 aught we know — cannot find a lodgement in the 
 soul that is animated by the true spirit of life, although 
 they may trouble and distress it. If St. Paul accepted 
 the current views concerning the evil powers — and it 
 would be nothing to wonder at if he did — they are 
 clearly regarded as only accessory. The real need of 
 redemption is from " the old man " of " the flesh " — 
 from our own lower selves. No powers, embodied 
 or disembodied, could conquer Him who was willing 
 
1 1 8 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 completely to give Himself up to the will of God, 
 and herein lies for all who " die with Christ " the 
 secret of complete freedom from all fear, and from all 
 that can be against them. As another Christian 
 writer asks, " If ye be Christ's, who can harm you ? " 
 
 We hear much to-day about getting deliverance 
 from fear and worry, and undoubtedly great is the 
 need therefor. For, if vice slays its thousands, worry 
 and anxiety slay their tens of thousands, and make 
 life a constant torment to many earnest souls of a 
 certain temperament. But if all things are under 
 Christ our Head, if He has virtually subdued all 
 things to Himself, if we have in Him all that these 
 Epistles assert, and if His Spirit rules our life, then, 
 surely, "holding fast the Head " we may \&.\g. peace. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE FULNESS OF GOD IN CHRIST: 
 PRESENT RELATION OF CHRIST TO 
 GOD AND TO OURSELVES. 
 
 A S we have seen, Christian faith cannot rest con- 
 -*--*- tentwith a merelyhistoricallymanifested Christ, 
 a brilliant Light that shone for a brief space of time 
 in the world, but now is quenched, a Personality in 
 whom God was manifested in the flesh for a few 
 years in Palestine, but who has now passed wholly 
 beyond our reach. In such a case the brightness of 
 the light, while it shone, would only make the present 
 darkness seem the deeper. Christian faith holds a 
 present relation to Christ as a living Lord and 
 Saviour ; to it Christ is still very really " God with 
 us." Christ is not only " He in whom all things 
 were created," and all things also brought back to 
 God; but as representing man in his truth at-one- 
 with God, He becomes a new Divine-human Head to 
 the race in the reception of whom as such alone can 
 it find its full true life or become a divinely-ordered 
 
 Body. 
 
 ii 9 
 
1 20 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 The true life represented in Christ must be volun- 
 tarily accepted as our own ; our reconciliation with 
 God in Him must become real in our experience ; 
 Christ's death to sin in our name must be homolo- 
 gated by us, and, in the power of the Spirit that pro- 
 ceeds from Him, we must rise with Him and be per- 
 fected in the new life. All that is representatively 
 ours in Christ must become actually ours in experi- 
 ence, through a faith that receives and constantly 
 looks to Christ as " our life." To " the Church " (of 
 which we shall hereafter speak) He is the Head with 
 whom all the members are in vital union, " from whom 
 all the body, being supplied and knit together through 
 the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of 
 God " (Col. ii. 19). Or, as stated in Ephesians, " from 
 whom all the body fitly framed and knit together 
 through that which every joint supplieth, accord- 
 ing to the working in (due) measure of each several 
 part, maketh the increase of the body unto the build- 
 ing up of itself in love " (iv. 16). From Him also, " in 
 whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and know- 
 ledge," spiritual teaching is received, and we reach in 
 this connection the highest statement that can be 
 made concerning Christ in His present life : " in Him 
 dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily " (Col. 
 ii. 9). Let us consider the meaning of this supreme 
 statement and try to see the truth it expresses. 
 
 The word rendered "fulness" is pleroma, which 
 
The Ftdness of God in Christ 1 2 1 
 
 was a technical term in later Gnostic speculation, 
 sometimes used to denote the entire Godhead as 
 distinguished from its distributions among aeons, 
 etc. The frequency of the term in these Epistles 
 suggests that it was used by the false teachers even 
 in Paul's time with a similar significance. But it is 
 common in the New Testament as denoting simply 
 fulness of any kind, and that with which anything is 
 filled up or made complete. Its general sense in the 
 New Testament is that of completeness, the whole 
 content of what is spoken of (John i. 16; Rom. xi. 
 12, 25, xv. 29; 1 Cor. x. 26; Gal. iv. 4; Eph. i. 10, 
 etc.) The meaning here is most probably that which 
 fills up the Deity, i.e., " the sum of the attributes 
 without which God Himself would not be complete " 
 (Williams, Cambridge Greek Testament, Co/ossians) ; 
 all the fulness of God dwells in Christ, so that there 
 is no need to go to lesser beings. That rendered " the 
 Godhead " — theotcs, signifies properly the Deity, the 
 essential nature of God, as distinguished from theiotes, 
 " Divinity." " Dwells," katoiked, suggests inhabita- 
 tion, dwelling as in a home or permanent abode. The 
 pleroma was not merely temporarily dwelling in Christ, 
 as certain early false teachers said, but permanently. 
 The only question that arises is as to the meaning of 
 somatikos, an adverb translated "bodily." Soma, of 
 course, means " body,'' and the adverb must denote 
 bodilywise, or in a bodily manner. But what is in- 
 
122 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 tended by this ? Does it mean that the Godhead in 
 Christ still dwells in a body, as it did while He was 
 here in the flesh, although a body of far finer 
 material ? It would seem that we cannot understand 
 it thus if we take theotes to refer to the essential Deity, 
 which cannot be circumscribed or limited by a 
 material body, however fine we conceive the material 
 to be. It is said, indeed, of Christ that " it pleased 
 the Father (or God) that in Him should all the 
 fulness dwell" (chapter i. 19), which some refer to the 
 historical Christ in the flesh. But it seems rather to 
 have reference to what was ultimately realised in the 
 case of the risen and glorified Christ. It follows the 
 statement that Christ was made, not only the Head of 
 creation, but also of the Church, " the first-born from 
 the dead " — which cannot apply to Him in His life in 
 the flesh. This life from the dead and Headship of 
 the Church were elements in "the fulness" that is 
 spoken of. Alford (with many others) interprets 
 Col. ii. 9 as meaning " manifested corporeally, in His 
 present glorified body (Phil. iii. 21). Before His 
 incarnation it dwelt in Him as the \6yos uauppco;, but 
 not (Tcuf/jaTixaJg, as now that he is the Xoyog htrapKOf." 
 An obvious objection to this is that Christ is not now 
 hffapxog, but is freed from the flesh. Nor was the in- 
 dwelling of God in Him in His body, but in His 
 spiritual Personality. 
 
 The risen and glorified Christ is certainly in 
 
The Glorified Christ 123 
 
 various places of the New Testament represented as 
 possessing a body, a glorified body, or "body of 
 glory." But, while we may believe that He has the 
 power of manifesting Himself in a bodily form, it 
 seems impossible for us to think of Him as being at 
 once wholly Divine and yet permanently embodied. 
 The account of the bodily ascension at the end of 
 St. Mark's Gospel does not really belong to that 
 Gospel ; the statement that He was " carried up into 
 heaven " in the closing verses of St. Luke's Gospel 
 is (as the Revisers' note) " omitted by some ancient 
 authorities," and the narrative in the opening chapter 
 of Acts is of too dubious authority to be founded on. 
 When in Philippians iii. 21 it is said He " shall fashion 
 anew the body of our humiliation, (that it may be) 
 conformed to the body of His glory/' the thought of 
 Christ's parousia or manifestation in bodily form 
 may be the determining one. When He is described 
 as "sitting at the right hand of God," the sitting there 
 cannot be taken literally, for of course there is no 
 right or left with God. His " right hand " is every- 
 where, and if we take it as a figurative expression of 
 a fact it may mean that Christ now shares in the 
 Divine Omnipresence. But the primary reference is 
 to His exaltation, as we have it in Ephesians i. 20 f. — 
 " made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly 
 places (or sphere), far above all rule and authority 
 and power and dominion, and every name that is 
 
124 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 named, not only in this world, but in that which is to 
 come." 
 
 If we think of Christ as He from wJtom the Holy 
 Spirit proceeds, the incongruity of supposing Him to 
 be embodied will be seen. It is true that the Spirit 
 proceeded from Him while incarnate, but it was then 
 far less powerful than it became after He had put off 
 the flesh. So marked was the difference that in the 
 Fourth Gospel we read : " This spake He of the 
 Spirit which they that believed on Him were to 
 receive; for the Spirit was not yet (given), because 
 Jesus was not yet glorified." The presence of the 
 Spirit is frequently identified with that of Christ 
 Himself; in several passages Christ and the Spirit 
 are interchangeable terms. But we cannot think of 
 the Spirit as possessing a body. 
 
 Moreover, it is distinctly affirmed, and is one of 
 the cardinal truths of these Epistles, that the Church 
 is the Body of Christ, that we are the members of the 
 Body of which He is the life, and to suppose that 
 He who thus lives in us and fills us with His power 
 is still in some way separated from us by a body, 
 however subservient to His Spirit that Body may be, 
 seems to place a serious limitation to the spiritual 
 presence and indwelling of Christ ; and perhaps the 
 popular conception of Christ as having a body mili- 
 tates against the realisation of His spiritual presence 
 and indwelling. 
 
The Glorified Christ 125 
 
 The assertion in the passage before us is, not that 
 the Divine fulness dwells in the body of Christ, but 
 that it dwells in Him — in His Spiritual Personality 
 — bodily-wise. The adverb gives the manner of the 
 indwelling: "In Him dwells bodily-wise all the ful- 
 ness of God" — imparted to Him, concentrated in 
 Him. " As in a body " is Bengel's rendering. 
 
 The word does not occur elsewhere in the New 
 Testament, nor in the LXX. ; for, " in a bodily shape 
 (or form)" (Luke iii. 23) the adjective <r<v[Aa,TiKdg 
 is employed. Lightfoot remarks that " St. Paul's 
 language is carefully guarded. He does not say h 
 cui/juri, for the Godhead cannot be confined to any 
 limits of space," and Chrysostom is quoted to the 
 same effect. Much may be said for the rendering 
 adopted by Olshausen (referring to Athanasius and 
 others, ancient and modern), which takes "bodily" 
 as meaning substantially — in actual substance, as 
 contrasted, not merely with the typical, but also with 
 all temporary and less complete forms. This finds 
 confirmation, on one side at least, from the use of 
 soma in verse 17 to denote the substance as contrasted 
 with the shadow : " which are a shadow of things to 
 come, but the body is Christ's." And, on the other 
 hand, it would meet what was probably asserted by 
 some of the false teachers that the Divine indwelling 
 in Christ was only of a temporary or partial character. 
 Dr. John Owen says "substantially or personally." 
 
126 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Dr. Thomas Goodwin prefers personally : " by body 
 is meant person, as they that understand the idiom of 
 the Greek tongue know ; as soul in Hebrew is put for 
 person, so many souls are said to have come out of 
 Jacob's loins (Ex. i. 5) ; so bodily in Greek is taken 
 for personally ( Works, viii. p. 376) ; " au^a,rix.ug, that 
 is, not only in a body, noting out the subject in which, 
 but the manner, personally, bodily, as the Grecians 
 put Gupa, to express a person, e.g., au[/ja,ra, ttoXKo, 
 rpstpuv, and so Thucyidides, august irokij/jiiv — so 
 that bodily is personally" {Works, v. p. 52). Other 
 examples are given in Cremer. 1 
 
 The meaning is that in the Personality of Christ, 
 freed from the limitations of the flesh, and taken 
 wholly into the Godhead, the Deity dwells in Divine 
 fulness and completeness. Christ is thus in very 
 truth, and in the fullest sense, God with us, God for 
 us, yet God in human form, that is, as He has 
 expressed Himself in a human Personality. The 
 whole fulness of the Godhead has become con- 
 centrated in Him in that form in which the Divine 
 Life seeks to live in and fill us and make us eternally 
 His children. It is in Him that the Divine Purpose 
 
 1 The one volume Bible Commentary says with reference to 
 "bodily": "usually explained to mean in bodily fashion. 
 Probably we should render ' in the form of a body,' and explain 
 it to mean as an organic whole. The fulness of the Godhead is 
 not distributed among the angels, but exists in its completeness 
 in Christ." 
 
The Glorified Christ 1 2 7 
 
 for Humanity has realised itself as in a representative 
 man who becomes the new Divine-human Head of 
 the race, the source of the fulness of the higher 
 eternal life of sonship. Christ has become for us the 
 reservoir, so to speak, from whom we receive the 
 supplies that we need, while we live in vital union 
 with Him : " in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily-wise, and in Him ye are made full." 
 " It is in Him," says Owen, " as the light in the beams 
 of the sun, and as water in a living fountain which 
 can never fail." He is the " candlestick " from whence 
 the "golden pipes do empty the golden oil out of 
 themselves (Zech. iv. 1 2), into all that are His " 
 (Works, x. 167). 
 
 This carries us back to that thought of the Eternal 
 Sonship in God as being that in which the creation 
 was conceived, now realised in Christ, and opens 
 out before us the grandest prospects for man. It 
 follows naturally from what was manifested in the 
 humanity of Christ. If God was so incarnated in 
 Him as to form one undivided personality — human, 
 yet Divine, the laying aside of the body freed the 
 Personality from corporeal limitations, so that, as He 
 promises in the Fourth Gospel, He could be with 
 His disciples in a more intimate and abiding manner. 
 While He was in the flesh He was only able to reach 
 a limited circle ; now He can be present with all — 
 the Christ who " is all and in all " ; and in all in all 
 
128 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 the power of the Life Eternal. Not only is there no 
 limit now to His Spiritual Presence; but He has 
 realised in Himself all that belongs to man's spiritual 
 and eternal life ; the whole Divine fulness dwells in 
 Him, and He is able out of it to impart to all that 
 which they need. This is in harmony also with the 
 sayings ascribed to Christ in the Synoptic Gospels : 
 " where two or three are gathered together in my 
 name, there am I in the midst of them " (Matt, xviii. 
 20), and "All authority hath been given unto Me 
 in heaven and on earth," followed by, " and lo, I 
 am with you always, even unto the end of the world," 
 or "the consummation of the age" (Matt, xxviii. 
 18, 20). 
 
 Christ, then, we conclude, is a definite Personality 
 in the spiritual world — in God, as it is said, "your 
 life is hid with Christ in God," and that Personality 
 which Christ is is so completely one with God, so 
 entirely filled by God, that all the fulness of the 
 Godhead dwells therein — not as confined in a body, 
 but substantially, personally and permanently, or as 
 if it were centred in a containing body. Christ is 
 God with us in human form — not body. The form 
 of humanity can be distinguished from the body 
 that is necessary for our existence on the earth; 
 and this human form is in Christ wholly receptive 
 and expressive of the Deity, as He sought to extend 
 His Divine life to man. In other words, in the 
 
Christ and God 129 
 
 humanity of Christ the Divine Ideal was perfectly 
 realised, so that in Him the humanity is filled with 
 and expressive of the Divine, and He is therefore 
 the true Divine-human Head of the race, in whom 
 is centred and from whom proceeds the fulness of 
 that life of sonship to God, in the Ideal of which all 
 are created. 
 
 Difficulty from the Omnipresence of God 
 
 But here a new difficulty arises, one that has 
 perplexed many minds and caused some to reject 
 this conception of Christ entirely. It is asked, Do 
 not the Fountain and Fulness of the Deity reside in 
 God, or " the Father " ? Is not everything in Christ 
 ascribed to Him ? and, Is He not for ever with us 
 all? Is He not the direct object of prayer even in 
 these Epistles, as when Paul says, " I bow my knees 
 unto the Father, of whom every family in heaven 
 and on earth is named " ? Is not " grace and 
 peace " and every blessing besought of " God our 
 Father " ? Do we not " live and move and have our 
 being " in God ? Ought we not, therefore, to look for 
 everything directly to Him, instead of to Christ? Why 
 should we need Christ in this relation to us at all ? 
 
 These questions are natural. And yet when we 
 look at the history of the world, and mark the ex- 
 perience of the great masses of mankind, we cannot 
 
1 30 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 but ask, How much comes from this direct relation 
 to God ? We read the story of the old religions and 
 see how for ages men, impelled by their nature to 
 seek for God, were left to grope in the thickest 
 darkness, suffered to form in some cases the most 
 revolting conceptions of the Deity, and to worship 
 in rites indescribable. We see the heathen world 
 groping in the same darkness to-day, or, what is 
 worse, suffered to rest as contented with the dark- 
 ness as if it were the light. We witness other 
 religions with more enlightenment, e.g., the Moham- 
 medan, firmly believing in a God who is with them 
 and favours them, but under whose supposed sanction 
 they can do the cruellest and most ungod-like things. 
 Men may believe in God, but too often they fashion 
 His image in their own likeness, as they have done 
 even in Christian times, notwithstanding the revela- 
 tion of God in Christ. Is not God as near to all 
 those as He is to us? Why, then, does He not 
 communicate Himself to them ? Why does He not 
 teach them better ? Why does not the God of Love, 
 that He undoubtedly is, show His regard for them 
 and help them in their misery, above all in their 
 search for Himself? 1 
 
 1 We might refer also to the results of non- Christian 
 mysticism — the endeavour to find God immediately, often 
 ending in finding practically a blank — an abyss of which 
 nothing could be said. 
 
Christ and God 131 
 
 There is no question of the omnipresence of God, 
 or of His desire to communicate Himself to all. 
 Wherever there has been susceptibility to God in 
 His truth, God has entered the soul according to the 
 measure of that susceptibility. In almost all religions 
 there have been gleams of His Presence, and in some 
 outstanding personalities that Presence has dwelt 
 in no small measure. Since the Creation was con- 
 ceived "in Christ," the Divine immanent Spirit has 
 been moving towards its realisation everywhere ; but, 
 like all evolutionary processes, the progress has been 
 extremely slow, and sometimes apparently there has 
 been (as in natural evolution) retrogression instead 
 of advance. Not till God could manifest Himself 
 increasingly in His transcendency could He become 
 known in His truth to men. We have sought to 
 show in a previous chapter how in Israel He found 
 susceptibility, and, through men of prophetic nature, 
 was able increasingly to make Himself known and 
 to communicate Himself, till in Him who was a 
 perfect Son the Father could completely reveal 
 Himself, and do for men what was necessary to 
 deliver them from that in themselves which was 
 the greatest obstacle to His self-communication. 
 Christ thus became the complete Mediator of the 
 knowledge of God to men, and of that life of Sonship 
 which was fully realised in Himself. God in Himself 
 is infinite, unsearchable; He can only be known as 
 
132 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 He can reveal Himself or make Himself known. In 
 Christ we have a Personality at once human, so 
 that we can understand it, partake of it, be con- 
 formed to it; at the same time one with, filled by, 
 and expressive of the essential Deity, so that in 
 Him we have God with us in true human form, 
 freed from bodily limitations. The only answer to 
 these questions — the only answer which preserves 
 the reality of God — is that, since God is Spirit, He 
 needs an adequate organ for His manifestation ; and 
 such an organ for His complete manifestation and 
 work on our behalf He found in Christ. It is only 
 through Christ that we adequately know God and 
 can come to God ; it was only through Christ that 
 God could come effectually to men, and in Him He 
 still comes to us. It is through the preaching of 
 Christ to those who sit in darkness that we can 
 bring to them the light that enables them to know 
 and find God. Here is the obligation that lies on 
 Christians. God has put it in man's own power to 
 banish the darkness : the responsibility for it rests 
 with us. Missionary experience often finds souls 
 very near God ; only waiting for the window of 
 the soul to be opened, as it were, in at which the 
 light will stream and be gladly welcomed. There 
 is evidence of a preparatory Divine working within, 
 and everywhere the revelation of God in Christ 
 finds a response in human souls. 
 
Christ and God 133 
 
 Harmony of the Doctrine of God 
 and Christ 
 
 There is really no contradiction between the uni- 
 versal presence of God and that in Christ. There 
 is no separation between God and Christ. Christ 
 is God in human form. In Christ we do come to 
 God, even to the Father, since ''all the fulness" 
 dwells in Him. Real coming to God is always 
 ethical : we come to God as we come into unison 
 with that which God is ; not merely when we think 
 we come to that which we have called " God." 
 And what God is is just that which fills Christ, so 
 that in coming to Him we come unto God, as God 
 has made Himself known to us, and as He actually 
 comes to us in His character of Holy Love. Any 
 other coming to God than to this Ethical Being — 
 this God who is Holy Love — is purely imaginary, 
 whether among " the heathen " or amongst so-called 
 " Christians." 
 
 " God is one" Jesus said, and it is the one God 
 who fills Christ and is present with us in the Spirit 
 that comes through Christ. If " the Son " in God 
 was that in which the creation was conceived, this 
 " Son " is not a different Person from God as 
 " Father," but is God as " Son," a " Person " more 
 nearly in the original sense of the word, which was 
 derived from personare, "to sound through," and 
 
134 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 denoted the mask through which a character in a 
 play spoke his part. One individual could thus have 
 or sustain more than one "person." The modern 
 sense of the word as denoting an individual has 
 given occasion for a Tritheistic conception of the 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as if it meant 
 something like three separate Divine Persons or 
 individuals, instead of one God, and has led to its 
 rejection by many. Those who framed the doctrine 
 expressly repudiated such a meaning. But while 
 the unity of God must be maintained, if God is an 
 ethical Personality, which He must be to be God, 
 He must have an ethical content or character. He 
 must conceive Himself as standing in moral relation- 
 ship to that which is thought as ethical Personality 
 other than Himself; which yet, as eternal, cannot 
 be separate from Himself. It must be a distinction 
 within Himself, and apart from such a distinction 
 there can be neither Righteousness nor Love nor 
 even Personality. This thought of another, which 
 at the same time can only be the "image" or 
 reflection of Himself, is "the Son," in the Ideal of 
 whom the world to be crowned by man is conceived 
 and created. 1 What we have in Christ, therefore, 
 
 1 We must also distinguish between God as He is in 
 Himself, and God as He passes into the creation to com- 
 municate the Divine Life to man as it becomes realised in 
 Christ. " The conception of a God-man, of a Saviour, of 
 God revealed in evolution, brings out the antithesis of God 
 
Christ and God 135 
 
 is the manifestation of God in His ethical truth in 
 the form of Sonship toward Himself, human Sonship, 
 since Christ was human, but essentially the Sonship 
 eternal in Himself. It is God in human form, and 
 this Divine humanity remains for ever as the mani- 
 festation and the presence of God with us, while 
 God is at the same time present as the Infinite 
 Spirit, and in all the forms in which He has 
 conditioned His Being for the creation. As Christ 
 says in the Fourth Gospel, " He that hath seen Me 
 hath seen the Father, and, "if a man love Me, he 
 will keep My word, and My Father will love him, 
 and We will come unto him and make our abode 
 with him." 
 
 It is in the Spirit that this Divine Presence is 
 with us: it is in "the Holy Spirit" that we have 
 the complete harmony of the presence of God and 
 of Christ. This is made specially prominent in the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians. As we have seen, every- 
 thing originates with and is the working of " God, 
 the Father of glory," who is " over all and through 
 all and in all." He is in all by His Holy Spirit : 
 "ye are created for a habitation of God in the 
 Spirit." That Spirit, by means of whose indwelling 
 God is in us, was doubtless always present with 
 
 Father and God Son, and the very conception of this relation 
 implies God the Spirit which proceeds from both" (Dr. Paul 
 Carus, Primer of Philosophy, p. 101). 
 
136 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 men, and was, as already said, increasingly realised 
 and effective in one special line. In Christ that 
 Spirit found complete expression and even embodi- 
 ment, and came thus to men with new power of 
 manifestation on the Divine side, and of realisation 
 on the human side. The real character of God was 
 thus made known, and the influences by which He was 
 reconciling the world to Himself were thus brought 
 to bear on the human spirit. The Spirit of God 
 was felt to come as a holy, saving Power — as the 
 spirit of the new life realised and manifested in 
 Jesus Christ, in which His own abiding presence, 
 divine and human, was felt to come. The Spirit 
 came as "the Spirit of Christ," one with the Spirit 
 of God. It was a Holy, Ethical Spirit in which 
 Christian men realised that they had the real 
 Presence of God with them, not only as "the 
 Father," but as "the Son," both in His essential 
 Deity and in His human oneness with the Father. 
 There was this new element in the Spirit, or rather, 
 the Spirit came to them in this new form to raise 
 them into the life of Sonship realised in Christ. 
 There was " one God, one Lord, and one Spirit" 
 in which the one God and the one Lord were both 
 with them. 
 
 God's presence, as being that of Spirit, must be 
 mediated in order to be universally and effectually 
 realised. It is so mediated in Nature in a thousand 
 
Christ and Ourselves 137 
 
 ways for the maintenance and advancement of our 
 physical and earthly life, and so as to constitute a 
 Providence that " makes all things work together 
 for good to them that love God " — that is, who live 
 in harmony with His will. In Christ that Presence 
 in its fulness is mediated, specially as the power of 
 our higher spiritual life, as that was conceived in the 
 image of the Divine Sonship. That which we have 
 of God within ourselves " by nature," or to which 
 we can by our unaided efforts raise ourselves, is not 
 adequate to meet our need. We require help from 
 God — a Saviour who can visit, enlighten, help, 
 encourage, make His " grace sufficient for us and 
 perfect His strength in our weakness," in a word 
 be "our life." To those ends "all the fulness of 
 God" is centred in Christ, and is conveyed to us 
 in that Spirit which God is as He is in Himself 
 and as He fills Christ — the Spirit of Holy Love. 
 Receiving [this Spirit into our hearts to live in 
 us, yielding ourselves up thereto, we have therein 
 the indwelling of God and of Christ. We have 
 at one and the same time God as our God and 
 Father in all the reach of His Being and Pro- 
 vidence, and Christ as our Saviour, Teacher, 
 and Friend in adaptation to our need. There is 
 great comfort and encouragement in the thought 
 of the abiding, ever-present Divine humanity in 
 Christ. 
 
138 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 "Though now ascended up on high, 
 He bends on earth a brother's eye ; 
 Partaker of the human name, 
 He knows the frailty of our frame. 
 Our fellow-sufferer yet retains 
 A fellow feeling of our pains ; 
 And still remembers in the skies 
 His tears and agonies and cries. 
 In every pang that rends the heart 
 The Man of Sorrows had a part ; 
 He sympathises with our grief, 
 And to the sufferer sends relief." 
 
 Believing in the revelation of God in Christ, our 
 hearts go out in loving devotion and filial trust to 
 our gracious Heavenly Father. But our necessities 
 will sometimes lead us to think specially of God 
 our Father, at other times of Christ our Saviour, or 
 again, of God as Holy Spirit (witness, e.g., Living- 
 stone's prayers in his most critical moments, in 
 which pleadings with God and with Christ are 
 intermingled). These, however, are but different 
 aspects in which we view the one God ; there is no 
 separation. To employ an illustration we have used 
 elsewhere, 1 we may say that, just as living in the 
 sunshine we have the real presence of the light 
 and of the sun by means of which it becomes 
 manifest and effectual for us, so in the Holy Spirit 
 we have at once the presence of the Father and of 
 
 1 See The Holy Spirit by the present writer (National 
 Council of Evangelical Free Churches). 
 
Christ and Ourselves 139 
 
 Him in whom that presence is supremely mediated. 
 In the sun in the heavens the whole fulness of the 
 light, for this world at least, dwells, so to speak, 
 and in the radiation which visits us so as to make 
 our physical life effective we have a physical analogy 
 to the coming and indwelling of God and of Christ 
 in the Holy Spirit. Only, we must remember that 
 the Presence is spiritual, and none the less real and 
 effective, although it cannot be physically seen or 
 felt. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE NEW LIFE 
 
 WHAT we have in Christ is a new life animating 
 those who receive Him : it is " a new crea- 
 tion." Let us view now the character of that life as it 
 appears in these Epistles and see whether it be such 
 as will bear out its ascription to a Divine Authorship. 
 Is it worthy of God and all He is said to have done 
 in order to produce it ? Is it really the Divine life 
 in man? 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the theology of these 
 Epistles, the high character of the Christian life as 
 therein set forth is beyond dispute. There cannot, 
 in fact, be a purer or loftier conception of life. 
 Without supposing that there was no high ethical 
 teaching or examples of noble character in the pre- 
 Christian Greek-Roman world, there was certainly 
 nothing like this Christian teaching and character 
 to be seen in that world before Christianity entered 
 it. Professor Ward Fowler says of Christianity in 
 his Gifford Lectures : " Though grown on soil which 
 
 had borne other crops, (it) was wholly new in structure 
 
 140 
 
The New Life 141 
 
 and vital principle. I say this deliberately after 
 spending so many years in the study of the religion 
 of the Romans, and making myself acquainted in 
 some measure with the religion of other peoples. The 
 essential difference, it appears to me as a student 
 of the history of religion, is this, that whereas the 
 connection between religion and morality had been 
 so far a loose one — at Rome, indeed, so loose that 
 many refused to believe in its existence, the new 
 religion was itself morality, but morality consecrated 
 and raised to a higher power than it had ever yet 
 reached." There was "a great gulf fixed between 
 the old and the new " (p. 466). 
 
 But it was not morality merely, it was something 
 more: it was the Love that is the source and the 
 crown of all morality. In that new life in those 
 human souls, animated by a self-transcending love 
 to Himself and devotion to the things that were of 
 God, rather than to " the things on the earth," God 
 must have found a satisfaction such as none of His 
 other works could give Him. Many of these early 
 Christians were very poor, many of them were slaves, 
 but in them there was a splendour in the sight of 
 God to which the glory of the Caesars or the bright- 
 ness of suns and stars could not even be compared. 
 He found in such lives that which His creative Love 
 had been seeking— that which He had gone forth 
 creating to find — which He had found supremely in 
 
142 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Christ as His Son, and now found through Him in 
 these Christ's brethren. 
 
 If we remember what many of those who by the 
 Apostles' preaching of " Christ " were lifted into this 
 new life had been before the Gospel reached them, we 
 cannot surely doubt that the power that could so 
 effectually operate on them was Divine, as manifestly 
 the working of God as aught that we witness in 
 Nature, even much more manifestly Divine. This 
 creates a strong presumption that the teaching through 
 which it came to them was in its substance true. If 
 we consider what is said in these Epistles of the 
 Christian life, we shall see also the witness that is 
 borne by it to the historic Christ; and we may be 
 reminded with advantage of the character that ought 
 to mark ourselves as Christians. 
 
 1. What they had been. — The immorality of these 
 Greek cities was notorious, "and such," says Paul, 
 " were some of you." Such had been some of those 
 to whom he is writing now. In Ephesians we have 
 some spoken of " who, being past feeling gave them- 
 selves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness 
 with greediness" (Eph. iv. 19): "the things done 
 of them in secret," it was a shame even to mention 
 (v. 12). We find his converts described as having 
 been "dead through trespasses and sins," wherein 
 they " walked according to the course of the world — 
 among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our 
 
The New Life 143 
 
 flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the 
 mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as 
 the rest '' (ii. 1, 3). They had "no hope" and were 
 "without God in the world" (ver. 12); they were 
 '' alienated (from God) and enemies in their mind in 
 their evil works" (Col. i. 21), living in the indulgence 
 of the vices which they are now to put away from 
 them as belonging to "the old man" (Col. iii. 5-10), 
 or to " the flesh " that had been crucified with Christ. 
 2. The Ideal they had accepted. — This was simply 
 the true life as manifested in Christ ; especially, and 
 as comprehending all, in His death to all that 
 belonged to man in the flesh merely, and in His 
 resurrection to the life of the Spirit — in the Love 
 which was on the Cross the crowning expression 
 of His life and the principle of the new life of the 
 Spirit. This is why there is so little reference to 
 the details of the life of Christ in Paul's writings — 
 the death and resurrection covered everything. But 
 it was not merely an adaptation of that idea of 
 dying and rising again which is found in so many 
 religions, drawn probably originally from the death 
 and resurrection of the sun and of nature. It was 
 a definite act in the Person of one who had lived 
 in the flesh and died for all as the expression of 
 an infinite Divine Love ; who had not only set the 
 Ideal before them, but sent forth the motive power 
 which could make it effectual in their lives. Nor 
 
144 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 was it a vague dying and rising again they were 
 called to, but a definite dying to sin and " the old 
 man " and rising to a new life of Love and Holiness. 
 The life that was set before these converts was that 
 of "the new man" in Christ, dead with Him to the 
 old life and risen with Him to the new, which was 
 to be regarded as the true and eternal life. It was 
 for them, as men who had died with Christ, to set 
 their affections (or mind) no longer on the things 
 that are on the earth, but on the things that are 
 above, where Christ is — and where their full life is 
 hid with Him in God (Col. iii. 1-3). Their ambitions 
 and hopes were to rise above the world and all that 
 is in it. But while living in the world, they were 
 to seek to give full expression to all that belonged 
 to the new spiritual man in Christ. " Speaking the 
 truth " (or as the R.V. margin, " dealing truly ") " in 
 love, they were to grow up in all things unto Him 
 who is the Head, even Christ" (Eph. iv. 15); 
 Christ was to dwell in their hearts through faith 
 (iii. 17) ; their Ideal was "the measure of the stature 
 of the full grown man in Christ" (iv. 13). Love was 
 the root, forming stem, branches, and fruit of the 
 new life ; they were to " walk in Love as Christ loved 
 us and gave Himself for us" (v. 2); "rooted and 
 grounded in Love," they were to seek to be " filled 
 unto all the fulness of God" (iii. 17, 19). It was 
 po merely other-worldly life they were called to; 
 
The New Life 145 
 
 Love made that impossible; sonship to God was 
 expressed in brotherhood to man. Not for idle 
 dreaming of future bliss had God called them. 
 They were " God's workmanship, created in Christ 
 Jesus for good works which God afore prepared that 
 we should walk in them " (ii. 10) ; to be " holy and 
 without blemish before Him in love " (i. 4) ; " to be 
 an habitation of God" Himself "in the Spirit" 
 (ii. 22) and a " possession " or " inheritance '' in which 
 He should rejoice (i. 14, 18). They were looking 
 forward to a future presentation of themselves unto 
 God, and therefore Paul was earnestly " admonishing 
 every man and teaching every man in all wisdom 
 that he might present every man perfect in Christ " 
 (Col. i. 22, 28). 
 
 Could there be a higher Ideal set before man than 
 this? Their acceptance of it shows what a new 
 Spirit had taken possession of them. 
 
 2. In practical detail. — We have not only the Ideal 
 set before these new converts, but the various ex- 
 hortations addressed to them gives it in practical 
 detail. 
 
 (1) Negatively — which shows further what they had 
 been, or the kind of life they had been called from. 
 They were to put to death, as belonging to " the old 
 man" who died with Christ, "fornication, unclean- 
 ness, passion, evil desire and covetousness which is 
 idolatry " (Col. iii. 5 ; cf. Eph. v. 3). Sins of the 
 10 
 
146 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 flesh, arising from unrestrained desire, were very 
 common amongst those who dwelt in those Greek 
 cities ; in both Epistles, therefore, these are specially 
 mentioned and condemned. The close association of 
 " covetousness " with these in Ephesians v. 3 and 
 Colossians iii. 5 suggests that it may mean inordinate 
 desire of a lustful nature, which, as being fixed on 
 human persons, would certainly be idolatry; in 
 Ephesians iv. 19 some are said "to work all unclean- 
 ness" with greediness (jrXiovi^ia,, the same word as 
 is above translated "covetousness"), and again in 
 Ephesians v. 5, "the covetous man who is an idolater " 
 is conjoined with the " unclean person." Most inter- 
 preters, however, take "covetousness" in its simple 
 meaning of greed, inordinate desire of getting more, 
 and regard it as referring to that greed of gain which 
 was the other leading vice of the heathen world, and 
 is truly the worship of the creature rather than of the 
 Creator. Both have their roots in the " passion " or 
 " evil desire " of the lower (animal) nature. Our Lord 
 had earnestly warned His disciples against covetous- 
 ness in the usual sense of the word, and had char- 
 acterised devotion to gain as Mammon-worship in 
 opposition to devotion to God and His service. 
 Perhaps in Colossians iii. 5 all forms of passion and 
 evil desire are meant to be marked as "idolatry," 
 because, whatever objects they may be directed 
 towards, these take the place of God for the soul. 
 
The New Life 147 
 
 They are also to put away every kind of falsehood 
 or untruthfulness, dishonesty, drunkenness, shameful 
 speaking (abusive or coarse language), foolish or 
 unseemly jesting, wrath (or angry outbursts), slander, 
 railing (A.V. "blasphemy," which it cannot mean 
 here; Eph. iv. 25 f. ; Col. iii. 8). They must study 
 to subdue all such inward motions as belonged to 
 the past, not only of sinful passion, evil desire and 
 covetousness, but also all unreasonable and sustained 
 anger, with all malice, or ill-feeling towards any. 
 All the evils condemned still characterise, more or 
 less, the lower nature, and although the catalogue 
 might well be enlarged for to-day, they are just the 
 things that separate man from God and that work 
 the worst evils of man on his fellows. 
 
 (2) Positively, they were to see to it that they 
 walked " worthily of their high calling of God " 
 (Eph. iv. 1), "worthily of the Lord unto all-pleasing, 
 bearing fruit in every good work" (Col. i. 10). 
 Having "put off the old man," they must "put on 
 the new man, that is, being renewed unto knowledge 
 after the image of Him that created him " (Col. iii. 
 10), "that after God hath been created in righteous- 
 ness and holiness of truth " (Eph. iv. 24). As God's 
 chosen people, they were to "clothe themselves" 
 with all that belonged to the character of God 
 (Eph. v. 1) as seen in Christ; with "compassion' 1 
 [oiktirmos, pity, compassion, mercy), " kindliness " 
 
148 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 {chrestotes — chrestos in Eph. iv. 32), which Trench 
 describes as a grace " pervading and penetrating the 
 whole nature, mellowing there all which would have 
 been harsh or austere " ; " oiktirmos may move us to 
 do kind things, but chrestotes makes us do them in 
 a kindly way." " With all lowliness and meekness, 
 with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love" 
 (Eph. iv. 2), " and forgiving one another, if any man 
 have a complaint against any, even as the Lord 
 forgave you, so also do ye " (Col. iii. 1 3). Humility, 
 lowliness, meekness, imply a spirit that has a due 
 regard for others, conscious of our own defects, and 
 remembering that all that any man has he has 
 received of the Lord, not for self-assertion or ag- 
 grandisement, but for the good of all in the sight of 
 Him to whom all are equally dear. The humility 
 here enjoined was in the non-Christian ethics 
 deemed unworthy of manhood, and it is just here 
 that we perceive the deeper insight created by the 
 new spirit ; for it is in the capacity to stoop (with- 
 out abjectness) that true greatness lies (see Philip, 
 ii. 1 f.). " Long-suffering '' or " patience " is the love 
 that " beareth all things " without anger or irritation. 
 In all they were to strive earnestly to maintain the 
 unity of the Christian brotherhood — "the unity of 
 the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. iv. 3). 
 " Above all " they were to " put on Love, which is 
 the bond of perfectness," i.e., " the power which unites 
 
The New Life 149 
 
 and holds together all those graces and virtues 
 which make up perfection " (Lightfoot ; Col. iii. 14). 
 They were to let " the peace which Christ gives rule 
 (arbitrate, ' settle all questions ') in their hearts," to 
 which peace they were called in one body; thank- 
 fulness, not murmuring, should characterise them 
 (Col. iii. 14, 16). As the members of one body they 
 were to live uprightly and honestly, " speaking truth 
 every man with his neighbour." They were to 
 " work with their hands that which is good," so that 
 they might not only be able to live honestly them- 
 selves, but have something to give to him who had 
 need. Their speech should be such as would 
 "edify," be helpful to those with whom they held 
 converse (Eph. iv. 25 f.). They were to " walk " — 
 conduct their life — as wise men "buying up," to 
 good purpose "the opportunity" which the fleeting 
 time afforded (Col. iv. 5), cherishing a cheerful spirit 
 and submitting to one another " in the fear of Christ," 
 or " out of reverence for Christ '' (Weymouth ; Eph. 
 v. 18, 20). High as the Ideal was, and unworldly as 
 were their ambitions and hopes, the practical good 
 life on earth is ever kept in view. 
 
 Particular counsels are given to husbands and 
 wives, parents and children, masters and servants 
 (bond-servants or slaves). The married men were 
 to love their wives, avoiding all "bitterness of 
 spirit," loving them even as the Lord the Church, 
 
150 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 even as their own bodies. Husband and wife should 
 be as one. Children were to obey their parents in 
 all things "in the Lord," honouring them as enjoined 
 in " the first commandment with promise." Fathers 
 were to see to it that they did not irritate — fret or 
 harass — their children, lest they should become sullen 
 or morose, or be discouraged ; they were to bring them 
 up tenderly with Christian admonition or advice. 
 Servants (slaves) were to obey their masters (lords) 
 according to the flesh, eager to please and with 
 simplicity of motive, '' as unto Christ ; not with eye- 
 service as men-pleasers, but as servants of Christ " ; 
 let their hearts be in their work, "with good will 
 doing service as unto the Lord and not unto men " ; 
 and here was their comfort and encouragement : 
 " Knowing that whatsoever good thing each one 
 doeth, the same shall he receive again from the 
 Lord, whether he be bond or free " ; " knowing that 
 from the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the 
 inheritance; ye serve the Lord Christ, with whom 
 there is no respect of persons." 
 
 Masters were to render to their servants "that 
 which is just and equal — deal justly and equitably 
 with them — knowing that they, too, had a Master in 
 heaven." They were to " do the same things " to- 
 wards their servants, or slaves, as they desired 
 towards themselves, " and forbear threatening, know- 
 ing that He who is both their Master and yours is in 
 
The New Life 151 
 
 heaven, and there is no respect of persons with Him " 
 (Eph. v. 22-vi. 9; Col. iii. 18-25, iv. 1). 
 
 The Christian preachers could not interfere with 
 the firmly rooted custom of slavery, but they intro- 
 duced the principle which should prove destructive 
 of it. The slave was made a free man of the King- 
 dom, a son and heir of God, equally with his master ; 
 both had one common Lord and one common hope 
 from Him; things that were equitable, just, and 
 right belonged to the slave as truly as to his master 
 — ideas that had never been heard of before, and 
 such as would have been scouted by the highest 
 and most ethical philosophy. The idea of one 
 common humanity in Christ — quite a new concep- 
 tion — underlies the whole. There is but one true 
 Body of which all are members — members of that 
 Body and of each other ; so that, if the Ideal were 
 realised, they could not wrong one another, for they 
 would thereby be wronging themselves. 
 
 What higher conception can we have of true 
 individual and social life? Is it not just what is 
 needed to make human character true and society 
 happy? Would not most of the evils of the past 
 have been avoided had this Christian life been more 
 earnestly enforced and exemplified as that which is 
 alone Christian ? Would not its practice now solve 
 our greatest problems and meet most of the evils of 
 
152 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 our time ? It is true life that is wanted, life lived to 
 God and going forth to man in that spirit of Justice, 
 Truth, and Love that God is. As one who does 
 not call himself a Christian has recently said with 
 reference to the great social problem : " Nothing will 
 touch it but a new and better spirit in all who work 
 and who organise work — a new social, moral, and 
 religious reformation" (Frederick Harrison). 
 
 We cannot but ask also, whence was this new, high, 
 and true conception of human life derived ? How 
 did it come to shine with such clearness before the 
 eyes of St. Paul, or whoever it was that wrote these 
 Epistles? It was a new thing in the world. If certain 
 of these graces and virtues had been commended by 
 others, how do we come to find them so wonderfully 
 unified in these Epistles? And not only unified, 
 but freed from all particularism, whether Jewish or 
 Greek, simply human, and inspired by a Spirit that 
 could make them realities in the life ? Surely they 
 had been seen exemplified in some outstanding 
 Personality who had wielded an influence such as 
 no moralist or philosopher had possessed, and who 
 had done something to win the hearts of these men 
 and women to Himself, and to implant the principle 
 of that new life within them. One who had authority 
 also, as their Lord, and who could enable them in 
 their weakness and trials to pursue this Divine 
 
The New Life 153 
 
 Ideal. The character is just that which was seen 
 in Christ; the Ideal could only be derived from 
 Him. His love was the inspiration, and His power, 
 with the prospect held out in Him, the encourage- 
 ment, to take it up and follow it out in earnest. 
 The whole conception is inseparable from the Person 
 and work of Christ, and we have a strong witness 
 here to the reality of the historical Jesus. 
 
 All these moral qualities were to be sought after 
 and manifested by them as believers in Christ — a 
 Christ in whom God had visited them in His grace 
 and reconciled them to Himself, through whose 
 sacrifice they had that forgiveness of sins which 
 was at the foundation of the new life — a Christ 
 who had lived and died for them and risen again. 
 They were to regard themselves as men who had 
 themselves died and risen with Christ ; whose minds 
 were therefore to be fixed on those " things above " 
 which characterised Christ, not on the perishing 
 things of earth. These "things above" were to be 
 found by them as "continuing in the faith," as 
 "holding fast the Head," as drawing from Christ 
 their spiritual nourishment, strength, and support. 
 It was not a new morality, enjoined from without, 
 but a new spiritual life, quickened within. They 
 were men and women in whom the Spirit of God 
 and of Christ dwelt. It was not in their own 
 strength merely that such characters could become 
 
154 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 theirs, but only through the power of the indwelling 
 Spirit. It was God's own life of Holy Love ex- 
 pressing itself in them, according to their measure, 
 as it had expressed itself in its fulness in Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 But while the Spirit of God and of Christ moved 
 them thereto, they had to exert all their own energies 
 in response to that Spirit. While they were to be 
 "strong in the Lord and in the strength of His 
 might," they must also "put on the whole armour 
 of God that they might be able to stand against the 
 wiles of the devil." They were engaged in a conflict, 
 not with flesh and blood merely, but with insidious, 
 invisible spiritual powers — which was true, whether 
 we take it literally or not. Therefore let them arm 
 themselves with that panoply of God, each portion 
 of which is in itself ethical or spiritual. The loins 
 must be girded by Truth, the heart guarded by the 
 breast-plate of Righteousness, the feet shod with 
 the preparation of the Gospel of Peace ; faith must 
 be held fast as a shield on which the fiery darts of 
 the evil one might be quenched ; the sword of the 
 Spirit, which is the Word of God, must be grasped 
 for the offensive. And at all times they must live 
 the life of "prayer and supplication in the Spirit," 
 and not only praying, but "watching thereunto, in 
 all perseverance and supplication for all God's 
 
The New Life 155 
 
 people." The high ethical life was thus to be the 
 outcome of a new spiritual life and fellowship with 
 Christ and with God. By receiving Christ they 
 were brought within the circle of God's people and 
 under His saving power. It was now for them to 
 " walk in Him," that is, to " live and act in vital 
 union with Him, having the roots of your being 
 firmly planted in Him, and continually building 
 yourselves up in Him" (Col. ii. 6, 7, Weymouth's 
 translation). It was simply " Christ is all and in 
 all." And in no other way can the highest morality 
 be reached than by the reception of God Himself, 
 as He comes to us in the Spirit of Christ, producing 
 in some real measure His own life in men, who, in 
 response to that Divine Spirit of life, co-operate 
 with God, working out what He works in them. 
 
 We have here no theories of conversion, but the 
 reality is there. If the tree is known by its fruits, 
 " the doctrine that is according to godliness " stands 
 approved by the life to which those Christian 
 converts were raised. 
 
 The Christian life has always been essentially the 
 same in kind, and it is still a " new life " as compared 
 with the ordinary life of the world. We are not 
 born into it by nature-birth, but must rise to it by 
 voluntary choice. It is this life that is the essential 
 thing in Christianity — this life above the lower self 
 
156 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 and the power of the passing world — this life of 
 devotion to God and to all that He is — this life 
 of the universal, self-transcending Love that God 
 is. Life is the one great possibility given to all 
 men. Apart from all theological questions, the 
 great concern for every man is what his life shall 
 be. The supreme value of Christianity is, that in 
 Christ the possibility of rising to a life that is 
 Divine and eternal is set before us. For this God 
 has created us, and to this He has redeemed us in 
 Christ. It is to this life we are called. Only by 
 obeying the call can we be raised above ourselves 
 to that which is the life of God in man. And only 
 as this life is lived in the world and for the world, 
 as Christ lived it, can the world be blest. No in- 
 tellectual difficulties ought to prevent anyone from 
 obeying the call. It commends itself to every man's 
 conscience in the sight of God — to the Ideal that in 
 some measure shines in all. Yet it is not merely a 
 choice that is asked of us, as if by an act of our 
 own will we could raise ourselves into this higher life. 
 It is a response to God as He comes reconciling us 
 to Himself in Christ, a reception of the Divine Spirit 
 as it comes to us through Christ and as the spiritual 
 power of God is centred in Him for our life. It is 
 through this response to God in Christ — this recep- 
 tion of Christ as that which He is " made to us of 
 God," that that new spiritual power enters us which 
 
The New Life 157 
 
 is the inspiration and strength of the new life, 
 and which we find to be adequately operative in us 
 as we live in fellowship with Christ. While, apart 
 from a personal relation to Christ, Christianity ap- 
 proves itself ethically as the right life-choice, only 
 that Christianity in which Christ is central will prove 
 effective in experience. And only by faith in Him 
 do we stand in the Christian succession. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF 
 CHRIST 
 
 WHILE the Christian life is centred in indi- 
 viduals, each holding a personal relation to 
 Christ, the Church, as the community of such, holds 
 a prominent place in these Epistles, in Ephesians 
 especially. It is " the Body of Christ " in no merely 
 figurative sense, but in most literal reality. While in 
 the flesh, Christ had an individual human body, by 
 means of which the Divine life that was in Him 
 found manifestation and organs of expression and 
 action in the world. When He put off that body He 
 had no longer those organs of manifestation and 
 action ; but the putting off of that body was to be 
 the means of His presence and operation in the 
 world through a new and far more extensive Body 
 which He should gather to Himself: " He ascended 
 far above all the heavens that He might fill all 
 things." The Church was to be, to Him such a Body 
 as should be " the fulness of Him that filleth all in 
 
 all." " Fulness " here most probably means comple- 
 
 158 
 
The Church the Body of Christ 1 59 
 
 tion, as it does elsewhere — as some ancient and 
 modern interpreters have taken it. Westcott renders 
 " the fulness of Him who reaches His fulness through 
 all things in all." Of course, we cannot think of 
 Christ in Himself — " in whom dwells all the fulness 
 of the Godhead " — as needing completion by means 
 of the Church. But, as Lightfoot points out, His 
 pleroma is here treated of, not in His relation to God, 
 but to the Church as His organ and manifestation 
 in the world. Until His pleroma is found in the 
 Church, His presence and work in the world are 
 incomplete. While He certainly fills all things, He 
 is Himself, as represented by His Body, the Church, 
 filled — completed — as that Body increases in fulness 
 and grows up into "the full stature of the perfect 
 man in Christ Jesus." " All things," says Westcott, 
 " are contributing to Him, and He Himself finds His 
 fulness in the sum of all that He brings into a 
 living union with Himself. Thus the Church is His 
 Body, in which, gathering to itself the first fruits of 
 creation, He is Himself presented to the eye of 
 faith " (Ephesians). But whether we accept this 
 interpretation or not, a Body is certainly a necessity 
 for Christ conceived as the Head : a Head without 
 a Body is as incomplete as a Body without a Head. 
 
 Each man and woman who received Christ as the 
 Life was thereby a member of this the new Body of 
 Christ. Each was able to bear a part in the manifes- 
 
1 60 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 tation and service of Christ. " We are members of 
 His body" — one with Him and with each other, 
 even as husband and wife are one (Eph. v. 29 f.). As 
 St. Paul had said to the Corinthians, " Know ye not 
 your bodies are the members of Christ"; "ye are 
 the Body of Christ, and severally members thereof" 
 (1 Cor. vi. 15, xii. 37). Of this Body Christ is the 
 Head, and each member maintains his place in it by 
 " holding fast the Head." From Christ as the Head 
 the whole Body receives its nourishment, so that it 
 may " increase with the increase of God " (Eph. iv. 16 ; 
 Col. ii. 19; cf. Rom. xii. 4 f. ; 1 Cor. x. 17, xii. 12 f.). 
 Its ideal is " the measure of the stature of the 
 fulness (pleroma) of Christ." 
 
 Through this Body Christ is to be increasingly 
 present and operative in the world. Various minis- 
 tries were provided by Him for "the building up" 
 of the Church so that it might become an efficient 
 organ of His manifestation. Apostles, prophets, 
 evangelists, pastors, and teachers, these were given 
 " for the perfecting of the saints " — not, however, as 
 an end in itself merely, but " unto the building up of 
 the body of Christ " (Eph. iv. 1 1 f.). The mention of 
 " evangelists " shows that the enlargement or exten- 
 sion of the Church is contemplated. The object of 
 it all is that Christ may have a complete and 
 effective Body for His manifestation and work in the 
 world. As all believers are actually members of this 
 
The Church the Body of Christ 1 6 1 
 
 Body — becoming such simply by their reception of 
 Christ — ideally this Body of Christ embraces all men. 
 As we have seen, all were created and redeemed in 
 Him. The work of the evangelist in preaching the 
 Gospel was meant to bring all men into vital relation 
 to Christ, so that He might actually " fill all things " 
 (or be through all things filled), and that through 
 Him God might be " all in all." The completion of 
 the Church would thus mean the full salvation of the 
 world and the complete fulfilment on earth of that 
 purpose of the creation which was realised in Christ as 
 " the first-born among many brethren.'' It would be 
 the complete divinisation and socialisation of mankind. 
 The conception of the Church as the Body of 
 Christ is thus a very grand one, and we therefore 
 read that it was by means of it that " the princi- 
 palities and powers in the heavenlies should behold 
 the manifold wisdom of God." It was in this Church 
 that God was to have His great "possession" and 
 " inheritance." Therefore this Church was very dear 
 to Christ : " He loved the Church and gave Himself 
 up for it, that He might sanctify it, having cleansed 
 it by the washing of water with the word, that He 
 might present the Church to Himself a glorious 
 (Church), not having spot or wrinkle or any such 
 thing ; but that it should be holy and without 
 blemish''— as a perfect Bride before Him (Eph. v. 
 25f). Not that Christ instituted the Church in any 
 
1 62 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 set words or formal manner ; but He looked forward 
 to it as that by means of which the purpose for which 
 He died should be carried on to its fulfilment, and as 
 He had been training His disciples to be the leaders 
 therein. For the sake of this Church, the object of 
 His love and sacrifice, God had "given Him to be 
 Head over all things " (Eph. i. 22). The Church is 
 thus everything to Christ, for it is in truth Himself 
 as He becomes anew embodied in the world for the 
 consummation of His Divine work therein. The 
 Church was also very dear to Paul, in whom so much 
 of his Master's Spirit was dwelling, so that he could 
 rejoice in his sufferings and fill up on his part " that 
 which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my 
 flesh for his body's sake which is the Church " (Col. i. 
 24). Not as if Christ had not done enough — although 
 it sometimes seems as if He had not, the response is 
 so slow and imperfect. His followers must be pre- 
 pared and willing "to suffer with Christ," enduring 
 all that is necessary for the full fruition of His 
 purpose, and Christ still suffers in them ; for if all 
 the members suffer when one member does so, much 
 more must this be true of the Head. 
 
 The Church is also represented in these Epistles as 
 a Temple of God, " a House of God, built upon the 
 foundation of the apostles and prophets," of which 
 Christ Himself is the chief corner-stone, " in whom 
 all the building (A.V. rather than R.V., 'each 
 
The Unity of the Church 163 
 
 several building,' m. 'every building') fitly framed 
 together groweth into a holy temple in the Lord — 
 for an habitation (fixed abode) of God through the 
 Spirit" (Eph. ii. 20-22). But this is in keeping with 
 the idea of the Church as the Body of Christ. While 
 here in the flesh He was God's true Temple, and as 
 the Life of the Spirit which filled Him and con- 
 stituted Him such extends itself to others, they 
 unitedly form the Temple of God on the earth — 
 "the habitation (or fixed dwelling) of God through 
 the Spirit." 
 
 The Unity of the Church 
 
 The Church as the Body of Christ was, of course, 
 conceived as a Unity. There were particular 
 " Churches " in existence, as these Epistles addressed 
 to them show, but all were embraced in the Church 
 as a great Divine-human Unity. There is "one 
 Body," says Paul, and "one Spirit," animating each 
 member of that one Body (Eph. iv. 4). Yet, owing 
 to inevitable individual differences, this unity was apt 
 to be broken. The members are therefore exhorted 
 " to give diligence (earnestly striving)to keep the unity 
 of the Spirit in the bond of peace." All had been 
 " called " in one common hope — that of salvation, or 
 of eternal life through Christ; there was but "one 
 Lord," whom all acknowledged, "one Faith," of 
 
164 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 which Christ was the sole centre, " one Baptism," in 
 which all professed their dedication to the one Lord 
 and were represented as having died and risen again 
 with Him, " one God and Father of all, who is over 
 all, and through all, and in all." Therefore, the 
 Church should be one. No detailed doctrines are 
 stated as the basis of unity, only the broad univer- 
 salities which were implied in their being Christians. 
 And, although there must be unity, there should be 
 no dull uniformity in the Church : " But unto each 
 one of us was given the grace " — the individual gift 
 that constituted specific capacity for effective member- 
 ship in the one Body — " according to the measure of 
 the gift of Christ " (Eph. iv. 7). It was for each one 
 to freely develop and exercise his special gift as a 
 member of the Body, and so serve Christ. The 
 unity was not one of doctrines or of humanly 
 created organisation and authority; nor was it 
 external uniformity, but internal unity of the Spirit. 
 
 We have no hint in these Epistles of the later 
 Church organisation, such as appears in Ignatius 
 and proceeded in its development until the Church 
 had a human Head as well as the one Divine- 
 human Head, relation to whom alone could make 
 the Church that Body of Christ it was meant to be. 
 On the contrary, there is no reason to believe that 
 there was any actual organisation of " the Church " 
 in the Apostles' time. Individual churches, meeting 
 
The Unity of the Church 165 
 
 in various places, were no doubt more or less organ- 
 ised, but not the Church as a whole. As Lightfoot 
 points out, the enumeration of special office-holders 
 in Ephesians iv. and Corinthians xii. are different, 
 and neither is to be taken as inclusive or fixed. West- 
 cott says : " In the first age it is perfectly clear from the 
 Pauline Epistles that the Christian society was not 
 as yet under any rigid organisation ; there was not as 
 yet a recognised ecclesiastical hierarchy," and " there 
 is no provision for all time, — the vision was closed 
 by the ' Coming.' " 
 
 No humanly organised church, nor any number 
 of such churches, can form the complete Body of 
 Christ, which in the very nature of it must embrace 
 all who are vitally united to Christ, whether they 
 are acknowledged by man or not. As already 
 said, ideally the Church embraces humanity. No 
 humanly organised body can ever be commensurate 
 with it. At the same time, the divisions and separa- 
 tions that have grown up among Christians ought to 
 be transcended by the unity of the Spirit. The unity 
 is not ideal only, but meant to be very real and 
 influential. But it is an inner, spiritual unity, not 
 an outward union or uniformity. A union of churches 
 will be good if Christ can be more efficiently served 
 thereby, and if this be its motive. But such a union 
 is never likely to be inclusive of all the Christians in a 
 country ; it depends on its basis. Whether it would be 
 
1 66 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 ^ood (judging from past experience) depends entirely 
 on how far the Spirit of Christ would animate 
 it. Christian unity — the unity of the Spirit — is 
 quite a different matter. It is the solemn duty of 
 all Christians to " strive earnestly " after this and to 
 seek to maintain it. Whatever stands out against it 
 is opposed to the very idea of the Church as the Body 
 of Christ. A divided body is a very imperfect con- 
 ception ; it cannot serve Christ as a united body 
 could. There is nothing that need hinder this unity, 
 however great the diversity of creeds and church 
 organisations, and the want of it must be a hindrance 
 to the cause of Christ in the world ; it is, in fact, 
 unnatural and altogether unchristian. This unity of 
 the Spirit, not uniformity, is, we repeat, the ideal of 
 the Church. To quote Bishop Westcott once more : 
 " Unity, not uniformity. Differences of race, class, 
 social order, obviously have no influence upon it. 
 They are of earth only. But, more than this, they 
 are consistent ,with serious differences in the appre- 
 hension of the common faith in which it reposes. 
 The unity of the whole is consistent with a wide 
 variety of parts, each having to a certain degree 
 a corresponding unity in itself. And the essential 
 bond of union is not external but spiritual ; it consists, 
 not in one organisation, but in a common principle of 
 life — external, visible unity is not required for the 
 essential unity of the Church." But, he adds, " the 
 
The Unity of the Church 167 
 
 range of variation in the constitution of Christian 
 societies must be limited by their fitness to embody 
 the fundamental ideas of Christianity " (Ephesians). 
 
 The unity of the Spirit means very much more 
 than a union of Churches, or even a formal union of 
 all Christians. There is something prior to this, 
 which has been too greatly lost sight of by Churches 
 in general. As members of the Body of Christ we 
 are, as we read in Ephesians iv. 25, "members one of 
 another!' As those in whom the Spirit of God and of 
 Christ dwells, we are bound together by the highest and 
 holiest ties of a love which should be stronger than 
 those of blood. In the words of St. Paul elsewhere, 
 we are " one body in Christ and severally members 
 one of another" (Rom. xii. 5), and " there should be 
 no schism in the body, but that the members should 
 have the same care one for another. And whether 
 one member suffereth, all the members suffer with 
 it; or one member is honoured, all the members 
 rejoice with it " (1 Cor. xii. 25-27). We give formal 
 recognition to this unity of believing souls, and in 
 our hymns we celebrate it ; but it is very imperfectly 
 carried out in practice. There is not much of this 
 actual mutual "brotherly love," with the interest, 
 care, and helpfulness that would flow from it, manifest 
 in the greater number of Churches. The members 
 are more often perfect strangers to each other (with 
 certain exceptions, of course), and the mutual aid 
 
1 68 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 which ought to characterise Christians and which did 
 make the Early Church remarkable in the eyes of 
 those around, has been, in one form of it at least, 
 largely delegated to the rate-payers or the State. 
 The Church has thus in great part divested herself 
 of that robe of Love which was her most distinctive 
 Divine livery and adornment. It may be said that 
 under present social conditions it cannot be otherwise ; 
 but that is open to question. But even were it so, the 
 Spirit of this mutual love ought to show itself in 
 ways that it does not. The Church is too often 
 found to be quite as cold as the world. It may be 
 said that where the members of churches are 
 separated from each other by so many barriers, 
 social and other, it is impossible to realise the 
 Christian Ideal. But this is a reflection on Christi- 
 anity. The very purpose of the Spirit of Christ is 
 to break down all the barriers that separate man 
 from man, and to unite all in one common spirit of 
 mutual love and care. Certainly, the Ideal cannot 
 be realised without taking thought and trouble, and, 
 it may be, making sacrifices. But these things 
 belong to the very essence of our religion : without 
 them nothing of real worth can be done. If these 
 are withheld, the Church can never become the Body 
 which Christ seeks to represent Him in the world. 
 Well might an Apostle write, " Let brotherly love 
 continue." 
 
The Unity of the Church 169 
 
 Love is everything in Christianity — not the love of 
 God or of Christ merely, but of one another ; not a 
 love in word only, but in actual deed. " What profits 
 it ? " asks St. James, " if I say to my brother or 
 sister in need of clothing or food, Go in peace; be 
 thou warmed or fed, and give them not the things 
 needful for the body?" This is that faith (and 
 profession) without corresponding works that is 
 valueless before God. It is perhaps in the neglect 
 of this practical Christian love that the churches 
 have most conspicuously and most seriously failed 
 to come up to the Divine Ideal, and have there- 
 fore failed adequately to represent Christianity to 
 the world. Without "brotherly love" it is nothing. 
 Ecclesiasticism is not necessarily Christianity. In 
 their concern for right doctrine in relation to God 
 they have overlooked too greatly the need for right 
 practice in relation to man — something so simple 
 and nigh. They have forgotten too much that God 
 is Love, and have paid too little heed to the question 
 of St. John : " He that loveth not his brother whom 
 he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
 seen ? " and to the words of the Master, " This is My 
 commandment, that ye love one another — as I have 
 loved you. By this shall all men know that ye are 
 My disciples, if ye have love one to another.'' It was 
 through the manifestation of Christian unity in this 
 love that the world should believe. As a matter 
 
170 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 of fact, it was this that so greatly impressed the non- 
 Christian world. It is not too much to say that 
 had this unity of Christians as the members of 
 one Body been more effectually recognised and 
 carried out in practice, many of the worst evils that 
 afflict society would never have existed, and the 
 Church would have presented to the world such a 
 genuine Christian Socialism as should have compelled 
 universal admiration, because the human spirit would 
 have seen in it the manifested Ideal of our common 
 humanity. 
 
 The Church in Relation to the World 
 
 While the Love that belongs to the Spirit of Christ 
 is to find the first sphere of its manifestation within 
 the Church, it is by no means meant to be confined 
 therein, but to go forth towards all men in the 
 Service ofi Christ. Here, indeed, we see the supreme 
 importance of the Church as the Body of Christ. 
 Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world; but He 
 needs a Body wherein to be present and act in the 
 external world, just as truly as our own spiritual 
 personality requires a body for its manifestation and 
 action. The spirit may be ever so full, but without 
 a body it cannot express itself. A blind man may 
 desire earnestly to see something, a dumb man to 
 speak some helpful or warning word, a deaf man to 
 
The Church in Relation to the World 171 
 
 hear what might be helpful to him, a man without 
 hands to do something that might minister to his 
 wants or to the help of others, but it is impossible 
 without the appropriate bodily organs. No matter 
 how earnestly the spirit might yearn after such 
 effects, they could not be accomplished. Therefore, 
 if Christ is to be actively and efficiently present in 
 the world, otherwise than by spiritual inspiration and 
 grace ; if He is to be the Enlightener of those who 
 sit in darkness, the Helper of the poor and weak, the 
 Divine Agent of righteousness, in a word, the actual 
 Saviour of the world, He must have a Body by means 
 of which He can manifest Himself and act. It is 
 for want of an adequate Body that He is not more 
 clearly seen, and that He cannot do more for the 
 good of men. The Church has thus, as the Body of 
 Christ, a great and necessary missionary function to 
 fulfil for the enlightenment and spiritual salvation 
 of men. Only through its presentation of itself to 
 Christ for that end can the work be done. We pray 
 to God for the conversion of the world ; but it is 
 assuredly not His will that men should remain in 
 ignorance or in sin. It is a Body with its members 
 that He needs, through which His Spirit may operate 
 as it yearns to do. 
 
 But more ; the Spirit that dwells in the Church is 
 that of true human life in all its aspects. It is the 
 Spirit of Him who is the true Head of our humanity. 
 
172 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Men are truly " saved " just as they are made 
 members of that Body of Christ. It is as they 
 become vitally related to Him that they belong 
 to that true humanity which is represented in Him 
 and which derives from Him its life. Only as He 
 is acknowledged does humanity find its Head. 
 Apart from Christ, it is a body without a Head — 
 an unnatural thing, or belonging to the lower 
 organisms only. Hence the anarchy and confusion 
 which reign in the world, which can only be removed 
 when the Head is acknowledged and obeyed. In 
 this way only can full social salvation be found. 
 If in the natural body the members were to refuse 
 or to fail to follow the guidance of the head, 
 acting under no common principle, but each for 
 itself — eyes and ears, hands and feet, acting inde- 
 pendently, or for themselves merely, what a strange, 
 impossible life it would be ! Humanity is ideally an 
 organic unity, not a mere collection of individuals, 
 each acting under his own impulses or from some 
 lower principle than that of the service of the true 
 life of all. Humanity needs a Head as truly as any 
 organism. And just as Nature laboured towards 
 the production of a head, in which creatures could 
 store up and learn from their experience, and as the 
 head developed, life rose in quality, till at length 
 man appeared as the Head of the world of Nature ; 
 so, man having been reached, God worked on till 
 
The Church in Relation to the World 173 
 
 in Christ the Head of humanity appeared — man 
 realising and manifesting the true life before God. 
 Ideally, the Church is humanity organised under 
 its true Head ; one Body in which we are members 
 of Christ and of one another ; one Body, all the 
 members of which are animated by the Spirit of 
 Christ, which is that of the Love that God is. It 
 is only when this Spirit possesses all that humanity 
 will be, indeed, the family of Him who is the Father 
 of all, and that God Himself shall be " all in all." 
 
 The Church has thus a distinctly social mission. 
 Not as separate from her spiritual calling, still less 
 as conflicting with it, but as necessarily flowing out 
 of it ; and the too general neglect of this has alienated 
 many from her. As we have seen, the Cross was 
 designed to make peace between man and man, 
 as well as between man and God. The Spirit of 
 Christ, which is the life of the Church and seeks 
 expression through her, is the Spirit of real, practical 
 Love, of sympathy, kindliness, brotherliness, helpful- 
 ness, justice, unselfishness. It cannot suffer those 
 in whom it dwells to be content, with the belief that 
 they are right themselves for time or for eternity. 
 As St. Paul says in another Epistle, " Look not every 
 man to his own things, but every man to the things 
 of others." The " things above " on which our 
 affections are to be set are not things that have 
 no practical relation to the present life of men and 
 
174 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 women in the world, but the things of God — of 
 justice and equity, of the Ideal Humanity which 
 He " with whom there is no respect of persons " 
 seeks to see realised on the earth. As already said, 
 the Spirit that animates the Church is the only 
 Spirit that can truly unite and socialise 'mankind ; 
 but in order to do this it must find expression 
 through the Church in every way that is possible. 
 It is the greatest reproach to the Church that she 
 should be content in the presence of poverty and 
 misery and unjust — often impossible — conditions of 
 human life, issuing in demoralisation and degrada- 
 tion — in more than on& form of " White Slavery," 
 and in a life that is worse than death. The culpable 
 existence of these conditions is as truly sinful — as 
 contrary to the thought of God for man — as any 
 sins which the Church condemns. The service of 
 God is to be sought and found in the service of 
 man. 
 
 The Christian Churches of to-day need to come 
 back with deeper conviction to this conception of 
 the Church as the Body of Christ, the Body which 
 the spiritual Christ needs and yearns for, and died 
 to gain. Before His death He felt Himself limited 
 and restrained. As He said : " I have a Baptism 
 to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till 
 it be accomplished." For a time after His departure 
 He found the Body He sought freely forming itself 
 
The Church the Body of Christ 175 
 
 around Him and becoming an efficient organ of 
 His Spirit. We know how soon, alas ! the spiritual 
 conception of the Church was lost, and how 
 an outward uniformity under humanly constituted 
 authority became substituted for the Church of 
 the Spirit. 
 
 Even now the high conception of the Church in 
 these Epistles is but half-heartedly embraced by 
 many Churches and Christians. The naturalness, 
 necessity, and requirements of the idea are not 
 realised. Churches too frequently appear to be 
 institutions with interests of their own to advance. 
 They are too often largely ends to themselves, while 
 the great end for which the Church was called into 
 being is comparatively little thought of. If they 
 are enabled to exist and to pursue the even tenor 
 of their way they are content, while the masses 
 around are visibly drifting away from all religion, 
 and, it may be, at their very doors, as in our 
 great cities, there is an amount of squalor and 
 vice — sometimes unnatural and revolting vice — 
 which cannot be surpassed, if it can be equalled, 
 among savages. Surely Christ seeks to do some- 
 thing more than He is enabled to do through such 
 instruments. Church members too often fail to 
 regard themselves as being primarily members of 
 Christ in the literal sense of these Epistles. Mem- 
 bership in a particular church takes the place of 
 
176 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 membership in the Church, which is the Body of 
 Christ, and the interests of that particular Church 
 are pursued irrespective of those of the Church as 
 a whole. The obligation resting on each member, 
 not only to do, but to be something for Christ, to 
 be as far as possible His organ and representative 
 in the world, is not universally felt or taken up 
 in earnest. It is not an externally imposed duty, 
 but that which follows naturally from membership 
 in Christ's Body, and apart from which such member- 
 ship would be as contradictory as if the members 
 of the natural body should do nothing in the service 
 of the animating spirit of life. What we term 
 " Church services " are a very inadequate substitute 
 for the real service of Christ. The idea of worship 
 has become too largely restricted to that offered 
 in "temples made with hands'' on certain days, 
 and " religious service " to the acts and observances 
 on such occasions. We are still observing " days " 
 instead of consecrating every day to the worship 
 and service of the ever-present Lord in these 
 " temples " which He seeks to find in ourselves. 
 More emphasis needs to be placed on the idea 
 of "the Church" in its original spiritual sense of 
 the actual Body of Christ in the world. 
 
 Not only is this idea of the Church largely lost 
 sight of, but Churches, and even "the Church," as 
 far as it is thought of, are too often regarded as self- 
 
The Church the Body of Christ 177 
 
 enclosed institutions, separate from the world, instead 
 of having it as their mission to influence and embrace 
 human life in all its aspects and activities, so that 
 all that a man does he does "as unto the Lord." 
 Christianity has come to be regarded too much as 
 a particular thing belonging to churches, instead of 
 a universal Spirit which seeks to animate and direct 
 all human action — that by means of which the world 
 should be redeemed, uplifted, sanctified, and blessed 
 in all its relationships, as God seeks to bless it, 
 and men united in the one true life as a real 
 family of God. Since Christ is wholly human as 
 well as Divine, there can be nothing really belonging 
 to our humanity that is outwith the range of His 
 Spirit. Whatever there is that cannot be inspired 
 and guided thereby is wrong and injurious to the 
 common life in its truth. If Christ is the true man, 
 we only become true men — whatever our special gifts 
 or calling may be — as we suffer His Spirit to inspire 
 and guide us, and live and work for the good of all. 
 
 The Christ-life, which should fill the Church and 
 permeate society, is not a life in separation from the 
 ordinary life of men and women in the world. It 
 is that same life under its highest inspiration, in its 
 truest form, directed to its supreme end — a higher 
 life certainly than the ordinary life of the world ; 
 but not a different life. It is human life lifted to 
 
 its highest term, with all that is unworthy of Christ 
 
 12 
 
1 78 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 left behind. It is the life of Christ Himself — the life 
 of God in Him — diffusing itself in the world, accord- 
 ing to the Eternal Purpose and Divine Ideal of the 
 Creation. Christ did not stand aloof from aught 
 that was truly human, natural, and right for men. 
 He was at the opposite pole from the separatist 
 Pharisee, and so far from asceticism that His enemies 
 spoke of Him as " a winebibber, a friend of publicans 
 and sinners." 
 
 Because the Christian Church has come to be 
 regarded so much as a separate thing, it has ceased 
 to have that influence in the world that the " Body 
 of Christ " and the " Habitation of God in the Spirit " 
 ought to possess, and did possess as long as it " held 
 fast the Head " and looked on itself as being in very 
 truth the Body in which Christ was present and 
 through which He was acting — extending the Divine 
 Life more and more widely, permeating all human 
 activities, inspiring men with one common Spirit of 
 Life, even that which had been manifested in Him- 
 self as the true life of man, and was still present 
 and operating in the world through the members 
 of His Body. When we think of the material that 
 formed that Body of Christ in these early days — 
 men and women, in many cases lifted out of the 
 depths of pagan ignorance and vice, who were yet 
 so efficient in His service, what might He not find 
 in ourselves to-day ? 
 
The Church the Body of Christ 1 79 
 
 There are many " Churches " but only one" Church." 
 Compliance with various requirements may make 
 men members of these " Churches " ; but only one 
 thing can make any one a member of the Church 
 of Christ — opening our hearts to Him that His 
 Spirit may inspire our life, and we be actual 
 members of a Body of which He is the Head. No 
 earthly authority or power can confer this member- 
 ship, and none can take it from us. "Joining the 
 Church," or "becoming members," ought to mean 
 our open profession of such membership to Christ 
 and our uniting with other fellow-members for our 
 edification in the spiritual life, for mutual helpfulness 
 and for the more efficient service of the common 
 Lord. Much Christian service is being rendered 
 outside the churches, although not irrespective of 
 the influences that have been sent forth through 
 them ; but if churches would take up more in- 
 telligently and earnestly the true conception of the 
 Church, they would be saved from the reproach of 
 standing aloof while others are doing the work they 
 ought to do. 
 
 Only as we hold ourselves in vital relation to 
 Him who is our Head, and draw from Him our 
 inspiration and strength, does our life become of 
 real value to Christ, or of the highest value to our- 
 selves or to the world. The religion that the instincts 
 of men are calling for to-day is an all-embracing 
 
180 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 one ; Divine, indeed, it must be, above the lower 
 " natural life," yet genuinely human and natural in 
 the higher sense ; deriving its inspiration from 
 Christ, and fixing its mind on the things above," 
 yet looking also to the temporal interests of men 
 as God's children, and covering the whole of human 
 life and activity. It is really such a religion that 
 seeks to possess and extend itself through the Church 
 as " the Body of Christ." 
 
 The feeling that Christians ought to be visibly 
 united is also growing in strength, and if there be 
 first the unity of the Spirit, that unity will make 
 itself manifest in some effective form, although the 
 idea of an all-inclusive, visible, corporate body of 
 Christians may never become actual in this world. 
 
 But we would repeat, what men justly look for, 
 and what Christ Himself expects on the part of 
 the Church, is the more general and effectual practice 
 of the Christian life. When Jesus spoke of His 
 disciples as a community, it was as the salt of the 
 earth and the light of the world. They were to be 
 like a city set on a hill which cannot be hid, like 
 the lamp that was placed on the lampstand to give 
 light to all that are in the house. " Even so," He 
 said, "let your light shine before men; that they 
 may see your good deeds and glorify your Father 
 who is in heaven." It was their good deeds that 
 should show the presence of God in their midst 
 
The Church the Body of Christ 181 
 
 and give the world to know and love God. True 
 doctrine, faithful preaching, church organisations 
 and unions, are all good and necessary, but these 
 alone will not move the world. They may satisfy 
 those within ; but they will not convince or attract 
 the thousands outside. As with the Lord Himself, 
 and as He foresaw, it is the good life and good 
 deeds that will adequately impress men and gain 
 them for God. It is more and truer Christian living 
 and acting on the part of all — high and low, rich 
 and poor, clergy and laity, ministers and people, that 
 the Church must set herself to promote if she would 
 be really the Body of the Spirit of Christ and of 
 God in the world and win the world for God. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE HOPE OF GLORY 
 
 THE Divinely intended destiny of man as 
 revealed in Christ is described as "Glory." 
 It is something to be experienced beyond this 
 present life and order of things, and implies survival 
 of bodily dissolution — belief in which was, as already 
 said, held by the majority of those to whom the 
 Christian message came. It belonged to the Jewish 
 faith, and was not only a floating popular belief 
 among the Greeks, but formed a serious element in 
 " the Mysteries." Christian [believers, indeed, looked 
 also for a resurrection, not in the body that was buried, 
 but in a new spiritual body — one, the principle of which 
 should be the Spirit instead of the natural anima, 
 or soul. As St. Paul expressed it in i Corinthians 
 xv. 44-46: "if there is a natural (psychical) body, 
 there is also a spiritual (pneumatical) body — Howbeit 
 that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
 natural ; then that which is spiritual." It was at the 
 coming of the Lord in His manifested glory that 
 those who were dead should be raised and share in 
 
The Hope of Glory 183 
 
 His glory: "when Christ who is our life shall be 
 manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested 
 in glory " (Col. iii. 4 ; cf. Philip, iii. 20, 21). According 
 to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus Himself had promised 
 His disciples participation in His glory as the 
 Messiah — King and Judge (Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke 
 xxii. 30; cf. 2 Tim. ii. 12 : "We shall reign with 
 Him "), and in the Fourth Gospel He says, " the glory 
 which thou hast given Me I have given unto them," 
 and prays that "they may be with Me where I am, 
 that they may behold My glory which thou hast 
 given Me " (xvii. 22, 24) — where, however, there is no 
 mention of a resurrection or of a reign on the earth. 
 
 The general belief of the Church has been that full 
 entrance into this " glory " can only be ours in virtue 
 of " the resurrection at the last day," which, however, 
 cannot be of bodies, and implies the survival of the 
 soul or personality. Since for the first Christians the 
 entrance into glory with Christ meant the inheritance 
 of the promised " Kingdom " (Eph. v. 5), and since 
 this Kingdom was to be established on a transfigured 
 earth, a bodily resurrection in a corresponding form 
 was a necessity for its entrance and enjoyment. 
 Such resurrection and life on a spiritualised earth, or 
 in a transfigured world, may be ^possible conception, 
 but it cannot be denied that it does not readily 
 commend itself to our minds to-day as the realisation 
 of man's destiny, and it is not thus that Christians 
 
184 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 in general think of it. It may be simply a remnant 
 of earlier beliefs still clinging to the minds of the first 
 Christians. What we seem to see in these Epistles, 
 as well as in other writings of St. Paul, is the gradual 
 transcendence of these more external beliefs by such 
 spiritual conceptions as are most fully expressed in 
 the Fourth Gospel. 1 
 
 In Colossians (i. 12) the "inheritance," which is the 
 same thing as " the Kingdom," is described as that 
 of "the saints in light." That this "light" has 
 primarily a moral significance appears from the 
 contrast with the "darkness" from which they had 
 been " delivered " and " translated into the Kingdom of 
 the Son of His Love." The Kingdom is thus already 
 existent, and is spiritually conceived. We have also 
 the " light " in an ethical sense in Ephesians v. 8 : " ye 
 were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord : 
 walk as children of Light'' (cf. vi. 12), and in 2 
 Corinthians v., while Paul still desires "not to be un- 
 clothed, but clothed upon," it is " with a house which 
 
 1 A modern thinker like Renan, however, could ask, " Who 
 knows if the highest term of progress after millions of ages may 
 not evoke the absolute consciousness of the universe, and in this 
 consciousness the awakening of all that have lived. A sleep of 
 a million years is not longer than a sleep of an hour " ( Vie de 
 Jesus, chap. v. See also his Philosophical Dialogues and 
 Fragments (Triibner & Co.), quoted in the present writer's 
 Christian Theism and a Spiritual Monism). While the 
 " silence of the grave " suggests, the solidarity of mankind gives 
 colour to such speculations. 
 
The Hope of Glory 185 
 
 is from heaven" and he is willing to be absent from 
 the body and at home with the Lord (cf. Phil. i. 23, " to 
 depart and be with Christ, which is very far better "), 
 which shows his strong conviction of the reality of life 
 with Christ in the unseen spiritual world. In these 
 Epistles there is no mention of a resurrection of 
 Christians, and, as we have seen, the Church is 
 affirmed to be the Body of Christ in this world, by 
 means of which the glory of God in His grace should 
 be manifested. 
 
 But many have at present grave doubts concerning 
 not merely the possibility of " resurrection," but the 
 possibility or probability of our survival of bodily 
 dissolution. If, however, we view the question from 
 the point of view afforded by these Epistles, a new 
 light falls upon it. If all were created in Christ — if 
 the eternal purpose for man is to be conformed to 
 God's Son — human life must have been Divinely 
 conceived, not merely as temporal, but as eternal. 
 For that Ideal cannot be realised in time alone. 
 Hence the universal instinct of survival is justified. 
 And there is nothing that science shows us contra- 
 dictory of this. However close we may deem the 
 union of soul and body — even though we conceive of 
 them as two sides of a constant unity — we must believe 
 in a very real distinction between them. The spiritual 
 Personality which we know ourselves to be belongs 
 to quite another order than the body, and cannot 
 
1 86 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 share its fate. It, with the memories, knowledge, and 
 capacities which belong to it, is spiritual, and cannot 
 be identified with the bodily organism which serves 
 it, but must in some form survive the dissolution of 
 that organism. Nor is consciousness in time and 
 space — that which we have through the senses — 
 commensurate with the Personality. There has been 
 all along an effective Reality quite distinct from and 
 prior to that consciousness — a spiritual Reality which 
 comes to have that consciousness — something belong- 
 ing to another world altogether than the material, 
 something which formed the organism all un- 
 consciously to the man when in his mother's womb, 
 which has gone on, still unconsciously or sub- 
 consciously to him, building up his brain according 
 to his exercises and experiences, and is thus shown 
 to be inseparable from that Personality which he is, 
 which may be sometimes conscious and sometimes 
 unconscious in the outer world, or as respects the 
 consciousness derived therefrom. It does not follow, 
 therefore, that because consciousness in the external 
 world ceases at death, the Personality which that 
 consciousness has served perishes, or that it may not 
 regain consciousness in another sphere by other 
 means. There may be, indeed, a higher and wider 
 consciousness to which, even now, the Personality 
 belongs, but from complete or continuous participa- 
 tion in which it is shut off by the bodily organism. 
 
The Hope of Glory 1 87 
 
 Psychology is coming to recognise the soul as being, 
 not only as real as the body, but as being that which 
 is deepest and formative in bodily evolution. " The 
 mind," says McDougall, "has been the pioneer of 
 bodily evolution ; the bodily organs and functions 
 have been merely the instruments through which the 
 mind has accomplished its purposes," and hence " we 
 see how distorted is any view of the evolutionary 
 process which represents mind as a mere bye-product 
 of its later stages, first coming into being when the 
 physical processes within the nervous systems of 
 animals reached a certain degree of complexity. Yet 
 that is a view of mental evolution which has been 
 widely entertained " {Psychology, pp. 176, 177). What 
 is true of the evolutionary process as a whole is true 
 of each particular organism : there is something in 
 every case that is not material, and this shows itself 
 as Personality in man. 
 
 There is much in recent psychology, with the 
 prominence now given to the sub-conscious, to 
 support the opinion advanced by I. A. Fichte, that 
 the soul does not only form the body but has a 
 life of its own, which only makes itself manifest in 
 our consciousness in dreaming and in various excep- 
 tional and abnormal conditions — " a life full of hidden 
 relations," with signs that betray themselves, such as 
 can only be described by " the working of a higher 
 consciousness upon our own'' — and that it may be 
 
1 88 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 gradually making itself independent of its bodily 
 organ, raising itself above the necessity of it ; thus 
 preparing for itself a higher condition or mode of 
 existence (see his Contributions to Mental Philo- 
 sophy, translated by J. D. Morell). Much more 
 might be said in the light of recent psychology and 
 philosophy ; but, at anyrate, we are certain that the 
 Personality belongs to a realm quite different from 
 the material, one which is not only as real as the 
 outer world, but the most real and the most certainly 
 known to us. In that spiritual realm the personal 
 life has been lived, and in it it endures. 
 
 Still, after all our reasonings, we must have Faith 
 — faith in the rationality of the universe, in the con- 
 servation of values, in the supremacy of justice and 
 goodness, in a Divine purpose in life. The Christian 
 assurance rests on the revelation of the true life of 
 man in Christ, and on His transcendence of death 
 and of temporal conditions — on His continued 
 Presence with us. Apart from Christ we seem to 
 ask in vain for any certain knowledge of what 
 becomes of this spiritual Personality, this spiritual 
 side of our being, this soul which we are. We cannot 
 picture to ourselves its existence in the absence of 
 a material embodiment, and "the spiritual body" 
 which some believe in is still really material. 
 Although psychical research has done much to 
 render a future life probable, if not certain, as some 
 
The Hope of Glory 189 
 
 hold, it cannot as yet give us any clear conception of 
 the mode of existence in the unseen world. It is 
 altogether probable that that world is not meant to 
 be open to us like the present ; for, if it were so, the 
 highest moral qualities of men in this life would be 
 rendered much less possible of acquirement, if, indeed, 
 life itself, as it is meant to be, would be possible. 
 
 But if we take Christ as these Epistles present 
 Him to us — as the true man, representing us in His 
 life and death and life beyond death, some light 
 may come to us. His survival proves the reality of 
 personal life after bodily death, and creates a pre- 
 sumption at least in favour of that of other per- 
 sonalities ; it gives an assurance of the survival of all 
 who are animated by the same Spirit. In His " resur- 
 rection " and " ascension '' — however we may under- 
 stand these terms — He was still man, and the 
 representative of man. Where did He go ? He did 
 not go anywhere in the sense of local movement. 
 He went to God, who is everywhere, with whom He 
 was already one. In His spiritual Personality He 
 already belonged to a different realm than that of 
 space, and when the flesh was dropped He found His 
 full life therein. He went, we are assured, to God — 
 not to be absorbed in the Deity in a pantheistic sense, 
 but to live as an active Personality in the Divine 
 Life — carrying our humanity into the Deity. " Our 
 life," says the Apostle, " is hid with Christ in God." 
 
190 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 To go to God, to live thus in God, was to enter into 
 " glory " ; for " glory " is that which is distinctive of 
 the Divine Life. And if Christ's life is representative 
 of ours, then, when those in whom He lives die, they 
 too go to God, " to be with Christ " in God. For 
 them, too, this is to enter into " glory " as far as they 
 are capable of entering that Divine Life which Christ 
 entered in its fulness. They have already been made 
 alive with Christ — alive with a life which is the very 
 life of God in them, a life which bodily dissolution 
 cannot destroy, but only liberate, as Christ's laying 
 aside the body was the liberation of His Spiritual 
 Personality. They are vitally united to Christ as the 
 members of a Body of which He is the Head, and 
 where the Head is, the members must also be. 
 Christ is in them, and in " the One Spirit " God is in 
 them, and death cannot separate them from God. 
 Hence the indwelling Divine Spirit was felt to be 
 "the earnest of the inheritance" — the "arles" — a 
 first instalment of that which is yet to be received 
 in full: thereby they were "sealed unto the day of 
 redemption '' (Eph. i. 13, 14, iv. 30). There can be no 
 doubt, therefore, with respect to those who are united 
 to Christ — those in whom His Spirit is the principle 
 of the life. When " the veil of flesh " is dropped they 
 find themselves with Christ in God. As He says in 
 the Fourth Gospel, "where I am there shall ye be 
 also " ; " where I am there shall also My servant be " ; 
 
The Hope of Glory 1 9 1 
 
 " Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast 
 given Me be with Me where I am, that they may 
 behold My glory, which thou hast given Me ; for thou 
 lovedest Me before the foundation of the world." 
 
 If we inquire farther respecting that life in God, 
 may we not learn something more from Christ as our 
 type ? We wonder with respect to those who leave 
 us ; we ask why does no one ever return ? But are 
 we quite sure that they do not ? or, rather, do they 
 really depart in the sense of removing to a distance ? 
 They certainly leave the outward world of space, but 
 there is an inner spiritual world to which they 
 belonged in their personalities — an inner world of 
 the Spirit to which we belong also, although the veil 
 of the flesh still separates us from it. Perhaps it is 
 only this that hides them from us. Yet there may be 
 openings in that veil, and spiritual communion is 
 always possible. They are "with Christ in God," 
 we say. But all our prayers, all our worship, all our 
 inner spiritual experience rest on the belief that God 
 and Christ are very near us, with us and even within 
 us. We cannot see or touch our departed friends; 
 but no more can we see or feel the presence of God 
 or of Christ (and it is because of this that we some- 
 times doubt the reality of their presence) ; yet, owing 
 to the relation in which Christ stands to us as " our 
 Life," our Lord and Saviour, Friend and Helper, we 
 
192 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 can know His presence to be as real as that of God. 
 If those who have passed from our vision are with 
 Christ, are they not also near to us in spiritual 
 presence, as He is ? Our mistake is desiring to see 
 what in its nature as spirit cannot be seen by normal 
 sight. 
 
 Further, the Spiritual Personality of Christ is 
 represented as seeking embodiment in those who 
 receive Him as the inspiring and illuminating Spirit 
 of their life. It is doubtless from a necessity arising 
 from the ethical nature of His Personality that He 
 seeks such embodiment in other lives ; it is, as we 
 have seen, as the Saviour of men, for the sake of the 
 work that He desires to do in the world, that He 
 seeks embodiment in the Church designed to be His 
 " fulness." Because in Him the perfect life of man 
 was realised, He, as the one completely Divine and 
 human Person in whom " all the Fulness dwells," can 
 come to us with a power which none other possesses, 
 and it is therefore to Him that our attention is to be 
 supremely directed and our hearts opened, not to 
 other invisible powers, real or imaginary, nor to other 
 disembodied spirits, however dear they may be to us. 
 Only to Him who is the Truth of our life, and in 
 whom dwells " all the treasures of wisdom and know- 
 ledge," are we meant to go in all that affects our 
 spiritual life and work. It is for this reason, perhaps, 
 that communion with other lesser personalities is so 
 
The Hope of Glory 193 
 
 largely shut up from us. Christ, moreover, is the 
 Head of all spiritual powers, wherever they are. 
 
 But if Christ thus seeks embodiment in us, may 
 not all surviving personalities seek similar embodi- 
 ment, and may they not find it in greater or less 
 measure in souls that are susceptible to their influences 
 and receptive of them ? While Christ is the Head of 
 all, may there not be, not only spiritual beings " in the 
 heavenlies" who are in sympathy with the Divine 
 purpose and actings, rejoicing to behold them, to 
 whom, as St. Paul says, are made manifest the riches 
 of God's glory in Christ ; but also spiritual person- 
 alities — "spirits of just men made perfect" — who 
 have been on earth the members of Christ's Body, 
 and who now, in subordination to the Head, go forth 
 to influence and it may be, under Christ, to guide 
 and direct, to cheer, comfort, and help those still on 
 earth, finding, so far, embodiment in them. Christ, 
 we must believe, has many ministries in the fulfilment 
 of which those who have departed the flesh may 
 find employment. Such active service is implied, 
 indeed, in entrance into the " glory " that is God's, 
 and we shall see in the following chapter how many 
 forms of such service are open to them, engaging in 
 which they, in the highest sense, partake of " the glory 
 of God." 
 
 In this thought also the younger Fichte (from 
 whose interesting " Confession " we have already 
 J 3 
 
194 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 quoted) found the explanation of that individual or 
 particular Providence which we are naturally inclined 
 to believe in, and which necessarily underlies the 
 belief in a general Providence. Of such a particular 
 Providence and Divine regard for individuals Christ 
 was the supreme manifestation, and its action is 
 found, so far, in the fact of His continued Presence. 
 But something more is needed to complete the 
 conception, and this is found in the thought of 
 " intermediate orders of the spirit world." " Why 
 should not the inward mental influences which impel 
 to these results [in the individual life] be communicated 
 by intermediate orders of the spirit world ? Why 
 should not this all-present guidance of human destiny 
 be entrusted to the care of more advanced and 
 perfected minds ? " Science, indeed, cannot give any 
 certain answer; it must be left to personal faith. 
 But " there can be hardly a more natural and obvious 
 explanation ; and, what is still more, there is no 
 arrangement more consonant with the purposes of 
 Divine Love, which we see everywhere, than that 
 which binds together humanity in both worlds by 
 indissoluble ties, and brings the Divine protection 
 and blessing to us through human instrumentality." 
 Of course, there are limits to the action of this Pro- 
 vidence, and its guidance may not be always followed 
 by us. 
 
 There may also be — we may remark in passing — 
 
The Hope of Glory 195 
 
 spiritual Personalities who operate as evil influences, 
 such as St. Paul speaks of in these Epistles when he 
 says, " our warfare is not with flesh and blood only.'' 
 Space does not apply to the spiritual world, which 
 may be full of Personalities both good and bad. 
 Experience seems to support this belief ; for there are 
 evil influences especially, — suggestions, temptations, 
 bufferings, which do not come from ourselves nor 
 from embodied persons. Nor are they wholly from 
 that " wider self " which is represented by the " sub- 
 conscious." At the same time, there are good and 
 holy influences, inspirations, consolations, which may 
 not always emanate directly from Christ. But the 
 evil powers can make their influences more con- 
 sciously felt in good souls, because such influences are 
 contrary to that which such souls would fain cherish 
 and become ; whereas the influences proceeding from 
 the good are more in harmony with the desires of the 
 good, and are therefore less distinguishable. 
 
 If we inquire further concerning the mode of this 
 existence with Christ in God, — while we who are 
 accustomed to think in terms of space cannot expect 
 to understand the things of the spiritual world, — 
 we may still learn something more from the con- 
 templation of Christ as our type. So far as 
 we know, those who pass into that life do so as 
 disembodied spirits (although there may be an em- 
 
196 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 bodiment invisible to us), and if we are to think of 
 them as near us we cannot suppose them to be 
 permanently embodied. How, then, we naturally 
 ask, are they distinguished from each other? how 
 can there be communication ? how shall we " know 
 each other there"? The answer may be found if 
 we think of spiritual form as being as real as 
 bodily form. When Christ is said to be "the 
 image of the invisible God," we are not to think of 
 an outward appearance ; yet it denotes something 
 real. St. Paul elsewhere speaks of Christ as pre- 
 existing "in the form (jioppfi) of God," which 
 certainly does not mean a bodily form or shape ; 
 and of His "becoming in the form of a servant 
 (or slave)," which again has no reference to anything 
 material. As more than one philosopher has taught, 
 there is an immaterial form of beings as well as 
 an outward or material figure — that of which the 
 material figure is the expression ; " for soul is form 
 and doth the body make." We take up personally 
 this formative power, so far as concerns our personal 
 life, and even (as we have seen) to no small extent 
 as affects the bodily organism. We are constantly 
 building up our spiritual form, this expression of 
 our real selves in the spiritual world. How often, 
 even in this earthly life, do we witness the character 
 of the Personality finding striking material expression 
 in the countenance, so that we seem at once to know 
 
The Hope of Glory 197 
 
 the person. That which we thus witness is the 
 manifestation of a spiritual reality, which as such 
 belongs to, and after death finds itself in, the spiritual 
 realm. We think of the person whom we knew and 
 loved as something quite real and distinct from the 
 body that is laid in the grave. Each person possesses 
 an individual form of his own. This view of the 
 reality and permanence (although not necessarily 
 unchangeableness) of spiritual form may enable us, 
 without any materialistic assumptions, to say " — 
 
 " Eternal form shall still divide 
 The eternal soul from all beside ; 
 And I shall know him when we meet" 
 
 What other means of expression there may be 
 we cannot tell. But if the resurrection narratives 
 have a foundation of fact, Christ was able to 
 manifest Himself to His disciples, also to St. Paul 
 on more than one occasion, although there may 
 have been no " appearance " outside the Personality 
 — only what was projected from within. At the 
 same time, for aught we know to the contrary, 
 while there may be no permanent embodiment, 
 manifestation and communication by means of finer 
 material than we are acquainted with may be possible, 
 and may have been made. But the facts of telepathy 
 seem to render it probable that there may be 
 immediate communication of mind with mind even 
 
198 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 in earthly embodiment, without any material medium 
 (see "Telepathy and Metaphysics," by the Right 
 Hon. G. W. Balfour in Hibbert Journal for April 
 191 3). This is also what we assume to be possible 
 as the basis of our religious experience — our com- 
 munion with God and with Christ. 
 
 The Word "Glory" 
 
 A consideration of what is implied in the word 
 " glory " may help us to understand what the Hope 
 of Glory means for the Christian. 
 
 The word — doxa — occurs very often in the New 
 Testament. Derived from dokeo, to " seem " and 
 to "think," it meant originally both appearance and 
 opinion, coming to stand for bright appearance, and 
 good or favourable opinion, approval, praise, honour, 
 etc. When St. Paul says, " All have sinned and 
 come short of the glory of God," and again, " Being 
 justified by faith we rejoice in hope of the glory of 
 God," the reference seems to be to the Divine 
 approbation, with, of course, all that this includes. 
 This meaning seems also to underlie the saying in 
 the Fourth Gospel : " they loved the glory (that is) 
 of men more than the glory (that is) of God " — their 
 approbation (xii. 43). 
 
 Regarded in this light, " the hope of the glory of 
 God" would mean primarily, the hope of ultimate 
 
The Hope of Glory 199 
 
 Divine approbation. Strictly speaking, this is the 
 only hope of man, and Jesus as our Representative 
 has entered into its complete fulfilment. Whatever 
 more than this "glory" may mean for man, this 
 must be the condition of participation in it. And 
 since no man can imagine that as he is in himself, 
 or in virtue of anything he can work in himself, 
 he can claim that approbation of God which can 
 only be given to that which is "without blame" 
 before him, it is " Christ in us " that is our " hope 
 of glory." 
 
 But the word in the New Testament most 
 frequently represents the Hebrew terms so largely 
 employed in the Old Testament to denote the 
 honour, majesty, splendour, and excellence of God 
 as the Divine Being — that which is distinctive of 
 the Divine — as well as honour, splendour, etc., per- 
 taining to man and created things. "The glory of 
 God," says Westcott, "is the full manifestation of 
 His attributes according to man's power of appre- 
 hending them, 'all His goodness' (Ex. xxxiii. 19)." 
 In the Synoptic Gospels it frequently represents the 
 glory of the Messiah — "when He comes in His 
 glory," "in the glory of His Father," etc. The 
 entrance of Christ into this glory is His '' glorifica- 
 tion " after death. This glory is regarded as some- 
 thing that can be manifested in brightness, or 
 " light '' : " the glory of the Lord " shone around 
 
200 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 the shepherds, the glory of Christ shone forth in 
 His transfiguration, and appeared to Paul on his 
 way to Damascus ; our bodies are to be " conformed 
 to the body of His glory'': so in Colossians it is 
 said, "when He shall be manifested, we also shall 
 be manifested with Him in glory." 
 
 Here again, however, we have outward representa- 
 tions of that which in its principle or source is ethical 
 and spiritual. It belongs to the character of God and 
 of Christ. As we have seen, it is the spirit that is 
 the norm of the spiritual body; the transfiguration 
 of Christ proceeded from within, and it is essentially 
 an inward spiritual transformation that is described 
 in 2 Corinthians iii. 1 8 : " We all with unveiled face, 
 beholding (or reflecting) the glory of the Lord, are 
 transformed into the same image from glory to glory, 
 even as by the Spirit of the Lord." It is also a " glory 
 full of grace and truth " that is ascribed to Jesus as 
 the only-begotten from the Father (John i. 14) ; 
 and when Paul speaks of " the light of the Gospel of 
 the glory of Christ," and says : " God — shined in our 
 hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory 
 of God in the face of Jesus Christ," the reference 
 can only be to a moral glory (cf. Art. " Glory *' in 
 Hastings' Diet, of the Bible). 
 
 Deepest of all, therefore, we must think of the 
 " glory " in which we hope to share as the eternal 
 inheritance of God's children — into the fulness of 
 
The Hope of Glory 20 1 
 
 which Jesus as the Head of humanity and " the 
 first-born from the dead" has entered — as that ful- 
 ness of ethical life which is the life of God. It is 
 our entrance, according to the measure of our 
 capacity, into the Divine Life. 
 
 This confirms for us the high truths suggested in 
 the opening chapter of Colossians, that the motive of 
 the creation was the communication of the Divine 
 Life to others who should be sons to God. It is 
 therefore that all things were created " in Christ " as 
 Son of God. The purpose of the Perfect Love which 
 sought thus to give itself could only be attained 
 through such a Divine kenosis as gives that appear- 
 ance to the world, which, in some of its aspects, 
 suggests the absence of God. In order to be the 
 Creator, God must go out from Himself. Hence we 
 witness in Nature that action of Intelligence apart 
 from Morality which had such an influence on 
 Hartmann as to make him affirm that the Creative 
 Power was blind and creation a mistake. The 
 destined result could only be reached by means of 
 that gradual process which we call "evolution." 
 But at the root of the whole process, and ever 
 gradually coming into fuller manifestation, was the 
 Divine thought and potency, the Divine thought 
 and love — ripening into full fruition in the appear- 
 ing and perfect Sonship and Sacrifice of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
202 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Our bodies are necessary for our individuality and 
 education, but when the Personality is perfected 
 they are no more required, and there is the return of 
 the creation into the bosom of God, as He from 
 all eternity conceived it — which is what we see 
 in Christ. Other personalities are perfected — each 
 according to its measure — through union with Christ 
 and by His spiritual indwelling and working. It is 
 fundamentally a perfecting of the spirit and life, 
 and Christ as the Head and Saviour of humanity 
 has undertaken this for us all, and is able to present 
 even those "who were in time past alienated and 
 enemies in their mind in their evil works" — "holy 
 and without blemish before Him," viz. God. The more 
 complete we are, the greater will be the possibility 
 of entering into the life of " glory," and therefore the 
 Apostle laboured so earnestly that he might make 
 every man " perfect in Christ Jesus." The ideal is 
 complete conformity to Christ. 
 
 There is no other hope save that which is founded 
 in the revelation of our true life in Christ and the 
 Eternal Divine purpose that this implies ; our hope 
 is in our return to God as that which He meant us 
 to become — His children possessed of His life. And 
 if sharing in the Divine Life be the " glory " we are 
 permitted to hope for, the eternal life must be one 
 of love, of action, of self-giving, of sacrifice, returning 
 to itself in the fruits thereof, and hence, at the same 
 
The Hope of Glory 203 
 
 time, the life of perfect blessedness, because it is a 
 sharing in the life of God. Some possible aspects 
 of that life of love and service, and hence of 
 " glory," will appear in the course of our concluding 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE WIDER REFERENCE: FULFILMENT 
 OF THE "ETERNAL PURPOSE" 
 
 SO far we have seen the fulfilment of the eternal 
 purpose in the bringing to God and glory of 
 those who on earth receive Christ as their life and 
 hold fast to Him as the Head of the Body of which 
 they are the members. But we cannot shut our eyes 
 to the fact that this alone would be a very imperfect 
 fulfilment of the Divine purpose as it is stated in 
 these Epistles, and as it must be regarded, if we are 
 to think of it as meeting the requirements of the 
 Divine creative and redemptive love. It is the 
 return of the whole creation to God that is contem- 
 plated in the fulfilment of the Divine creative purpose. 
 The purpose of God as stated in Ephesians i. 10 
 is " to sum up all things in Christ " (" that all things 
 may be gathered together in Christ as in a centre," 
 Weiss) and in Colossians i. 20, " to reconcile (or re- 
 concile again) all things unto Himself, having made 
 peace through the blood of His Cross, through 
 
 Him, whether things on the earth or things in the 
 
 204 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Ptirpose 205 
 
 heavens." " All things " in both passages represents 
 to, TKi/ra, and cannot mean less than all things 
 absolutely, the universe — " God purposed through 
 Christ to reconcile the universe to Himself." In 
 whatever way we may explain these passages, we 
 cannot, as Alford remarks, stop short of that. 
 Similarly, Lightfoot says : " The whole universe of 
 things, material as well as spiritual, shall be restored 
 to harmony with God." And Westcott remarks : 
 " It is altogether arbitrary to introduce any limita- 
 tion into the interpretation of ru, irwvru. The truth 
 transcends our comprehension, but we can see that 
 it answers to the fact and purpose of creation (Apoc. 
 iv. 11; Rom. xi. 30)." All modern commentators 
 agree in this, whether they do full justice to the 
 statement or not. We see, then, what we have before 
 us plainly affirmed as belonging to the revelation in 
 Christ. 
 
 Moreover, the conclusion is bound up with the 
 very idea of the creation. For all things were 
 created in Christ, and therefore the goal of the 
 creation must be conformity to Christ. As Weiss says 
 (although he stops short of the legitimate conclusion), 
 "it cannot fail, because the goal of the world 
 established in Him (Christ) must be realised " {Bib. 
 Theology of New Test, ii. 99). 
 
 It cannot be said that the purpose of God was 
 fulfilled in what was done in Christ; because what 
 
206 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 was done through His Cross was with a view to 
 " the reconciliation of all things to Himself." What 
 was done in Him was the basis on which the recon- 
 ciliation rests ; and whatever was done in Christ was 
 done representatively for all, and must be actually 
 realised in all. 
 
 If we were to stop short of this, the eternal 
 purpose and its fulfilment would be very much less 
 than that which they embrace. Those who are 
 presently being attached to Christ and made heirs 
 of glory constitute but a small fraction of the human 
 race. What of those who lived and died before 
 Christ appeared ? What of the myriads who, since 
 His appearance, have lived and died on earth, and 
 have passed away from it, without ever having heard 
 of Christ, and who are so passing away every day ? 
 What of the many who, having heard, have failed to 
 embrace Him as their Head, and who die " unsaved "? 
 We may ignore these questions if we choose, but 
 ought we to do so? Others will not and cannot 
 ignore them. Nor can we thus do justice to the 
 Gospel, or present a true representation of God as 
 the Creator of the world and the Father of men, 
 as He has been revealed in Christ. The matter is, 
 indeed, "vital to Christianity." It is vital to religion. 
 Our thoughts concerning God, our feelings towards 
 Him as Creator, our estimate of the redemption in 
 Christ, are all bound up with the question of the 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 20 J 
 
 ultimate issue of the creation. We cannot rest con- 
 tented with the thought that we ourselves shall be 
 saved and perhaps our best-loved friends, or even 
 a very much larger number, while others are hope- 
 lessly lost. The principle Divinely implanted in 
 our hearts forbids it, and the very fact that it does 
 so suggests an irrepressible hope, if not a certainty ; 
 for— 
 
 "The wish that of the living whole 
 No life may fail beyond the grave, 
 Derives it not of what we have, 
 The likest God within the soul ? " 
 
 It is not too much to say that on the answer 
 to these questions depends for serious thought the 
 validity of the entire statement of the Divine eternal 
 purpose in these Epistles. Whatever difficulties 
 may confront us, and however much we may seem to 
 meet with in the Scriptures to the contrary, we seem 
 bound to believe — if we take in earnest the revela- 
 tion said to have been given in Christ — that the 
 working out of the eternal purpose of God, in view 
 of which the world was created and redeemed, is not 
 exhausted in this present life, but that the process of 
 reconciliation must go on beyond it, and cannot 
 cease till " all things " in the " heavenlies " (or the 
 spiritual world), as well as on the earth, are brought 
 back to God in Christ. And it is only this that 
 gives us a full human Gospel — one wide as creation 
 
208 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 — and brings to heart and mind a satisfying view of 
 the creation itself, with the suffering, sin, and death 
 that presently characterise it. 
 
 No doubt, when we think of the enormous 
 multitudes that have peopled the earth, of the 
 millions that are constantly passing into the un- 
 seen, and of the kind of life the great majority 
 have lived and still live on earth, it all seems at 
 times very bewildering, and our hopes appear to 
 be founded on our wishes rather than on any 
 solid basis. But, as already pointed out, we derive 
 from the Christian conception of our life in these 
 Epistles one most reassuring consideration : human 
 life has been conceived by God in the image of His 
 own eternity; the Ideal is one that cannot be 
 fully realised on the earth ; it is sonship to Himself 
 after the image of Christ, not something temporal 
 merely, but eternal. So that we can adopt for 
 humanity at large what St. Paul says of the 
 Christian hope : " He that wrought us for this very 
 thing is God." The infinite is His realm and 
 eternity His "work-day." Thus we come back 
 with courage restored, believing that death does 
 not bound the Divine intention ; that there is an 
 endless progression and boundless possibilities be- 
 fore us ; that God is over all, and that His eternal 
 purpose manifested in Christ cannot fail of accom- 
 plishment. 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 209 
 
 It is common to say that we have only to do 
 with the Christian salvation in the present, with 
 the case of those who believe in Christ, and that 
 we must leave all that is beyond this in the hands 
 of God. This assumes, of course, that we have 
 no revelation of a wider purpose; but, even if we 
 confine ourselves to this view of the case, we shall 
 find that we are compelled to go beyond all that 
 is accomplished in the present life. 
 
 The Divine purpose of salvation as it is stated 
 in these Epistles (or as on any ground we can con- 
 ceive it) must have embraced at least the human 
 beings who were living at the time when redemption 
 became effective through the Cross of Christ. It 
 was God's purpose that these should be saved. 
 But how many of those thus embraced in the 
 Divine purpose would of necessity pass away before 
 that purpose could be even made known to them ! 
 How many of those who were representatively 
 reconciled to God in Christ would thus perish, if 
 the possibility of salvation be limited to the present 
 life ! We cannot doubt that, if any were embraced 
 in the Divine purpose, those then living were so; 
 otherwise there would be no meaning in the re- 
 conciliation of man to God in Christ. But unless 
 the Divine grace can operate in the world beyond, 
 the Divine purpose with respect to them has failed ; 
 or rather, it had no meaning. It became effective 
 14 
 
2 1 o Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 only in a very small moiety of those who were 
 redeemed by Christ. 
 
 Christ died for all men : salvation was provided 
 and represented for all in Him. But countless 
 thousands have passed away without ever having 
 heard of Christ. Why? Partly because, in the 
 case of many, it was inevitable that they should 
 do so, and partly because their fellow-men who 
 did hear of Christ and of the salvation provided for 
 all in Him failed to make the glad tidings known 
 to others. Are all these others, therefore, eternally 
 lost to God? Can the fulfilment of the Divine 
 Father's purpose as it affects millions of His 
 children have been left wholly dependent on the 
 action of man towards his fellow-men and on the 
 chances of life on earth? Does God think only 
 of those who happen to hear the Gospel? How 
 can we believe it? 
 
 If men can be fully saved — made partakers in 
 "glory" — apart from the Gospel in Christ, why 
 need it be sent to them? Christ, it may be said, 
 stands for a principle : those who live by that prin- 
 ciple are saved thereby. No doubt there are many 
 belonging to all times — Old Testament saints and 
 men and women of all nations, who, striving to be 
 true to the light that was given them, were, as 
 St. Paul puts it, "seeking glory, honour, and im- 
 mortality," to whom should be granted "Eternal 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 
 
 21 I 
 
 Life." There may be of these a great multitude 
 which no man can number, and amongst ourselves 
 to-day there are many who do not profess Christi- 
 anity who cannot be disposed of in the old hard- 
 and-fast manner. But still we have thus only a 
 relatively small portion of human beings, and for 
 them, perfecting in the life beyond is necessary. 
 Judged by the •Christian standard, many of the Old 
 Testament saints were far from perfect, and perhaps 
 there are few Christians even who are fit for " glory " 
 when they die. So that there must be the action of 
 grace after death. 
 
 If we believe with Christ that there is a " soul " 
 which the death of the body cannot touch, we 
 must believe that all ethical personalities at least, 
 or all who have souls, survive bodily dissolution ; 
 and if Christ is " Head over all things," — the 
 universe, seen and unseen, — if He is the Ideal in 
 whom all have been created, and in whom they 
 have been representatively reconciled to God ; if 
 He is to "fill all things," and God through Him 
 to be " all in all " ; if, in a word, He is really the 
 Saviour of the world, — why should there be any 
 hesitation in believing that He shall complete His 
 work, that His spiritual saving power can and shall 
 reach those who have passed into the unseen world 
 as well as those who are here embodied on earth? 
 Christ is more completely manifested there than He 
 
212 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 is here, and, divested of the earthly body, they 
 must be more open to spiritual influences. To 
 believe otherwise is to limit Christ without any 
 reason, and to contradict the assertion in these 
 Epistles of His universal Headship, which are sup- 
 ported by statements attributed to Him in the 
 Synoptic Gospels, already quoted, such as: "All 
 things have been delivered unto Me of My Father," 
 and "All authority hath been given unto Me in 
 heaven and on earth." May not an element of 
 that " glory " into which Christ has entered be that 
 of the Eternal Redeemer carrying out to Its com- 
 pletion the Divine purpose conceived in Himself? 
 May not also much of the " glory " of those who 
 pass into the Divine life " with Christ in God," and 
 of their work for God under Christ, be the bringing 
 of the many who have died without the knowledge 
 of Christ to that knowledge and to God? The 
 heavenly life cannot be an inactive one, and surely 
 there is no kind of action more Christ-like or more 
 " full of glory " than this. Christ taught distinctly 
 that we are here in training for higher service; 
 that to him who is faithful in this life higher things 
 will be committed. Is not this missionary work 
 in the Unseen that "higher service" which we 
 are accustomed to say our Christian friends are 
 raised to when they leave us, often without our 
 having any very deep conviction of its reality, and, 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 2 1 3 
 
 at any rate, without any clear conception of its 
 nature ? 
 
 The only way by which the conclusion that the 
 work of salvation must proceed after death can be 
 avoided, and at the same time the fulfilment of a 
 Divine purpose affirmed, would be by limiting the 
 purpose to an elected number of the race, while all 
 others are left to perish. But such limitation, we 
 have seen, would be entirely unwarranted, when it is 
 the universe that is spoken of. Besides, it is clear 
 beyond all reasonable dispute that the election 
 affirmed in these Epistles (as we have seen from 
 Eph. iii. 4-6) is that of the Gentiles to be " fellow- 
 heirs " with the Jewish race of the Kingdom of God, 
 an extension of that Divine election which was sup- 
 posed to have been confined to Israel, to all mankind, 
 not a restriction of it to certain individuals. Indeed, 
 it is just this that leads to the affirmation of the 
 universal purpose. What kind of reconciliation of 
 the universe to Himself would that be which was 
 confined to an elected few ? We are only warranted 
 to affirm a Divine election unto salvation if we make 
 it wide enough to embrace all mankind. What a 
 thing it would be to limit the Divine purpose ! 
 
 Therefore, for those who die without the knowledge 
 of Christ, there must be the possibility of that know- 
 ledge in the life to come. 
 
 But what, it may be asked, of those who were not 
 
214 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 sufficiently developed as to be able to receive the 
 Christ ? We can only believe that for all sur- 
 viving personalities there will be possibilities of 
 development beyond death ; and here again, there 
 may be a wide field for the services of those who are 
 in "glory." 
 
 A still more serious question is, what of those who 
 have refused Christ and die unsaved, or who may 
 refuse Him in the life beyond ? But must this refusal 
 remain fixed for ever? By what right can this be 
 affirmed ? If the conversion of the worst is possible 
 in this life, why should it become impossible in the 
 life to come? We are not to argue here this oft- 
 debated question. It may be correct to say that 
 Paul had not this subject in his mind when writing 
 these Epistles. We are not concerned with the 
 question whether he had or not. We have a distinctly 
 declared purpose of God 'to reconcile all things to Him- 
 self — the universe, which was created in Christ, having 
 therefore its Ideal and its goal in Him ; and which 
 was representatively reconciled in " the blood of the 
 Cross." We confine ourselves to this. We ask, can 
 God's eternal creative and redemptive purpose fail ? 
 It may certainly be resisted by free personalities ; but 
 can it be resisted for ever? If we say that God's 
 purpose can fail ultimately, is not this to make Him 
 less than God? Is it not to say that He has created 
 something that He cannot bring into harmony with 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 2 1 5 
 
 its Ideal, or back into unity with Himself, that there 
 is something in the creation stronger than God? 
 And when we remember that that something is sup- 
 posed to be evil, we may well shudder at such a con- 
 clusion. Certainly, there can be no salvation by com- 
 pulsion ; but is there not sufficient spiritual power 
 in God, — non-compulsory, yet moving and obtaining 
 free consent, — " to subdue all things to Himself? " to 
 Himself, be it noted, not in mere external submission, 
 but to that which He is. The Divine Omnipotence 
 is not that of Force, but that of Love — the Love that 
 He is, as He has manifested Himself in Christ. May 
 not that Love so come to every soul as shall yet 
 bring every soul in humble, heartfelt submission into 
 unity with the Father ? If man has been created in 
 Christ and for God, there must be something in every 
 man's nature which will not suffer him to rest till the 
 Ideal in which he was created is realised. Can all 
 men really know " the breadth and length and height 
 and depth of the love of Christ that passeth know- 
 ledge," without being at length conquered by it? 
 " Stronger His love than earth or hell." As Luther 
 explains it, " nothing is so broad, long, deep, high, as 
 to be beyond the power and help of Christ " (quoted 
 by Meyer). Surely this is true, and we see constant 
 proofs of what the knowledge of God in Christ can 
 work in the human heart. Let us worthily trust 
 the Almighty Love of our Creator and Redeemer 
 
216 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 It is able to reconcile completely all things to 
 Himself. 
 
 The universality of the Divine purpose is, as we 
 have said, generally recognised. But it would be 
 no fulfilment of that purpose if a large portion of 
 humanity were to remain in settled and hopeless 
 opposition to God. Nor, if evil were to be put 
 down by force merely, could " all things " (the 
 universe) be said to be "reconciled to God." Dr. 
 Meyer says : " All unchristian natures and persons 
 shall be discarded out of heaven and earth, so that 
 thereafter nothing in heaven or upon earth shall 
 be excluded from the gathering together again." 
 But " the gathering together again " is of " all things 
 to Himself," not after some things have been ex- 
 cluded. No one, perhaps, has stated the eternal 
 purpose better than Dr. Dale in his lectures on 
 Ephesians. " Paul," he remarks, " has just said that 
 it is the Divine purpose to sum up all things in 
 Christ, the things in the heavens and the things 
 on the earth. This is the destiny of the universe. 
 Unmeasured ages of imperfection, sin, and suffering 
 lie behind us, and it may be there are unmeasured 
 ages of imperfection, sin, and suffering still to come. 
 But at last the whole creation is to illustrate and 
 fulfil the Divine thought, and to reach its perfect 
 unity and ideal perfection in Christ." "The whole 
 creation " ; it is a grand, reassuring conception — one 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 2 1 7 
 
 without which we cannot surely be content. But how 
 very incomplete it would be if the result was reached 
 only after many had been annihilated, as Dr. Dale 
 believed. Even this thought brought relief to his great 
 heart and to many others from the dreadful incubus of 
 everlasting misery ; but the tendency of more recent 
 theology is to take that more hopeful view which seems 
 also to give the worthier thought of God, and to be 
 alone consonant with His eternal purpose in creation 
 and redemption. 
 
 But to say that God's purpose continues to take 
 effect after death is not even remotely to suggest 
 that all men will step into blessedness when they 
 die, or that sin of any kind can escape its due 
 punishment. This is impossible: "Whatsoever a 
 man sows, that shall he also reap." In these Epistles 
 entrance into glory, even for those who have been 
 reconciled to God, is made dependent on their 
 continuance in the faith, and it is solemnly affirmed 
 that it is impossible for some to inherit the Kingdom 
 of God. It is impossible for them as they are. As 
 long as sinfulness continues, blessedness abides afar 
 off, and only misery remains — misery, it may be, 
 now realised for the first time by the callous heart 
 and deadened conscience. While to some, freedom 
 from the body may make it easier to respond to 
 God, to others the knowledge that has come to 
 
2 1 8 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 them of the consequences of sin may make it 
 more difficult to come to Him from the right 
 motive. There may be resistance to God, not only 
 in this life, but in that which is to come, and how 
 long it may continue no one can tell. As Dr. W. N. 
 Clarke, who in his Outlines of Christian Theology 
 favours the more hopeful view, remarks : " A hope 
 of final restoration opens up no easy path. Nothing 
 but just such humble and holy return to God as 
 Christ now demands can ever, in any imaginable 
 state or world, bring salvation. This breaking-off 
 of sins by righteousness, and of iniquities by turning 
 to the Lord, must naturally grow more difficult ,the 
 longer one goes on in evil." 
 
 There is thus nothing in the acceptance of the 
 belief in God's purpose to reconcile all things to 
 Himself, to encourage men to continue in sin or to 
 be indifferent to the salvation that is now brought 
 nigh to them. On the contrary, there may be thus 
 brought home to them such a realisable conception 
 of the certain consequences of sin as to be a real 
 deterrent from sinful courses and a reason for 
 accepting Christ's salvation from sin and sinfulness. 
 Nor is there anything that should make us less 
 earnest and self-sacrificing in our endeavours to 
 carry the Gospel to all and to press it upon them 
 for their acceptance. Alienation from God must 
 entail on us a doom to the reality of which we 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 2 1 9 
 
 may only awake in the life beyond. Sin must 
 carry with it in eternity, more consciously than 
 in time, the suffering that is inseparable from it. 
 Besides, there are the benefits which the Gospel 
 brings to men in this present life, which will be 
 found in their full fruition in the life beyond. And, 
 beyond and above all this, the thought of God's 
 love for His human children, His eternal purpose 
 for them, His yearning over them, all that He has 
 done in creation and in redemption to win them 
 for Himself, as well as the reality and blessedness 
 of conscious reconciliation with God and of the 
 new life in Christ, ought to be the supreme and 
 sufficient motive for the evangelisation of the world. 
 God works by means for the accomplishment of 
 His purposes, and we are here to be His instruments 
 in this present time. Our failure in this may tell 
 heavily on others, and may lower our own prospects 
 of glory. For the measure of our capacity to enter 
 into glory will be that of our conformity to Christ. 
 Let us add that the thought of the Divine yearning 
 over men should be the strongest ground of our 
 confidence in His continued working to bring all 
 to Himself. We view this great subject too com- 
 monly in the light of man's interests merely, 
 forgetting that the whole has its beginning and 
 end in the love of God for men, and that it is a 
 matter affecting.God as Creator and Redeemer. 
 
220 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Of course, passages may be cited against all this, 
 as others might well be in its favour. Especially 
 there may seem opposed to it the solemn eschato- 
 logical sayings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. 
 But, apart from the questions, how much of these 
 really belong to Jesus, and how far we understand 
 them aright, it must be remembered that it is im- 
 possible to form any definite and consistent doctrine 
 of the future from such sayings as are recorded, and 
 that we have no reason to believe that Jesus came 
 to give us supernatural knowledge on the subject. 
 He was true man, and seems to have simply em- 
 ployed the language of His people and time. Very 
 often at least, as reported by the synoptists, He 
 spoke as if the Kingdom of God was to be set up 
 on the earth, and eternal life only to be found by 
 entering it. " Eternal {aionian) life " was, indeed, 
 the life of the age or aeon — the Messianic age, and 
 "eternal {aionian) punishment," the punishment of 
 that age. The judgement scene in Matthew xxv. is 
 the Messianic judgement of "the nations (t« 'i&vr\, 
 elsewhere almost invariably translated " Gentiles " 
 and " heathen "), following that of the Jewish people 
 and that of His disciples ; and the sole determining 
 principle is their kindness towards the Christian 
 believers. Nothing else is taken into account. It 
 is really more suggestive of Jewish Christianity than 
 of Christ Himself. The fire of judgement is kindled 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 221 
 
 on the earth, but we cannot imagine that He who 
 revealed the loving Father and spoke of His care 
 for the birds of the air, and pictured His yearning 
 over the wanderers from the fold, ever meant that 
 human beings created to be God's children should 
 be cast into and consumed by a literal fire. Rather, 
 if such representations be really His — which there 
 is reason to doubt — we must think of the fire as 
 designed to be destructive of the evil in them. It 
 is worthy of note that none of these pictures are 
 found in St. Luke's Gospel. The scene of the 
 punishment of the selfish rich man is laid in Hades, 
 probably before the final judgement. 1 
 
 1 The representation of the judgement in Matthew xxv. has had 
 a very great influence on conceptions of the future, and con- 
 sequently of the character of God as taught by Christ. But 
 many things suggest the doubt whether we have here Jesus' 
 actual teaching. It is found in this Gospel only, which is 
 widely believed not to be the original form of Matthew's 
 Gospel. It shows many Jewish-Christian features. Of it 
 Professor Bacon remarks : " Matthew closes the whole series 
 of the discourses of Jesus with a group of three parables, 
 developed with great elaboration and rhetorical effect out of 
 relatively slight suggestions, as found elsewhere " {Making of 
 the New Testament, p. 150). Apart from questions concerning 
 the eschatology of the Gospels in general, the following features 
 of this particular representation suggest doubt : (1) Jesus 
 nowhere else in His discourses calls Himself "the King." 
 (2) The phrase "the Devil (diabolos) and his angels" is not 
 like the language of Jesus. With two exceptions (Matt. xiii. 
 39 ; Luke viii. 12) He uses the word Satan (or the Evil 
 One), which is also the word in Mark iv. 15, parallel 
 with Luke viii. 12. On the other hand, when Matthew is 
 
222 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 Above all, it has to be borne in mind that the 
 Christian revelation, such as is stated in these 
 Epistles, is not derived from the teaching of Jesus, 
 but from His Person, as its significance came to be 
 understood and interpreted under Divine spiritual 
 influences. No words of Jesus (unless all is em- 
 braced in that great word " the Father ") can give 
 us that conception of the Divine eternal purpose in 
 creation and redemption which these and other 
 Epistles assert as, e.g., where St. Paul says God shall 
 yet be "all in all." Yet this great conception has 
 
 narrating he uses diabolos (iv. i, 5, 8, 11), while in the same 
 connection he gives Satan as the term employed by Jesus 
 (iv. 10). (3) It is extremely improbable that Jesus would 
 speak of an "eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his 
 angels " as the counterpart of " the Kingdom prepared for the 
 righteous from the foundation of the world," as if God had 
 before His mind something else than the universe created in 
 Christ. Is the statement to be taken as a revelation ? (4) 
 The principles of the judgement will by no means agree with 
 those in the " Sermon on the Mount " ; but are in keeping 
 with Jewish beliefs, which held that charity delivered from 
 Gehenna. No inner qualities are taken into account : nothing 
 save outward acts of kindness to the Christians, who are clearly 
 distinguished from those who are judged. (5) It is difficult to 
 believe that our Lord, who proclaimed man's sonship to God, 
 would address any as " ye cursed " ! especially when they 
 were not "workers of iniquity," like those in chapter vii. 23. 
 But it is in keeping with the Jewish attitude towards the 
 Gentiles (to Wvrj). (6) To share the doom of the Devil and 
 his angels seems far too great a penalty for the omission 
 which is the ground of the condemnation. It is sometimes 
 said that we have here the just doom of selfishness, or want 
 of love, — love being central to the character, — but it is only 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 223 
 
 been in some sense universally accepted as flowing 
 from the contemplation of the Person and work of 
 Christ. We therefore fall back again on the thought 
 of the creation as conceived " in Christ " and on 
 the purpose of God in Him to reconcile all things 
 to Himself (which certainly includes all moral 
 beings), and on the beliefs which alone seem worthy 
 of God, that the Divine Love is Almighty, and that 
 the Divine Purpose cannot fail. We believe that 
 the Divine creative and redemptive work cannot 
 have been in vain, that since all were representatively 
 
 for lack of kindness to suffering Christians — "these My 
 brethren'' — they are condemned. It is quite a mistake to see 
 in this picture the general judgement and the commendation 
 of human kindness or unselfishness in general. As Weiss 
 says, "the nations, as such, at the last judgment stand over 
 against the brethren {i.e. the fellow-citizens of Jesus), but are, 
 to be sure, only judged on this point, whether they have shown 
 love to these or not " {Bib. Theology of New Testament, ii. 291). 
 They might have done all that is mentioned, and yet, according 
 to the general teaching of Christ, have been unfit (as they 
 were) for the Kingdom. Moreover, if it is to be taken literally, 
 how many of us have failed to do the things required, and 
 have thus become subject to the doom depicted ! In the 
 opinion of some the motive of the representation is the Jewish- 
 Christian insistence on " works." May it not rather be meant 
 to induce the Gentiles to show kindness to the Christians 
 among them? According to Jewish belief, the Gentiles as 
 such were doomed, and had no part in the world to come (or 
 the Kingdom) ; here an exception is made of those who show 
 charity to the Christians. The basis is probably such sayings 
 of our Lord as we have in Matthew x. 40-42 ; Mark ix. 41, in 
 which last chapter we see the tendency to amplify threatenings 
 by the addition of vv. 44 and 46, omitted in R.V. 
 
224 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 reconciled — made at one with Himself — in Christ, all 
 shall yet be so in actual fact ; that the Head of the 
 race shall yet rejoice in a complete Body, and God 
 Himself be " all in all." 
 
 It is sometimes said that God is now taking out 
 of the world "a people for Himself." This often 
 seems to be the case ; but if so, it is for service He 
 is taking them, and in the bringing to God of those 
 who have resisted His grace there is a sphere of 
 action in the very highest form of " glory." 
 
 What has been said applies to all moral person- 
 alities, whether men or angels, whether they be 
 "things in the heavens or things on the earth," 
 which we take to be simply a general, all-inclusive 
 expression. But there are other things, lower 
 things, belonging to the creation, things inanimate 
 and things animate, although not personal, — in what 
 way can they be reconciled or brought back to 
 God ? In the strict moral sense of reconciliation the 
 statement cannot apply to them ; because they have 
 never got away from God in the sense in which 
 man has. Things in Nature, animate and inanimate, 
 all fulfil their purpose. If there are catastrophes in 
 Nature, they happen under the action of the laws 
 that are necessary for the upholding of the world 
 and of life. If there are wild animals — man-eating 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 225 
 
 tigers and poisonous snakes, destroying thousands 
 of human beings annually— they are only acting 
 out their instincts under the pressure of hunger or 
 fear. There are aspects of Nature, indeed, which 
 instil feelings of sadness in our hearts. When we 
 witness the sufferings endured by animals, and the 
 intelligence and affection which some of them mani- 
 fest, along with the treatment they frequently ex- 
 perience at human hands, we cannot help asking 
 whether there is anything in the ultimate purpose 
 of God for them ? St. Paul, we know, saw the whole 
 creation " groaning and travailing together in pain," 
 and believed that its emancipation would come at 
 " the manifestation of the sons of God." But how 
 he pictured to himself the coming of that redemp- 
 tion we cannot tell — unless it was on a transfigured 
 earth. This view would scarcely meet our question- 
 ing, and it may be the same conception that informs 
 the statement in Colossians, as far as it applies to 
 inanimate things and the lower creation. Or it 
 may simply be that, as all things (that is, the 
 universe) were created in Christ, in Him as repre- 
 senting the perfected humanity, the creative Ideal 
 is realised and, in this sense, the " all " is in Him 
 at one with God. 
 
 This would leave our questions with respect to 
 the lower animate beings unanswered, and probably 
 there is no answer put within the reach of man. 
 
226 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 We can only say that all the life that has appeared 
 on earth has appeared inevitably, according to the 
 necessary laws of life ; it has all come in the course 
 of the movement manwards ; we owe our own man- 
 hood to the process. It is for man to minimise 
 animal suffering as far as may be, and to destroy 
 such forms of life as now serve no useful purpose 
 but are in many instances inimical to man. The 
 only further suggestion we can make is, that for the 
 creatures there may be (as the words of Jesus in Luke 
 xii. 6, 7; Matt. x. 29-31 seem to imply) some hope as 
 yet "hidden" — a " mystery " still unrevealed, which 
 may apply to them as they approach to personality. 
 
 In the creation, as it appears, there has been much 
 suffering. But either there must be the actual creation 
 with all the suffering we deplore, or no creation at all. 
 The pessimist thinks it would have been better had 
 there been none. But the Christian view is that 
 the culmination in man as a partaker in the Divine 
 Life was a worthy ideal ; nay, that the creation 
 was a necessity for the Love that God is, and which 
 seeks to impart itself; that the creation itself was 
 founded in a Divine Self-sacrifice. For, as already 
 said, the Love that sought to impart itself must, in 
 order so to do, pass out from itself in a Divine 
 kenosis to become the potency of the creation — 
 which we conceive as an eternal process — and when 
 the creative Ideal was reached in Christ, the Divine 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 227 
 
 Love again gave itself to redeem the world and 
 bring all things back to itself in that eternal unity 
 which is represented for all and made possible for 
 all in Christ. If, however, we were to think of the 
 suffering creation as something wholly apart from 
 God, we should fail to feel satisfaction. But if we 
 believe that God is immanent in the creation as 
 well as transcendent of it ; if we believe with Jesus 
 that " not even a sparrow can fall to the ground 
 without our Father," then we see that God Himself 
 suffers with and for His creation. We see Him in 
 Christ taking even our sins on Himself; for God 
 was in Christ, and assuredly He did not leave His 
 Son to suffer alone. All was " of God," as St. Paul 
 affirms : all is of Him, and all shall yet be well. 
 The grand vision which the Seer of Patmos beheld 
 shall yet be realised : " 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 honour and the glory and the dominion for ever 
 and ever" (Rev. v. 13; cf. iv. n). 
 
 The view of the eternal purpose which we derive 
 from these Epistles is of great practical importance, 
 and it is because of this that we have sought to give 
 full expression to it : " the secret things belong unto 
 
228 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 the Lord our God ; but the things that are revealed 
 belong unto us and to our children." Nothing is 
 more urgently needed for a real revival of religion, 
 and even of religious interest, than a right and 
 worthy conception of God and of His purpose in our 
 creation, as His love and purpose are revealed in 
 Christ. A " religion " which does not rise in love to 
 God is no true religion at all ; and how are we to love 
 God if we do not see Him to be lovable, and that 
 above all others? If human experience is to be 
 confined to the present very uncertain life, so over- 
 clouded by sorrow, so full of suffering, and always 
 ending in death, it will be, for many, impossible to 
 believe in God at all. As it is, many have ceased 
 really to believe. The great majority never seriously 
 think of God. To others who still in some sense 
 believe in " God " He is, if more than a name, 
 Creator and Judge — a Being afar off, unrelated to 
 them — for " Father " means little to such — who will 
 bless them if they believe certain things and act in 
 a certain way, not very clearly defined, perhaps ; but 
 who, should they fail so to believe and live, will care 
 no more for them, but will banish them irrevocably 
 from His sight. It is simply impossible for men and 
 women, as they are in the world, to be attracted to 
 such a God. And if we cannot attract men to God, 
 our religion has lost its power. If they cannot be 
 attracted to God, how are they to be saved — in this 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 229 
 
 life, at any rate ? Fear for long moved some, but 
 that influence has largely passed away. We need to 
 see how much there is that we may reasonably fear 
 if we live not in harmony with God and His eternal 
 laws, — for it is not a merely good-natured God that 
 can save us, or that can be God at all. God's love 
 is holy love, and " without holiness no man shall see 
 the Lord." But we need a truer, worthier conception 
 of God — one without self-contradiction in it. It may 
 be said : " Preach Christ ! " — Christ who is surely 
 attractive, Christ who said, " I, if I be lifted up from 
 the earth, will draw all men to Myself." Christ is 
 preached, but even His attractiveness as a spiritual 
 Saviour seems to be no longer felt by tens of 
 thousands of people. But are we sure that we are 
 preaching Christ — the Christ of these Epistles, the 
 revelation of a God who has created all in the Ideal 
 of Sonship to Himself, and whose eternal purpose is 
 to reconcile all to Himself in Him in whom we have 
 been created — who has already done it representat- 
 ively in Christ and His Cross, and will through Him 
 effect it ultimately in all? A God, the motive ot 
 whose creation, as well as its Ideal, is the Love which 
 He is, which therefore must yet subdue all things to 
 Himself? If we see God to have this loving purpose 
 concerning us, and realise what He has done, in the 
 creation and in Christ, His Cross and His Spirit, to 
 make it effectual ; if we see this to be the purpose 
 
230 Christ the Creative Ideal 
 
 of our creation and the meaning of our life; and if 
 we believe that this God is by His Spirit actually 
 within us, it will surely tend, not only to brighten our 
 outlook on the world, but to make us ashamed of our 
 sin and opposition or indifference, and of any lower 
 life, draw our hearts into unison with our God, and 
 make us glad, self-sacrificing workers in His great 
 world-cause. It will deliver us from all possibility of 
 resting in a merely self-regarding salvation. 
 
 The need for a right conception of God is, we 
 repeat, the great need of the world to-day — a world 
 in which men and women everywhere are becoming 
 indifferent to all vital religion. The old way of 
 representing God and His relation to men in respect 
 of their destiny has manifestly proved ineffective with 
 the greater number. It is not seriously believed or 
 preached to-day. The Church finds herself without 
 any definite teaching regarding the future, and as a 
 consequence the future itself has become very dim 
 and uncertain. But if the Christian Church were as 
 with one voice to proclaim God and His purpose as 
 stated in these Epistles ; if she were to show how the 
 Gospel of redemption is grounded in an earlier 
 Gospel of creation ; how men and women are all, 
 not only redeemed in Christ, but created in Him, with 
 their destiny to be conformed to Him as the first- 
 born of the Sons of God, it would have the effect 
 which a real Gospel of God to men is bound to have. 
 
Fulfilment of the Eternal Purpose 231 
 
 Men simply could not be indifferent to that which 
 so concerned their very life. Instead of confirming 
 them in sin, it would be the most powerful agency to 
 turn them from sin to the God who so loved them, 
 and to whose love they must sooner or later submit— 
 with a lasting and unhappy memory of their per- 
 sistence in evil, or indifference to such a God. 
 
 In any case, it is a serious question for the Church 
 whether she is proclaiming the Gospel of God's 
 eternal purpose in all its fulness '' as it has been 
 revealed to His apostles and prophets'' in Jesus 
 Christ. We cannot better conclude than by adopting 
 for ourselves the prayer of St. Paul for the Ephesian 
 Christians, that " Christ may dwell in our hearts 
 through faith — that, being rooted and grounded in 
 love, we may be strong to apprehend, with all the 
 saints, what is the breadth and length and height and 
 depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth 
 knowledge, that we may be filled unto all the fulness 
 of God." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Animal world, 225. 
 
 words of Jesus concerning, 226. 
 At-one-ment, 100 f., 105, 106, 112. 
 Attraction to God, 228. 
 
 Bacon, Prof., 4, 221 (note). 
 Balfour, Hon. G. W., 198. 
 Bergson, 73. 
 
 Bodies, 202. See Embodiment. 
 Body of Christ, 122 f. 
 
 the Church as, 124, 1 58 f. 
 
 need for, 1 70. 
 Bosanquet, 107 (note). 
 
 Carus, Dr. Paul, 134 (note). 
 
 Chrestotes, 148. 
 
 Christ, revealer of man, 21. 
 
 as the true man, 22, 24, 66, 80. 
 
 the living, 41 f., H9f., 126, 128. 
 
 Person of, 45 f., 78, ngf. 
 
 Ideal>and Goal of Creation, 53 f., 
 66, 80, etc. 
 
 in relation to this world, 56 f. 
 
 in relation to the Universe, 63 f. 
 
 God in human form, 52, 60, 79, 
 etc. 
 
 humanity of, 62, etc. 
 
 continued life of, 67. See the 
 
 mode of Incarnation, 68 f. 
 personal life of, 77 f-> 79' 
 and ourselves, 79- 
 reconciliation of all things in, 
 
 98 f. 
 sacrifice of, 103, 105. 
 Head of the race, 53, 89, 119, 
 
 172, 201. 
 
 232 
 
 Christ, Head of the Church, 120. 
 
 of all powers, 63, 89, 117, 
 211. 
 
 the glorified, 122, 123, 126, 
 128, etc. 
 
 in God, 128, 129 f. 
 
 why we need, 129 f. 
 
 the Church His Body, I58f. 
 
 type of the future life, 1 89 f. 
 
 Universal Saviour, 210 f. 
 
 Love of, 215. 
 
 and the creatures, 226. 
 
 preaching, 229. 
 
 the historical, 26, 152 f. 
 
 See also Jncarnation, Resurrec- 
 tion. 
 Christianity, practical, 112, 113, 
 151, 167, 173, 180. 
 
 all things serve, 90. 
 Church, the Body of Christ, 158 f. 
 
 Ideally, 161, 165. 
 
 Unity of the, 163 f. 
 
 in relation to the world, 170 f. 
 
 social mission of, 173. 
 Churches, union of, 165. 
 
 what they need, 174. 175 f. 
 Clarke, Dr. W. N., 218. 
 Colossians, 3. 
 
 Colossians and Ephesians, 1 f. 
 Comparative religion, 129, 130. 
 Consciousness, 186. 
 Continuity of God's working, 57, 
 7of.,8i. 
 
 human, 84. 
 
 of nature, 85. 
 Converts, early Christian, 142 f. 
 Cosmic Christ, the, 53 f., 63, 89. 
 
Index 
 
 233 
 
 Creation, in Christ, 53> 66, 103, 
 
 105, 131, 205, 215, 229, 230. 
 
 Christ the Ideal of, 53 f., 201, 
 
 226, etc. 
 and Redemption, 54. 
 Divine conception of, 61, 226. 
 return to God, 99, 103, 204 f. 
 ultimate issue, 206. 
 suffering in, 226. 
 necessity for a, 226. 
 
 Dale, Dr., 216. 
 Darwin, 91. 
 
 Davidson, Dr. Samuel, 26. 
 Deity of Christ, 47 f. 
 
 modes of statement, 50, 51. 
 
 See also Christ. 
 "Departed," the, 191. 
 Destiny, man's, revealed in Christ, 
 28 f., 182 f. 
 
 the revelation in the Life, 36 f. 
 Development hereafter, 214. 
 Doketism, 83. 
 Doncaster, 92, 93. 
 Doxa, 198 f. 
 Du Bose, 66. 
 
 Election, 213. 
 
 of the Gentiles, 12, 213. 
 Embodiment, spiritual, 192, 195, 
 
 197, 202. 
 End, the, 227. 
 Ephesians, 3. 
 Eschatology of Gospels, 220 f., 
 
 221 (note). 
 Eternal punishment, 220. 
 Eternal Purpose, the, 12, 13, 82, 
 88, 204 f., 214, 216, 223, 227. 
 
 Fulfilment of, 204 f., 223. 
 
 Life, 37, 220, etc. 
 Eternity and human life, 185, 208. 
 Ethical life, 59. 
 
 the Divine, 83. 
 Evolution, 57, 65, 72, 77, 83, 86, 
 93, 201. 
 
 mind and, 72, 187. 
 
 spiritual, 76 f., 82. 
 Eucken, 89. 
 
 Faith, need for, 35, 37, 188. 
 verification of, 41 f. 
 
 Fear, 118, 229. 
 Fichte, I. A., 187, 193. 
 Forgiveness, 105, 153. 
 Form, spiritual, 128, 196. 
 Fourth Gospel, 49, 50, 55, 69. 
 Fowler, Prof. Ward, 140. 
 Freedom, human, IOI. 
 
 Christian, 115 f. 
 Fulness of God in Christ, 1 19 f. 
 Future Life, 33, 182 f., 185,208, 
 211, 230. 
 
 mode of, 189, 191, 193, 195, 
 200. 
 
 Garvie, Dr., 61. 
 
 Glory, the hope of and life in, 
 182 f., 184, 190, 193, 212, 
 214 ; the word, 198 f. 
 Gnosticism, 2, 121. 
 God, in relation to Christ, 47 f. , 
 56, 129 f. 
 what we can know of Him, 55, 
 
 56, 59, 66, 131. 
 in relation to the Creation, 53, 
 56, 98, 201, 204, 206, 216, 
 219, 226, 229. 
 manifestation of, 59, 61, etc. 
 continuous working of, 57, 70, 
 
 74 f., 81. 
 as incarnate in Christ, 62, etc. 
 as Spirit, 81. 
 
 act of Reconciliation, 105. 
 sacrifice, 83, 106, 226. 
 Omnipresence, 1 29. 
 Immanence, 76, etc. 
 Transcendency, 7°, 75> '3 1 - 
 and presence of Christ, 133 f. 
 coming to, 133. 
 Ethical Personality, 83, 134. 
 love for His human children, 
 
 219. 
 need for a worthy conception of, 
 227 f. 
 Goodrich, E. S., 72 (note), 93, 
 
 96. 
 Goodwin, Dr. T., 126. 
 Gospel, the universal, 108, 207. 
 the needed, 7, 230. 
 
 Harnack, 31. 
 Hartmann, 201. 
 
234 
 
 Index 
 
 Head of Humanity, 119, 171. See 
 
 Christ. 
 Hereafter, belief in a, 33. See 
 
 Future Life. 
 Heredity and the Incarnation, 71, 
 
 8 5 . 
 note on theories of, 91 f. 
 Hill, J. Arthur, 7. 
 Holy Spirit, 75, 77, 124, 135, 
 
 154, 229. 
 Hope, the only, 199, 202. 
 Humanity, perfection of, 16. 
 destiny, 28 f. , 204 f. 
 
 Ideal of the Creation, in Christ, 
 17, 21, 53, 57, 58, 103, 143, 
 etc. 
 its realisation, 68 f., 204 f. 
 the Christian, 143, etc. 
 Immanence, 70, 77, 86, 131, 227. 
 Immortality. See Future Life. 
 Inanimate things and reconcilia- 
 tion, 224. 
 Incarnation involved in the 
 Creation, 52, 54, etc. 
 mode of the, 68 f. , 82 f. 
 in New Test., 69. 
 culmination of the Divine 
 creative and educative action, 
 70, 81, etc. 
 advantages of the view, 81 f. 
 and Science, 70, 75, 81, 85. 
 Industrial Strife, 113. 
 Inspiration, 2. 
 Intervention, Divine, 81. 
 Israel, spiritual development of, 
 59, 74 f-, 86. 
 culmination in Christ, 75, e ' c - 
 contact with other peoples, 78. 
 
 James, Prof., 20. 
 Jew, the, and Christ, 86. 
 Judgement, the representation of, in 
 Matt, xxv., 220 and note 221. 
 
 Kenosis, 61, 82, 201, 226. 
 Kingdom, the, moral significance, 
 
 Life, of the world, 57, 59. 
 the new, 140 f. 
 
 Life, the Christian, 141 f., 151, 
 
 155. 177. etc. 
 Spirit of, 1 59 f. , 171. 
 future. See Future Life. 
 meaning of, 229, 230. 
 
 Lightfoot, Bishop, on Christ and 
 
 the Creation, 54. 
 Livingstone, 138. 
 Logos doctrine, 50, 66. 
 Love, 65, 106, 112, 141, 144, 
 
 156, 168 f. , 215, 226, 229. 
 amongst Christians, 167 f. 
 of Christ, 215. 
 
 MacDougal, Prof., 96. 
 McDougal, W., 73, 187. 
 Man, revealed in Christ, 21 f., 
 55, 6 7, 177, 189, etc. 
 
 reconciliation of, to man, 108 f. 
 Mankind and the Eternal Purpose, 
 
 13. See Eternal Purpose. 
 Martineau, James, 31, 40. 
 Matthew xxv. 31-46. See Judge- 
 ment. 
 Max Nordeau, 95. 
 Mediation, 136. 
 Meyer, Dr., 216. 
 Ministries under Christ, 193, 194. 
 Miraculous, the physical, 51, 84. 
 
 birth, the, 69. 
 Missionary function, 132, 171. 
 Montifiori, C. G., 51. 
 Morality, 141. 
 
 Motives for Evangelisation, 218. 
 Mystery of the Gospel, 5. 
 Mystery, the revelation of the, 1 1 f. 
 
 of human life, 15 ; revealed in 
 Christ, 17, 21 f. 
 Mysticism, 130 (note). 
 
 Nature and reconciliation, 224. 
 
 aspects of, 225. 
 Need, the present, 7, 167, i74^; 
 230. 
 
 Oiktirmos, 147, 148. 
 
 Omnipotence, 215. 
 
 Organism, of Christ, importance 
 
 of. 7o, 77, 79 f- 
 the human, how formed, 71, 
 
 84, 186. 
 
Index 
 
 235 
 
 Orr, Dr. James, 73. 
 Owen, Dr. John, 125, 127. 
 
 Paul, St., j., 4, 6, 14, 225, etc. 
 
 his Divine Philosophy, 4. 
 Peace through the Cross, 104, 
 
 no, 112, 113. 
 People, a, for service, 224. 
 Perfecting, 202, 211, 214. 
 Perfection of Humanity, 16. 
 " Person," 61, 133. 
 Person of Christ, 45 f., 77, 128, 
 
 etc. 
 Personalities, the Divine aim, 74> 
 Personality, spiritual, 72, 185, 
 
 189, 202. 
 Philosophy of the Universe, a 
 
 Divine, 4, 6, 85, go. 
 Pleonexia, 146. 
 Pleroma, 98, 120, 121, 159. 
 Practice, Christian, 180. See 
 
 Christianity. 
 Prayers, 138. 
 
 Preaching "Christ," 229, 231. 
 Pre-existence in Christ, 52, 56 f., 
 
 60, 71. 
 Providence, a particular, 194. 
 Psychical acquisitions, 94. 
 
 Research, 33, 188. 
 Psychology, 187. 
 
 Reason, 10 ; in life, 16, 86 ; and 
 
 faith, 36. 
 Recognition hereafter, 196, 197. 
 Reconciliation of all things in 
 Christ, 98 f., 204 f. 
 
 of the Universe, 99, 108, 205. 
 
 of man to God, 103 f., 107, 
 108. 
 
 of man to man, 108 f. 
 
 of Nature, etc., 224. 
 Redemption, 99, 100, 226, 227. 
 Religion, 24. 
 
 all-embracing, 179, 180. 
 
 comparative, 130. 
 
 true, 228 f. 
 
 the Roman, 140. 
 Religious revival, 9, 24, 180, 228. 
 Renan, 184 (note). 
 Representation in Christ, 99, 104, 
 120, 214, 229. 
 
 Resurrection of Christ, belief in, 
 28, 39. 197- 
 present relation to, 29 f., 44. 
 of Christians, 182. 
 universal, 184 (note). 
 Revelation, how made, 19 f. , 36 f. , 
 55. 59. 131. 222. 
 how its truth recognised, 25. 
 of the Future, 209, 220. 
 
 Sacrifice of Christ, 103, 105. 
 
 Divine. See God. 
 Salvation, meaning, 23. 
 
 the consciousness of, 43. 
 
 Divine purpose of, 209, 211. 
 
 after death, 214, etc. 
 Saviour, the universal, 211. 
 Science and Christianity, 9, 51, 
 
 68f., 75 , 85,91 f. 
 Selbie, Principal, 9. 
 Self, the, 23, 101, 114, 117. 
 Service in " Glory," 193, 212, 
 214, 219. 
 
 a people for, 224. 
 Sin, possibility and reality of, 
 ioif. 
 
 punishment of, 217, 218. 
 Slavery, 151. 
 Smith, Dr. W. C, 107. 
 Social Salvation, 172, 173. 
 Socialism, Christian, 170. 
 Somatikos, 121 f., 125. 
 Son of God, 46, 50, 58, 61, 127, 
 
 133, 201. 
 Sonship, the Ideal, 58, 61, 127. 
 
 in Christ, 61, etc. 
 Soul and Body, 72, 185, 186, 
 
 187. 
 Spencer, H., 91. 
 Spirit of Christ, 114, 158 f., 173. 
 Spiritual powers, 117, 195. 
 Suffering and sacrifice, 107, 226. 
 Survival, possibility of, 185 f. 
 
 Ta ethne, 220, 222 (note). 
 
 Tapanta, 205. 
 
 Taylor, Isaac, 9. 
 
 Telepathy, 197. 
 
 Transcendency. See God. 
 
 Trinity, 134, and (note). 
 
 Truth, the, how recognised, 25 f. 
 
236 
 
 Index 
 
 Union of Churches, 165. 
 Uniqueness of Christ, 52, 79, 80. 
 Unity of the Church, io3f. 
 
 of the Spirit, 164, 165 f., 167 f. 
 Universal and final religion, the, 
 
 88, 89. 
 Universality of the Divine purpose 
 
 and itsaccomplishment,204 f. , 
 
 216. 
 Universe, Christ in relation to 
 
 the, 63 f. 
 reconciliation of, 99, 205. 
 Unsaved, the, Divine relation to, 
 
 214 f. 
 
 Verification of faith, 42 f. 
 
 War and Christianity, 1 1 1 f. 
 Watson, Ed. B., 96. 
 
 Watson, H. B. Marriott, 64, 65. 
 Watson, J. S. B., 97 (note). 
 Weinel, Prof., 26. 
 Weismann, 91 f. 
 Weiss, 205, 223 (note). 
 Westcott, 159, 165, 166. 
 Wider reference, the, 204 f. 
 Williams, Cambridge Greek Test., 
 
 3- 
 World, the Gospel for the, 13, 15, 
 227 f. 
 an organism, 57. 
 Christ in relation to the. See 
 
 Christ. 
 the Church in relation to the, 
 
 170. 
 life in, 177. 
 Worry, 118. 
 Worship, Christian, 176. 
 
 Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh 
 

 
 
 :iiiilf